1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
9 What gain has the worker from his toil?  10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.  11 He has made everything beautiful in its time.  Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart,  yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.  14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.  15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.
— Ecclesiastes 3:1-15, ESV

The human authorship of the book of Ecclesiastes has long been a debatable subject.  After reading the poem that forms the first part of chapter three, rock music aficionados would like to believe it was written by The Byrds, or Pete Seeger, or maybe Bob Dylan.  But the book of Ecclesiastes was written long before the evolution of the best music ever made.

Internal clues tell us the text of Ecclesiastes is: “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.”  Since “son” can be translated “descendent,” and since several of David’s heirs assumed the thrones of Israel and Judah, there are several candidates.  Solomon, however, seems the oldest and wisest choice.  

Higher critics, including some who maintain a high view of Holy Scripture, find evidence in the text that points to a much later author, writing as if he were a pre-exilic Israeli king to lift the spirits of the post-exilic Israelites.  Like theories about three Isaiahs and the like, this is not the most satisfying solution, but it does not necessarily threaten the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Bible.  For the human author is not as important as the divine Author.

Whoever the various human authors of Holy Scripture may be, there is always the Holy Spirit inside of them.  “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (ref. 2 Timothy 3:16) is a defining doctrine of evangelical Christianity.  “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (ref. 2 Peter 1:21).  

So let us give credit where credit is due and thank the Lord Himself for the poetry and prose that is the book of Ecclesiastes.  But the Bible is not all God wrote.  He is also the Author of time and eternity.

Time

The term most touted in our text today is time.  It ticks thirty times in fifteen verses, mostly in the oft-quoted poem that covers verses one through eight.  Time truly marks every turn of events in our lives.  Time is our lives.

If you ever want to write your autobiography, you can use this text as a template.  You know your birth date, you’ll simply have to depend on someone else to write in your date of departure.  What happens in between has been cutely called “the dash.”  

Take my mother for example.  Oh her tombstone it is written, 1942-2015.  She was born in 1942, she passed away in 2015, and the dash in between is all the life that she lived.  And it was pretty lively, too.

So is yours.  Your dash includes everything Solomon mentions in his poetic vignette.  You’ve planted, plucked, killed, healed, broken down, built up, wept, laughed, mourned, danced, cast away, gathered, embraced, refrained, sought, lost, kept, thrown away, torn, sewn, loved, hated, lived through war, and longed for peace.  These things are all part of living, these things make up your life.  

But what caused all of these things to happen in our time?  Are they all just random events?  Are they purely a product of our own free will?  Or is “the hand of God” at work?

Notice where all this time unfurls.  No longer does Solomon simply look “under the sun,” as if God were not involved.  He says every season of life is lived “under heaven.”  Not only is God in the equation now, He is the equation.  

God invented time, He is the creator of it.  God ordains time, He is sovereign over it.  God gifted you your time, and He will hold you accountable for how you spend it.

Consider something Solomon’s father, David, wrote about time, your time, and the sovereignty of God:

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
— Psalm 139:13-16, ESV

God is sovereign over time.  He is the reason you were born where you were born and you will die wherever you will die.  At every turn of your time, as described in the twenty-eights twists in the text, you are “under heaven” and under “the hand of God.”  

God designs your time to be “beautiful.”  His purpose is for you to “be joyful” while you “do good as long as you live.”  God’s timing is perfect, and if we could understand and obey Him perfectly, we would live perfect lives.  But, we don’t.  And whose fault is that?

Man is responsible for his time.  We receive it freely and have free and willing choices to make with it.  Our sins and the sins of others against us mar our time and bring in the unwanted elements.  What God designed to be “beautiful” can turn out terrible, even tragic, because of pride, greed, lust, and hate.  

God redeems time.  At least He does for some of us, “for the sake of the elect, whom he chose” (ref. Mark 13:20).  God takes even our mistakes, and the arrows others have pierced us with, and does this:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
— Romans 8:28-30, ESV

I know we Calvinists see election and predestination on every page of Scripture.  But you do not have to subscribe to sovereign grace to grasp the theological and philosophical wisdom of Ecclesiastes in this post.  Life is a gift from God.  We choose what to do with it, and sinful choices abound.  God will redeem it, if we are among the “people [who] fear before Him.”  

