Embracing The Sovereignty Of God - [Ecclesiastes 3]

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What's your favorite Bible verse? You probably have one, don't you? Your favorite Bible verse that you are comforted by, encouraged by, maybe even convicted by.
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For many of you, does this sound familiar? For we know that for those who love
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God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose.
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Some people, that's their favorite Bible verse. And I don't blame them for having such a verse.
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Here's my question this morning. What if that verse isn't true? What if Romans 8 .28
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is a lie? Does that affect anything in your life? Does it affect your outlook in life?
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I would say if that verse isn't true, to use the technical word, we're toast.
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We are in for, we are done with. There's no comfort. There's no hope.
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There's nothing because it is what it is. God is not truly sovereign. He's a deist.
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Everything's wound up and here we go, hold on. But thankfully, that verse is true.
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God is sovereign. He rules. He reigns. He's in control of everything. And we can trust
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Him. If you take your Bibles, we're in the book of Ecclesiastes and we're in Ecclesiastes 3 this morning that God is sovereign.
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He is the Lord of heaven and earth. He's your Lord. He's your Master. He is, as Pink said,
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God in fact as well as in name. God does everything after the counsel of His own will.
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He does as He pleases, only as He pleases, always as He pleases, and the book of Ecclesiastes teaches that.
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It's one of these doctrines where you say with David after you are reminded of it, many, O Lord my
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God, are the wonders which You have done and Your thoughts toward us. There is none to compare with You.
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If I would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count.
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To try to look at the world and think, if I walk by sight, there's despair and frustration, so therefore
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I must do what the Bible says, and that is to walk by faith, understanding who God is even if I can't understand everything.
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Even in this sin -curse world where I can't figure it all out, God ultimately knows it and He's ultimately ruling.
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Today, it's not a doctrinal sermon per se, like Romans 8 .28,
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although that would be good. It's a sermon about God's sovereignty with poetry. How many people here like poetry?
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I hope you raise your hands or at least your hearts because there's lots of the Bible that's poetry, and here we have poetry about the sovereignty of God.
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I mean, if I were to explain sovereignty, I might say something like the Westminster divines would say, God foreordains whatsoever comes to pass, and that would be true, but Solomon here explains it a little differently.
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In this book, the book of Ecclesiastes, I kind of think about it this way. Life is difficult, life is frustrating, things are very, very hard, there's heartbreak, there's suffering, there's death, sadness, and everything in between, and then you die.
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Is that really Ecclesiastes? No, no, it's this way. It's a cloudy day, and you're sitting at the beach, and every once in a while, the sun breaks through.
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Have you ever been at a beach, and it's kind of a little cold and a little windy, kind of like Maine beaches in July, right?
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And you think, if the sun would just come out, it would warm me up a little bit, but right now, the clouds, it makes me want to put a jacket on.
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And so Ecclesiastes is a book that deals with the frustration of life, but every once in a while, the sun comes out, it warms everything up, and you think, oh, that is how
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I survive my life. That's how I enjoy my life under the sun in a cursed, fallen world.
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Now, at Thanksgiving time, you might think to yourself, well, in our
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Thanksgiving home, we would go around the table afterwards and say, what are we thankful for?
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Everybody gets a little verse of Thanksgiving, and they get to read it, and I'm thankful for such and such. Thanksgiving, it's a happy time.
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It's a fun time. It's a joyous time. Everything that the Lord has done for us, we're thankful for.
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To God be the glory, great things he has done. And everything, give thanks. It's not a depressing time.
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It shouldn't be. It's a thankful time. Do you know the book of Ecclesiastes was read in synagogues, in Jewish synagogues, during one of their harvest festivals?
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Like Thanksgiving? How could such a depressing, dour, stifling book be read at Thanksgiving?
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That's a really good question. And so today, we're going to look at really the second divine imperative for us to make it through life with some joy and satisfaction.
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Last week, we talked about how everything in Ecclesiastes 1 and 2 drives us to say we need to take the good from God as a gift from Him.
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So let's just have a quick review in the book of Ecclesiastes that deals with the biggest questions in life. What's the meaning of life?
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Why is there suffering? Does God care? Does God know? How can I live my life when there's so much chaos and sin?
