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Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 and the Story of Emily

We thank you for coming and joining us today, especially if you're here with us for the first time. Wonderful time to be together in the fellowship of the saints too. Today we'll be thinking about Ecclesiastes 3, verse 1 to 15. And I believe this is probably one of the most familiar passage in Ecclesiastes, if not the most familiar. When we think of Ecclesiastes, this is what jumps out. Ecclesiastes 3,

For everything there is a season, a time under heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Let me begin by a story that I read about a month ago. It's a story about a lady named Emily. She's a cancer survivor. She struggled for three years. She survived ovarian cancer. And after a long and difficult treatment, she finally got remission. Obviously her family rejoiced. It felt like it was a new slate of life. It's a new beginning. About just a few weeks ago, in mid October, she developed a simple fever and cough, something that maybe a Panadol can solve. So she just brushed it off, thinking that it was nothing too serious. Went to the doctor, perhaps for some meds. But her condition worsened after a few days. After four days, she passed away. Passed away not because of cancer, not because of this deadly disease that has taken millions of lives away. Passed away not because of the struggle that she's been battling with for three years, but she passed away by a simple pneumonia, simple infection.

Now, stories like this surprise us because they are deeply unsettling. Because we all know instinctively that life should be more than this, that there is something more to life, more coherent, more lasting, more meaningful ending to life. In fact, we weren't made to live on chaos. We long for a life that makes sense, a life where joy stays, where beauty lasts, where our work matters and all of our stories hold together. But friends, life often under the sun, refuse to behave this way. In fact, this is the reality of it all. Something inside us aches. There is a longing in us. There is something in us that says this is not how life is supposed to be. In fact, this is the question that Ecclesiastes brings.

Solomon’s Perspective on Life Under the Sun

Ecclesiastes, this is supposedly written by Solomon. He calls himself the preacher in this book. And it examines life under the sun, life from the human perspective. He has drunk deeply from what this life promises and delivers. He has explored wealth. He explored romance and relationship. He has explored wisdom. He has explored all things that the eye can see, that the hands can grab. But what did he find? That with every attempt to find meaning, he finds that life under the sun is miserable. It's actually a deeply miserable existence. There's nothing to be gained here. There's nothing here. There's nothing under the sun. So Ecclesiastes is a book that I think, if you've read it, it's deeply grim and depressing. Because it really shows us that the human longing can never be satisfied by what we see, feel or touch in this world. Just as the preacher experienced life and found it deeply unsatisfying. So the preacher asks, “Really?” and to paraphrase it, the question is this, “Is there really more to life than this? Is there more to life than life under the sun?”

The Misery of Life Under the Sun

So to fully appreciate and answer this question that there's ultimately life beyond the sun, we first have to see the misery of life under the sun. The point is this, that this is obviously a miserable experience. This is a miserable existence. Life under the sun is miserable. He shows us that in two ways. The first thing is this, we see a grim reality, and the reality is this, that we are people, we are creatures, bound by times and seasons. You know, it's funny that today, we live in a world that is unhealthily obsessed with time. Only in Singapore will a train delay become big news. Commuters balk at the lost time because they have to wait five minutes. Companies debate four day work weeks, just so that they can save time, or because people are desperate to get their time back. Parents choose tuition centers based on time. Which schedule is the most optimized? What is the time per dollar ratio? Everything is optimized to save us seconds. We have air fryers, we have fast charging, we have self checkout, we have playback speeds. We get irritated when someone texts us late because we feel that someone has stolen our time. And even rest must be efficient. Power naps, a quick getaway, speed yoga. I don't know what that even means. But I suppose there's something that we all must grasp, that no matter how much we perceive to have control over time, it is actually time that controls us. In fact, this is the thing that Solomon observes, we are bound by times and seasons. Human life is lived inside limits. It's lived inside boundaries, inside seasons that we can't quite control. In fact, this is what he says in verse one, a very popular verse. It says,

For everything, there's a season and a time for every matter under heaven.(Ecclesiastes 3:1)

He is saying that this is a fundamental assertion of life. The calendar moves, the clock ticks, and we move along with it. In fact, to make his point really clear, he gives us this poetic series of verses in verses 2 to 8. Look at this. There are 14 contrasts pointing to extremes, right? For example, for everything, there is a season, a time to be born and a time to die, to plant, to harvest, to kill and a time to heal, for war and peace right at the end. The point here is not commanding or prescribing you to do this. It's not saying, all right, this is a time to kill. That's not the point. He's describing life between the extremities of life. And he says there's a time to be born, a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh. And the point here is that humanity experience a full range of, a full variety of experiences. In fact, he's saying time affects all of life and we can't do anything about it. He's saying that time will take us into extremes that are inherently uncontrollable. We can't control the day of death. We can't control the day of birth. We can't control opportunities that come along our way. We can't control seasons of happiness and seasons of joy. He's really saying that we are at the mercy of time itself.

