A Time for Every Matter

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, you can take out your copy of God’s word and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter three on Unbelievable on one hand that we finally got here unbelievable. I suppose on the other hand that It’s been my fault. It’s taken so long to get here in some ways You know, it was just last Sunday that we finished up chapter 2 in some ways. I feel like it’s been so long since we’ve covered the end of chapter 2. It’s almost like I feel like I’ve been out of the country. Wait a second. I have been out of the country. So what seemed maybe like a normal week to you seemed like a really long period of time to me. I did have the opportunity to talk, give the 128th ministry report. That’s one of the things that we regularly do at the elders retreat, and it was so much my joy to be able to tell them how much growth we see in all of our lives, lives of the leaders, lives of junior hires, lives of high schoolers, excited about the signs of grace in so many lives. So that was fun. It’s great to be back even though for most of you

probably didn’t even miss me in the sense of not really realizing that I was gone and that’s okay.

But regularly I’m asked by other people, you know, how far into Ecclesiastes are you? And then I tell them, well, like I answered the question this week, well, we’re gonna start chapter three. And then they say, now when did you start Ecclesiastes? Then I say something like a long time ago. And then I realize it’s good to keep going. So we move into chapter three this morning, in particular chapter three verses one through eight. And before we get to that, I was having a conversation with Jim Martin this morning at Elders Prayer. And we were kind of talking about the fact that it seems like the book of Ecclesiastes is almost wasted on youth. It’s almost wasted on those of you in junior high and high school because a lot of you don’t have the kind of life experience to be able to kind of resonate with the frustration here. In many ways, I at least can think of ways that you guys as students and and as children and families, and many of you do have jobs as well, I at least feel like I can think

of ways that you can, you know, kind of experience this level of frustration that Solomon is describing, and yet I mentioned even in my introduction to the book of Ecclesiastes that in a lot of ways this seems best addressed to old people who have spent their life banging their head into the wall over and over and over again who have spent their life searching for emptiness or at least searching for satisfaction but only finding emptiness.

And so again Mr. Martin and I were talking about that this morning and about how in many ways it seems like the message here oftentimes could be wasted on youth and yet who is this book primarily addressed to. Deut’s. De young people’s. De peeps. This is addressed to, I mean, everybody as it’s God’s Word. It has application for everybody what whatever stage of life they’re in. But let me remind you before we move into chapter three of a couple verses near the end the book. Look at chapter 11 verse 9. Rejoice, O young man, in the days of your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Look at chapter 12 verse 1. Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth. I mean, this is wisdom that the preacher is sharing with us for the young people’s. And even today as we move into chapter three, this is a worldview kind of passage. If you haven’t been getting in

in the first two chapters, some changes to the way you think about life, life under the sun, then you’re missing the point of what the preacher is trying to give us. And especially as we move into this new paragraph this morning, I think we find here some critical worldview kind of issues. This is a paragraph that must get into your perspective on life. must be the at least part of the lens through which you look out at everything that happens in your life and in the life of others. Now this is a paragraph that sticks out. In fact, let’s read chapter 3 verses 1 through 8, and I’ll make a couple comments on the paragraph.

For everything, there is a season. Turn, turn, turn. And you know what? It’s not the Beatles. I thought that for many years and it’s the birds. B-Y-R-D-S, the birds sing this as a paragraph. How many of you know that song by me saying turn, turn, turn? I don’t think the turn, turn, turn is here, but there is a season, turn, turn, turn. So anyway, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to seek and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to cast away. A time to tear and a time to sew. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate.

A time for war and a time for peace. Now this is very clearly its own paragraph, but in noticing that it’s its own paragraph it really sticks out like a sore thumb. At the end of chapter two, I mean all of chapter two has pretty much been prose, right? It’s been, you know, more like a letter almost or like a message and this clearly sticks out as being poetry. I mean he started off with some poetry back at the beginning of chapter one, but then Again it’s been prose. It’s a completely different kind of writing here. Clearly this is not prose in chapter 3 verses 1-8. You’ve got the parallelism, you’ve got kind of the cadence going on.

