When Seasons Change

We're beginning a new series today. Every season. We wrapped up our season in the Psalms that we did this summer. And as we're headed into the fall, we're going to be in the book of Ecclesiastes today and we'll be in the Book of Acts next week where we're going to be talking about every season. If you get a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there.

I'd pray for us, but man, what Bryce just prayed, I don't, I don't know. Not a prayer contest, but keeping our eyes on Jesus, I think that pretty much sums it up. Amen. If you're new to our church, we are church that exists to connect people to Jesus for life change. If you're online, thanks for joining us and checking us out.

We're just as weird as you suspect we might be. Come check us out next week in person. Love to have you here. And today, the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter three. If you've got a Bible, Lord willing to go through verse 14.

But we're going to be talking about time. And isn't time a strange thing? You might be in a different place in life where you view time different than somebody who is at a different place in life than you, earlier than you. And whether you think about time as minutes and seconds or seasons or days or decades, is it interesting? It only goes in one direction.

Everybody has the same amount each day. Doesn't matter whether you're rich or poor, educated, not educated, ethnicity, irrelevant. Everybody the same amount in the same direction. And you can't go back. But what if you could?

Whatever season you're in right now, some of you are in a season of learning. Like, how does this life even work? And then you're in an algebra class, you're like, what does this have to do with life? It happens. Trust me.

Not as much as you might be led to believe, but it does matter.

Well, maybe you're at a spot where you just got done with college in your building. Or maybe you're about to get married. It's the beginning. Or maybe you're in a marriage and it hasn't gone the way you thought. You're in another stage.

Or maybe you're at a spot where you're sending the kids off. Or maybe you're empty nester. Or maybe you're caring for people who once cared for you. They changed your diaper, now you're changing their diaper. That's how it goes.

Whatever stage of life you're in, it just keeps relentlessly Moving forward, doesn't it? If you could go back to any time in life, where would you go? Because everybody here has had some experiences and laughed and cried and had good times and bad times. And if you go back to one moment or one season of life, which one would you pick? If time didn't go forward and you could, you know, there's a.

We've got technology to pause live tv. We can't pause time. We're not gonna have that. Because can you imagine if I could pause? I'd have to pause all of your lives, too.

And eventually you'd be like, who gave that guy the remote? Like, why is he pausing so much? When you're in the good times, you want to slow it down. When you're in the bad times, you want to speed it up, where would you go? One of the interesting things about most seasons is they don't announce that they're over.

But every once in a while, you get that opportunity. My wife and I are at one of those seasons with one of our kids, Ava. She's our second oldest, and she just went off, and we just moved her in last weekend to NC State. I think we got a picture of her, moved into her dorm room. All right, done with that one.

Just kidding. And while I've been here, the 20 years I've been here, people have been like, who's your team? What's your team? And I've always been like, ah, you know, I pick a team, and then it's mostly who are most of my friends that root for whatever team. I just want them to be happy.

My heart's not really there. But, you know, the Bible's actually true. It says in the Bible, and it's different than the way I thought it would happen. Where your money is, there your heart will be also. Up until last week, I was always like, yeah, I got a lot of NC State.

It seems like there's more NC State people at our church. So I want them to be happy. Things go better for everybody if that just goes. And. But as an outsider, like a missionary, as somebody who came here, I go, they don't have a chance of winning anything.

All right? It's just the way it is. But once I sent a check, I was like, maybe there's a chance. One in a million. Yeah, well, she's there.

And it felt like it happened a lot faster than I expected. In the last week before she was going to, we moved in, and we were gonna have that day that I showed you the picture of already. I asked Her, I said, can I take you to breakfast? We'll go on a date, a daddy daughter date. We used to do those.

They were a lot simpler when they were little. We used to do those when they were little. And she's like, yeah. And then she's like, but I'm gonna be with my boyfriend tonight. And then it was, I got a work shift, I got friends I gotta say goodbye to.

And I kept getting pushed off. I remember a stage where when I came home from the office, she would run up to me and she would just hold her arms up in the air and say, hold you me. And I had the gift of interpreting tongues at that time. And I knew that she actually meant will you hold me? Even though grammatically it was a total disaster.

I knew what she wanted in that moment.

And I could then go to the next stage, which I didn't realize the other one had ended. And I remember I'd just be walking through the kitchen and go, you want to go to Walmart with me? She's excited to be with me. So she eyes light up, she's excited. She became a teenager.

And I say, you want to go to Walmart with me? And she look at me like, we are a target family, dad. Like, why are you so dirty? Like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, it's my money at both places.

What are you talking about? But whatever.

And now I was at a spot where I was competing with a calendar and life and all these other things. And then we had that meal. And the temptation for me over eggs was, oh, all the stuff I maybe I didn't say I got to get that into this meal because it was a season that announced it was ending. But rarely do we get that sometimes they just change. And what time did you go back to in your mind?

And here's, here's what we're going to see today when we get to the book of Ecclesiastes. Seasons change. I've titled today's message when seasons change. We're going to be in Ecclesiastes chapter one, the first verses. I'll just read the first eight verses to get us started.

But eventually we'll go, Lord willing, through verse 14 or 15. What's happening in the book of Ecclesiastes? It's interesting. It's part of what the Bible refers to as a wisdom literature. There's a sections, there's some prophetic books and there's historical books and various different things in the Bible.

