Then in Ecclesiastes chapter number three, the Bible starts out,
to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
So the Bible lists all these different contrasting things and says, look, there's a time for everything.
And one of the things that we need to understand about this is that there's a virtue
in the Bible called discretion. And one of the meanings of discretion is knowing
what is appropriate at the right time. You know, having that discretion
to be able to decide when to speak, when to keep silent, when to do all these other things,
when to plant, when to pluck up that which is planted. We need to have that discretion of knowing
what is appropriate at the correct time. Another thing that we can see here
is that certain things that are right or correct at one time could be wrong at another time.
And a lot of things that we would even think of as, oh, that's always wrong.
Actually, sometimes it's not wrong and vice versa. Obviously, one of the big examples would be at the
very end when he says in verse eight, a time to love and a time to hate. You know, a lot of people
today would just say that hate is bad. You know, hate is not a family value and they would just
condemn all hate. And that's become a buzzword even in my lifetime, because in the 1980s,
this idea was unknown. This idea of hate speech or hate crimes or hate group that did not exist
when I was growing up as a child. Some of you that are younger, you might just take that for granted
that that's just a normal thing. But that is new. I remember when it first came out, I can remember
being a kid and seeing on the news because before they came out with the hate speech, they came out
with the hate crime. And I remember seeing on the news, they said this is a hate crime. And I
remember just thinking that's so stupid because, you know, I guess other people who are beaten,
it's done in love and other people that are murdered, they're murdered in love or other
robberies are done in love. You know, any time you're murdering, stealing and harming people,
you're not showing them love. You're showing hate toward that person. Love is the fulfillment of the
law, you know, and love is the opposite of hate. And so to sit there and say, oh, this is a hate crime,
you know, that didn't make sense to me. But now it makes perfect sense to me because what they're
trying to do is just to say that you have to love everybody because of the fact that they have this
degenerate class of our society known as the LGBT, known to me as fags and queers. And that group,
that segment of the population, you know, they demand that we love them.
You know, it's not even enough for them to just have the same rights as everyone else,
which I don't think they should even have that. I think that they should get the Leviticus 2013
treatment. Amen. But it's not enough for them just to be treated like everyone else. No,
they want to rub all of our noses in their death style and they actually demand that we love them.
We're not even allowed to have another opinion or another viewpoint, lest we be guilty of the
thought crime of hating homos. You know, we can't even feel that way. Can't even think like that.
Or we're going to be condemned by this evil and adulterous generation. And so, you know,
we need to make the Bible our final authority. And if the Bible is the final authority,
then there's a time to love and there's a time to hate. And we should not get this attitude that
hate is always bad and love is always good. You know, the Bible says God is love. But yet the
Bible says him that loveth violence, his soul hateth. God hates all the workers of iniquity,
according to Psalm 5. So does God realize that there's a time to love and a time to hate? Does
he practice that? Yes, he does. And so to sit there and say that God is all love and he loves
everybody all the time, that's a lie. That is not what the Bible teaches. That is a fraud.
But it's a convenient teaching today for pastors to get up and teach that when that's what our
culture is demanding of us. You know, our culture today demands loving all people at all times. So
it's interesting how the theology just kind of conveniently shifts just by coincidence at just
the right time. Whereas in the past, that was not the theology that preachers have taught because
they read verses like this and they understood that, you know what, it's not all peace, peace,
sometimes there's a time for war. Sometimes there's a time to hate. Sometimes there's a time to
embrace and there's a time to refrain from embracing. There's a time to kill and a time to
heal. Modern Christianity wants to just be all healing, all peace, all love, all embracing and
just love everybody. Good God, good sin, good devil, cold hell type of Christianity. And it's,
you know, I'm not, I don't buy into it. I'm not going to get on board with that. You know,
I'm going to continue preaching what the Bible says. And if that causes our church to be labeled
as a hate group or whatever they want to label it, you know what, they can label it whatever
they want. It's not going to affect how I preach. I'm going to keep preaching the same way because
I need to be led by the Holy Spirit, not by a degenerate culture, not by the American empire
in decline, a culture in decline on a bobsled to hell. And so don't buy into the world's philosophy.
Understand that there is a time to be positive and a time to be negative. Now, obviously people
can sometimes go too far in the other direction and you do see people that are just angry all
the time and they're always fighting and they're always at war and they have no peace. You know,
they just want to fight and hate and anger. You know, obviously we need to get these things in
balance. And you know, it says a time to love and a time to hate. Let me tell you something.
The vast majority of the time it's time to love. Time of war and time of peace. The vast majority
of the time is the time of peace. And so we need to understand that obviously even though
there's a time for both, we would emphasize love, emphasize peace, emphasize these positive things.
But the problem is when people just want to go all the way to that extreme
and then have this ridiculous view where they're even going to love the pedophiles and whatever.
I mean, it's absurd. It's insanity. And so we need to make the Bible our final authority.
