In our culture of impatience and instant gratification, We cringe at the idea of waiting. but it's a skill every Christian ought to develop. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah considers why it's always best to wait on God's timing, even when we don't understand why. from his series in Ecclesiastes, Searching for Heaven on Earth.
Here's David with the conclusion of Beautiful in his time. You know, many people are surprised when they discover that God is not affected by time. And really surprised when you tell them God created time. He does not live within time, he lives outside of time. He is always the same.
He always has been. There's never been a time when he was not, and there never will be a time when he ceases to be. He's the eternal God. But we live in time. And God tells us that in this.
time bubble that we live in, He has put eternity in our hearts. What a wonderful promise that is. And we're going to talk about that some more as we turn back to part two of Beautiful in His Time in this series. on Ecclesiastes. And by the way, you can get The study guide for this series, it goes along with what you're hearing on the radio and wonderfully accompanies our resource for the month.
Our resource for the month of February is the book, 31 Days to Happiness. It's a paperback presentation of Ecclesiastes in a contemporary commentary style in 31 chapters. You can read it easily in a month and be through with the book of Ecclesiastes and have it really in your heart. If you don't have this book, if you've never gone through this study like this, I encourage you to get this book and make it your manual for these next several days. The book 31 Days to Happiness is our way of saying thank you to your gift to Turning Point during the month of February.
When you send your gift of any size, simply say, please send me the book, 31 Days to Happiness, and it will be on its way. And now here is part two of Beautiful in His Time. 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? 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 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 this 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 happen 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 Mugharit 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 blackies. 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. It was Saint Augustine who said it first: Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee. C.S. Lewis put it this way: He said, Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns for us along the journey. But he takes great care to see that we do not mistake any of them for home.
What a great thought. There's a lot of joy along the way as believers, but the ultimate joy isn't ours till we get home.
So, his plan is good and his purpose is clear. But, number three, the third insight about God Solomon makes is that his program is mysterious. His program is mysterious. Because I've said all I can say about it, but verse 11 says: except that no one can find out the work that God does from the beginning to the end, nobody can figure it out. I don't know if you came here thinking, I'm going to explain all this to you so you can understand why this happened, why did that happen, why is this going on, why do I have this?
I don't know. I know this, God's plan is good. His purpose is clear, but his program is mysterious. I'm not God and I can't understand it. I try to figure it out, and so do you.
And I wish sometimes God would be more forthcoming with answers. But sometimes he doesn't answer us. And let me tell you something: he's God, and he doesn't owe us an answer. We may think that God's responsible to tell us why stuff is happening. He doesn't owe us that answer, he's God.
Someday we'll know. But right now we live, as Paul wrote in the New Testament, we look through a glass darkly. We don't see things clearly. It's kind of like the. Back window on frosty morning when the mist is there and you can barely see some shadows, but you better not back up till you clean it off.
Because you can't see clearly.
So, God's plan is good, and His purpose is clear, and His program is mysterious. And that brings us From the insights of God.
So, some instructions about living.
Now, here's the good part about all this.
Now, you know, this is philosophical, this kind of be a little heavy sometimes. But it's all good when you understand what Solomon is saying. He's gonna give us three things we need to do because we heard this message today. Three things we need to follow up on because we know We've gotten these impressions about life that God's in charge of everything: ups and downs, good and bad, white keys, the black keys. And the insights about God is His plan is good, His purpose is clear.
This program is mysterious.
Now, what do we do? Number one. First, Instruction for living. Don't forfeit enjoyment because of what you can't understand. Write it down.
Do not forfeit. enjoyment because of what you can't understand. Notice verse 12. I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice and to do good in their lives.
Now here's what I believe Solomon is saying. You can spend all of your life, if you want to, trying to figure God out. You never will. You can figure out why God allows everything that He allows and you'll never understand it.
So if you spend all your life locked up in that, you won't be able to enjoy life as you were created to enjoy.
So, don't let what you don't understand keep you from enjoying what you can enjoy. Go have a good hamburger. Go to Krispy Kreme on the way home. You know, I'm trying to be facetious here just enough so you can understand what I mean. Because here's what I think happens.
I think a lot of Christians get locked up in all of the stuff that they don't understand, and they miss the fact that Almighty God sent Jesus into the world to give us life more abundantly. How many Christians do you know that if you looked at them as an unbeliever and you thought, If I got what they had, I'd really be sick. You don't want what they have. They don't have joy. I hear people say all the time: when you get older and you get ready to die, you're going to look back and realize you should have served God more.
And that'll probably be true of all of us. But you know what else? I think a lot of us are going to get old and we're going to look back and say, you know what? I never enjoyed life. anywhere close to the way I should have.
And I'm learning how to do that better and better every day that I live. We're to enjoy life. God has given us this life to enjoy. You're not going to figure out the mystery of God. But what you can do is you can do what Solomon says, you can enjoy.
life. Lewis Smeads, one of my favorite writers. Wrote these words. He said, Some saints can't enjoy a meal because the world is starving. They can't enjoy their clothing because the world is naked and homeless.
