You can't see it, but you can see its effects all around you. even when you look in the mirror. Time is the focus today on Turning Point as Dr. David Jeremiah continues his study in the book of Ecclesiastes. You know how time affects your body.
But have you ever considered what it does to your soul and spirit? David explores these areas and more as he shares today's message, Beautiful in His Time. And for some reasons, we could call this time an eternity, because this famous verse in Ecclesiastes says all things are beautiful in his time, and then it also says he makes all things beautiful, and he has put eternity in your heart and in mine. And so he's helping us sort out time and eternity. That's a pretty important lesson to learn as we go along, especially if we're Christians.
How do we relate the eternal impact of God in our life with everything we deal with day by day? Ecclesiastes helps us do that as Solomon expresses his frustration of trying to live his life with God on the sidelines. Part one of Beautiful in His Time is coming up, but before we go there, let me remind you that Turning Point will be heading toward Alaska this July. We'd like to let you know those dates early so that you can make your plans. We'll be cruising the Inside Passage, Icy Strait Point.
We'll be in Hubbard Glacier, watching all the calving of that beautiful glacier. We'll be in Juneau and Ketchiken, Victoria, and we'll be with many of your favorite musicians, Jurio Vega, Michael Sanchez, others who come with us, who we invite to help us have a wonderful type of worship aboard this cruise ship. Alaska is always one of the favorite times of the year for me. It comes at a time when we all need a break, when we're heading into the busy season that is before us in the fall, and it's a great time to reflect upon God's goodness, His wonderful provision for our needs, and to just Increase our gratitude toward him. I hope you'll come with us if you can.
If you've never been to Alaska, you should try to come. And if you've been there, I don't have to say much about it because you know how beautiful it is. It's our wonderful opportunity to host you July 12th through the 19th. 2026. And now let's get back to our study of Ecclesiastes.
Here's part one: Beautiful in His Time. We're going to look at the first 15 verses of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. And the third chapter poses a much different problem for us than we have experienced so far. In fact, one writer that I read has actually called his entire writing on the book of Ecclesiastes the problem with God. We've looked at the problem in the first two chapters without God, but there is a problem with God.
And the problem with God is summarized in an argument that was put forward in a book by Rabbi Kushner. In his book, Kushner relates the story of the tragedy of his own son. And then, as a religious man, he tries to sort out in his mind why God would allow something so terrible to happen to his boy. And he comes up with two theses as to why this could be true. First of all, he said it is possible that Almighty God is loving.
But he's not powerful. He's loving. He wanted to do something about his son, but he didn't have the power to do it. Or he said the other alternative is he is powerful. And he's not loving.
He has the ability to do something about the evil in the world, but he just doesn't care. Kushner wrestled with this problem in his book. and came up with a conclusion from his perspective. That God is loving. but he's not powerful.
That God cares deeply about us, but He Basically, created a world and wound it up and set it loose to be its own. entity without any intervention from outside.
so that in his mind, God is not in control. God is not sovereign. God has nothing to do with the everyday situations in your life and in mine. I debated a rabbi after my illness out at Scripps. Clinic.
Who is a disciple of Rabbi Kushner. And in his response to the illness that he had and the illness that I had. He made the statement that he never prayed to be healed because he didn't believe God had anything to do with his illness, so, why should God have anything to do with his healing? That God was basically outside of all the experiences of life.
Solomon would not agree with that assessment.
Solomon helps us to understand that Almighty God is in control, He's sovereign. He is on the throne. Nothing happens outside of his purpose. But having said all of that, There are still some issues. There are still some problems.
So as we look at the third chapter, We're going to see three things that Solomon does in his reasoning through these questions. Why are things in life not better than they are? If I am a follower of God, why do I have to go through winter? Why do I have to experience autumn? Why can't I just have spring and summer?
Why doesn't God treat me better? Because I'm one of his children. Why is all this pain in my life?
Well, the Solomon begins. to unravel this question in the third chapter. He does so by giving to us Some impressions About life. In the first eight verses, Solomon gives.
Some interesting dialogue with us about life in general. This is a very interesting literary passage because it contains 14 couplets, 14 phrases that are alike in some ways. Actually, there are 28 statements: 14 negative ones and 14 positive ones. They are statements about life. As it is, and they fall into three separate categories.