And this is not just one isolated passage. We could turn to 20, 30, 40 other passages
that would teach the exact same thing about hate and show us God hating ideas, things, people,
places. I mean, and you know, God's people as well. And so that's another sermon that
shall be preached at another time. But there's a time to do all these different things. There's
a time to be born and a time to die. All of us are going to die one day. And this is one of the
main themes of the book of Ecclesiastes. And so that's probably why he starts out with that
thought. There's a time to be born and there's a time to die. Every single one of us will die
unless we happen to be the generation present when the Lord returns. And obviously, statistically,
the chances of that are not very great because of the fact that it's only going to be one
generation that's here when he returns and a lot of generations that aren't. Now, we see a lot of
the signs of the times, and so it's very likely approaching. But that's what they said in the
1970s and the 1980s as well. And so we just need to be patient under the coming of the Lord. And
if he comes in our lifetime, great. So much the better. Even so, come Lord Jesus. But other than
that, you're going to die. And even if he comes in our lifetime, you know, it's going to get a
little hairy there at the end. You might die then too. So therefore, we need to live our lives with
eternity's values and view and not just live a life for ourselves on this earth because it's all
going to end someday. Nothing on this earth is permanent. The things that are seen, all of them,
they are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal. And so there's a time to be born,
there's a time to die, there's a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted,
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. Think about how wrong it would be to do these at the wrong time. You know,
you don't want to go to a funeral and let's say it was someone who died tragically and you're just
laughing and partying and having a good time. It wouldn't really be appropriate if someone's baby
died and basically you're joking around and cutting up during the service. It wouldn't really
be appropriate, right? Now we joked around and cut up a lot at Brother Gregory Davis' funeral
because he did not die tragically. He died of old age. You know, people keep asking like,
how did he die? Old age. That's actually a thing, by the way, okay? It exists. You could be,
you don't have to have a specific illness kill you. You know, your body has a clock in it
and that clock eventually counts down to your death. Even if you don't get a disease or an
illness, you will eventually die of old age. And so that, you know, that was not a tragic death,
but many deaths are tragic. And you know, obviously you would use discretion joking
around with someone who just had a major tragedy happen in their life. The Bible says to mourn with
those that mourn, to rejoice with those that rejoice. We need to have empathy for other
people's feelings. And so it's a time to weep and a time to laugh, 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 get and a time to lose, time to keep and a time to cast away,
time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak.
So we see all of these different times and God is just saying, look, you've got to know what's
appropriate at what time and pretty much at any, everything at some point becomes appropriate.
But if done at the wrong time, it could be wrong. You know, you think about an example of this
because, well, let's go on in the chapter and I'll show you what I mean. But it says in verse nine,
what profit hath he that worketh in that where any labor? So verses one through eight was kind
of like an aside where he kind of changed the subject for a minute and talked about that.
Now he's kind of jumping back to what he's been hammering in chapters one and two. I mean chapters
one and two were very repetitive about this, weren't they? What profit hath he that worketh
in that where he left? What is the point of it all? That's the big question that Ecclesiastes is
asking. You know, what is the point of our lives? Why are we even here? How should we even live our
lives? What does anything even matter? Is it all vanity? And the book of Ecclesiastes is a very
philosophical book. Now, philosophy in and of itself is not bad, but the Bible warns us
of the philosophies of this world and it warns us of, you know, vain philosophy that would
contradict the word of God. But the Bible encompasses a lot of different genres. You know,
the Bible has got historical books, it's got poetry, it's got prophecy, it's got all these
different genres and it has Ecclesiastes, which is sort of the philosophy section. You know,
Job and Ecclesiastes, they're considered poetic books, but they're very philosophical.
And so it's asking these really deep questions like, you know, what is the meaning of our lives?
Why are we here? What's the point? And so we asked this question, you know, what profit hath he that
worketh in that we're into? And by the way, if you read the world's philosophy, this is way better
stuff. By the way, this is a lot more entertaining, a lot more interesting, and it's absolute truth
because the word of God. But it says here in verse 10, I've seen the travail which God has
given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. And we talked about this in the last couple of
weeks, that travail is painful, difficult work or labor, right? And he's saying God has given us
this exercise to do. Now, you know, when I think of the word exercise, I think of basically going
through the motions without actually accomplishing anything. That's what I think of when I hear the
word exercise because think about what does it mean to exercise like going to the gym and
exercising. You're basically going through the motions of various activities, but you're not
actually accomplishing anything. Like here's a machine that, you know, will actually simulate
chopping wood with an axe, but the difference is you're not actually chopping any wood with an axe.
So you didn't actually create firewood or like you get on an exercise bike and you pedal and
you pedal and you pedal and you go nowhere. Now, you know, somebody who wasn't familiar with our
modern world and the concept of fitness and gyms would probably be a little confused at what the
point of an invention is. Hey, it's just like a bike, except you don't go anywhere. It's kind of
like, well, what are we doing here? But isn't that what exercise means? I mean, if you think about
all of these different exercises, you know, you're just lifting something over and over again,
but you're not really building anything. You're not making anything. You're not accomplishing
anything. So that's an aspect of exercise. You know, you go to school and you read the chapter
and then at the end of the book, you do some exercises. But if you think about it,
you're not actually, you know, solving the mysteries of the universe with those exercises
or, you know, when you're not writing a book that's going to be published, you're not, you know,
doing a new scientific discovery. You're just going through an exercise, right? You're just
practicing. You're doing something that doesn't really accomplish anything. It's just for your
learning or for your strengthening. You know, you're getting stronger, you're getting in shape,
you're building endurance, whatever. So the Bible says here that God has given to the sons of men,
and by the way, that's us. Sons of men simply means human beings. He's given us to be exercised
in this travail. So we work hard and sometimes the work is painful,
but we don't actually ever achieve the end goal. We don't actually get to the destination.
Let's keep reading, and I think you'll understand what I mean by that.
It says in verse 11, he had made everything beautiful in his time. Also, he had set the
world in their heart so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning
to the end. Now, verse 11 here is a really interesting verse, a little bit tough to
understand. First of all, let me say this. You know, my Bible right here has a little
number next to the word world telling you like, oh, you know, by the way, it's not really world,
it's eternity. You know, it's just, it's like telling you it's, it's something else. Now,
personally, I believe that the King James Bible is the word of God without error. And so, you know,
I don't like it when people are just these kind of armchair linguists and so-called Hebrew and
Greek experts when really they're not what they're cracked up to be 99% of the time. 99%
of the time these guys don't know the language as well as they let on. And, you know, who knows,
like who's putting that in the column here? Who is that? Some guy at some public, it's probably
just one guy who thinks he's so smart and he's got it all figured out and changes that to eternity.
