His Perfect Love

Matt VanderVen: Our circumstances change; our God never does. He is not limited by physics of matter, the laws of immutability, or certain things that we are limited by. God can move and walk through matter, time, and space. He's not limited by anything.

So he comes back and starts to go, "But when I think about it, when I look at God's timing, it can't be coincidence." The wisest man on the earth figured it out. He says there's no such thing as coincidence.

Guest (Male): As we look around, it might be easy for us to conclude that things are spinning out of control and wonder if God really is in control. So, is he? Ecclesiastes makes it clear that God is sovereign and everything under his control has his season.

God's timing is perfect; ours isn't. So, shouldn't we try to exercise patience and wait for God to act in our lives and show us the way? Sounds good to me, and it sounded good to King Solomon. Here's Pastor Matt emphasizing how good God is and his higher purpose for our lives.

Matt VanderVen: This passage that we're in, chapter three, is taking a turn. If you might remember, Solomon, who we believe is the inspired writer, had incredible wisdom beyond measure, more than any other man that had really walked the earth at that time. He put that to the test in regards to trying to understand the earth and the universe and everything within it. For him, in his own words, it said it drove him to madness right in chapter one. It was an epic fail for Solomon, really.

In chapter two, he says, "Well, if I can't find pleasure in my wisdom, my intellect, being able to challenge these things apart from God," that's the whole part of the equation. He'll bring the Lord into it at different times, but it won't be until chapter 12 where he finally understands that none of this makes sense without Jesus, without the Lord. It is something you and I have already come to understand. Praise God.

Well, he is working through that. In chapter two, he's now going to go to pleasure. He's going through frivolity and all the things you can do, partying, even the drinking and all these other things. Towards the end of that, he starts to dwell on death. He starts to think, "Is life just here one minute, gone the next?" He starts realizing, "I can't do anything about what's going to happen to me. One day, I'm going to die."

That starts to frighten Solomon in some ways because with all his intellect and with all his wisdom, he doesn't have the strength or capability to change that. That's the interesting thing about a finite man or woman. We can't control the things of eternality. Only Jesus Christ then, because he's saved us and he promised to resurrect us to eternal life.

He's working through that, and he basically comes to the point where he says life is empty. Life is frustrating. Then he goes out and he brings this axiom. He says life is madness. What he's describing is what we would call mental illness today. He's saying life gets to the point where it induces mental illness when you just literally try to understand this world, try to understand purposes and things without God. He says that's what it leads to. It's just confusing.

In chapter three, he's not done yet. He's now going to go through and he's going to say, based on all this, he's going to adopt what we would call a fatalistic philosophy or ideology. That's important in the context because when it looks like we read Ecclesiastes three, a very popular passage, most of us have read it. But in the Hebrew, in the context of how this was taught originally when it was inspired and written all those years ago, all events predetermined, that was the context of where Solomon was coming from.

He was writing his feelings and he was coming to the point where he said, "I think that everything in this world is just predetermined." It is a fatalistic approach. You're going to live, you're going to die. These things are just going to happen, and everything in between you can't control. Aren't you thankful that that's not true? But that's where he came because that's what the human mind and man's wisdom will lead to. It's actually very sorrowful and a downward spiral.

As we read this chapter, what you're going to see here is he's going to speak and lay out these arguments. He's even going to ask a question to himself as we get towards verse nine. He's going to take these couplets. That's what it's called. When we look at verses two through eight, those are organized in couplets in the Hebrew, and there's somewhere between 13 and 15 depending on how you want to break it out.

The idea behind a couplet in the Hebrew writing is think of it as a mathematical system. If I add one and I take one away, what do I end up with? Zero. That's exactly what Solomon is up to. This is his way of poetically writing. He's meaning it in man's wisdom, but he's coming in and adding. He's saying if I add this but I take this away, each time he does that through the couplets, he's going to come away and go, "I don't understand." Well, that's a good place to start humility. Please look at chapter three, verse one and we'll read together.

"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; a time to kill, a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 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 sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."

As we read verses two through eight here in these couplets, as I mentioned, a couplet is something that bookends itself. It's one plus a negative one equals zero. The other thing that's interesting in the Hebrew language and the idea of the couplets here is it's not just the two bookends in what Solomon is saying. This would have been implied and even understood at the times of the ancients. We've lost so much of that in our modern language.

Like what we would say is "before time, after time, and in-between time." If I said that to you, you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the beginning, the end, and everything in between. That's what a couplet is supposed to do in the Hebrew. When we read this, I want your mind to think differently than what it does with the English language where you say a time to born and a time to die.

That makes you think of two events, being born and then death. But what he's really trying to say is it's all-encompassing, everything beginning with birth and everything culminating with death and everything in between there is a time. He's going to make this whole statement and he's going to continuously go. He adds, he takes away, all wiping each other out, but also in-between time is his point.

He's had all this time being the wealthiest man alive. No war at that time in Israel. He has all this time on his hands to think. He has all this money to say, "I wonder what would happen with this experiment," and he pays for it and does it. He's Solomon. There was nothing holding him back. He had servants for servants, researchers for researchers, museums for museums, zoos for zoos.

