Discerning the Times

Ecclesiastes 3 and God’s Appointed Times

Our message today, Ecclesiastes 3, 1 -10. There is an appointed time for everything, and there is a time for every matter under heaven. A time to give birth, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted.

A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to tear down, and a time to build up. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to throw stones, and a time to gather stones.

A time to embrace, and a time to shun embracing. A time to search, and a time to lose. A time to keep, and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart, and a time to sew together. A time to be silent, and a time to speak.

A time to love, and a time to hate. A time for war, and a time for peace. What advantage is there to the worker from that in which he labors? I have seen the endeavor which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your powerful, precious word. And Lord, we pray that we might gain wisdom and understanding from the message that you've brought to us today. And Lord, that we may live lives that are full of joy and wonder at your magnificence, at your grandeur, at the great things you've done to bless and prosper us.

Lord, just give us eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts that will obey. And use your messenger, Josh, today to bring understanding and clarity to these truths that are timeless. Thank you for your faithfulness to us.

And Lord, our hearts feel pain for our dear sister Sarah. Lord, meet her needs, I pray, in abundance. Thank you again for this time together. Have your way with us, I pray, in Christ's name.

Gratitude Amid Political and Ecclesial Disorder

It's easy for us to say that the mark of a good Christian is gratitude for what God has done. It is a problem that we have seen throughout the course of Scripture. What do God's people do? They see a move of God.

And they move, and everybody rejoices. Yay! And then hard times come, and God's people grumble. It's hard for us in the day we're in. Think about, if you're in these circles, think about the political conversations you've been privy to.

There's a lot of despair out there right now. Really on every side of the aisle. The left has been knocked back. The Trump coalition splinters. Republicans are fighting with each other. Nobody knows what it means to be a conservative anymore, or if you even adopt that label.

Even within what has unified Christian thought for at least 40 years, which is, we must end abortion. We find factions in that camp, and we find bad operators. And it can all just feel so pointless. Imagine being Solomon, a man who ruled over a people who was so wealthy, so powerful, so full of godly wisdom.

And yet he looks out, and he realizes, as we saw last week, I'm going to die. And everything that I have, and everything that I've possessed, and everything I know is going to pass down to a son who's probably going to lose it all.

And God's people are going to continue to grumble. What is the point of all this? And what's lost in that, and what can be lost? And I think what Solomon is going to bookend the text with this morning.

Is that there is a thing going on under the sun. There is a thing going on that God has appointed. And the key is, as he teases it up, is it's very important for us to remember. No matter what you believe about salvation, whether you're a, quote, Calvinist.

Or whether you're an Arminian, or a provisionalist, or whatever other stripe under the sun. What none of us really argue about is that God appoints the things that happen. That is inescapable from scripture.

And we see it right here. And Solomon starts, and he says, there is an appointed time for everything. The things that happen under the sun are not catching God off guard. They're not. He knows about it.

It's definitional to him being God. If he is God, then he knows everything. If he is God, then he's all powerful. If he is God, then he has created and set everything in motion. So he has sovereignly appointed everything that happens.

Contentment in Every Circumstance

Now what's our job in relation to that? That's what the text gets to this morning. Because our job is twofold. First of all, we are not to complain about our circumstances. But instead, we're to give thanks in everything.

I think Paul says it best in Philippians 4. Great chapter. He says in verse 11,. Not that I speak from want, for I learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in abundance.

In any and all things, I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. What is the secret that Paul talks about? See, Paul was a man of purpose.

Paul was a Christian who was a man that had a mission. Paul pressing on towards the prize, straining ahead, training himself as an athlete, understanding that he's at war and that he has to put on all of the armor of God.

These were not figurative things to Paul. Paul was in a battle against enemies who wanted to kill him. Paul was in a battle against his countrymen who wanted to banish him. Paul was in a battle knowing that the prize was at the end.

Paul was not a pietist. Paul did not think that having good feelings was going to fill him up. Paul knew that there were souls to save, and Paul knew that there was no way that they were going to hear unless faithful men of God preached.

And I look at the landscape. Look, the church has forgotten it. We've forgotten in America. And I've forgotten, and I wonder, and I used to think for a long time, if I was doing an inventory and somebody tried to see, and they were like, hey, is Josh really excited about his Christianity?