And that's what a lot of people say about this. They, they just try to change, you know,
I believe that it's correct. Okay. You know, I don't think that there's any issue here with,
with the way that it's worded in English here. It says he had made everything beautiful in his
time. Now doesn't that fit in with verses one through eight, right? And then it says,
also he had set the world in their heart so that no man can find out the work that God
make it from beginning to the end. So what does that mean? God has set the world in their heart.
Now, first of all, if I were to go with this column thing, God has set eternity in their
heart. That actually doesn't really make any sense with the context because if, if God set eternity
in people's hearts, like what does that even mean? Any more than God set the world in their hearts.
When, when I read this and it says, God has set the world in their heart.
The way I understand that is that basically man's desire is never satisfied. And this is
taught elsewhere in scripture that man is never satisfied. It's taught even in Ecclesiastes. It
says the eye is not satisfied with seeing the ears, not satisfied with hearing man's heart
is never satisfied. Man is always wanting more. He wants to know more. He wants to do more. He
wants to achieve more. He wants to own more, have more money, whatever it is that we pursue in life.
We always want more. You know, uh, speaking of exercise, you know, people who they, they exercise
and they get in shape, they don't get to a position. Usually we're like, I'm in shape enough.
They always want more. And then sometimes they go to like crazy extremes where they just have like
this tiny head on a giant body or something, you know, because they go too far and people,
you know, when they get a lot of money, they're not happy with that. They just want more money,
you know? So I think when the Bible says, God has set the world in their heart is basically like,
that's the desire that man has. He wants the whole world. He wants the moon. He wants everything
is the idea here. He wants to know everything. And if we understand with Solomon, you know,
he's not satisfied. He just wants more and he keeps trying to get more things in this world.
So God has set the world in their heart. Now, if he said eternity in their heart, that doesn't
really make any sense because this chapter's context is not about eternity. This context of
this chapter is very clearly about, you know, Solomon's finite lifetime and, and you know,
I'm going to work and then I'm going to die and I'm going to leave this stuff to someone else.
And, and what's the point of life or, or how am I better than an animal? If we both die,
we both turn to dust. That's the context of the chapter. It's not really an eternity
context. And if you wanted to think of like, well, you know, eternity past,
well, the Bible right after this says so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from
the beginning to the end. Neither of those are eternity because something that has a beginning
and an end is something that ends eternal is something that ends eternal. Eternal literally
means not ending. And so, oh, he said eternity in their heart so they can try to find out the
beginning and the end. That doesn't sound like eternity to me. So I think I'm going to stick
with what the King James Bible says, but I was already going to stick with that anyway,
before I even went through that exercise. I'm just showing you that, you know, these people,
they think they're so smart and they know so much more. They don't. Okay. You know,
and this word, the Hebrew word can be translated as either world or eternity. Just like in the New
Testament, the same word means world, eternity. There's a word like that in a lot of languages,
but the King James Bible translators are translating it with what it means in this
situation, in this context, in this usage, in this verse. And see, that's the danger
when people go to the concordance to define scripture where they'll basically, they'll go
to a concordance and they'll look up what that Greek word is translated as in other places,
and then they'll try to insert all of those meanings. That's not the way words work,
because think about how in English we have words that mean more than one thing.
You don't necessarily want to just import all of those meanings. Okay. And sometimes there could
be an English word. It's the same in every other language that can mean two opposite things.
Like how about the word fast? You know, well, fast has a lot of meanings, but one of the meanings
of fast is to do something quickly. You're doing it fast, right? Another meaning is not eating as
a verb, but another meaning that's the exact opposite of quickly, the word fast can mean
stuck in one place, which is the exact opposite of going like, hold him fast or fasten your
seatbelts. I didn't, I pronounced the T there just to make a point. You don't normally pronounce that
T kids. So, you know, fasten your seatbelt and hold him fast, bind him fast. You know,
when it says bind him fast, it's not saying do it real quick. It's saying, you know,
make him stationary, immovable. Okay. So what if you were going back to the English and you said,
well, you know, the English word for fast here, it doesn't just mean quickly.
It also has to do with being stable. So what it's saying is do it quickly, but, but you're,
you know, you're staying at the same speed because it's fast and you don't stop to eat
because fast means not eating. So, you know, you don't stop to eat. You go fast and this,
you stay at the same speed the whole time. You're not going 90 and then 75. No, no, you just,
you're just fast at 87. Now that's, but that's the kind of dumb garbage that you get with this
mentality that says, Oh, and by the way, here's a revelation going to E sword and clicking on KJV
plus is Strong's Concordance in electronic format. And preachers have been doing this
for years where they, this is how they figure out what the Greek word means by looking at,
well, I'm going to look at all the different ways it's translated in the King James. Well,
here's the thing. It's translated different ways because it means different things in
different situations. It doesn't mean all of those things in every situation.
Does everybody see that? So, you know, yeah. Does this word mean eternal somewhere else
or eternity somewhere else? Yes, but not in this context. Here, we're talking about God
has set the world in their heart and world and eternity are not the same thing. It's not like,
well, it's kind of an eternal ish world. No, it's not at all. It's just world. Okay. And you could
look up all the New Testament occurrences, not of this word, but of its Greek equivalent,
which will also mean world. And, and they're translated correctly as world. They make sense
as world and they don't make sense as eternal. So anyway, I just wanted to point that out.
You know, God has set the world in their heart and then it says so that no man can find out
the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. God has created this world in such a way
where it is impossible for you to figure out this world from beginning to end, to understand
everything about it. But yet God has placed into man the desire to know these things.
