Intro
Kids are afraid of a lot of things, including my own. But they come by it honestly. When I was a child, I was afraid of all kinds of things. In fact, I had a fear that I think is fairly unique. I was terrified of time travel.
That’s right, time travel. When I was young, I saw Back to the Future. Christopher Lloyd was literally the most terrifying person I had ever come across, with his wide eyes and crazy white hair. When I was a teenager, years after seeing the movie, I still had this fear that he would suddenly appear in my room ranting about some rip in the space-time continuum. Not long after watching Back to the Future and being welcomed to the nightmares of my childhood, I watched Field of Dreams. I remember feeling somewhat betrayed by my parents because they hadn’t told me that time travel also made an appearance in this movie. I loved the movie, but that part where Kevin Costner suddenly finds himself in the ‘50s straight up freaked me out! Eventually, I got over it and I’m happy to say that time-travel is now one of my favorite genres. Just this week, Carolyn and I watched The Adam Project. A month ago we watched The Tomorrow War. A few months ago we watched Avengers Infinity War. All were great.
Actually, when I started to think about all the shows or movies I’ve watched that involve time travel, I realized something: our culture is obsessed with this. For something that doesn’t actually exist, there is a crazy, disproportionately large amount of time-travel related productions! And here’s the question: why? What is it about time travel that compels us so much? Maybe it’s just that it’s fun. Imagining what it would be like to visit your dorky 12 year old self, or to travel into the future and see what cataclysmic events are in store, that’s just good times, you know? But here’s a deeper, philosophical take: I think we’re compelled by time travel stories because many of them tell us that we can have control over time. They tell us that this force we are victims of, that marches on whether we like it or not, that stamps our past actions in unalterable concrete, can be overcome. They tell us that, given the right technology, we can alter the past and save the future. They make us lords of time.
Time travel stories are also compelling because they tap into a deep yearning and frustration: we want to understand and dictate time but just can’t. It’s a frustration that is voiced by the Teacher of Ecclesiastes. He may have lived a few thousand years ago, but as you’ll see, his struggles and reflections hit home in the modern world.
There is a time for everything,
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
and a season for every activity under the heavens: 2a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
1. What “the times” mean for life
This is probably the best known passage in Ecclesiastes, the only one that might get preached in a lot of churches. The Teacher begins by saying that there is a time for everything, a season for every activity under the heavens. Remember what we said last week about that phrase. Under the sun, or under the heavens, refers to life in this world in bondage to sin and to death. It’s a reference to a broken world in the wake of Genesis 3, not the world as God ultimately intends it to be and will one day make it to be. However, in this world that we still inhabit today, these kinds of things all inevitably happen.
The Teacher, the title the author of this book gives himself, provides 14 contrasting pairs. Let’s look at a few of them. The first is mostly, clearly, out of someone’s control. You have no say over when you are born, it just happens to you. In most cases, you also have no say in when you die. It also just happens to you. Your existence on earth begins and ends according to forces that lie well beyond your control.
The second pair is similar, but here you have some control. Technically, you can plant seeds whenever you want to. You can plant them in December if you want. Tunnel through the 4 feet of snow we got last winter, dig a little hole, plant those carrot seeds. You’re welcome to do it. You’re welcome to be an idiot. There are, of course, times to plant and times to uproot, times when those activities make sense and will produce the best results. For the most part, there’s nothing you can do about that.
The next two lines likely have to do with warfare. Of course, you have the line at the very end about a time for war. It seems that even the “scattering and gathering of stones” in verse 5 probably also has to do with war. For example, the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings says that Israel will overthrow their enemies and ruin every good field of theirs with stones. That will teach them! What an irritating act! When you think about life in the ancient world, there were always “seasons” of warfare- times when a nation was attacked by another people or nation or times a nation engaged in campaigns to extend their territory. A lot of people would argue that there continue to be times when warfare is needed in the modern world- for example, in response to Nazi provocations leading up to World War II. A lot of otherwise peace-loving Westerners absolutely support Ukraine’s military response to the Russian invasion. Even Christians who might disagree with war in principle, under almost any circumstance, have to deal with God commanding warfare in the Old Testament. I was telling my kids a particularly lethal Old Testament story the other day, and my daughter says “Daddy, there’s a lot of killing in the Old Testament”. Yes, there is. I explained that we see things differently in the light of Jesus and that there were particular reasons God instructed His chosen people in warfare in the time before Jesus. But that still proves this point: in the scope of world history, there have been seasons of killing and tearing down. At the same time, there have been seasons of peace, of reconciling, of rebuilding what war has torn apart. Much of this lies outside of my control or yours. We are subject to much larger forces at work in the world.
