Times and Seasons in Life
VBC Albuquerque · Nov 8, 2025
This sermon explores Ecclesiastes and the life of King Solomon, who possessed everything yet found life meaningless without God. The pastor teaches that God ordained seasons and times—birth and death, planting and harvest, weeping and laughter—to remind us that nothing is permanent under heaven. Understanding God's sovereign control over these seasons cultivates patience, humility, and trust in His guidance through all circumstances.
Ecclesiastes is a unique autobiography in Scripture recording King Solomon's journey to find meaning, purpose, and happiness for life under the sun. Solomon was the third king of Israel, son of King David, and was given extraordinary wisdom by God. When God offered to grant him anything, Solomon asked not for riches or power but for wisdom to judge God's people justly. God was pleased and granted him wisdom surpassing all others, plus wealth, honor, and long life. Solomon possessed everything humans desire: supreme intelligence, immeasurable riches (silver as common as stones), widespread fame, 700 wives and 300 concubines, and absolute power.
Yet after experiencing everything people crave, Solomon concludes: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." His search for happiness through physical pleasures—building houses, planting vineyards, acquiring servants, seeking enjoyment—yielded only emptiness, like "dust in the wind." His journey focused 100% on earthly life without lifting his eyes to God, making all efforts meaningless. Solomon's testimony foreshadows the futility of leaving material legacy—his foolish son Rehoboam destroyed eighty years of his and David's work in less than a year.
The sermon's core teaching concerns "Times and Seasons in Life" based on Ecclesiastes 3:1-11. Solomon lists fourteen opposing times: birth-death, planting-harvest, killing-healing, tearing-building, weeping-laughing, mourning-dancing, embracing-abstaining, seeking-losing, keeping-discarding, tearing-mending, silence-speaking, love-hate, war-peace. The pastor emphasizes that time is equally distributed to everyone—24 hours daily for celebrities, doctors, and ordinary people alike. No one can control or extend time; once it passes, it vanishes forever. He illustrates this with Sarah Brightman's song "Dust in the Wind" to capture the sensation of time slipping away like dust in the breeze.
Understanding life's seasons cultivates humility, compassion, and wisdom. Living only through positive seasons (life, laughter, embrace) makes people weak when facing difficulties or indifferent to others' suffering. Conversely, experiencing only hardship (death, tears, war) breeds bitterness and resentment. The pastor tells of a disabled Vietnamese veteran rejected by his wealthy mother, leading to his tragic suicide, and the ancient parable of the old man and the lost horse—when the horse disappeared, he said, "How do you know it's bad?" When it returned with wild horses, "How do you know it's good?" When his son broke his leg, "How do you know it's bad?" Then war came, and his son's disability exempted him while neighbors' sons died in battle.
In conclusion, the pastor affirms that God—not humans—controls time and seasons. Each season has purpose, value, and meaning for those who trust God wholeheartedly. Solomon writes: "Whatever God does is appropriate in its time." Though God has placed eternity in human hearts (revealing that another realm exists where things continue forever), no one can fully understand God's work. True happiness comes when we thank God for what we have rather than regretting what we lack, when we realize dreams differ from reality, and when we look upward to our Creator even while living on earth. As Psalm 121:1 affirms: "I lift my eyes to the hills: where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."