So you have all these scientists, right? And they have this innate God-given desire to figure
everything out. But it's actually just an exercise because they will never actually figure
everything out. They're always just about to figure everything out right now. They're about
to figure everything out. But a hundred years ago, they were also about to figure everything out.
And a hundred years from now, they'll just be about to figure out. But what it is is that like,
every time it's like when you're climbing a mountain and you think you're at the top.
And then as soon as you get over that summit, all of a sudden it's like, oh, there's another summit.
It's called a false summit, right? And there are all these, you know, if you go hiking,
there are all these false summits and you keep thinking, is this the top? It's got to be the top.
Nope, nope, nope. Well, this is a never-ending false summit when it comes to trying to figure out
the work of God. No man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
You're never going to figure it all out. It's impossible. Now that doesn't mean that we
shouldn't try because God has given this travail unto the sons of men to be exercised there with.
So this is our life. You know, we work, we build things, we're going to clean up this town or we're
going to solve the mysteries of the universe or we're going to do this and that. You know,
obviously God wants us to work and achieve these things and he gave us that desire.
But what we need to understand is that we are not God. And so we need to understand that we are here
on this earth temporarily. Yes, we work hard, whether it's as a scientist or whether it's as
a preacher or whether it's as an electrician or a carpenter or a plumber, knowing that every single
pipe that you install will eventually be destroyed someday. Every electrical wiring that you install
will eventually be completely obsolete and gone. Every building, everything that you do
will eventually perish. That's what we need to understand. So he's not saying don't do stuff,
but he's just saying understand that everything that you do in this world is temporary and we
need to put our mind on spiritual things because spiritual things are the only things that are
going to last. The things that are not seen that are eternal. That's what we need to think about.
Okay, that's the point here of all of this. But the work that God makes from the beginning to the
end, nobody will ever figure it out. You know, mankind, as we grow in scientific knowledge,
what we learn is how little we know. And you know what? The smartest people feel like they know the
least. You can always tell an idiot because they think they know everything. And you can always
tell someone who knows nothing about science when they tell you, oh yeah, the science is settled.
Yeah, there are no outstanding questions with evolution. There are no outstanding
questions with global warming. There are no outstanding questions. We got it all figured
out. It's all settled. You can always just tell this person knows nothing about science. They
don't understand it. They're just blowing up. Isn't it so funny how many people worship science
and literally believe that science is a replacement for God?
Now look, I'll tell you this right now. If I thought that science were the replacement for God,
then you know what? I've learned about science. But isn't it funny how people,
they want to replace God with science and they don't even know anything about science.
It doesn't even make any sense. Come on, that's your God. Go worship it.
This is my God. Okay. And you know what? The Bible has the answers. You know, I would rather
see what this book has to say than the outcome of a science experiment. You know, this is more
reliable. It doesn't mean that science is bad or false. And obviously science does a lot of
things for our society and improves our lives and we can learn a lot. And that's a part of the
travail that God has given to the sons of men to be exercised there with. But let me tell you
something. Science can never replace God because science does not just apply to every area of life.
There's a scope of science. And answering questions about why we're here, where we
came from, that's outside the scope of science. And so as science learns more about the world
and they get down smaller and smaller and they discover the atom, you know, the word
atom literally means indivisible. But yet now we know, of course, that it's made up of smaller
components. And then you get down and you say, okay, we've got the proton, the neutron, the
electron, we're done. We've solved it. We figured it out. Except for the fact that then you have 10
and 20 subatomic particles that are not the proton, neutron, electron, but even smaller things.
And they say that, you know, the protons and the neutrons are composed of quarks, up quarks and down
quarks. Who knew? Right? But who's to say that that's the final frontier? Who's to say that it
doesn't go smaller than that? And they say, well, as far as we know, the electron's indivisible.
Who knows? You got all these other subatomic particles out there. There's a constant
growth in understanding. But the more that we learn, the less we know as a percentage of the whole.
Because, you know, for example, you know, astronomy, we feel like, oh man, we pretty much got astronomy
figured out. And then the last 10, 20, 30 years, dark matter, you know, dark energy is the big thing.
And they're like, turns out that this huge percentage of the matter in the universe
is this dark matter. We don't know what it is. And you know what? Maybe it's not even composed
of protons, neutrons, electrons. We don't know what it is. So it's just like, there's always
something else. It's like, it's like you're never going to reach the end. There's always something
else, always something else. This is what God predicted. This is what he prophesied in the
word of God. This is the way the world works. And it's, that's just science. We can apply this to
any area of life. You're never going to be God. You're never going to understand everything.
You're never going to achieve what you're after. Okay. So you need to understand that our life
is only fulfilled in Christ because all of our human endeavors ultimately will end in
frustration because we're never going to reach the finish line.
We're never going to be satisfied, is what I'm saying. All right, let's move on here.
So it says he's made everything beautiful in his time.
Nobody can find out the work that God makes from the end of the beginning.
I know that there's no good in them, but for a man to rejoice and to do good in his life,
verse 12, and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of his labor.
It is the gift of God. I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever.
Nothing can be put to it nor anything taken from it, and God doeth it that man should appear before
him. Now, why bring that up? Because God is the exact opposite of man in this respect.
So whatever man does, everything that man does is what? Temporary. That's what we've been learning
in chapters one, two, and three. Everything man does is temporary. And when he makes a scientific
discovery, he could be the greatest scientist of all time and come out with amazing discoveries,
but you know what's going to happen in the future? Something's going to be taken from it.
Well, you know, Isaac Newton did great, except this one part,
he was wrong about this. We got to take that from it. And he didn't realize this other part,
so let's add that. So God is the exact opposite. When God does something, he reaches the finish
line. Does everybody understand? We can never figure out the end from the beginning,
but God knows the end from the beginning. And when God writes the Bible, it's not like,
well, you know, it's really surprising for such an ancient book how many things the Bible was
right about. Of course, now we know that this part doesn't apply, so let's take that part out.
