August 12 - Ecclesiastes 3 - "Turn, Turn, Turn"

MPC 12th August 2018.

Phil Campbell

My neighbour Mark said to me the other day, we were at our street pizza night, he said, time's been funny this year. Faster than every. Can't believe we're into August already.

Know the feeling?

Here we are this morning at the most famous words in Ecclesiastes: chapter 3; one of those bits of the bible you'll find printed on tea-towels. Or embroidered and hanging in lounge rooms. And the opening words are a poem. All about time.

As you heard, it's even been a pop song. Back when some of us were younger. And thanks again to Craig and Jan and Alan and Judy. Fantastic.

In the original Hebrew, so my commentary tells me, it's the longest set of lines with internal half line parallelism in the whole Old Testament. Fifteen pairs of opposites stacked one on top of the other. With a series of positives and negatives arranged in a pattern.

Positive, negative. Born, die.

Positive, negative. Plant, uproot.

Then negative-positive negative-positive negative-positive negative-positive. Four pairs.

Followed by the opposite order. Positive negative positive negative. Four pairs.

Then two sets. Negative first.

And two sets. Positive first.

Carefully shaped and crafted. A poem about time. That's got a rhythm a like the swing of a pendulum.

It's a poem that stands back and looks at the seasons of life. And says, it's all going to roll around, whether you're ready or not. There's a summary in verse 1. "There's a time for everything - there's a season for every activity under heaven." And then it spells those seasons out. That are coming. Ready or not.

All part of the cycle of life under the sun.

All part of time taking its course. Which in some ways is a comfort. And in other ways is kind of scary, isn't it?

Because here's the problem. It's the first of three key problems in the chapter.

THE TIME PROBLEM

We'll call it the time problem. Because in the end, it's like we're just along for the ride. Not in control. The times roll around whether we're ready or not. It's time pulling the strings, and not us. And from our point of view, things just unfold in front of us. And there's nothing we can do to stop it. A time for war whether you like it or not; a time to tear down whether you want to or not.

Just a sample of the opposites life's made out of that time brings, ready or not. It's like the teacher is looking at life and he says, Time rolls on, it brings the good, it brings the bad. so what are you going to do about it?

Albert Einstein wrote to Michele Besso's widow, a few days after his colleague had died. Einstein says this:

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

But is it?

I was reading a review the other day of a book by Carlo Rovelli called The Order Of Time. And he says the nature of time is one of the greatest remaining mysteries of both physics and philosophy. He says almost every great equation in physics can get by without it. Like Einstein's E=mc^2. Timeless. He says there's only one fundamental equation which has time as a variable. But it's a big one. The one I mentioned last week. Second law of thermodynamics. Disorder. Always increases with time. Energy. Always dissipates with time. Everything. Turns to dust. Given time.

And so Rovelli says, even though Einstein's quote got famous, he didn't actually believe time's just a persistent illusion. He says, he was just trying to stand outside of time and offer words of comfort. To a grieving widow. Smacked in the face by the second law of thermodynamics.

So back to our poem. And its conclusion. Which brings us back to exactly where we started last week.

Remember it? We're reading this book by a guy who calls himself the teacher, and at the start of his book he raises the question. Chapter 1 verse 2.

What do people gain from all their labours at which they toil under the sun?

And after he looks at time and the kind of things that are just going to happen around when the time comes; beyond our control. Verse 9, it's back to the question again. No real progress.

What do workers gain from their toil?

You can clock on and you can clock off, you can work over-time, double-time or flexi-time. But what do you gain that you can wrap your fingers around and hold on to? That you can take with you in the end? That's yours to keep?

Because you'll have your times celebrating births and planting and healing and building and laughing and dancing and gathering and embracing and searching and keeping and mending and speaking and loving and peacemaking. But there'll be the opposite times as well.

And maybe sometimes you feel like you're caught in a batch of them all at once. Bereavements, uprooting, demolishing, mourning, scattering. Tearing up. Silence. War.

The teacher says, be encouraged; those times will pass. There'll be brighter days. But at the same time there are the big questions of the meaning behind it all. That we've got to grapple with.

And by the time he's noticed how everything has its season, by the time he's read the births, deaths and marriages in the paper and he's balanced out the weeping with the laughing, he's pretty much in two minds. "What does the worker gain from his toil?" Time just carries you along like a leaf in a stream. So why bother?

