Eternity on My Mind (Part 2 of 2)

How we respond to life's circumstances says a lot about us. Today on Truth for Life, we'll look at why our assurance of God's providence changes our perspective as well as our response to just about everything.

That includes the mundane, frustrating, and confusing aspects of life. Alistair Begg is teaching from chapter 3 in the book of Ecclesiastes, or in verses 1–5. Our lives are an open book to the God who wrote this book. And to the open book of our lives, he brings this book in order that he might match his truth to our need. Now, this morning, in the time that we have, I want to draw my thoughts around three headings. First of all, in verses 1–8, I'd like you to notice that what we have described for us here is what we might refer to as the same old routine. The same old routine, followed by a whole new perspective. Verse 10.

This is good news. I have seen the burden God has laid on men. In other words, the frustration that men and women experience is actually the result of a God-given burden.

A God-given burden. God has created us for a purpose. And unless we discover and fulfill that divine purpose, we will never be fully satisfied with anything else that is offered along the journey of life and within the realm of vanity fare. And this, says the pundit, is the burden that God has laid on men, having made us for his pleasure, having created us in his image. We have to be forever dissatisfied until we come to know him and until we come to live in fellowship with him. What the Bible says is that you and I who live out the life that is ours were actually made for his presence. Therefore, it's no surprise that our lives would be marked by frustration and by confusion when we turn away from him.

It shouldn't surprise us that if we choose to live in the dark, we can't see. People say, Well, why doesn't God make himself known to me? Listen, God is under no obligation to satisfy your intellectual curiosity. He will cater to the genuine, humble expression of a longing, seeking heart.

But he doesn't do tricks for the arrogant. And if we doubt that, we need only look at Jesus dealing with the Pharisees and the people around him. Hey, Jesus, do another miracle for us. If you do this, we'll believe that.

If you send somebody here, we'll do that. And Jesus walks away, and he leaves them. Why, doesn't he care about them? He cares passionately about them.

He cares so much about them that he refuses to capitulate to their arrogant insinuations. And when a man or a woman begins to think for a moment about their finitude, I was not in charge of my birth. I will not be in charge of my death. I can't make the leaves fall, and I can't make the green shoots grow. I'm really, actually, in a process here over which I have very, very little control. In fact, I'm not sure how the double circulatory system really functions. I really have got no concept of what would bring about renal failure. I don't know why it is that my eyes don't stick shut in the night and why, when I waken up, there's still enough fluid in them.

I don't know why it is that there is synovial fluid in my joints that prevent me from becoming an arthritic basket case. I can't explain why I even have breath to breathe to shout in such triumph of these Ohio State games and so on. What is it all? What is it all, you see? And man in all of his pride says, You know, I'm in charge of this. I am in charge of this. You're in charge of nothing.

Anything you think you're in charge of is an illusion. Anything you think you pull a string and make God dance for you. He who has magnified himself in the beauty and order of creation. He who has spoken in the person of his Son.

He who comes to us through the pages of a book that understands us. You see, this is all different. It's a radical perspective, isn't it? Tyranized by the routine, frustrated by a sense of homesickness that we can't explain. Why do we feel this way?

Because we are a fugitive to our destiny. Oh, well, when I graduate, I'm going to feel fine then, says the adolescent kid. And they graduate, and there's a great sense of flatness. Well, I'll get on, and I'll get a degree, and they get a degree, and there's another sense of flatness. Well, if I can get a job, that'll give me the opportunity for enough to be able to make a living, and there's another sense of flatness. Well, and so it goes on through life. Why? Is there no joy in life?

Of course there is. But what I'm saying is this, that they're ultimately fleeting. They're ultimately transient. They ultimately cannot fulfill the deepest longing in the soul of a man.

Why? Because God has set this burden upon them. This explains your friends at work, incidentally. Don't be too unkind to them tomorrow morning when they show up at work, because they're frustrated with everything.