And, you know, there's this other part that needs to be added. Wrong. What God has done here in the
Word of God, nothing can be added to it. Nothing can be taken away from it because it's already
perfect. That's why he puts that curse on anybody who tries to add or remove. It's done. It's
perfect. When God does something, he does it perfectly, and what he does lasts forever.
Whatever God does is eternal, the exact opposite of man. Every single thing that we do in life
ends up being temporary. We build a business. We build a house. We build a family. It's all
temporary. Everything God does is eternal. Look at verse 15. Now we're gonna get real deep here.
That which hath been is now, and that which is to be hath already been, and God requireth that
which is past. Now, I believe that this verse is 100% literal. I believe this verse literally,
and I think it implies that this has to be the case. Okay. And, you know, as long as I say this
to people, and they act like I'm weird or I'm crazy for saying this, but it's true that everything
has already happened. Tomorrow has already happened. Next week has already happened. Now,
you might be tempted to look at this and just think, well, this is just kind of talking about
how things are on a cycle, like in chapter one. You know, because chapter one talks about things
on a cycle, like, well, the same stuff that's going on now is the same stuff that was going
on back then, and the same stuff's gonna go on in the future. But, you know, that last statement,
God requireth that which is past, I think, you know, eliminates that interpretation,
because that interpretation doesn't fit here, because he's talking about the fact that, you
know, there is a past that's locked in that is set in stone, and there's a present and a future,
but that the future has already happened. Okay. Now, you know, how does that work? What does that
mean? Well, think about it this way. It's like if you went to a movie theater, right, and, you know,
you can't watch the whole movie at once. You can't just, like, sit down in a movie theater
and just, like, you know, have the movie just be transmitted to you in a moment. Like, you're just
like, whoa, that was a cool movie, and then you just walk out a minute later, and it took you one
minute to go to the movies. You know, you can't do that. You can only experience one second of
that movie at a time, right? So you're sitting in the theater, and let's say you're at, you know,
one hour and 17 minutes into the film. That's where you are, and the movie's moving forward
inexorably. But up in the control booth, there's a reel of film, right? And that reel of film
actually has still images, frames, right? 30 frames a second. So every second, 30 pictures
are coming on the screen, and to us, it just, you know, our brains can only tell if it's slower than
23 frames a second. Anything above 23 frames a second, it just looks like a continuous motion
to us. So, you know, 30 is pretty far from 23, so we can't perceive. You know, it doesn't see,
we're not watching it, and it's, you know, it's all just moving, because that's how our brains
can do it. Now, what if I were to go up into the movie theater control booth and grab that
spool of film and just unspool the whole thing and cut up all those images and lay all those images
down on the ground at once in front of me, right? Let's make it a shorter movie just to make this
more realistic. Let's say the movie's like three minutes long, right? So, you know, I cut them all
up, and I put it, then wouldn't it be possible for me to look at the whole movie at once,
right? I could just look at it, and I see the whole movie laid out in front of me,
because every frame is just there. Now, isn't that how God sees time? God is outside of time.
So for us, we're the guy sitting in the movie theater, so we're experiencing life as it plays
forward, and we don't have any control. You know, you don't go to the theater and yell up like,
hey, can you back that part? That was cool. I want to see that part again.
You have no control. If you get up and go to the bathroom, nothing stops for you. It just
keeps going and going and going. Am I right? That's how life is. That's how we experience time,
because God is the one in the control booth, and so we have no control over time.
But God is outside of time, and so God can see everything at once. That's how God knows the end
from the beginning, and the Bible says that God speaketh of the things which be not as though
they were. So God talks about future events as if they've already happened, because from
his perspective, they have already happened, because he sees the whole story. He sees the
whole thing. So for example, the Bible will use the present tense about things that haven't
happened yet, like in Isaiah chapter 53. He's despised and rejected, or it'll use the past
tense, you know. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. He was wounded
for our transgressions. That's 700 years before he's even born. He was wounded for our
transgressions. So in the Old Testament, they have a scripture telling them that Jesus died
on the cross, and this is why, you know, I was out stolen-ing, you know, like a week ago, and
this guy asked me, well, how did people go to heaven before Jesus?
If Jesus is the only way to heaven. And I said because Jesus is the lamb slain from the
foundation of the world, and because all of history from God's perspective has already
happened, and so even before the foundation of the world, Jesus has died on the cross for the
sins of mankind, because everything has already happened, because God is not cruis- like God
right now is not- it's not like God today is experiencing May 19th. Like there's not a calendar
up in heaven where God's tearing off like, you know, he tore off May 18th, and now it's May 19th.
Okay, because for God, you know, time doesn't exist. God is outside of time. That's why he said
to him, a thousand years is like a day, a day is like a thousand years. You know, God created this
universe. He's outside of this universe in order to create the universe, because he's not part of
the creation, is he? He's the creator. So he transcends this creation, and, you know, the Bible
says in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. You know, so he said, well, what
happened before that? That was the beginning. That's the beginning. So that's a foolish question,
you know, what happened before the beginning? Well, you know, if something happened before it,
then it wouldn't really be the beginning in that sense. You know, and so that's when time- I believe
that that's when time came into existence at the beginning. Okay, and so God has created this world
with a timeline and a clock that's ticking, but he's outside of that. And so when you see things
from God's perspective, you understand that that which is to be- look at verse 15 there. I mean,
what does the Bible say? That which is to be has already been. Next week already happened.
