Weekly Sermons

God’s Eternal Hand Overshadows Time

Have you ever tried to put together the pieces of a puzzle without the picture on the box, the one that shows what the puzzle will look like when it’s completed?

Read Ecc. 3:1-15 God’s eternal hand overshadows time Let’s Pray!

God providentially manages time V. 1-10

The word translated season is the word zeman, which the Greek Septuagint translated as chronos. You can see the word “Chronology”in there. Everything in the universe has an appropriate chronological unfolding.

The word translated time is the word ‘eth, which the Greek Septuagint translated as Kairos. It refers to fixed and definite events, ‘dates with destiny.’

God’s providential care in our lives throughout time means His divine arrangement of details to give everyone opportunity to experience real meaning in life while at the same time factoring in our own and others good and bad choices that have built in consequences.

It’s not that the things like work and sex and amusement in chapter 2 were wrong in and of themselves – they were just never meant to bring meaning apart from God’s purpose for them and His timing and boundaries for their use.

As chronological time unfolds, God providentially brings fixed events into our lives. Our calling is to discern what time it is and make wise choices within time.

God purposefully instills eternal thoughts inside us V. 11-15

God has also established in man an impulse leading him beyond that which is temporal toward the eternal; it lies within us not to be contented with the temporal; we can’t stop thinking about eternal questions.

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” -C.S. Lewis

The word driven away in verse 15 could be translated pursued, followed, chased. It’s used in Proverbs 13:21 to speak of disaster pursuing sinners. All of the sinners life the consequences of their sins have been chasing them down.