The Teacher searches for meaning but he realizes in Chapter 3 that his search for meaning is a search that is conditioned by God’s sovereignty over the affairs of men. Man is a limited being and his search for meaning comes in the context of understanding that God has set the times and seasons.
3:1 picks up where 2:24-26 leaves off. In 2:24 The Teacher admits that his eating and drinking and enjoying his labor is from the hand of God. In 3:1 he expands that thought so as to communicate that all of our living comes from the hand of God as God has designated times and seasons under the sun for His purposes. As pure enjoyment stands not in the power of man, much rather is a gift of God (2:24). God bestows or denies man according to God’s will, so in general all happens when and how God wills, according to His own ordained plan comprehending all things which man can neither completely understand nor in any respect change. God does this so that man should sense his dependence upon God and learn to fear God.
To often 3:1-8 has been taught as a text that communicates our needing to order our own lives according to what we determine are proper times. Also it has been taught that we have to determine when the proper times are ourselves. Before my study of this passage I was guilty of this misreading. Indeed, in the notes of my Bible I have inscribed,
“Our prayer should be that God would give us wisdom to be able to discern the appropriate times.”
But 3:1-8 is not about us. These are not prescriptions but descriptions of God’s work. To read the text as if this is a list of prescriptions is to miss the whole thrust of what the Teacher is conveying. The Teacher is communicating that there is one who has ordered the Universe in such a way that all that comes to us as covenant keepers can have meaning. It is not a totally random world where we are the ones imposing meaning on the world. The world comes with ordered meaning because God has given everything a season and all times a purpose.
We can take great encouragement from this. There is a structured order to the life of man, even when it involves
sickness (3), death (2), and war (8); for, in spite of the curse, God does not permit the world, and man’s life in it, to fall into complete chaos. He makes sure there are times for birth (2), health (3) and peace (8) as well.
So while man is to learn from this and order his days aright because of this description of God’s ordering the Teachers primary purpose is to emphasize the perspective of the God Who “orders” every single aspect of man’s life and actions.
I submit to you that the fact that 3:1-8 is not about us — about our needing to order our own lives according to what we determine are proper times is seen in vs.2.
“A time to born … a time to die.”
All would agree that none of us determine the time of our birth, and I would contend that not even the person who commits suicide and rushes into God’s presence un-summoned determines the time of their death.
Vs. 1 then makes it clear that what is said in vs. 1-8 is not about our necessity to figure out when we need to do one thing or another but is about how God ordains all things.
So in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 we find words which covenant-keeping man may read for understanding and encouragement, while covenant-rejecting man in his state of alienation from God is estranged from their meaning.
“… To every purpose under the sun”
The purpose here being spoken of is not man’s purpose but God’s purpose. God marries times and seasons to His purposes and the Teacher recalls here that God is the one who has ordained the times and seasons to accomplish His purposes.
Man has very little control over the comings and goings of God’s seasons. From verses 2-8 we have God’s time stamp; indicating His times of change, of direction, of progress, and no man can touch the clock on whose minute and hour hand these times are marked.
Covenant keeping man finds these words comforting because it reminds us that our times are in God’s hands. These words remind us that there is rhythm and meaning to life because God is the one who is purposing the times under heaven. Life is not coming to us by time plus chance plus circumstance and life is not spinning out of control when our purposing under heaven does not come to fruition.
The Teacher saw that, notwithstanding the vanity which so broadly marked all human life, there was a partially discovered method underlying everything. Things that seemed to come by chance really came by arrangement, and all the irregularity of life was only on the outside. Considered from a macro point of view all of life comes to us by the hand of God who is the one who regulates all of our times. The covenant keeper finds his sense of equilibrium and stability in this truth in the seasons that we mark off as adversity.
However, Covenant rejecting man finds these words exasperating and hateful to his desired sovereignty. These words stand as a rebuke to men who would be as God, — men who would structure all reality according to their fiat word. These words are hateful to the covenant rejecter because they remind him that they live in a world that is conditioned and controlled by God. Their times are not in their own hands but remain in God’s hands.
In these words the teacher provides comfort for the covenant keeper but at the same time these words are a javelin slung at the heart of the Idolatrous worldview of the covenant rejecter. He must live his life in submission to God’s ordering.
Still, the covenant rejecter as always tried to ascend to the most high in this matter of controlling the times.
Rushdoony reminds us,
“In ancient paganism…humanistic man sought to govern time by means of rites whose purpose was to control time and nature. In fertility and chaos cults, men believed that they could make nature fruitful again, wipe out past history and sins, reverse time and order, and regenerate themselves, nature, and history.”
That this remains a goal of modern covenant rejecting man is seen in Aldous Huxley’s novel, “Brave New World,” where man seeks to take up God’s predestinating purposes in regard to running the world. Huxley reveals to us that man wants to be the one who determines the “time to be born.”
“The Director of the Centre (the D.H.C.) conducts a group of new students, as well as the reader, on a tour of the facility and its operations — a biological version of the assembly line, with test-tube births as the product. They begin at the Fertilizing Room, move on to the Bottling Room, the Social Predestination Room, and the Decanting Room. Along the way, the D.H.C. explains the basic operation of the plant — Bokanovsky’s Process — in which one fertilized egg produces from 8 to 96 “buds” that will grow into identical human beings.
The conditioning that goes along with this process aims to make the people accept and even like their “inescapable social destiny.”
The Social Engineering done today by way of science and politics is just another example of covenant rejecting man seeking to throw off the reality that God is the one who has given everything a season and God is the one who has given a time for His every purpose under the Sun.
As we consider the list in 1-8 we would do well to remember that these are not listed from a moral point of view. The vantage point that is taken up is of the God who disposes all things and who can take even the adversity that He ordains and makes it subservient to his plan.
