For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be seeing, hopefully, some bright colors along the hills. And even though it gets colder, I’d have to say that late Summer/ early Fall is one of my favorite times of the year.
And since the change of season is so prominent in this part of the country––really, no matter what season it is––I thought I’d go to a familiar passage that talks about change. We looked at it once before, and I thought now would be a good time to take a look at it again.
It’s found in Ecclesiastes 3, the first 15 verses. I have to admit, I hesitated to go there because it’s such a familiar set of verses. In fact, if you’re anything like me, you probably know the song so well you might have a hard time reading it without singing it or at least have the song run through your head.
I also didn’t know which version to read from because if you are familiar with the song, it’s almost verbatim from The King James Version because in the 1960s, that’s all they had. But with the verses that we’re going to read that immediately follow, I could hardly understand a word of it in King James English, so I went to the New International Version. But then I hesitated reading from the New International Version, which is usually what I read from because then the familiar verses just don’t sound right. So I decided to go for the middle and will be reading out of the New King James Version. Yes, there really is such a thing as a New King James Version.
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:1-15
1 To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:
2 A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted;
3 A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away;
7 A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak;
8 A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace.
9 What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? 10 I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
12 I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives, 13 and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor—it is the gift of God.
14 I know that whatever God does, It shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, And nothing taken from it. God does it, that men should fear before Him.
15 That which is, has already been, And what is to be, has already been; And God requires an account of what is past.
This scripture is best known as a 60s pop song. At least they had the reverence for scripture back then to honor it in song rather than completely doing away with or blatantly rebelling against anything Biblical.
In life, we are constantly changing, whether we realize it or not. There was a Greek philosopher who lived about 500 years before Christ; in fact, he lived in Ephesus sometime between the events of Esther and the completion of the Temple in the Book of Ezra. His name was Heraclitus, and he said that life is constantly in flux. We are constantly changing. And he is most well known for having famously said, “The only constant in life is change.” And we still use that phrase today, 2,500 years later.
In our own lives, it seems that there has been a lot of change going on. Personally, we’ve had to put my mom in a nursing home while taking Evelyn to school, bringing her back, and going to Rose’s wedding. That’s a lot of change right there.
Think about those who have been impacted by the hurricane. Think about how drastically their lives changed, literally overnight.
As Solomon, who wrote Ecclesiastes, pointed out, seasons in life come in a variety of ways. He begins his observation with, “To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven.”
If we pause and think about just that short, simple phrase, we find that it is quite a profound statement. Just as in nature, there are seasons that are timed out and specifically set in motion, so also are seasons in our lives in both the natural and spiritual sense timed out and set in motion.
At the end of Genesis 8, after the flood waters receded and everyone walked out of the ark for the first time, we read that Noah built an altar and gave a sacrifice.
Then God said in verse 21: “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.”
Then in verse 22, he says: 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
So we’re all familiar with the story of the rainbow and God’s promise not to destroy the earth with a flood ever again. But we also see that God promises that his timing of the days and seasons shall not cease from the earth. In Psalms, David wrote poetically in chapter 104:19: “He made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting.” God has set the universe in motion to precisely function and operate so that we can see the seasons even by their placement in the sky–captains can guide their ships by the stars. Times and seasons function to such precision that even the start and end of those seasons can be calculated to the minute years in advance.
I don’t know how they do it, but I looked up the season’s calendar on timeanddate.com. They have the exact minute of the start of the solstice and equinox figured out up until at least 2049. Now, it’s almost always on the same days, which makes it easy, but it’s amazing that they have it somehow pinpointed to the exact minute. And the minutes fluctuate quite a lot from one year to the next. For example, the first day of autumn for 2022 was Sept. 22 at 9.03 p.m.; 2023 will be on Sept. 23 at 2:50 a.m., and 2024 will be back on Sept. 22 at 8:43 a.m.
How do they calculate that? I don’t know. I’m guessing the rate of the earth around the sun? But what is amazing is that it can be calculated to a precise minute. That’s the kind of God we serve. Precise. God’s timing for everything is on his calendar. He has a calendar for the natural seasons–he’s had time calculated since before the beginning of time, and he has a calendar just for you and for your season in life.
When we are born, where we are born, the homes that we live in, the places we live, what things God has for us to do and experience in life, and as Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, even the time of our death and entrance into Heaven is marked on God’s calendar.
Here are David’s words in Psalm 139:
13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
I’m going to read a few more verses for you. That last one goes well with Jeremiah 1:4-5 which says, “Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
And then we have another one out of Jeremiah. I’ve used this one before. Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Here are a couple from Proverbs:
Proverbs 16:9 “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
And from Proverbs 19:21 “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”
And one more, this one stood out to me. From Daniel 2:21, “He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.”