And there's a section of Wisdom literature, where you get books like Psalm that we were just in, the Psalms 150 books, the Proverbs 31, one for every day of the month. You want to start reading the Bible regularly. The book of Job, Pain and suffering and things happening that we don't see in Ecclesiastes. Some people shy away from Ecclesiastes. They'll put it on a coffee mug, a verse here or there, read a verse or two at a wedding, usually out of context, or in a funeral.

And then every once in a while, you hear somebody teach it, and they'll talk about how depressing it is and what a bad place Solomon was at. Well, here's the reality. We don't even know who the author is.

There are two people or two voices. It may be one person saying both voices. And the teacher is more of a character. But two characters in the Bible or in the book of Ecclesiastes 1 is the narrator, which we see in verse 1 and at the end of the book. And then for 11 chapters, we have the teacher.

Look what it says in Ecclesiastes 1:1. It says just this. I see. You got to get to it. Ecclesiastes 1:1.

The words of the teacher, son of David King in Jerusalem. So people make an assumption that that's Solomon. But this is actually among scholars, debated even amongst the most conservative scholars. And the conservatives always are very confident they're right. Even they debate this about who is it?

Is it Solomon? The Hebrew actually seems stylistically to be slightly different than his era. So. So maybe not. Maybe it's someone who's taking a Solomon type posture.

But that's the teacher character. In here, we don't know there's the answer. And for our purposes today, it doesn't matter. But the narrator comes in and gives this introduction that there's a teacher. The word teacher in Hebrew, koheta, it means this one who gathers.

So he gathers people together. And that's what this teacher is doing in this book, is gathering together to then share this wisdom. And the question that's being asked is, what's the meaning of life? And many people struggle with this book because it's giving a very different view of life than what your algorithm will give you on Instagram. It's not selling a class.

It's not going to give you the formula for fixing things to success. A book, whatever the stuff is for you to be rich. But the person that's rich is always the person telling information. It's not doing that. It's not telling you how to grab a hold of life, seize the day, carpe diem.

In fact, it's telling the opposite, and the Bible oftentimes does that. But people have such a hard time with that. They don't realize that what God's giving us through this book is freedom, not depression, not emptiness. And whether it's Solomon or not, whether Solomon was at a good place or not, irrelevant. The truth that's written here could set you free if you understand it.

Let me read it to you in the first eight verses, which is probably the most famous, maybe the most famous verses in this book. It's a poem, and you'll understand quickly why it gets read at funerals and weddings. If you have never heard it yourself before. It says this. There's a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.

A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh.

A time to mourn and a time to dance. It's in there. It's in there even if you were told it was wrong. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.

A time to search, A time to give up, a time to keep. And hoarders hear this. A time to throw away and shanna. That doesn't mean every leftover, I'll eat it. Just give me time.

Give me time. All right. Verse 7. A time to tear or a time? Yeah, it's time to tear and a time to mend.

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. This message today is for everybody that. That the pericope of something new in all of its potential.

In the beginning, maybe you're starting a new class, college program, job, relationship, all that it could be people that are in the middle and maybe it wasn't what you hoped. And people that are ending and maybe you want to or maybe you don't. This is about life. And it's not about life in theory. It's about the life that you're living.

And what we're going to see as we walk all the way through, at least verse 14, is that you're going to see. There's a time to release, a time to receive and a time to revere. The first one is to receive that's what this poem is showing us here. All of these things here happen in life regardless of what formula you adopt, regardless of what you try to do, regardless of what's happening in this very moment. And we tend to be very narrowly focused in whatever's happening right then.

And forgetting sometimes the past, forgetting the promises of the future, forgetting some of that. Here's the reality. The poem is zooming us out and going, this is your life, receive it. And here's the part that'll be hard for some, but will set you free. If you really grasp it, you don't have any control over it.

If you read these, this list, you'll go, there's some good stuff and some bad stuff. Notice that the teacher doesn't tell you which is which. You have thoughts about that, but there's no commentary here about that. And a key word to understand this book, and why many people shy away from it, is because I believe the way the English translators have chosen to translate a specific word, it's the theme of the book. It's the most popular word in the book.

Occurs 38 times, 5 times just in verse 2. I already read you verse 1. If you got a physical copy, you can go back to verse two, and what you read there is this Hebrew word, hevel. Hevel. It means English translators oftentimes translate it, and they're technically right.

Meaningless, vanity, emptiness.

It says that in the niv. That's what I was reading from when I read you verse one. And these other verses in chapter three and verse two, it says this. Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher. Utterly meaningless.

Everything is meaningless. Put that on a graduation card.

The NIV is a thought for thought translation, meaning it's not going word for word of what the translation says. The English Standard Version, one's not better than the other. They just have a different philosophy. The English Standard Version is more literal to the Hebrew, and they translate it this way because the word hevel is actually in that verse. Five times, not four.

You saw the word meaningless four times. Here's the word vanity. 5. Ecclesiastes 1:2. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Did you get it? You understand? And that sounds pretty depressing. The Hebrew word hevel, actually, literally translated, means smoke or breath or vapor.

In the New Testament, we see James say in Greek, your life is a vapor, and he's telling you it's a lot shorter than you think it is. In light of eternity, it's like here and gone. And so if heavel means Smoke instead of vanity. Empty, meaningless. It's an awkward translation.

