1. "Time is a river that only flows in one direction. You can't climb out of it. You can't make it reverse course. One day, time will run out. The destination that the river of time is so quickly pulling you toward is death."

2. "Sometimes God just shuts the door in your face and He expects you to sit there and wait and be silent."

3. "Suffering is a stewardship. Suffering is a work. Bearing the yoke of the time God has put you in is a test of your faith. Not every problem can be fixed. Some difficulties simply have to be endured."

4. "The more you are used to winning and succeeding and controlling and prospering, the more likely you are to mistake a wall for a hurdle."

5. "We constantly strive for a God's eye view. We constantly yearn for some kind of mountaintop perspective that will give us a vision of everything God is doing in our lives so it all makes sense. But we see such a small slice of reality and we understand much less than we see."

6. "Life is a tapestry but you only see the reverse side. You see some strange frayed ends hanging out, you see some quasi shapes and muddled sort of images. God is the only one who sees the whole tapestry that he's weaving."

7. "We're time's prisoners, but we have eternity bottled up within us."

8. "If you make a small pleasure into the center of your life, you not only miss the true purpose of your life, you also miss out on that small pleasure because you ruin it in the process. Put too much weight on that job or relationship and you'll crush it."

9. "The only reason why it would seem strange to you to fear God is if you have shrunk God down to the size of a creature and inflated yourself to the dimensions of the Creator."

10. "Science cannot tell you what happens after the breath departs your body. Which means that science can never prepare you to die."

Observation Questions

1. According to Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, what are some of the contrasting pairs of "times" that the preacher lists, and what do these pairs suggest about the nature of human life?

2. In Ecclesiastes 3:11, what two things does the text say God has done regarding humanity's relationship to time and eternity?

3. What does Ecclesiastes 3:14 say about the permanence of God's work, and what purpose does the text give for why God acts this way?

4. In Ecclesiastes 3:16-17, what troubling observation does the preacher make about "the place of justice," and what is his response to this observation?

5. According to Ecclesiastes 3:19-20, what similarity does the preacher identify between humans and beasts, and what common destination does he describe for both?

6. What does Ecclesiastes 3:22 conclude is "nothing better" for a person to do, and what limitation does the verse acknowledge about human knowledge?

Interpretation Questions

1. The sermon describes life as a "tapestry" that we only see from the reverse side. How does this image help explain the tension in Ecclesiastes 3:11 between God making "everything beautiful in its time" and humans being unable to "find out what God has done from the beginning to the end"?

2. Why does the preacher's observation that humans and beasts share the same fate (returning to dust) not lead to despair, according to the sermon's interpretation? How does the context of verses 12-13 and verse 17 shape our understanding of verses 18-20?

3. The sermon emphasizes that "suffering is a stewardship" and that "sometimes doing nothing is doing something." How does this interpretation flow from the structure of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, and what does it teach about biblical wisdom?

4. How does the sermon connect Jesus Christ to the "riddle of time" presented in Ecclesiastes 3:9-11? What does it mean that Christ "entered time, endured the worst of time, and obtained a life beyond the ravages of time"?

5. The text states that God acts "so that people fear before him" (v. 14). According to the sermon, why might modern readers find this statement uncomfortable, and what does a proper fear of God actually look like in light of the whole passage?

Application Questions

1. The sermon distinguishes between "hurdles" (obstacles to overcome) and "walls" (situations requiring patience and waiting). Think of a current difficulty in your life—is it a hurdle or a wall? What would it look like to respond with wisdom to whichever it is?

2. Ecclesiastes 3:12-13 calls us to receive food, drink, and pleasure in work as "God's gift." What specific good thing in your life have you been treating as an entitlement rather than a gift, and how might gratitude change your experience of it this week?

3. The sermon warns that putting "idolatrous expectations" on small pleasures will crush them. Is there a relationship, job, or pursuit that you've been overloading with expectations of ultimate fulfillment? What practical step could you take to hold it with more open hands?