The first group of statements are about our humanity and our body. The second group is about our soul, and the third group is about our spirit.
Solomon has reasoned about life, and he has some impressions about life and how life works. As it relates to our body, our soul, and our spirit, which is the makeup of a man: body, soul, and spirit, that's who we are. He begins, first of all, by reminding us that Our life is about time. In fact, the word time is found in this passage of scripture over and over again. 29 times, Solomon mentions the word time, and that does not include other words that reflect on time, like season and like eternity and like forever.
Solomon's talking here in this little entry from his journal about how you and I, who follow God, look at life, and here is his impression. First of all, he talks about how Time affects our bodies. He says there is a time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted. There's a time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to break down and a time to build up. He begins with a summary statement by saying, to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. First of all, Solomon talks about the boundaries of life. He says there is a time to be born. and a time to die.
God knows the time of our birth, He knows the time of our death. And he says There's a time for You to plant and a time to harvest. He's talking about the food supply. God has set the boundaries of the harvest. Did you know that you don't plant in the wintertime, in the middle of the winter, when snow is on the ground?
There's a seed time and a harvest, and that's part of the rhythm of life. There's a time to kill and a time to heal. That sounds strange to us, a time to kill, but did you ever think about the fact that your body is in the process of dying in many respects from the moment you're born? And that's not meant to be morbid, but scientists tell us every seven years we change. All of the cells in our bodies replenish themselves every seven years.
The old cells die, so whoever you are, you're different than you were seven years ago.
Some of you say, I like my old cells better than my new ones. Amen? You're different. But you're the same. There's a time when you die, there's a time when you are born.
He goes on to say. There's a time To break down in a time to build up, we build up in the youth, we start breaking down in our age. Isn't that true?
Someone said that the way that happens is when you start breaking down, type gets smaller and smaller, steps get higher and higher, people speak in lower and lower tones. Have you noticed that? when you start breaking down. What Solomon is saying in That we need to understand is when it comes to our bodies, there's a season for every part of life. There's a time when we're born, a time when we die.
There's a time when we build up, a time when we break down. There's a time when you plant, there's a time when you harvest. There's a season. And here's what he wants us to understand, men and women: God is involved in all of that. He doesn't stand outside of that.
He's involved in every part of it. You say, God is involved in death. Yes.
Now, you're going to have to suspend your judgment on what I'm saying until we get to the end, but I want you to hear clearly that God is not, as Rabbi Kushner says he is, outside of the experience of life. He is not loving but not powerful. He is all-powerful and all-loving, and because we can't comprehend that, does not make it untrue. He's God. We're not.
We may like to be God, but we cannot be God. He's God. The throne in heaven is occupied. There's no vacancy sign on the outside. Nobody gets to be God.
So he goes on now and he begins to reason in these next couplets about life in the soul, how time affects the soul. He said, There's a time to weep. And a time to laugh, verse 4. There's a time to mourn and a time to dance. There's a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.
The soul is the seat of our emotion.
Solomon reminds us that there's a time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. No one gets through life without these emotions. Have you noticed?
Sometimes you laugh hysterically, sometimes you weep.
Sometimes you rejoice and you can hardly contain your joy. There's a time to rejoice and there's a time to cry. He goes on to say That we will feel joy and we will feel sorrow, we will weep and we will laugh, we will mourn and we will dance. There's a time to cast away and a time together. A time to embrace and a time to stop embracing.
There's a time when we affirm one another and it is good, but there's a time when we need to confront one another and affirmation would be complicity. Life is made up with all of these emotions. And what Solomon wants us to know is God is not just in the good things. God is a part of all things.
Now, we may not accept that in our minds or in our hearts, but you have to stay with me.
Solomon continues now with the third grouping, and he calls this how time affects our spirit, verses 6 through 8. He said there's a time to gain and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to sow. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time of war and a time of peace.
These last six couplets here in the first part of this chapter have to do with the spirit, the inner decisions, the deep commitments of our life.
Sometimes we gain, sometimes we lose. Money? Wait. Hair?
Sometimes we store things in our garage, and sometimes we clean out our garages. We collect and we throw away. Don't you go through seasons like that? You look at it and you say, where did all this junk come from? And you have a garage sale, or you just call goodwill, or you just put it all in the trash.
There's a time when we need to speak. And there's a time when we need to keep our mouths shut. There's time for love, and there's a time to hate. You say, How could you say there's a time to hate? There is a time to hate.
