Seasons of Life

SERMON: 2012-04-21--ac1289--seasons-of-life SOURCE DURATION: 00:47:48.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: All candidates provided are lyrics from a hymn or worship song (non-sermon material). Since no sermon content is present in the visible segment to mark the transition, the final candidate index must be selected. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:36:50.740-00:43:57.700, 00:44:01.240-00:47:45.520 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:02:18.520] [CUT] One of the characteristics of planet Earth is that the further you move towards the North Pole and the South Pole, the more pronounced become the four seasons that we know of as spring and summer and autumn and winter. The reason for that, of course, as you know, is that the Earth rotates on an axis 23.5 degrees off perpendicular. And so as the Earth rotates around the Sun, the rays of the Sun hit the Earth on a different angle, and that is what causes our seasons. And not only does the natural world observe seasons, but so does life in general, both individually and corporately. And I cannot think of anyone who words it more poetically than does the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes in the very familiar words of Ecclesiastes 3, the verses 1 to 8. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. A time to embrace and a time to refrain. A time to search and a time to give up. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. And a lot of us will remember how that passage of scripture was popularized a number of decades ago by a group called The Birds in a song called Turn, Turn, Turn. Anybody here remember the song [CUT]? [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:02:18.520; resume after this marked segment] Great song. Great song. But life consists of seasons and in the time that we have this morning I want to talk a little bit about the seasons of life and I do that for two reasons. First of all, the early church and our ongoing study now in the book of Acts finds itself suddenly in a brand new season. Listen again to the verse that we read before. "Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit. It grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord." It enjoyed a time of peace, it was strengthened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord. What a contrast to the season that it had just previously come through. They had been decimated by persecution. They had been spread out over all the area. Only the apostles basically were left originally in Jerusalem. Many people had been imprisoned. Many people undoubtedly had lost their lives. But now that cycle had run its course. It ran its course because the apostle Paul got apprehended by the Spirit of God on the way to Damascus, and now is a season of peace and tranquility in the life of the early church. What a change. That's one reason I want to talk about the seasons of life, but a second reason is that I believe that unless God's people understand the reality of seasons and know what lessons to learn from each season, we have a hard time doing life and remaining faithful to God in the midst of it. So let's talk a little bit about seasons and just to keep it as simple as possible, let's talk about seasons in the context of nature as we understand it, spring, summer, fall, and winter. First of all, then, spring. Spring in the natural, of course, is a season of new beginnings. It's when the rays of the sun grow strong enough to begin to warm the earth and the snow melts and the frost comes out of the ground, and one of the amazing things about spring, and we so readily take it for granted, don't we, is that life that has been dormant, life that often looks like it might well be dead, starts springing up, and who of us doesn't rejoice when we see the first little shoot of green begin to shoot up in the garden and know that spring is just around the corner? Spring is a time of growth, and sometimes that growth develops slowly, sometimes it's very rapid. I recall that as a youngster, I planted orange seeds in one of my mother's flower pots, and for a long time nothing happened, but eventually it sprouted, and with a relatively little tending this thing over the next years grew until it reached the ceiling. And what I best remember about it, besides the fact that it took 12 years to bear oranges and only then after my sister helped it along with a little artificial pollination, is that most of the year this plant would be dormant, it would just sit there. But then when it would start growing, it would go in overdrive, it would make these huge foot long sprouts, almost, you know, if I say overnight it's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean, it would just grow. And I remember thinking, my land, isn't that remarkable, it just sort of sits there, and then all of a sudden when it goes to work, it just goes. And that's really what spring is, isn't it? It's the rebirth of life, and we experience that not only in nature, but there are moments of rebirth, there are springs in our lives too, when new beginnings happen, when growth is easy and fast and the grace of God seems to abound, it's when your child is born and you enter into a new season and your kid goes off to school and he starts a new season or your kid goes off to college and he starts a new season, a young couple fall in love and get married, you find your first job, life is full of new beginnings. And spiritually that happens too. I don't think it's coincidental that in terms of the Northern Hemisphere, the resurrection of Jesus that we celebrated last week happens in spring, because spring is so much that season of new life. I love the way this old hymn puts it. It says it's the spring of souls today, Christ has burst his prison and from three days sleep in death as a sun has risen. And then these words, "All the winter of our sins, long and dark, is flying from his light to whom we give laud and praise undying." Spring is when God seems