1200. The Time of Your Life

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones Senior's intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything, so he established daily chapel services today. That tradition continues with fervent preaching from the University Chapel platform my message today will be preached by Dr. Sam Horn was a BJ your seminary professor and is also pastor at Palmetto Baptist Church in Piedmont, South Carolina.

When asked to take your Bible to Ecclesiastes chapter 3 this morning and one of the last things that happened to me while I was here was a very memorable thing and it came about as a good friend of mine who's also a board member man by the name of Jerry Morgan, you many of you may not have any clue Jerry Morgan is back is a board member that deeply, passionately cares about the school and he's on this campus almost every day. If not every day. He drives a truck around campus and when I was here he would call sometimes it's a hand grabbing on campus and we run down there one day he was on campus and he actually came through where my office used to be and he poked his head in the door and he said CM remember this number and he gave me this number 25,950 is I want you to remember that number and I want to think about that number because that's a very important number 25,915 that's a number I want you to think about. If you have your phone. Just enter that number in somewhere so that you have it and that you are able to retain it so that wherever you are. Whenever it comes to your mind and you want to think about that number you know where to go to find 25,900 D and he said it was such a passion that I wanted to know what that number was and he said to me that is the number of days that the average American male lives in this century, 25,915. The average American age lifespan according to what whoever makes these figures or does these figures is 71 and so when you take 71 years and you multiply that by 365 that is 25,950 that is an incredibly depressing number because this October I will have completed 20,391 of those days.

That's actually really depressing. I mean I that you know that means that means I have 5524 days left.

If I lived it to 71 in if you want to put it on a percentage I've lived 79% of my allotted days that that's not a happy thought for a guy like me. Let's talk about you for a minute.

It if you're 20 years of age he let's say on your 20th birthday.

You will have completed 7300 of those 25,950 days. That means you got 18,615 of those days if the Lord gives you a 71 year life allotment. Now some of you will live less than that some of you will live more than that, but but it 20 years of age, you will have spent 17% of your allotted days. What are you going to do with the rest of what you going to do with today. The passage that we are looking at this morning in our our time together is a passage on time. It is in a block where the preacher, Solomon has asked a very piercing question on somebody described it as the fierceness question or one of the fiercest questions in the Bible and the question is when it's all said and done when you've lived all 25,915 of your days and you add it all up. What profit what advantage is it is a man to have spent that time and invested what he invested what Jane what advantage is there to man when he lives his life under the sun that Solomon's question. That's what he wants to know uses an accounting term to kind of put the question in front of us. If you've got 25,915 days and you work hard and you invest that time and you you build a a a business and and you accrue well and you accrue power you use those 25,950 days to accomplish at the end of the time.

At the end when it's all said and done what advantage has all of that brought Solomon's incredible answer to that is nothing, everything is vanity.

It is a bill that's the word it's the idea of fleeting.

It's the idea of I can't quite grasp it. Solomon uses the imagery of chasing the wind to help us sort to get a mind picture around that word, and so Solomon sets out on a quest in he acknowledges right away. Chapter 1 that life really is like this is not making this up, and that it goes over and over and round and round and everything turns and turns and rivers come out of the ceiling flow back to where they came from, and everything is this ongoing repetitive cycle under the sun every thing is vanity, the harder you try to figure it out, and the more you work to put all the pieces together. It's impossible. It's like chasing wind. Solomon goes on this pervasive search and he searches everywhere hi low and he has the resources and the wisdom given by God and experience to go and do this and add heat as he comes back he comes back with the answer that it is all empty. It is all serial. It is all just chasing after when but in chapter 12 he talks about a shepherd who has given him words and the words are wise words and they are words that are intended to bring the light to everybody living under the sun chasing after the wind and so he writes the words down and the words are the book of Ecclesiastes. So how do we make sense of life and more importantly, what does Time have to do with life and so we come to chapter 3 and that's a big context in which this discourse of the time of your life that Solomon is going to talk about.

And Solomon is going to tell us five simple things about time. Let money show them to you in the text. Number one, Solomon is to start by reminding us that God is the sole architect and ruler of time. He starts off in chapter 3 with this statement. To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.

Note the word time and the word season, that's the idea. There and then he's going to articulate 29 times and eight versus the use of the word time he's got architect and made using poetic structure, 14 lines where he is going to architect what ever happens in time and he's going to bring it down to what happens in your time and 28 different things are listed in verses one through eight and there in their set in this pairing that that is in the is is is intended to help me understand that what's on the one side and on the on the other side is intended to include everything in the middle. Everything has a season. There's a time to be born in a time to die.