4. Verse 7 speaks of "a time to keep silence." In what area of your life right now might God be calling you to wait quietly rather than act, speak, or fix? How can you practice patient trust in that situation?

5. The sermon concludes by asking, "What time is it in your life?" As you consider whether you are in a season of joy, grief, building, or tearing down, how should that season shape your priorities, prayers, and relationships with others in your community this week?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Psalm 90:1-17 — Moses' prayer reflects on God's eternality and human frailty, asking God to teach us to number our days and gain wisdom, directly echoing the themes of time and mortality in Ecclesiastes 3.

2. James 4:13-17 — This passage warns against presuming on the future and calls believers to submit their plans to God's will, reinforcing the sermon's point that we cannot control time or guarantee our goals.

3. Romans 8:18-25 — Paul addresses present suffering and future glory, showing how creation groans while waiting for redemption, connecting to the sermon's teaching on patient endurance and hope beyond this life.

4. Colossians 1:15-20 — This hymn proclaims Christ as the one through whom and for whom all things were created, supporting the sermon's claim that Jesus is the answer to time's riddle as the beginning and end of all things.

5. 2 Peter 3:8-13 — Peter explains that God's timing differs from ours and that a day of judgment is coming, reinforcing the sermon's emphasis on God as the Lord of time who will bring perfect justice at the end.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Time's Mysterious Nature and Its Inescapable Flow

II. The Tapestry of Time (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

III. The Riddle of Time (Ecclesiastes 3:9-11)

IV. The Joys of Time (Ecclesiastes 3:12-13)

V. The Lord of Time (Ecclesiastes 3:14-15)

VI. The End of Time (Ecclesiastes 3:16-17)

VII. The Dust of Time (Ecclesiastes 3:18-22)

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Does time ever play tricks on you? You set out for a week's vacation, and it seems like you arrive home only minutes after you left. You walk into the DMV for an appointment, and pretty soon you can't remember what day it is, or how old you are, or whether you have ever been anywhere else.

Time. We mark time, make time, keep time, and pass the time. You spend time and try to save time. When you're young, time seems like a friend. Time is on your side.

You've got all the time in the world. But age quickly dispels that illusion. Time is a river that only flows in one direction. You can't climb out of it. You can't make it reverse course.

One day, time will run out. The destination that the river of time is so quickly pulling you toward is death.

And no matter how much time you've saved throughout your life, on that day, you will have no time left over.

This is our third sermon on the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. And we come now to consider the whole of chapter three. Just for a little review, in the first half of chapter one, the preacher, the book's author and protagonist, declares his thesis: Everything in life is fleeting and flickering, and there's no permanent gain we can hold on to when all is said and done. He illustrates that claim by showing how, against the backdrop of nature's stable cycles, We come and go in the blink of an eye and we vanish without a trace. Then, as we saw last week, in the second half of chapter one and all of chapter two, the preacher goes on a quest for the meaning of life.

He dives into the deep end of learning, pleasure and success in work and he hits the bottom every time. None of those things will fully and finally satisfy us.

In chapter 3, as we're going to see, the preacher turns his attention to time. What will time make of you? And what should you make of time? What will time make of you? And what should you make of time?

The preacher's answers to those questions will come in a series of six snapshots that each show us something about time. Point one, the tapestry of time. The tapestry of time. The preacher displays this tapestry to us in verses 1 through 8.

For everything there is a season. And a time for every matter under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal.

A time to break 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 cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.

A time to seek and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sow, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

This life is a patchwork of joy and grief, success and failure, trying and giving up, starting and finishing. So many of those times are beyond our control and even beyond our ability to influence. You don't plan your own birth and you don't know when or how you will die. So many of these times and seasons that these eight verses are talking about are things that happen to us things that crash in on us and dictate our response. Wisdom requires knowing what time it is.

Time sets hard limits on both what is possible and what is wise.