And people are going to go, what are you talking about? Life is smoke. Life is smoke. Smoke, smoke. All this smoke.

Huh? And so you can understand why the translators would pick that word. But context is going to determine the meaning. And what's being talked about here is the transitory nature of. Of life, of things.

They happen. You have no control over them. You don't get to change. It doesn't matter what formula they think. It doesn't matter if you put carpe diem on your truck, you buy the T shirt.

You can't, because smoke can't be grabbed ahold of. And so you've probably seen smoke, whether it's a house burning down tragedy or whether it's a bunch of people that are friends sitting around a campfire connecting like the Trinitarian blood that's in their veins, gives us a longing to be with other humans, is happening. And. And it's actually glorious. When you see that smoke, you see the smoke and it's real and it can change the environment and it's actually happening.

But if you try to grab a hold of it, you can't. That's heavy, Heavel. Life is heavy. It's real, but it's temporary. If you think and grab it, you're mistaken.

And if you spend your whole life trying to grab life, you'll miss life. Here's what happens. And the poem shows us. So receive it. That's our first point.

Receive the gift given. Here's how life happens. It happens that there are all these occurrences that take place. The time. There's a time for everything.

A time to plant and a time to uproot. And we went through the list and there's a time for laughing, there's a time for crying, there's a time for keeping, there's a time for throwing away, there's a time for building, there's a time for tearing down. All of these things. And you didn't decide when you were born. And no matter what, you can live to 100 book you buy and supplements you take, you don't decide when you die.

And the stuff in between have all. If you live your life thinking that you have control over that, thinking you can grasp life. Oh, then it is empty. It is vanity. You've missed the meaning.

Heavel, Heavel. All is heavel. Today I'm going to tell you the hope of Heavel. But it gets heavy first, and I don't want to give you a cheap answer to escape out of that. And it'll be tempting to do, especially when we get to the second point.

But here, grasp what's being said. Verse 1 There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. The word for time here is an interesting word because it's been said about time, that time is the great equalizer. It's the same for everybody. And like I said, it only moves in one direction and it's just relentless in doing that.

Every one of us has 24 hours today. It doesn't matter how much money is in your bank account, doesn't matter what education you have, doesn't matter whether you're in a good mood or bad mood, doesn't matter anything about any of the stuff that's happening in your life. It just keeps ticking and going. I thought about bringing an hourglass up here and turning upside down, but then I thought, I don't know how long I'll go, so I don't want them to see that and then think it's over.

But we all, all are on the same clock. And even if you pause live TV and even if you have AI that does a bunch of tasks automated for you, isn't it funny how we talk about time saving time, wasting time, investing time, but it just keeps moving. It just keeps moving. You got remember email was going to save us so much time. Now we spend so much time reading other emails and AI is supposed to save us a bunch of time, right?

Yeah. Now we can read emails that somebody else's AI wrote for them. Like that's what ends up happening, is that now we just expect you to do more. There's just more things to do. And you got a dishwasher and you got a microwave and you got.

But the time just keeps doing its thing. Doesn't matter what the technology is, doesn't matter what the hack is, doesn't matter what book you read, doesn't matter what way you do life in your sleep. I do 30 minutes every so many hours instead of getting an 8 hour night of sleep. So then I can. Okay, whatever dude.

The clock just keeps moving.

My wife asked me not to share the next part with you, but I'm under God's authority, so therefore she asked me not to share it because I think she knows it'll make her cry. But Tim Urban, when he was 34 years old, did a calculation. Both of his parents are still alive. And thinking about how long the average lifespan is and their health and where he was at and how often they saw each other. He calculated how many days he has left with his parents, and he calculated at age 34, in the way that they related with one another, 300 days.

So for the rest of his life, if they both live to normal life expectancy, he doesn't even have the amount of time that he had in one year in his childhood with his parents left. In fact, researchers say that once you graduate high school, you've already spent in your relationship with your parents 93% of the time you will ever spend with them. So everything after high school is considered the tail end of that relationship, even though they will often the end of your life, be changing your diapers. Wow. And it just keeps moving.

It keeps moving here. The word for time in verse one is not like a stopwatch, not the seconds on your watch hand. It's the idea of a season. It's what's fitting would be a literal translation from the Hebrew. So there's a fitting moment for every activity under the heavens.

There's a season for every activity under the heavens. And then this list, we get this list of 14 pairs. There's 28 experiences here. This isn't exhaustive of all of life, but I want to kind of skim through it again and then give you some observations and you can make some of your own as well. A time to be born and a time to die.

Okay, so we've got some opposite ends of the spectrum there. A time to plant, A time to uproot. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down. A time to build.

A time to weep. A time to laugh. Well, it seemed like they were going the way I would consider it. Positive than negative. Positive than negative.

Positive. And then it went. Weep and laugh. Okay, what's happening? A time to mourn.

A time to dance. I like dancing better than morning. If you're offended, I don't care. All right. A time to scatter.

Time to gather, Time to embrace. A time to refrain from it. There is a time to refrain from it. But we're Christians. We're supposed to be nice.

Don't be fake. Time to search. A time to give up. Wait, but what if it's a time to keep and a time to throw away? Huh?

They said there was a time to kill. Time to love, time to hate. All right, so here's some observations. First observation is this. This is not theoretical, and it's not just poetry.

