And we'll look at verses one through eight. Ecclesiastes chapter three verses one through eight. For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. The time to be born and a time to die. The time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. The time to kill and a time to heal. The time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and 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 together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to seek and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to cast 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 for war and a time for peace. They God richly bless both the reading and the hearing of His Holy Word. And of course those who are of a certain age you can't help but when you read these verses think of the song by the birds. In 1965, turn, turn, turn, where they put these words to music. In chapter one the writer speaks or the preacher as he identifies himself speaks in broader terms about the ordinary cycles of life but he puts them in the terms of nature. So he speaks more broadly and more generally about the cycles of nature that all generations experience. We all experience the rising and the setting of the sun and we all experience the blowing of the wind and the flow of rivers. But in our text this morning here in chapter three the preacher zeroes in under the broader category of the cycles of nature. He zeroes in on the particulars of life, life under the sun in general. So he looks at those seasons now under against the life under the sun, against the backdrop of the rising and the setting of the sun and against the backdrop of flowing rivers and changing seasons. He says there are also human experiences that are experienced by way of cycle. There is a time of birth and a time of death and planting and reaping and killing and healing, keeping and laughing and all of the other things that are listed in the text. So again in chapter one we have the big picture, the cycles of nature, the seasons, the four seasons, the things that take place in those seasons, the rising and setting of the sun. But here in chapter three he zeroes in on the cycles of human experience played out against the backdrop of changing seasons. Now what I want to do is look at the cycles of human experience from three different perspectives. You want to look at it from the perspective of God, from the perspective of the unregenerate and then from the perspective of the regenerate, the cycles of life as they exist under the sun. So we begin with God and here's what we see in the first place when it comes to the cycles of life that are set forth here just like the cycles of nature that are explained in chapter one. We know that all of the seasons and all of the cycles of human experience are from the hand of the sovereign God and they are under his sovereign rule and accomplishing his sovereign purposes. So just as the seasons of the year, just as the flowing of the rivers, the rising and setting of the sun is under the sovereign rule and authority of God, so are the cycles of human experience. So there is no season of human experience under the sun that is not under the sovereign rule of God and that is not accomplishing his sovereign purpose. So it doesn't matter what it is and so we want to look at three things in particular, a threefold way in which we can see the seasons and the cycles of human experience under the sovereign rule of God. One, when we get in the cycles of human experience, we get a glimpse of God's purpose for his image bearers. We get a glimpse of God's overall purpose for his image bearers in the earth. You see, we were created to be stewards of the earth, therefore you have seasons of planting and seasons of reaping. We were also created to be in fellowship with God and to be in fellowship with our fellow image bearers. Therefore, you have seasons of laughter, you have seasons of joy and you have seasons of dancing and seasons of celebration and you have seasons of peace, because those things reflect God's overall purposes for his image bearers in the earth without sin. This is what we would enjoy, that we would enjoy one another, we would enjoy God, we would enjoy the plants of the earth, we would enjoy the fruit that he allows us to cultivate, we would enjoy things. So when we look at the cycles of life and human experience as expressed here, we do get a glimpse of what God intended for his image bearers, how he expected us to live within the earth. But in a way, even with the advent of sin, it doesn't mean that God has intended these things for us. So therefore, when we see these things portrayed here in Ecclesiastes 3, we see we get a glimpse of what God has intended. But a second thing from the perspective of God, as we look at the cycles of life, these cycles also remind us that we are under a divine curse. Yes, we see the fact that we have the capacity to weep, we have the capacity to laugh and we have the capacity for celebration, but prominent in this list of human experience, prominent here is the fact of death. The very first thing, we he says, there's a time to be born and a time to die. So the reference to death here in verse 2, it says that yes, there is a time to be born and a time to die, but the reference there sometimes people misunderstand that and how many times have you heard people say, we were born to die, we were born to die, we were created for eternal life, as a matter of fact, he goes on later in this very same chapter to say that I think it's verse 13, that God has put eternity in our breasts. So we are not, we weren't created to die. Here's the reality that even though it says that people are familiar with saying that we were born to die, we were not born to die basically because God put eternity in our in our breasts, that means we were created for eternity. The very fact of death is a reminder that the wages of sin is death. And so we experience death because we were born into sin. If there's no sin, there's no death. So here's a reminder that everything else that follows is a reminder that we indeed live in a cursed creation because we live in a cursed creation and the wages of sin is death. We get cycles of life that remind us not only is will we die as are we under a sentence of death because of our sin, but we are also told in Genesis 315 that God Himself says that He