They're confused by everything. They've gone through another Sunday. There was no worship in it for them. In fairness, we could say there was worship in it. They worshiped at their own shrines. They did their own thing. They assembled themselves before the gods of their own making.

But they didn't satisfy. Their gods couldn't answer. Their gods didn't speak. Their gods didn't hear. In fact, they were in charge of their gods. They programmed their gods and got from them what they desired.

And what they desired really didn't satisfy. And now here they are, driving in the car again, down 422. Now we're to 271. Now we're back on the same rat race as last Monday, and the same one as next Monday, and the same one as the following Monday, and the following Monday, and the following Monday. And I can't take enough vacations to deal with this. I can't drink enough booze to handle this.

I can't shoot up enough to clean this up. I'm a nowhere man. I'm just living in my nowhere land. I'm making all my nowhere plans for nobody. Now, the day that you're prepared to get there is a great day.

It's a great day. Because now the burden on your back has weighed you down enough to realize there has to be an answer somewhere else. There has to be an answer in someone else.

And of course, there is. Augustine! Read his confessions.

What a story! Augustine, you know, turning his back on everything that was made available to him as a boy, running away into oblivion, spending his life in dissolution, ignoring the prayers and the cries of those who loved him most, and finally, in the space of a very short period of time, God, in his grace, uses the tiny voice of a little child playing in the garden, singing a little rhyme—"Take up and read, take up and read, take up and read." And he says to himself, you know, I think I ought to take up and read the Bible. And he takes up and reads the Bible, and it comes like a dagger to his soul that comes like a shaft of light into his darkness. It comes like a river assuaging the deepest thirsts of his life, the thirst that could not be met in his desolate lifestyle.

And Augustine finally encapsulates, and he says, O God, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. See, I know this about you. I don't know where you live. I don't know your street. I don't know your income. I don't know your IQ.

But I know this about you. You have a burden laid on your back by God. You have a restlessness in your life laid on you by God, in order that when you face up to that, he, the Burden Maker, may become to you the Burden Taker. But you see, you never ask anybody to help you when you're walking down the street carrying nothing, do you?

That'd be a bizarre person, just walking down the street. You see someone coming to say, Could you help me with this? The person says, With what? You say, Oh, yeah, that's right. I don't have anything for you to help me with.

Sorry, I just wanted… Yeah, the person. But when you're coming down the thing with those plastic—do you want plastic or paper? Do you realize what a paralyzing choice that can be sometimes for someone as indecisive as me?

I can be stuck there for about seven minutes. But anyway, when you finally go for plastic, and you've got them all creased and pulled in here in the thing, then you realize, if somebody doesn't intervene here for me, I'm in trouble. First the burden, then the awareness of the burden, then a cry for help, then the solution. But if in your life you're just walking through like this, no cry for help, no relieving of the burden.

Finally, the same old routine, a whole new perspective, and the possibility of a solid conviction. You see, the way you and I respond to life's circumstances, the circumstances that are described here under the heading, A Time for Everything, actually reveals a great deal about us. The despair that the preacher here describes is clearly not his own despair, and he describes it in such a way as to tell us, And this needn't be yours either. The believer, the person who trusts in God, can accept the same program as is described here but accept it as an assignment, accept it as a gift. Look at verse 13, for example. That everyone may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all his toil, this is the gift of God.

Now, let's read it another way. That everyone may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all his toil, this is the gift of God? This is the gift of God? Now, the unbeliever comes to it and says, Are you telling me this is the gift of God? My sorry pilgrimage here? I'm a train driver.

I drive up and down the Amtrak—Baltimore, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, D.C., except every day on the train. And you're telling me that this food and the thing that my wife put in here for sandwiches and the jolly Diet Coke and whatever I'm getting when I get home, this is satisfaction, and this is the gift of God? I don't see it.

Of course they don't see it. Now, why a train driver? I don't know. I guess, you know, the psychologists out there are saying, Hmm, he probably really wants to be a train driver.