That's the first thing the Solomon lays out as you live out your 25,915 there is a beginning and an ending of those days and every thing that happens in the middle is something that God is orchestrating. Notice the phrase under the habit. It's an unusual phrase in the book because Solomon all along has been talking about under the sun life under the sun is is have L life under the sun is vanity life under the sun has no profit, and all of a sudden, as he introduces the understanding of time he wants you to understand that time under the sun is under the control and in the hand of someone who is above this and he ended introduces this idea with the idea that there is also an under the habit.

There is someone and have been who is not bound by this frustration and who is not limited to chasing the wind. He actually has his own land is owned his own divine wind and it's called the spirit of God and that spirit has given these good words that are like goes drive us to a place of security there like Peg's nails that allow us to hang our lifestage in stable ways on these words and so Solomon says the first thing you need to know about time even though it doesn't seem to make sense and why do we have 25,915 that go so quickly. Solomon says you need to know that time is is architected and ruled sovereignly by God. There is an architect and a ruler over time, and he has designed everything in time everything you will experience in time.

All of the relationship to go down and look at these eight versus a talk about the experiences of life. They talk about the relationships we have in life. They talk about the responsibilities that will come upon us in life we speak about all of our joys and our sorrows and our pain and our pleasure. Solomon's is all of this is architected by God, so God is the sole architect and ruler over time and noticed secondly that God is at work in time is not is a God architected like this where he actually is at work in time. What probably givers nine.

What profit had he that worketh in that wherein he labor. I've seen the travail, which God has given to the sons of men, to be exercised, and then look at verse 11. He has made everything beautiful in his time. So Solomon is now going to lay out for you what God is doing in time and it's an interesting thing that God is doing. He is assigning vocation to men within that time, you know, do you realize that you have a God given vocation from God, and you were to spend the vast majority of those 25,950 days caring out that vocation, a vocation is very different than a job. The job is what you do for a paycheck, a vocation is what you do to advance the kingdom of God to the gifts and calling cities called you to exercise where ever he places you in whatever career you do you know it's interesting that you were designed for this by God, you are in the process of discovering that's why when you came here your freshman year, you may not have known exactly what it was that that you were getting major and how many of you came your freshman year and you did not know what your major was cozier and how many of you change your major. Since your freshman year that is your hand. You know what happened you began to discover what God's vocation for you was.

Maybe you came here and everybody else had an idea what you should do with your life.

But at some point along the way.

It maybe was in the chapel message. Maybe it was a lecture that a teacher gave her. Maybe it was some conversation you had and you became aware that God was orchestrating your life that he had hired you for something and that patching was growing and you begin to discover your vocation and you are to be highly commended his students here because you are now investing significant time of your life and preparing for the application. I hope you see what's going on here is much more than just getting a piece of paper do a good job. I hope you see what Solomon is saying that God is assigned you a vocation and he will capacity you and energize you and bless you and and you use you in that location and God himself is doing something in time is not just assigning you and equipping you and energizing you and preparing you to use you in a vocation he himself is doing something in time and what he is doing as it is this. He is always doing things the right time. That's the idea that you see in verse 11, TF made everything beautiful in his time. God is doing the right thing at the right time. The idea here is appropriate, even in a broken world. Even in a world that is under the curse, even in a world where you are missing pieces. Solomon says in chapter 1 verse 11 you are missing pieces. There's no way you could put this picture together because you are missing pieces and you don't know which pieces are missing and there are pieces that are bent and twisted and when you try to get them to fit where they should go. They are so twisted and so bad it doesn't fit together, but in the midst of all of this, God is always doing the right thing at the right time.

Whatever's going on in your life today is just going on the architect of time the sovereign ruler of time is at work doing the right thing in your life at the right time. He is always doing the right thing and the right time and you instinctively know that there is more than meets the eye. Look at verse 11.

Again, he also has set the world in their heart. The idea of there is eternity. God is good and eternal. Since a new because you are an eternal being, you know instinctively that there is something more than what you can just see and experience in those 25,915 days under the sun. You know that and your heart yearns for that.

But God is hidden from you. Look at verse to the rest of that verse. He has set the world is set eternity in their hearts so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. So God is at work in time God has a purpose for time. That's the third thing God has a purpose for time when 14 I know this is the second time Solomon is going to say this I perceive is the idea. I know that, whatsoever God knew it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it and God knew at that that men should fear before him, God is at work in time. Nothing can be added to what he is doing nothing can for those purposes. Those 25,915 days or however many of them. God is allotted to you. God is always going to do the right thing at the right time and you instinctively know that it is way more than just those 25,950 days and your heart yearns to know what that is in your investing your time trying to figure out how to get ready to do whatever God has called your vocation to be and you instinctively know that there is a God says I alone architect that I always do the right thing and the right time, and I have done it this way and here's why.

