Enjoying God! - [Ecclesiastes 3:1-14]

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Theologian and actor Jim Carrey said, everyone's a theologian,
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I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that that's not the answer.
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What is the answer? Does theology determine methodology?
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If God's not in charge of everything, why bother? But if God is in charge of everything, why bother?
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If God is sovereign over times and places and events and everything,
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He determines whatsoever comes to pass, what should we do? Why bother?
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If God is sovereign, why is man responsible? If God determines and decrees and appoints and elects and selects and determines, then why pray?
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If God is in charge and He's the King of kings and the Lord of lords, out of all those kingings,
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He's the King of kings, why pray? Why evangelize? Why do anything? If God isn't alive, then we turn in on ourselves like Jim Carrey says.
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But if God is alive, and since He is alive and is sovereign, how do we live? What's the response of the
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Christian who knows God is sovereign? You could say comfort, that would be true. But today we're going to look at a different response and I think it's going to shock you.
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The response for the person who believes that God is sovereign, according to Solomon is, you should enjoy your life.
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You should enjoy your life. Friends, I don't like to say this word that often because it has negative connotations sadly, but I'll say it this morning.
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Calvinists should be the happiest people if you believe in the sovereignty of God, if you believe
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God is high and lifted up and worthy to be praised, and He determines places and times and epochs and ages and people and skin color and parents, then you should be the most happy, joy -filled person in the world.
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Sadly though, people that believe in reformed theology and sovereignty of God and salvation, sometimes you know what?
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They, I'll even say me, sometimes we, we're just curmudgeons. We're dour.
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We're sour. We're not enjoying life that God has given us.
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Let's turn our Bibles to Ecclesiastes 3 this morning. Ecclesiastes 3, I changed this at the last minute, we'll be in Matthew 8 most likely next week.
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Ecclesiastes 3, since God is sovereign, enjoy your life with an eye towards fearing
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Him. That's Ecclesiastes 3. Let me put it this way. The catechism says, of course, you know the answer to this, both the question and the answer, what is the chief end of man?
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Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy
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Him forever. What do you mean? If I was writing that, man's chief end is to glorify
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God and to serve Him forever, to obey Him forever, to say no to self forever, to spend oneself for other people forever, to love other people.
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Why did the catechism writers say to enjoy God? Something off there.
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I mean, there's too much enjoyment here in the Christian life. Got to stomp that out. Puritans weren't too far away from the coast here several hundred years ago.
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And Solomon asks and answered the question, since God is sovereign, how are we to respond?
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And I think you'll hear echoes of our Lord's words found in John 10. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, but I came that they might have life and they might have it, what?
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Abundantly. That's exactly what you're going to see here. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
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The sovereign God who's portrayed in Scripture intends for your life to be satisfying and fulfilling underneath the banner of the sovereignty of God with an eye toward fearing
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Him. I'm not talking about hedonism. I'm not talking about you live for pleasure. I'm talking about when you understand
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God is sovereign, instead of trying to fix every tiny little mental closure you've got in your mind from the tangent of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man and the deity of Christ, is
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He fully God? Is He fully man? How can they be reconciled? Some of these things you're not meant to know.
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I'm not meant to know. So how do I respond in a world full of enigmas and riddles and theological things that I can't get my mind wrapped around?
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Why does God ordain evil? Why does God ordain sin? Why does
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God allow it? Why does God permit it? Whatever word you want to use to try to soft pedal it, if God didn't want sin in the universe, it wouldn't be in the universe.
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So why is it there? I can't seem to get it. I can't wrap my mind around it. And so here's what Solomon does.
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With poetry, he reminds us that God is in fact sovereign. And the response should not be to try to solve every riddle, but to do what we do know, and that is we can enjoy the gifts that God has given us today.
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To enjoy God, because you know He's sovereign. There's something about a little kid who's worried and anxious and doesn't understand the universe when the daddy or mommy picks him up and says, everything's okay.
