Time Is Meaningless without Jesus

I saw this reality clearly in my family life. Our family had a humongous Great Dane named Samantha. She was a wonderful dog, but she came near death several times in her life. She ate gauze, and it wrapped around her intestines. Surgery saved her life. Then she ate my mom’s panty hose, it wrapped around her intestines, and surgery saved her life. Finally we left her in a kennel when we went on Christmas vacation to Georgia, and she got pneumonia. The vet had to put her in a doggy oxygen tent to save her life. My dad did with Samantha something he would have sworn earlier in life that he would never do. He spent thousands of dollars saving that dog’s life! But do you know what happened? Samantha eventually had serious injuries to her back knees so she could not walk. My parents would have to carry her outside to go to the bathroom, and eventually she would just mess herself. So they had to call the vet to come put her down. Through tears they spent their last moments with her giving her things to eat that she liked but was not supposed to have, like chocolate (and tissues—for some reason!). They spent thousands saving her life, but eventually she had to be put to sleep.

Life is a big nonplus. We seek meaning in all of our activities and come away frustrated. What do we do? Where do we turn in this frustration? The frustration of our current existence should drive us to fear God.

Ecclesiastes 3:10-15

Ecclesiastes 3:10 restates 1:13, and thus it gives a negative evaluation to the poem of 3:1-9. God imposed a curse on creation because of Adam’s rebellion, so now we experience burdened toil. Activity and work were not designed to be frustrating, but they are now in a cursed world. Our frustration is therefore a God-enforced burden. But why? What is the purpose? We see God’s intent in the following verses.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 is an extremely difficult verse to understand. People love the verse and quote it, but they only quote part of it. I am not sure they understand what it means. We will walk through each of the three clauses separately to see what they say, and then we will attempt to put them together to see the whole and how it connects with the negative tone that led to this point.

God made everything beautiful—or perhaps it is better to say “appropriate”—in its time. “Time” calls us back to the poem to show that the author is now commenting on these times. The phrase “He has made” refers to God’s initial act of creation, but it can also refer to everything He has done since the creation (Longman, Ecclesiastes, 119). The word translated “beautiful” or “appropriate” means God made everything good and right, so that everything perfectly fits its own place and time. Bottom line, the phrase sums up the poem to show that God is the One in charge of these times and appointed activities. And it sets up what follows. The overarching point seems to be that God has appointed or ordained all of these things as part of His bigger, hidden plan.

The next phrase famously says that God has put eternity into people’s hearts. Eternity here contrasts with “time,” which was used 29 times in the poem (Greidanus, Preaching Christ, 72). We know that life under the sun is not all there is, thus it is absurd to live as if this life is all there is. There is a desire to live forever; there is a desire for more than life under the sun, and there is knowledge of an eternity out there beyond this life.

The final—often-ignored—phrase of Ecclesiastes 3:11 gives the problem: “But man cannot discover the work God has done from beginning to end.” We cannot know or see God’s entire plan or fully grasp it, no matter how much we want to. The limit of man’s knowledge is a major theme in Ecclesiastes, and the purpose of exposing that reality is to drive us to faith in God. We know there is more out there, and we want to know our purpose and our destiny. However, we are still dependent creatures who can only know and handle a sliver of what the Creator is really doing. And if we doubt in any way the truth of that statement, we need to be reminded that, mysterious as it may be, when the Son of God set aside His glory and took on human flesh, even He did not know all the times set by God (Matt 24:36). As Matt Chandler points out, we are like a child in the “why stage” (“Ingredients”). When you tell a child in the why stage to do something, he or she can ask “Why?” into infinity, and eventually you have to say in exasperation, “Because I told you so.” In a sense we cannot handle all of the whys of God’s plan, so He tells us, “Even though you cannot know it all, you can trust Me!”

Here, then, is the main idea of 3:11 and how it fits with the absurdity of life described earlier. We perceive and long for better things than this cursed misery, but we cannot see the full picture, and we must lean on God. We are trapped between time and eternity, and we must trust that God uses the details to work out a grander plan.