Back then when Covid hit, my wife now, my girlfriend then, flew to Singapore for a week to attend a wedding of one of our church members too. Terrible timing in 2020 if you can remember. Circuit breaker was about to be enacted, and so everything was shutting down. Planes were being grounded. You can't mingle, you can't interact. And we thought my girlfriend then, and my wife now, what a terrible timing for a flight, let alone a wedding. And so we took the first flight out. We didn't get to attend the wedding. We just took the first flight out, back to the Philippines, specifically in Cebu. Now, my wife is not from Cebu. Philippines is made out of 7000 Islands. It's one of the 7000 Islands. And lo and behold, when she landed back in the Philippines, everything also was shut down. Cross Island travel, cross Island planes were not working. Everything was totally in a standstill. We thought, “Wow, cannot.” So she does have family there. I got some relatives in Cebu for my mom is from there, and she stayed at Cebu with my aunt's place for a while. Now, we didn't know what Covid was like. We thought it was just a normal flu. We thought maybe one week it will pass. Ok lah, just take it as a nice holiday in Cebu. One week passed and still at a standstill. Nothing changed. One became two. Two became a month, and we thought, OK, one month still bearable. But one month became two months, two months, three months and three months ultimately became six months. Six months away from home without interaction, with very very minimal interaction in a cramped, small room. What was meant to be a one week trip to celebrate the wedding of our friends turned into a six month nightmare.

The Human Condition and the Longing for Eternity

That is the point that I am trying to say. We are really at the mercy of time itself, and that is Solomon's point. For all our planning and scheduling and controlling, we are creatures who wake up to each seasons that we didn't create. We can't control time. We're bound. We're shackled. We're confined. We're imprisoned by time itself. Time is our master. And time is a cruel master, because we can't pick or choose. I can't pick the day I was born. I can't pick the moment my loved one will pass. I can't schedule seasons of joys and seasons of tears. I can't decide when opportunities open or close, because we are really at the mercy of time itself. And this is why life under the sun is full of despair, because deep down inside us, instinctively, we want to have a little bit more agency. We want to skip the difficult seasons of life. We want to pause at the great seasons of life. We want to extend the meaningful seasons of life, and we want to move past the confusing seasons of life. But friends, life does not submit to us. It runs its course, whether we like it or not. And that's why life doesn't just feel limited under the sun. Life feels often, sometimes quite cruel. It's cruel to live within the extremities of time when sickness comes, when death comes knocking, when opportunities slip through our fingers. Life just simply keeps reminding us how powerless, how creature like we are, how limited we truly are. So this is the inescapable reality, is where life under the sun deeply confronts us because we are creatures bound by something we can never control or even command. But more than just facing this inescapable reality, the preacher now will tell us that the issue actually runs far deeper. He now will say in a series of verses that the human condition is deeply flawed, that life within the sun or under the sun is full of aches, hungers and restlessness.

I watched a CNA documentary recently, and also read about this in the papers. It's about a man who pioneered rearing crabs at home. He does it through piles of Toyogo boxes, calling it crab condos. He fit water pipes through so that every crab has its own customized suite, so to speak, and even attaches sterilizers to break down organic waste or something like that. Here's the truth. For humans, condos are great, fantastic. But for crabs to live in one, it's where it feels a bit stifling. It feels suffocating. It feels like it's trapped. It's confined into this box, this limitation. And we know that that's not what a crab is made for. It's made for chilli crab. No, it's made for the sea. But like poor crabs, life often feels that way. We feel the tension of life that we're stuck, we're trapped. We're yearning for, actually, what we're made for, and that's the restlessness that Solomon would now explain.