Maybe. But leaving that aside for the moment, it doesn't matter whether you're driving a train, a golf cart, a boat, or your automobile. You see the difference? Same people going down the same road, the same people going through the same routine, the same people experiencing the same rhythm—one looks at it and says, This is absolute nothingness.

The other person looks at it and says, I'm driving a train. To the glory of God! Suddenly my food, my drink, my life, my coming and going, has taken on a completely different perspective. Because I understand, verse 14, that the plans of God need no correction. I know that everything God does will endure forever, and nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. So you see, I've come to terms with my own finitude.

I've come to realize that I won't even be a footnote in history. I've come to recognize that in point of fact you go through the cycle, you build it up, you lose it, you try it again, you build it up, you were successful, then a little failure, a little more failure, then try it again, and so on. You work hard, you start with nothing, you end up with nothing, and that's the process of life.

But it's, like, fine. Because I know that God, who in his overarching purpose is doing things that will endure forever. And my significance is not ultimately in me, but my significance is ultimately in my identity in God—that I was made for his pleasure, that I suddenly realized I exist for someone other than myself. I exist for a purpose far greater than just driving the train. I exist for more than being a dad, more than being the mother, more than being the teacher.

I am all these things. But those things left within this cycle of life maybe come from me only the source of confusion and the source of tyranny, until I understand that in this process God is doing something far greater. As Paul writes it in Romans 8, he says, All things work together for good to those who love God and who have been called according to his purpose. That God today, in his providence, is preserving his children, operating in everything that comes to pass, so that through it all God has his hand in all of our affairs. That we're not at the mercy of blind forces. That when he uses the three-letter word all, he uses it purposefully.

He means it. And in all things, the things that happen as a result of my personality, the things that happen as a result of choices that I have made—good choices and bad choices—the things that happen within the frame of my own biochemical makeup, my physicality, the things that emerge as a result of the social context in which I live, born in the inner city or born in suburbia or born to be a king or born to be a pawn—in all of this, God is fashioning his purpose and his plan for us. And when a man or a woman is brought to that perspective, then it changes everything, you see. It will produce within such an individual at least two things.

I'll tell you these, and I'm finished. Number one, humility. Humility. You know, I'm gonna find a person who understands that God has intervened in this way, walking around saying, you know, I'm such a smart individual, I'm glad I figured all this out, and, you know, I have a course on it, I'd love to introduce you to it.

No, this individual is amazed that God would have intervened in this way. He, to death, through life, has brought me. I'm amazed in the presence of Jesus as this individual. So there is a humility that comes, and also there is a security that comes.

There is a security that comes. We live the same lives, we go through the same things, we have the same leaves that fall, we have the same diabetes that sets in, we have the same challenges with our children, we have the same issues with all of the accoutrements of life. Christianity doesn't take you out of that, take you off into some funny place.

Leaves you right in the middle of it all. So then, how do you make sense of the cycle of life? A time to be born, a time to die, a plan to gather and heal and so on.

How do you make sense? Because I am confident, says Paul, that he who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion of the day of Jesus Christ. That, right in the heart of it, all he made, he made everything beautiful in its time. That God has no abandoned projects, and he has no forsaken children.

You see, that's the doctrine of providence, isn't it? He doesn't abandon projects, and he doesn't forsake his kids. Mercifully, he's not like us. You do that again, and you're out of here. If I hear that one more time from you, and so on, if God were to treat us in that way, where would any of us be today? But he doesn't abandon his projects, and he doesn't desert his children.

Why would he, he who is involved in the life cycle of the sparrow, is profoundly involved in the life of his children? And so here we have it, the same old routine—a brand-new perspective, a solid conviction. Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come? Well, because I've had a bad week and because something happened here and a couple of things that I can't tell you about. I mean, in immediate terms, there's a number of reasons.