They're afraid to enjoy an evening at home with their families because they feel they ought to be out saving souls. They can't spend an hour with an unforgiven one without feeling guilty if they haven't preached a sermon to him. They know nothing of balance and they're miserable because of it. They have no inner incentive to bring people into a relationship with Christ that would make them feel as miserable as they themselves feel. They think the gospel's good news until you obey it, then it becomes an endless guilt trip.
Anybody like that?
Solomon says, Look, don't go down that road. God's given you life to enjoy. Yeah, we'll be always talking about the imponderables of the Godhead. You know, get into a discussion about the sovereignty of God and the free will of man and you'll freak out. Because you can't figure it out.
But what you can do is, while you can't understand what you can't understand, you can enjoy what you can enjoy. Amen. Secondly, Don't forget to be thankful for God's gifts to you. Notice verse 13. And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor.
Did you know that? Go to working. Be glad. I hear people complaining all the time about their job. Let me just tell you something.
Sometimes we get so caught up in what's wrong with our job, we don't understand that God's given us a job. And people everywhere would give thanks.
So be thankful for what you got. One day we're going to die. But in the meantime, let's live. Don't go through life and not live and be thankful for what God has done for you. Yeah, there's a lot of things we don't understand, but don't let the things you don't understand keep you from the things you can enjoy, and don't forget to give thanks to God.
And here's the last thought. Number three. Don't fear life. Fear God. I know that whatever God does, it'll be forever.
Nothing can be added to it, nothing can be taken from it. You say, well, I don't like God's plan for my life. Forget it, it's too bad. Yeah. God doesn't have any red ink in the contract on your life.
He doesn't have a delete button on his computer. There's no erasers in heaven. It says, whatever God has determined, you can't take anything from it, you're not going to add anything to it. God does it, and men should fear before Him. You say, What does that mean?
It means the very fact that you can't understand it is the reality that He's God. You say, I don't understand what you're doing, God. And he says, well that's probably because I'm God and you're not. And my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. And what should we do when we have that emotion?
Get mad?
Well, I don't think it's right that I can't understand what God's doing. No. You realize the imponderable mystery of Almighty God and you fall down before Him and you worship and say, Lord God, I don't know what's going on here, but I know you're God and I worship you with all my heart, and you're in charge, and whatever you've got going, it's okay with me. We'll get through this, and I know you will never leave me nor forsake me. Don't fear life.
Fear God. Life is God's gift, and Almighty God. has come to you with this wonderful plan.
Some of you say, how could it be fair that God would allow this sort of thing?
Well, let me tell you something that's really unfair. Listen to me. There once was a man who was perfect. who never sinned a sin in his life. He was the spotless, blameless, holy, perfect.
Son of God. And one day his father came to him and said, I am sending you to the earth. to be a man. and to live for thirty years, and to go and hang on a cross and die. You say, Pastor Jeremiah, now you have lost me.
God didn't do that. I know the Romans did that. The Jews did that. Frankly, if you want to know the fact, I did it because I'm a sinner. I want to leave you with a couple of scriptures that I hope you will never forget.
First of all, Acts 4, 27 and 28. For truly, against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined beforehand to be done. Did you ever read that verse? That says that what the Jews did, what the Romans did, what we did, what sin did, was all done because God determined ahead of time that's what would happen. He crucified his own son.
You say that was awful. If you only see it. on Good Friday. It's awful. But if you wake up on Easter morning and you hear that he's alive, it starts to get better.
And if you keep listening to what you hear and you find out that because he lives, we too can live, it gets really good. And then when you find out that because He is alive in heaven forever. We can live with him forever and ever because of what God did when he sent. It's good news. It's called the gospel.
And because of what God did. You and I. Rejoicing. that we have life everlasting. And if you do not know this God I've been talking about, I don't preach to you, plastic Jesus.
I don't preach to you somebody who is so Pollyanna, that he's not real. I preach to you the real God who loved us. and sent his son into this world to die for us. Who experienced the most awful imponderable the world has ever known. And God, in His wonderful grace and wisdom, turned it all around.
and made it the best day history has ever known. Because in him we have life. Eternal. You know, when you study the Bible with Jesus Christ in mind, which is what we always should do, He's the center of it all. You see him in every situation here in this Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.
The bridge between time and eternity, who is that? That's the Lord Jesus, who came to be one of us and lived among us, went to the cross and paid the penalty for our sin, that we might go to heaven and be with him for how long? Forever. and never ceasing relationship with God that begins when we put our trust in Him. Tomorrow, we're going to take a little turn in our journey as we answer this question: What to do when your world doesn't make sense?
Has that ever happened to you? Oh my goodness, it's happened to me many times. And I learned much from this part of Ecclesiastes. I hope you'll join us then. Be sure to ask for your copy of 31 Days to Happiness when you send your gift to Turning Point during the month of February.
I'm David Jeremiah. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah.
Your notes of encouragement mean so much. We invite you to write to us at Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 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 stream more than 1200 of Dr. Jeremiah's messages on demand on any screen with our streaming service TurningPoint Plus. For a monthly gift of any amount, visit turningpointplus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Join us tomorrow as we continue searching for heaven on earth on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