Kids in the congregation, how was 2020 for you? What in the last year was especially hard for you? Have you learned anything in this past year that you might not have learned otherwise? One of God's purposes in taking away so many good things that we take for granted, like school going normally or visiting grandparents or going on vacation, one of God's good purposes in taking those things away is to teach you wisdom even from a young age.

Have you ever heard the Hallmark card saying, Whenever God shuts a door, He opens a window?

Two problems with that saying. Number one, no, He doesn't.

Sometimes He just shuts the door in your face and He expects you to sit there and wait and be silent. We see this in the Psalms. Psalm 62:1, For God alone my soul waits in silence. From Him comes my salvation. Second problem with that hallmark, he's saying, If God does open a window, what are you supposed to do?

Jump out and break your leg? This is not the kind of way of reading providence we need to really engage in as believers, but in any case, that saying tries to dodge the hard wisdom of these verses. When a baby is born, it's time to rejoice. When a loved one dies, it's time to mourn. Don't confuse the two seasons.

Submit to what each one calls for. Submit to what every time in your life calls for. In this season of unusual suffering and unexpected disruptions, some of us are learning for the first time that suffering is a stewardship. Suffering is a work. Bearing the yoke of the time God has put you in is a test of your faith.

Not every problem can be fixed.

Some difficulties simply have to be endured. Sometimes your main work is waiting. As our beloved former associate pastor and now supported church planter Andy Johnson has said, Sometimes doing nothing is doing something. If you want a fridge magnet from Andy Johnson, there it is. Sometimes doing nothing is doing something.

Not every obstacle is a hurdle to be overcome. If you're running full speed on a track and you come to a hurdle, what do you do? Well, you jump it and you keep going. But if you're running full speed on a track, and you come to a cement wall, you either execute a sudden and complete stop or you sustain a severe injury.

The more you are used to winning and succeeding and controlling and prospering, the more likely you are to mistake a wall for a hurdle. The tapestry of time that God is weaving in your life is an alternating pattern of gain and loss, mercy and judgment. In prosperity, prepare for suffering. In suffering, know that it won't last forever. For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

Point two, the riddle of time, the riddle of time. The preacher poses this riddle to us in verses 9 through 11. Look first at verses 9 and 10. What gain is there in has the worker from his toil. I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

In verse 9, the preacher again asks the question that he asked in chapter 1, verse 3, and the question that ran through all of chapter 2. What lasting benefit does this life under the sun give us? And then in verse 10, he reminds us of the comprehensive quest for the meaning of life that he undertook in the second half of chapter 1 and chapter Two, he's reminding us that he has seen it all. Notice the repetition here. The preacher is introducing key themes and then returning to them again and again.

Why is this book so repetitive? Because life is. The book's form matches its meaning. Life is cyclical and so is Ecclesiastes. But then, verse 11 adds a new thought.

Look at verse 11.

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Each season has something to show us and teach us.

Every time bears some trace of God's goodness. Every time is ordained by His wisdom. And every time there is a beauty that will pierce your heart if only you can keep looking long enough to see it.

Verse 11 continues, 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. God has made us yearn for more meaning than this world offers. He has implanted in us a desire for fullness and permanence that nothing in this world measures up to. And he has given us an insatiable desire to know what on earth is going on. What is the point of all this birth and death?

Killing and healing, mourning and dancing. But, and this is hard to hear, God is also the one who has withheld the answers we long for. We can't find out the whole shape and scope of what God is doing. God is the one who has made time a riddle. Now, it's important to remember that, like a stand-up comic, the preacher is working an angle.

His angle is dictated by the viewpoint that he has adopted, the particular mindset that he's inhabiting. In technical terms, he is working from and working out a certain epistemology, a certain approach to how we can know. And that approach is simply observing and analyzing human life. Those are the limits and parameters that he's restricting himself to, observation and analyzing what goes on down here.