The Purpose of God’s Design

So we see this tension from verses 9 to 11. He says, in verse 9,

What gain has the worker from his toil? (Ecclesiastes 3:9)

He looks at the futility of toil. Why is man working so hard from morning to night, when at the end of the day, nothing he does can ever change what God has set in motion? He looks at the futility of human striving.

I've seen all that man has been busy with, and nothing, nothing is to be gained… (Ecclesiastes 1:14)

It's where humanity wears itself out trying to make sense of what existence is all about. And here is his reflection, very familiar verse.

He has made everything beautiful in his time… (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

But the word ‘beautiful’ here, I think, goes beyond what the normal way we understand beautiful to be. We understand beautiful to be rainbows, flowers or your spouse. But beautiful here means fitting, appropriate or purposed. He's essentially saying his theology that God ultimately has designed this world with a particular purpose in mind. This is not some random world. We're not just plopped into a random existence and we're supposed to discover and find it, but he has ordered this word. He will make everything beautiful in its time. And he also says that he has put eternity into man's heart. Now that's a deeply puzzling set of words, because it's difficult to understand. I think he's saying that in every human heart, there is this yearning and longing to be eternally satisfied. We are made to be eternally satisfied. We are made for more.

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In fact, this is the story of Solomon. This is a story of humanity from the moment a man was driven away to East of Eden. It is a long pursuit of finding meaning. They pursued pleasure. They pursued wisdom. They built empires. They've expanded to the edges of the Earth only to fail to find what fills the aching of their souls. But as Solomon discovers, and as what every generation from Adam to now discovers, nothing under the sun is truly enough. Every well will dry, every joy will fade, every season will shift, and every achievement will lose its shine. We keep searching under the sun for meaning, for our hearts to be eternally satisfied, because God has put eternity into our hearts, but the pursuit of it all ends the same. Nothing is to be gained under the sun. And it begs the question. Why? Well, thankfully, Solomon tells us, he says at the end of verse 11,

…so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

It means this that while God has ordered this universe perfectly, he sovereignly rules and sets things into motion. He has a beautiful and purposeful design for this world. He has not given us. He has withheld it from us. We're not given the full picture.

I think about this, and I remember that it's been more than a decade since MH370 vanished. It's interesting. Despite the availability of resources and the advancement of technology, a plane can vanish from the sky, and it demanded global searches from different countries altogether.

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Now imagine you're the family of one of the victims of the vanishing of MH370. You long for answers, isn't it? You long for closure. You long for meaning. And every year you get a taste of meaning or a debris was found, or a signal, but ultimately it comes short. The point is, our hearts long for meaning. Our hearts long for closure, for truth, for meaning beyond this life, but we cannot know it. It's veiled in mystery. We live inside this timeline. We experience moments, seasons and fragments, but never the whole picture. We long for the beauty of the whole, but we only see it in part, and that limitation is precisely the ache and the restlessness that all of humans, of humanity experience. And today, we feel that restlessness deeply, don't we? The story of human life is this, is simply from one pursuit to another, hoping that something will fill this ache. That's the human longing. We're made for eternity in our hearts. We're created with an awareness that there's so much more to life than this. You know, a crab in a Toyogo box can have the best life possible. You can design the perfect system. You can stabilize the water, you can regulate the temperature. But the truth of the matter is, you cannot change what the crab was made for. It was made for the sea.

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You know, life is similar. Life is the same. Life can feel busy, productive. We can entertain ourselves to death, but it cannot satisfy us, because God placed eternity in our hearts, and satisfaction is wired in our being, and it can only be quenched thoroughly and fully in life beyond the sun. That's why humanity today keeps pressing against the wall of limitation, chasing after that next thing, looking for the next thing in life, looking for the best experiences, the best moments, only to fill that void that nothing can fill. And ultimately they all will come short, because we are not made for temporary things. We're made to be eternally satisfied in him. In the end, that's the reason why we feel restless. There's a reason why there's an ache. We desire, satisfaction that nothing on earth can provide. Oh, this life can promise so many things. It can promise joys beyond our wildest imagination, but it never will feel complete. Because it can never meet the deepest needs of our hearts. Well, God is merciful. Life under the sun is not meant to humiliate us, but to awaken us. I would say that life under the sun is deeply revealing, because it will tell us something. It will drive us to someone. It will drive us to Him.