This is your life.

Everybody here is living this. And I look out and I see there's some pretty young people here. But you've laughed and probably lost something, maybe someone you've probably planted and uprooted, built something, destroyed something. You've probably seen a time of peace and a time of war. You've probably hated and loved.

So this is our lives. This is not theory. This is your life, this is my life. So while this is poetic in the way that it's written, it's not just a theory. And then you see there's opposites here, right?

And there's things that at least the way I classify things, I think most people in our country, in our western mindset would classify things. There's stuff that we would welcome. So go look at the list again. Birth, planting, healing, building, laughing, dancing, embracing, keeping, mending, love, peace. There's other stuff that we really don't want, but it is part of life.

Death, uprooting, killing, tearing down, weeping, mourning, giving up, throwing away, war. They're side by side with no comment who's saying what's good and bad. We naturally divide things up. And if you have a legalistic background, and by that I mean somebody did tell you there was a formula to life and most of the sermons you heard at church were the keys and steps and different ways to do stuff. And a lot of it's pretty manipulative to get you to behave a certain way.

If you grew up in that environment, then you think, if I'm in a bad season, I did some of the formula wrong, so I gotta go back and fix it. Nope. This should be freedom for you because it's saying the seasons happen and they're not asking you to vote. You don't get to determine when the seasons come and go. The seasons happen and they happen simultaneously all the time in a bigger story than you're a part of.

And while you might be in a season where you think it's, maybe you're exposed not to the legalism gospel, but to the prosperity gospel. And you think that you got that promotion and the new boat and whatever's happening because you were so faithful. No, actually that's how life works. You didn't earn it. That means it's a gift, you better be grateful.

And it's not a guarantee either. Because one of the things that's implied by all the seasons changing is that we oftentimes think that every gift is a guarantee. So we grieve whenever the seasons that are good end and we wish we could have fast forward on the seasons that are hard and wish we'd get to the end of them sooner. You don't have any control. And they are gifts, not guarantees.

So in the first service. It's interesting to me that in 20 years of pastoring, I've been asked literally thousands of times via email, comments on social media, conversations in the lobby, phone calls, all kinds of stuff. Why does God allow. It's never this blessing in my life. It's always this bad thing in somebody else's life.

Something I saw on the news in my life, something that happened in my past, something I think might happen. Why does God allow bad. My question for you is, why have none of you ever come to me and said, why did God allow this good gift to come into my life?

Because what happens is we think when the good gift comes, there's no end to it. There's a guarantee. I'll tell you there is. As somebody who. And it's right that my daughter's launched.

It's right that those things have happened. But it hurts. And I don't cry. But I did lose control of my emotions and some wet stuff came out, but I didn't cry. I don't know what that was like leaking oil.

Oil or something, I don't know. But every gift is not a guarantee. That's. When you read this poem, you see that and you don't have control. And that sounds scary to some.

It should be freedom because it means God is God and you are not. So you don't have to carry that weight. You didn't earn it and you're not being punished because of happens now. Are there consequences for decisions? Yep.

Are there times when you put yourself in a better situation that you could have been it? Yeah. Here's the reality. You have agency. You do not have sovereignty.

Agency is. You've got the ability to influence a situation. You've got the ability. How you view a situation, your mindset, you've got. You want it to be renewed by the truth of the scriptures we were talking about in the last series.

We all have stories we tell ourselves. Everybody here is telling yourself a story about your life that helps you survive your life. It doesn't mean your story's true. It doesn't mean you're believing all lies. You take little true pieces that makes your story work.

That's how we work as humans. But we go to God's word so we can say what's actually true. And if your story you're telling yourself doesn't line up with this, you're lying to you. Just so you know, here, here, what ends up happening is you're being Set free, receive your season and realize what isn't. Heavel.

I read a story this week about a gentleman, his name is Terry Waite. And Terry was a hostage negotiator. He was experienced at it. He had actually already, prior to the story I'm about to tell you, negotiated hostages out of places like Iran. Have fun with that.

Your boss says to you, hey, you want to go to Iran? No. How about that? Looking for a new job now? Like, what in the world?

Yemen? Yeah. Thanks anyways. Well, he's British citizen and the Archbishop of Canterbury. And the way they do things is it's governmental, but it's through the Church.

So this wasn't like a mission trip, but it should communicate to allies and enemies this, no one's going to pull out a gun here. You don't need to worry about dying. The Church has commissioned this. It's supposed to be a peaceful meeting. Everybody understands that, and that's why he's been able to negotiate in the past.

He was being sent to Beirut and he was told to go and negotiate for hostages to be released. He had a few friends even warn him, don't go. He was seasoned. I've already done this. He went.

It went very different than every other season and all the other places. They kidnapped him, kept him as a hostage for 1763 days. The things they did to him. Probably too graphic to speak from the pulpit, but they chained him to a radiator and kept him in isolation. Total darkness, total isolation for four years.

They had mock executions of him when they'd move him from place to place. They put him in a refrigerator or a freezer type object so he couldn't hear anything and he couldn't see anything, and he wouldn't know what location he was at. For four years, he said he wrote a book in his mind, didn't have a pencil, didn't have any paper, nothing to type with. He kept himself sane by remembering the past, not being focused on isolation. That'll drive you crazy.