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I used to pick up my kids when they would cry and I would pick them up and I would sing them a little song.
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I can't really sing, of course, as most of you know, but I would sing a little song. Everything's all right in your father's house.
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I could be singing to them. I got the whole world in my hands. I'm in control. I'm the dad.
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And the kid, you could just kind of sometimes feel them as I would hold them tightly and kind of just sing them to sleep.
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You could just feel their bodies just kind of go, dad's in charge.
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And it's usually three in the morning, so I was doing that too. Since God is sovereign, life does have meaning.
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Since God is in control of everything, there are no haphazard events.
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There's no chance. There's no fate. There's no fortune. There's no serendipity. How do we respond?
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Well, comfort, yes. Praise, yes. But for Solomon, enjoy God then.
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Enjoy God with an eye toward fearing Him. And what he's going to do in verses one to eight is give us a definition of sovereignty, but it's going to be in the form of poetry.
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I'm kind of a propositional guy. I'm a black and white guy. I'm not really a poetry guy.
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I even think of the song growing up in the 70s. I think probably Phoebe Snow or somebody. I'm a poetry man. I hated that song.
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Kids in Nebraska growing up don't like poetry if you're a man. But you know what? Even if you look at your
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Bible, if you've got the ESV and some other translations, notice all the white in the margin in verses one through eight, especially two to eight.
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You see chapter two, wide columns, no margins really there. And you see lots of white stuff in your margins in verses two through eight in chapter three.
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Why? Because it's trying to tell you different genre, poetry. This is poetry.
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And so how do you describe God of the universe, sovereign control in poetry?
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And we look at Romans, excuse me, Romans. We've been in Romans for a long time. In Ecclesiastes chapter three,
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Nebuchadnezzar said his dominion is an everlasting dominion. He does according to his will and the host of heaven and none can ward off his hand or say, what have you done?
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But Solomon says it a little differently. Isaiah says the Lord of hosts has planned who can frustrate it.
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As for his stretched out hand, who can turn it back? But Solomon says it differently.
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There's a big debate in evangelicalism. Is this book Ecclesiastes mainly a negative book, pessimistic or a positive book, optimistic?
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I think there are strains of both, but this was read on feast days, traditionally in the
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Jewish synagogue. Happy times at the end of September, early October, feast of the tabernacle, feast of the booth.
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I'm not so sure it's as pessimistic as some might have you believe.
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Havelock Ellis said you may spare yourself some unhappiness if beforehand you slipped the book of Ecclesiastes beneath your arm.
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And this is a book dominated by the word God, not Yahweh, personal covenant keeping
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God, but Elohim, the sovereign creator. He's in charge of everything.
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And Solomon is going to try to convince you that if you don't see the world above the horizon of humanity, then you don't see the world rightly.
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Let's take a look at verses one to begin. Well, let me give you Westminster Shorter Catechism definition of sovereignty first since it's so opposite of the poetical way
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Solomon does it in Ecclesiastes 3. Definition of sovereignty Westminster Shorter Catechism. His eternal purpose according to the counsel of his will, whereby for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.
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That's kind of poetry to my ears, but I think you'll find this better.
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Do you really believe that God is sovereign in Ecclesiastes 3? One, for everything, there's a season.
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NAS says there's an appointed time for everything. And a time, that's going to be a key word here, used many, many times.
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For every matter under heaven. Things are either under the sun,
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God's not to be seen, or they're under heaven. I recognize this is God's world and everything is under heaven, under God's watchful, sovereign eye, controlling every event.
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And everything has a set time. Everything exists for some reason. But the way it's delivered, as one writer says, the poem ensnares the reader with its lilting rhythm.
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And he uses 14 pairs of opposites, seven verses, verses two through eight, with 14 pairs of opposites.
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Double seven for completeness, if you'd like. And he uses the form of a merism.
