1200. The Time of Your Life

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel platform. Our message today will be preached by Dr. Sam Horn, who is a BJU seminary professor and is also pastor at Palmetto Baptist Church in Piedmont, South Carolina.

I'm going to ask you to take your Bible to Ecclesiastes chapter 3 this morning. And one of the last things that happened to me while I was here was a very memorable thing. And it came about as a good friend of mine who's also a board member, a man by the name of Jerry Morgan. Many of you may not have any clue who Jerry Morgan is, but he's a board member that deeply passionately cares about the school. And he's on this campus almost every day, if not every day. And he drives a truck around campus. And when I was here, he would call sometimes and say, hey, I'm driving on campus.

And we'd run down there. And one day he was on campus and he actually came through where my office used to be and he poked his head in the door and he said, Sam, remember this number. And he gave me this number, 25,915. Because I want you to remember that number. And I want you to think about that number because that's a very important number, 25,915. Now that's a number I want you to think about.

If you have your phone, just enter that number in somewhere so that you have it and that you are able to retain it so that wherever you are, whenever it comes to your mind and you want to think about that number, you know where to go to find it, 25,915. And he said it was such passion that I wanted to know what that number was. And he said to me, that is the number of days that the average American male lives in this century, 25,915. The average American age, lifespan, according to what whoever makes these figures or does these figures is 71.

And so when you take 71 years and you multiply that by 365, that is 25,915. That is an incredibly depressing number. Because this October, I will have completed 20,391 of those days. That's actually really depressing.

I mean, I, that, you know what that means? That means I have 5,524 days left if I lived to 71. You know, if you want to put it on a percentage, I've lived 79% of my allotted days. That, that's not a happy thought for a guy like me.

Now let's talk about you for a minute. If you're at 20 years of age, you know, let's say on your 20th birthday, you will have completed 7,300 of those 25,915 days. That means you've got 18,615 of those days if the Lord gives you a 71 year life allotment. Now some of you will live less than that, some of you will live more than that, but, but at 20 years of age, you will have spent 17% of your allotted days.

What are you going to do with the rest of them? What are you going to do with today? The passage that we're looking at this morning in our time together is a passage on time. It is in a book where the preacher, Solomon, has asked a very piercing question. Somebody described it as the fiercest question or one of the fiercest questions in the Bible. And the question is, when it's all said and done, when you've lived all 25,915 of your days and you add it all up, what profit, what advantage is it to man to have spent that time and invested what he invested, what gain, what advantage is there to man when he lives life under the sun? That's Solomon's question.

That's what he wants to know. He uses an accounting term to kind of put the question in front of us. If you've got 25,915 days and you work hard and you invest that time and you build a business and you accrue wealth and you accrue power and you use those 25,915 days to accomplish at the end of the time, at the end when it's all said and done, what advantage has all of that brought you? And Solomon's incredible answer to that is nothing. Everything is vanity. It is Hevel. That's the word. It's the idea of fleeting. It's the idea of, I can't quite grasp it. Solomon uses the imagery of chasing wind to help us sort of get a mind picture around that word. And so Solomon sets out on a quest and he acknowledges right away in chapter one that life really is like this. He's not making this up and that it goes over and over and round and round and everything turns and turns and the rivers come out of the sea and they flow back to where they came from and everything is this ongoing, repetitive cycle under the sun.

Everything is vanity. And the harder you try to figure it out and the more you work to put all the pieces together it's impossible. It's like chasing wind. And Solomon goes on this pervasive search and he searches everywhere high and low and he has the resources and the wisdom given by God and experience to go and do this and as he comes back he comes back with the answer that it is all empty, it is all ethereal, it is all just chasing after wind. But in chapter 12 he talks about a shepherd who has given him words and the words are wise words and they are words that are intended to bring delight to everybody living under the sun chasing after the wind. And so he writes the words down and the words are the book of Ecclesiastes.

So how do we make sense of life and more importantly what does time have to do with life? And so we come to chapter three and that's the big context in which this discourse of the time of your life that Solomon is going to talk about. And Solomon is going to tell us five simple things about time.

Let me show them to you in the text. Number one, Solomon is going to start by reminding us that God is the sole architect and ruler of time. He starts off in chapter three with this statement, to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. Note the word time and the word season. That's the idea there and then he's going to articulate twenty-nine times in eight verses the use of the word time. He's going to architect an amazing poetic structure, fourteen lines where he is going to architect whatever happens in time and he's going to bring it down to what happens in your time. And twenty-eight different things are listed in verses one through eight and they're set in this pairing that is intended to help you understand that what's on the one side and on the other side is intended to include everything in the middle.

Everything has a season. There's a time to be born and a time to die. That's the first thing that Solomon lays out. As you live out your 25,915 there is a beginning and an ending of those days. And everything that happens in the middle is something that God is orchestrating.

Notice the phrase under the habit. It's an unusual phrase in the book because Solomon all along has been talking about under the sun. Life under the sun is, is Hevel.