The Role of Fear and Trust in God

There's a third thing, the reason why actually we feel this restlessness. There's a reason to why we feel this ache that we're feeling. Before Solomon unpacks the reason, he tells us how usually people would respond. He says in verse 12,

I perceive that there's nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good, as long as they live. Also that everyone should eat and drink and to take pleasure in all his toil, because this is God's gift to man. (Ecclesiastes 3:12-13)

In other words, he's saying, If life feels incomplete, if meaning slips through our fingers, if there's nothing we can do under the sun, for to find satisfaction in life, the next best course is simply to enjoy it. The humble enjoyment of God's gift - eat, drink and take pleasure in the work that God has given to you. In fact, you can feel this sense of resignation. He says, in Verse 14,

I perceive that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added, nor can be subtracted…(Ecclesiastes 3:14)

His saying was theologically right. Nothing can change God's ways. What he has set in motion can never be altered. That's what he's saying. God does what He will do, and therefore I will do what I can do, which is simply enjoy the humble gifts that God has given for mankind to enjoy. That's resignation. It's interesting that people do respond that way. Endless pursuits of enjoyment as the mantra of the life. But thankfully, Solomon at least pulls back the curtain and helps us to see deeper. The deeper reason why there's this ache and restlessness that we feel. And I think a clue is found in verse 14.

…He does this so that people would fear before him. (Ecclesiastes 3:14)

So that people would fear Him. Now, we've been told time and time again in this stage what fear means. In fact, it's just last week where fear was explained to us. It's not about terror, it's not about panic. It's not about the feeling or the sense that we have when we watch a horror movie. That's that's not the point of fear. Fear is being in awe. It's being reverent. Is to see ourselves as creatures, as God as a creator. Is to see that there is a divine gulf between God and all humanity. To see ourselves as powerless creatures bound by times and seasons of life, bound by decay, bound by weakness. It's like coming before the grand canyon with all its majesty, with all its grandiosity and its enormity, and feeling dwarfed in comparison, that's what fear is. We're having a mental awareness that God is God and we are not. And that we should know a place. We should know who we're coming to. That's what fear is.

Now, I grew up in the Philippines. And I suppose if you've been through developing nations, travel is sometimes quite dangerous and extreme. My godparents’ place was on top of the mountain. And to get there, you have to go through a life and death situation. A narrow, circuitous route that has little to no safety barriers. In fact, every time we travel, it's an exercise of faith. You're really, really trusting that the driver is the best driver in the world. Because you look out the window, really, it's true. You can see debris of fallen cars and buses, lives that have been lost. So every time I travel, we pray hard. It's an exercise of faith. If the driver just loses focus in one instance or just speeds up a corner, I think that really would be it. I wouldn't be here today. Well, that's life in the Philippines. And it can tell that as I travel to my Godparents’ place, it's really always an exercise of faith, and it tells you and reminds you how helpless you really are. It really tells you that you're not in control. You can't grab the wheels. You can't control the bus, you can't control the slopes. You're simply at the mercy of the driver. And the only thing you can do is to trust really the one who's steering the wheel. The point is this, that helplessness that I felt in that bus is deeply uncomfortable because we are control freaks. We want to be on top of things. But it reveals something that is deeply true in our lives, that we are not in control, and we are never meant to be. And friends, this is exactly where what Ecclesiastes is trying to say.

The Invitation to Fear and Trust God

In that humbling awareness, in that fear of the Lord, when we recognize ourselves for who we are and who God is, we're drawn to the one who can truly satisfy our deepest needs. We're drawn to him who knows the whole story, who endures forever. It's only in our helplessness they will truly know what it means to fear him, just as the passenger must entrust himself to the driver. Our aches leaves us no choice but to trust in God and fear him. So really, at the end of it all, what I'm trying to say is this. This ache that we feel is not a flaw in the system, but it's God's purposeful design to draw men and women to fear him. God uses it to strip away our illusions of control, to say that we're not really at the driving seat of our lives, and he is. God uses it to show that behind the ache lies a helplessness, and in that helplessness will be drawn into him, will be led to him, will be driven to him for life and satisfaction. That's why I say the divine purpose is ultimately deeply revealing, because God allows our restlessness, this aching that we feel, to lead us to ultimately fear him.