THE JUSTICE PROBLEM

Skip a few verses and it gets worse. Problem number 2.

Because verse 16, he turns from births, deaths and marriages in the newspaper back to the front page, and all he finds is corruption. Crooked cops, judges in the pockets of the crime bosses, even banks charging advice fees to dead people. And it's everywhere.

Look what he says. Verse 16. "I saw something else under the sun." Here's what life looks like when you stand back and squint a bit. He says, "In the place of judgement, down at the court house, wickedness was there. In the place of justice, wickedness was there."

If that's life, says the teacher, you'll never win. So why bother?

Look, the teacher resolves that in the next few verses. But we'll come back to that shortly. Because here's problem 3. And we'll look at it first.

LIKE THE ANIMALS

And it gets worse again. Have a look at verses 18 to 22. If you want to have a good look at life under the sun, life in a closed in bubble of this world is all there is; here's where it takes you.

Peter Singer is an Australian born philosopher; now he's a professor of ethics in an American university. Back in the 70s he wrote a book called Animal Liberation. Chapter 1: All Animals are Equal. Including us.

He says "The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval." So if you don't think chimps and wolves and pigs and cows and rats and elephants and persons are absolutely equal - you're primitive.

Look, that's nothing new. The Teacher here in Ecclesiastes makes the same observation. If this is all there is in our clockwork observable universe, if what you see is what you get, then man is just like an animal. And genetically, you've got 90 percent of your DNA in common with your cat, 70 percent of the same DNA as a slug. Heck, look, according to the Internet, which is right about everything, 50% of your DNA in common with a banana. Pyjamas or otherwise.

Not news. The Teacher picked it long ago. Read from verse 18. He says,

I also thought, "As for men, God tests them so they may see that they're like the animals. Man's fate is like that of the animals, the same fate awaits them both: as one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath - man has no advantage over the animal - Everything is vapour. All go to the same place; all come from dust, all to dust return."

There's a time to be born and a time to die... and if that's the end of the story, Peter Singer's right, and the Teacher is right as well. You're no different to an animal. You breathe the same breath. You die the same death.

That, says the Teacher, is the test question God puts in front of us. The puzzle. Problem number 3. Dust to dust. No more value than the cow.

And so who knows? Verse 21. Who knows if the human spirit rises upwards and the cow goes down in the earth?

That's the puzzle. If you sense there's actually some kind of difference, if you sense there's some kind of intrinsic value in humanity, how can you ever know for sure?

The Teacher's a pretty chipper kind of guy. He comes back to the point we left him at last week in verse 22, where he says, he's decided in the end there's nothing better to do than enjoy your work and put up with your lot.

Because how can you know? He says, for who can bring a person to see what will happen after them?

Such is our limited perspective.

And look, that's workable. And kind of admirable. And logical. In the face of life's ultimate questions, just get on with life, do your job and be satisfied.

The other option of course, is the people who say the opposite. Which is, if this is all there is, what's the point?

A high schooler posting on the online Reddit Q & A forum asks this question:

I discovered nihilism not so long ago and it made perfect sense to me and I felt that I now live knowing what was most likely the truth. That nothing matters. I try to give myself to my own purpose like people have suggested so I don't kill myself from lack of self worth, but despite all these distractions I give myself the fact that I'm gonna die anyway that it's pointless keeps creeping back into my mind as I do things and I get really bummed out and lazy. Is it just teen angst? Any tips on how to deal with this would be much appreciated.

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING MORE

Look, I hope you're still with me this morning, because I've picked out all the negatives first. The three big problems. And as we've moved through the chapter I've skipped over the hints of a way out. For the Teacher, they're still only hints. But they're good ones. Because there are some tips on how to deal with the temptation of nihilism. And because of Jesus, we're much better positioned that even the teacher was with all his Old Testament wisdom.

So I want to go back for a second pass. And pick up the threads.

ETERNITY

Here's hint number 1. Because in the end, we are different to animals. In a most significant way.

And that is, we've been hard wired to grasp after eternity. In a way that your average cow just isn't.

You won't catch a pig daydreaming about the mathematical concept of infinity or the extent of the universe or of time before time began. Or what happens after us. But we do. Because we've somehow been built with a little splinter of eternity in our hearts.