According to the Teacher, there are certain times when contrasting emotions are appropriate. There are times to mourn and weep and times to laugh and dance. Imagine you’re at a funeral for someone you love. And in the midst of a very somber part, where the pain of the absence of that person is felt deeply, in comes someone laughing and dancing and twirling down the aisle of a church with ribbons and brightly colored clothes. That may be appropriate in other settings, but not here. On the flip side, when I was reading up on Chris Farley for an illustration last week, I came across a clip I hadn’t seen in a long time. The joke is that Farley is told, in one of those hidden camera commercials, that the coffee he’s actually drinking at a restaurant is from instant decaf coffee crystals. The idea is that it tastes so good that he’ll be surprised and impressed. Instead, Farley is so enraged that he’s been lied to he flips over the table and begins choking the man who’s shared this news with him. The humor comes from the fact that this was a time to laugh, not to mourn- or in this case, to rage. Different emotions for different seasons.
I mentioned the scattering of stones in verse 5 as connected to warfare, but one ancient Jewish interpretation said this was actually about sexual activity- I’ll let you connect the dots with “scattering stones”. While that’s up for debate, the second pair is definitely about physical affection. I’ll say more about this later on, but once again, the idea here is that there are seasons where these acts of physical affection are appropriate and other seasons where the same action is inappropriate.
There’s a right time to search and a time to give up, and the length of time in searching is probably appropriate depending on the value of what is lost. If your child has been lost, you won’t stop looking until you find them. If you spend five minutes searching for the Sunday school craft from last week that your kid lost, you need to know: there’s a time to give up. That time was five minutes ago.
There’s a time to keep and to throw away. Speaking of crafts, you can tell this is a thing in our household because of the number of references, but this is an area of wisdom I desperately need my kids to gain. They’ll hoard cardboard boxes, fast food fry boxes, little bits and pieces from packaging. They’ll begin making something- admittedly they’re very creative- and then leave it on the table for weeks. And if we try to throw it out, we’re dealing with an evening of tears. This, to them, is a time to mourn. I want to tell my kids, you’ve got the time wrong! This is a time to throw away! You see it in people’s lives. They accumulate possessions when they move out on their own and when they begin families, but then they downsize into a one bedroom condo when the kids move out. Investors are constantly asking the question of whether this is a time to keep stocks or to sell them. There are appropriate seasons in life for all these actions.
Tearing and mending is probably similar to mourning and dancing, since people in ancient Israel would often tear their clothes in grieving a loss or as a sign of repentance for sin. There is a time for this, something our culture, which often seems to lack the capacity for genuine, personal repentance, needs to know.
There is a time to be silent and a time to speak. A lot of the wisdom literature in the Old Testament revolves around this theme. These are two contrary actions, both right in different circumstances. There are two consecutive verses in Proverbs that I’ve heard used as evidence for how the Bible contradicts itself. Proverbs 26:4-5 proclaims: “do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.” Do you answer a fool according to his folly or not? However, this isn’t a contradiction. It depends on the fool. If the fool is just going to drain your energy and drag you into his pit, stay silent. If the fool would benefit from wisdom, or there are people overhearing who would benefit, then provide an answer. Speak up.
Social media, and the internet in general, is pretty relevant right here. There’s a legendary comment thread from a few years ago on an Australian news site. It had posted a recipe for a birthday cake with numbers baked inside of it. One person in the comment section asked how long to freeze the numbers for, and another person responded “until they’re frozen”. That sarcastic response to what may or may not have been a foolish question sparked a series of responses that ultimately led to people swearing at each other, accusing each other of being filthy liberal communists and hypocritical conservatives, blasting each other’s parenting styles, casting epithets at each other…on the comment section of a cake recipe. There’s a time to speak and a time to be silent. Online, more often than not, it’s silence that’s called for. Know the times.
Finally (because we’ve already covered war and peace), the Teacher says there is a time to love and a time to hate. We might recoil at this. Isn’t every time the time to love? But what about God? Does God hate sin? Does He hate injustice? Does He hate evil? Does He hate when His good creation is undermined, when His people are oppressed, when death reigns in a culture? There is a time to love, and a time to hate.