Is that something that really moves the needle for him? Is he passionate about it? How eager is he to talk about that? Because that exposes us, does it not? The things that we love to talk about are the things that we love the most.

It's easy to get several of the men here talking about golf. How easy is it to get us to talk about the hope of the nations? And I've tried to dedicate and pray for the fervor that in the course of my life at work that every student who comes and asks about the semblance of the hope in me, that they would hear what the source of that hope is.

And it's that I can give you moralist lessons, but at the end of the day, if you don't have faith through grace, there is no hope, no hope at all. So is the church on mission? Does it seem like that? And what I want us to do this morning is I want to point the guns inside.

Too often in the Reform camp, we look out at the world, and we look out at the broader church, and this self-propagates our pride, and we think, oh, everybody out there is terrible. It's a good thing that we're the lone bulwark inside here.

It's a good thing that we have our doctrine right. And then what we never do is look at what are we doing? What is the fruit? Because God is not going to come, and he's not going to look at the people at CBC, and he's not going to judge us primarily on how focused our doctrine was.

He is going to judge us based on the fruit that we bear. And under heaven, we have a lot of different circumstances that we have to respond to. And it's very easy for us. I want you to notice this duality.

I think Solomon is on this. It's very easy for us to be grateful in the good times, but it's even easier for us to be grateful for the bad times five years after they happened. We love the bad times five years ago or ten years ago, and we talk about them, and we get a tear in our eye, and we think, it changed me so much.

I would not be the man I am today without that tremendous hardship 17 years ago. I would not be the man I am today. And yet, 17 years ago, I was whining against God and just crying like a smash cat. God, are you even going to hear me?

And that's too often the path of God's people. It is a discipline, and it is sanctifying work for Christians to give thanks and to be joyful like Paul was when he's in prison. Do you understand that? That's what he's saying.

I was just as content when I had everything as I am now when I have nothing. Learn this, Philippians. That's what he's doing. That's what he's saying. And so the first thing that we understand from Ecclesiastes 3 is that life is ever-changing.

There is an appointed time for everything, and there is a time for every matter under the sun. Every single thing that you see and hear about that happens has been appointed by God for his purposes. For your good, everything works for good to those who love him.

He is organizing the world, Christian, for your good, and that's an encouraging thought. It's not happening in a vacuum. It's not arbitrary. It's not happening for no reason. It's happening for the strengthening of the church.

Our present political climate is happening for the strengthening of the church. And I think we're starting to have eyes to see that the church is in disrepair, and it needs a refiner's fire. And that starts here in the Reformed Church.

See, we should be held more accountable if our doctrine is more locked down. Because if our doctrine is good, the practice should be good. Orthodoxy that does not lead to good orthopraxy is no good at all.

What good is it if we tell our neighbor, go and be fed? The Scripture tells us it's no good. It's nothing. And what we have to do is we have to remember the heart of wisdom from Solomon is this. The heart of wisdom is that God has appointed everything that's happening under the sun, and you're going to have to navigate it.

And you're going to navigate it a certain way. You are going to chart your course trusting the Lord. That's not something you say to make yourself feel better. That is a belief given to you by the Holy Spirit that goes all the way down to the tips of your toes.

God is doing this. Are you going to trust Him? Hebrews 11, 6 says, Without faith it is impossible to please God. If you do not believe first that God is, but also if you do not believe that He rewards those who diligently seek Him, then what hope do you have?

And are you even a Christian? See, we have to learn to accept and respond with wisdom to the rhythms and times of life that are above us and around us and below us. Life is a series of opposites. To make this difficult, right?

To make this difficult, life always changes. And then the changing is opposites. And I think you're going to see as you read the list how we have abandoned wisdom for a lot of worldly madness in the church.

And what has happened is we have said, well, the Word of God says there's a time for this and a time for this. And what we say is, actually, there's never a time for that. There's only a time for this.

And you're going to see those as these dualities start to unfold. So Ecclesiastes 3, 2 -9 is a poem that is giving us a view of everything that's going on under the sun. Now remember, this is primarily not for you.