will allow enmity to exist between the seed of the woman and the seed of the circuit. And so therefore this conflict between the seed, those who belong to the Lord and those who don't, it's a reality, it's a reminder, a reality check that reminds us that as good as our parties are, we are still under a curse. So these seasons of life where there is mourning, why do we have mourning? Because God has subjected the created order to a curse. And therefore we have mournings, we have tears, we have death, we have enmity, we have all of these things because God has subjected the created order to a curse as the language that Paul uses in Romans 8 when he says that he has subjected the whole creation to futility so that it cries out like a woman in labor waiting for the sons or the children of God to be revealed. So from the vantage point of God, the cycles of life are, it's an expression of what God has intended for us, that we do experience joy, we do experience fellowship, we do experience those bright spots in life. But the cycles of life also remind us that we are under a curse. Thirdly, the cycles of life from a divine perspective, the cycles of human experience under the sun issued by the hand of God also gives us a preview of the eschatological end of human history. Eschatology is simply the study of end times. And so the seasons of human experience that are set forth here is a reminder of the eschatological end, that life as it is is not static. It's moving in a particular direction. It's moving towards a particular end. Look at all of the negative human experiences that are referenced here, dying, killing, weeping, mourning, hate, and war. All of those things are a reminder that human history has a terminating point. But take those negative experiences that are set forth here and contrast them with the no mores of the New Earth, that we see in Revelation chapter 21. Revelation 21, we are told he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And death shall be no more. We are told that neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore. He says, for the former things have passed away. And Isaiah chapter 2, verse 4, Lord says in through Isaiah, in anticipating the eschatological end of human history, he says, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares. And their spears into pruning hooks, nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall there be any war anymore. So the seasons of life, with all of their, all of the antithesis that's presented here, the seasons of human experience is a reminder that all of human history is moving towards an eschatological end. An eschatological end that will see the termination of all of those negative experiences that come with the curse, and a renewal of the earth where those things will be removed, and a renewal of the people where the conflict and enmity between the two seeds will ultimately be resolved. Well, let's look at this, the seasons of cycles of human experience from the perspective or from the vantage point of the unregenerate. And there again are three things that we will see as because I would argue that for the unregenerate, these cycles of human experience deepen our frustrations and our perplexities that we set forth last week, vanity, evanities. What does it mean to be vain or to seem empty? It is this period or this experience of frustration and perplexity. So therefore when unregenerate people go through these seasons of human experience, in the first place, we see that because they seek ultimacy within the created temporal realm, therefore they seek to escape the negative cycles by finding refuge in the positive. In other words, because fallen man, unregenerate fallen man, is seeking his ultimacy in temporal things, seeking to affirm himself in the temporal pursuits of life, and validate himself in the temporal pursuits of life, that what he has a tendency to do is to seek, escape from all of that which is negative by hiding and trying to elongate the positive seasons. Let me explain one of a couple of examples of what I mean by this. We live in a world where people don't like negative things. We don't like to hear bad news. So look at what we've done to death. We filled it with all sorts of euphemisms. We don't say so and so died. We say someone passed. We don't go to funerals anymore. We go to life celebrations. But yet scriptures here in Ecclesiastes, one of my favorite funeral texts, it says that it's better to go to a funeral than it is to the House of Murth. It doesn't say you shouldn't party, but what it's saying is that when it's time to cry, cry. So we go to funerals and people are told, don't be sad. Or you see the celebration, you see all kinds of screen presentations and go to the cemetery and doves are set free. But brothers and sisters, feurals and when it's time to die, it's not a time for the freedom of doves. That's not what's on my mind when I'm at that grave. It's the body that's being set forth in the grave. And so the unregenerate tries to escape the hard places of life. And instead of going to the difficult things, so we try to make everything funny. And here Ecclesiastes says there is a time to laugh. But the funeral is not yet. It's part of the problem that we see in contemporary worship as they are influenced by the flesh. It is a time for silence. It is a time for celebration. When we come into the presence of God, it's a sacred moment. That's what the offensive thing that I hear people, well, if you were at a baseball game, if you were at a basketball game, yes, I'd be drinking beer and eating peanuts. But we're not at a baseball game. We're not at a political rally. We're not at a concert. And we can't escape their difficult seasons of life by pretending that hurt doesn't hurt. So we, the unbeliever, seek to deny all of the difficult seasons by trying to find escape in the positive ones. We try to escape those heart seasons by trying to explain it away, but God confronts us with these realities. The unbeliever is not only, doesn't, not only do they try to escape the negative seasons by elongating the positive seasons, because that's where their ultimate see is. But also the unbeliever has a tendency to define God according to the seasons. Here's what I mean by that. They cannot reconcile the concept of a God who isn't good and loving, but also allows fallen sinners to act the