Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
081420
GOD is perfect, HIS ways are perfect and you and I were born under HIS perfect timing.
We believe that God gives us a certain amount of time that we might use for His glory.
God has created you for His glory and until you believe that and then live for that purpose, you will never find true happiness and contentment in life!
Think about it, He was not amazed at what the teachers were teaching, they were amazed by His understanding of the Torah and His answers to their questions.
Now, one of the things that make time so important is the fact that it is so rare! It is irretrievable!
You can never get back the time that you lost or wasted.....it's gone forever!
The Philosopher William James said, "The great use for one's life is to spend it for something that will outlast it!"
Now, God's timing is perfect, and if you are in fellowship with Him, you will have peace of mind with everything you do.
However, if you are not in fellowship with God and you do not have doctrine resident in your soul, you will concede with Solomon in ECC 3:9 What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils?
Please notice that this verse doesn't say that there is a time to be conceived and a time to die.
It says, a time to give birth because life begins at birth not in the womb.
Now, regardless of the circumstances and events that surround your birth, God gave you life at that moment, so that was the right time for you to be born.
You had nothing to say about your birth and that's why your timing was perfect.
You did not choose your parents; God did. And His timing was and is right on time.
You did not choose your birthday; God did!
God created soul life and imputed it to your soul at your birth.
So, if you have any complaints about your parents or your birth, your timing is off.
Don't say you were born too late or too early or you would have been better off if you lived during another generation.
God is perfect, His ways are perfect and you and I were born under the perfect timing of God!
We are saying God's timing is off, but God's timing is never off!
And that's why anyone who resents his parents or his early environment, no matter how bad or how good it was, is totally out of sync with life.
He said, “Bob, get use to it, because anyone can say anything about another person and there will always be someone stupid enough to believe it!’
Every time you use your environment as an excuse for your bad habits or your bad decisions, you are so far out of line that you are disoriented to life.
And just like we had no control over our birth, we also have no control over our death!
The point is that when we were born and when we die is a matter of the sovereignty of God or God's judgment.
Only our perception of what's happening can be wrong, and that will be brought out in some of the passages that our Lord went through.
I always get a little chuckle when I think about what He said to me and how dumb I was.
Smiling faces sometimes
Pretend to be your friend
Smiling faces show no traces
Of the evil that lurks within (can you dig it?)
Smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes
They don't tell the truth
Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof.
Let me tell you, the truth is in the eyes cause the eyes don't lie, amen
A smile is just a frown turned upside down my friend.
So, hear me when I'm saying
Smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes, yeah
They don't tell the truth
Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof.
(Beware) beware of the handshake -- that hides the snake (can you dig it?).
I'm a-telling' you beware of the pat on the back
It just might hold you back.
Jealousy, (jealousy) misery (misery) envy (envy)
I’ll tell you; you can’t see behind smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes they lie, they don’t tell the truth.
People are often bitter, upset, and disturbed because of the way someone they love dies, putting themselves out of God's timing for the rest of their lives, as if somehow everything in life is unfair to them.
There is a lot of unfairness in the world, but the minute you react, you're out of God's timing.
And remember that excuses are never solutions to problems.
Look at all the people who complain about their birth, their parents, their home, their environment, and their circumstances right now.
And becoming very pushy and trying desperately to make things happen is a sign of being on your own timing.
And your wrong timing as a believer will destroy you and make you miserable in life.
Now, timing is simply defined as the selection of the best time for doing something in order to achieve the desired effect with maximum results (repeat).
For the Church-age believer, timing is a matter of adjusting to and synchronizing with the PPOG.
So, every detail of life is involved in timing, such as being in the right place at the right time.
In God's plan for your life, bad timing is a matter of being out of fellowship, falling apart when under pressure, being out of the will of God, having the wrong priorities, making the wrong decisions, and all of this because of ignorance or rejection of the plan of God.
And, above all, bad timing is lost opportunity under the equal privilege and equal opportunity of God's plan.
The Hebrew verb for plant is nata which means to plant, to work, to invest, to use your assets.
In other words, Solomon is saying that God has allotted or assigned to you a profession, a business, or a job and also the time to put into that profession, business, or job as well as the time to enjoy those blessings.
A time to begin and a time to end.”
A time to start and a time to quit!
A time to engage in your job and a time to retire from it.
In our day, "there is a right time to invest and there is a right time to reap from that investment."
So, in effect, this verse says that whatever you do in life by way of making a living, there's a right time and a wrong time.
So, you were born at the right time and you will die at the right time because those are God's decisions.
And knowing when to plant and when to plow is a matter of understanding the soil, the weather and what crops you're trying to produce.
So, in effect, this is saying that timing in life is a matter of knowing what you want to do in life, what business you want to be involved in, what you want to do to make money to sustain yourself.
And Solomon is right in his assessment of the fact that there is a time for everything but if you don't look at life from the divine viewpoint and you just look at it like life "under the sun,".....time is meaningless even when you're doing what you're supposed to be doing!
Uproot is the Hebrew verb aqar which means to root up; to destroy, to exterminate.
Before you can replant after your crop grows you must destroy the old to make room for the new!
And this is also means that there could be a time in your life for you to uproot or destroy or to exterminate that which you have been planting.