See, God has many things on his calendar. Including us, his purpose and plan, and way for us. Earlier this year, there was upheaval as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. I certainly don’t condone abortion, but I understand that there are a lot of people who were conceived under horrible situations. Maybe God did not plan those births. But God has a plan for those births. God has a plan for everyone regardless of how they were conceived. Maybe a pregnancy isn’t planned, even by God. But that doesn’t mean God is surprised or saddened by that pregnancy. That doesn’t mean God wants the parent to abort the child, that doesn’t mean God can’t have a plan for an unplanned person. Talk about planned parenthood, they haven’t consulted God in planning for that child’s future.
Ecclesiastes 3, verses 9-15, talk about the plans of God.
“What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task which the sons of men are to be occupied.” In other words, Solomon looked around at everyone in their labor and wondered what’s the point. We get up in the morning, we work, and we die. And that’s just cycled from generation to generation. What point is there to life? But, he found that there is a greater purpose in the God-given task. It could be any type of labor, any type of task. I used my job as sermon illustrations last week. I would never have planned to go into that, but God has me there, I think, for a reason greater than a means to pay bills.
One time before COVID, this church hosted about a dozen area ministers for a get-together where they bounce around to a different church in the Living Waters Association each month. It was our turn to host. We had a missionary to Costa Rica who spoke. And I remember one of the things she said was that it is hard to find missionaries. It’s hard to find laborers, especially ones who are young. And one of the pastors spoke up and said it’s hard to find young people going into the ministry at all––a lot of ministers are going to retire soon. Many going into ministry are like myself, who went in as an adult.
One of the things they said was that maybe it’s best to start teaching on calling again. To start encouraging people to seek a calling. Usually, a calling doesn’t just come, God wants us to seek a calling.
What is a calling? It’s when we pray about what God wants us to do, and there’s this stirring within us and in our minds that just won’t let go of us. We’re compelled to do something. We talked last week about how God created us with a variety of specific gifts and talents. Some, we don’t even really know we have until God calls us. When we sense God’s calling, we find a greater purpose in life when we do that.
That leads us to verse 11: “God has made everything beautiful in its own time.” It kind of reminds me of the Ray Stevens song–another song (probably) from this chapter. I was only vaguely familiar with it, so I had to look it up. You might be more familiar with it. The lyrics of that are:
Everything is beautiful in its own way
Like a starry summer night or a snow covered winter’s day
Everybody’s beautiful in their own way
Under God’s heaven, the world’s gonna find a way
So he sings about how each season is different yet beautiful in its own way. Then he sings about how each and every one of us is different yet beautiful in our own way. And that goes along with being gifted in different ways with different tasks and abilities. And how each task and each ability and each calling and each phase in life that we go through is beautiful in its own way.
You know, having kids grow up and become adults is beautiful in its own way. Having a mom who is in a nursing home––it’s hard to see it as beautiful, but I think God sees it that way.
We know that this stage in her life means that the end is coming soon. But for the Christian, that season is beautiful in its time. And that ties in with the next line of Ecclesiastes, which reads, “He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
God is a mysterious God. We see things, we observe things. And we don’t understand it all, but God ordains it. I was thinking about doing another sermon on the end times. I’ve noticed that subject has been coming up a lot lately, but I decided against it. It just seems like I should take a little break from it for now. But have you ever noticed how the end of The Book of Revelation seems like, to us, it would make more sense for Jesus to send Satan into the Lake of Fire with the Beast and Antichrist? But no. Satan is sent into another place–a pit for a thousand years while Christ reigns on earth. Then Satan is purposely loosed again to wreak havoc, then he’s thrown into the Lake of Fire.
Sometimes God just doesn’t make sense. Even with that, God has set the time and date, and situation for how the end of Satan is to be. We can know some things, but we cannot completely understand because we do not have the mind of God, and we are not God. We cannot see the beginning or the end the way God does. Even in our own lives.
Why do certain things have to happen a certain way? God, wouldn’t it make more sense if this happened then if this happened?
There are plenty of things in my own life where I look back and, at the time, didn’t understand why I went through certain things in life. God doesn’t always make sense. But when he puts the pieces together, you find out that certain seasons in life were meant to be. He really was guiding all along. It was the only way to connect the dots from one to the other to the other.
So I’m going to close by asking you, what season are you in? Are you in a season where some things just don’t make sense? Hang on because every season is beautiful in its own way.
God has a plan and a purpose for your season, even if you can’t see the end from the beginning.
Maybe you need to pray about it. Maybe you need help discerning your season. Maybe you need help discerning your calling and purpose in this season. To everything, there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.
Prayer: Lord, I pray for everyone in this church. That you would help them to discern the season that they are in. I pray that you would bring to mind the joy of this season and remind them that everything is beautiful in its own way. Sometimes, it’s hard to see that. Sometimes it’s hard to see the beauty when our personal season is not the colorful early fall but late fall when the trees are bare, and everything around us gets colder.
I pray that you would help us see the beauty in our own lives. And maybe help us to connect the dots as to where we are and where we have been. Help us to see your hand through the many seasons of our lives. May we give you praise for each and every season of our lives.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by zero take on Unsplash
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