way they do. And so therefore they try to redefine God according to the seasons. And as they, in other words, they try to just support, presuppose, they presuppose that if there is a God, and this is, and when I say, I remember I am talking about the unregenerate, because it's not that the unregenerate is always denying the existence of God, but they want to define God according to what they see in the cycle of life. That's one of the reasons you have the various gods in various mythologies that are assigned to different things. The rain God responsible for the rain. The God of the harvest that's responsible for bringing things up. The God of this and the God of that, because they can't wrap their minds around the fact that the God of the Bible, holy, just and wise, is the one that's responsible for death in the world. They can't wrap their minds around that. And so they either deny God outright, or they define Him according to their misunderstanding of the seasons. There is no place in their mind for a God who is good and loving and human suffering. So they either presume themselves to be God, or they redefine their understanding of God, according to the seasons of life. Here's the third thing about the unregenerate perspective of the cycles of human experience. They deceive themselves into thinking that they can fix the negative and ultimately eliminate it. So they think that's, again, that's part of our problem. That's what they alluded to in the beginning, that here's one of the things that I kind of push back on when we go through these seasons. Well, we'll get back to normal. How do you know? How do you know that viruses, that strip us up and that stop us on the dime? How do you know you're going to vaccinate against it? And when you do, how do you know there's not another one? Because all of human history is moving in a particular direction. That is the height of humanism, that all human problems, everything that we face we can fix in the words of Billy Holiday. The difficult I can do right now, the impossible might take a little while because we have deceived ourselves into thinking. That we can, listen, look at how, how, how, how brash we are. Are you familiar with cryogenics? In cryogenics is the idea that you freeze a corpse right after they die so that you can figure out what the problem was and then thaw them out when the problem gets figured out. Well, I can save you a lot of time or money or you can just pay me and, you know, you say that I can help you with that. Brothers and sisters, the disease that brings about human mortality is sin. And man can't fix that. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be good stewards over God's creation. And I'm not saying that we should not take advantage of technology to overcome difficult situations. But all we do every time we get to get over a particular disease, that becomes maybe pandemic, all we do is add it to the arsenal. We never expunge it from the creative experience. It's just something else that we come to live with. Brothers and sisters, the unregenerate mind seeks to escape the negative realities that God has put in place to remind us that the end is coming. Unregenerate humanity assumes themselves or they assume to, they seek to define God according to the seasons. That God is this and God is that because of what they see. And unregenerate man thinks that we can fix all of those negative things. But look at the list, there is nothing here that man can fix. There is no negative season that man can fix. And so the delusion of fallen humanity is either we can fix our problem or the flip side of it, which is pessimistic existentialism that there is no hope. But let me give you a third perspective. A third perspective on the cycles of human experience is from that of the regenerate. And the regenerate, those who have been renewed by God's grace, what we discover in all of these seasons, what we discover is the riches and the sufficiency of God's grace through the contrasting cycles of human experience. Again, let me repeat that, the regenerate. Those who are saved by God's grace, those who have been regenerated by the spirit of God, they, what we come to discover is that through the riches of, or through these seasons, we discover the riches and the sufficiency of God's grace through the contrasting cycles of human experience under the sun. And it's for three reasons. What we discover, brothers and sisters, is that whatever our pleasant temporal experiences are, they are grounded in a greater joy of being reconciled to God. In other words, they are not inns in themselves when we experience those enjoyable seasons. We enjoy it with a realization that it's attached to something bigger and something better. Paul says to the Corinthians, whether you eat or whether you drink, do it all to the glory of God. And when we come together and eat what we are mindful of, is that our joy, as Jesus says in the course of His earthly ministry, I have come to give you joy, let my joy be upon you. And being wrapped and covered in the joy of Christ, it allows us to experience the little joys of life without attaching it to ultimately, but understanding that it's a reminder of the goodness of God. One of the things that I think is just reprehensible among Christians is this sad kind of Christian experience where you're not allowed to snap your fingers, listen to certain kinds of music, and you just go through life just waiting for heaven. No, God has intended us to enjoy. We enjoy fellowship. We enjoy family. We enjoy friends. We enjoy seasons of laughter. We dance. And you don't have to go to church to dance, by the way. Dance. And we try to sanctify everything dance. I don't care how good the church musician is. They can't cut it like when you're listening to a good parliament song or when it's really time to cut loose and dance. When it's time to dance, just dance. Because dancing is a reminder that the sinner that I am, God and His goodness, has allowed me to experience the joy of being reconciled. So here's the ultimate already not yet. When God breaks into our human experience and allows us to enjoy fellowship, allows us to enjoy life. It is a reminder that the misery around me is not eternal, but I'm connected to a greater reality. That moments of joy can be fleeting, but those fleeting moments are attached to a greater joy. We