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Remember what a merism is? M -E -R -I -S -M. When I meet young men, they want to be in ministry, the first thing
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I tell them is to go take an English class. Learn what a merism is. A merism, easy for me to say.
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A merism states two different opposite poles, but makes you think that everything in between is also covered.
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So the first one's going to be there's a time to be born and there's a time to die and the merism structure of the poem is and everything else in between.
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So two extremes, but everything in between is covered. And look at how he illustrates in verses two through eight, his thesis of chapter three, verse one, with appointed times, ordained times, sovereign times.
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There's a time to be born and a time to die. And there's also a time to rescue this passage from the 1968
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Bird Song. And I'm going to do it right now. The younger generation.
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If you only knew what an eight track was, you would know. The two opposites and everything in between.
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There's a time to be born. God's sovereign over your birth. God chose when you would be born, to whom you would be born, where you would be born.
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God is sovereign over your birth. And a time to die.
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Your birthday is ordained by God. Your funeral is ordained by God. And everything in between.
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In our world where people have all kinds of abortions and mercy killings and seemingly somehow in control of death,
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Job 14 says his days are determined and the number of his months is with you. And his limits you
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God have set so that he cannot pass. The psalmist said, my times are in your hand.
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He says, well, the same is true for the plant world. Verse two goes on to say, there's a time to plant.
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This is true even of vegetables. And a time to pluck up what is planted. The Jewish agricultural mind would get this season, spring, fall, summer, a harvest, year after year.
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Yes, there's a time for that. And God is sovereign over it all. Verse three, there's a word in Hebrew for kill.
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And there's a word for a murder. This is to kill. There's a time to kill and a time to heal. There's a time to put someone to death in capital punishment.
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There's a time to kill someone in self -defense. There's a time to kill with marauding armies.
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There's also a time to heal. And Solomon is crafting here the sovereignty of God with poetry.
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There's a time to break down and there's a time to build up. I don't think this is metaphorical for relationships.
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I think this has to do with nations and building houses and tearing down houses, beginnings and endings.
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Same is true for emotions. Verse four, there's a time to weep. There's a time to laugh.
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And everything in between. There's time to mourn at a funeral and other times.
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And there's a time to dance at a wedding and everything in between. God's sovereign over it all.
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There's a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones. There's some debate with this, has some sexual connotations.
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I don't think it has to do with that at all. Nothing else in this list seems to be figurative. So what's the literal meaning of cast away stones, a time to gather stones?
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Well, I think the answer is found in New England. It's said of a funny traditional story.
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Of course, it's not biblical that when God created the world, he gave some angels a bunch of rocks and a big sack.
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And when the angels got to Israel, they tripped and stumbled and let all the rocks go because there's rocks everywhere.
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And by the way, my favorite story of rocks all time is when I was in Israel the first time. And we went to the place where David killed
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Goliath. Close enough. They built some cathedral on top of the area.
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It was by a little river bed. And of course, I wanted to get some rocks. You know, how many stones do you pick up to put in your pocket to take back?
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And can I get them through the Israeli customs? And all of a sudden, out of nowhere,
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I look down the way in the creek bed and there's a huge truck backing up to dump all the other rocks for all the other millions of tourists that are gonna come.
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I got my special rock that David used. One thing you'll notice in New England, you'll notice all these stones put up to make fences because they get them out of the middle of the field because if you're gonna farm it all and have stones in the field, it's not gonna go through.
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Let me just read to you 2 Kings 3. I think you'll get the idea of how you ruin someone's field with stones.
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The text goes on to say, and they overthrew the cities and on every good piece of land, every man threw a stone until it was covered.
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They stopped every spring of water and felled all the good trees till only its stones were left.
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There's a time to clear out a field. There's a time to fill it full of rocks. Verse 5, be a time to embrace.
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This could mean a lot of different things. The Hebrew would mean sexual love within marriage.
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Song of Solomon 2 .6. It could mean family love, caring for one another, or it could be just two friends in the
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Near East who haven't seen each other for a long time and they embrace with affection.