Doesn't matter who you are; doesn't matter how much of a sceptic. You don't have to be an Einstein. And you mightn't do it very well. But you've somehow been designed with the ability to tangle with the big ideas of eternity. Late at night under the stars. Or in the small hours lying awake in your bed. So here we are carried along by the times and the seasons and the mourning and the dancing, here we are going round and round the circles of time - and we've got eternity in our hearts. Why is why we're never satisfied. Because we know in our hearts there's something more.

And so when in the 1940s Arthur Stace was shuffling around the streets of Sydney chalking the word eternity on the footpath in his copperplate script; time after time there were people who saw it say they were confronted. Head back and read verse 10. He says,

I've seen the burden God has laid on men. He's made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart... yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

We've got a sense of it. There's something about life that points to something bigger. That says there's more. There's eternity in your heart. But it's just too big to get hold of. We can't fathom it from beginning to end.

COMING JUSTICE

Here's hint 2. That injustice he was talking about. Back in verse 16. The wickedness in the place of judgement and justice.

Notice what he says in verse 17? Because he's got an inkling as well that out beyond the times to mourn and the times to dance... that beyond all that... verse 17, there's going to be a time where the injustices get balanced.

I said to myself, "God will bring into judgement both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed."

There is a time for everything; a season for every activity under the heavens; and so there's going to be a time for God's judgement too. Which means what you do matters.

FIND SOMEONE WHO KNOWS

That's the teacher's instinct, anyway. And yet so obscured. By the fact that he's got no answer to those two questions at the end. Which give us hint 3. Or to at least know where to look for an answer.

Who knows if the human spirit rises upwards and if the spirit of the animal goes into the earth? And who can bring a person to see what happens after them? Verses 21 and 22.

They're meant to be rhetorical questions. With the answer, Nobody can.

But what if someone could?

I'm not talking about those sort of near-death experiences people have with the bright lights and the tunnels. They're near death. I'm talking about well and truly dead. And come back to talk about it? What if, for example, there was a resurrection? What if there was a comeback. From the other side of death?

We were watching Harrow the other night. Forensics drama on the ABC. A guy sits up alive on the slab in the morgue. Which was a scary moment. The paramedics hadn't picked up his vital signs.

I'm not talking about that guy. The fact is, hundreds of years after the Teacher, the New Testament says Jesus came; claiming to be the Son of God. Worked miracles. And saved the biggest one until the end.

And if that's true, then we've got an answer to the Teacher's questions. And a confirmation of his best suspicions as well. About judgement. About eternity.

The disciple Thomas was a normal bloke, and when his mates tell him they've seen Jesus alive again when he's been dead three days, Thomas says the normal thing. He said, "You guys are kidding me. When you're dead, you're dead."

He's gone down in history as Doubting Thomas. But I reckon you'd have said pretty much the same. I know I would.

John chapter 20 verse 25, he says,

Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

Not going to just casually believe a claim like that. Because if it's true, it changes everything.

But a week later, Doubting Thomas comes face to face with the facts. Face to face with the risen Jesus.

Who says, "Stick your finger here. Put your hand in the spear hole in my side. Stop doubting. And believe." John chapter 20. Read the whole thing for yourself sometime.

Because I want to say to you, if you've looked at the evidence about the resurrection of Jesus and believed, it's going to make a huge difference in the way you look at your life. And the way you live it. And the way you find contentment and not despair. And the way you find a longer view in the midst of all the cycles of time that are going to catch up all of us.

Because he's the one who says, if you believe in me, you'll live. Not just now. But for eternity.

That if you trust me, I'll lift the threat of God's anger from you. And take it on myself. So when that time for judgement comes; you'll find I've already taken it for you.

It would be tragic, wouldn't it, to hear that offer. And then reject it. And go back to living and dying no different to an animal. Hints of eternity all around you. And you never figure it out.

Grab hold of Jesus, and suddenly instead of living in a random sort of world where you're just in the middle of a cycle of random good times and random bad times, you can live with confidence. And a real contentment. That all your times are in God's hands. And there's a bigger picture - that might not make sense right now. But one day it will. One day it will.

Table of Contents

THE TIME PROBLEM

THE JUSTICE PROBLEM

LIKE THE ANIMALS

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING MORE

ETERNITY

COMING JUSTICE

FIND SOMEONE WHO KNOWS