Good morning. Once you grab your Bible and
head on over to Ecclesiastes, we're going to be in chapter 3,
Ecclesiastes chapter 3. It's great to have you with us
this morning. I know there's many that
probably visiting for the first time.
Maybe you popped in to witness family getting baptized or
whatever the case might be. But if you don't quite know the,
the framework to the book of Ecclesiastes, very Simply put,
it's written by King Solomon in his all that days, he's he's
looking back on life. You know, the Bible calls
Solomon the wisest man that ever lived, but he's looking back on
his life with a purpose. He's actually looking at your
life too. And, and what we give ourselves
to. And he's examining life,
examining the things that we, we build our lives on, the things
we pursue, the things we sell our souls for, the things that
the world tries to sell us. And he starts asking the
question is, do you realize how much what we pursue and what we
give ourselves to is actually meaningless?
Meaningless. Meaningless is how it starts.
Very sorry. The voices in my head like to
show their ways. Meaningless, meaningless.
Everything is meaningless. And he's been going after
riches, work, honor, pleasure, wealth and treasures.
And he's asking the question, what of this has any eternal
value? He's like a grandfather or a
father leaning over his children and saying, the last thing I
want you to do is sell your soul for that which is meaningless.
Do you spend your entire life building this, this legacy,
climbing up the ladder of success, only to realize as you
breathe your loss that the ladder was leaning against the
wrong wall? And over there is stuff that is
eternal. And so we've been doing this
over the last few weeks. You can catch up on our website
or on our app because it is a rather intriguing book and very
challenging. But today, what he does in
chapter 3 of as we saw last week is he begins to unpack time.
But what I want to look at, what I want to show you today is that
he unpacks time as a weapon, a tool for you and I to discern
the difference between what is meaningless and what has eternal
value. He looks at time so that you and
I can be recalibrated from the immediate to the eternal.
So we're going to take a look at that Ecclesiastes 3 and verse
11. We're just going to look at one
verse and this is what it says. If you're not there, we'll pop
it up on the screen for you. But this is Solomon writing and
he says he has made referring to God.
He has 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.
This is like the tripod that He puts this lens on.
He has made everything beautiful in His time.
He has also set eternity in the human heart.
Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Going to look at those two points, those three points
there. I know it kind of seems a little
bit philosophical, but bear with me.
We're going to build some understanding and unpack this
together. But firstly starts off simply by
saying He has made everything beautiful in its time.
Rory touched on this a little bit last week.
He's made everything beautiful in its time.
One of the biblical scholars actually paraphrases it and says
the following. He says God's purposes, the
things that God's busy with that which has meaning.
God's purposes unfold at the intersection of place and time.
Not just place, but place and time.
God's purposes unfold at the intersection of place and time.
If you're wondering what all these XS are, it's not X marks
the spot dig for some treasure, although I suppose in one sense
it is. If you recognize that God's
purposes intersect or unfold at the intersection of place and
time, you begin to understand a little bit of what he's going
after in Ecclesiastes 3. And so when we met on Friday, I
asked the guys to put some of these intersections of place and
time at key places. They're not just randomly put
across the building because I actually wanted you to see as
you came in that there are some spots that God has been doing
something extraordinary. Like one of them is up on the
stairs over there. Because we have sat and watched
as a community as the Denison family had a smear campaign
against them. And Front Page Report, Sunday
Times and EU magazine and here to stand day after day.
Lord, I will stand in this place trusting you.
I wait for your time to deliver me.
And we've seen that deliverance come also ask for one to be done
on that side because there's a mact of mine.
He came out of prison. We didn't do prison time
together. We were in different times.
But when he came out of prison, he was in prison. 74 charges
laid against him by Interpol. And when he came out, he came
into three CI and I got to meet him over there and I watched as
God got a hold of him in this place in his time.
Another one I asked was to be done by the the baptismal pool.
I mean, we've seen a lot of place and time, a lot of
intersecting and a lot of God's purpose unfold around that pool.
And I wanted it to be around the pool, not in the pool.
Because the one for me over the years that struck me and, and I
was reminded of and prepping for this week was I remember a guy
coming up to me, sharing me, sharing his testimony with me.
And he said he was going through a divorce.
And God kept every time he came to church on a Sunday, God kept
getting a hold of his heart. He could feel his heart racing.
It's like, this is so weird. And if I'll go say, no, you must
go get baptized. And he kept saying to God,
listen, my life is a mess. I can't even keep a marriage
together. She hates me and rightly, Sir.