discover brothers and sisters that whatever pleasures we experience, it's a reminder that even though we are not, we are not deserving of it. I like what one preacher put it. He says that we don't have to be able to taste our food in order for it to nourish us. And the fact that we have taste buds is a testimony to God's goodness. And so therefore God allows us to experience His goodness through the joy that He allows us to experience, but here's the second thing. We know that God is with us when we go through those negative life cycles. You see, the unregenerate are without a clue, but when we go through David says, and yay, though I go through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me. So we know that when we go through those seasons of death, when we go through the valley of the shadow of death, we don't have to wonder where is God. We know that He's with us. Lord says in Isaiah 43, when you go through the fire, I'm with you. And when you go through the waters, I am with you. And so when we go through the seasons of loss, when we go through the seasons, all of the negative seasons that are portrayed here, here is the confidence of the regenerate. And when even though my season may be dark, my God is not forsaken me. Brothers and sisters, we have the comfort and the confidence that Peter has. You know, Peter, when the Lord told him, Peter, you're going to deny me. And Peter says, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I would never deny you. And before the very nights, by the way, that Jesus was arrested, Peter denied knowing the Lord. And he's thinking that that season of failure, that season of embarrassment somehow disconnected him from the Savior. And so when Jesus rises from the grave, he says go and tell Peter and the rest of the disciples. And then later, John gives us that point, that scene of Jesus going out to the sea where Peter was fishing. And he asks him three times, Peter, do you love me? Then feed my sheep. Because I already told you that you were going to do that. I already told you that Satan desired to sit. You already told you that. And I didn't stop loving you then. And I'm not going to stop loving you now. Brothers and sisters, those who are regenerated, those who are redeemed, we know that when we go through any of these negative seasons, we know that when our barns are empty and our cupboards are bare, that he's still with us. We know that when we have confusion and fall out, that he's with us, we know that there is no season that we can go through, where God is not with us. And His grace strengthens us for each appropriate season. And you notice that He makes a distinction here between crying and mourning. Because sometimes just living in this world will make you cry. Sometimes the stings of loss, the sting, and of loss will make you mourn. So whether it's through frustration, or whether it's through sorrow, we know that God is with us in it and through it. But here's the third and final thing that we as the regenerates understand as we go through the cycles of life. We also know that we're not home. We don't get lost in our highs or in our lows. Because we know that the best is yet to come. It's a part of the flawed thinking of the unregenerate. Is there always trying to retactor what they thought was the golden years? But we know that the golden years are not back there. The golden years is when conflict is removed. The golden years are ahead when we can plow the ground and there's no thorns. Is when the enmity of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent is no longer an issue. We know that when we experience our highest highs, it can get higher. We know that our greatest joys are still in front of us. And we know that weeping may endure for season. But joy comes in the morning. We know that whatever it is that we have, whatever joys and experiences that we have on the highs, that it gets better when he removes all of those things that remind us that human history is moving towards its terminating point. So we don't get too cast down. And we don't get too disappointed in life playing itself out the way it does under the sun because God has broken into us. And He has already seeded us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And we know that there's more to life than those things that we read in our newspapers. See in our media feeds, we know that there is more to come. And what will come is the sovereign God who put all things in motion who did not expunge humans from the earth when they sin. But He let them coexist with all of the misery that sin brings. And He says, if you think this is a judgment, don't you hear people say, well, you know, hell is here on earth. That's because they haven't been to hell yet. There is a hellishness to it, but trust me, it gets worse. And so the people of God are perspective on the seasons of life. It's that it's in the context of the seasons, the contrasting seasons of life that we discovered the fullness and the sufficiency of God's grace. That is grace is sufficient for us until He brings us home. Because home is where it gets better. There is a season for everything under the heaven that season has been appointed by God. And God knows that He's bringing it to an eschatological end. The unregenerate are trying to escape. But the regenerate have already found escape in the seasons under the sun. And our escape is our hope and our rock who is Christ Jesus. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we again thank you for your word and we thank you for your grace. We know that we live in perilous and difficult times, but they are perilous because man has sinned. And even as you allow us to experience the highs and the lows and the joys of being image bearers, you allow us to experience fine things. But you also remind us that this is a curse creation. Let us let us cling to the one who transcends this world. Let us cling by faith to our Savior who has come into the world to redeem us, that we with Him would rule and reign throughout all eternity in perfect unbroken fellowship with you. Father, thank you for your grace that saves us because the grace that saves us from eternal damnation is the grace that sustains us through the seasons and cycles of life. Strengthen us now for your service and for your glory. We ask these things in Christ name, Amen, which you please stand.