In other words, don't try to hold on to something that God has taken away.
The Hebrew verb for kill is harag which means to kill the enemy in battle or to execute the criminal.
Violence can be right timing or it can be wrong timing.
For example, if you are in the military or law enforcement, there are times when you must practice violence!
In the laws of divine establishment, capital punishment is the way that crime is controlled.
So, a "time to kill" refers not only to capital punishment for criminals, but also to the fact that when you serve your country in the military, you should kill the enemy, for that is your job.
And you are not a murderer, it is honorable to kill in war, not dishonorable!
And the Bible does not say "You shall not kill", it says "You shall not murder."
The verb to heal is rapha which means to heal; to bind up wounds, to heal medically, physically, to restore life; to save life; to mend or repair; reconcile.
A time to tear down is the Hebrew verb paratz which means to demolish, or to break away.
There's a time when we must have things in our life completely removed or taken away……for our own benefit.
The Hebrew verb banah is used for construction of something wonderful, something great, it can also mean to repair something.
Now, what Solomon says in this chapter is basically right, however, without a relationship with God and seeing things from the divine viewpoint of life, all of these things are meaningless.
Fatalism comes from the Latin fatum meaning "that which the gods ordain to happen" and it is the belief that all things have been determined to happen and there's is nothing that we can do about it.
This is the beginning of his fatalism in which he says, "what will be, will be" and there's really nothing we can do about it!
So, in effect, this verse says that whatever you do in life by way of making a living, there's a right time and a wrong time!
So, a "time to kill" refers not only to capital punishment for criminals, but also to the fact that when you serve your country in the military, you should kill the enemy on the battlefield.
A time to tear down means to demolish certain things in our life or to break away from those things especially if you are living in the grace of God.
There's a time when we must have things in our life completely removed.
In fact, there's even a time when we need to break away from certain people.
The Hebrew word banah is also used for construction of something wonderful, something great, it can also mean to repair something.
In other words, God has allotted a certain amount of time in your life for laughing and dancing and weeping and mourning.
any pastors spend all of their time trying to set people "straight" rather than just teaching the word of God and letting God do it!
And he said, "Well I've spent 12 years trying to straighten out John, and he never did get straightened out!"
"I've spent 14 years trying to straighten out the marriage of the Smith's and it never did get straightened out!"
I've spent three years trying to straighten out Susan and she never did get straightened out.
And then the ex-pastor and now funeral director said, "Now when I straighten them out they stay straight!"
Laughter and weeping are used here as opposites yet they bare a direct relationship between the mentality of the soul and the emotions.
The verb to weep is bakah and it means legitimate weeping not operation cry baby or the tears of bitterness but an expression of emotion.
For example, our Lord wept at the tomb of Lazarus, Joh 11:35.
Our Lord wept out of patriotism in Luk 19:41, because of the coming destruction of Jerusalem.
Our Lord also wept at the cross, Heb 5:7; Psa 22.
He could cry and scream under the horribleness of spiritual death and still orient to the grace of God and pray.
Laugh is the Hebrew verb sachaq which refers to legitimate humor because of relaxation, not laughing at foolishness or to hurt someone or to make fun of them and mock them.
God has given us a certain amount of legitimate pressure and relaxation.
A time to mourn is the kal infinitive construct of caphad which means to weep or to beat the breast and it's used for mourning for loved ones at a funeral.
There's a certain amount of time that God has set aside to mourn for those who have died but, only a certain amount of time and then you must pick up the pieces and move on!
And by the way, if you desire to go to the grave of a loved one, there's nothing wrong with that nor is there anything wrong with memories that may bring tears to your eyes!
A time to dance is the kal infinitive construct of raqad which means to dance as an expression of pleasure, joy and happiness, not as the sexual expressions of today.
C.S. Lewis probably said it best, he said "Pain is God's megaphone. He whispers to us in our pleasures, but He shouts to us in our pain."
I've seen families throughout my ministry draw strength from one another while in mourning over the death of a loved one!
And then I've seen that same family laugh and enjoy each other’s company right at the funeral.
To throw stones is the hiphil stem of shalak which is causative active voice, so this means to be caused to throw stones.
Throwing stones can mean a lot of things but to be caused to throw stones can mean to be caused to fight for your country or if in law enforcement, practice capital punishment!
However, "to throw stones" can also mean to pick up stones and to clear the land for construction or building.
To gather is the Hebrew verb kanac which means to collect materials for building; to collect stones for construction, or to clear a field for plowing, or to prepare the military with weaponry.
In Jer 1:10, the Lord said to Jeremiah, "See, I have appointed you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, To pluck up and to break down, To destroy and to overthrow, To build and to plant."
In fact, when God gives you rest and peace from problems and difficulties, whether it's to your nation collectively or you individually, it's time to build and prosper!
In 2CH 14:7 "For he said to Judah, "Let us build these cities and surround them with walls and towers, gates and bars. The land is still ours, because we have sought the Lord our God; we have sought Him, and He has given us rest on every side." So, they built and prospered."
And, if it's not literal war, it is the spiritual warfare of Eph 6:12.
Now, there is time when destruction is the only alternative, however, a constructive soul with inner grace and inner power can handle the destruction.
And, it's a constructive soul that you need not counseling.