Now from our perspective, it hasn't. So I'm not trying to get weird about that or something,
because of the fact that obviously for us, yeah, it's still in the future. And this doesn't mean
we have no free will, because we still are going to make those decisions next week. We're the ones
making the decisions next week. It's just that we already made them. You know, I've already lived
my whole life in that sense. Now, and you say, oh, I don't think you're right, Pastor. Okay,
then explain this to me. How can God know the future or see the future or look at the future
if it doesn't exist? It has to be there to look at, you know what I mean? Just like if you can
go up and unreal the movie and look at all the frames, the frames have to exist. So in order for
God to see the future, the future has to be there. It has to exist. And, you know, I think if you
just take this verse at face value, that's basically what it says. It basically says that,
you know, stuff that is to be, stuff that's in the future has already happened. And that's how
Jesus is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. So there's absolutely no issue with
an Old Testament saint. This is where it matters doctrinally because you say, why does this matter?
You're just vain jangling. No, no. Here's why it matters. It matters because this is how an
Old Testament saint can waltz into heaven through the blood of Christ. Whereas if you don't have
this, you have all these doctrinal problems where now you have this problem of like, well, how can
an Old Testament saint go to heaven? You know, so then he has to go to like a holding tank.
And he's got to wait and be put on hold, put in limbo, and then he can go. But if you understand
this doctrine, you understand he can go to heaven no problem based on the blood of Christ, or you can
get into an even worse doctrine because the holding tank doctrine is a dumb doctrine, but it's not
really a harmful doctrine. But here's the really harmful doctrine is when you have people actually
teaching what I think is just a damnable heresy that people were saved by works in the Old Testament.
Because I'm thinking to myself, you know, if you could be saved by works in the Old Testament,
why can't you be saved by works right now?
If we're, so, oh, okay, I get it. So in the Old Testament, you got saved by filthy rag.
So the Old Testament is a filthy rag that gets you to heaven. But in the New Testament, it's the
blood of Jesus. Why did Jesus, if righteousness comes by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.
You know, if people aren't good enough to go to heaven now, how could they have been good enough
to go to heaven back then? We're all sinners. We're all doomed. Every Old Testament saint is doomed
without the blood of Christ, right? They got to heaven through the blood of Christ.
They shall be saved through the faith of, we shall be saved through the faith of Christ,
even as they also were. Okay, so Old Testament saints went to heaven by grace through, you know,
well, we're in the age of grace. The age of grace started in the Garden of Eden.
Otherwise, everybody would have gone to hell, because without God's grace, you can't go to heaven.
And so that's why this, you know, understanding this might just seem like some kind of a
philosophical exercise, but understanding the fact that God is outside of time and that the
things that are coming in the future have already happened, the Book of Revelations already happened,
once you understand that, then a lot of these theological problems go away and you can
understand. Of course people could be saved in the Old Testament, because Jesus might as well
have died on the cross, because he did die on the cross for sure in the future, and so, you know,
why can't that payment be applied? It's money in the bank, you know, as far as our salvation is
concerned. And so my mom taught me this as a little kid, you know. My mom taught me, she said, that in
Revelation chapter 7, when the Apostle John looked out and saw a great multitude of all kindreds and
tongues that no man could number, she said he was looking at us because we were in that crowd.
She said, even though here we are talking right now and we haven't even lived our lives yet,
she said someday we're going to be in that crowd and John's already been there, so he actually saw
us. He saw us. I mean, my mom taught me that when I was a little kid, you know, it was a
it's a heavy upbringing, let me tell you. No, I'm just kidding. I had a great upbringing, I'm just
kidding, but it was heavy sometimes. That's the way I like it. Anyway, let's move on. We're running
out of time here. It's a great chapter. This is a really good chapter. And moreover, I saw
unto the Son the place of judgment. Now, how does this flow from verse 15? Well, in verse 15, the
Bible says, God requireth that which is past. And by the way, I think this also debunks this kind of
fatalistic, predetermination, Calvinist type of interpretation, because just because what's
happened in the future has already happened, it doesn't mean God's not going to hold you
responsible, because God does require that which is past, because we're the ones who made those
decisions next week. The sins that you did next week, you know the stuff you're going to do next
week. In fact, you already did it, you turkey. No, I'm just kidding. But anyway, so God requires that
which is past. So what does that have to do with verse 16? Because if you're not careful, you could
feel like Ecclesiastes is just kind of jumping around random thoughts, but it's not. There's a
flow here. It's just not always super obvious. Moreover, I saw under the sun the place of
judgment that wickedness was there. Here's what Solomon is saying. He's saying that God requires
the things that are past. Is God under the sun? And his judgment is perfect. God requires the
things that are past. Human justice under the sun, unfortunately, there's wickedness there.
So just as in verse 14, we had a contrast between whatever man does is temporary, whatever God does
is is permanent. Whatever man does is imperfect. It needs to be added to. Things need to be
subtracted. God does stuff and it's just a done package. It doesn't need anything added or taken
away. Well, also, when it comes to judgment, you know, God's judgment is perfect, whereas justice
on this earth is flawed. In the place of judgment, wickedness is there.
Under the sun, as opposed to what? You know, where God is, not under the sun. And the place
of righteousness, that iniquity was there. You know, what's he saying? He's saying, you know,
you go to church, church is a place of righteousness, but guess what? There's
wickedness there. There's iniquity there. There's no church that doesn't have any sin in it.
You know, even if you went to a church and, man, everybody just seems like they have their act
together and everything seems perfect and everybody's dressed nice. You know what?
There could be some gnarly stuff going on in those homes and in those lives.