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Is there more to life? And here this book, this wisdom book, wisdom literature, tells us in great detail from Solomon's own personal testimony.
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Remember last week, verse 1 of chapter 1, the words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Israel.
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And he said what in verse 2? Vanity of vanities. Vanity of vanities.
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All is vanity. That's an important word, as you know, in this book, vanity.
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And it can either mean puzzling. You look at the world and you think, how do I figure this out?
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It could mean futile or vain. This seems so frustrating. Or most likely, many times, it's translated as just puff of air, vapor, smoke, temporary.
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It just doesn't last. Transient. I mean, it just fleets. Life is here today and gone tomorrow.
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Speaking of beach, I don't know why I'm thinking about the beach. Maybe we'll go tomorrow. You make sand castles at the beach, right, with your children.
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And then what happens when high tide comes? All that work, all that digging, all those troughs, all those yellow
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Tonka bulldozers. Remember what those are? Kids have pictures of those on their iPhones, but they don't actually have them.
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There's nothing like a Tonka truck. Tonker. High tide comes in and it's all gone.
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All the work we've done. And tide comes in and destroys it all. That's vanity.
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And nothing really lasts very long, does it? Verse three, what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
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In this sin -cursed world, everything's just futile. The next few verses, he just has this cycle of futility.
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It's just like a washing machine washing your clothes, just going around and around and around and doesn't seem like it's going anywhere.
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Some of you know enough pop culture. When I quote this song, you should be thinking this is part of the frustration of life.
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And even these unbelievers wrote this, and understood that. So you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's what?
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Sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older.
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Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death. Yes, in fact, for the first time in 25 years,
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I've quoted Pink Floyd from the pulpit. Unbelievers know.
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We know. There's frustration. It's cloudy everywhere. Where are the rays of light? In verses 12 -18 of this first chapter,
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Solomon says, I'm going to try to figure this out. This is the lot of everyone trying to just figure out how do
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I comprehend fallen life under the sun? Is there something more than vanity? This pursuit of pleasure he goes into in verses 1 and following of chapter 2.
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Possessions, pleasure, experience, Netflix, YouTube, Instagram. What can
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I find to help me? One of the most devastating poems that I've read that would talk directly about the vanity of pursuing only life itself, not recognizing it as a gift from God, was written by Stephen Crane.
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It's devastating. I saw a man pursuing the horizon. Round and round they sped.
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I was disturbed at this. I accosted the man. It's futile, I said. You can never...
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You lie, he cried and ran on. Disillusionment.
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It doesn't matter if it's pleasure. It doesn't matter if it's possessions. It doesn't satisfy.
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And so we learned at the very beginning of chapter 1, it doesn't matter what you're looking for.
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If you're trying to find meaning in this life, you're not going to find it. Chapter 2 is the same thing. And then here comes the sun breaking through the clouds in verse 24 of chapter 2.
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You remember? Here comes some good news. It's kind of cold. It's kind of bleak.
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You've got your jacket under the beach. And here comes the sun. This will solve things even after Tom Brady won three
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Super Bowls. He said, why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me?
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There's got to be more to life than this. That's what we're talking about.
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And so that first ray of light comes through and we think, oh, there it is. The solution.
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Verse 24. There's nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.
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This also I saw is from the hand of God. For apart from him, God, who can eat or who can have enjoyment?
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There. There. The meaning of life isn't found in life. The meaning of life isn't found in what we have, our pleasures.
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They're fleeting. They're vain. They don't go anywhere. But now we have the
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Scriptures that teach us that God intends, dear Christian, for you, to have your life be satisfying, to be fulfilling, even though it's hard, even though one day we'll die.
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We know because of the Lord Jesus when He said, if anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.
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Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
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And Jesus isn't just talking about thirst for our physical thirst, but spiritual thirst.
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We were born to know something about God who's transcendent. We were born not to just have our head down with blinders on, thinking this is the world.
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And so when we feel frustrated and we feel sad and we feel down and depressed and everything else, it's a good check for us to go, oh, that light on the dashboard just went on.
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It means there's a problem. Is there anything wrong with pleasure? Is there anything wrong with possessions?