Studies have shown not being focused on darkness, but he knew what the darkness and how bad it was because of the light he had experienced. He knew how bad it was to be in isolation because of the community. He knew, you know, how bad it was to be in prison because he knew what freedom was like. In his memoir, he talks about how they couldn't break him physically or mentally while they did him harm. But then he said, but they couldn't touch my soul.

Yeah, because all this other stuff, the past, memories that were such good gifts that Were not guarantees. The current circumstances that you certainly did not want, did not orchestrate, and had no control over. Heavel, Heavel, Heavel. But there's something eternal. That's verses one through eight.

That's why he has hope. That's why when you're in a dark season, it's Heavel, though it's heaven. That's not eternal. This is temporary, like James says in James 4:14. Why, you don't even know what will happen tomorrow.

What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. What season did you go back to in your mind when I asked you at the beginning of the message? There's a great quote by the philosopher Andy Bernard from the epic show the Office.

He says, I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.

It's called gratitude.

Receive the gift given and release the unseen. It's going to get heavier than what we've done so far. Just so you know. Be encouraged. Verse 9.

Release what is unseen. And by that I mean your desire to grasp. Heavel. What do workers gain from their toil? So after 14 pairs, 28 experiences, not exhaustive, but basically saying, this is what life is like.

You don't have any control over it. It happens. Whether you keep hitting the pause button. It's not that your batteries are out, it's that you don't have sovereignty. But if I just told them this, if I just.

If I just maneuvered these chess pieces in the right way, then I could get. You don't have sovereignty. You have agency. And that's why God uses you. Theoretically at least.

Whether this is actually happening in your life or not, I don't know. As the light of the world, he wants you to influence for what is eternal in the midst of the heavel. What is eternal. But if you keep trying to grab some heavel, it'll be empty. And so he reflects well, Goods.

All this work I've done. If this is Solomon, which we don't know, but if it is, he's the richest man ever. He is a. Whatever you've accomplished and you think you're awesome.

He's like, I don't know. You can have that forest. How about we give you that country? Could you just go away and it doesn't impact his bank account, his sleep?

The wisest man who ever lived is looking and going, what do you get for all of this? You do all this work and you worry about it and you save and you plan and you strategize and try to help other people and do this thing. And at the end of the day, what do you get in his answer in chapter two, Heavel, you leave it to somebody else who doesn't appreciate it, and they waste it. This is a summary of chapter two, verse ten. He says this.

I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. And so, after describing those 14 pairs, the 28 circumstances, life, your life, he says, God handed you a burden. Life is a burden. It is a weight. It's heavy.

And he wants you to feel the weight. And part of the weight is you can't see all that's happening. And look what he says next. It's a verse that I've quoted often when sharing the gospel. Here it is the full thing.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. This is the temptation that when you're feeling the weight, to run to Romans 8:28. And God works everything together for good. Even the bad stuff will be good at some point, and even the bad and ugly stuff. And that the author of Ecclesiastes is going, nope.

Sit in the ugliness of murder. Nope. This is how life really. And giving you that cliche is not going to fix what's actually happening right now. So don't do that right now, because that's eternal.

And you actually can't see eternal. That's what he's about to tell us. And that's tension and he's not trying to get us to run. Romans 8:28 is true. Eternal perspective.

True. But he's telling you our perspective when we're in the middle of the ugly, when things are terrible. Know this. Everything's beautiful in its time. And beautiful there doesn't mean pretty, it means fitting.

That's appropriate right here in these circumstances.

But he has also said eternity in the human heart, that means you long for more. You know, there's more than what we're seeing yet. And here's why. I know for sure. He wants you to feel tension.

Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. You don't get to see it. In fact, there's no promise you're going to get to see it. The emails I get the question, why did he allow this? Why did this happen?

I don't know. And some people say, well, no, one day, well, will we. Will we care? Could we fathom the answer? There's a lot of questions I have for that.

I don't know what your questions are for that. But I wonder, I wonder if we will ever know. I haven't found the verse that says we're going to know. And here it seems to say, you won't. He has made everything beautiful in its time fitting, appropriate at that appointed time.

When there's a season, there's always a season. There's a time for everything. And there's. You don't have any control over that. And he's going to put the appropriate things in those moments.

He has also said eternity. You have a longing. The way he's designed every image bearer, whether you believe in him or not, is that you have a longing. You feel like there's gotta be more than this, right? You can sense the heavel.

You can sense the temporary. You can sense. You can't grab the smoke. And those of you been trying, it isn't working, is it? And even if you think you grabbed a hold of it.

Vanity, Empty, meaningless. So you can quote 9000 celebrities and successful people going, I got everything I wanted and I still want something. Yep. God set eternity in the human heart. But here's the tension.

No one can fathom what God has done. You couldn't. Even if it was shown to you, you wouldn't understand it. And if you think that beautiful means. Romans 8:28.

Here you're ignoring the context and just to be faithful. The context, I've told you, that's so important for so many years. Read chapter one and two, Chapter one, verse nine. What has been will be again. What you're doing, it's not as novel as you think it is.

What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. But wait, isn't AI new? And no one ever thought of this name that I named my kids. Listen, names change.

Technology changes. The seasons don't change. People don't change. Different culture. Yeah.

Different customs. Yeah. Not new. Repackaged. Repackaged.