We constantly strive for a God's eye view. We constantly yearn for some kind of mountaintop perspective that will give us a vision of everything God is doing in our lives so it all makes sense. But we see such a small slice of reality and we understand much less than we see. Our life, our trying to make sense of life is like trying to assemble a 5,000 piece puzzle with no picture on the box.

Life is a tapestry but you only see the reverse side.

You see some strange frayed ends hanging out, you see some quasi shapes and muddled sort of images. God is the only one who sees the whole tapestry that he's weaving. So a key part of wisdom is learning to live with that limit. God is the author, we are the characters. Does Hamlet know what Shakespeare is doing?

The riddle of time sets a hard limit to how much you can plan and project your life. There is no guarantee that you will accomplish your goals, fulfill your dreams, and get what you want out of life. We strive to be the masters of our fate. We like to think of ourselves as massive ocean liners that can chart a course and plow ahead mile after mile despite any ocean currents, despite any storms, no matter how big the waves we just to keep following our goals. But really, we're more like tiny little lifeboats with sails made from our own torn clothes.

And yet, we keep yearning and longing and questing, just like the preacher. We're times prisoners, but we have eternity bottled up within us.

As Blaise Pascal said, We desire truth and find in ourselves nothing but uncertainty.

We seek happiness and find only wretchedness and death. We are incapable of not desiring truth and happiness, and incapable of either certainty or happiness.

If you're not a believer in Jesus, what do you yearn for? What do you long for? What knowledge would you most like to have? Is there any way that we can find out what God has done from beginning to end? Does this riddle of time have an answer?

Yes, and the answer has a name: Jesus. Jesus is the beginning and end of all things. Paul says that in Colossians 1:17 when he tells us that all things were created through him and for Him. Jesus Himself tells us in Revelation 22:13, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. God, the eternal Son, is our Creator and Ruler.

He's our source and our destination. We were created for Him. So when we rejected Him and rebelled against Him, and we earned God's wrath and condemnation, Christ came to reclaim us for himself. He did that by dying on the cross to bear the penalty for our sin and rising from the dead to break death's curse. Christ's resurrection liberates us from time's tyranny.

That liberation is only for those who believe and it is for all those who believe. So if you've never turned from sin and trusted in Christ, trust in him today.

Rely on Him, come to Him, abandon trying to be your own savior, and give all to Him. Christ solved time's riddle by entering time, enduring the worst of time, and obtaining a life beyond the ravages of time. Point three, the joys of time. The joys of time. The preacher commends these joys to us in verses 12 and 13.

Look at verses 12 and 13. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live. Also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil— this is God's gift to man. As we considered last week, that last phrase is crucial. That phrase is what makes the difference between bleakness and blessing.

Every good thing we enjoy in this life is a gift from God. Food, drink and pleasure in our work. All those are good gifts from the good hand of a good God. Last week, in recounting his quest from chapter 1, verse 12, the chapter 2, verse 26, the preacher held our heads underwater for a long time before finally releasing us up above the surface so we could gulp in the fresh air of God's grace. Here in our passage, he plunges us under and then brings us up in rapid succession.

He is pivoting back and forth several times between looking at the world from a secular perspective and looking at the world from the point of view of all of it being God's creation, all of it being God's gift, all of it being sustained and held in being by him at every single moment. Imagine a large room with a globe on a stand in the middle. Our preacher throughout this book is like someone in that room standing about 10 feet away slowly circling the globe and taking a series of pictures as they go. When our preacher is on one side, that's the only side he sees and he shows us what he sees. But then when he's circled around to the other side, we take a picture of that too.

He shows us what he sees there and he just sits. These different snapshots side by side. That is the book of Ecclesiastes. These verses, verses 12 and 13, draw us out from the bleakness of secularism into the joy of receiving everything as a good gift from the hand of a kind, faithful, generous, and provident God.

Now, all these joys are not just given in time.

They're stamped by time. They're limited by time. They're bounded by time.

And one day they will vanish into time.