I'd be lying if I said that wasn't the case. Just the cycle of life, just the stuff. So what changes? Not the cycle, the perspective. Why should I feel discouraged, and why should the shadows come? Why should my heart seem lonely and long for heaven and home?

When Jesus is my captain, my constant strength is he, and his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. Making a pathetic attempt to dig some leaves out one day this week, it was a humorous, tragic picture, really. I hope none of my neighbors saw me. But I was hanging out of a bathroom window in jeopardy of my life, holding onto the broom part of the broom and using the long part to flick leaves out of the gutter.

And there were a couple of times where I almost flicked myself right one story down. But in the course of doing that, I came on a tiny sparrow that had died right up in the gutter. And I thought, hmm. Well, I can't tell you other things I think, because you think I'm weird, but you know. Because I always think things like, I wonder if he went out flying and was supposed to be home for his tea and he never came back, you know, that kind of stuff. But anyway, and then I thought, and there's not a sparrow falls to the ground. But Lord, you know it all together. And at that point, I had something that was like a major thing on the back of my neck.

And so here I am hanging out with a broom, flicking around, trying to make sure that when it rained on the next day, it wouldn't be a dreadful overspill. And God, in his providential care, in the course of the cycle of life, said, I've got you. I've got you.

And I want you to know, I make everything beautiful in my time. Just hold on. I've got you. Do you have you?

Do you have him? You may. It's no wonder our hearts are restless in this world. We were made for eternity.

Until we rest in God's providence, we'll continue to be restless. This is Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Alistair will be back in just a minute to close today's program with prayer. If you are enjoying this study in the book of Ecclesiastes, you can download any or all of the messages from this study for free.

The series is titled A Study in Ecclesiastes. You can re-listen to messages as often as you like, whenever it's convenient, or share the teaching with a friend. You'll find the messages on our website at truthforlife.org. Now, along with the daily Bible teaching you here on this program, we are able to offer these free downloads and other helpful resources because of the generosity of our Truth Partners. Truth Partners are listeners like you who come alongside Truth for Life, faithfully praying for Alistair and the ministry, and for the many who hear the program, praying that they will become committed followers of Jesus. Truth Partners also support Truth for Life financially.

They give a set amount that they choose each month. Without their faithful giving, this program would not be possible. So if you are one of our Truth Partners, thank you on behalf of everyone at Truth for Life, as well as listeners throughout the world who are benefiting from Alistair's teaching. And let me assure you, the staff here at Truth for Life is praying for you as well. If becoming a Truth Partner is something you have yet to do, let me encourage you to make today the day. You can become a Truth Partner by giving us a call at 888-588-7884, or go online at truthforlife.org. And when you join this important team, you'll be able to request both of the books that we recommend each month for no additional donation.

It's our way of saying thanks for your support. The book we're recommending today is a great supplement to our current study in the book of Ecclesiastes. It's titled Living Life Backward, How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End. You can pair this book with the messages in this series, and you will have a thought-provoking Bible study. Request your copy of the book Living Life Backward when you become a Truth Partner, or you can request the book with a one-time donation to the Ministry of Truth for Life. Go to truthforlife.org slash donate.

And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to Truth for Life at PO Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. Now here is Alistair to close with prayer. God our Father, thank you for the Bible that speaks to us with clarity about life and the things that all of us face. It points us away from ourselves to the wonder of what you've done in laying a burden upon us, and so that when we become aware of it, we may see that Jesus, in his death upon the cross, bears all of the burdens, in order that having all of our care and all of our sin and all of our darkness cast on him, we may rise to face the same routine, the same leaves, the same process of life, but to view ourselves not now trapped in some tyrannical, confusing cage, but now living in the framework of your providential care. Come then to our hearts, we pray, and remind us forcibly that you really do what you say, and that although we see through a glass darkly, that you will make everything beautiful in your time. For Jesus' sake, Amen. I'm Bob Lapeen, thanks for listening today. Tomorrow we'll discover why keeping up with the Joneses will ultimately leave you feeling dissatisfied. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.