We are in the midst of a short series out of the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is a difficult book. It’s an enigmatic book - mysterious, difficult to interpret and understand. And I think the author - “The preacher”, presumably Solomon, intended it to be a perplexing book… because we live in a perplexing world. If you want plain vanilla, pat answers for the difficulties and bewilderment you face, Ecclesiastes is not for you. But I’d go further, the bible is not for you. Ecclesiastes does give us answers, but not ones you would find on a ten steps to a successful life list. It gives us better answers than that, but we have to want them. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to search it out. 

Solomon uses the phrase “under the sun” several times in this book”. This is where we live, under the sun. We don’t see everything from down here under the sun. There are severe limitations under the sun. Limitations in what we can perceive, in what we can do physically. We experience intellectual limitations and emotional limitations. And it is these limitations along with the deep perplexities of life that give us a sense of the futility of life under the sun. Let me give you an example. Listen to Ecclesiastes 7:15:

In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing.

We all notice this. We see this. Maybe you have experienced this in your own life. Someone you loved dearly died young (relatively) while doing good, living for Christ. And another person seems to live forever, and actually prolongs his life by doing evil. Of course, we know that sin has messed everything up. That’s true. But Ecclesiastes also helps us see some big picture truths that are meant to help us. 

Solomon wrote this book not as a man caught in the vice grip of sin… and therefore is full of bad theology. Instead I think this book is written by an older Solomon who is both humbled and repentant and contains profound and sober theology. We are drawing out some of the main themes out of this book and I think when we see how they are woven together, what we have is joyful and serious help in a fallen, futile, baffling world. Which brings me to our subject today which is God’s providence. People used to talk about providence a lot more than they do now. Now I probably should define what Providence is before moving on and then as we move on. 

Providence is: God governing and ordering all times, seasons, and events in all of his creation according to his wise and holy counsel, for his glory, and the ultimate good of his people. 

This is very different from the “blind watch maker” idea of God. This is the belief of deism. It’s the idea that God made everything and wound it like a clock and set things in motion, and as time goes on, everything is being worked out according to predetermined mechanisms that God has established. That’s not what the bible teaches at all. It teaches the truth of God’s providence. And I would like to suggest that a firm reliance on divine Providence over every season and time of life is the only sure foundation for enduring joy under the sun. The alternative is darkness and distress or unreality to cynicism. 

One of the reasons why the world looks so perplexing and futile and at times deeply distressing to us is because we cannot see all that God is doing. Ecclesiastes 11:5 says, “As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.”

It seems puzzling to us. If you were to put your nose in the middle of a tapestry, all you would be able to see is what is right there at the end of your nose… it might look like a blob or a mess. But if you could step back and see the entire tapestry, you would see a work of wonder and beauty. Life seems puzzling to us, but it is not to God. It’s governed by God who in his wisdom is working all things according to the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11). Verse 1 of our text says,

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the sun…  Ecclesiastes 3:1

In whose hands would you like your seasons and times to be in? The hands of the blind watchmaker? Blind, impersonal mechanisms? Chance? Your own hands? Or God’s hands? I’m with King David, and I think you are too: 

But I trust in you O LORD. I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors. (Psalm 31:13-14)

Our times and seasons are in God’s hands. First Solomon says, “A time to be born and a time to die.” I think we understand this. Did anyone here decide when you would be born? Did you petition heaven for a certain birthdate? No. God did. And in Whose hands is the day of our dying? It is in the hands of God - he is the governor of our birth and death. Our lives are in his hands. Psalm 139:16 says,

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Before you had lived a single day, your days were written in God’s book. The day of your birth and the day of your death. Next Solomon says, “There is a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted”. Whether this is talking about nature and the different seasons or the planting and plucking up of peoples and nations. Either way, God governs these seasons and times. 

Solomon says, “There is a time to kill and a time to heal.” Is a soldier ever killed on the battlefield because the Lord looked away or was napping?  There is a time to tear down and a time to build up. Empires are raised up and torn down and all of this is from the Lord. (Assyria, Babylon, the Persians, Alexander the Great, Rome… and America). 