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I think about it this way. If you struggle with assurance, am I really saved or not?
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When you chase assurance, you don't seem to get it. When you chase the personal work of the
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Lord Jesus by understanding Him and praying and knowing the Scriptures, then you get assurance.
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Chase assurance, you don't get it. Chase the Lord Jesus, you get assurance. It's the same thing here. If you chase pleasure and possessions as the ultimate fulfillment in life, you don't get it.
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But if you look to the triune God who's great and awesome and who gives and who's generous, proved by the fact
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He gave the Lord Jesus for us, then everything else is good. There's nothing wrong with sex and marriage, pleasure, food, any of these things, unless they're the ultimate, unless they're the end game.
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Thomas Brooks, the Puritan, said, The rattle without the breast will not satisfy the child. The house without the husband will not satisfy the wife.
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And the world without Christ will not satisfy the soul. No wonder
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Moses in Psalm 90 said, God, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
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Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us. And so we have two options.
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It's the grim reality of this is it and then we die. Or, this isn't it, and when we die, there's eternal life.
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There's a sovereign God. And that's where we come to chapter 3. Not only do we need to enjoy everything as a gift from God Himself, but also we need to embrace
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God's sovereignty. So let's keep the alliteration going as long as we can. I don't think it's going to work next week, but let's enjoy it now while we can.
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Enjoy everything as a gift from God and embrace God's sovereign hand.
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We think about the Lord Jesus, do we not? And how He was born under the sun, toiled under the sun, suffered and died under the sun, taking the curse of death for us, redeeming us from the curse, and now we see, okay, we can not only enjoy
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God, but He is sovereign over everything. Well, if you take a look at your
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Bibles in chapter 3, verses 1 to 8, you'll probably see some indentation there. It looks different than some of the other verses in chapter 2, for instance, because it is, again, poetry.
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Let's take a look at the reality of God's sovereignty found in verses 1 to 11, and then let's take a look at some of the responses of God's sovereign hand.
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So, the reality that God, the triune God is sovereign, verses 1 through 11.
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And again, this is poetry. This isn't going to be His eternal purpose for His own glory.
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He hath ordained whatsoever come to pass. No, no, this is poetry, and you're going to kind of feel the in and out of this.
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It's kind of like this back and forth, ebb and tide, as we're going through the passage.
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In and of itself, if Jesus isn't raised from the dead, it's sad. In and of itself, it's paradise lost.
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But knowing who God is and how He's sovereign and how we have an inheritance, imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for us, it changes everything.
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Verse 1, For everything, there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven.
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There's a time for everything. God's sovereign over everything. Nothing's random.
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Nothing's by chance. Nothing's by fate. Nothing's by serendipity. Nothing's by kismet. Nothing's by fortune.
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Nothing's by... Can you think of anything else? It's all in God's control. There's nothing haphazard going on.
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Every event, God's design, every molecule, every atom. And He begins to illustrate
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His thesis with the word time used over and over and over. And some of you know about grammar, and when
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I was growing up in elementary school in Nebraska, I hated grammar. And sometimes my grammar up here shows that.
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But I actually like grammar. And I like learning figures of speech because there are all kinds of figures of speech in the
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Bible and similes and metaphors and everything else. What this is in verses 2 through 8, and you'll probably raise your hand in praise when
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I tell you what it is. It's a grammatical device called a merism.
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Doesn't that make you just say, Praise God from whom all blessings flow. A merism.
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It's a figure of speech that contrasts two things that would tell us it's a complete thing.
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Everything between... When God made the heavens and the earth, He made the heavens and everything else and the earth.
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Right? If you search for something everywhere, that's how we would say it just dogmatically. I've searched everywhere for this product
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I've lost. But how does a merism say it? I've searched high and I've searched low.
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I've searched everywhere. And that's what he's using here. I can tell by the looks of your faces you want to get back to the text.
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I know. But here this first merism, can't you see it, starts off pretty importantly.
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A time to be born and a time to die. Did you know, dear
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Christian, your birth was sovereignly decreed and your death is sovereignly decreed.
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And everything in between. Your life, your death, everything else. That's called a merism.
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And here we understand that God's sovereign over all these things. He's sovereign for who your parents were.
