SERMONIC THEME
Opening Statement: On our life’s journey we’ll face many different situations, experience many different experiences, and meet many different people. Sometimes we have gains, and we laugh. Sometimes we have losses, and we cry. Sometimes our feelings are hurt, and we isolate. Sometimes our song is played, and we celebrate. Sometimes we really blow it, and we sink. Sometimes we get it right, and we smile.
Transition: The Bible says that God takes these collective experiences and eventually makes something beautiful out of all of the loose ends.
Text: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
Title: Something Beautiful!
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OUTLINE
Opening Statement: Many years ago there were two musical notes that sent terror into everyone who heard them. These two notes worked their way into the psyche of every American. No other notes in the musical scale speak of fear, terror, and death like these two notes. They are an E followed by an F. When they were first played in a particular score, six cellos and three basses played them. When played together, it sounded like this. (Illustrate at piano.) This is John William’s score from Jaws.
Transition: John William’s two musical notes remind me of two notes in life that keep us on the run, terrified about what the future may bring.
Explanation: There’s the “E” note of expectations. It’s all the combined things that we thought life should bring to us: a happy home, a satisfying marriage, a generous salary, and a famous reputation. This “E” note would sound OK if it were just played alone and everybody was able to include it in their life’s score. But when it’s combined with the “F” note of unfulfilled “failed” expectations, the “F” note of divorce, the “F” note of limited income, the “F” note of kids that don’t turn out the way they’re suppose to, then a monster is created. And when we begin to play these two notes together in life, expectations versus reality, we begin to run away as a kind of “Jaws” is released into our lives. We become afraid as we begin to match our expectations with reality.
Question: Wouldn’t it be great if there were some way that all of our young adult dreams could somehow be gathered up along with our unfulfilled expectations, and then something beautiful could be constructed with the pieces? Wouldn’t it be great if we could stop running from unfulfilled expectations? The Bible says that we have this hope in God. It comes from an unlikely place. King Solomon had tried all of life’s offerings. They had left him empty and he journaled skeptically about the whole experience.
Exposition: In Ecclesiastes 3, the idea is propounded that there is an appropriate time for all of life’s experiences and expectations. Notice how the writer uses opposites as a means of covering everything in between. Verses 2-8 are a poem in which Solomon listed 14 opposites.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 For everything there is an appointed time, and an appropriate time for every matter on earth:
3:2 An appropriate time to be born, and an appropriate time to die;
None of us asked to be born; it was something done to us, apart from us. None of us ask to die or to set up our date with death; it is something allowed by God and we all have an appointment with death that we will keep someday.
an appropriate time to plant, and an appropriate time to pluck up what was planted;
Everything must come in its appropriate time. If you get it out of sync you are in trouble. Try to plant a crop in the middle of winter when snow is on the ground and it will not grow. Half of the problem of life is that we are constantly trying to run this schedule ourselves. But God has already planned the schedule. There is an appropriate time for everything. Agriculture demonstrates this. You plant in the Spring and harvest in the Fall. Try to do that in reverse order, and you’re going to be frustrated. There’s a time to move and a time to stay put. Get these things out of order and you’re frustrated.
3:3 An appropriate time to kill, and an appropriate time to heal; an appropriate time to break down, and an appropriate time to build up;
Youth is the time for building up. Muscles grow, abilities increase, coordination gets better. Then, if you hang on long enough you reach that century mark. That is a time when everything starts to fall apart -- "a time to break down." Type gets smaller and smaller, steps get higher and higher, trains go faster and faster, people speak in lower and lower tones -- "a time to break down." But that is appropriate. We should not fight it. It is not evil to grow older, it is right at this point in life. God has determined this, and no matter what we may think about it, it is going to continue that way. That is what this is telling us. There’s a time to rely on life-support and there’s a time to unplug machines that artificially sustain life.
3:4 An appropriate time to weep, and an appropriate time to laugh;
No one is going to escape the hurts and sorrows of life, is what he is saying here. God chose them for us. The proof of that is when God’s own Son came. He was not handed a beautiful life with everything pleasant and delightful, free from struggle and pain. No, he was, "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," {Isa 53:3b}. In a fallen world it is right that there will be times of hurt, of sorrow and weeping.
an appropriate time to mourn, and an appropriate time to dance.
There will be times too when it is right to laugh, to be happy and carefree. There is a time of grief and tears, "a time to mourn," but there is a time to celebrate and to enjoy a festive occasion.
3:5 An appropriate time to throw away stones, and an appropriate time to gather stones; an appropriate time to embrace, and an appropriate time to refrain from embracing;
There is a time to break things down, and a time to build them up again. This particularly has to do with our social structures, our relationships with others. There is a time when we need to embrace others, to show our support for them. But there is a time when we ought to refuse to embrace them, when our support would be misunderstood and would be tantamount to complicity with something evil. Those times come from the hand of God.
3:6 An appropriate time to seek, and an appropriate time to give something up as lost;
There is "a time to seek [work, marriage, new friends], and a time to lose," {Eccl 3:6a RSV}. There comes a time in life when we should curtail certain friendships, or change our jobs, for instance, and lose what we had in the past. It is proper and appropriate that these times should come.
an appropriate time to keep, and an appropriate time to throw away; 3:7 An appropriate time to rip, and an appropriate time to sew;
There are values and standards which must never be surrendered, while there are other times when we need to throw away things -- clean out the attic, the garage, throw away the old clothes, etc. There’s a time to accumulate and a time to liquidate. This is true of habits and attitudes at times. Resentments need to be thrown away. Grudges and long-standing hurts need to be forgiven and forgotten.
an appropriate time to keep silent, and an appropriate time to speak.