Let’s wrap this part up: one of the points of the passage is that there is wisdom in submitting to the times. We tend to exert our force on time. We try to bend it to our will. We try to do what we want when we want it, even when it’s not the right time. However, we do not rule time. Instead, time happens to us. Seasons happen to us. Wisdom is recognizing that many things lie outside of our control and responding accordingly.
Responding accordingly means understanding the particular course of action God is calling us to in different situations. If I think about our Western culture, one prominent example of this is in the realm of sex. In our culture, it seems that almost any expression of sexual intimacy is to be celebrated (with a couple of exceptions). The idea that there would be boundaries or limits is mocked as prudish and oppressive. And let’s be clear: sex is good, a good gift given by a good God, meant for human flourishing. It is to be celebrated. Celebrated, that is, in the right context. In the right season. And God in His word has given us the season and context, which is marriage between a man and a woman. In terms of the extent we accurately bear God’s image in the realm of sex, in terms of what He made sex for, sex outside of biblical marriage is as fruitless as planting carrot seeds in December. We can rebel against that all we want in our culture, and people are free to do that. We’re not the first culture to struggle with biblical ideas of sexaul morality! However, if God has set the seasons and times, wisdom means submitting to His authority, not ours. Things go better when we understand the times and seasons God has set and live accordingly.
2. What the “times” mean for worship
Here’s where the Teacher of Ecclesiastes goes next:
9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. 15 Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account
Ecclesiastes 3:9-15
There are some pieces here connected with what we talked about last week. The Teacher concludes that given all the weariness of this world, the best you can do is be happy, do good, eat and drink and find some satisfaction in your toil. After all, he says, God has made the seasons of life beautiful in their own way. But to find satisfaction in the times is a massive struggle because he says that God “has set eternity in the human heart”.
On the one hand, the most natural interpretation for a lot of us is that God has wired us for a desire for immortality, for the afterlife, for heaven of some kind. We desperately want to believe and know that life extends beyond this world, that there is something beyond the grave. You hear this all the time even among people who might have no solid conviction about the existence of God. You will hear sentiments about people going to a better place, being happier now, and so on. There was even a 2014 American survey that found 32% of self-proclaimed atheists believed in an afterlife of some kind. God has put a longing for eternity in the human heart.
However, most Hebrew scholars would say that the author means something different. I believe that what he means by this phrase is that God has given humans a kind of consciousness that there is more to life than any present moment. Humans are uniquely able to reflect on the past or plan for the future. Humans are uniquely capable of regret about what’s happened before and anxiety about what is to come. We also have this intuitive desire to understand purpose in the events of life, even on a broad scale. We read the news partly because we want to understand the direction of history.
Contrast that with animals. I’ve always heard that dogs don’t understand time, that for a dog one minute of being away from their owner is the same as one hour or one week. Apparently there’s some disagreement about that, but in any case, I have yet to meet a dog philosopher. I highly doubt dogs are concerned about what economists are predicting for the stock market in the coming year or are interested in learning about the events of the 1970s. Dolphins, as smart as they are, don’t seem to experience existential crises. Cats don’t spend their time trying to discern the seasons and what the appropriate course of action is. That’s because all cats do is consider how to be as evil as possible in every moment of their existence. Cats are the worst. The point is, this relationship with time seems to be uniquely human.
The point is that we are wired for this, and yet we can become deeply frustrated because our understanding of history and time and meaning is so limited. Think about people who, after reflecting on their lives, come to the same conclusion as we looked at last week. So much of life “under the sun” ends up feeling futile and meaningless. The search for meaning in this world can come up empty. And this is so frustrating because we feel there should be something more. Ecclesiastes says God has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. There’s an image from the scholar Derek Kidner I want to share with you, because this is so good and true:
“We are like the desperately nearsighted, inching their way along some great tapestry or fresco in the attempt to take it in. We see enough of its quality, but the grand design escapes us, for we can never stand back far enough to view it as its Creator does, whole and entire, from the beginning to the end”.
Derek Kidner
We are like desperately nearsighted people inching along a huge tapestry, taking it in inch by inch. We want to understand but we can’t. We are limited. But God isn’t. And that’s the other point the Teacher makes. We are limited. We are often hapless victims of time and the seasons of life, where wisdom is submitting to the seasons. But God somehow stands above time. We delude ourselves into thinking that we are lords of time, but God really is the Lord of time. We have eternity in our heart, but God actually is eternal.