Repack. Been trying to build a city to God since Babylon or Babel. That's not new. Is there anything of which one can say, look, this is something new. Well, we put it on toothpaste, but not really.

New and improved. New and whatever. Okay, I think that's marketing. Okay, whatever. It was here already long ago, and it was here before our time.

No one remembers the former generations. Ooh, let that sit. What's your great, great grandma's name? Yep, that's what I thought. That's your family.

They'll forget you too. Just so you know. And even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. That's why people don't love reading this book. But it's true.

Ecclesiastes 2:17. To give you chapter two. It gets worse. So I hated life because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. Not only empty, it's grief causing.

Verse 20. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. If this is Solomon, he can look out and he can't even see the expanse of his kingdom. It's too big. Thousands upon thousands of people, horses, land, wealth.

They didn't have air conditioning, but he had it all. Ecclesiastes 2:23. All their days their work is grief and pain. Even at night their minds do not rest. And if that is you do not say, amen, I've done it.

Laying bed, solving tomorrow's non existent problems.

So when he says, what do workers gain from their toil? In chapter three, in verse nine, he's repeating a question he's already asked. He's already said, this is not a great answer. And then he calls it a burden from God in verse 10 of chapter three. And he says he's made everything appropriate, fitting in its time.

And he put eternity in your heart. But you can't even fathom that.

Have you ever stood next to the Grand Canyon or something way bigger than you that makes you feel small? The ocean some place. And if you stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon, you're blown away by its magnificence. Magnificence. And maybe you planned there and you wanted that moment and it reminds you how small you are in the story.

But can you imagine if somebody said to you, hey, I want you to peer down there and do you see that ant at the bottom of the canyon? And if you're me, you go, I'm almost 50. Are you kidding me? I can barely see my shoelaces. What are you talking about?

It's all blurry. After a certain point, maybe you get a big telescope and you look down there and you see it. It's moving its little piece of dirt or carrying a piece of food, whatever. It's doing a line with other ants. So small.

Can you imagine? Then if you were asked, can you explain to the ant how you got here and why you came to this place? Because you can't see the big picture, but you can see the big picture. You're standing up there and you can see all that's there and all the things happening around it. And you get down there and pick up this aunt and the ant.

Hey, aunt. Well, see, this is what happened. My wife and I, well, she decided she saw something on Instagram, she wanted to come to Grand Canyon. So we save money for months. Do you understand?

Month. You don't know currency. Okay, don't worry about that part. It's on the main part, okay? And so then we saved up the money, and then we got an airplane ticket and we flew here.

And the ants thinking, you're like a bird. You're like, this is a big metal thing. I'll talk about aerodynamics later. All right? And so I.

Then we got here, we rented a car, but we had to get the cargo one because we brought the kids stuff, too. And they wanted to bring all their stuff. And then we had. We wanted to make sure we got air conditioning. Yeah, I know.

You don't know air conditioning. You're the ant.

And we're asking God questions that if he gave us the answers, we don't even have a category for what he's going to say back to you. So when I tell you, you have agency, but you don't have sovereignty. What the second part of the passage is telling you is you can see the season, but you can't see the story. And some of you, it's like standing three inches away from a masterpiece painting. And right now, because of the part of the painting you're looking at, you're looking at a dark season.

And so it's this black blop on the middle of the painting. And you're going, why is this here? What is happening here? You can see the season. God sees the story.

You've got to release the unseen. Because no one, you're not the exception, no one can fathom what God is doing from the beginning to end. That's the story.

It gets better. That's the hardest part, because some of you will hear that and be like, that's true. Put that in my notes and then leave here, grab it, control. And try to manipulate. Okay?

That's the part that's causing you all the stress if you release that part. That's where faith begins. You trying to grab a hold of things, you trying to control things. You. That's actually a work of the enemy in your life to live the life that God hates.

It says in the Bible, it's impossible to please God without faith. What does the Bible say faith is? Because it's not what we oftentimes think. And if you've ever prayed this prayer, God, just show me the next thing to do, and then I'll do it. I think if God would audibly speak to you, he'd go, oh, yeah, I've proven that not to be true.

Read the Bible and everybody sins. So I know me just telling you the next thing to do isn't the answer. How about you trust me? Here's how he defines it in Hebrews, chapter 11. You can't see the whole story.

He can. You see your season, and he asks you to move forward regardless of what you see. Look at what it says now. Faith is the confidence in what we hope for and the assurance about what we do not see. Huh.

Well, maybe that's. I don't understand that. I got to get the Greek. Okay, well, I'm just going to read you what's repeated through chapter 11. Every example of every character in chapter 11.

How about this one? Abraham by faith. What was that? Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as an inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. Put that in your gps.

He couldn't see. Take the next step, Abraham. Well, can you just tell me? What does it matter? You don't know.

You don't know the name of it. Just go.

Verse 7. It says this about Noah. By faith. Noah, when he was warned about things not yet seen in holy fear. Holy fear built an ark to save his family and even seen it rain.

By his faith, he condemned the world. Who lives by sight became heir of the righteousness that is keeping with faith. Moses says this. Verse 24. By faith.

Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Amazing. God placed him in a season, living in a palace with a life of comfort and everything you can imagine. And he said, you step into something unseen, and he didn't go. I kind of like it here.

You put me here, I'm gonna stay here. Nope. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. Wait. It was sin to stay where God had placed you when God told you to go?

