2024-06-16 San Jose CRC - Sermon Only

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14

God’s perspective on transitions

Transcript:

Ken Mensing: 

The reading this morning is from Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verses 1 through 14, which can be found in your pew bibles on page 540 or you can follow along on the screen. A time for everything. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.

A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to uproot. A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to tear down, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to gather stones, and a time to gather them. A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing. It's time to search and a time to give up. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be silent, a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. What do workers gain from their toll? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil. This is the gift of God.

I know that everything God does will endure forever. Nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Gil Suh:

Can we go to the next slide to see if it works? Probably not today. We are going through this thrive and transition. Um, the transition is the process in which we navigate Our internal responses, what's going on inside with the major changes or happenings around us. So that's somewhat of a lengthy process.

Somewhere, according to the statistics, somewhere three months, even sometimes three years and five years, depending on what kind of major. Or events in your life that you're dealing with. So that's the transition. So it's very intimidating, it's very challenging. But we are looking at this transition from the Scripture, from God's perspective, as God's allowing those transitions in our life to shape us and mold us to be more like Christ.

So in that sense, we can actually thrive spiritually in those transitions. But for today's message, let me start with, um, this riddle, uh, it's called the Riddle of Sphinx from Egypt. Have you heard of this Riddle of Sphinx? What walks on four legs in the morning then two legs in the afternoon and then three legs in the evening, and then no legs at all at night? Does anyone know the answer? It's kind of easy, right? Jake? Man. Man, yeah, human. Yes, yes, it's human, right? In fact, yeah, in our life, there are times of infancy, childhood, adulthood, and old age. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So we go through, if I put it different way, seasons of life, right? And from the cradle to the grave, between the delivery room to the funeral home. The pictures that I was going to show are, you know, California, not so much, but if you go to the Middle West and East Coast, the four distinctive seasons, right? So even the same spot during the, uh, the pandemic, um, Joyce and I went to this place called the Frederick Meyer Garden.

If you go to Grand Rapids, it's highly recommended. It's a beautiful garden. So there's one spot. I took a picture of the spot every time I went. Then later on, I discovered that it's like, it looks different, right? Especially in different seasons. The change between the seasons is kind of gradual. But like, oh, you can see the difference.

It's the same spot but with a different look. In the same way, you and I go through the seasons of life. We are the same person. But we look different, of course, as we get older, and we also experience life differently, right? Our perspective changes and all that. So that's the kind of wisdom that we can gain from living through this life.

And then there are transitions, right? It doesn't change just all of a sudden from spring to summer. There's always this transition in our life, too. And those transitions are challenging times. And that's where we have to pay attention more to our purpose. So throughout human history, philosophers and wise people wrestled with this question of, Okay, we can observe the seasons of life, but what is life?

What is the meaning of life? And what is time? What is lifetime? It's all about. You know, they wrestle with this question while the majority of people just mindlessly go by their lifetime without asking those serious questions. However, from time to time, we people, because of those unexpected life circumstances, come to ask serious questions.

Especially in light of our mortality, how should we understand life and time? And if we are not believers in reincarnation, we know there's only one lifetime given to us. There's no practice run, and, oh, I'm going to live differently next time. This is it. So, how should we live our lifetime, then?

Ecclesiastes. is giving us some insight. The teacher, that's the voice of teacher that we heard this morning, the teacher, supposedly the King Solomon, is very serious about those questions and shares his insights through the words in the book of Ecclesiastes. So teacher is now helping us look at our lifetime from three different locations.

From the outside, from the inside, and from the above, each point of view provides different experiences and understandings of life. Like a corn maze. Have you ever been to a corn maze? From the outside, a corn maze just looks like, you know, the parameter. It looks like just a regular cornfield, right? But then, when you are inside, there is a maze.

Wow, it's a different experience. When you look from the above, whether through a drone or helicopter or some kind of high place, you can see it differently. So, the teacher is providing us with those three different perspectives on life. So first, we can examine life from the outside. We can observe how other people live and how they live in the past and present.

So there, then, we can observe and agree with the teacher, aha, there is a time for everything and a season for every activity. So that's the list of verses 2 to 9. Wisdom is to know the difference and live accordingly.

It sounds easy, but it's not that easy. As an example, we Americans, even back in 1972, Golden Dawes, in his book Work, Play, and Worship in a Leisure-Oriented Society, described American middle-class people. That is true even today, even more so. He said this in his 1972 book. Most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship.

I thought this was a profoundly correct description of American tendency. Once again, most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work, to work at their play, and to play at their worship.

But a wise person knows when to work, when to stop, and when to enjoy the fruit of the work. When we know the difference and live accordingly, life can be quite pleasant because it works well. That's why the teacher says there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good.

Opportunity, health, to do work, and also to enjoy the fruit of the work. So that's the outside look at the life. Now, second, we experience life from the inside. Okay. Thank you. It's one thing to look at a corn maze from the outside, but it's totally different when we walk in it. We come to know that when it comes to life, there is more than what meets our eyes and other senses.

Isn't it true that it's so easy for us to judge and criticize others or what's happening from the outside or what? We experience ourselves in life is not so simple and pleasant. It's rather burdensome and complicated most of the time. So one of the reasons that's why we should not be so quick to be judgmental toward each other.

We don't often see the whole picture of someone's life—we don't even see the whole picture of our own life. So life from the inside feels random and incohesive.

It's like walking purposelessly in circle or in a maze. Although you haven't been to the corn maze, you can imagine going through like, whoo, maze. To find the exit, but it's hard. You know, we thought there was simplicity in life. We thought somehow, if we discovered the order of things and their pattern and we worked hard at it, we would live happily now and ever after.

