Ecclesiastes 3 GOD’S TIMING People experience life but cannot control it. That frustration is one way in which God draws people to Himself. God, in His sovereign will has set patterns in life and so has established His own timetable for our lives. We cannot do anything about the cycles of life He has set in order. To get upset about them or strain against those limitations is futile. Rather, if we so choose, we can find appreciation and acceptance – even joy in them. We know that God in His own arranging of things, sees the whole plan of our lives as one big present picture, and is going to do what is best. His timing is right, and when we rest in Him, instead of frustration, we can find rest and contentment when “our mind is stayed on Thee [God].”
God’s appointed times are predetermined by Him. Nothing He does is accidental. In His wisdom He has arranged a starting time and a stopping time. In between those times, we are able to live in harmony with His sovereign will when we live by faith in Him. This chapter begins with a comprehensive picture of life. It is lived between these opposites. The twenty-eight opposites cover every aspect of the life of faith of a believer. It involves what people do, rather than what they want to do.
So, what can bring lasting gain from human effort when our lives are under divine control? Faith in God is its own reward. We live, learn and love in our lives before Him who knows every thought and intent of our hearts. Finite man living in a fallen world is very limited and cannot function properly without serving our infinite sovereign God. We can’t control or manipulate things, and this becomes a burden to us if we refuse to accept our limitations. If we try to live as if we are capable of doing anything we put our mind to, we are deceiving ourselves. I have heard people say to young people, “You can do anything you want if you just put your mind to it.” We can enjoy life as God intends when we realize what He has given us to do, and enables us to do it.
Everything God created was made to fit together and appropriately function according to His sovereign plan. Such patterns and order mean there is an objective the Lord God has in His mind. What that goal is, is beyond our ability to fathom. Even though we are limited in understanding, we do have a sense of “eternity” in our hearts that He placed there. That makes us conscious of the fact that what we do now needs a long-term reason to give us the satisfaction in living. We have been created in God’s image and have a spiritual thirst. Because we have eternal values in us, it takes eternal things to satisfy us.
Beginning at verse twelve there is a different line of consideration in the words of the Preacher. We can be happy and fruitful in life if we have goals that are consistent with living for God by faith. An appropriate view of God and His grace brings pleasure in living for Him. There is an order and balance in a life lived for God that is like a gift from Him to give us joy. We are limited by our humanity, but when we live in fellowship with our infinite God, we find ourselves with a sense of eternal purpose in what we do. We don’t add to or take away from anything God does, but in reverence and respect to Him, we give Him first place in life and we find a real purpose for living. The past of our lives will be set in the big picture along with the present and future to form the whole panorama of divine grace and purpose being fulfilled in us by our sovereign God. What a blessing! What a joy! There is much we don’t understand, but we can be glad in what we do understand!
Solomon the Preacher, then considers that there seems to be some contradictions to God’s sovereign control of things happening on earth. Why is there dishonesty and cruelty? Why does God allow envy and inconsistency? There is wickedness in the legal system. Instead of wise decisions and justice, there is evil in those who sit in the place of judges. God’s true judgment will be passed on the judges themselves. There will be justice carried out at the judgment seat of Christ for believers; at the great white throne for unbelievers; and when Christ reigns, there will be judgment on the nations.
In our physical life, humans are animals because our bodies die like animals die. But humans are more than mere bodies because we have “eternity in our hearts.” We have a consciousness of God. We understand time, space and matter. We know what righteousness, truth and love are, and are affected by them. We make moral decisions and our choices affect our life and our lifestyle – the way we live. If we are only body and life, then life is meaningless. Physical death is universal to every living thing. Humans suffer the wages of sin which brings death to the body but also to the soul and spirit. There are only glimpses of what happens to humans after death in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, life and immortality have been brought to light through the Gospel. Work for work’s sake is vanity, but when we recognize work as a blessing from God, that gives joy, meaning and value in work as of an enduring worth when we do it as unto the Lord.