It is, but God put me in the palace, and maybe I can influence the palace. And if I was the Pharaoh, you know how much I could do? A lot more work as the Pharaoh. But God said go rather than to enjoy the heavil pleasures. Fleeting, temporary, transitory pleasures of sin.

He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ. Moses in the Old Testament. Yep, that's what it says. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as greater value than the treasures of Egypt. I'll take failure for Jesus or over the treasures of this world because he was looking ahead to his reward.

So he what? He did see something. By faith. He left Egypt not fearing the king's anger. Really?

Because I read that story. They seem pretty scared. That's Egypt. Or I mean, the Exodus, by the way. They are terrified, but they move forward anyways.

And the way it's recorded is he feared God more than he feared the King. That's what's happening there. Not fearing the king's anger, he persevered because he saw him. Who is invisible. Huh?

What does that mean? Here's the answer. I've got a bunch of degrees in this. Do this all the time. I have no idea.

I think you know it when you experience it. But you saw the invisible. I don't know. Okay. By faith, he kept the Passover.

That's really weird. It's not weird to us because we know the story, but. But if you were watching those Hebrew people put blood on the doorpost and they don't have much stuff. They're killing the best animal. They got what.

They hadn't seen, but they did by faith. They kept the Passover and the application of the blood so the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

That feels different than just a Lord. I dedicate this kid to you. There's action in verse 13. It says this. All of these people were still living by faith, not seeing when they died.

They did not receive the things promised. They only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. And. And that is why Ecclesiastes is hard to grasp, because it doesn't make sense when you think about it, like everybody else thinks about life. You can tell yourself a story doesn't make it true.

This is rewriting our minds.

Release the unseen and finally revere God. That's what ends up happening. And let me remind you, there's two characters. Some people say Solomon wrote this at a low point of idol worship and adultery, and he was depressed and that's why it's so heavy and dark and why he keeps saying everything's meaningless. I don't know if Solomon wrote it or not.

I don't know what stage of life he was at, if it was him. But this is not the narrator speaking. The narrator speaks at the beginning. The word of the teacher or preacher, if you're in the esv, same idea. And at the end, here's the whole commentary on everything that gets said in 11 chapters.

Fear God, do what he says. Okay, there's the narrator. The narrator. Beginning, end. This is not either the beginning or the end.

This is chapter three. It's really heavy. It's really dark. And he's telling us to revere the giver, revere God. Watch what he says.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Verse 11. Just to give us context again, he has also said eternity in the human heart. Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Verse 12.

I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and do good while they live. What does that mean? That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil. So it's not the results, it's not the outcome, it's not the very activity. Eating a good meal.

It's so mundane. You're seeing right there. And that the gift, enjoy the gift while you have the gift. Enjoy that steak or fajita or if you're vegan, I don't know what you eat. I did it for a little bit, I'm sorry, whatever that is, enjoy it.

If you're non denominational or Presbyterian, that glass of wine, if you're Baptist, that Coke, enjoy it. Enjoy as you eat and drink everyday stuff, basic things, beans and rice. You have a meal, enjoy it.

And enjoy the actual work, not just the outcome. Enjoy the relationships, enjoy the moments, the seasons come and go. You're not guaranteed how long because this is the gift of God, not the narrator, the teacher. There's a drop of wisdom right here. But it's all heavy, right?

Huh? It is heavy. It is heavy. It's all temporary. Just like that season passed when my daughter was actually excited to go to Walmart with me.

I know it sounds wild. Some of you could never fathom ever being in that place in your life. Some of you are like, yeah, those are my people. Had a guy email me last week. It's like, I met you at Walmart.

That's right. To my people, you target people. You can come here too, but so can you. And see, that's all right. Jesus trumps all that, right?

But I remember when I would take Ava, who I can barely get to go to a meal, not because she doesn't love me, just because she's busy and she would just like jump at the moment to go to Walmart. And I remember rushing through it one time and I kept going, come on, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. And I'd say, hurry, hurry, hurry. And she, with her bright eyes and so excited, just about being in the moment together. It's like, I love you.

Which was like a rebuke to my rushing through it, which we later redeemed. Then I said, hurry, hurry, hurry, and we changed it to I love you. And now we said, if there's ever a moment where it feels awkward to say it, we can just squeeze each other's hand three times. Because I would squeeze her hand when I say hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. Now we do.

I love you.

It's a gift from God. No guarantee. It stays. And then what? Look at the next part.

This is why there's hope in Heavel. I know that everything God does will endure. Wait, you just said everything in life, everything we do, it's Heavel. Heavel. But everything God does is eternal.

Eternal. That's what he's saying here. Your work, your things, they come and they go. There's a season. There's a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.

There's a time to plant, a time to uproot. But everything God does will endure forever. Verse 14. Nothing can be added to it, nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear Him.

Ooh, ooh. Fear Him.

What does that mean? That's a hard word. I'm supposed to be scared of God. Well, let me expand your view of what fear is that you already know, but maybe haven't put words on. I already used an analogy of the Grand Canyon.

Imagine you're at the Grand Canyon and you see that ant. Or you look down and you think, the Grand Canyon is perfect. It just needs me, and I'd like to float through it. And you decide to jump. You'll die.