If there was ever someone that could turn around and say, "Look, I have scoured the earth, I have done so much," it was Solomon. In his intellect, he comes to the place and he tries to simplify. He goes, "People are born and then we have life and then we die." Without Jesus Christ, that seems pretty ominous, doesn't it? It's deflating. You might even say depressing to some extent.

But when you add God into the equation, which he will do later on as we get into verses nine and on, he's going to turn around and say, "But God." Through God in that lens and perspective, everything has meaning. How many of you can remember for the first time you fell in love? Just raise a hand. Anybody here remember when they fell in love the first time?

Didn't everything just look a little better? When you were in love, you could see nothing wrong with that other person. They were perfect. The way they looked, the way they dressed, the way they smelled, they made the best cookies. Whatever they made, everything was just wonderful. You'd walk, and all of a sudden you're noticing flowers. "Wow, the sky is brighter today." What did it do? It lightened and changed your perception or perspective.

That's right. When we receive Jesus Christ, when we understand God and we realize that our lives have plans and purposes, life makes more sense because it's not just some cosmic accident that happened through a Big Bang theory, the nonsense of that. Have you ever taken a deck of cards and I just throw them up? They don't just build a house. No, I get 52 cards scattered everywhere and I got to go clean everything up.

Chaos doesn't create order. Never has, scientifically, and it can't be observed in science. People say Christians don't like science. We love science, observational science, which is the definition of science. When we look at observational science, we have never found anything where chaos creates order. No, it's always an intelligent designer that brings about intelligent beings and intelligent design. Decency and order. First Corinthians 14:40.

Why am I bringing that up? Because Solomon is thinking through these things without understanding God. So for him, his life feels very empty. He's looking and he says, "I'm born, I see people traveling, I see all these things, they die." Without God, any one of us can end up in that place. That's why our eyes need to be on Jesus to remember why we're here.

We're here to glorify God and to worship him. When we begin to look at that, it doesn't mean life is always easy. There's definitely sickness and illness. We're living in a cursed and fallen world. But lest we understand, we could find ourselves struggling so deeply in the miry clay because we forget that this is temporary and that we're citizens of heaven.

When I looked at that, I thought of a time to born and a time to die. I started thinking about that. I said, "Well, I could go through how I love data and statistics." I used to work for an insurance company a long time ago and at one of the floors there were actuaries. I thought they were the most interesting people. You know what actuaries do? They go through and they figure out the statistical probability of something happening to you or not happening to you.

I'd walk up there and they'd be crunching numbers and telling me, "Hey, did you know? By the way, this." I'd sit there and it was always interesting to me. The things that most human beings fear, statistically, are never going to be realized. Not always, but statistically. That was like Peter. When you think about it, Peter walked on the water. He's a fisherman and he grew up on the water. That's what he did.

Jesus beckoned him, "Come unto me." Peter steps out of the boat and says, "Okay, I'll come to you, Lord." He starts walking. What was it that caught Peter's attention? Was it, "Oh my Lord, I'm walking on water, this is freaking me out"? No, he doesn't say anything like that. You know what it was? The wind. Read the passage again. In the Greek, it was the wind. He literally says the wind blew.

Peter didn't have wind blowing on the Sea of Galilee every day. If you've ever gone to Israel, you know it's in a bowl and you get tons of wind in that area every day. It's not an uncommon thing. But here Peter gets the wind, something so common that it catches him off guard. He takes his eyes off Jesus. He loses perspective and what does he begin to do? Sink. Exactly what we all do, exactly what's happening to Solomon because he took his eyes off God and he's trying to make sense of things going on around him and he's beginning to sink. It makes beautiful sense.

Well, I thought I'd give you some of the examples of animals. I know we love animals and insects and different things. Let's look at some of the examples of the shortest living animals and how God has, even in those aspects, given amazing things when it comes to life. A ruby-throated hummingbird, do you know what the average lifespan is? Three to five years. A least weasel? One to two years. A sand rat, average lifespan, 6 to 12 months. Dragonflies, four to six months. A chameleon, four to five months. A dwarf pygmy goby, two months.

How about honeybees? We see them all around. God, look at the beautiful architecture and design. The great engineer God to design a bee. The massive bee should not be able to fly, physics, and it does. He put all this physics into it to make this engineering marvel. Do you know how long most drone bees live? Two months is the average.

How about a housefly? You are all going to say amen on this because it's far too long. 15 to 30 days on average. How about a drone ant? Three weeks. How about the common fruit fly? Two weeks. A moth, one to two weeks. The mosquito, six to 10 days. Too long, some people are saying. How about a moth? Seven days. The mayfly, the American sand-burrowing mayfly, you ready for this? Five minutes to two hours.

Yet God did not spare the engineering or design in any of these insects or animals. The reason I'm bringing that up is because for Solomon, well, it's all just vanity. It's not vanity to God. If you're here tonight, you're not a mistake. God has you here for a plan and purpose. If you still have air in your lungs, God has a mission for you and you are on mission for Jesus Christ because God doesn't make mistakes, whether it's two minutes or five days or a lifetime.