So that people will fear me. Now let's stop very quickly and make sure we understand the idea of fear in Ecclesiastes is this not afraid it's not what I felt when I was walking down that path and I heard that rattlesnake. That's not the fear that were talking about here.

When Solomon talks about sphere or the fear of the Lord.

It's it's like a statement it's it's it's a code statement for rightly related to Yahweh.

When Solomon talks about fearing God it it's it's it's it's it's the idea of being rightly related him racing and following who Yahweh is and what is expected coming to know Yahweh in intimately and that's the idea. Here God is saying Solomon is writing these good words that are supposed to bring up the lie for 25,950 days and he is saying God is architecting it this way because he wants to use time in all of its brokenness to drive you to a place where he wants to drive you is the most wonderful place and all eternity is into a relationship with the God who architects time who always does the right thing at the right time and then there's 1/4 thing that happens in this little chapter and that is this God doesn't just architect time and he doesn't just have a purpose for time he tells us how to assess the moral character of our time and in Solomon's answer to that is our time on earth is evil.

Look at verse 16 through 21 in the taxes. Let your eyes scan it, I saw under the sun. The place of judgment, that wickedness was there in the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there and over Psalms is everywhere I look where where where I looked and expected seem righteousness, I saw evil and where I expected to see evil. I saw righteousness. This is a broken and corrupt place. This is Solomon's version of what Paul said in Ephesians 520 says you need to redeem time because the days are correct. The days are evil.

So Mrs. you want to know what God wants you to know about time you have limited time. God is always architect the time so that he's always doing the right thing at the right time is a purpose for time for your time and he wants you know that you live in an evil time and you're going to see things that don't make any sense. And the reason you see things that way is because the world you live in is broken. It is twisted it doesn't work well the way it was designed and there pieces that are missing and you don't even know what all those pieces are.

You can even number them.

You can even identify the and then he says it is. It is a limited year in this broken place for a limited time. Look at verses 18 to 21. I said my heart concerning the state of the sons of men that God might manifest them and that they might see that they themselves are beasts and then goes on to say the same thing that happened to the animals around you is going to happen. Your body is going to stop breath is going to stop.

Life is going to stop in those 25,950 days are going to come to an end to what writer Heber said he was nine, 27, to every man is appointed once to die, so Solomon why not just if that's true, why not just eat, drink and be merry. Why not just build bigger barns like the man in the parable Jesus told white. Why not do that. This is all we have these 25,915 that is why not do that. The answer is in the last phrase in verse 22 Psalms that I perceive there is nothing better than a man should rejoice in his own work. The work the idea. There's a work God gave him for that is his portion that is a lot for who shall bring man to see what Shelby after him and that's the final thing as we close this morning.

God will redeem time and he will evaluate your use of it. The question that Solomon is asking actually has an answer. It's it's phrase it as a rhetorical question who will bring him to see you will bring man to see what is after him and under the sun.

There doesn't seem to be anybody, not even someone as wise and is experienced and as powerful Solomon but Solomon is actually wanting to enter. Who knows time is architecting time who always does the right thing with time and what he wants you to do a time. Her Solomon's advice to you and the advice is this. Remember your creator turned to him abrasive when in the days of your youth right now while you still have the vast majority of those 25,950 days, now is the best time it is the appropriate time for you to turn and embrace your creator and say to him what is it you want me to do with those days. If you're always doing the right thing at the right time to get on board with your plan for my life and God's answer to that is fear God and keep his commandments do the next right thing because God will bring every work good or evil, in the judgment and he will always render the right judgment at the right time units in amazing thing is that it is we close that in the fullness of time at the right time, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law to do what to fix everything that was broken in time, including your own heart and mind. So what do we do with our time and I don't mean like our minutes.

What we do with our life. What we do with the time God is allotted us. We let God architected we let God use it.

We let God.

Let father thank you for our time. Thank you for our life. Thank you that you are God who unfolds it in amazing ways.

Lord, as you reveal what it is you're calling us to do with time. Our time may we respond. I pray for every student as they pursued and prepare for the vocation. You've called them to do in this broken world and you would use the men and women in this room to establish the message that you have become to save us from this time and will thank you for it. In Jesus name, amen.

You would listing to a sermon preached by Dr. Sam Horn, who was a preacher. Your seminary professor and is also pastor at Palmetto Baptist Church in Piedmont, South Carolina.

If you appreciate this program and benefit from the faithful preaching and teaching of God's word would you consider sending us a special financial gift. You can easily do that through the website. The Daily Platform.com. I'm Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University.

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