Jesus hated. He hated sin. He hated destruction. He hated corruption. We need to learn how to hate that which is evil without hating the people who are evil.
We should hate abortion. But we should not hate those who have abortions or those who do abortions. That's where the breakdown comes with all the stuff that happens with the killings around the country. We should hate the sin, but we should love the sinners. That's what Jesus did.
There's a time to hate, there's a time to love. There's a time for war and there's a time for peace. We've lived through both war and peace. There's a time for each one. It's a part of the cycle of life.
War is sometimes necessary. What Solomon is teaching us is that all of life unfolds under the appointment of Providence. Both death and birth, and growth and harvest, and joys and sorrows, and acquiring and losing, and speaking up and being silent, war and peace. Since everything has its appointed time from God, man cannot change the time and the circumstances or the events of life. God is in sovereign control of all that happens in life.
You may not like that, and we may not be able to fully explain that, but it is true, and Solomon recognizes it. God is in control. Listen to Lamentations 3:37 and 38. If you struggle with this, as all of us do. Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass?
when the Lord has not commanded it. Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that woe and well-being proceed? Did you ever see that verse? Or, what about Ephesians 1:11? In him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him, God, who works all things according to the counsel of his will.
How much of what goes on in the world is under the control of Almighty God? Whether you like it or not, everything. God is in charge. If you do not believe that, you have a God who is not worth worshiping. If God is not in charge, he can't be God.
And that's why when you hear somebody like my friend at Scripps talk about how God is loving but He's not in control, I don't want to worship that God. There isn't a God like that.
Sometimes people come along and they say, Well, my God would never allow that. You know why? Because their God doesn't exist. The God who doesn't allow good and evil is not the God of the Bible. Does God promote evil?
No, but in His permissive will He allows it, and we're going to see in a minute why. All of these things are part of the plan that God has for life. He did not edit out the difficult things so that we could go sailing through life without challenges. Did you know that? One day, everything that is broken, hallelujah, is going to be fixed.
And everything that is sick is going to be made well, and every disease is going to be eliminated forever, but not yet. We're living in between the cross. And the crown. And in that in-between time, we deal with life as it really is, and it is made up of all of the emotions that we have discussed so far. The problem is that God has planned my life, and it is His plan, and not my plan.
He is God. I am not. He is God. You are not. He is in control.
So there are some impressions about life. What Solomon is saying is, life is made up of a lot of seasons: winter, summer, autumn, spring, and all of it's a part of God's ultimate plan for his people.
Now let's just File that for a moment, all right? We got that far. And you might not agree with it, but just hold on to it, all right? Let's talk now about some insights about God.
Solomon now files in his report some insights about God. Once again, he asks this tough question. This is the third time he has asked this question, and we are not even finished with the third chapter of his journal. Here's the question. What profit has the worker from that in which he labors?
What is left over after all the rhythm of life has extracted its emotion from us? What do we have to hold on to, he says? Is there meaning in all of the polarization of life that fills the first eight verses of this chapter? Where's the meaning in all of this? Verse 10, he says, I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied.
Basically, what he's saying is, man is so busy living out his life that he will not understand the meaning of it unless he stops to ponder it. Unless he begins to think about it, then he will realize that God's plan is good. That's the first thing I want you to know about God. Here's the first insight that Solomon had about God. Here it is: His plan is good.
Verse 11, here's what it says: He has made everything. Beautiful. in its time. God did that. God makes everything beautiful.
In its time. Everything that happens in our lives has a purpose. God makes it beautiful. in its time. This is the Old Testament counterpart of Romans 8:28.
We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. It's the basis of the little worship chorus. In His time, in His time, He makes all things beautiful in His time. Lord, please show me every day as you're teaching me your way that you'll do just what you say. in your time.
Now here's the problem. The problem is the problem. We have no problem with that particular perspective on life. As long as it only refers to the good things that happened to us. I mean, you meet this guy and you've been praying to get married, you meet this guy in the elevator and across a crowded room or whatever, and your eyes lock and it becomes instant love, and you say, Oh, it was beautiful in its time.
10 years later, you've lived with the guy for 10 years, you want to think about it again. Maybe it's not so beautiful in its time. But what I want you to understand is that everything that happens in life. is a part of the plan of God, and God's plan is good. We have no problem with this observation, but we don't understand that the plan also includes the hard things.