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He's sovereign the way you're going to die. It's all under God's sovereign hand. And Ecclesiastes wants us to know that because if you don't get it, you're going to be frustrated and everything's going to be full of vanity.
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You need to know God's sovereign in every area of life and death. Now, man tries to control some of these things, but he can't.
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And there's no surprises with God. Job 14, since His days are determined, the number of His months is with you and His limits you have set so that He cannot pass.
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You were born the day you were to be born and you're going to die the day you're going to die. I encourage people to work out for lots of reasons.
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Stress release, other things, but no amount of exercise, surgery, vitamins, or anything else will prevent you from dying one day earlier than you're ordained to die.
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God ordains your life and your death. And I have great peace knowing that I cannot die if 10 ,000 terrorists tried to kill me and God doesn't want me dead.
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And I also get comfort knowing that if I had 10 ,000 SWAT team members trying to protect me the day
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I'm supposed to die, they couldn't help me. I'm supposed to die because the King ordains both the birth and the death.
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Well, there's another merism here. It's the second one. A time to plant. What was true in our world, it's true in the agricultural world, in the plant world.
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A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. You know the life of vegetables?
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Anybody plant a vegetable garden yet? Anybody plant cilantro? Some do that.
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I could have cilantro cologne. That smells so good. Just the essence of the cilantro. Did you know the life of vegetables are under the sovereign plan of God?
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Like veggies? Yes. Vegetables. Planting, harvest.
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God sets boundaries. God sets times. And of course the Jewish people would especially appreciate this agricultural discussion and the seasons.
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Verse 3, there's a time to kill and there's a time to heal. Obviously you know at this church there's a difference between the word murder and kill.
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This is the word kill, not murder. There's a time for capital punishment is the idea. There's a time for just wars.
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That's the idea. There's a time to defend your spouse and your home. To kill. But there's also a time to heal.
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Solomon just trying to make sure we understand that you have to grasp God's sovereignty or this world doesn't make sense.
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When there's sickness in your family or you're in the hospital or ICU or NICU or wherever you are,
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Lemonster, Med Surge Room 17, you better believe God is sovereign because He is.
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And if you abandon it, you're going to act just like everybody else does in this world. For the believer.
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For the unbeliever. Life is hard. It's difficult. It's fleeting. It's vain. And we die.
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And no one will remember us. Believer and unbeliever. But there's something different for the believer.
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He or she has the Spirit of God in her or in him. And they realize Jesus has conquered death.
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He's been raised from the dead. He says to Lazarus, Arise. He has raised Himself from the dead on that cross.
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Who does that? The sovereign Lord of history does that. The King of kings. The Lord of lords. He does that.
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And He will raise every one of our bodies up for that resurrection day. And those trusting in Christ.
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We aren't going to be judged by our actions because Jesus is judged for us.
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And there's purpose to life. There's meaning of life. What counts now counts for eternity because of the resurrection.
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Verse 3, a time to break down, a time to build up. There's a time to knock down a temple.
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There's a time to destroy someone's house that you're warring against. There's a time to take a wall that needs some work and knock it down.
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And there's also a time to build up. Emotionally, God is sovereign over all this as well.
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I don't mean God's emotions, but our emotions. A time to weep. And a time to laugh.
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And by the way, as I go through these things, you begin to say to yourself, Oh, there's a time to weep.
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I remember the Lord Jesus and Him weeping over the city of Jerusalem. There's a time to laugh.
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Joy, laughter, sadness. They're all appropriate seasons. Verse 4, there's a time to mourn and there's a time to dance.
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You lose a loved one, it's time to mourn. The Ark of the Covenant's coming back to Jerusalem.
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There's a time to what? Dance. For the Ebendross, the time to dance is Thursday night at 7pm for our ballroom dancing.
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There's a time for that. Under the sovereign decree of God. Verse 5, using poetry to teach sovereignty.
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A time to cast stones and a time to gather stones. What in the world?
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Now this is easy for us New Englanders. You drive past houses, older houses in particular.
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You drive down the 62 and what do you see everywhere? Houses, trees.
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Yeah, I know. But particularly, what do you see? Stone walls. We have frost heaves.