close, it's when you open the scriptures and it makes sense and you come to church and you know that you're being spoken to and you pray your prayers and God answers the prayers and it's just a good and happy time of new life and new birth. The danger of course is that we take that for granted, don't we? Or we think that it's our goodness or our spirituality that makes that happen and the reality is we live but by virtue of the breath of God and were he to withhold his blessing at any given time, spring could turn to winter very, very quickly. But there is a season and it's called spring and spring normally is followed by the season that we call summer and if spring is a time of new and rapid growth then I would say summer is a time of growth and consolidation. It's the time when the promise of spring grows to maturity. It's when the fruit forms in the tree. It's when the grain fills out and life unfolds as it should and as in nature so too in our personal lives there are times of summer, times of growth and consolidation, times when people settle down, perhaps start a family, establish their career, buy homes, settle in for the long run and whereas spring can be a hectic time of rapid growth and all the work that comes along with it, summer sometimes is an easier time as the potential of spring begins to unfold and spiritually too. There are times of summer, times when we become increasingly aware of who we are in Christ, what our gifts are, what our passions are, times when we find our place in life in the broader community and we know how to give ourselves increasingly in service to God and service to others. It's a time of great satisfaction. It's also a time of diligence because the world, the devil and the flesh are always there to try to abort the harvest and to try to destroy the life that is in fact taking place and for some people summer spiritually speaking or emotionally speaking becomes a time of boredom. They miss the drama, the excitement of the new and the fresh and we talk about people having a midlife crisis when things just aren't moving fast enough and you want the drama and the excitement of feeling that you're in control and that you're making it happen instead of standing back and watching the crop grow with the kind of tending that God assigns to us in areas of our responsibility. There is spring, there is summer and then of course there is autumn and if spring is a time of planting and if summer is a time of growth and consolidation then of course as we know autumn is a time of harvest. A time when the hard work of spring and the careful tending of summer hopefully pays off in a bountiful harvest. It's when the fruit gets picked, the potatoes get dug up, the grain will have been combined and our storehouse is filled with the fruit of our labor. A time of tremendous satisfaction when the harvest has come in and so too in our personal lives there are those times when it's harvest time. When the seed you have sown and the crops you have tended, they come to fruition and you sit back and you begin to enjoy with increasing measure the fruit of your labors both in the natural and in the spiritual. A time when hopefully life becomes a little easier, when economically and financially for many people there is that sense of being provided for and a time when you see the fruit of your labors before God. And then there is winter and winter as we know is a time of decline. A time when growth dies off and turns brown, the earth grows cold and frozen. Very often a time when we become aware of the limitations of our physical and emotional world where our bodies begin to age and our minds are no longer as agile as they once were and the realization comes home to us that we're not going to live forever in this world and we better start making preparations spiritually. A time when sometimes God seems absent because there are times like that in the Christian life. When prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling, when our hopes and dreams perish and when it looks like God might have abandoned us and where you wonder is he angry with me or have I in some place committed the unpardonable sin, a place where you look back with nostalgia on other moments in your life where life was exciting and dramatic and you knew the blessing of God. The psalmist put it this way in Psalm 42 verse 4, "These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I used to go with the multitude leading the procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng." Winter can be a time of discouragement, a time where you really wonder, will I ever laugh again? Life consists of seasons and even within seasons there are seasons, are they not? Seasons of drought, seasons of rain, seasons of great happiness and seasons of great joy and seasons of sorrow, seasons of great success, seasons of great failure, times when the sun shines brightly and times when it looks like the rain will never quit. And believe you me, when I tell you, there is nobody immune to the seasons of life. I don't care how good you think you are or how much you think God loves you or how much you think you might have life under control. There are simply seasons, some of which are of our own making, but some of which are simply unavoidable because it's the nature of life and just because you're a Christian doesn't mean you're going to avoid the seasons of life. In fact, God will probably accelerate the seasons of life for reasons that I will make clear in just a moment or two. And so as we ponder the seasons of life there are, I think, three things about seasons that we need to understand. And the first is this, no single season, listen carefully, no single season ever lasts forever. I love Genesis 8 verse 22, God speaking to Noah after the whole world has been wiped out in the flood and God says, "As long as the earth endures, see time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." People really get bent out of shape over global warming and perhaps they should or we