And you want me to go get baptized?
Imagine what people are going to say if I go and get baptized.
Oh, who does he think he is? Holier than thou?
Go sort your life out first. And God kept on saying to him,
no, no, no, baptism is not about what you've done, it's about
what God has done. So eventually he just said, OK,
I'm going to get baptized and came.
And he sort of kept it under the radar because he didn't really
want anyone to know. And then he suddenly realized,
oh gosh, everyone's going to know.
It's going to be on the screen. And he said, to this day, he
doesn't know why, but he messaged his ex, said, hey,
listen, I'm getting baptized today.
We'd love for you to come and witness it.
And she came and he says that she was standing on the side of
the baptismal pool, intersectional place and Tom.
And when he came out of the water, she looked in those eyes
and said God has done something in this man, gave him a second
chance, didn't sign the divorce papers and they're still married
as we speak. God's purposes unfold at the
intersection of place and time. God makes all things beautiful
in his time. The other one I wanted was right
there. I think one of the hardest
things was watching a friend of mine come back from New Zealand,
having lost his three children, officiating their funeral here
in this auditorium, but yet watching God restore his faith
and his family right there, right there.
God makes all things beautiful in his time.
We're talking about this in the week.
And someone actually sent a photo of her child whenever she
brings him to church, he always lies down on the floor.
He can actually show the the picture lies down on the floor,
puts his ear to the ground. Oh, does it so often that she
eventually took a photo because it's like, what are you up to in
the comments where I think my son is lying on the floor
because something in that little heart is going God is busy here
in this place. I'm listening is this is time is
this this time I know comment was actually she thinks more of
us should come and just lie and say, Lord, this is this is what
I bring. This is what I need.
Would you come and intersect your place and your time.
This is what I bring to you. This is what lies shattered on
the floor. I need you.
I need you, Lord, I need your purposes to unfold in this
place. Could it be at this time where
you're sharing and there just happened to be a cross on the
floor when we're having a, a staff meeting on Tuesday and it
all said to the guys, why don't you come and stand and pray, you
know, if you haven't quite had that intersection of place and
time and when when we left, someone took a photo of that.
Can you see the tears? Why tears?
You see sometimes you stand at the intersection of place and
time. The time hasn't happened yet.
You know, you're standing here. And then there's tears for one
of two reasons, either tears of trust or tears of turmoil.
How long, O Lord? How long until you answer this?
And the problem with tears of turmoil is that that often
results in US coming to the conclusion that it's
meaningless. That's meaningless.
I sat next to my dad's bed praying that you would heal him.
You didn't hear my prayer. You didn't answer my prayer.
You took them from me. You took them from my family.
And I had to grow up under a single mother looking after me
and trusting in you. Those prayers meaningless.
A God who heals meaningless. Well, I trusted you.
I brought my work situation to you.
I didn't want to do it. And you said trust me and I did.
And I lost my job. That that's meaningless.
Where were your your purposes at the intersection of that place
in time? We had a conversation and I'm
worried that we have tears of turmoil.
A wife caught her husband having an affair.
God placed in her heart a grace and a faith.
Lord, you've done it before. You can do it again.
Would you come and do that in in my marriage forgave him,
welcomed him back in loved on him, cooked for him and he's had
another affair. God meaningless meaningless.
I don't know if you know this, but tears are unique to you.
Like your fingerprints like snowflakes.
Not only are they unique to you, but they are unique to your
situation. So scientists, scientists do
gathered one of their friends said, OK, we picked you to chop
some onions. So chop, chop, chop, chop, chop,
chop, chop. And then they gathered some
tears and take a look at what what an onion tear looks like
under a microscope. Beautiful.
Hey, that's an onion tear. And then they found someone who
was going through grief and they gathered one of their tears and
put that under a microscope. Take a look at what tears of
grief look like. You can almost see the pain and
the angst and the anxiety. You know the Bible says in Psalm
56, verse 8, you keep track of all my sorrows.
You've collected all my tears in your bottle.
You've recorded each one in your book.
Why? Because He makes all things
beautiful in it's time. He might still be gathering
those tears. You might be in play saying
Lord, now would be a good time. He's gathering those tears
because the time will come when he will make all things
beautiful in his time, the intersection of his place and
his time. That's where his purposes
unfold. So last week, if you were here,
you might have been traumatized by Rory dropping that Battlestar
Galactica Star Wars 5000 piece Legos set.