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And so what did they do back in the day? They have a field, they want to plant some crops and all of a sudden there's a bunch of rocks there.
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You've got to get rid of the rocks. Where do you put the rocks? Well, maybe some we could use for a fireplace but after that, let's put them over there.
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Well, we're just going to have a big stack. Why don't we make fences? One writer said in New England when life gives you stones, build a wall.
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That's farm work and next year there's more. I did some research in 1871.
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The United States Department of Agriculture published an article called
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Statistics of Fences in the United States. That's a good use of government money. In New England and New York State alone, there were 252 ,000 miles of stone walls enough to circle the globe 10 times and to build all the pyramids of Egypt.
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Egypt 100 times over. Well, if you've been to Israel and when you go with us this coming
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February, you'll realize there are a lot of rocks, not just in New England but in Israel.
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There's rocks everywhere. Tour guides say things like this, God told some angels to distribute stones all across the world and the angel tripped above Palestine.
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What do you mean time to cast stones? If a New England farmer says, I've got to get rid of stones to have a place to plant crops.
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If you wanted to destroy someone and you wanted to burn down their livelihood, if you wanted to ruin their plot of land, what would you do?
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You would cast stones on them. That's exactly what he's talking about here. Ruining a field so there could be no cultivation.
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2 Kings 3, And you shall attack every fortified city and every choiced city and shall fell every good tree and stop up all the springs of water and ruin every good piece of land with stones.
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There's a time to tear down, there's a time to build up, there's a time to throw stones and there's a time to gather stones.
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Verse 5, There's a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. These are general things.
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There's a time for sexual love in marriage. There's a time for families loving care.
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There's a time for kissing each other on the cheek in different cultures. There's a time to embrace wedding night.
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There's a time to refrain from embracing. There's times when it's inappropriate.
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The most interesting one that I found this week, when do you refrain from embracing?
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And this particular commentator said, you refrain from embracing a person with leprosy.
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Some things I don't need to know because I do it intuitively. God's sovereign over all this.
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There's a time to seek and a time to lose. Actively you seek, passively things are lost.
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Time, time, time, time, time. How many times is the word time used? Time to keep and time to cast away.
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Let's store up the grain like Joseph did. Let's cast things overboard.
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As one commentator said, there's a time to throw Jonah overboard. I said, okay, deal. There's a time, verse 7, to tear and a time to sew.
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What's that talking about? It's talking about God is providentially over even times of grief and sadness.
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When you were really sad back in the day, what'd you do? You tore your clothes. And when the mourning time was over, when the weeping time was over, when the bereavement time was over, what'd you do to those clothes?
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Sewed them back up. There's a time to bereave. There's a time to mourn.
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Verse 7, there's a time to keep silent and there's a time to speak.
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I think of the Lord Jesus before the Sanhedrin not saying anything, but yet talking then to Pilate.
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There's a time to love. There's a time to hate. There's a time for war and a time for peace. There's a time to get rid of those walls around Jericho.
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There's time for peace, not just between God and man, but Jew and Gentile. Now, I know you all want me to say something about the birds song, turn, turn, turn, because you are all into pop culture,
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I never am. The birds use this, that's true.
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The birds sent some of the royalties to Israel because the lyrics were written by an
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Israelite. But the song adds at the very end to this final merism,
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I swear it's not too late. And so you take a song, a poem, about the sovereignty of God and you turn it into an anti -Vietnam protest against war by adding those words.
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So, I will not say anything more about the birds. B -Y -R -D -S band. There is a season for everything, a time for everything.
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And that's what Solomon said, everything has its time. And we are to embrace that God is sovereign.
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Do you believe God's sovereign? Do you believe He's sovereign over the weather? Do you believe He's sovereign over whether you're single or married?
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Do you believe He's sovereign over whether you can have children or not? Do you believe He's sovereign over how many children you have, the sex of your children?
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We just keep going and going and going. God is sovereign over everything. The lot is cast in the lap, but every decision is from the
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Lord. Who goes to heaven? Who doesn't go to heaven? God's sovereign over that.
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The evil acts of men, the good acts of men, God's sovereign over that. I submit to you that through Ecclesiastes, that if you don't embrace the sovereignty of God, you're going to grind your teeth at night when you sleep.