There are times when we know something, a piece of gossip, and we should not say it; we ought not to speak. There are times when we ought to speak, when something we are keeping secret would deliver someone or bring truth into a situation; a time to speak up.
3:8 An appropriate time to love, and an appropriate time to hate;
When is it time to hate? Think of young Abraham Lincoln the first time he saw human beings sold on the slave blocks in New Orleans. He felt hatred rising in his heart. He resolved that if he ever got a chance to smash slavery he would do so. Lincoln’s hatred of slavery was perfectly appropriate. There is "a time to love," when it is right that we should extend our love to somebody who is hurting, someone who is feeling dejected or rejected, lonely or weak.
an appropriate time for war, and an appropriate time for peace.
We ought to remember this as we consider some of the issues before us today. When tyranny rides roughshod over the rights of men there is a time when a nation properly makes war. But there is a time when war is absolutely the wrong thing, when no provocation should be allowed to start one because war can explode into violence far beyond anything demanded by a particular situation. How much is permitted in that regard is a perfectly moot subject, one that is being widely debated today.
Can you feel the tension that begins to settle over you after reading all of these? Sometimes, we don’t know what the proper timing is though we may know what should be done. Sometimes, others have acted toward us in the wrong time and place. All of these experiences and inappropriately timed events are compounded by the meaninglessness of our labor.
3:9 What advantage can the worker gain from his toil? 3:10 I have observed the burden that God has given to men to keep them occupied.
People give so much of their lives to their labor or work and what do they get out of it?
3:11 God has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time; but he has also placed eternity in the human heart; so that people cannot discover what God has ordained, from the beginning to the end of their lives.
We’re trapped in time with all the unfulfilled expectations that the passing of time brings to us. And if this world is all there is, we’re in trouble. But skeptical Solomon asserts that God can make things beautiful when appropriate to do so. He has eternity to work with, and He has given us a curiosity about our tomorrows, about what He might do with our lives. While God has not given us every detail of what our tomorrows will be like, He can and will recreate something beautiful out of the brokenness of our lives.
Observations: These verses and thoughts lead me to make some concluding observations.
1. God knows all about our unfulfilled expectations. He knows all about our experiences. He knows all about reality. He knows that we don’t always “get it right.” Our timing is off at times. We pluck when we should plant. We kill when we should be celebrating birth. We laugh when we should be weeping. We speak when we should be silent. But God knows the proper time. God knows when its time for us to be born and He knows when its time for us die. God knows when we need to cry and when we need to laugh. God knows when we need to mourn and when we need to dance. God knows when we need to be silent and when we need to speak. God knows everything about the human experience! God knows all the minute details of our lives and He also knows why everything happens. God sees the little picture of the moments and the details of our lives and He also sees the big picture of how everything unfolds in the light of eternity. And He has created a heaven, a place untainted by our missed timings and our lost opportunities.
2. Life in God creates a longing for something more within us. C.S. Lewis said that the very fact that there’s still a little bit of emptiness inside us even after becoming a Christian argues for the existence of heaven, a place where we long for God to make something beautiful out of all our mistakes and failures in life. C.S. Lewis said, "Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns for us along our journey, but he takes great care to see that we do not mistake any of them for home." There is a longing for home, there is a call deep in the human spirit for more than life, as we know it can provide.
3. There are some things in life you’ll never know. We cannot know all the answers to all the conundrums and enigmas of life. I don’t know why God would withhold perfectly noble dreams and ambitions from someone, but He does. There are times when you will have to fly in the dark on some things. What I do know is that every moment comes to you pregnant with a divine purpose that you may not be able to figure out this side of eternity. These moments are fully understood by a God who transcends time. Furthermore, you were made for eternity, so you will not understand everything in our temporal world. Living with unfulfilled expectations is a part of life. The issue becomes then, am I going to desperately grab for life or will I humbly allow God to bring life to me and fulfill my expectations if that is His will.
4. God makes life beautiful in His time. Those who live a surrendered life according to God’s time and schedule will ultimately lead a life of beauty.
CONCLUSION
Application: Today, would you like for God to begin making something beautiful out of your life? How about freedom from life’s expectations and failed expectations? Beauty replaces the beast when life happens in God’s time, not yours. Now is always the right time to receive His Son. From there, life begins to get into rhythm with the divine Plan for our lives. We grow up learning to share, making friends, learning moral values that will guide us into a beautiful life. We express our sexuality with someone after we’re married. We get in harmony with our marriage partners and stay with one another. We enjoy the natural things that God has given us to enjoy, rather than manufacturing a false-sense of joy through the accumulation of things.
Quotation: The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
Remember your possibilities; forget your limitations.
Remember your potentialities; forget your seeming restrictions.
Remember your abilities; forget your disabilities.
Remember your assets; forget your liabilities.
Remember your strengths; forget your weaknesses.
Remember your joys; forget your sorrows. William Arthur Ward (1812-1882)