As I come to a close, I know this passage is deeply familiar to each one of you. You hear this in weddings, in funerals, you probably have this framed in your house or on your mugs. But I suppose this familiarity is, makes us really miss the force of what the preacher is saying. He's really not saying or telling us a pretty poem about time, because that's what we always think about Ecclesiastes. God has His times and seasons, and we all just have to trust him in patience. But beyond that, I think what he's really saying is this, he's diagnosing the human condition. He's saying, “You have eternity in your heart. You ache because you are made for more. You have a longing because you are made to be eternally satisfied, and you feel restless because eternity has been placed in your heart, and God uses that ache not to crush you or to make you feel despair and disillusioned, but that ache is an invitation to draw you to Himself.” Now, throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, it’s a long book, 12 chapters, Solomon will keep asking this question, “Why does joy ultimately fade? Why does life feel meaningless? Why does meaning slip through my fingers?” And time and time again, the response and the answer that he gets is this, because we were never meant to be satisfied apart from him. So is there life? Is there more to life than this? Absolutely. You know, maybe that's you today. You know what I'm talking about. You feel the ache, the restlessness in your system, and you ask the same question, “Is there really more to life than this?” Deep down, you know, there's a longing, there's a hunger, there's a sense of restlessness you just can't quite remove. And you've tried all things. You've tried pleasure, you've tried finding in a relationship and success, you tried climbing the corporate ladder and it still left you even more empty. And you begin to wonder, what is life really all about? Is there more to life than this?

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The Story of Humanity and the Invitation of Jesus

Well, friends that ache that you feel. It's never the enemy. That ache is God's mercy to you to awaken you to truly fear, trust and love him. It's a call. It's an invitation. In fact, this is the story of all of Scripture. Humanity was created to be in a perfect relationship with God, but man blew it. And ever since then, it's always a story of a pursuit for something apart from God, a restless people finding something apart from God and God pursuing them. That's what we see in times of exile, in times of the wilderness, in the silence between the Testaments. The question has always been, can anything satisfy us? Can anything quench and fail this hunger that I'm feeling? And into that long ache, Jesus steps in. He tells us in John 6,

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. (John 6:35)

The Ache and Restlessness for Christians

You know why that ache is there? You know why there's restlessness? You know why you still can't quiet it without your endless pursuits of all these things? It's because we've never responded to the invitation. Whoever comes to him shall never hunger and thirst. So if you have never trusted him, but you still feel that longing. If you have never turned to him, you still feel that ache. Or maybe because you have not accepted the invitation that Christ gives. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. But friends, this passage isn't only speaking about people outside of Christ, because he speaks powerfully too for those who are in Christ, because you know how it is. You know the reality of it all that we sometimes forget where true satisfaction is found. And this ache, this forgetfulness, this longing, always shows up in the very small but ordinary moments of our lives. It shows up maybe after you've bought the thing you've been saving for, and suddenly that experience fades. It shows up perhaps when you sat through a family conflict and thought to yourself, why can't this be easier? It shows up perhaps when you scroll through your old photos and you look how seasons have changed and how quickly things have changed, and you yearn for much more happiness and joy like old times. It shows up when you're lying on your bed late at night, you're wondering if you're really making a difference in life. It shows up after that big celebration, that wedding, that graduation, that promotion, when the thrill ends and you quietly ask yourself, “Is this really all there is? Is this really all there is to life?”

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Christians, brothers and sisters in the Lord, that ache you feel is not a flaw in the system. It's always a reminder, a signal. You are not made for temporary things, but you are made to be satisfied in God alone. So don't settle for lesser comforts. We live in this nice and beautiful, affluent country where we're offered many things at our fingertips, but we're made for more beyond it. Don't get numb to God because you've pursued all these things, but settle for life beyond the sun and what it can ultimately provide. I end up with this quote from St Augustine, a familiar quote that you all probably know, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.”

Prayer and Conclusion

That is a story of humanity in a nutshell. Will never be truly rest it until we find true and final rest in Him. So let's consider that as we come to Lord in a word of prayer. Come, let's pray.

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God, we are such restless creatures. This is our story. This is who we are. It's from one pursuit to another, hoping and praying that things would soothe the ache, would quiet the longing, would quench the hunger and the thirst that we all experience. But how deeply lost we are, how unsatisfied we are, because the world promises much, offers much, gives much, but it can never truly deliver. Because life under the sun is all that there is life under the sun. But you've made us for more, for life beyond the sun. So I pray Lord that for every restless soul, they will find true rest in you, because only you can satisfy this heart. These we pray in Jesus name, Amen.