Cancer can be a part of God's plan. Does God give people cancer? No, He allows it, though. People ask me all the time, how did you get cancer? My goodness, Pastor Jeremiah, you're a man of God.
I'm a human being. And human beings get cancer. I don't get a pass. I mean, when I became a pastor, God didn't just give me a rest of the life free pass of all disease. And he didn't give you one either.
It's part of life. But God's plan is good. I remember reading this.
Some years ago from a book by Malcolm Mugridge. called 20th century testimony and listen to what he said this is profound He said, Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that in everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through affliction and not through happiness. Whether pursued or attained. In other words, if it were ever possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo-jumbo, as Aldous Huxley envisioned in A Brave New World, the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable.
This, of course, is what the cross signifies, and it is the cross more than anything else that has called me to follow Christ. What is Mughreach saying? He's saying, if you could look back on your life and take out everything that was painful, everything that was difficult, everything that was a challenge, everything that you would say is not positive, and you would look at your life, you would say, that life was so vanilla, it was not worth living. You say, well, Pastor, I'd like to give that a shot. I promise you.
you would not like it. One of the pastors who's preached on Ecclesiastes is Tommy Nelson. I listened to his message on this passage some time ago. During the service, he had his pianist come up on the platform. and play Jesus Loves Me on the white keys.
And then he had her add all the black keys to the arrangement. Then he voted: which of these did you like the best? And it was hands down. Everybody liked the second version. They didn't like Jesus loves me on the white keys.
They like Jesus loved me with the black keys. How many of you know that in life there's some black keys? You know what black keys are? They're sharps and flats. And life is filled with sharps and flats.
So, what you have to understand is that God's plan is good. Even the thing that He allows in your life, and some of you are going to come up to me and don't give me your illustrations. I've heard them all. What about the Holocaust? What about 9-11?
What about all of these things? I can't answer those questions. All I can say is that when you are able to look at all that has happened in life from eternity's perspective, you will see that Almighty God was in charge and He put it together in a way. That was a good plan. If you don't accept that, You will struggle all your life with the difficult things that you face.
Not only is God's plan good, His purpose is clear. It says that he has put eternity in their hearts. I could preach a whole sermon just on one little phrase, but let me tell you what that means. What that means is, God has put something in our hearts that cannot be discovered through the experiences of life. He has put eternity in our hearts.
There always will be a longing within us for something more than we have experienced until we know God. And even after we get God, there will still be an ache because the Bible says the whole creation is groaning, waiting for the day of redemption. We cannot find ultimate satisfaction in this life, even if we are followers of Christ, because Christ has created us only to find that perfect satisfaction in a personal relationship with Him when we spend eternity with Him forever and ever. Walter Kaiser sums up this longing. He said, Man is an inborn inquisitiveness and a capacity to learn how everything in his experience can be integrated to make a whole.
He wants to know how everything downstairs relates to everything upstairs. The cycles of life, the highs and the lows, the joys and the sorrows, they leave us with an ache that will not go away because God has made us to ache for Him.
Well I told you this is a play. of eternity and time. He's made all things beautiful in time, and he's put eternity in our hearts. What a wonderful gift we have. from our Creator.
Our great Father from God. Part two of this tomorrow. I hope you'll join us. Then in the meantime, don't forget, Turning Point creates a magazine and devotional just for you. And don't be surprised, this month's title is Happiness: a Moving Target.
It's all about happiness. It is coordinated with what we're teaching on the air during this month. If you don't get Turning Points Magazine Devotional, you owe it to yourself to get it. And all you have to do is ask for it when you get in touch with us here at the Turning Point Office. When we get your request, we'll add you to the list and you'll get the next issue as it comes off the press.
Please do that. You'll be glad you did. It will help you, encourage you, it will add value to your life. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
For more information on Dr. Jeremiah's series Searching for Heaven on Earth. Please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected: our monthly Turning Points magazine and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org/slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org/slash radio or call us at 800-947-1993.
Ask for your copy of David's book, 31 Days to Happiness. It's filled with Solomon's wisdom and it's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International and New King James Versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr. Jeremiah's decades of study. Get all the details when you visit our website, davidjeremiah.org slash radio.
This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue searching for heaven on earth on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