Just so you know. And you go, but I don't believe in gravity. And life says, we don't care. This is true regardless of the story you tell yourself. And so you should fear, as magnificent and glorious and as much as you stand at the Grand Canyon, you should fear because it's different.

And at one level, when mishandled, is dangerous.

You should fear God because you are not the same. And as much as you get to know him, you will never fully know him, because he is infinite. And you had a beginning, he didn't. And you spend all of the rest of eternity getting to know him. And you will not know all of Him.

And there will always be a new category. You were like, I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't know that. I couldn't ask the question because I didn't even have. Whoa.

You'll be continually amazed. You will never be him, which should be an incredible relief to you, because he holds everything together, the power of His Word, and you don't have to carry that weight. And he did it all so you'd have proper fear, not terror. He loves you, but you try to relate different than He's. You'll experience wrath.

Oh, then you should have fear. In fact, that's the very first step of wisdom. Wisdom, literature, Proverbs, chapter one and verse seven. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

But fools despise wisdom and instruction. Oh, man. God, if you just show me. Go see what Jesus does when people say that in the New Testament. He doesn't do tricks.

The Pharisees come to him. Mark, chapter eight. We'll believe. If you'll just do a miracle. Jesus leaves.

That's not the same Jesus most people talk about at church. That is Jesus.

There's a man who comes to him in John chapter four. He's a royal official, and he says, come, heal my son. He's in Capernaum. You're in Galilee. Those aren't the same talents.

It's like, hey, he's over in Chapel Hill. Okay? Jesus says, go.

If I was that guy, to be like, all right, let's go. I'll go, but you're coming with me, Jesus, because I can see you. But the guy goes, and then people meet him on the way and says, your son was healed at 1 o'. Clock. Which is about exactly the moment when he said, jesus, come heal my son.

Go. Because that's faith. He does all of this, so we will fear him. Then the question is this, do I trust him? And the way you know whether you should trust him or not is, is he good?

And no one has ever seen God, the New Testament tells us. But he says, if you want to see what he's like, look at Jesus. It's John, chapter one. Jesus, who existed outside of time, before time, entered time. John, chapter one and verse 14.

He came and he tabernacled among us. He became one of us by putting on flesh. And he lived among us, dwelt here. And he knew what it was to build and tear down, to plant and uproot, to love. He lived life the same life that you live.

But he never sinned, and they murdered him. So then, prosperity gospel. Well, everything should go awesome for him. No place to lay his head on a cross, murdered for righteousness, and go. That Way legalism.

Well, he must have done something wrong because he's on the. That's not how it works.

You have agency. You do not have sovereignty. You see the season. You can't see the story. Here's part of the story that you need to grasp.

He went to that cross for your sin, not his own. He died for your sin. And it was unlike any other death in human history. Even if you're a total skeptic, even if you don't believe in him as your Savior. Historically, no one has ever died.

And darkness covered the earth in the middle of the day. An earthquake and. And people came walking out of their graves. Never happened before. Historically documented, that had happened.

And he stays dead for three days. That was worse than Terry Waits four years in isolation because it meant separation from the Father. But he is risen. Amen.

If you want to know if God is good, look at Jesus and he takes the worst. But it was for an appointed time, such as this beautiful murder. For your good. You know he's good. The question is, will you trust Him?

Let's pray. Father, we come before you and people listening online. There are people here that maybe don't believe in you. And I wouldn't even want to argue them into the kingdom.

There are things they can't see, but there is a lot of evidence.

And I know what you're saying to them because you've written it in the Bible. Come to me all who are weary and burdened. Come to me all who thirst, which is everyone, because you placed eternity in our hearts. We're all thirsting for more than we've experienced. All want more than we have here.

All hope that there's something other than this. And even those of us tell us that's all there is. That's all there is. That's the way that it goes. And I've just.

All three. It's the story they're telling themselves. But you've told us what's true. And if you've been telling yourself that story, Jesus is saying, will you come to me today? I mean, telling you what to do is simple.

It's in fact as simple as abc. Admit, believe, confess. Admit your sin before God. Believe that Jesus died for your sins and confess. Jesus is your Lord and he promises he'll save you.

Easy to say. I recognize it's hard to do. And you may be torn in your heart whether to do it or not. Why wouldn't you today?

Don't tell yourself a false story. There is no reason good enough not to trust Jesus. Right now. And if you want to trust him, do this. God, I admit that I'm a sinner.

I believe that you died for me. And I call upon you to be my Lord and my Savior and forgive me of my sins. I want you in my life. If you just pray that prayer, God promises he will change your eternity forever. And that endures, because what he does endures.

God, thank you for giving us hope in heaven. This temporary mist, vapor breath smoke of a life that we can see, but we can't quite get our hands around that. Sometimes we don't like the picture you're painting. But we trust you, those of us who already know you. Thank you for loving us, being gracious with us, patient with us, kind to us, rebuking us, challenging us, refining us, and the gifts you give us.

Some of us are in a dark season and we can't pray gratitude right now and be honest. We can say words, but we can admit where we're at. Ask you to meet us in that. Will you meet us in it? Lord, make your presence especially known to who that applies to.

Father, I pray for those of us that are in the highest, best part of our life we've ever experienced. Help us to be grateful and not forget you. It's a gift, not a guarantee. And you may be storing up some armor for when it gets real dark. Help us.

It's in Jesus name I pray. Amen.