Life under the sun is vanity. Life under the sun has no prophet and all of a sudden as he introduces the understanding of time, he wants you to understand that time under the sun is under the control and in the hand of someone who is above the sun. And he introduces this idea with the idea that there is also an under the heaven. There is someone in heaven who is not bound by this frustration and who is not limited to chasing the wind.

He actually has his own wind, his own ruach, his own divine wind and it's called the Spirit of God. And that Spirit has given these good words that are like goads that drive us to a place of security. They're like pegs, nails that allow us to hang our life, stay in stable ways on these words. And so Solomon says the first thing you need to know about time, even though it doesn't seem to make sense, and why do we have 25,915 that goes so quickly? Solomon says you need to know that time is architected and ruled sovereignly by God. There is an architect and a ruler over time and he has designed everything in time, everything you will experience in time. All of the relationships, if you go down and look at these 8 verses, they talk about the experiences of life, they talk about the relationships we have in life, they talk about the responsibilities that will come upon us in life.

They speak about all of our joys and our sorrows and our pain and our pleasure. And Solomon says all of this is architected by God. So God is the sole architect and ruler over time, but notice secondly that God is at work in time.

It's not just that God architected life this way, he actually is at work in time. What prophet, look at verse 9, what prophet hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I've seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised. And then look at verse 11, he has made everything beautiful in his time. So Solomon is now going to lay out for you what God is doing in time and it's an interesting thing that God is doing. He is assigning vocation to men within that time. Do you realize that you have a God-given vocation from God and you are to spend the vast majority of those 25,915 days carrying out that vocation. A vocation is very different than a job. A job is what you do for a paycheck.

A vocation is what you do to advance the kingdom of God through the gifts and callings that He has called you to exercise wherever He places you and in whatever career you do. You know it's interesting that you were designed for this by God. You are in the process of discovering it. That's why when you came here your freshman year you may not have known exactly what it was that you were going to major and how many of you came your freshman year and you did not know what your major was? Can I see your hands? How many of you changed your major since your freshman year?

Can I see your hands? You know what happened? You began to discover what God's vocation for you was. Maybe you came here and everybody else had an idea of what you should do with your life but at some point along the way maybe it was in a chapel message, maybe it was a lecture that a teacher gave or maybe there was some conversation you had and you became aware that God was orchestrating your life that He had wired you for something and that passion was growing and you began to discover your vocation and you are to be highly commended as students here because you are now investing a significant time of your life in preparing for that vocation.

I hope you see what's going on here is much more than just getting a piece of paper to a good job. I hope you see what Solomon is saying that God has assigned you a vocation and He will capacitate you and energize you and bless you and use you in that vocation and God Himself is doing something in time. He's not just assigning you and equipping you and energizing you and preparing you to use you in a vocation. He Himself is doing something in time and what He is doing is this, He is always doing the right thing at the right time. That's the idea that you see in verse 11. He hath made everything beautiful in His time. God is doing the right thing at the right time.

The idea here is appropriateness. Even in a broken world, even in a world that is under the curse, even in a world where you are missing pieces. Solomon says in chapter one verse 11, you are missing pieces. There's no way you can put this picture together because you are missing pieces and you don't know which pieces are missing.

And there are pieces that are bent and twisted and when you try to get them to fit where they should go, they are so twisted and so bent it doesn't fit together. But in the midst of all of this, God is always doing the right thing at the right time. Whatever's going on in your life today isn't just going on. The architect of time. The sovereign ruler of time is at work doing the right thing in your life at the right time.

He is always doing the right thing and the right time and you instinctively know that there is more than meets the eye. Look at verse 11 again. He also has set the world in their heart. The idea there is eternity. God has put an eternal sense in you because you are an eternal being. You know instinctively that there is something more than what you can just see and experience in those 25,915 days under the sun.

You know that. And your heart yearns for that but God is heading it from you. Look at verse, look at the rest of that verse. He has set the world, He has set eternity in their hearts so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. So God is at work in time. God has a purpose for time.

That's the third thing. God has a purpose for time. Look at verse 14. I know, this is the second time Solomon is going to say this, I perceive is the idea, I know that whatsoever God doeth shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it nor anything taken from it and God doeth it that men should fear before Him. God is at work in time. Nothing can be added to what He is doing.

Nothing can thwart those purposes. Those 25,915 days or however many of them God has allotted to you, God is always going to do the right thing at the right time. And you instinctively know that it is way more than just those 25,915 days and your heart yearns to know what that is and you're investing your time trying to figure out how to get ready to do whatever God has called your vocation to be and you instinctively know that there is more.

And God says, I alone architect that. I always do the right thing and the right time and I have done it this way and here's why so that people will fear me. Now let's stop very quickly and make sure we understand the idea of fear in Ecclesiastes. It's not afraid.

