Seasons
Sermon Audio
Sermon Notes
Last week we had a great week where we celebrated our 1 yr birthday as a church, and one of the ways we celebrated was by meeting a need in our city. We don’t want to get complacent as a church now that our 1st year’s behind us, instead we want to keep loving Jesus and loving our city. So we heard about a need in our city from The Covenant House, which is a place that houses homeless and runaway children and teens with the hope of reuniting them with their families. We heard they had a huge need for socks and underwear, so we set a goal to raise 60 pairs of socks and 60 underwear on our 1 yr birthday, and we not only met that goal, we far exceeded it. We raised over 150 pairs of socks and 110 underwear which far exceeded that goal, so let’s give God praise this morning!..We have a person in our church who works at The Covenant House and she was literally in tears over the generosity of our church meeting this need. So thanks for loving Jesus, thanks for loving our city, and let’s keep doing that so more people can come to know the love of Jesus. Let’s keep reaching people, reaching the world.
Now as for today, today we’re continuing our series on the book of Ecclesiastes called Life Under The Sun. It’s called Life Under The Sun and it’s all about learning how to enjoy today, as we look forward to tomorrow, and regardless of the season of life we’re in. We want you to learn to enjoy today, as we look forward to tomorrow, regardless of the season of life you’re in, and every single one of us is in a season. Every single one of us in this room is in a season. Some of you are in a good season, some a bad season, but every one of us is in a season, and the way you view your seasons, will affect your joy in those seasons. The way you view your seasons, will affect your joy in those seasons, and today we’re gonna talk about viewing your seasons in a way that allows you to find joy in every season. So let’s turn our bibles to Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 and get into it. The title of today’s message is, ‘Seasons.’ It’s called Seasons, and you can find joy in every season, because there’s a beautiful reason, for every season.
Context:
Here’s your context. Last week we learned that Solomon’s the author of Ecclesiastes, and he was a man who accomplished a lot in life, who knows a lot about life, and who writes this book toward the end of his life. He’s writing this book as a wise, old man who wants to teach us a few things about life, and in Ecclesiastes ch. 1-2 we learned that he denied himself no pleasure, which we know is historically true. We know Solomon had sampled all the pleasures on the menu of life, and in ch. 1-2 he teaches us that it’s all vanity. He says it’s all vanity, everything life has to offer is vanity, if there is no eternity. He says we’ll never find lasting purpose, joy, or satisfaction until we find it in an eternal relationship with God. He says it’s all vanity, if there is no eternity, if we don’t have an eternal relationship with God, and today he’s gonna teach us to find joy in every season, because there’s beautiful reason for every season. Let’s check it out.
The Word:
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 states this, “For everything there is a season...” He says ‘for everything there is a season,’ meaning everything you experience in life has a season. It has a season, and because it has a season it means it has a beginning and end date. It’s what makes a season, a season. It’s that they don’t last forever, they have a beginning and end date. Solomon’s saying our seasons of life are like the weather. Just like winter, spring, summer, and fall don’t last forever neither do our seasons of life. It’s all just a season. So how’s your season?.. How’s your season?..What kind of season are you in?..Is it a good season or a bad season?..Is it an easy season or a hard season?..Is it a season of clarity or a season of confusion?..Is it a season of faith, or a season of doubt?..How’s your season?..How’s your season?..Look some seasons are gonna last longer than other seasons, but regardless of the season you’re in, Solomon’s teaching us that every season has a beginning and end date. He’s teaching us it’s all just a season, and you can find joy in every season, because there’s a beautiful reason for every season.
Again vs. 1, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die...” He says there’s a time to be ‘born,’ and a time to ‘die,’ meaning just like our seasons have a beginning and end date so do our lives. Our lives have a beginning and end date. On everybody’s tombstone there’s a beginning date, a birthdate, and there’s an end date, an expiration date. But if you ever look at a tombstone, there’s also a little dash that separates those dates. It’s a little dash that’s supposed to represent your entire life and all the different seasons you experienced in life between those two dates. Solomon’s about to talk about the various different seasons we experience in that little dash called life.