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There's a time to embrace, and all three of those would certainly be true in the course of God's sovereign plan, and a time to refrain from embracing.
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So one man said, there's a time to say hello. There's a time to say goodbye. There's a time to seek and a time to lose.
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Probably with investments and real estates and economics, there's a time to get new investments.
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There's a time to lose what you have. Man is active in gaining. Man is active in giving away.
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There's a time to keep and a time to cast away. Verse 7,
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God's sovereign and providential over sadness and joy. There's a time to tear and a time to sow.
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Well, why did you tear clothes back in the Old Testament? You tore clothes because you were sad and you wanted to repent?
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Or most likely what it's talking about here, you were sad and grieving because somebody died. David tears his clothes because he mourns for Saul and Jonathan.
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Job tears his clothes because he loses his children. Verse 7 says there's a time to be silent and a time to speak.
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There's a time to love, verse 8, and a time to hate. Personal emotions, individual emotions, and now even publicly, there's a time for war and a time for peace.
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Probably those same emotions except on the public level. Go back to verse 1.
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Remember his thesis? He's just tried to illustrate it in the last seven verses. The thesis is for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.
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Nothing is random. You think about your life for a second. God is sovereign over your life, true or false.
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The answer must be true. And why is it so obvious in Scripture that God shows
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His sovereign hand in the lives of people? And the answer is because in our lives sometimes it doesn't seem so obvious.
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You read Genesis 37 to 50 and you go, my five -year -old could read
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Genesis 37 to 50 and say to themselves, looks like they had all these plans to do things, but God was behind it all.
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God was in charge of it all. It's obvious. 37 to 50, the sovereignty of God. But in my own life, and I think of trials and temptations, and in your life and sickness and in health and all kinds of other things, is
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God really sovereign? And if He's really sovereign, why bother doing anything?
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Verse 9, what gain has the worker from his toil?
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If you really get that God is sovereign, it's got to go through your mind for at least a second, then why?
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You can tell when people grasp the sovereignty of God when they go, well, then why would I evangelize?
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Well, why would I pray? We have to teach them that God has means to His end and God has commanded that and this is how we're supposed to do things in light of who
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God is. That we have success in evangelism because of the sovereignty of God. But I at least say to myself, they get it.
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They get the utter, naked, alien fact that God is in charge.
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They get it. I'm glad for that. But if God's sovereign over everything, what gain has the worker from his toil?
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It's all predetermined. He says in verse 10, I've seen the busyness that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.
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The things that God has assigned to human beings to keep them active and working.
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He says in verse 11, very famous verse and a wonderful verse.
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He has made everything appropriate, NES says, ESV says, He has made everything beautiful.
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Appropriate is probably the best rendering. In its time, He's sovereign over everything.
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His ways are good. The beauty and loveliness and appropriateness of God's sovereignty, welcome it, seize it, espouse it.
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It's as beautiful as His love, but it says, and He has put eternity into man's heart. Look at the
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Egyptian pyramids and you'll find out why people put so much effort into the afterlife because eternity has made itself plain in the hearts of humans because God has done it.
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But the text goes on to say something. He's put eternity into man's heart. There's this longing for other, longing for purpose, longing for these transcendent things, yet so that he cannot find out what
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God has done from the beginning, to use a little merism here again, from the beginning to the end and everything in between.
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Could any sensible person who thinks about future life, purpose, meaning, everything else, say that they understand things like God does?
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No. One writer said, the Creator has made Him a thinking being and He wants to pass beyond His fragmentary knowledge and discern the fuller meaning of the whole pattern, but the
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Creator will not let the creature be His equal. I want to know purpose.
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I want to know destiny. Theologically. But His purposes are outside my realm of investigation.
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I get my little magnifying glass out. God's ways are too high for me.
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So what do I do? God's sovereign over everything. Solomon said, I know you want to know, but God is
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God and you're not, and so what do I do since God is sovereign? And the answer is twofold.