It's not what I felt when I was walking down that path and I heard that rattlesnake. That's not the fear that we're talking about here. When Solomon talks about fear or the fear of the Lord, it's like a statement, it's a code statement for rightly related to Yahweh. When Solomon talks about fearing God, it's the idea of being rightly related, embracing and following who Yahweh is and what he is expected coming to know Yahweh intimately.

And that's the idea here. God is saying Solomon is writing these good words that are supposed to bring us delight for our 25,915 days and he is saying God is architecting it this way because He wants to use time in all of its brokenness to drive you to a place. And where He wants to drive you is the most wonderful place in all of eternity. It is into a relationship with the God who architects time, who always does the right thing at the right time.

And then there's a fourth thing that happens in this little chapter and that is this. God doesn't just architect time and He doesn't just have a purpose for time. He tells us how to assess the moral character of our time. And Solomon's answer to that is our time on earth is evil. Look at verse 16 through 21 in the text.

Just let your eyes scan it. I saw under the sun the place of judgment that wickedness was there and the place of righteousness that iniquity was there. In other words, Solomon says everywhere I looked, where I looked and expected to see righteousness I saw evil and where I expected to see evil I saw righteousness.

This is a broken and corrupt place. This is Solomon's version of what Paul said in Ephesians 5 when he says you need to redeem time because the days are corrupt, the days are evil. So Solomon says you want to know what God wants you to know about time? You have limited time. God is always architecting time so that He's always doing the right thing at the right time.

He has a purpose for time for your time and He wants you to know that you live in an evil time. And you're going to see things that don't make any sense and the reason you're going to see things that way is because the world you live in is broken, it is twisted, it doesn't work well the way it was designed. And there are pieces that are missing and you don't even know what all those pieces are. You can't even number them.

You can't even identify them. And then he says it is limited. You're in this broken place for a limited time. Look at verses 18 through 21. I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men that God might manifest them and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. And then he goes on to say the same thing that happened to the animals around you is going to happen to you. Your body is going to stop working. Breath is going to stop. Life is going to stop.

And those 25,915 days are going to come to an end. It's what the writer of Hebrews said in Hebrews 9 27 to every man is appointed once to die. So, Solomon, why not just, if that's true, why not just eat, drink, and be married? Why not just build bigger barns like the man in the parable Jesus told? Why not do that? I mean if this is all we have, these 25,915, that's it.

Why not do that? And the answer is in the last phrase in verse 22. Solomon said, I perceive there is nothing better than a man should rejoice in his own work. The work, the idea there is the work God gave him. For that is his portion, that is his lot. For who shall bring man to see what shall be after him? And that's the final thing as we close this morning, God will redeem time and He will evaluate your use of it. The question that Solomon is asking actually has an answer.

It's phrased as a rhetorical question, who will bring him to see? Who will bring man to see what is after him? And under the sun there doesn't seem to be anybody, not even someone as wise and as experienced and as powerful as Solomon, but Solomon is actually wanting to introduce you to the shepherd who knows time, who's architecting time, who always does the right thing with time. And what he wants you to do with time, here's Solomon's advice to you and the advice is this, remember your creator, turn to him, embrace him.

When? In the days of your youth right now while you still have the vast majority of those 25,915 days, now is the best time, it is the appropriate time for you to turn and embrace your creator and say to him, what is it you want me to do with those days? If you're always doing the right thing at the right time, how do I get on board with your plan for my life? And God's answer to that is fear God and keep His commandments.

Do the next right thing because God will bring every work, good or evil into judgment and He will always render the right judgment at the right time. You know it's an amazing thing isn't it as we close that in the fullness of time, at the right time, God sent forth His son, made of a woman, made under the law to do what? To fix everything that was broken in time, including your own heart and mind. So what do we do with our time? And I don't mean like our minutes, what do we do with our life? What do we do with the time that God has allotted us?

We let God architect it, we let God use it, we let God rule it. Father thank You for our time, thank You for our life, thank You that You are God who unfolds it in amazing ways. Lord as You reveal what it is You're calling us to do with time, our time, may we respond. I pray for every student as they pursue and prepare for the vocation You've called them to do in this broken world that You would use the men and women in this room to establish the message that You have come to save us from this time. And we'll thank You for it in Jesus' name.

Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Sam Horn, who is a BJU seminary professor and is also pastor at Palmetto Baptist Church in Piedmont, South Carolina. If you appreciate this program and benefit from the faithful preaching and teaching of God's word, would you consider sending us a special financial gift? You can easily do that through the website, thedailyplatform.com. I'm Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University. Thank you for listening to The Daily Platform. The Bob Jones University School for Continuing Online and Professional Education offers convenient and affordable online programs. Whether you're seeking to expand your skills, pursue a passion, or develop a ministry on your own time, qualified and engaged instructors will help you reach your goals. For more information, visit scope.bju.edu or call 888-253-9833. We hope you'll join us again next week as we study God's word together on The Daily Platform.