It's like 18,000 Rand. It's his masterpiece, 5000
pieces. And he goes and all the geeks in
the auditorium, you cut me deep, Shrek, you cut me deep.
So I went to him this week. I said, I'm so glad you used
Lego as that example because I don't know.
I'm sure you know, Lego actually comes up in the New Testament
very, very often. You didn't know that.
So the New Testament is written in Greek.
It's it's ancient Greek. They call it Koine Greek.
And then it's translated into English.
But in the Koine Greek, you've got the word logos.
Have you ever heard the word logos?
It means word. In the beginning was the logos,
and the logos was God word. This is referred to as the logos
of God, the word of God. But when that word is given as
an instruction, logos becomes Lego in Greek.
And the very first time Lego pops up in the New Testament,
it's right at the very end of the genealogy in Matthew chapter
1 doesn't begin, not right at the very beginning.
You know, when Adam and Eve blew it, Surely we should have had
Lego come along and fix the problem.
Not even Abraham, Isaac or Jacob, not with Moses or Joshua,
not even David. But the Bible says in the
fullness of time, at just the right time, Matthew 1, Mary was
the mother of Jesus, who is called, who is Lego Messiah?
Messiah. It's the name given to the one
who saves, who restores, who redeems.
Just like when you buy Lego, you get that little booklet they
said, put this piece first, that piece second.
In the fullness of time, God's purposes unfold at the
intersection of place and time. Lego, the Messiah sent, and this
is the first thing that Solomon tries to help us understand.
The God will make all things beautiful, but he'll do it in
it's time. And sometimes you're standing
there and sometimes you're crying tears of turmoil.
Sometimes it's tears of trust. But the very first thing, the
very first way you and I can discern, is this meaningless or
is this eternal? As we recognize God's purposes
will unfold at the intersection of place and time, and maybe
you're here and all you have is place.
How long, O Lord? How long, O Lord, He makes all
things beautiful in its time. So that's the first thing that
he puts down. The second thing it says he's
also set eternity in the human heart.
Now this is where it gets really hard because essentially he's
saying, OK, He makes all things beautiful in its time, but
sometimes that time it's only an eternity.
I don't like that he didn't ask me about that.
I'm like, surely should have had some counsel before you decided
on, you know, it's like, where's this God of power, God who's
able, You know, I'm a, I'm a fast food 2 minute noodle.
Just add water, instant pudding, get what you want without
waiting kind of guy. I don't know if you saw that ad
back in the 80s. It's a credit card.
And the slogan was with this credit card, you can take the
weight out of wanting. That's my love language.
Nike, do it now. But waiting in eternity.
There is a church in Europe who was taken to court by the City
Council because they'd painted one word on their roof.
Not Jesus, not hell, eternity. And the people who are so up in
arms about the simple painting of a word.
Eternity on. I don't want to think about
eternity. I want to set my heart, my
affections, my life on now. I think it is the single most
strategic element of the enemy's tactics on you is getting you
infatuated and consumed with the now, the immediate at the cost
of the eternal so much so that we just we don't even want to
think about it. Don't don't put your stuffs on
me. Eternity.
I want to I want to sleep with her now.
I want to have that affair now. The slogan in the UK, life is
short, have an affair, life is short.
You breathe your last, your face, and give an account to
your Creator. But life is short.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it now.
Last week, if you were here, we didn't have 7 baptisms.
We had one Louis. And if you were here, you would
have heard, I think it was Clinton was hosting, said, hey,
listen, Louis got terminal cancer.
Let's just pray for Louis before he gets baptized.
And then we went to the last group on Thursday night and I
heard the back story. And so I phoned Stefan, who did
the baptism. I said, listen, just clarifies
this. True.
So what had happened was he'd been walking a road.
Stephen had been walking a road with Louis for a while.
And he'd gone to Australia, I think on the 28th of November,
got a phone call from Louis. Louis had just gotten news from
the doctor. It's terminal.
And the doctor said to Louis, you've got weeks to live.
And Stephen's heart obviously breaking.
Oh gosh, that's heavy, heavy, heavy.
And then Louis asked Stefan, would you do my funeral?
You're a Christian, right? Can you do my funeral?
And I love Stefan's answer. He said, I don't think I can
bury you do your funeral, but I'd love to bury you in the
baptismal pool on Sunday. You see, because that is what it
represents. It's this imagery of us being
buried in Christ but raised to eternal life in him.