This is Solomon writing to his sons and to future kings of Judah and Israel, and he is telling them, as a magistrate, there is going to be a lot of things that you have to decide. Sometimes you're going to have to kill, and sometimes you're going to have to heal.

Sometimes you're going to have to go to war, and sometimes you're going to have to give up something to have peace. There is a time for both. Sometimes people are going to give birth, and sometimes people are going to die.

And the reality is, the heart of wisdom is, that you give equal gratitude to God in all of those situations. See, it's very easy to thank God when you have a newborn baby crying. And looking at you and spacing out.

It's very difficult to give thanks to God when you have a stillborn baby who has no breath of life and is taken into heaven. And what Solomon says is, that the power of God is such that both of those situations were sovereignly ordained by Him for your good.

For your good. And the good that we can see with heavenly eyes is that, you know, the one that we get to enjoy that lives, we see the growth and the maturing, but the one who died, we trust in God. That we have a good God, and we trust that we will see that child again in the flower of adulthood in the new heavens and the new earth, when they are consummated.

Birth, Death, and the Culture of Death

There is a time for both. We give birth and we are very excited. We have death and we are sad and we should be sad. Did you know that God describes death as an enemy? It's an enemy that Christ is going to defeat.

Death is not natural to human beings. And that we, over thousands of years, have not been able to reconcile death as being natural, because it's not. Did you know this? You should remember. Human beings were created as immortal beings.

And death was given to us as a penalty because of our father Adam and his rebellion against God. And death will be reversed when Jesus defeats all of his enemies, death being the end of it. Death has no victory for the Christian today, because Christ has conquered death.

But still, birth and death, both of these things, have you noticed, both giving birth and death, both of them bring families together, don't they? Everybody gathers at the hospital. There's baby showers.

Everybody wants to come see the baby. But also, when people die, everybody goes to the funeral. Everybody prays together. People are tuned in. Spiritual eyes are open when these things happen. Both events are full of reflection.

They are full of fear. They are full of unknowns. But still, giving birth and death are opposites. And see, what's happened is, our culture, you have to rebel against this, Christian. Our culture has decided that there is a time for death, but there's no time for birth.

We know this. We have a catastrophic birth rate in this country. And when we say culture of death, those are not nice slogans. What it is is we embrace death as a culture all the way down to the end where we hate birth, and we've decided in worldly wisdom, birth, we have no time for that.

We've got to go on vacation. Death, we love that. You've got to kill the excess old people because they're straining the medical system, and you've got to kill the babies because they get in the way of you having a career.

We have to have death. We love that because those of us who are alive, we get to have a party, more riches, more wealth. And we see human beings as a curse. And Solomon is warning his son, there's a time for both of those things.

There's a time for both. He also goes on and he talks about planting and gardening, and he says that there is a time to plant and there is a time to uproot. Many times, we have a hard time uprooting. It's fun to plant, right?

It's fun to go out and plant flowers and to plant the garden. It's not nearly as fun to uproot, but there is a time for both. You cannot plant out of season just as you don't want to uproot in the wrong season.

Imagine going and having your fully bloomed out orchards and uprooting them when they're about to fruit. That would be silly. We don't do that. And we have to understand. The wisdom of Solomon says this, you can start blackpilling with Ecclesiastes really easily, right?

What's the point of everything? We're all gonna die anyway. But in a very real sense, what we have to understand is that this law applies. There is a time to plant churches and there's a time that churches are uprooted, right?

There's a time when families begin and there's a time when families end. And what we like to do in our balance is we like to flatter ourselves and think, well, this church will be here for at least five generations.

And we've learned already from Ecclesiastes that is folly. There is no way to think that way. What we do is we try to plan for the next generation holding in God's hands that that next generation, they may just give it over to the flag-waving leftists.

Is it impossible to believe that CBC could have a rainbow flag hanging on the front porch within two generations? No, it's happened to much better men than us. And it's happened many times over. There is a time to plant, there is a time to uproot.

Just because one seems more fun than the other does not mean that sometimes you have to start over. As churches die, it is sad. But sometimes churches have to be uprooted so that a new plant can be planted.

And new plants grow, and they have vitality, and then at some point they die. And contrary to a lot of modern thought, just because something is going to fail in the future does not mitigate or take away our responsibility for doing what we're supposed to do right now.

