Reference

Genesis 8:18-22 and Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

Sermon Notes

When Am I?

Genesis 8:18-22

So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark.

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1–15

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

          a time to be born, and a time to die;

          a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

          a time to kill, and a time to heal;

          a time to break down, and a time to build up;

          a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

          a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

          a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

          a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

          a time to seek, and a time to lose;

          a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

          a time to tear, and a time to sew;

          a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

          a time to love, and a time to hate;

          a time for war, and a time for peace.          

          What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is 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 take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

 

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.