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Number one, the proper response to God's sovereignty in Ecclesiastes chapter three is, so enjoy your life.
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Enjoy God. Enjoy your life. Kind of crazy that it's here.
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Too much Christian joy. Now, enjoy life without with an eye to fear
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Him, then maybe people are going to go crazy, but here to enjoy your life. Look at verse 12 and 13.
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It's so good for the Christian. This is why people that believe in the sovereignty of God used to be the, should be the happiest.
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We have a little saying in our house when you're kind of got a fussy looking face, or when I used to say to the kids when they were really little, do you have a fussy heart?
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Well, how do I know they have a fussy heart? Because their face is showing what their heart is like, and so I would say, do you have a fussy heart?
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So then we would say, the other kids would chime in too. Well, then maybe you better send a missionary to your face. And so the amazing thing here is when you think about a big picture and just pull back for a second.
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You know, missionary to your face, anybody can just kind of smile on cue. But how about the missionary, the person, the
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Holy Spirit, who comes and grants you fruit in your heart and the fruit of the
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Spirit is love. And what's the second one? Joy. This is fascinating.
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Verse 12, I perceive that there is nothing better for them than to be what? Joy? It's like it shouldn't be here.
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To enjoy your life. How often do we teach that lesson? I teach the lesson, God is sovereign, you can take comfort in that.
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When Luke's born and they say, we don't know if he's gonna live and they gotta take him to the NICU and off we go. My first thought is
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God's sovereign and I can wrap myself underneath his wing of sovereignty and I'm comforted. So many bad things going on in the world.
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The other response, or one of the other responses to the sovereignty of God is to be joyful. Why, how does that work?
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Let's find out. And to do good as long as they live. Sovereignty of God and responsibility.
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God's sovereign, what do you do? You're to be joyful, you're to do good as long as they live. Also, that everyone should eat, drink, take pleasure in all his toil.
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This is God's gift to man. Yes, life is fleeting.
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Yes, life is full of trouble. Yes, life has many difficulties, but God is to be trusted.
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Trust the Lord with all your heart and when you can trust on this sovereign God's abilities, there's enjoyment, there's happiness, there's pleasure in life like drink and food and work and family.
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Say, well, yeah, but once I get sovereignty of God and human responsibility, free agency, moral accountability, once I get who wrote scripture, was it
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Paul or was it the Holy Spirit? Did they take turn writing verses? Once I get fully God, fully man, all that figured out.
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Once I get through, how does God work through prayers? Does prayer change everything? Does prayer change anything?
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Once I figure all that out, then I can be happy. Well, friends, let me tell you something.
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Don't force mental closure because I know what will happen to you if you do. You're gonna get the joy robbed from you because you're going to try to do things that you can't do.
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You're fallible, frail, sinful, finite, of course, along with me, and we can't get there.
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So what does God say? Trust that I'm sovereign and enjoy the little things in life as a gift from God.
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Boy, this ice cream social tonight after church is getting to be tasting so good right now.
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To enjoy God. I'm not saying stiff upper lip because you're at a funeral and this,
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I know there's hardship, I know there's pain, but God is sovereign. There's nothing better.
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That's amazing. There's nothing better than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live.
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I go back to my earlier point. If you believe in the sovereignty of God, you ought to be the happiest. Okay, let's not use happy, let's use a fruit of the
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Spirit. You have to be the most joyful. Starts with enjoying God himself.
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Jonathan Edwards said, how good is God that he has created man for this very end to make him happy in the enjoyment of himself, the
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Almighty, who was happy from the days of eternity in himself, that he might make them blessed and beholding of his excellency, and that this might glorify himself.
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We can't figure out some things. Ecclesiastes 11 .5, you do not know the way the
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Spirit comes into the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
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So I say uncle theologically, but I also say everything else in my life. Here's what
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I do know. I can't reconcile sovereignty and responsibility. By the way, as Spurgeon said, who needs to reconcile friends anyway?