A major theme in Ecclesiastes is now exposed.  “The fear of God” does not mean to be afraid of Him.  It is quite the opposite.  It is reverence, respect, trust, obedience, or if you want just one word, faith.  By God’s great grace, through the manifold gift of faith, God redeemed your time on earth.  Then, you do not have to fear anything, in time, nor in eternity.

Eternity

Three people have never lied to me.  All three have assured me there is an eternity.  They are Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, and God.

I don’t know what happens when people die,
Can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try,
It’s like a song I can hear, playing right in my ear,
That I can’t sing, but I can’t help listening.  
— Jackson Browne

God has put eternity into man’s heart.
— Ecclesiastes 3:11

Solomon knew eternity existed.  He had an older brother, if you remember, who died shortly after birth.  Surely he was taught the lesson his father David learned in that moment.  When the dead in the Lord depart, they go to be with the Lord.  They will not come back to us, but we can go to the same eternity and join them. 

We know eternity exists, it beats in our hearts, but we know so very little about it.  Since wisdom is gained by knowledge and experience, and since we who are living have yet to experience eternity, we won’t know what it’s like until we get there.  

But God gives clues.  Scriptural references to life and death, paradise and prison, Heaven and Hell abound.  And in regard to Heaven and Hell, we are bound for one of the two.

God is sovereign over eternity.  He has a “book of life” He wrote “from the foundation of the world” (ref. Revelation 17:8).  The names in the book are the citizens of Heaven, predestined to live there eternally.  Names not found in the book are destined for the other place.  “Nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken away from it.”  

I should point out here the difference between predestined and destined.  Those predestined have a choice made for them.  Those destined have to live with their own choices.  Hearken back to Romans 8 or explore Ephesians 1-2 to see God’s choice of sovereign grace in predestination.  The rest make their own destiny with the choices they make in life.  

Man is responsible for where he spends eternity.  The last verse of our text today is haunting when we get at the right translation.  God, in making His choice, analyzes yours.  In arbitrating where you will spend eternity, “God seeks what has been driven away.”  The NIV translation is superior here: “God will call the past to account.”  

Look at your life.  Have you received it a “God’s gift to man.”  And have you, man or woman or boy or girl, given back your life to God as a gift to Him?  Do you “fear before Him,” meaning reverence, respect, worship, obey” based on the revelations of the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ?  Or, have you lived your life as such:

It matters not how strait the gate,
      How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul.
— Invictus, by William Ernest Henley

The infamous Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVey quoted that poem, right before the executioner sent him on to eternity.  How’s that working out for him now?  Not too good.

God redeems eternity.  We get a glimpse of this in Ecclesiastes.  We see a fuller picture in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  The latter gives us the most familiar verse in the Bible:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
— John 3:16, ESV

Have faith in God, in Christ, and make sure said faith is defined in biblical terms as a trusting obedience.  Remember the last verse of John 3:

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
— John 3:36, ESV

The reward and punishment of eternity is well summed up by this great Puritan:

Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset;
Eternity to the wicket is a night that has no sunrise.
— Thomas Watson

An Ecclesiastical Philosophy 

Once again we are left to comprehend an ecclesiastical philosophy of life, gleaned today from this particular passage.  It is extremely timely and eternally profound.  Time and eternity hangs in the balance, and on the scales weigh the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.

God is sovereign and man is responsible with our time on earth.  The same old stuff happens to us all, yet God has crafted a specific plan for all of His children.  God’s part is perfect, but we on our part manage to mess it up.  We can spend our time hopelessly blaming ourselves, we can spend our time endlessly blaming others, or we can heed the word Pete Seeger used to preface the chorus of Ecclesiastes to music, “Turn, turn, turn.”  We can turn our lives over to God while we have time to do so on earth.

God is sovereign and man is responsible in the redemption of our souls.  God makes his choice in salvation in eternity past, a time and place too vast for our feeble minds to fully comprehend.  We make our choice for salvation at one of the many turns along the way, some in childhood or adolescence, most in young adulthood, a few in old age.  Every turn in life is an opportunity to know, love, and fully trust the Lord with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  

God is sovereign and man is responsible for where we spend eternity.  God’s got His books.  You’ve got yours, too, your checkbook, your calendar book, your biographical book you are writing each day.  God reads what we have written and judges, with grace or justice, and His decision stands forever.  

While there is still time, trust your eternity with God.  Turn, turn, turn, indeed.  Turn your past over to Him, He will forgive.  Turn your present over to Him, He will use you for His glory.  Turn your future over to Him, and He will give you a glorious eternity.