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From man's perspective, if God's sovereign, not sovereign, verse 9, what gain has the worker from his toil?
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By the way, I know sometimes at funerals people read verses 1 to 8, but at unbelievers' funerals, led by unbelievers, they never read verse 9.
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What gain has the worker from his toil? Good thing it doesn't stop there.
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The right perspective, verse 10, I've seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with, and He has made everything, what?
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NES says appropriate. Here's the sovereign hand of God, ESV. He's made everything beautiful in its time.
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Also, He has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
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The plan of God, comprehensive. The purpose of God, all -encompassing. Everything God does is according to His overarching, eternal, sovereign plan.
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You say, I can't understand the depths of this divine providence, the mystery of this providence. That's true, but we can say,
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I do know what I know, and that means God is sovereign. If God isn't sovereign, that's a bad choice. God is so sovereign that He even decreed the worst sin in all the world, and that is the death of the
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Lord Jesus. Those men that crucified Jesus were sinning. Yes, they were. That was decreed, because God can even take in His sovereign rule and providence, sin and turn it into something good.
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He works all things together for good, and we need to believe that, or we're sitting at the beach on a cloudy, windy, cold day.
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Everything front -loaded with emphasis. God is sovereign over, and wherever you investigate,
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He's sovereign over that as well. And you know what God does, verse 11?
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He puts eternity into man's heart. He gives us this yearning for more.
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There has to be more than this. It can't terminate here on life. There's got to be more to life than this.
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Even unbelievers know that. How many people have seen the Egyptian pyramids, for instance? Only a few.
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Okay, good. Well, maybe not good, but I was supposed to go see the
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Egyptian pyramids, and then one week before we were going to fly there, we heard that the Muslim Brotherhood took over the
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Egyptian pyramids, so we didn't go. And I said, well, that's just the way, that's the luck of the draw.
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I didn't say that. Sovereignty of God. Eternity in their hearts.
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Why do the tombs exist in Egypt? Why do the pyramids exist in Egypt? Because those Egyptians have eternity in their heart, and they're thinking afterlife.
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They're thinking there's got to be more to life than this. Eternity was put in the hearts of these
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Egyptians, just like it's in our hearts. Wanting something more than just life can offer.
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Yes, enjoy your life, enjoy your wife, enjoy your husband, enjoy your children, enjoy pleasures, but there's something more.
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Augustine said, God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find peace in you.
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Every one of us has eternity in our hearts. So how do we respond to the sovereignty of God?
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Here we go. Oh, here comes the sun. I realize that's another pop reference song, sorry.
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I didn't mean that. I don't mean that. Birds, Pink Floyd, George Harrison, whatever.
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You notice how influential music is? It just sticks.
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How did Arius, the person that denied Jesus as the eternal son, he's a created being, the precursor to Jehovah's Witnesses, how did he say,
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I'm going to change everybody's theology and teach them that Jesus is a created being and just the number one
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God, but not God, God. How did he do it? Through children's songs. I could say something about Caleb, but I'm not going to.
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Just be wise. That's all I'm saying. Verse 12, God's sovereign. Okay, how do
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I respond? I perceive that there's nothing better for them than to be what?
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So full of consternation because I can't figure out everything about God's sovereignty, man's responsibility, what is free will?
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Is there free will? I can't figure it all out. No, no, for them to be joyful. Hey, God's sovereign.
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I don't have to do anything. I don't have to evangelize. I can lay back and let God. There's no responsibility for me at all.
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No, no, be joyful and what? To do good as long as they live. Also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil.
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This is God's gift to man. Christian, God is running the world.
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Relax, relax. It doesn't mean you shouldn't pray. It doesn't mean you shouldn't serve. It doesn't mean any of that stuff.
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It just means God's got it. There's that story of Corrie Tenboom who was in concentration camps in Germany during the
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Nazi reign. And before they were put in a concentration camp, I remember her father, the watchmaker, was going to go to work and he took
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Corrie on the train. And so he had his big tool bag of tools for his watchmaking.
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And Corrie was reading the newspaper. And it said something in the newspaper about sex sin.