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So I'm just done doing that. Both are true. But you know, there are some things
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I do know. I know my wife is a gift from God. I know my taste buds are a gift from God.
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I know Christian fellowship is a gift from God. I know singing's a gift from God. I know my kids are a gift from God.
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I know work's a gift from God. I know money's a gift from God. And my response is,
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I'm supposed to enjoy it. One thing I learned growing up, even from a father who wasn't a
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Christian and a military guy, if I didn't say thank you, I was gonna get my head clobbered.
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That's what I was gonna get. And he did it quite often. Oh, the day that I hit my father in the head with my water ski.
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That's another story. Doesn't cost you anything to say thank you. Yes, please.
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No, thank you. I mean, now, if I were to get pulled over by a policeman, I'm sure speeding, he'd give me a ticket. And it's just a knee jerk, knee reflex.
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Thank you. Thank you for what? I'd say, thank you for your ministry as an officer of God, Romans 13.
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But just say thank you. And so all these things, I do know every good gift
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I have is from the Lord. Every good thing I have. I don't care if that's a dog.
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Even for some of you cat lovers, I'll let you just use this just for today only. You can enjoy your cat as a gift from God.
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Just today, dogs don't have souls, but cats are demon possessed. I can't figure out a lot of things, but I can figure out
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I deserve hell, punishment, eternal torment. And God has given me this.
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He's given me everything. Everything I have, everything I own. The linking of the sovereignty of God with enjoyment is his point.
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They're all gifts from God. The ESV study Bible has a great point. It says, rather than becoming embittered by what
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God has not granted human beings, namely the ability to comprehend all of reality, one should enjoy the gifts that God has given.
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Go with me, if you would, to chapter 5 and let me show you this theme of understanding things are given by God.
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Yes, there's pessimism in Ecclesiastes. I'm not going to say there's not. But laced through there like a gold vein in a mountain off California Highway 41, 49, you see these things.
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Chapter 5, verse 18. Ecclesiastes 5 .18, Behold, what
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I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink. See, this shouldn't be in here because how do you control the masses?
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Tell them to enjoy themselves and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him.
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For this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them.
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And accept his lot and rejoice in his toil. This is the gift of God.
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For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.
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Friends, could it really be that those who struggle with joy could one reason be they're really not remembering the sovereignty of God and what that implies?
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Go to chapter 8 with me, if you would, please. And I wanna continue this theme about seeing things as the gift of God.
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And I think that will be helpful. Here's our society today.
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The world deserves to give me this much. But the world doesn't deliver. It's a bad advertiser.
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And the difference is for many people being down and depressed and moody.
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But you know what? If I realize I deserve this, like if I could go underneath here and go down to the gates of hell, that's what
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I deserve, I've earned it. And then I get the heavens. The difference between those two is joy.
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What do I deserve? I deserve nothing. That's why when I tell people at the stores, they say, how you doing today?
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I go, compared to what I deserve, I'm doing great. Because the world says you get this. I never get what the world says.
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And I'm glad. Ecclesiastes 8 .15, and I commend, uh -oh. See, you shouldn't say these things to church members.
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Solomon, should you say to his readers, I commend what? I commend joy. That should be a good new slogan of Bethlehem Bible Church.
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Some people have probably listened to No Compromise Radio. They thought they were gonna get whacked today. And here I am saying, I commend joy.
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To you, I commend joy. I commend joy. For man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and to drink and to be joyful.
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For this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him.
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Then one more passage to look at while we're in Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes 9 .9, verse 7.
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I love these verses because I'm to take pleasure in the simple things of life.
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Food, family, fellowship, wife, children, friends.
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Ecclesiastes 9 .7. Go, eat your bread with joy.
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Drink your wine with a merry heart. For God has already approved what you do.
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Let your garments always be white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun.
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True or false, God is a cosmic killjoy. True or false, God doesn't want you to have any encouragement, any joy.