Happiness is somehow a guaranteed outcome for those who follow that order or that pattern. Isn't that what wisdom says? Isn't that what the big chunk of, uh, Proverbs is about? Hey, there is a creation order—the way things are. If you follow it, you'll be happy. If you go against it, you'll be in trouble.

But somehow as we live our life, it doesn't work that way. There seem to be too many exceptions. People with unhealthy lifestyles live long. And people with healthy lifestyles sometimes don't live long. Very recently, one of our Christian Reformed Church leaders, when Joyce and I and Isaac went to Egypt with, his name is Dennis Canada, and he and his wife Jenny joined us, uh, the Egyptian that tour.

I was very impressed with them both as a couple, and they're really fit, and they just recently retired and are very healthy and, like, wow. Then, his brain hemorrhaged, and he passed away.

It's a brain tumor of some sort. Yeah, so, like I said, it's so random. Very healthy, with a very godly, healthy lifestyle. So that life experience from the inside often puzzles us. What's the point of life then? Yes, we realize work or pleasure can be good. Purpose or meaning of life either. Because the more work that you do and the more pleasure that you pursue, it doesn't satisfy us.

In the right place, work. In the right place, pleasure. It's a good thing. But if that's what life is all about, it doesn't seem to be that meaningful. So, the teacher—the Ecclesiastes teacher who tried everything—sighs and says everything is meaningless, like chasing after the wind. If you read the Ecclesiastes, that's what he keeps saying.

What's the point? That sense of cynicism amplifies during transition when we experience major life changes.

We need to be extra careful and patient because we become vulnerable and prone to temptations during the transition. We'll be tempted to either become very cynical or even give up and fall into temptations. So that's sort of the second. The teacher is teaching us perspective on life from the inside, and that's what most people in the world struggle with, from the outside, from the inside.

But then there's a third point of view, perspective, that he is teaching us. He introduced the final and ultimate perspective on life, that is, from the inside. He says this, God has made everything beautiful in his time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

So he's bringing God and his perspective of life.

And God is sovereign, and he's the ultimate, and who is the eternity we are yearning for. And he continues to say, say, I know that everything God does will endure forever. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. And the fear of God, his final conclusion, after meaningless, meaningless, like chasing the wind, this life from the outside or inside, from God's perspective, will never leave.

Fear of God is the beginning of true wisdom. Without that fear of God, yes, conclusions will be very empty and meaningless. So it's like looking at a maze of life from an aerial point of view. And somebody may wonder, how is it possible? It is possible for us to see our lives from above because our God reveals that view to us, through Jesus Christ, who is from above. He came to where we were. He meets us at the bottom and lifts us up. In Him, we can see life from God's perspective. Remember, He is God, became flesh and lived among us, and He taught us how God sees our life. And not only he taught us, he suffered, and he died on our behalf, and he rose again so we can believe in him, and in him we can see life the way that God sees.

We come to see our lives and our world from the perspective of God's love. In Christ, we see God making all things new and beautiful. Every season of our lives then finds its meaning and purpose, and we can go through any circumstances with gratitude and trust in God's good gifts and goodness.

From this point of view, we realize what really matters is not how, but how. what we have, what we possess, or even not even how long we live. It's about how well and how fully we live according to God's calling. Even for someone, and many people who die young, And someone like Jim Elliot, who died at the age of 28 years old, doing mission work in Ecuador.

We can say his lifetime is beautiful. For, as he said, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Again, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. And that echoes, actually, the words of the ultimate teacher, Jesus, who lived, but he also happened to live only 30 years old or so. He said to his disciples, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

So this morning, God's invitation and challenge for us are: Are we looking at our life and other people's lives from what perspective? Depending on what perspective we look at our lives from, we gain wisdom, true wisdom, as the teacher is pointing us to. And that true wisdom resides in Jesus Christ. The wisdom manifested, incarnated, came down to us.

God revealed to us so that we can. see from above in him. So here's a reflection. In what ways can you shift your perspective to see your life from the outside inside and above? And how might this shift impact your understanding and approach to current life challenges?

So, in response to today's words, from those three perspectives of life—outside, inside, and above—when we shift our perspectives of life from those, among those three, how will that impact our understanding and approach to current life changes? So that's something to go home with. As you deal with your own personal, family, and collective life challenges, let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the different seasons of our lives, each filled with unique challenges and blessings. Help us to understand and embrace these transitions with wisdom and grace.

When we are in it, Lord, it feels so disorienting, challenging. But in you, Lord, we can see from above because you will show us what you see. That will give us, Lord, true wisdom and true strength to continue our journey. So as we navigate through life's maze, may we seek your perspective, knowing that you make everything beautiful in its time.

So grant us the courage to live fully according to your calling, trusting in your eternal plan. In every moment, let us see our lives through the lens of your love, finding meaning and purpose in your presence. Guide us to live well, honoring you in all that we do. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Awesome.

Please stand and worship with me.

I confess.

Without you, I fall apart. You're the one that guides my heart. Lord, I need you. You. Oh, I need you every time. I need you. My defense, my justness, oh God. How I need you.

Your grace is more where grace is found where you are and where you are, lord, I am free. Holiness is Christ in me. Lord, I need you. Oh, I need you.

I need you my one defense. My righteousness, oh God. How I need you.

So teach my song to rise to you. When temptation comes my way, when I cannot stand, I'll fall on you. Jesus, you're my hope and stay. And Lord, I need you. Oh, I need you. Every hour, I need you. You are my one defense, my righteousness. Oh God, how I need you.

Seasons of life, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you. And Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace. Amen.