There’s a time for weeping and a time for laughing… a time for mourning and a time for dancing. And all of these times are in the good hand of God. It’s hard for us to see this… because we live under the sun. Solomon tells us this. Look at verse 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. (v. 11)

We can’t see to the bottom of everything. Ecclesiastes 7:14 says God has made “day of adversity and the day of prosperity,” and we can’t understand why… it’s bewildering to us. We cannot see the entire tapestry. We see with the limitations of living under the sun. We have our noses up against the tapestry. 

BUT we can see by faith the kind of God who is governing all his creation and so entrust ourselves to him with the seasons and times of our lives. What kind of hands are our seasons and times in? 

The hands of inscrutable wisdom

Our lives are in the hands of inscrutable wisdom. The word inscrutable means beyond our ability to search something out. Romans 11:33 says, “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has become his counselor?” to which all of us should be able to say NOBODY! We cannot get to the bottom of God’s wisdom. God’s wisdom takes into account the fact that he knows everything, knows what will serve his ultimate interests best, knows what’s best for us, and knows the best path to achieve the greatest manifestation of his glory and our greatest, eternal good. 

You’ve heard of multitasking, right? I think it’s probably a myth. If you are trying to do three or five things at one time, you are probably doing none of them very well. God is doing billions of things at every moment. And he is able to give all of it the proper attention so that the beautiful piece of art called redemptive history is just perfect. Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon “My Times are in Thy Hand” said,

To have our times in God’s hand must mean not only that they are at God’s disposal, but that they are arranged by the highest wisdom. God’s hand never errs; and if our times are in his hand, those times are ordered rightly. We need not puzzle our brains to understand the dispensations of Providence: a much easier and wiser course is open to us; namely, to believe the hand of the Lord works all things for the best.

In Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian and Hopeful get off the path and eventually fall into the hands of the dreadful Giant Despair and were brought to the dungeon in Doubting Castle. Now, The Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory and in an allegory, every character or location and so forth correspond to some spiritual reality. And so this scene in the book has to do with how Christians can stray and have real bouts with despair and even doubt. Christian had led both he and Hopeful off the path which led to their captivity. Christian was lamenting his foolishness and apologized to Hopeful. Hopeful responded thus, 

Be comforted, my brother, for I forgive thee; and believe, too, that this shall be for our good.

If our lives were in our own hands, or subject to other people or left up to chance, we could never say this with confidence. But you and I may, no matter what we face, because our seasons and times are the hands of a wise Father. 

You might be raising a question (or have before now), “Wait a minute! Doubt, despair, adversity, and even evil are part of God’s providence? How can that be? Doesn’t that make God evil?” 

Yes, all of these things are a part of how God governs the seasons and times we live in. What we see throughout scripture is that all of these things - times of birth and death, times of planting and plucking up, times of war and peace, and so forth advance his good agenda. Let me tell you about Joseph. 

Betrayed by his brothers. Sold into slavery. Father thought he was dead. Put in prison. Do you know how long Joseph spent in slavery and prison before being promoted? Thirteen years! Now, he lived under the sun like you and I. Do you think he was ever perplexed by what was happening to him? Did it seem futile? Was he ever discouraged? But at some point, he saw through what his brothers did. He saw through what Potiphar's wife did. He saw through being forgotten in prison for a couple extra years and saw what God was up to. When he revealed himself to his brothers as the VP of Egypt, they were scared he would have them executed or enslaved for what they did. You know his response. 

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. (Genesis 50:20)

You meant evil… God meant it for good. And so the writer of Psalm 105 could see through the actions of the brothers, and see what God was doing when he wrote:

When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave. (Psalm 105:16-17)

Did his brothers sell him and send him into slavery? Yep, under the sun that’s what we see. But we also see that Joseph’s times and seasons were in God’s hand for good. This story is for us! It is for our instruction… to help us as we live under the sun. All we see is what is right at the end of our nose pressed up against the tapestry. But God is doing so much more… for good!