You couldn't know how I bumped into Stefan this morning and
said, listen, is he? Is Louis still alive?
Because these are the questions you ask about a man who's got
terminal cancer and weeks to live.
He might be haven't heard from him today, but I can tell you,
Louis filters absolutely everything through one word.
Eternity. What about you?
Have you considered eternity? When you stand before your
creator and you have to give an account, are you seriously going
to try and weigh up? Well, I was, I was, I was better
than Joe. I was almost as good as Pitt.
You got to let me in. But we are to give an account
for every thought, every action, every deed, even giving an
account for the things we didn't do and knew we ought to do.
There is only one way that eternity can find its place and
time, and that is at the cross. And so he says to us, he says
he's also said eternity in the human heart.
What's interesting there is he doesn't say, he said eternity in
the Christian heart, that he said eternity in the human
heart. This is supposed to bother us
like that eternity on the roof of a church.
It's supposed to call us to an account to let us calibrate and
evaluate everything that we do Eternity.
You know, I was, I was thinking about Louis and I thought, you
know what? Sometimes I think my prayer
life, my, the pain I'm going through, the grief, the tears
that I'm crying. I'm like, oh Lord, if you can
just come through for me. God is leaning over and saying,
no, you know what? You, you don't need to be
rescued. You just need a recalibration.
You're so consumed with the immediate and it's Hevel, the
meaninglessness Hevel that's bringing all these headaches.
And I'm like, Lord, you've got to give me that business deal
and you've got to come through for me.
And, and she has to say yes. And everything I get and it's
just sucking the laugh out of me as I'm trying to grab at smoke
and go say like, let me just recalibrate.
Not rescue, just recalibrate if you can begin to have an
understanding of eternity, that everything echoes into eternity.
The problem with Louis is that he's got terminal cancer.
The problem with me is I've got hurry sickness.
And if I had to guess, you probably have hurry sickness
too. It's the thing.
Shout out to Ross Roger if you ever, if you're ever looking for
a good church in Durban, Olive Tree, Ross.
He's an amazing man, gifted preacher, wonderful teacher, and
he helped me see the hurry sickness.
In my soul. It's a thing.
So here are some of the signs that you've got hurry sickness.
Firstly, you're extremely irritable.
Now, don't nudge your husband. I know we're talking about
people at the other church. Yeah, but think about.
It's irritable. Yeah.
If you don't believe me, just wait till tomorrow morning.
You're trying to get your kids to school on time.
It's time to leave. And they don't even have their
shoes and socks on and they haven't packed a lunch box.
And you just in the red. Maybe you won't even have to
wait till Monday. Maybe today you go home and your
wife says, babes, can we just stop at Woolies to get bread and
milk? Every man ever has fallen for
that one because the the male species hears the words bread
and milk. How long can it take to get
bread and milk? So we we fall for it every time.
I'll just stay in the car, babes.
You don't get bread. Only to find out she is shopping
for the Ethiopian children who haven't had food and she's heard
that the Ukraine Russia war is coming South and we need to
stock. And you're so irritable at the
end of this. By the time she climbs in, you
got to go for marriage counselling.
Don't fall for it man, Save yourself.
But what you will find is that you're extremely irritable.
Love it. Too hypersensitive.
One comment just drives you into the red.
Restless. How did your quiet time go this
morning? If you had one?
Maybe you just slipped right through it.
But you know, highly likely you have a quiet time and suddenly
you've got to remember this. I've got to put that on my To Do
List and I haven't checked this e-mail.
What's the weather like for tomorrow?
It's like ADHD on steroids. Restlessness, well,
multitasking, you know, maybe you're going to do that today.
You go home and you're going to binge Binilanders and you're
going to scroll the gram like, like, and you're going to have a
deep, meaningful conversation with your husband and he's going
like, I wonder why emotionally numb.
You want to care. You know, it's right to care,
but you just don't care. Because so much is going on in
my life. I'm so busy.
There's so many fires I've got to put out or you isolate
yourself. When last did you go to the life
group? I bet you if I had to ask you,
why not? It's just it's such a busy
season. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry,
hurry, hurry. Sickness.
And so he says. God has set eternity in the
human heart as a Plumb line, as a scale, as a lens for you and I
to measure what is immediates and what is eternal, what is
hevel and what is tov. So we started off, He has made
everything beautiful in His time.