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True or false, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. See, I got you on that one because that's
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James chapter one. Every good gift and every perfect gift, the comprehensiveness and the inclusiveness, easy for me to say, comprehensiveness and inclusiveness of God's goodness.
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Everything, everything.
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And friends, when I read Romans chapter eight, verse 32, he who did not spare his own son,
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God's most precious possession, using language of Genesis chapter 22 about sparing
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Isaac, when God didn't spare his own son but gave him up for us all.
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Think about it. When we were unbelievers, enemies, reprobate people from the human perspective, helpless, ungodly, whatever
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God was like, we were just the opposite and he gives his best. So then he says, if God gives his most precious possession to us as enemies, what will he do for his children?
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He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us what?
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All things. The argument is from the greater to the lesser.
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Would God do less for his children than he would for his enemies? We get the greatest gift, salvation, forgiveness.
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We are justified, we are redeemed, we are reconciled. God has propitiated all because of his free and sovereign mercy.
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Distinguishing sovereign grace did it. We earn nothing. We are the recipients of this. We are passive in regeneration.
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God did it all and if God does the best for his enemies and now you're a child, what will he hold back?
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Christ's death shows his generous giving of his best.
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The verse before that was Calvin's life verse. What should we say then to these things? If God is for us, who could be against us?
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And God should be against us, but he's not. All because of what Christ has done.
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Look at Ecclesiastes chapter two. It's just earlier in the section here, Ecclesiastes chapter two.
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Can you imagine? Before I was saved, I knew
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I was a sinner and I knew I was going straight to hell if I wasn't forgiven and so my life was consumed with how am I forgiven?
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And in my particular case, it was through baptismal regeneration, doing good things plus Jesus's death.
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But there's some truth to the fact that I knew I was gonna die and go to hell and there was no bigger priority for me than to making sure that when
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I went to heaven, I mean when I died, I went to heaven. Everything else was secondary.
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But now I'm gonna read these verses here and I want you to see them in light of the cross and in light of progressive revelation. But since we have that taken care of for us by the work of another, our substitutionary, sin -bearing
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Savior who was raised from the dead, now I get all the rest. I don't have to pine away for all the others because I know where I'm going.
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The Damocles sword is over. Ecclesiastes two, verse 24. There's nothing better for a person than he should eat, drink, find enjoyment in his toil.
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This also I saw is from the hand of God for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment.
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Literally outside of God, who can eat or who can have enjoyment. But flip that around for a second.
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But with God, you get enjoyment. You get to eat and to drink and to do all those things. Without God, no enjoyment because you better be pining away for how do
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I make myself right in God's eyes? What's the solution to my problem? But since I've been declared righteous by the work of Christ, I can have enjoyment.
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Speaking of material riches, Paul goes on to say in 1
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Timothy chapter six, but hope on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.
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Say, yeah, but people are gonna push this too far and this is gonna be some kind of sinful hedonism. Well, let's add verse 14.
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God is sovereign in the light of his sovereignty. Solomon teaches us to enjoy God.
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We don't have to figure everything out with an eye to fearing him as well. And boy, this is sure good.
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Don't miss verse 14. In a life of temporal, vain, transitory, short -lived, half -lifed world,
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God remains rock, redeemer, fortress. I perceive that whatever God does, for us, it's all vanity.
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Whatever God does, it endures forever. Nothing can be added to it. Nothing nor anything taken from it.
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God has done it so that people fear, and the ESV does an excellent job here, proper translation, they fear before God.
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They fear in God's presence. Awe -inspiring presence.
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I've been to some awe -inspiring places in this world. You probably have too. Ever been to Niagara Falls?
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I mean, it is just awe -inspiring. You can use the word awesome there, actually, I think, and you can hear it, you can feel it, you can taste it, you can see it.
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You go to the Grand Canyon, and you're just like, this is, you know, I feel so stupid. I'm gonna take my camera out and take a picture?