Again vs. 2, “A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.” Look here’s what Solomon’s saying, he’s saying the seasons are changing. He’s saying the seasons we experience in life are constantly changing. So his 1st point is that there’s a season for everything and those seasons don’t last forever, they having a beginning and end date. But his 2nd point is that the seasons are constantly changing. It happens to all of us. Our seasons are constantly changing. One day the car’s fixed, the next day it’s broken...One day you feel in shape, the next day you feel like a Twinkie...One day you’re caught up on emails, the next day there’s more...One day you feel valued at your job, the next day you don’t...One day you have hope and pursue your dreams, the next day you lose hope and have shattered dreams...One day you’re single looking for a spouse, the next day you’re saying ‘I heart you’...One day your loved one walks toward you, the next day they walk away from you... One day you feel happy, the next day you feel sad...One day you feel close to God, the next day you don’t. Our seasons are constantly changing. They’re constantly changing, and personally I don’t always like it when the seasons change, especially if I’m in a good season. I like the good seasons, I want to stay in the good seasons, and so my tendency is to read these verses and treat them like a buffet where I get to pick and choose which season I want. You want to be born? “Yes please. I’ll take some of that.” You want to die? “Nope, I’ll pass. I still have a lot of things I want to see like my boys growing up and walking my daughter down the aisle. Actually that one can wait”...You want to laugh? “Sure, I like laughter. I’ll take a scoop of laughter.” You want to weep? “No thanks, I’m on a no weeping diet. Trying to cut back on the weeping..” Isn’t that what we do? Don’t we want to treat the seasons of life like it’s a buffet?
See at a buffet you get to choose what you want and don’t want, and if you notice none of us ever go for the things we hate, we go for the things we love. I mean I’m not going for the veggies, I’m going for the bacon, chorizo, and prime rib. The only time I’m going for the veggies is if it’s deep fried okra! If it’s not deep fried I’m not eating it. Yet this is exactly how we treat our seasons of life. We want to be able to pick and choose what seasons we want and get all angry with God if non-fried Okra ends up on our plate. We get all angry with God if He allows us to go through a tough season. But what if your tough seasons are actually an act of God’s grace and love for your life?..What if, just what if your tough seasons are actually an act of God’s grace and love for your life?..I mean if it were up to us all we’d ever choose is the good seasons, but it’s the tough seasons that’ll actually stretch us, grow us, even teach us to appreciate the good seasons. You can’t be stretched if you’re not put in situations where you need to be stretched. You can’t grow if you’re not put in situations where you need to be grown. You can’t appreciate the good seasons, if you’re not put in situations where you’re facing a tough season. One of my mentor’s once said, “Too often Christians pray for God to grow their faith or the faith of their children, but they don’t want to go through the tough seasons that’ll require them to have faith.” Matt Chandler once said, “No one wants to eat flour, but everyone loves to eat cake. But you can’t have cake without the flour.” It’s the tough seasons that’ll stretch us, grow us, even teach us to appreciate the good seasons. I heard all kinds of people complaining about losing power during the hurricane, and you know what they said? “Sure makes me appreciate having power.” It sure makes me appreciate having power. But it took a storm in their life, it took them losing power in their life to get them to appreciate the season of power they had. Sometimes it takes a storm in your life, sometimes it takes a tough season in your life to get you to appreciate the good seasons in your life. Sometimes it takes a storm, a tough season to get you to realize you can’t fix yourself, you can’t fix your own power grid...you need God to fix it, you need God to fix the mess of a season you’re in. It’s all an act of God’s grace, because it’s all under the submission of God’s grace. All our seasons are under the submission of God’s grace, and God’s grace is working to make every season beautiful in its time. You can find joy in every season, because there’s a beautiful reason for every season. God’s grace is working to make that happen, it’s working to make every season beautiful in its time, which Solomon’s gonna talk about next.
Vs. 9, “What gain has the worker from his toil? 10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time.” There’s our big idea, there’s the big idea of the message. It’s that there’s a beautiful reason for every season. It’s that God’s made ‘everything beautiful, in its time.’ So our seasons have a beginning and end date, they’re constantly changing, and they’re also being made beautiful in its time. They’re being made beautiful in its time. “Yeah but Pastor I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that because my seasons don’t always feel beautiful.” Listen I’m right there with you. I’m right there with you. There’s been plenty of seasons in my life that haven’t felt beautiful. I mean I’ve hurt financially, I’ve hurt relationally, I’ve lost friends who were shot and killed, I’ve lost friends who were hit by cars and killed, I’ve had to do the funeral of one of my best friends, a funeral of one my best friends newborn babies, even speak at my own mother’s funeral, and there was nothing that FELT beautiful about any of those seasons. None of the tough seasons I’ve ever been through in life have ever FELT beautiful, so I’m right there with you on this. I wrestled a bit with this part of the text, but as I wrestled I realized 2 things about the text.