We're not responsible for what happens 150 years from now. We're responsible for what happens now. We have to do it now. What do we say? Well, no one, if you go preach on campus, no one's going to listen to you, so what's the point?

No, we wouldn't say that. You do what you're supposed to do. The results are God's. The fruit is God's. He appoints all of these things. And gardens and orchards need culling. There might need to be less churches in America for a time.

There might need to be. And there might need to be less of a hold to ancient institutions. And look, I love institutions. Institutions provide a lot of vehicle for power and influence. But at the same time, when things go into disarray, there is a time to uproot.

And there is a time for Christians to trust God and say, hey, maybe this man-made thing we're looking at, maybe that's not it. Things rise and things fall. Look in our culture at how environmentalism turns this upside down.

We've seen it. It's kind of on the downswing now because people are more worried about AI now. But it used to be, like 10 years ago, remember, we were all going to burn. There was a death clock. And if you didn't burn, you were going to drown because Miami is going to be underwater.

Statue of Liberty, she's going to be up to her waist in water. That's what's going to happen. Imminent, imminent. I think it was 2016. We were all going to die by then. But environmentalism has kind of taken its lumps from all of these death predictions.

But at the same time, look what it did. There was never a good time to uproot, only endless planting. Plant a tree. All the while, there's more trees in America today than there ever was before. The reason why, guys, here's a little pro tip.

If you want a lot of something, start farming it. We're not going to run out of chickens because if you farm them, you're going to have billions and billions of them. So if there is a wood industry, there's going to be a lot of wood.

The environmentalists will turn this over, though. They will say there's never a time, never a time to uproot. You always just got to endlessly plant. And that's not realistic. It causes forest fires.

Killing, Healing, and the Authority of the State

Solomon has wisdom. There's a time for both. There is a time. This is tough for us, and I'm going to save a lot of comments for the end of it. There is a lot of talk about killing and healing. The church has messed this up.

When do we kill and when do we heal? This is the bane of many kingdoms, is it not? This is the bane of many kingdoms. When this is disordered, when we mix up killing and healing, what happens is we placate sin and we promote evil.

We have a lot of that in America today. When things are ordered with killing and healing, the good are promoted while the wicked are terrified. This is simple Romans 13 stuff. Did you know that the state is not to give compassion?

The state bears a sword. The state's job is to make wicked people terrified of the sword. The church's job is to heal. The family's job is to heal. When the state starts to try to get into the healing business, what we start doing is letting a lot of injustice happen because judges are not supposed to feel sorry for criminals.

Judges are supposed to punish criminals. The state is supposed to terrorize those who would cause evil to the good. And what happens is when these things get mixed up, if the state starts healing instead of killing, then there's a lot of sin going on.

We just saw it, did we not? A woman strangles one after one her three small children, and we go, well, we should feel sorry for her. You don't know what her mind was like. And here's my response. A state that understands its job to kill, the state understands it doesn't matter what her mind frame was.

She is a danger to society, and she has eliminated her own family. She needs to be punished. Simple. This used to be simple. But when a nation gets disordered and starts loving evil and hating good, then the nation starts healing when it's supposed to kill and starts killing when it's supposed to heal because our government is very, very fascinated with killing a lot of people too.

Right? For specious reasons. And in the church, what we've seen, I'm sorry, hobby-horsing here, but it's very important. The church has to do this too. The church does not kill anyone. Right? The church does not have a sword.

The church is here to shepherd, to give means of grace, to give mercy. The church can't placate evil, but the church can't kill. When the church tries to kill, things get really, really out of whack. And I'm not talking about primarily the Middle Ages.

Look, I'm not going to LARP and talk about what was going on in the Middle Ages with the church and government and all that. Nobody wants that right now. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is this, is when the church starts to wield its power against Christians and not giving them their day in court for sin, then the church starts killing people, trying to kill their reputation.

And when the church does that, things go horribly wrong. It's not a job that we can do. I do not have the sword to kill anyone. And that means your reputation, that means your livelihood, that means your access to the table.

Okay? There is a process for that, and it has to be followed. Solomon moves on, and he gives two couplets that are similar but have escalating language. There is a time for weeping and laughing. There is a time for mourning and dancing.