And by the way, this is why you shouldn't envy other people and think like, oh,
they have it so good. And I wish I had their, I wish I had their wife and I wish I had their
kids and I wish I had their job. And you don't know what it's like. And if all our troubles
were hung on a line, you'd take yours and I'd take mine. And so, you know, we don't want to
get covetous or envious, coveting your neighbor's wife, coveting your neighbor's house, coveting
your neighbor's ox or his ass or anything that is thy neighbor's because of the fact that, you
know, you don't know what's going on there. And God has given you what you need. He's made a
decision about how your life should be and that's what you've got. So deal with it.
And so, you know, in the place of judgment, wickedness is there. You know, you go down
to the halls of justice and they have all kinds of inspirational quotes on the wall and statues
and flags and it's, you know, your honor. But you know what? Your honor sometimes isn't very
honorable, is he? Sometimes he's on the take, he's taking bribes, he's got ulterior motives,
he's passing wicked judgments. And, you know, place of righteousness, I mean, I would consider
that church, place of church, there's iniquity there. And the workers of iniquity will creep
into the church. There's always gonna be sin, there's always gonna be an infiltrator and some
wickedness. And this bothers Solomon, you know, he doesn't like the fact that church has wicked
people, he doesn't like the fact that when he goes to court, you know, some of the judges are crooked
and all of them are a little bit crooked. If you think about it, because nobody's perfect,
everybody's a sinner, right? You know, when I read this verse, I think of the yin and yang symbol,
which obviously that's associated with a false religion. But you know what the devil does? He'll
take something that's true and he will pervert it and corrupt it. And, you know, it's like the
devil's not very creative or original. It seems like everything he does is like twisting something
that God made. It's like he can't make things original on his own, he can just take what God
does and pervert it and corrupt it. And so, you know, I always thought of that symbol,
you know, because it's showing that even in the place of righteousness, there's iniquity there,
even in the place of judgment, there is wickedness there. That's actually a biblical truth.
I don't recommend that symbol because that symbol is associated with a false religion. And we should
never have any symbols of a false religion because number one, the Bible says abstain from all
appearance of evil, you know, and we don't. And number two, you know, we don't want to take up
the names of other gods in our tongue or put up their monuments and their shrines and their idols.
So, you know, that's why I would not, you know, we shouldn't have these Hindu symbols and
yin and yang and those kinds of symbols because they're associated with false religion.
But the concept behind it is lifted somewhat from the Bible because of the fact that nothing
on this earth is going to be truly pure because we're all human and there's sin everywhere. We're
in a fallen land. I'm not going to go to church. There's too many hypocrites down at church.
There's too much drama at church. I mean, there's just too many phonies at church.
Okay. Name me a place that doesn't have those things.
Because I guarantee you that if you worked at the grocery store and you're one of the clerks at the
grocery store, there's going to be a lot of drama at that grocery store. There's going to be a lot
of gossip at the grocery store. Am I right? You know, because I've, I've, I've had friends that
worked at the grocery store and they said, man, there was some sordid stuff going on at the
grocery store. I mean, there was some adultery going on and all kinds of gossip and all kinds
of just, you know, amongst the employees, all kinds of drama and backstabbing and backbiting.
I mean, have you ever heard this term before office politics? What's that about?
It's a cutthroat environment down at the office. People get lied about, they get,
how about junior high? I mean, there's, there's, there's none of that going on in junior high,
is there? Yeah. At the junior high school, I wonder if there's any drama. I wonder if there's
any backbiting. I wonder if there's any sin going on down at the junior high school. I wonder if
anybody's a hypocrite down there. I wonder if anybody's a phony down at the high school or the
university or whatever. Folks, everywhere you go in this world, that's why it's so hypnotic.
That's why it's so hypocritical to say, well, you know, I just left church. There's just too
much hypocrisy, too many folks. You'd have to abstain from every area of life. You can't go
to school, can't go to work, right? Because there's just too much drama. You know, your
bowling night, it's gonna be too much. There's going to be drama. There's going to be gossiping.
There's going to be backbiting. There's going to be sorted affairs and drunkenness and wickedness
and adultery and drugs and bad deals and stealing. And folks, it's the world that we live in.
You know, I hope that my kids don't grow up thinking like, oh, well, you know, we've had to
go through some stuff because we're a pastor's kid. You know what? Guess what? If you weren't
a pastor's kid, you're going to go through some stuff, too. Let me tell you something.
The Bible tells us, don't think it's strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you.
I almost said, which is to fry you. The fiery trial with you, if you go back to the group,
you know, in Strong's, KJV Plus, no. No, see, we don't need KJV Minus or KJV Plus. Just KJV is
fine. But, you know, the fiery trial, which is to try you as though some strange thing happened to
you. And you know what the Bible also tells us? The same temptations are accomplished in your
brethren, which are in the world. Guess what? People out there in the world, you say, oh, man,
the Christian life's so hard. Life's hard out there, too. The difference is that we have joy
and hope and peace and love and we have all the constellations of Christ. They're going through
all the same junk we're going through. They're getting stabbed in the back. They're getting
betrayed. They're getting lied about. They're having strife. They're having problems, except
they get nothing. At the end of the day, they receive nothing. And we receive riches and glory
and honor and everything that we inherit with Christ. We as the meek inherit the earth.
And so that's the constellation of Christ. But you know what you think? You think it's just so
great out there not being a Christian. Oh, life out there not being a Christian is just so great.
No, it isn't. No, it isn't. Well, it's going to be better than this. Wrong. The Christian life
is a better life. And you get all the blessings and the rewards and God is on your side. You go
out there. You deal with all the same junk. You're going to have the same problems, except God's not
helping you. So good luck with that because it's a jungle out there. God's going to judge the
righteous and the wicked. Verse 18, I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men
that God might manifest them and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.
Now, I don't want to spend too much time on this because I already hammered this the last two weeks.
But I do want to say this, that some of the modern versions will change this verse as well.