He says a time to plant, a time to pluck. He goes on again, a time to kill, a time to heal, and he goes back and forth through all this as we read all the way to verse eight. A time to love, a time to hate. That's his idea. Is there really ever a time to hate according to Christ? A time of war and a time of peace. I think the only thing we're to hate, he tells us very clearly in Proverbs. What does he tell us? Hate evil. There's very few things Jesus ever told us to hate. He says hate evil. Fear God, hate evil.

Look at verse nine. He's going to move out of this fatalistic moment he's having in verses two through eight, and he's going to begin to consider God because he gets to the end of himself. It didn't take very long. He goes through these couplets and he sits back and he goes, "But there has to be more." Yes, Solomon. Yes, brothers and sisters.

He begins to ask himself a question. Look what he says, "What profit has the worker from that in which he labors?" He starts sitting back. Well, in light of everything that I just mentioned in verses two through eight, he says, "Then what's the point of labor? What's the point of work? What profit does it bring anyone that labors that way?"

He says in verse 10, "I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied." Please underline that in your Bibles. Now he comes through and he starts saying God-given. What he starts to do is attribute to God what he was attributing to men. He now says, "But God." He comes back and says, "You know what? I know God has authored all this." What he thought was just the beginning and end and everything in between, he says when he takes it apart, without God it doesn't make sense.

But he knows enough to know that God has given these tasks to the sons of men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Well, this sounds different from what he was saying in verses two through eight. You know why? Because he finally gets to the end of it and he goes, "I don't understand anything. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know." He starts to say, "But the Lord knows and God has created these things."

He's watching and he uses the idea of observing here. He says, "He has made everything beautiful in its time." He says God can work inside of creation and outside of creation. God is not limited by time like we are as human beings. He's infinite. He's outside of time. Sometimes I think we forget that when we're in deep, difficult circumstances.

Our circumstances change; our God never does. He is not limited by physics of matter, the laws of immutability, or certain things that we are limited by. God can move and walk through matter, time, and space. He's not limited by anything. So he comes back and starts to go, "But when I think about it, when I look at God's timing, it can't be coincidence." The wisest man on the earth figured it out. He says there's no such thing as coincidence.

Also, he has put eternity in their hearts. That makes sense, doesn't it? Except that no one can find out the work that God does from the beginning to the end. Now that's what bothers Solomon because Solomon can't control it. He can't figure it out. Life and human beings are very patternistic. We're creatures of habit. We're habitual to some extent. Even our randomization is patternistic because we happen to do random things in patterns, believe it or not.

Have you ever tried to lay a floor and it's supposed to be a random pattern? If you're very linear, have you ever tried to do that? It's like your brain hurts. Well, that's what's happening to Solomon. He's declaring that no one except God knows these things. No one else can understand the equation of life but God. It's almost futile to try to figure it out because we don't have all the information.

If I showed you a trailer of a movie, do you think you'd understand the entire contents of the movie? How many times have you watched a trailer that you thought would be interesting, went to the movie theater and paid your hard-earned money, only to turn around and go, "That was a bait and switch. What a waste of two hours. I can't get that back." We've all had those experiences.

No, we can't judge things by what we see in glimpses. Our brains don't operate that way; God's brain does. We see little touchpoints throughout life and we try to correlate them and bring them together so that we can form some level of understanding. We do it in medicine and science through classification. We do it through language, the art of communication, so we can understand feelings, emotions, and thoughts.

It's always our attempt to go ahead and bring this understanding. But what he's finally realizing is he's saying there are some things that in this life we will never understand, and we have to be okay with that because God does. There's something really important about the equation of that. Forgive me if I take a moment. If you are in control of the gods you carry, then you are in control of your gods and your gods can do nothing without your direct interaction or intervention.

But if you have a God that's all-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere, and you don't carry him, he carries you. Wow. I don't want a God that I can completely figure out because if my mind can be figuring out everything God's mind can, then one could argue my mind is equitable or equatable to God's. God's mind is infinite, ever all-knowledge, eternal. It's not possible.

You know what that should do to every human being? It should humble us. It should put us in that rightful place as a child, much like if you had a parent that was very loving and protective and that parent would guide you. There was safety in being with that loving parent. Or maybe it was a friend or a relative, somebody you knew that you trusted. When you went out with them, they said, "Stay close to me, hold my hand." What did that bring you? Comfort, security, trust. That's what God does for us if we take his hand. Abba Father.

Guest (Male): This is His Perfect Love. Pastor Matt VanderVen is leading a study of Ecclesiastes right now, and if you enjoyed today's message, we'd like to know. Email us at our website, hisperfectlove.org. Be sure to include your prayer requests. While you're there, you'll notice a place to listen to Pastor Matt's sermons, including all of Ecclesiastes. That's hisperfectlove.org. You can also listen to us at oneplace.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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