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It's never gonna work. It's gonna be like this big. This picture doesn't do the story. Redwoods of California.
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You just stand there and look, and you just think, I'm gonna take a picture of this, but it's not gonna do any good. I'm just inspired.
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You go to the Swiss Alps, and you just have to stand there, and your mouth's just kinda like, you think,
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God is so sovereign, and He's let me enjoy things, even as a saved sinner. This is just an awesome, reverential fear, and I am to enjoy life, but I am to enjoy it with an eye to God's glory.
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That's why the catechism says, to glorify God and to enjoy
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Him. God, of course, is going to bring every action to judgment, even for the
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Christian. Not for our sins, but our works, our deeds. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 10, and a theme of Ecclesiastes is to fear
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God. Chapter 5, chapter 7, chapter 8, fear Him openly with a reverence for His greatness, and a fear of a
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God who fulfills His vows, and is faithful, is provided atonement in His Son.
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Can you say, with the Old Testament scholar, I know that these things must play their part in God's plan.
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He's talking about sickness, and evil, and sin, and Satan. I long to know what the plan is, and to see it as a whole.
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I shall always go on trying to see it, but in the meantime, I will live my life one day at a time, believing that in the common round of life,
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I am doing the will of God. I will be content with what God gives me, and take my life from the hand.
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Don't you love the story of Corrie Ten Boom when she was in Europe before they were put in a concentration camp, and she's with her dad, the watchmaker.
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I'm sure you know the story, but it's so apropos. She's a little tiny girl. They're on the train.
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He's got his big, looks like a medical doctor's kind of briefcase with all his watchmaking tools on it, and she's reading a newspaper, and she sees something in the newspaper as a little tiny girl, and she said, dad, you know, what's this?
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And the word was, the two words were sex sin. They don't usually write about those kind of things now using those terms in the newspaper, but in those days, they did.
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Dad, what's a sex sin? No comment. Didn't answer her.
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They finally get to the destination, and he says, Corrie, pick up dad's, pick up your father's tools, and meet me at the end of the platform.
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She goes over, tries to pick the thing up. Can't pick it up, too heavy. But daddy, but father, it's too heavy.
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And he said, Corrie, that's just like sex sin. Some things are too heavy for you to handle.
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And I think to myself, the world of theodicy and evil, the world of sin and sickness and despair, the world of does
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God author sin? Does God ordain sin? Is God behind sin? All these kind of issues, friends, it's too heavy.
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I can't do it. So I trust my father to carry it, and do you know, I do know this, the reason why
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God did it, it's a good reason. And the maker of the universe does the right thing.
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And my response isn't to put him under my thumb. My response, and may you say with David, many, oh
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Lord, my God, are the wonders which you have done, and your thoughts towards us, there is none to compare with you.
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If I were to declare and speak to them, they would be too numerous to count. May you walk by faith in a sin -cursed world, knowing that King Jesus is on the throne, and he will return.
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So enjoy your life with an eye towards fearing God. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we trust you with the answers to our questions.
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We are humbled at the fact that your ways are higher than ours.
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Yet for many things you've condescended and shown us in Scripture exactly how we're to think of things.
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And we would acknowledge this morning that you're a sovereign God, high and lifted up. That you're a gracious God, that you would send your
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Son to die for our sins, to be raised from the dead, in real love, in the love of propitiating love.
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We're thankful for that. We're thankful that you hold nothing against us now. Christ has taken all of our sins past, present, and future.
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And he's bore them on his body, on the tree. And we're thankful that he's in heaven at the right hand, and will soon return.
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And we just want to be responsibly responding to what you've done.
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Help us to evangelize, help us to praise, help us to enjoy, help us to fear. And when
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I think of the Lord Jesus Christ, and how he lived as a man on this earth, oh, he's more than a man, but as he lived on earth, living in light of the sovereignty of God.
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We're thankful we have not only a substitute, but a representative. And we pray in his name, amen.