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And she was 12 or 13 or something like that. And she said, Daddy, what's sex sin? He never answered her.
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They got to their destination and he said, Corrie, please pick up Dad's toolbox and come with me.
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Let's depart. She tried to pick it up and she said, Daddy, it's way too heavy. Daddy, it's way too heavy.
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I can't pick it up. And then Corrie Tenboom's father said, Corrie, it's just like sex sin.
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It's too heavy for you to handle. And when you're older, we'll talk about it. The way of the world and why things are happening, it's too heavy for us.
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Trying to unscrew the inscrutable, trying to figure out the world, Middle East, America, economics, politics, laws and legislation and all these different things.
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Listen, I can't do it. I know I can't enjoy life now under the sovereign hand of God and do good now, the days of my life.
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I don't do good because I want to please God. I'm more saved than I was before because I'm doing holy things and good things.
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No, because we're saved, we do good works. God creates good works for us to walk in. Not because we're saved by good works.
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No, we just want to do them. And so we don't have to figure it out. There's no end to all this, trying to figure out the way the world works and all the what -ifs.
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I used to read some of those history books called, What If, right? And what if Nazi Germany won and they're governing us in Manhattan?
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Okay, it's interesting, but God is sovereign over all this. The right response to a frustrated life that says,
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I've tried wisdom, I've tried pleasure, I've tried things, I've tried everything else, is to say, well,
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I'm going to enjoy what God has given me and He's sovereignly giving me these things. Thank you. In addition, dear
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Christians, you've entrusted your soul to the triune Creator. Can't you entrust also to Him God's perfect timing for your life?
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I'd like to have this particular job. I'd like to have this particular person to marry.
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I'd like to have these children. I'd like to have this amount of money. I'd like to have this particular health.
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I'm going to go to the doctor this week and have a scan and I'd like it to be this and that. You can want things like that.
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They're good things. You can desire those things. You can pray for those things. But you submit them to God's good care because He knows you.
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He cares for you. He's the Good Shepherd. We not only need to believe that God is sovereign, but that we can trust
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Him in His sovereign hand and in His timing. If God's sovereign over my birth and my death and everything in between, can
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I trust Him for everything else? No wonder the Lord Jesus said, why act like pagans worried about what you're going to eat and what you're going to drink and what you're going to put on?
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Matthew 6. God's sovereign over all the timing.
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Acts 1 .7 Jesus said, It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.
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God's got the timing right. Romans 5 .6 At the right time,
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Christ died for the ungodly. Jesus, in His ministry, announces the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.
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Jesus knows about timing. At the feast of Passover, He knew that His hour had come to depart out of the world to His Father.
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And all the grossness of the world, the ugliness of the world, the ugliness of our own sin,
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God is sovereign. We don't sin to say God sovereignly then make it better. But since God's sovereign, we tuck ourselves under the sovereign care of God.
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I've said many times when our children were really little and I would try to comfort them because they had a bad dream or something in the night and I would just kind of hold them,
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I wasn't strangling them or anything, but I would just hold them firmly. Like you pick up a kid and I just think it's like a football, right?
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It's like Heisman thing, right? No, you pick up a child, you want to make sure you don't drop them, but when they needed comfort,
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I just held them a little tighter, right up to my chest and I wanted them to go, Daddy protects me.
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Daddy's got me. Why does every father wrestle with his children? Or as we say where I grew up, rassle.
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I can just hear my kids say, Dad, let's rassle. I feel like some kind of all -star wrestling,
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Baron Von Raschke or something. You wrestle with your children because your children need to know that you're strong.
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And what does a good father do? He not just pities, but he protects. You can trust him because he's strong.
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You don't have to worry. Why do I want my children to have to worry about the world and its problems?
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Why do I say to myself, I don't introduce my children to carnal knowledge about sex when they're four years old or when they're in kindergarten?
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Because they just need to be protected. I've got it for you. I protect you. I've got you.
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There's a time for everything and now is not the time. How much more, when it comes to the triune God for us, do we really think, you know what, life is really hard on earth and if I just knew all the mysteries of providence, it would be easier.
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Really? It's the protection of God we don't need to know. It's just like sex sin.
