Word of Salvation – Vol. 37 No. 02 – January 1992

 

Time On Our Hands – Eternity In Our Hearts

 

Sermon by Rev. H. DeWaard on Ecclesiastes 3:10,11

Readings: Ecclesiastes 1:1-11;3:1-13, Romans 8:18-25, Ecclesiastes 3:10,11

 

Dear congregation, beloved in Christ,

If I asked you, ‘Why are you a Christian?’, I wonder what you would say.

If you asked me, my main answer would be that the Gospel gives meaning to life.  That’s important, isn’t it?

The Gospel tells me where I came from, what my destiny is and what the purpose of my life is.

Without meaning, life becomes unbearable; work becomes a bore, raising children becomes an exercise in despair.  Even suffering becomes unbearable.  People will suffer and sacrifice a great deal for meaningful causes.

Meaninglessness is something I cannot bear.  Meaninglessness leads to boredom, cynicism and despair.

I think many young people know about this too.  Too many live in a state of despair.  You find them in Reformed Churches too.  Why study hard for jobs that do not exist?  Why try hard to get ahead when the future is increasingly uncertain?  Why build up this relationship only to have it burst like a balloon?

Many people feel that life is like a revolving door or a senseless sideshow.

But what I can’t believe is that the Bible seems to agree!

The book of Ecclesiastes seems to confirm our worst fears about life.  Have you ever read it?  Everything is meaningless’!  (1:2).  Wisdom is meaningless, work and pleasure are meaningless, riches and promotion are meaningless.

How can the Bible say this?  This is the kind of thing I expect to read in the cheap and nasty novels written by down and out people.

When you read Ecclesiastes you wonder why on earth it is in the Bible at all!  Is it wrong of me to say that?

In the book of Proverbs everything makes sense.  `Trust in the Lord… and he will make your paths straight’.  That’s great.  It all makes sense.  You often see wall hangings with texts from Proverbs, but you never see verses from Ecclesiastes on the kitchen wall.

Are there any students here?  What do you make of this?

1:18 – ‘For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.’  Or is there someone who is not happy in his work?  2:17 – ‘I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.’  Or is there someone here in financial difficulty. 10:19 – ‘A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.’

Is this from the Bible?  Yes, it is.

Who wrote this?  Ch.1:1 seems to suggest it was Solomon.  But that’s strange for Solomon’s reign was the Golden Age of Israel’s history.

Strangely enough despair rears its ugly head at the best of times.  The philosophy of despair came from the western world, which has enjoyed great progress and affluence.

Why is it that more people commit suicide in the rich western world than in the third world where multitudes struggle to survive?

Young and not so young people in the west have everything to live with wealth, leisure, health – yet they are bored.  They feel empty inside.  They have nothing to live for.  As an illustration think of the eccentric person Howard Hughes who died years ago.  All he lived for was to have more.

More money, more pleasure, more power.  He believed that more would satisfy.  He died a billionaire and a drug addict.  He had gone insane.  Friends, this is sheer madness.  It is totally empty and meaningless.  Let’s learn from the madness of others.

In the same way civilizations have come and gone.  Where is the great Roman Empire?  Where is the great city of Babylon?  It is a lonely post along the railway track to Bagdad.  And even Bagdad which until recently was strong and powerful is now a smoking ruin.

In time to come people will say: Where is western civilization?  It too will vanish because it no longer has a purpose to live for!

Our society has achieved abundance.  When people achieve abundance, they indulge in leisure which leads to selfishness which leads to apathy, dependence and weakness and they slide into … bondage.  It can happen to the church too.

The cynic says: `So what?’… and reaches for another drink.

Dear friends, we are not cynics.  We are Christians.  We struggle as Christians to find meaning in our lives.

I believe that Ecclesiastes 3 can help us and encourage us.  That’s what we need.  There are plenty of people ready to make us feel guilty or kick us when we are down.  We need courage for living.

Chapter 3 is the heart of Ecclesiastes.  It speaks about the fact that we have

TIME ON OUR HANDS

BUT ETERNITY IN OUR HEARTS.

There is a time for everything.  In time all sorts of activities are carried out.  We are born, we grow up, we marry and have children, we raise our families with all the joys and hassles that come with it.  We struggle with the job, we see relationships flourish and we experience brokenness.  We love life and sometimes we hate it.  God has given us time for many activities and experiences.

And, we are told, God has made everything beautiful in its time.  All the timely activities listed here are delightful.  Does that include killing, tearing down, weeping, war?  That seems scandalous and odd.

Yet, from God’s point of view nothing is absurd or unacceptable.  What we do matters.  2:24 – ‘A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work.  This too, I see as from the hand of God.’