And they'll change it to, you know, that they can see that they're like beasts. But you know, the
Bible says that they would see that they themselves are beasts. Okay. For that which befall the sons
of men befall beasts, even one thing befall them as the one diet that they are. Okay.
So diet the other. Yay, they have all one breath. And watch this. So that a man have no preeminence
above a beast for all his vanity. Now, again, these are the type of verses you don't want to
take out of context and just run with this. You know, I saw some vegan guy post a verse that said,
you know, he that slew an ox is as if he slew a man from, I believe, what at the very end of Isaiah,
Isaiah 66 or something. And, you know, totally out of context, twisting the Word of God. You
know, that's a wicked thing to do, to take something that you know that's not what the Bible
was saying and you just pulled it out of context. This right here in context, man has no preeminence
above a beast. Here's what he's saying. He's saying without the Spirit, without spiritual
things, without the Lord, if you believe like the modern science-based atheism, then man is not like
a beast. Man is a beast. And let's go ask the science professor down at ASU, is man an animal?
Are they going to say, well, he's like an animal? Is that what they're going to say? Or are they
going to agree with the King James? They're going to agree with the King James Bible because they're
going to say, no, man is an animal. Because, by the way, beast in the Bible just means animal.
Beast is just an old word from animal. Okay. So if I go down and ask the atheistic science people,
they're going to say man is a beast. Man is an animal. Am I right? Is that what they believe?
Yeah. Not that he's like a beast, but that he is a beast. Okay.
And the reason why is that without the soul, without the Spirit, without anything that
transcends the physical, they're correct. If everything came from an explosion
and, you know, we're just this cosmic accident and we just evolved from lower life forms,
then how could you say that we're anything other than a beast? Of course we're a beast in that
case, right? But that's not the truth. And see, that's why the Bible says here, it says a man
hath no preeminence above a beast because all is vanity. But let me ask you this. Is everything
vanity when you're with Christ? Nothing's vain with Christ. What does the Bible say about being
in Christ? He says, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord for
as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. What did Solomon say in chapter
one? Oh man, all my labor is vanity. It's vanity. It's vanity. What profit hath the man of all his
labor which he taketh unto the sun? And then what does the New Testament say? Labor not in vain.
So is 1 Corinthians 15 not teaching us the exact opposite of what Ecclesiastes 1, 2, and 3 are
saying? Because Ecclesiastes 1, 2, and 3 are a man who's frustrated in his human existence.
He can't find the meaning behind it. Christ gives meaning in the New Testament. The New
Testament gives us meaning and says your labor is not a sore travail that you're exercised with
under the sun. No, your labor in Christ is not in vain. Now we definitely do some things in life
that are running on that hamster wheel called life and it's part of life. You know, we have to,
right? We got to go to work. We got to pay our bills. We got to brush our teeth and, and, and we
got to go to bed and wake up and eat breakfast. We got to go through these things that God has
given us to be exercised there with. But you know, when we go out soul winning, when we read the
Bible, when we pray, when we study the word of God, when we teach the word of God to other people,
when we lead many in the paths of righteousness, and when we lead our family in a godly way and
godly children, hey, our labor is not in vain. None of that's vanity. And you know what that
gives us? Preeminence above a beast. Preeminence above a beast. That's why if the, you know,
if the science dude tells me, hey, we're animals, I'll say, speak for yourself. I'm not an animal.
Who here believes that we are not animals? Humans are not animals. We're not. I don't, you know,
I don't teach my kids. Well, you know, kids, human homo sapiens sapiens is an animal. I don't
teach them that. We're not some species. We don't use it. What species are we? We don't have a
species because we're not animals. We're just in a class all by ourselves. You know, you got the
mineral, you got the animal, you got the plant, and then you just got man, mankind, human beings.
And we transcend all that because we are made in the image of God. So, yeah, a man has no
preeminence above a beast if we all just turn to dust and we're gone. That's why he says all go
into one place, all are of the dust, all turn to dust again. Verse 21, who knoweth the spirit of
man that goes upward and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth? That is the
difference. And without that difference, without the spirit of man going upward and the spirit of
the beast going downward into the earth, then man has no preeminence above a beast and man is a
beast. And that's why, again, the King James is the superior translation. These new translations,
they don't get it. They're too dumb to understand this stuff. Or maybe it's because it's spiritually
discerned and so it goes over their head spiritually. You know, so then they change it
and twist it and whatever into something else. Thanks be to God that we actually have work that
we can do in our life that is meaningful, that is eternal, that we will never regret and that will
never be forgotten. And only Christians have that because everything else on this earth
is going to be gone someday. And even all the knowledge and all the achievements, you can build
yourself monuments. You know, Absalom, he set up some big pillar, you know, it's going to be
called Absalom's pillar. I'm sure there's some guy who set up a gift shop next to some random
geology that calls it Absalom's pillar. But is that pillar really still around? I don't think so.
I mean, it was around back then. Maybe I'm sure you can get a postcard of it or something. But,
you know, I guarantee you there have been a lot of monuments that have been set up over the years.
And you know what? Some other country comes in and conquers it. And what do they do? They break all
the monuments. Nothing will last forever. It will all be gone someday. But he that do with the will
of God bideth forever. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so
much for this great chapter in Ecclesiastes, Lord, as some of these things in Ecclesiastes
are difficult and hard to grasp. But Lord, I just pray that every single person who's here
would understand as much as possible. And Lord, I don't understand everything. That's why it's so
fun to read Ecclesiastes over and over again, because it's so deep. There's always something
new to learn, Lord. And I just pray that everyone who's here tonight would at least walk away with
one important truth that they could walk away with that would bring them closer to you and
equip them for their Christian life and give them a different perspective on life than the
people of this world who believe that they are beasts. And in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.