In Hebrew there is some alliteration at times. There’s also assonance which is where the words end the same or sound the same at the ending. sound the same at the beginning, sound the same at the end. You see that more clearly in Hebrew. The constructions are very similar. So this is poetry. As such, it sticks out from the paragraph that comes before and the paragraph that comes after it. But not only just in its kind of writing that its poetry doesn’t stick out, it also sticks out, at least, on an initial reading based on its content. In fact, go back and look at the paragraph We looked at the last couple weeks 24 through 26 in chapter 2.

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also I saw is from the hand of God for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment for to the one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner, he has given the business of gathering and collecting only to give to the one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. Now pick up at chapter 3 verse 9 and see how well it would have just flowed.

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in his time. He has also put eternity into man’s heart yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceive that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live, also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. This is God’s gift to man.” What an amazing similarity and connection then between chapter 3 verses 9 through 13 and probably even 14 and 15, back with the end of chapter 2. And really, as I was studying and reading over this and trying to figure out how everything goes together, in a lot of ways, not only because it’s poetry, but even from its content, chapter 3 verses 1 through 8 sticks out. I mean how in the world is chapter 3 verses 1 through 8 related to the paragraph that comes right before it? And how in the world then is it related to the paragraph

that comes right after it? In fact, the book ends there, the paragraph before and the paragraph after would have been better if they’d been smushed together and then this poem would have put someplace else. At least initially that’s what we might conclude. So what we’ve got to find out is what in the world is this paragraph doing here? If Solomon had all this wisdom that God says he has, if Solomon arranged all those proverbs, not necessarily every one of the proverbs in the book of Proverbs, but he was responsible either for writing or for collecting and gathering and organizing so many of them. If Solomon could do that, then don’t you think by this old part of his life he’d have figured out, you know, to keep his thoughts together?

Is this poem just stuck in here because, you know, he thought, well, I don’t have anything to do today. Maybe just write a poem and then I’ll stick that poem in right here. I don’t think that that’s the case. I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think that it very clearly is connected to what comes before it and what comes after it. And in fact, I really think it establishes something that verses 9 through 15 are going to explain further. In fact, I would say that verses 24 through 26 of chapter 2 kind of introduce us to a subject, that then this poem establishes, and then next week we’ll see hopefully verses 9 through 15 that Solomon explains. And let me give it to you. I think that chapter 3 verses 1 through 8, Solomon establishes a sovereign God worldview. That’s the point here of this poem. Solomon establishes a sovereign God worldview. And then next week we’ll see that Solomon will explain the sovereign God worldview.

You cannot escape, I already mentioned it, the idea of worldview, but you also cannot escape. In the paragraph we studied last week about joy being a gift from God coming from the hand of God, You cannot escape who is in control at that point. And by the way, it’s not you or me.

God is the one. We work. We hope to find enjoyment in the process. But ultimately, we’re not the ones who can guarantee that we get joy. We’re not the ones who can guarantee success of our work. God is the one who is in control of all that. He picks up on that theme again, starting in chapter 3 verse 9. It’s God who is the one who gives this gift of joy. It is God who has been doing these certain things in man’s heart, giving him this idea of eternity and yet keeping men from understanding all of his plans and design and detail. God is very much sovereign and in this poem we’re kind of, you know, we’re able to take a step back and kind of enjoy the different writing and the beauty even that is the poem. But what it does more than anything else is establishes a sovereign God worldview. Two words in that phrase right there stick out to me. The first one is sovereign. This is all kind of introduction to the paragraph. Sovereign, and that is exactly what we don’t like. That is exactly the kind of dust that gets into our nostrils that

makes us sneeze. That’s exactly the kind of Ipecac that we drink that makes us puke. I won’t keep trying to think of more illustrations for that, but it is this not being in control that causes us so much frustration and disappointment and bitterness. And this paragraph, this poem, establishes God’s sovereignty. We talked about his sovereignty the last couple weeks. And I’m telling you, I know for sure that at least one person in here has had trouble grasping the fact that God is in control even in the toil. That was me. So I know for sure that even though I’m the one who studied the passage, preached the passage, I still had trouble thinking that it applied to me.