Mourning, Joy, and Sanctified Suffering

So both of those things go on, weeping and mourning. Mourning is worse than weeping. Mourning and grief is the most powerful of human emotions. It feels like you'll never get out of the pit. There is nothing more damaging to the soul than grief.

But at the same time, when you are so elated and filled with joy that you want to dance, those are opposite ends of the spectrum. And God is to be glorified in both of those times. There are times to dance, and there are times to have grief and to mourn.

So what Solomon is doing here is he is taking aim at several different world views that have happened throughout history. There are hedonists, and there are Stoics. Right? The hedonists want to dance all the time, and the Stoics want to be serious all the time.

And both are wrong. There are times for both of these in our lives, both in family and in church, in our work and in the nation. If every Friday is eat cake at work, then the cake is not special. And friends, the cake should always be special.

All right? Cake is a glory and a blessing of God. Your family is not going to have fun times all of the time. There is going to be sickness. There is going to be death. There is going to be hard days at work.

There is going to be financial instability. But there is also going to be feasts, and there is going to be parties, and there is going to be Butterfinger ice cream, and there is going to be fine steaks.

It's all food with me. It's always going to be that stuff. Okay? And there is going to be time for both, and what we should do is give thanks to God in both. Did you know, though, that the crucible of sanctification is going to be hard times for you, Christian?

Nothing changes you like hard times. Resolve with yourself to not waste your suffering again. There is a time for throwing stones and a time for collecting. This kind of misses us in the English language.

Like, does that mean like skipping them across the lake? I hate gathering stones. All right? I don't like that. Nobody likes that. Throwing them can be pretty fun. But no, throwing stones would have been an idea of sabotaging someone's field.

2 Kings 3 .25, they tore down cities, and each one threw a stone on every piece of good land and filled it. And they stopped all the springs of water and felled all the good trees. This is another thing.

This is another way of saying there is a time to destroy, and there is a time to build up again. So sometimes, sometimes you destroy someone's field as a king, and then sometimes you clean out the fields and you put them back into production.

The king who only does the one is out of balance. The king who only does the other is out of balance. And Solomon is telling you over and over, the difficulty we have in Ecclesiastes is this. We're not a wise people, and we have no excuse.

We must be wise because the Holy Spirit has illuminated the Scripture and given us wisdom. Are we going to take it? So there is a time. Did you know this? There is a time for the state sometimes to take people's stuff and break it.

There is. And there is a time sometimes for the state to make things right again. There is a time to build parks, and there is a time to blow up buildings. Okay? We know that. Tough for us in the church, and tough is the state.

Fellowship, Separation, and Wise Boundaries

There is a time for embracing and a time for shunning embrace. To me, of all the couplets, this is the one that gave me the most difficult time this week. Because I will tell you, especially in our church culture, what we have is we think it's always time to embrace.

Can't we all just get along? It's always time to embrace. And shunning, right? Shunning and embrace is looked at as, well, that's just not nice. Where is the love of Christ in you? Isn't Christianity about love?

Isn't God love? It is. And what Solomon is telling us here, there is balance. Did you know that there is a time to not extend the right hand of fellowship to someone that you might be a brother with? There is time that sin gets between us.

There is a time when our government is supposed to not embrace other governments. And there is a time when they are to embrace. There is a time when you don't embrace your brother because there is something between you.

And you need to get it straight. You need to do the work of getting it straight. Proverbs 5 .20, same author says, Why should you, my son, be intoxicated with a strange woman and embrace the bosom? Oh man, hot fire here.

Why should you embrace the bosom of a foreign woman? You don't have to embrace people just because they're here. Okay? You can shun when it's wise. And here's the thing, right? When one of these seems so out of bounds, you can feel the heat, right?

You've got to love the sojourner. You've got to give them everything. This is Christian dogma today. And this is emblematic of the shaking foundation of the church is that we have abandoned wisdom. What Solomon tells us is that there is a time to offer that right hand of fellowship.

And there is a time to withdraw it. How do you know the difference? Well, you study God's law. That is the fountain of wisdom. You pray to God for illumination. You seek counsel. Do you think Solomon had counselors around him?