Perhaps my favorite movie series is the Star Wars franchise, especially the original trilogy. Imagine if you had no prior knowledge of that series, and I took you into a movie theater and showed you the final scene from The Empire Strikes Back (1980). I showed you the fight between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. I showed you the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke’s father, to which Luke screams like a baby, “Nooooo!” I showed you Darth Vader cutting off Luke’s hand with a lightsaber and then Luke falling down the tunnel and the rebellion retreating. Then I shut the movie off. You would be perplexed and confused, but you would also inherently know there was a bigger plot and story line at play. You would know that there is a backstory you are missing, and you would want to see what happens next because you would inherently know that could not be the end of the story. You had only been shown a sliver of what the director/storyteller was doing in his grand masterpiece. The pain of the few moments I showed you would not make much sense. If later on you got to see the end, and you got to see how in Return of the Jedi(1983) Darth Vader turns away from the dark side of the force and rescues his son from the murderous emperor, then all of the painful details would fall into place. You would see how they were part of a masterpiece that worked out well in the end. There is a resolution that your heart yearned for.

That is the frustration Solomon feels but also the confidence that something more is going on. We have a small vantage point. We are frustrated because we cannot get past the fragmentary image to see the whole picture. We want our lives to matter, and we try to find ways to make that happen. We look to all kinds of pleasures, experiences, relationships, and possessions in vain hopes of making sense of things. But we need to understand a divine purpose and plan were set in motion at the beginning and will work out in the end. There is a sovereign God reigning over all things who not only sees all that will happen but declares all that will happen.

You were made for the Divine and for His purpose, so there should be no surprise that you get frustrated when you turn away from Him. That is the frustration Solomon has been exposing throughout the book. God wants you to be dissatisfied until you come to fellowship with Him. And you will never be satisfied without Him (Begg, “Eternity on My Mind”). Augustine famously put it this way: “You made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they can find their rest in You.”

This tension leads to another carpe diem passage in which Solomon encourages us to enjoy the details of our lives because they are part of this beautiful picture. He says there is nothing better for Adam’s sons than to enjoy good things as long as they live (3:12). Your life is a fleeting mist, so enjoy it while you can. Eat, drink, and enjoy your work because this is God’s gift to man (3:13). As Solomon said in chapter 2, enjoyment of life is a gift that God gives to the one “who is pleasing in His sight” (2:24-26). Again the question must be asked, Who pleases God? The answer is that none of us do because we have all sinned, but Jesus Christ is the well-pleasing Son who never sinned but took God’s wrath against our sins on the cross, so that by means of faith we might become pleasing and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, only those who believe the gospel can rightly enjoy God’s blessings as God intended instead of turning the blessings into idols.

Resting in Christ and being reconciled to God through Him, we are satisfied in the Creator and enjoy, rather than worship, created things. So drink deeply of life as a gift from God. Cuddle your children, learn to fish, hit a golf ball, teach a class, eat a fattening dessert, work out, spend time with your family, and so much more as a means of worshiping your Creator (Driscoll, “Peering Over the Loom” and Chandler, “Ingredients”). Our middle daughter Emma will say to us from time to time, “I’m so thankful to be part of this family.” Solomon says to drink deeply of those moments because they do not last forever. Enjoy everything that is happening around you as part of the loving plan of your heavenly Father.

Solomon concludes by saying that whatever God does endures forever (3:14). Nothing can be added to or subtracted from God’s work in the world. God’s plan cannot be changed, and He has a specific purpose for His plan and even the frustration we feel. It is to cause people to revere Him. This is key in Ecclesiastes. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and it is the key to alleviating the frustrations of life trapped between time in this cursed existence and eternity. There is no use trying to change the past, the present, or the future. God uses all of this tension, frustration, and burden to drive us to Him. It is a sign of God’s goodness. He knows there is no such thing as happiness apart from Him, and He wants us to learn that.