The Teacher writes, “I know that everything God does will endure forever.” It reminds me of words that the prophet Isaiah wrote. These are good humbling words:
“All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.”
Isaiah 40:6-8
God is eternal. He doesn’t fade away. His word endures forever. Other philosophies come and go. The great people of history rise and fall and are soon forgotten. However, God stands above time. He always has been, always will be, He’s the Alpha and the Omega and everything in between. He is not subject to the seasons and times. Instead, He sets the seasons and the times.
And what this is supposed to lead to is worship. Ecclesiastes 3:14 says that God does what He does “so that people will fear him.” I take this to mean reverence. Awe. Worship. That’s what our relationship to time contrasted with God’s relationship to time is meant to evoke.
Think about that. Think about how we as humans forget this. I said before that we humans try to exert our will and force on time and bend it to our will. I said that the reason time travel might be such a compelling theme in shows and movies is because it tells us that this reality that we are subjects to could actually be manipulated. Technology becomes the means for us to become like gods, gaining immortality on our own. You’ve got mega billionaires from companies like Google and Amazon and Oracle investing their money in technology to enable them to cheat death and live forever- or at least for a few hundred extra years. Think about it on a smaller scale. Think about the way so many of us resist and fight against whatever season we find ourselves in. Think about the way we expect to get what we want right now. Our impatience is in some ways a form of our time delusion. All of this- the delusion, the stress, the being wired for something that we don’t seem to be equipped for- is why we need to worship, because worship sets us straight. Worship means we acknowledge the truth of who God is. Worship reminds us of the truth. It gives us the right perspective on things.
I remember looking up at the sky years ago and thinking that if what I had learned in school was true, what I was looking at- the light shining from stars, which you can actually see in rural Manitoba- had actually happened in the distant past. Those stars might not even be there now, but thousands of years later their light had reached me here on earth. That blew me away! It reminded me of my smallness and of God’s greatness. It reminded me that again, He somehow stood outside of time, could see it all from beginning to end, and was at work in the midst of it all. I couldn’t help but worship.
And here’s the thing about worship: it leads to wisdom. That is why the wisdom authors of the Old Testament tell us again and again that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10). You want wisdom? Then worship.
3. What the “times” mean for discipleship
So, on the one hand, we are limited, mortal and weak, eternity in our hearts but unable to fathom the tapestry of history. On the other hand, God is the Lord of time, who endures forever, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. That contrast makes the Gospel- the good news of Jesus- even more incredible. The Gospel tells us that God, the Lord of time, has been working in the midst of time for our benefit, for our salvation.
Galatians 4:4 says that “when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” When the set time had fully come, Jesus came. It was in accordance with the plan of God, who is the Lord of time. This is what Jesus announced in Mark 1:15, a passage I mentioned last week: “the time has come, the kingdom of God has come near.” The time. The time has come, it has been fulfilled, the long-awaited Kingdom of God has become present in him. Romans 5:6 says “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” Jesus’ birth, ministry, death, and resurrection- none of that was an accident. At that moment in history, God determined, “the time is now. The time to make myself known in this way is now. The time to go to the cross is now. The time to pay for the sins of the world is now. The time to break the cycle of sin and death is now.”
The Scriptures also tell us that God has determined another time: a time when Jesus will come again. In his incarnation, in his humanity, Jesus himself did not know when this time would come. Matthew 24:36 says, “but about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” In his letter to Timothy, Paul charges him to keep a command “until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time.” (6:14) A time is coming, and God knows when it is coming, when the living and the dead will be judged, heaven and earth as we know it will be done away with, and He will make a new heavens and earth.
And in that time in between- between the time of his first coming and the time of his second coming- God is calling you to turn from the prideful ways of the world, trust in Jesus, and become His children. In Hebrews 3, we read a quote from Psalm 95 that says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” And Hebrews says, based on that, to “encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (3:13). This is the moment, this is the season, this is the time between Jesus’ first and second coming. Right now is that “Today” that Hebrews talks about, the day God is calling you to turn to Him and away from the hardness of heart. Every moment you are alive, it is time to hear God’s call and receive Him. Jesus says in Revelation 3:20, “here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person; and they with me.”
Today is the day. He is knocking. He is calling. Knowing the times and responding accordingly means, above all else, opening the door and giving your life to the Lord who gave His life for you. Don’t waste another moment.
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