Babies become toddlers, become preschoolers, become elementary schoolers, and eventually they grow up and move out. Even the best meal you will ever have lasts only a couple of hours and you're hungry again in the morning. Even the most satisfying project you will ever have at work eventually comes to the finish line and then you're left with those mountains of boring paperwork that you've pushed aside in order to finish.

In order to receive the joy that God intends for you to get from these gifts, you have to receive their limits too. You have to respect their limits. The limit of a cake you're baking is 350 degrees for 30 minutes. If you cook it for 500 degrees for an hour, you will not have a cake but a smoldering mess and a ruined oven and blaring fire alarms and maybe even a visit from the fire department. All the joys of time are small good things.

If you blast them with the heat of idolatrous expectations of fulfillment, you will ruin them.

If you make a small pleasure into the center of your life, you not only miss the true purpose of your life, you also miss out on that small pleasure because you ruin it in the process. Put too much weight on that job or relationship and you'll crush it. Receive it with open hands and you will taste the goodness of the Lord that he has infused into that gift.

Point four, the Lord of time. The Lord of time. The preacher reminds us who is in charge of time in verses 14.

I perceive 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. That which is already has been, that which is to be already has been.

And God seeks what has been driven away.

For a parent of young children, there are few more troubling moments than discovering just the cap of a permanent marker.

To a toddler, blank clean walls are just a bigger canvas. Why confine yourself to 8.5 by 11 inches when you can go big?

Toddlers are not to be given permanent markers because we do not trust them. They are heedless of their potential to do lasting damage. They should not be entrusted with such power. Kristen, just this morning, discovered Margaret, excuse me, with a Sharpie. Cap off.

Here we go, saved in the nick of time. Verses 14 and 15 tell us that God writes all of history in permanent marker. Whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it nor anything taken from it. Time is beyond our control, but it's not beyond God's control.

We can't find out the big picture, but God is the one who is weaving the tapestry. With apologies to Doctor who, there is only one time Lord. The Creator of time is the Lord of time. Time is the measure of creaturely change and motion. Before God created all things, there was no time.

Time is a feature of the existence of creatures. Before that, there was only God's complete, full, self-contained, eternal existence. And the same God who created time rules and governs time. History is not a tale told by an idiot, but is the steady, inscrutable handwriting of the living God.

And why does God govern history the way he does? Verse 14 tells us, God has done it.

So that people should fear before him. To say that people should fear God seems overblown to many of us today. It seems exaggerated. It kind of strikes the wrong tone. Doesn't God want us to be his friends and his beloved children?

Isn't God a God of love? The only reason why it would seem strange to you to fear God is if you have shrunk God down to the size of a creature and inflated yourself to the dimensions of the Creator. God upholds all things and is upheld by none. God encompasses all things and is encompassed by none. God governs all things and is threatened by none.

God ordains all things and is surprised by none. That is why you should fear Him. Look at the end of verse 15.

After repeating His point from chapter 1 about how there's nothing new under the sun, the preacher says, and God seeks what has been driven away.

We experience time like someone on a road trip driving along a long, flat highway. Everything that happens in time recedes into that rearview mirror farther and farther away. It all just disappears behind us.

We can't reach back and retrieve any of the past.

But God is sovereign over time. All of time is laid bare before Him, and one day God will lay bare everything that has ever been done in time.

Which brings us to point five, the end of time. Point five, the end of time. We see this end in verses 16 and 17.

Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.

Verse 16 presents what is a very common objection to God's sovereign government over all things. If God is up there and He's in charge of everything, then why is injustice so rampant down here?

The preacher perceived something that is all too common in this life under the sun. The very leaders entrusted with authority to promote justice pervert justice. The institutions established to protect righteousness promote unrighteousness. And then look at the preacher's answer. I said in my heart, verse 17, God will judge the righteous and the wicked.

For there is a time for every matter and for every work. When he says there's a time for every matter, he doesn't just mean there's a time when it will happen, like verses 1 to 8 say. He means there is a time for it to be judged. There is a time for it to be held to account. There is a time for payment to be rendered.