Yet there is a burdensome aspect to that work.  Vs.10 – ‘I have seen the burden God has laid on man.’  The word burden can be translated as worry or concern.  God laid that burden on us because of the curse of sin.  In the Garden of Eden work was satisfying.  It was a way of giving glory to God.  But Adam and Eve weren’t satisfied.  They wanted to be like God.  They were not content with their status as creatures and from that time a painful element entered into their work.

“Through painful toil you will eat of the ground all the days of your life’.  Or as Paul puts it in Romans 8:20 – ‘For the creation was subjected to frustration or meaninglessness… because of human rebellion.’

Our burden is that whatever we touch gets dirty and ruined.  Our best efforts spell disaster.  Pleasure is mixed with pain.  When some weeks ago my wife and I celebrated 25 years of marriage, the joy was dimmed by the fact that a close friend is struggling with cancer.  They are wondering whether they will make it to 25 years!

We develop nuclear power and we create Chernobyl.  We fight for leisure time and we get utterly bored.  The gift of sex is perverted into pornography.  Human vanity leads to racism.  Wine drives into alcoholism.  Antibiotics keep many people alive and leads to overpopulation.  You just can’t win.  It makes no sense.  It drives you to despair when you think about it.

When you THINK about it.  Made in God’s image we are creatures who can think.  We reflect on our situation.  We are not like animals.  Like animals we live in time and with the restrictions of time, but we have eternity in our hearts.

We are religious beings.  We have a desire for God.  It does not matter who you are.  You may be a rebellious teenager with long hair and an earring as symbol of your rebellion.  You may be a cynical person.  You may have given up hope.  You may be here in church for no other reason than to keep the family happy.  But whoever you are, I know that you long for love, beauty, order, meaning.  You long for perfection.  You want to be involved in work and pleasure and be satisfied.  You long for God.

How do I know that?  Because I am like you.  My heart, like yours remains restless until I bow and trust Christ.

Outside of Him we cannot make sense of life.

Even though we don’t understand God’s ways we are asked to accept our creatureliness together with all its limitations.  Accept the authority of a great Creator who sees the end from the beginning.

If you don’t, you’ll end up in despair.  Believe that God knows what He is doing.  He has a pattern for our lives even if from our perspective it seems chaotic or meaningless.

Ecclesiastes shows us what life is like without God.

Solomon himself is a good illustration.

He was wealthy.  He had great wisdom.  He enjoyed many pleasures.  He established a great kingdom.

But he messed it all up by letting go of God.  1Kings 11:9 – The Lord became angry because his heart had turned away from the Lord…. Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command.  He worshipped other gods.  He led the nation into death.

It all ended in pitiful failure.  Everything slipped through his fingers.  No wonder Solomon wrote in 2:11 – ‘When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after wind; nothing was gained under the sun.

Beloved congregation, later on a king greater than Solomon built his Kingdom, not on wealth and strength, but on weakness.  He built his kingdom by calling the lame, the poor, the oppressed.  He offered no important positions.  He offered the towel of service and a cross of shame.  Are you ready for that?

It is precisely as you take up the towel and the cross that life becomes meaningful.  For then you are followers of the one in whom time and eternity meet.

In the fullness of time, God sent His Son.  The Eternal One limits himself to time.  He becomes God in the flesh.  The eternal One in a human body involves himself in all human activity.

It sounds like a contradiction.  It is the Gospel!  Because of that contradiction – which is a profound mystery – life takes on new meaning.  For the eternal one gives himself as a sacrifice in time in order to free us from the eternal curse, and the meaninglessness of human existence.  In Christ, our time is set in the context of eternity.  We still have time on our hands, we live with all the limitations of time, but we are sure that through faith in Christ we have been lifted into eternity.

So what? …you may ask.

My challenge to you this morning is this.  As you go about all your various activities be aware that there is more to life than meets the eye.  The work you do may look so unimpressive.  Yet through these activities you can fulfil God’s great purpose.

There is love to be expressed.

There are people in need of the Gospel.

There are the hurt to be taken care of.

Therefore, don’t just live under the sun with all its frustration.  The Bible says: Seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

We are no longer purely subject to time.  We have eternity in our hearts and we set our heart on eternal things.

You may say: Yes, but I am weak.  Like Solomon I’ve blown it, I’m despairing, the future holds no great attraction for me.

Don’t despair.  Listen what the Preacher says: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong (9:11).

Precisely those who are unfit, those who are not strong but nevertheless rely on the grace of God, they survive!  They overcome time and live eternally.  This is the victory that has overcome the world, even your faith. 1John 5:4.

Beloved congregation, life is barren without a practical faith in God.  That is the message of Ecclesiastes.

I plead with you to take the risk of faith and believe that the Eternal God has come in time in Jesus Christ.  He will come one day and then everything will make sense.  The eternity in our hearts will then find its fulfilment at last.  We will then be liberated from meaninglessness to enjoy the glorious freedom of the children of God.  (Romans 8)

AMEN