I’m anticipating that maybe some of you are in a similar situation. That you read the paragraph, you know, it’s from the hand of God, apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment. How How many of you tried to eat or drink or find enjoyment apart from the hand of God just in the last week? Some of you are humbly raising your hands. You don’t have to do that. The fact of the matter is, even though we know it, somehow we think it doesn’t apply to us. We can read it. We can think about it. We can marinate on it for a while. And yet when it’s done marinating, it’s time to get back to work and get our own enjoyment from what we’re doing.

And the fact of the matter is, we need to have the fact that God is sovereign in everything established more for us, and that’s exactly what the preacher is doing. We try to, seriously, there’s nothing better for a person, that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also is from the hand of God. Maybe I can also get it from someplace else. For apart from him, who could eat or who could have enjoyment? Well, is that really true? For to the one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner He has given the business of gathering and collecting only to give to the one who pleases God.

Are you sure? Is there really no escape clause here? No getting out of jail, collecting your $200 or however that goes? Everything in chapter 3, at least verses 1-15, is meant to establish and explain that God is in control and sovereign over absolutely everything. Look at verse 1, for everything there is a season and for every matter and a time for every matter under heaven. Who is the one who is determining that? For everything there is a season. Says who? And a time for every matter under heaven. Who is the one who is apportioning those times? Who is determining the seasons? Who is that? It’s not me, and it’s not any of us. Verse 2, a time to be born and a time to die. How much control do you have over either one of those things? That’s right, that would be none. Good answer.

Absolutely no control do you have over times and seasons, over your own beginning of life and end of life. Look at verse 10. I know it’s not in our paragraph, but I have seen the business that God has given. Verse 11, He has made everything beautiful in its time. That everything looks back to verse 1 and the everything there. Now it’s just telling us the actual subject. It’s not suggesting us, suggesting who the subject is. In verse 11 it’s explicitly telling us, also, he has put eternity into man’s heart. Look down at verse 14, not only is God in control of everything, he’s in control of everything forever. I perceive that whatever God does endures forever, nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it so that people fear before him. It is all about a sovereign God worldview. It is about having a perspective on life that cannot escape from this God who is in control of every element at every time forever right in the center. And I tell you what, if you don’t have that kind of

God, a God who knows what’s going to happen because he’s planned it and has the strength then to carry it out. If that kind of God is not at the center of your life outlook, your perspective, your worldview, then there is going to be no other possible conclusion for you but vanity and striving after wind. Frustration, disappointment, irritation. We are under somebody else’s control. We are not sovereign. This paragraph, this poem establishes that. So again, one word, you know, as I’m giving you the point of the paragraph, Solomon establishes a sovereign God worldview.

One of the words that sticks out to me is sovereign, the other one is worldview. It’s important for me to clarify that this is not a prescriptive passage. This is a descriptive passage. In other words, this passage is not giving us a bunch of imperatives for us to figure out what we are to do and the right time to do it. This is a paragraph that describes what God is doing. I think I can prove that to you. Do you need to try to figure out the right time to be born and then be born at that time? No. Do you need to figure out the right time to die? And you’re like then morally obligated to die at that appropriate time? No. This is descriptive of things out of our control, not prescriptive of what we need to try to you get in control of. For example, do you need to try to figure out the right time to lose? A time to seek and a time to lose down in verse 6. Is there a time where you are morally obligated, it’s the right thing for you to do to lose, you know, your sheep or your banana clip for your

hair or you know whatever it is that you lose. Is that right for you to try to figure out how to fit into when it’s time to lose and then to lose? No. Again, some of the other ones we might see as you know rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep, yes. There’s another passage that talks about the appropriateness of our actions, but this is not giving us a command or an imperative, this is giving us perspective. This poem is not looking at life from our vantage point to try to figure out what we should do. This is a paragraph that’s giving us a perspective on what God has planned for our lives at his right time. He is the one who is in control here and maybe you’ve heard the the abbreviation OOC. What’s that mean?