Some might object, “I don’t like that.” We do not like the limit of human knowledge or the mystery around what God is doing. Some may even say, “Why will God not make Himself more clearly known?” Begg replies, “God is under no obligation to cater to your intellectual curiosity. You cannot pull a string and make God dance for you. He only caters to the contrite of heart” (“Eternity on My Mind”). We must revere Him!

Christians love Romans 8:28 and the promise that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. But Paul assures us that means we will experience famine, peril, nakedness, and other pains. God uses all of these to conform us into the image of Christ (Rom 8:29). So Solomon and Paul call us to trust God and be confident that His plan is good. He knows all of your days, and He is sovereign over the details and seasons of your life. He mixes the good and the bad—the joys and the pains—together to make something beautiful. We often do not like that. We would rather pick and choose. Let me have the good only, Lord, and none of the bad! He does not allow us to pick and choose because He loves us too much to allow us to turn into Veruca Salt (Chandler, “Ingredients”). She is the girl from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory(1971) whose daddy caters to her every desire. She wants the golden goose, and if she does not get what she wants, then she will scream and pitch a fit. God loves us too much to allow us to become spoiled brats. He uses both pleasure and pain as part of His plan to conform us into the image of Christ.

Now some of you may be thinking, as you look from your earthly vantage point, How could what happened to me ever be beautiful? Not that! Not what happened to me. God lovingly tells us we are too close to see the big plan, but we can trust Him. He has us, and He has your pain that seems like a jagged piece of glass, and He says that once you can step back and see the stained-glass window, you will see that it is gorgeous (Chandler, “Ingredients”). Yes, it hurts, but yes, God has you, and you can trust Him.

This reality shoots our life through with meaning. God does not abandon one second of our life under the sun (Eswine, Recovering Eden, 134). He fits each part—even the smallest of parts—into the whole. This is the God who turns evil into good. This is the God of Joseph, a man who was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, and wrongfully imprisoned, but who then became a ruler in Egypt. God used all of the mess that happened to Joseph to put him in a position to save the world from famine. When his brothers were afraid he would exact his revenge now that he had a position of power and their father Jacob was dead, he said to them, “You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result—the survival of many people” (Gen 50:20).

While we live in this cursed existence east of Eden and long for the Redeemer promised in Genesis 3:15 and hope to once again have access to the tree of life, we know something better is out there. And in this context the Bible tells us about our God, that “when the time came to completion” (Gal 4:4), God sent His Son Jesus into this cursed world to experience all of the times and seasons that we do. There was a time for Jesus to be born, a time for Him to heal the sick, a time for Him to build up, a time for Him to tear down long-held structures, a time for Him to party with sinners, a time for Him to weep at his friend’s grave, and a time for Him to die. He entered into this miserable world to take on all of its pain and suffering. He took the curse on Himself so that God could turn the evil of the cross—wicked men murdering the Son of God—into the salvation of the world. Romans 8 tells us our lives fit into this same plan, where joy and pain ultimately bring us into conformity with Christ.

Ecclesiastes 3 says that God appointed the seasons, and Ephesians 1:10 tells us that all things will be summed up in Christ. There is a reason God wove the seasons into the fabric of creation. There is a reason why there are seedtime and harvest. There is a reason there are winter and spring, and it is not so that we do not get bored. God created the seasons to point us to Christ. So when we look outside in the literal dead of winter at trees with no leaves and barrenness all around, we know that in a few months or even weeks everything will spring to life again. God wove winter and harvest into the fabric of creation to show humanity that Jesus would be raised from the dead and make all things new. All of the times of our lives and the seasons point us to find our rest in Him because He is the One working out the ultimate plan to make all things new!

Perhaps “Turn! Turn! Turn!” did not get the feel of Solomon’s words just right, but they did get the final note right. They end where Solomon’s poem ends, with “Shalom,” and they say it is not too late. Indeed! May the Prince of Peace come and set all things right.