God has fixed a time when he will judge all that has been done in time. Every time will have its time in God's court. However prevalent injustice is now, one day God will enact a perfect and permanent justice. That should strike terror into the hearts of all those who abuse power for unjust ends. And it should in no way discourage us from working for whatever measure of justice we can accomplish in this fallen world.

Most of all, it should cause us to hope in God, to patiently endure suffering, and to fix our minds and hearts on the day when he will right all wrongs. In this time, under the sun, measured by its daily circuit, life is cyclical and repetitive. It can seem like any effort to secure lasting change is futile. It just evaporates, vanishes, returns to the status quo. In countries across the globe and throughout history, oppression leads to revolution, which leads to a new government, which leads to the new government eventually becoming just like the old government.

But one day, God will bring all those cycles to a full stop. Point six, the dust of time. The dust of time. In verses 18 to 22, the preacher tells us that this dust is what time makes of you. Look at verses 18 to 22.

I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them, that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same. As one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and to dust, all return.

Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him? Here the preacher switches his lens again. He's back to his mode of empirical investigation.

And science cannot detect the image of God in man. What makes people different from animals? Science can't give you a full and satisfying answer. Science cannot tell you what happens after the breath departs your body. Which means that science can never prepare you to die.

If you're not a believer in Jesus and perhaps you subscribe to a scientific, naturalistic worldview, Would you say that you're ready to die?

However ready to die you are, what is it that you would say is preparing you or equipping you to face death?

What does empirical investigation tell you about who you are? It tells you that you are the dust of time. You're made of dust and very soon Time will turn you back into dust. The dead skin cells that your body continually sheds become a very small part of the dust that slowly settles on every surface of your home. So the next time you spray a shelf and wipe it down, consider it a preview.

Say to yourself, That's a very little bit of me. Soon it will be all of me.

Now, of course, the preacher has told us in verse 17 that there is a reckoning beyond the grave, but he doesn't put all this together. He just sets out the snapshots side by side. We are made in God's image. We are accountable to him. There is a life beyond the grave, but when you just look with what your eyes can tell you, all you see is dust.

All you can finally measure and monitor is the rate of our inevitable decay.

So how should you live each day given that one day you will turn to dust? Verse 22 tells you, Look at verse 22, so I saw that there's nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him? Receive your lot in life as God's gift to you and rejoice in his generosity. One day all the little candles of this life will flicker out, but that doesn't make any of them any less of a miracle.

We have a Jamieson family tradition of reading A.A. Milne's collected stories of Winnie the Pooh straight through to each of our children. I would highly recommend that to you if you've never read them. They're infinitely better than the Disney cartoon knockoff version. I'm reading them all to William right now who's five and we recently came to the chapter in which a house is built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore. That chapter begins with Piglet visiting Pooh at his house.

Well, they get kind of mixed up. Eventually, Piglet's there at Pooh's house. Speaking of Pooh, we read, he looked up at his clock, which had stopped at 5 minutes to 11 some weeks ago. Nearly 11 o'clock, said Pooh happily. You're just in time for a little smackeral of something.

For Winnie the Pooh, it's always 11 o'clock. It's always time for a little smackeral of something. And we don't mind. Pooh doesn't need to bother about time. He's the best bear in all the world.

He never comes to any harm, anyway. But Winnie the Pooh is not exactly a paragon of wisdom. In fact, he's a bear of very little brain.

Little brain. So what about you? What time is it in your life?

What responses do those times call for? What have you made of the time you've had so far?

And what will time make of you?

Heavenly Father, we praise youe because everything in this life is from youm hand. You are the one writing the stories of our lives. So we marvel. And we fear you. We praise you for your generosity.

We pray that you would grant us to see your goodness stamped onto what you give us. And we pray that you would grant us to live both in light of our swift end here and in light of the eternal weight of glory that you're preparing for us. In Jesus' name, Amen.