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When you're old enough, i .e. when you're in heaven, you'll figure it out. That's pretty old there.
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Jesus said, all things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the
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Father and no one knows the Father except the Son. And anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. It's all sovereign, the sovereignty of God.
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I just read you verses about the utter, naked sovereignty of God. What's the response?
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Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I'm gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
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God's sovereign. Our response is yes, enjoy, yes, work, but it's just to relax, it's just to rest, it's okay.
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That's why I think to myself, I have daughters and what kind of theological acumen must my daughters, what must be the men's theological acumen who want to marry my daughters?
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I mean, I've got a long list. Monocovinentalism is out. Inflapsarianism maybe.
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No, no. Here's what I want besides being a Christian. God is sovereign.
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Because when you drive home from that hospital without the baby, you don't know all the answers and you've lost the baby, but you rest in God's sovereignty with a tear, with sadness, never forgetting, but resting in who
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God is. You've got to have that. You've got to believe in the sovereignty of God. If you don't believe
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God is exhaustively sovereign, you can't have joy. And maybe that's some of our problems.
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I'm not trying to be condemning, but maybe your problem is you will not say uncle to God's sovereignty. You will not just say, you know what?
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God, You're God and I'm not. Romans 9, I can't really swallow it and therefore I can't really deal with it.
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Maybe, could I just tell you as a friend, why don't you just say, Lord, would You just help me to resign myself to the fact that You're sovereign, that You're wise, that You're exhaustively sovereign, not just in theory, but in my own life.
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You're not to be embittered by God's sovereignty. You're not to be perplexed by God's sovereignty. You're not to be flummoxed with God's sovereignty.
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Look back at verse 12. You're to be joyful and do good as long as you live and eat and drink and have pleasure in all this toil.
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God's gift to you. There's nothing better. I have to get mental closure on the sovereignty of God and man's responsibility before I can rest.
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Don't. Say, well, you know what? If I was sovereign, the world would be a better place.
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But true or false, we all try to think like that most of the time. If I was in charge, what if no one was sovereign?
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It wouldn't be good if I was sovereign. It wouldn't be good if you all were sovereign. What if no one was sovereign?
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God's timing can be trusted because God's sovereign. God's goodness can be trusted because He gave
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His Son for you, dear Christian, to die for you, to suffer for you, to experience the wrath of God for you.
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And if He gives you that gift, He gives you everything else and you enjoy it from the gift of God's hand because that hand that gave it to you is sovereign.
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His own free will. This universe is only big enough for one free will and God has it and that sovereign will is good and loving and kind.
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Maybe what we should do, I should start. Instead of complaining through life, instead of becoming embittered in life, well,
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I don't have this and I don't have that and they have this. Why don't we just today enjoy what
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God has given us and do some good works? Wouldn't that be good? Kind of an easy task, isn't it?
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Do you ever hear that from somebody from this pulpit? Just enjoy your life. You think I have a huge smile, my name's
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Joe Osteen or something. Pastor's losing it. No, we as sinful people, our sin has been redeemed.
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We as sinful people, sin when we say God's not sovereign. We sin when we say we're sovereign. We sin when we say we want to run the world differently.
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We sin when we don't enjoy God and His good works. But all those sins are paid for.
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We confess them, we repent, and now we say, you know what? I can't figure out
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God's sovereignty so I need a lesser goal. Enjoy life as a gift from God.
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I need to rearrange my priorities. The ultimate meaning in life,
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I'm going to try to figure out in life. No, I can't. So I'll enjoy the present as a gift from God.
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God's sovereign. Enjoy Him. Let's pray. Father, thank You for Your Word.
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I praise You that for many of us we've said uncle theologically to Your sovereign hand.
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We don't know everything. But we'll know one day to some degree as glorified creatures.
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Father, would You protect us from being bitter, for being perplexed, for trying to figure out everything instead of just enjoying all
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Your good gifts? Thank You for giving us the Holy Spirit who comforts us. Would You have
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Him comfort us today knowing that everything's all right? We're protected. We're held firmly in Your bosom as it were because You love us and protect us.
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The world has death for a shepherd. And we get the one Father that You sent, the
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Lord Jesus, the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for us. Oh, what a shepherd.