First I realized the text never says our seasons are gonna FEEL good, it says they’re gonna be MADE good. It never says our seasons are gonna FEEL good, it says they’re gonna be MADE good. It says God’s MADE everything beautiful, meaning some seasons aren’t gonna start off beautiful. It’s why God has to MAKE them beautiful. The reason God has to MAKE them beautiful is because some seasons are just flat out ugly. They are, and so God has to do a work on those seasons to MAKE them beautiful. The 2nd thing I noticed is the phrase ‘in its time.’ It states that God’s made everything beautiful ‘in its time,’ and if you’re in a difficult season right now it just means it’s not time for you to see the beauty of that season yet. But ‘in its time,’ you’ll get to see that beauty, you’ll get to see the beauty of what God’s doing in your seasons. You’ll either see it in this life, or in eternity, but either way you’ll get to see the beauty of what God’s doing. Solomon never says our seasons are gonna FEEL beautiful, but he does say God has MADE them beautiful, in its time. You can find joy in every season, because there’s a beautiful reason for every season. And in its time, you’ll get to see that beauty.
Again vs. 11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart...” There’s the reason your soul’s never satisfied. I talked about this last week. This is the reason your soul’s never satisfied, why the things you chase after in this world never give you lasting purpose, joy, or satisfaction in your life. It’s because God’s placed eternity in your heart. He’s placed eternity in the heart of the non-Christian so they’d wake up and realize there’s something more to this life than what this world has to offer and that something more is God. As a non-Christian your heart will never be satisfied until you place it in the hands of God. It takes an eternal God to quench your eternal thirst, and He’s placed eternity in your heart so you’d realize that and turn your hear over to Him...For the Christian, He’s placed eternity in our hearts so we’d always remember to worship Him as Creator instead of His creation. If we’re discontent and dissatisfied in the season we’re in, it’s a clue we might be worshiping something in creation, rather than Him. Whatever that thing is, God’s grace is reminding you today that He’s far greater than His creation. In fact some tough seasons we experience in life are because of this sin, it’s because we’ve chosen to worship other things rather than God. Sometimes He’ll let us wrestle with a tough season until we reject our sin, repent of our sin, stop worshiping other things, and turn to worship Him. It’s all an act of grace. He’s put eternity in the hearts of both the Christian and the Non-Christian as an act of grace, so we’d realize we can find joy in every season, when that season is done in relationship with Him. You can find joy in every season, because there’s a beautiful reason for every season, when that season is done in relationship with God.
Again vs. 11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Solomon, one of the wisest men to have ever lived, says we don’t know what God’s doing from ‘beginning to the end,’ we don’t know what God’s doing in our seasons. He says there’s just some things we’re not gonna know this side of eternity...Several years ago I was on vacation with my family in Pensacola, and for whatever reason the beach was extremely crowded that day, we had a hard time finding a place to park. But eventually we found a spot, we got out of our car, and started walking with the kids towards the beach. Now my son Noah was 6 at the time, and when he saw the beach he entered a season of joy and started running towards the beach. But what he didn’t know, what he couldn’t see from his limited 6 yr old perspective, was the devastation awaiting him around the corner. It was a car speeding in the parking lot. So I immediately grabbed him, pulled him back, and saved his life. I pulled him back from a season of joy where he was running to the beach to literally protect him from a season of devastation. What he didn’t know, I knew, what he didn’t see, I saw, and what you don’t know, God knows, what you can’t see, God sees. God knows it, He sees it, and sometimes He’ll pull us back from a season of joy to protect us from a season of devastation. Sometimes He’ll do it to stretch us, grow us, teach us to appreciate the good seasons, even to convict us of sin. But sometimes He’ll do it to protect us from a season of devastation which means sometimes you’re not gonna get that job, that raise, that promotion, that degree, that boyfriend, that girlfriend, that teacher or athlete of the year award because God’s protecting you from what you can’t see. You think those things will bring you a season of joy, but God knows they’ll bring you a season of devastation, so as a loving Father He pulls you back to save you from that season of devastation. He can see the entire parking lot, He has an eternal view of the parking lot of your life, and what you don’t know, He knows, what you don’t see, He sees. The question is, do you trust His view of the parking lot?..Do you trust His view of the parking lot?..Do you trust in His sovereignty, or in yours?