Our times are in the hands of unsearchable wisdom. And our times are in…

The hands of redeeming love… 

Of course, the ultimate proof of God’s providence, resulted in our redemption. Jesus Christ was born “in the fullness of time” Galatians 4:4 says, “In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” 

All of the events leading up to his crucifixion - the Judas’s betrayal, Pilate, Herod, the Jews, and Roman soldiers… all of it was according to God’s plan. What all those men meant for evil (the greatest evil the world has ever known), God meant for the salvation of the world. What if God had left it to chance? What if he had left it to the blind mechanisms of a winding clock? Well he didn’t, and I think we are grateful for that. 

God ordered the event of the cross for his glory and our good; and he orders all the events of our lives for his glory and our good - birth and death, mourning and dancing, weeping and laughing. Our loving Father wastes nothing. What if part of the Father’s design for our lives under the sun is to provide perplexity and humility, and to point us away from ourselves to a Redeemer.

How Should We Live? (V. 12-14)

If this is true, our times and seasons are in God’s hands, how should we live. Because some would say, “This belief leads to fatalism… Que sura, sura.” What will be will be. We don’t do anything. NO! How providence and our actions work together, is above our pay grade. But we know that they do work together. We know that we are not robots. You are here today because you got up and came to church. Divine providence says there is more to it than that. Namely God. We are not robots and also we are most emphatically responsible to God to live according to what he has revealed to us (Deuteronomy 29:29). 

I love that place in LOTR, when Frodo and Gandalf are talking and Frodo laments: “I wish it need not have happened in my time” (receiving the ring and the perilous journey, etc.). Gandalf’s answer is a timeless wisdom that we all need to hear. It sounds like it could have fit into Ecclesiastes. He said,

So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

We don’t decide the time and seasons in which we live. That has been decided for us - by God. It has been given to us by God. So what do we do with the time given to us. Solomon tells us. Toward the end of our text, there are four exhortations that I think Solomon would give us. 

1. Fear the Lord. (v. 14) → God’s providence should evoke a healthy fear of the Lord. He is not in our hands… our lives are in his! Our living and dying and everything in between. So we ought to humble ourselves in reverent worship. Which frees us from a thousand other fears, doesn’t it (like dying)?

2. Be joyful (v. 12). I actually think this is the foundation for an undaunted joy. But we need to understand something… I think we often mistake joy for good vibes. We think joy and sorrow are mutually exclusive. Like you have sorrow on a certain day and another day you have joy. But Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6: “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing…” If you can have confidence that God means everything in your life for good, you can have a serious, undaunted, glorious joy under the sun - because God is always good and all he does is good. 

3. Do good as long as you live. (v. 12) - what good has God put before you? This too is part of his providence. He’s put it in front of you to do it! These are the good works which he prepares beforehand that we should walk in them. 

4. Take pleasure in the good gifts God gives you (v. 13). Eat, drink, and take pleasure in your work. Because he truly has given them to you. And these things are to be received as gifts.

So how should we live under the sun? We are called to live joyful and productive lives in the fear of God, enjoying every good gift he gives us under the sun as long as we live, because he holds every season and time in his hands. I want to close with the words of a hymn, written in 1835 called “My Times Are In Thy Hand”. 

My times are in Thy hand; My God, I wish them there;
My life, my friends, my soul I leave; Entirely to Thy care.

My times are in Thy hand; Whatever they may be;
Pleasing or painful, dark or bright, As best may seem to Thee.

My times are in Thy hand; Why should I doubt or fear?
My Father's hand will never cause; His child a needless tear.

My times are in Thy hand, Jesus, the crucified!
Those hands my cruel sins had pierced; Are now my guard and guide.

My times are in Thy hand, I'll always trust in Thee;
And, after death, at Thy right hand; I shall forever be.