He's also said eternity in the human heart, and then he wraps
the two up with this. Yet no one can fathom what God
has done from beginning to end. So on one side, He's made
everything beautiful in his time and then on this side he says,
yet he has also set eternity in the human heart.
And we've got this tension and instead of resolving the two, he
drops the mic and says, yet no one can fathom what God has done
from beginning to end. You know, I love, I love looking
at the original Greek and Hebrew that scripture was written in.
And I was so surprised, you know what it says in this one.
Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
It's it's 3 letters. WTF.
But you know what WTF means? He doesn't know what the fathom
your kids can explain. When you get home real, he's
going like what? This just doesn't make sense to
this mind. This just doesn't mean what the
fathom if no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to
end. And the reason why we get to
that place, the reason why we stand and we look and we say
yes, but in criteria is of turmoil rather than trust is
because of one word in that sentence, the word God.
I want to tell you a little bit about God.
So I discovered something recently that has literally it
has changed my prayer life. I think it's changed my
worldview and has most definitely changed my
priorities. I wasn't really paying attention
at school first time around, but the second time around I've
discovered something about our planets.
Now the Earth is, it's pretty big, right?
It's the, it's the biggest planets I've ever lived on.
And what I discovered was that the sun in the sky is a whole
lot bigger. No, it doesn't look that way.
But if you had to take this planet, you could put 1.3
million Earths into our sun, 1.3 million Earths.
Now, I don't know when last you walked to Joburg.
I was asked to swim from Robben Island to the Cape Coast.
You know how far that is. And this is like on planet
Earth. And there's 1.3 million of those
that would fit into our sun. Now here's what I discovered
thanks to my sponsors. If you were to shrink the sun
down to here because I mean I'm from the bluff, so you really
have to make things basic and you've got to draw me pictures
so you're welcome. But if you are to shrink our sun
down to this size now remember there's 1.3 million earths.
Now when it's this size, you are not even a speck of dust you on
you know the the gamma rays atomic level small.
OK, now I want to introduce you to the biggest star that you
will see in the NASCAR tonight. I want to introduce you to a
star called Beetlejuice. Now, if you were to use the same
scale and put it up against Beetlejuice, OK, this is our
sun. There's 1.3 million of us inside
this. You're looking at that
Beetlejuice, they say it is so big it is twice the size of
Earth's orbit around the sun each.
I've figured that with a bluff. IQ, Beetlejuice and Psalm says
when I consider the heavens, that which you created with your
fingertips, the sun, the moon, the stars which you put in place
who is man, that you are mindful of him.
And I say this because not because so you get an idea of
just how big God is, but so you have an idea of how powerful God
is. See, it doesn't say, when I
consider the fact that you only needed to use your fingerprint,
your fingertips, it says this because it's a power display.
You know, like you've got something on your on your bowel
and you just get rid of there. You got something here,
fingertips. When I look at that and I
recognize that you have so much power.
The Beetlejuice just needs your fingertips.
And Beetlejuice dwarfs the Sun, which dwarfs the Earth, which
dwarfs me, which dwarfs what I'm facing, dwarfs my decisions,
dwarfs my Hevel. If his power dwarfs your power,
even your power, Simon, if his power dwarfs your power, so too
surely his wisdom dwarfs your wisdom.
Then Isn't it reasonable to consider the fact that maybe
there will be many things that you don't understand yet?
Maybe there'll be many things and many ways that fall on your
mind and your IQ and and your world view and your situation.
You go like God. I just don't understand how do
we hold these two intention? Well, he says no one can fathom
what God has done from beginning to end.
He's basically saying sometimes, but you just don't know.
How do you hold them in tension? Faith.
A faith in the fact that God doesn't introduce himself to you
as God, but as Father. A faith that the same God is
collecting your tears and putting it into a jar.
Same God who stands there and says there will come a time when
I'll make things beautiful, but it will be at my place and my
time. How do we hold these two
intention? The God who unfolds his
purposes, the intersection of place and time.
We recognize that he's the God of Betelgeuse.
And the God who bottles your tears, we recognize that he's a
God of glory, but a God who wades into your grief.
He says, I'll hold you, just bring it to me.
You're recognized. Whatever it is that you're
facing, whatever it is you're up against, whatever questions are
in your mind that you can trust to God, He says, my purposes
will unfold at the intersection of place and time.
And would you trust me? Would you trust that God to be a
man of His word even in the midst of your misunderstanding?
Thank you.