Look personally I’m in a tough season right now. I’m in a tough season where I’m wrestling with God on a few things. But it’s in those tough seasons that I’m constantly reminding myself of the character of God. I’m constantly reminding myself that God’s all knowing, He’s all loving, which means He knows what’s best for me and He’s always gonna do what’s best for me. I’m constantly reminding myself to trust His view of the parking lot, not my own. The reason Solomon can say everything’s made beautiful in its time, is because He trusts God’s view of the parking lot, he trusts that God’s sovereign grace is working to make every season beautiful in its time, despite the fact from his limited perspective, he can’t see what God’s doing from beginning to the end. Solomon trusts God’s eternal view of the parking lot. The question is do you?..Do you trust God’s eternal view of the parking lot? Do you trust in His sovereignty, or in yours?..
The Big Idea:
Let’s get to the big idea. Here’s the big idea. You can find joy in every season, because there’s a beautiful reason for every season...You can find joy in every season, because there’s a beautiful reason for every season...So how’s your season?..How’s your season?..How’s the season of life your in?..Solomon teaches us in his wise old age that regardless of the season we’re in, we can always find joy in every season because all our seasons have an end date, and God’s sovereign grace is gonna make it all beautiful, in its time. The reason you can find joy in every season you face TODAY, is because God’s sovereign grace is working to make everything beautiful tomorrow. But most of us don’t tend to view our seasons like that, we don’t tend to have an eternal view of our seasons. I told you at the beginning of this message that how you view your seasons will affect your joy in those seasons, and most of us don’t have an eternal view of our seasons, instead we tend to view our seasons too closely, we tend to focus too closely on the current season we’re in and it robs us of joy. It robs us of joy because as soon as we face a tough season that tough season becomes all that we know. So we need to take a step back, adjust our view, and view every season through the lens of the joyful eternal season ahead.
Look life’s a lot like a crocheted blanket. If you look too closely, all you’ll see is a bunch of chaotic knots and holes. It’s just a bunch of chaotic knots and holes. But if you take a step back, if you adjust your view, then what you’ll see is a detailed, intricate, beautifully designed blanket that’ll keep you warm. Up close it’s just a bunch of chaotic knots and holes, but far away it’s a beautifully designed blanket that’ll keep you warm. Jesus is a kind and merciful God who saw the chaotic knots and holes of our lives, and he came not just to give us an eternal view, but also to weave himself into those chaotic knots and holes. He came to live, die, and rise again for our sins, so we can enjoy an eternal relationship with him, where he’s weaving all the chaotic knots and holes of our seasons together into one giant blanket of grace. Somehow, someway at the end of your life, when you enter eternity, Jesus is gonna make it all right, he’s gonna make it all beautiful, he’s gonna weave all your seasons together into one giant blanket of grace that’ll cover all your hurts, pains, sins, scars, sufferings, and tough seasons never to return again.
If you’re a Christian this is the eternal season you have to look forward to. If you’re not a Christian Jesus came to offer you the gift of that eternal season. The way you receive that gift is by repenting of your sins and believing Jesus died for your sins. But apart from him, apart from Jesus, none of our lives or the seasons of our lives will ever make sense or have lasting joy. God placed eternity in all our hearts, so we can realize that only He can quench the eternal thirst for joy in our hearts, only He can make eternal sense of our lives, only He can turn the chaotic seasons of our lives into a giant, joyful, blanket of grace. So let’s all take a step back, adjust our view, and turn to Jesus so we can view whatever season we’re in, through the lens of our eternal relationship with him, and all the joys that’ll come because of him. It’s only because of Jesus that everything’s being made beautiful, in its time. You can find joy in every season, because there’s a beautiful reason for every season, when you’re doing those seasons in relationship with him.