Even as the wisest man who ever lived, I assure you, he had lots of counselors. And he was listening. Sometimes we embrace. Sometimes we shun the embrace. And I will tell you this. I live in this country, and I know this.

You're going to feel much more tempted in this place to embrace when you shouldn't than you are to shun when you should. Okay? You're going to feel the pressure to embrace. And if the Spirit tells you, and if you have conviction this is not something I can embrace, then you better not embrace.

To sin against your conscience is a sin indeed. This gets hard. This gets difficult. There's a time to search and a time to lose it. You don't get to be a hoarder. There's a time to keep things and a time to throw them away.

Sorry, Corey. When I look around at the budding businesses in northwest Arkansas, I see a preponderance of two types. We have car washes. I don't know what's going on there. Do we need more car washes?

Man. But the other one is storage facilities. And here's what's happened. As a culture, we have embraced the idea it's never good to throw it away. Don't throw it away. Keep it. Pay a monthly fee to keep it.

Now, look, if you must keep it, then I know of a good man to talk to for storage facilities. I'm not trying to get into your business, but here's the thing. What Solomon will tell us, right, is that there is a time to keep stuff and there is a time to throw it away.

Which side do you fall on? Because I do think people have tendencies one way or the other. The guy I work with this week went on a bender and threw everything in our shop away. Just threw it in the dumpster.

I'm tired of looking at it. That's what he did. He threw it away, and I'm like, oh, okay. I mean, I probably fall a little bit on the other side of that spectrum. We'll just keep piles of five and four-foot lumber in there.

I might use it someday, and we're tripping all over it. Probably not on that side either. There is a time to look for things. There is a time to forget about it. Friends in golf, there's a time to just leave it.

You're not finding it. It's gone. Forget it. It's hard to let go sometimes, isn't it? Have we ever thought of dusting off our robes and just forsaking someone? Because this applies to people too. There's a time to search for someone, and then there's a time to let them go.

Which side are you going to be more likely on? And it falls both ways, right? For me, I will tell you, it's one of my more sociopathic tendencies. It's much easier for me to let go. And I say this not to insult you.

I'll never think about you again. I don't say that proudly. It is a tendency. And so wisdom for me would say, hey, when my first instinct is just to let you go and cut it off, maybe I should examine that a little bit in wisdom.

But for some of you guys, you'll just hold on. And you'll beat your head against the wall trying to argue with the same person for years and years on end. And what you never do is you never take the advice of Christ that says, dust your robe off.

You're throwing pearls before swine. Quit doing that. Boy, that scorches today, doesn't it? I'm not evangelizing you because it's pearls before swine. Maybe we stop sending missionaries to this country where no one ever becomes a Christian.

Maybe that's not a fine use of money. But the church never thinks that way, right? Unreached people group, got to go in there, got to spend all the capital. It's like maybe it would be better to invest the money where there is a harvest.

We don't think that way. Why? Because we're crazy. We're crazy. We do not listen to Scripture. I said it on Wednesday night. The book of Revelation, this should shame us, right? The book of Revelation is very confusing to us because of how profoundly we don't understand the Old Testament.

And when you understand the Old Testament, Revelation starts demystifying a little bit. Similarly, we don't read Ecclesiastes because it makes us feel bad. But I think the reason it makes us feel bad is because we don't understand wisdom.

And this applies to me. I struggled with this text this week. You don't hear me say that very often, right? This was a tough one. I struggled a lot. It's going, what is this? It seems so obvious, but at the same time, why does he keep talking about this?

And what you'll see is he's actually repeating a couple of themes. Life and death. Mercy and judgment. Tearing down, building up. Those are the themes over and over again. Life and death. Mercy and judgment.

Tearing down, building up. That helps you to understand the motif. And what Solomon is saying, a king has to do this. A king has to do all three of those things. Is there a time for mercy from the king?

Yes. But more often, there's a time for judgment. Tearing apart and sewing together. This is probably another allusion to dying. Because what would happen is, in mourning, they would tear their robes, right?

There's a time to tear your robes because you're in mourning, and there's a time to sew them together when things are good. Silence and speaking. See, Solomon attacks me in the Proverbs because what is often wise is being quiet.