Out of control. I’m gonna add another one. O O O C. Out of our control. Life. Ready for this? your life is not in your control. Even as I say that, somewhere deep down inside something goes, no! Something says that’s wrong. That’s not what we’re told by commercials. That’s not what we’re told by most of the books that we read. We are told that life is, our life is in our control, and we can be who we want to be. In fact, we can be all that we can be. And the idea is you just make the right choice, you make the right decision at the right time, and you will control your destiny, your life, what happens to you. And the fact is you nor I are in control of anything. Now, we act like we are. And I mean, in a certain sense, God has given us, you know, responsibilities.

But bottom line is, I can’t make anything happen. I can’t guarantee that anything will come as a result of what I do or what I don’t do. Can’t guarantee it. I am not in my own control and and neither are you. God is in control. And because of that, this is a perspective that we need. We must establish or have established in our own minds and in our own worldview that we are not in control that God is. And I tell you the biggest reason why that’s so important. This is not just an element of theology. It is. It is, it’s huge theology.

God understanding of God studying God himself proper his you know power and strength and plan and all that more than just an issue of theology this is an issue of joy if you do not have established in your worldview that God is sovereign you will not have joy not lasting joy not meaningful joy your life will be joyless and full of dismality. If your worldview doesn’t have a sovereign God right at the center. If you do not have a sovereign God at the center of your worldview then your life will be filled with frustration because who will be at the center of your worldview? It will be your sovereignty and your control. And if your worldview includes what you can do to control your life, day day after day, you’re going to get to the end of day and go, wow, if I’m in control, I really stink.

I really do a pretty bad job of being in control if I am in control, like, I’m not doing a good job. I’ll try better tomorrow. And then at the end of tomorrow, it’s no better. And after a few years go by, you will have nothing but frustration at your total inability to control your life. And if you look at life, your perspective on life, your worldview has you at the center and you at the decision making, you know the control panel of life. You’re going to be ending with frustration, with disappointment, with anger, with bitterness. And you are going to do everything you can to buck the system, trying to establish yourself as the determiner.

The fact is, as this poem explains and establishes, you’re not in control.

On the other hand, if you do have a worldview with a sovereign God, the sovereign God at the center, then you have a perspective of submission to the sovereign God. And if you have that kind of submission and trust in the sovereign God, then your joy is actually untouchable, regardless of whether you accomplish what you think you wanted to accomplish. In fact, whether you live or die. Your joy is untouchable if, like I say, the sovereign God is at the center of it. I tell you what, if you are at the center of your worldview, your perspective, your outlook on life, if you are at the center, then when your friend gets cancer, you can’t say or sing, for you are good to me. You can’t at least sing that and mean it. You can sing it as a hypocrite, I suppose. For you are good, for you are good, for you are good to me. I mean, that’s basic lyrics. Nothing complex about that. And yet you will be angry and you will not be able to say, for you are good to me, if you’re at the control panel, control central in your life. You can’t

saying, blessed be your name, you give and take away. If you’re at the center, when then something is taken away that you couldn’t hold on to, you know, and we try, we try to grasp on tight.

But when it ultimately is taken away from you, if you don’t trust and submit to sovereign God, the sovereign God, you can have no joy. Well, let’s look at the poem itself. For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. This is the introduction to the poem. This is the umbrella under which the rest of the poem falls. Everything from verses 2 through them falls underneath this every thing or this every matter. Note the repetition everything there is a season any time for every matter under heaven. And not only then do we have this you know universal principle, you know what does every mean? Well every. It means there isn’t something that is outside of the every. And not only does he then repeat the idea of every twice in verse 1, but then in 2 through 8, he uses 14 different opposites, 14 different polars, different sides, opposites. And that’s actually a common way, even in our own language, but certainly in Hebrew writing, that’s a common way to say that everything is included from one end of the spectrum to the other and everything

in between. Nothing escapes God’s control and God’s sovereignty. Every season, everything that happens is precisely and exactly under the control of one sovereign God. Starts in verse two with the life cycle. A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted. This is not a human life and then moving into the farmer’s job. This is all about life cycle. One is from the human perspective, one is from the plants perspective. Plants have a life cycle too. Plants grow and then plants are uprooted. They die. Plants have a birth date and they have a funeral just like humans do. This verse too, I mean out of all of the other verses, sets the tone of O-O-O-C, out of our control. From the very beginning here, it is not your choice. It’s not up to you. It’s not under your control. It is completely out of our control. When you’re born and when you die. I mean we think that you know none of us have really ever tried to argue that being born is under our control but a lot of us