1-8 also reminds us that as there are God ordained times so there are fitting human reaction to those times. God has made us in such a way that no one emotion is in and of itself evil.
God has made the time to weep, and the time to laugh. He has made the time to mourn and the time to dance. He has made the time to embrace and the time to be aloof. The time to speak and the time to remain silent. The time to love and yes even the time to hate. No human feeling is in and of itself wrong. The error lies not in the emotion but in the marriage of the wrong emotion to the wrong time that God has ordained.
Ill. — Nietzsche’s lie that Christianity is a killjoy religion is a demonstrable falsehood because God gives times to laugh.
In vs. 9 we see a repeated idea from back in Chapter 1:3 where the search was to find meaning in work. 3:10 returns to the theme of 1:3 — The Burden of God and points mnen to God’s covenant faithfulness with a reference back to God’s doing in God’s time (vs. 10). So, the profit that a worker does or does not have from his labor as part of the God given task that God has given can be anchored in the reality that God has made everything beautiful in its time. God has made it beautiful in its time. However, if we cannot find the satisfying good in the events and affairs of life, that is because God has put eternity in our hearts. (vs. 11)
This idea of eternity in our hearts is the Teacher reminding us that God has placed in each one of us a impulse that leads us beyond the temporal to the eternal; it lies in our nature not to be contented with the temporal, but to break through the limits which it draws around us, to escape from the bondage and the disquietude within which we are held, and amid the ceaseless changes of time to console himself by directing his thoughts to eternity.
The idea of eternity in our hearts reveals that for men created as the Image of God that which is temporal cannot satisfy. We are made for something higher and grander than the temporal, though having a place, cannot ultimately satisfy what we thirst for. We are beings limited by time but in our innermost nature we were made for eternity. That which is temporal has just enough of the eternal in it to cause us to sigh for the eternal which will remind us of the Temporal.
So, everything is beautiful and appropriate in its season from birth to death, from war to peace (11). If we cannot find the satisfying Good in the events and affairs of life, that is not because we could devise a happier order for those events (though we often think we could) but it is because God hath put “Eternity in our hearts,” as well as time, and did not intend that we should be satisfied until we attain an eternal good.
The fact that we are time bound is emphasized again in 11b. We are creatures that are created in time. We can not get out of our time to know what God has done from beginning to end. We want to know. We are like people who are in a long play. We have our part and we think we know where the play is going but the curtain falls on our part before we can see all that God as the producer and director of the play is doing.
So, while we can’t know God’s beginning to end, we are called to rejoice and do good in our lives. We can not control the times. That is God’s doing. But we can enjoy the times that God gives and do good. We can live our lives then in light of eternity. This is what we are called to do throughout Scripture. Since our times are in God’s hands (Ps. 31:15) we are to bless the Lord at all times Ps. 34:1.
And in terms of the doing good … well, as we say repeatedly that is found in God’s law,
David could say,
“My soul is consumed with longing for your law at all times.” (Ps. 119:20)
“Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly [i.e., at all times] do what is
right.” (Ps. 106:3)
With this in mind Paul writes, “Be careful, then, how you live —not
as unwise – but as wise, making the most of every opportunity [i.e., redeeming the time]….” (Eph. 5:15)
In 14-16 the teacher makes some concluding remarks for this section.
Implicit contrast between God and Man — vs. 14
One purpose of God’s doing — vs. 14 (Fear God)
Nothing new under the sun — vs. 15 (cmp. 1:9)
God will judge
The covenant keeper has been judged in Christ.
Grammar:
Original: “TO often 3:1-8 has been taught as a text that communicates our needing to order our own lives according to what we determine are proper times.”
Edit: “TOO often…”
Original: “So while man is to learn from this and order his days aright because of this description of God’s ordering the Teachers primary purpose is to emphasize the perspective of the God Who “orders” every single aspect of man’s life and actions.”
Edit: “So while man is to learn from this and order his days aright because of this description of God’s ordering(COMMA), the Teacher(APOSTROPHE)’S primary purpose is to…”
The group of words before the comma is a dependent clause, and when dependent clauses open a sentence, they must be separated from the main clause with a comma.
Original: “All would agree that none of us determine the time of our birth, and I would contend that not even THE PERSON who commits suicide and rushes into God’s presence un-summoned determines the time of THEIR death.”
Edit: Not even the person who commits suicide… determines the time of HIS death.”
“The person” is singular and the pronoun must reflect that.
Original: “…are a javelin slung at the heart of the Idolatrous worldview of the covenant rejecter.”
Edit: “idolatrous” Idolatrous would be an adjective, not a proper noun and shouldn’t be capitalized.
Original: “Still, the covenant rejecter AS always tried to ascend to the most high in this matter of controlling the times.”
Edit: “the covenant rejecter HAS always tried”
Original: “The Burden of God and points MNEM to God’s covenant faithfulness”
Edit: “and point MEN to God’s”
Original: “So, the profit that a worker does or does not have from his labor as part of the GOD GIVEN TASK THAT GOD HAS GIVEN”
Edit: Is this intended to be redundant?
Original: “That which is temporal has just enough of the eternal in it to cause us to sigh for the eternal which will remind us of the Temporal.”
Edit: The very last “temporal” is capitalized, but there is no clear reason for it.
Original: “And in terms of the doing good … well, as we say repeatedly that is found in God’s law,”
Edit: “as we say repeatedly(COMMA), that is found in God’s law(PERIOD?).”
The comma separate the opening dependent clause from the main clause. The period is questionable because I wasn’t sure whether you were trying to connect it to the next sentence. If so, leaving the comma would result in a comma splice. It could be a semicolon, or connecting words could be added.