Everything is Beautiful in its Time
A. I had a very unusual experience with the passage we will
look at today in Ecclesiastes 3. Please turn. For three days God
kept drawing me back and opening new things to me. On the third
day, he kept showing me more and more to the point where I said
something I never said to God before. “God could you please stop,
I really need to get some work done!”
1. I feel a deep sense of inadequacy with my finite mind to
try to package into a sermon a passage that is loaded with
infinite truths and some of the biggest questions that many
of us ask ourselves along the way of life.
2. I may raise more questions than I answer but I trust I will
be sending you down the right path to think about them.
B. We are going to see three major things all intersect in this
passage – God and His sovereignty, time and eternity, and man’s
activities here on earth. As Solomon wrestled with these three, he
is going to ask a question that many of us have asked before.
C. Let me do a quick side bar on God’s sovereignty, as it is key
in this passage and throughout the book!
1. Sovereignty –it simply means that God has the right and
power to do whatever He pleases and He orders
everything, controls everything, rules over everything
according to His will in both heaven and here on earth!
a. When you balance that out with Scripture we see two
1. One God does not do or tempt anyone to evil –
therefore God is not the cause or responsible for
2. Romans 9-11 teaches us that while God is fully
sovereign in His choices man is fully responsible
2. When you ask me how do I fit together all the pieces of
God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility and
accountability for his choices I respond like Paul did after
three chapters of talking about this very thing.
a. This infinite truth should lead our finite minds and
hearts to worship God rather than figure Him out and
• So, in light of these balancing truths, we are going to learn some
key truths about God’s sovereignty this morning. Let’s jump
A. The structure of this passage is simple
1. V1 he states the truth
2. V2-8 he illustrates the truth
3. V9 he asks the big question that comes out of this truth
1. By the way, in these few verses we are going to see the
word “time” 30 times. Gives us a little hint about what
2. Two different Hebrew words for time in v1 – the first has
to do with a specific appointed time, the second has to do
3. In the context of this chapter, we will see that God is the
one who puts all these times on His master calendar in
heaven. He has set up specific appointed times for
everything here on earth long before they ever happen.
4. Verse 1 covers from the universal whole – everything in
life to the specific parts – each individual event that
C. V2-8 is reinforcing and illustrating the truth, we learned
1. These fourteen sets of opposites are called a merism. A
merism is a figure of speech that is used of polar opposites
to suggest the totality of everything in between them.
a. V2 simply that means he starts us off by showing
us that God appoints everything from birth till
b. The rest of the verses just flesh it out for us
D. Now we come to the big question that Solomon asked and we
often ask when we are faced with this truth, that God arranges the
2. We need to keep this question in the context of what came
3. So what he is asking is this “what value does anything I do
have if God is sovereign, in control over everything?”
4. We should not take this as a cry of futility but an honest
question in light of God’s sovereignty.
• The answer to this question is in
1. Now the answer I would have expected in light of the
repeated phrase of the rest of this book is this “all man’s
works is vanity, like chasing after the wind.”
2. But he does not answer it that way – instead he says this -
B. We see three major things in this verse.
1. God has made everything, yes, even all the things in V2-8
beautiful and appropriate in God’s appointed time. Reread
2. Secondly, God has set eternity within our heart (that is the
deep-down yearning within us that wants to understand all
the big questions of life), but the problem is that we cannot
discover what God is doing
3. Note what he cannot discover what God is doing from the
beginning even to the end. That is the big plan of God that
expands beyond my life, my time and this world into
C. Let me try to illustrate this. We see and know only a
very, very small, small piece of the tapestry that we
experience and we only see the back side so things just do not
make sense to us! Especially some of the hard and ugly
things in our lives and this world!
1. But God’s purposes expand beyond my life, my
experience, my time, this world’s history into eternity past
2. Our little finite minds cannot understand our specific
events in light of God’s big plan
3. Try to illustrate this with the stage and to infinity on both
sides. God’s time and mind and our finite time and minds
a. To properly understand what God is doing we
need to be able to understand what He is doing from
D. Let me add one more thought about God’s sovereign working
in our lives and this world!
2. Simply what he is saying that in light of this big sovereign
plan of God, everything He does is permanent (everything
God does will remain forever) and perfect (nothing to add
to it and there is nothing to take from it)
E. Now summarize the three everythings of Ecclesiastes 3
1. V1 - everything is according to God’s appointed time
2. V11 everything is beautiful in that appointed time
3. V14 everything God does is permanent and perfect!
. Sounds like the same conclusion that Paul came to
in Romans 11 after three chapters of wrestling with
a. Do not try to figure out God or what He is doing
1. A bit later in the series, I will show how fear and
A. First, your activities/work/efforts here on earth are not futile
but rather they are God instruments for accomplishing His eternal
1. Tie v1-8 to v10 – the task God has given …
2. Verse 12-13 see good in his work
3. Part of the good that man can see in his work is that God is
using what he does to accomplish His big eternal and
B. When we allow the truths of Ecclesiastes 3 to become the
northern point on the compass by which we navigate the activities
and events of our lives, we regain our bearings and it gives a
completely new perspective and attitude to our lives.
1. In many ways, this verse seems to me to be the Old
Testament equivalent to the New Testament passage many
of us claim repeatedly. Romans 8:28-29
C. Once in a while God gives us a small window into what He is
doing. I was impressed with this truth on Mother’s Day when
Cathy Clarke was sharing with us about the loss of their son Kevin
1. Hearing the amazing timing of the morning Kevin went
out to his last battle before he went out he turning in an
assignment where he recorded a very strong and clear
testimony of his faith in Jesus Christ as his savior
2. Then for Phil and Cathy to receive word from one Kevin’s
superiors that the testimony was read to the company and
eventually spread through the United States Marines
3. We have no idea how many seeds were planted by that
…how many lives have been touched – how many
marriages, how many families, children. And how many
of those who have been impacted by it have impacted
4. We can add to that how I have heard from some after that
message how God used Cathy’s message and sharing the
process she went through in being radically honest with
God has helped free them up from things they were
V. Prayerful reflection question for us
. Think for a moment of one very difficult event in your life,
one that caused you great pain or you just cannot understand why
or what that was all about.
1. Consider when you tell others about that event or when
you think about it; what does the way you tell it or think
about it say about the way you interpret that event?
a. Example: “the day God ripped me off?” “an unfair event”
b. Take a moment to consider and title it from your perspective.
2. When you consider the title, you gave that event; on a
scale of 1-10 how in line would your title be to the truths,
we learned today in Ecclesiastes 3 and Romans
8:28. Give yourself a score 1-10
3. If you were to put a new title on that chapter of your life,
even though the original title may be true, this one tells the
larger story in light of the truths we learned today in
Ecclesiastes 3 and Romans 8:28.
. I want to encourage/challenge you that when you think or
talk about that event in your life to begin to tell it from the
perspective of the larger story title!
a. Take a moment give that new title.