you know have this idea that when we die is somehow under our control and so we eat our vegetables and we drink our water and we you know run on our treadmills and we do all those kinds of things and yeah I mean God has us as stewards and he tells us there are wise things to do but ultimately I’m not in control. I mean I could be running on my treadmill. I could you know not be paying attention, hit the side, smash my head right on my iPod, poke it through my eye and die. Here I am trying to exercise so that I can live long and prosper and boom the very thing that I’m thinking is going to be under my control, my health, to keep me alive for a lot longer. That very thing could kill me. You know what? The LA marathon was a couple weeks ago. I’ve run a couple marathons hoping to run some more maybe. A couple people were in the LA marathon.

Well I mean probably 20,000 people were in the LA marathon. You know these are people that you would think are like in shape and healthy. And two people actually had heart attacks in the middle of the LA marathon. This healthy thing that they’re doing, two Two people had heart attacks and they died during the race. I mean, and this happens to me a lot when I’m eating a vegetable, I choke on it. Not the kind of choking most of the time that requires the heimlich, but right? I mean, it really is not up to us. It is completely up to God. And in the plants life cycle, this is an inanimate object. This doesn’t have a will or a consciousness to itself.

A plant does not have feelings, ladies, okay? They don’t feel when you prune them, oh. So it’s out of the plant’s control. It establishes that somebody else is the one making the decisions, and it’s God.

Additionally, verse three, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down time to build up. You have positives and negatives. You have things that are desirable and things that are not as desirable. I mean obviously it’s more desirable to heal and to build up than it is to kill and break down. And this is not telling us why the killing is taking place, whether it’s a war, just war or not. It’s not telling us if it’s capital punishment. This is not telling us giving us license to go out and murder people. It’s just saying that there are times in life, you know, we’re so sensitive that, you know, we can’t imagine this happening, but there, as God has determined, throughout history there have been times of killing and there have been times where there hasn’t been killing. There have been times where there’s lots of building and there has been time where buildings are destroyed. Whether this is, you know, literally referring to you know a house or a business building or whether it’s

referring more figuratively to just your projects in life whatever it is all of us have seasons when we’re constructing all of us have seasons when we’re not constructing in fact when we’re tearing things down you know what we’d like to think that all that is up to us and under our control well God is the one who is in control of those seasons and those times. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. I mean, here are our emotions. Do you know that your emotions in response to certain situations are also under God’s control? The first part of verse four is maybe more private. the second half of verse four is maybe more public. Weeping, sadness, laughter or happiness, and then as it’s expressed in maybe public mourning or even dancing, we’re so excited.

And like I mentioned before, I mean, Romans tells us where to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. We do have obligation to be identifying those times and be sensitive, but there are other times in life where, you know, we get news that we’re not in control of that’s maybe happened to somebody else or that relates to ourselves, relates to people in our families, whatever it might be. And there are times when God gives us, you know, the response of laughing and happiness and having fun. There are other times that are more sober and serious and sad. But both are there and both are under God’s control. Verse 5, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. Time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Both of these are connected in that one seems to be kind of getting away and the other is bringing too. So the gathering of the stones or the embracing is a similar idea or the refraining from embracing or the casting away stones is similar.

It seems like best I could tell the casting away stones and the gathering stones, you would gather stones together when you were trying to prepare a field so that you could plant in it. And there would be times when then you would be gathering all the stones in a field together so that you could prepare it and like I say plant things and grow things. You also find, I think it’s in, I think it’s in 2nd Kings. I’ll have to get it for next week. There’s an example of throwing stones out into an enemy’s field to make it so he couldn’t use it.

Or at least it would be more difficult. So for yourself and for your own planting, you would gather them up out of the field and for an enemy, you might throw them out into his field so that he couldn’t use it. Obviously then, as it relates to our relationships, embracing and a time to refrain from embracing. This could be between a married couple embracing and refrain from embracing. It could refer to just more general. You know, there are times when giving a hug is not the right thing to do. God is in control of those situations. A time to seek and a time to lose. This is another example of something, you know, that we put on our calendar, on our task list.

