Ecclesiastes 3:1
3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
Solomon is still pursuing his argument. Everything around us is in a perpetual change. What vanity, therefore, is it to seek solid happiness in so shifting a scene! As well might we find rest on the tossing ocean, as in a fluctuating world. There is no stable centre. It is “the wheel of nature.” (James 3:6) Sometimes one spoke is uppermost — sometimes the opposite. But all is constant motion.
And yet all these fluctuations are under absolute control. It is not a world of chance, or of fate. All events — even the most apparently casual — all those voluntary actions, that seem to be in our own power, with all their remotest contingencies — are overruled. To everything there is a season — a fixed time (See the word Ezra 10:14; Esth. 9:27, 31.) — a predetermined purpose, on which — and not on man’s care, thought, or effort — everything depends. Of this purpose we know nothing. But “known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” (Acts 15:18) His eye has been upon everything, great and small, from all eternity. All is his unchangeable will. ‘If God’ — as Charnock writes — ‘could change his purpose, he would change his nature.’ (Discourse of the Immutability of God.)
The perversity of sin has indeed disturbed the order of God’s providence. But the work progresses. “The wheel in the middle of the wheel” (Ezek. 1:15-21) moves forward, and performs the appointed work. Caprice, short-sighted ignorance, and fickleness of purpose, distinguish the works of man. But here everything is worthy of God. “He hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence.” (Eph. 1:8) It is ‘the wise, and regular, and orderly administration of One, who sees the end from the beginning, and to whom there is no unanticipated contingency; and whose omniscient eye, in the midst of what appears to us inextricable confusion, has a thorough and intuitive perception of the endlessly diversified relations and tendencies of all events, and all their circumstances, discerning throughout the whole the perfection of harmony.’ (Wardlaw.)
There is, then, a season for every work of God, and it comes in its season. Every work has its part to fulfil, and it does fulfil it. There was a season for Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, and for the return from Babylon. Nothing could either force on, or keep back, the time. “On the self-same day,” the deliverance was at once developed and consummated. (Exod. 12:41; Ezra 1:1) To have looked for it at any other time — whether sooner or later — would only have brought disappointment. There was “the fulness of time,” the appointed season — the fittest time — for the Saviour’s advent. (Gal. 4:4) An earlier period would have hindered many important purposes, or at least clouded their full development. The delay demonstrated the utter weakness of all other remedies. What could reason do with all her intellectual energy (1 Cor. 1:21), or the law with all its heavenly sanctions? (Rom. 8:3) Successive disappointments prepare the welcome to the one — alone — efficient remedy.
Rightly to time things is the property of wisdom. And here indeed “the Lord is a God of judgment,” not only willing, but “waiting” the time, “that he may be gracious, and have mercy. Blessed” — truly “blessed are all they that wait for him.” (Isaiah 30:18) Child of God! Remember it is thy Father’s will, which appointed the season, and determined the purpose. All the wheels of Providence subserve the purposes of grace. Every dispensation is most fitly chosen, and issued under the commission to do for thee nothing but good. (Rom. 8:28) It is the will of the Omnipotent God of wisdom and love. His will is always the best reason, and without it there could be no reason at all. If thy “times are in his hands” (Ps. 31:15), in what better hands could they be?
Our times are in Thy hand;
O God, we wish them there;
Our life, our friends, our souls, we leave
Entirely to Thy care.
Our times are in Thy hand;
Why should we doubt or fear?
A Father’s hand will never cause
His child a needless tear.
Here is thy best happiness in a world of vanity and sorrow. The grace for the present moment is inexhaustible and always ready, and (so writes an excellent Christian) ‘as exactly and exquisitely suited to your case and mine every instant, as if it had been appointed and contrived only for that single case, and that single moment.’ (Nottidge’s Correspondence, p. 65.)
— Charles Bridges (1794-1869)