Okay, lose something. Figure out the appropriate time to lose something. That’s not the point. There are times when we lose things. There are times when we’re trying to find things. In fact, it’s really frustrating sometimes when you do lose something to figure out when to stop looking. A time to keep and a time to cast away. This seems probably more like possessions and money when it refers to saving or being generous. There are times for both.

A time to tear and a time to sow, a time to keep silence and a time to speak. A lot of commentators suggest that that relates to mourning and death. Even as Pastor Z mentioned this morning, tear like as in tearing your garments. So when the time of mourning was done to sew them back together. Obviously that seems to go with the keep silence and the time to speak, even as Job’s comforters came and initially tore their clothes and were silent for seven days. And then it was time to speak after that. I don’t know if that’s exactly what it’s referring to, the morning or just more general. But then verse eight, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

Look, as much as we might like to think we’re in control of some of those things, it’s out of our control. Some of these are on a national kind of level. I mean, war and peace is probably more of a national kind of issue and nobody’s asking me. That’s out of my hands, but it’s not out of God’s hands. So think about this. In this poem, we have emotions, relationships, work, money, war, all of those things are under God’s control. In this poem we have public things, private things, social things, national things, all of them are out of our control. We have things being started, things being finished. We have investing, saving, and we have generosity giving. We have friends and enemies. We have fighting and fellowship. We have times for serious and fun. Well, when it comes down to it, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven and the one who determines and apportions those is God. There is a time to be frustrated driving to work when traffic doesn’t go the way that we want. There is a time when the lights

are all green. You know what? It doesn’t matter whether you were a minute late getting out of the house or you were 10 minutes early, you’re ultimately not the one in control of whether you hit all reds or all greens or half and half. This afternoon you’ll go home, you’ll get a call. You are not in control of whether that call brings you good news or bad news. Tomorrow you will go to work or you’ll enjoy your day off and how much you get accomplished and how much you don’t get accomplished, you’ll think is up to you.

Well really it’s just part of God’s sovereign plan. And the point is that we must have the sovereign God at the center of our worldview or there will be no joy. If God is not at the center of your worldview, then getting the call with the bad news cannot bring you any kind of joy on any level. It will destroy you depending on what the depth of the bad news is. Getting all red lights will irritate you and you’ll have road rage if God is not at the center. You’ll be frustrated and unable to sleep with how much you didn’t get done if you’re at the center. And as I close this morning, I do want to say that knowing that God is sovereign does not stop us from being sensitive. It doesn’t stop us from being sad and being glad. It doesn’t stop us from times of rejoicing and from times of weeping.

Knowing that God is sovereign does not stop us from being sensitive, but it should stop us from being so surprised. It should be able to stop us from freaking out about everything. It doesn’t go our way. There’s no reason to be surprised. It’s not that I don’t weep when I find out bad news, but I’m not surprised by it. It doesn’t touch my joy in God. If I’m surprised by it, I’m upset by it, I’m overturned by it. My joy, my life is depending on my control of the situation. I’m always in trouble. If it depends on God, then I can always rest on Him and in Him and look to Him. That’s exactly where our perspective needs to be.

Joy only comes from and in the hand of God. We receive it from him and we hold onto it by being in his hands ourselves. And where are you? Are you trying to hold your life in your own hand or are you trying to submit to the hand of God? God is in control in fact. Last thing I’ll say, whether you like it or not, whether you live this way or not, actually is at the center of the world. A sovereign God is the one who is established to be in control of everything, not you. And if you try to buck the system and get out of that and be in control of your own life, welcome to Vanity of Vanities. All is vanity. That will be your motto for your life.

Unless you again submit to the sovereign God. Father, help us to do that. Give us this worldview, perspective, and outlook that we need. A beautiful poem, but so much more than just its beauty strikes us, strikes us in its comprehensiveness, strikes us in its explanation and establishment.

Reminders of things that we really already should know, that we have already experienced to one degree or another that we’re ultimately not the ones in control you are. Help us submit to you every minute, moment, hour, day, year. Give us the joy from your hand as we live in your hands. We pray this in Christ’s name, amen.