should, but I'll tell you one thing, God has said, "As long as the earth endures, season will follow season." At the end of the day, He is sovereign, He's got it under control and He is bigger than we are and bigger than all the crazy things that we do that might in fact end up damaging planet earth. God says, "Season will follow upon season." And that's not only true in the natural sense, but it's also true in the emotional and the psychological sense. I love also Psalm 30 verse 5 where the psalmist says, "For his anger is but for a moment and his favor is for a lifetime, weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning." Or as another translation puts it, "Tears may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning." I believe how often in almost 40 years of ministry I have quoted that verse as I've tried to help people walk through the deep valleys of life. When you're in the middle of one, it looks like it will never come to an end. You say with the psalmist, "Has God abandoned me? Has He thrown me off forever? Has He forgotten His promises? Has He forgotten His commitment to me?" The promise of Scripture is that tears may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Season follows upon season. No night ever lasts forever. And what is true in the natural and what is true in the emotional is also true in the spiritual because listen to these words of Peter in 1 Peter 5 verse 10. This is in the context of a church that is going through its next phase of persecution when now the whole Roman Empire has turned against them. It's no longer just in Jerusalem. And Peter says these words, "After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, establish and strengthen you." Just a sequence, restore, that is healing. Minds up your wounds. Who of us know that no matter how broken or wounded we are, there are those moments in the providence of God when we've been brought to the end of ourselves, He comes to us by His word and by His Spirit and through the circumstances of life, and He's able to restore to the uttermost those that are just utterly destroyed and utterly broken. That's the character and the nature of God. He is a redeeming God. We sang it earlier, "My Redeemer lives. He buys us back." Love that Psalm. My Redeemer lives. He's bought us back with the cost of His blood. But not only does He restore, He establishes. And when He establishes me, I don't know how to describe it other than to say, He makes life possible. We're not just hanging on by the skin of our teeth and the edge of our fingernails. No, no. God comes along and He restores our inheritance. Remember the story of Job, how he lost everything, was reduced to scratching his boils on the ash heap, and then God not only heals and restores him, but He reestablishes him. He gives back a double of everything that he has lost. And then He strengthens. He gives us new grace. He gives us new power. Part of the difficulty when you go through tough times in life, particularly when they last a long, long time, is that you get reduced inside and outside to absolutely nothing. If you've been with people that have gone through emotional turmoil or if you've ever been with people who go through extended physical illness, then after a while you come to the place where you say, "Just let me die because I cannot do life anymore." When your hopes have been dashed and your dreams have been broken and your life has gone down the tubes, then you just want to give it all up. And Peter says, "After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to Himself will restore, establish, and strengthen you." No season ever lasts forever. And some of you are saying, "Well, what about the people who die or who have an interminable illness and there is no prospect of change in this life and in this world? Isn't that a season that seems to have no let up?" And there's truth to that. The apostle Paul talks about the thorn in the flesh. He's cried out to God three times for God to take it away. And God says, "My grace is sufficient for you." But you know, even when we don't see our restoration, our establishing and strengthening in this life alone, we have the promise of eternal life and eternal glory, do we not? And as Christians, we live by faith. And I know sometimes that sounds like small comfort and who cares about the future when the present is so painful, but the reality is life in this present world is painful many times. It lives under the power of the curse. And the promise of the gospel is not that everything is going to be honky-dory and happy-clappy in the here and now, but when I'm in Christ and Christ is in me with the power of His Holy Spirit, then He makes the vision of a new creation that much clearer and brighter in my mind, and how many Christians aren't there who have suffered intensely in the course of life? Hebrews 11 talks about some that were delivered in the context by the grace and the power of God, but others were not delivered and they held on because they knew there was awaiting them a new resurrection with greater glory that God has prepared for those who love Him. Isn't that what makes Christians Christians? And isn't that what makes Christians able to keep on going and to honor God even in the midst of great suffering? And I'll tell you something, that the glory that we receive in the age to come will be in direct proportion to how the Lord has sustained us through the difficulties and the trials of life. No season lasts forever. And whenever we find ourselves in whatever season we find ourselves, like Paul, we can say, "Lord, deliver me." The biblical pattern is you pray three times, and that doesn't mean you can only pray three times. Most of us pray a hundred times or a hundred thousand times, but three times in scripture is that figure that says, "God, I really mean business, and this is really what I'm asking of you, and I'm not going to accept no until you have told me no repeatedly because then I know that this is your heart and this is your will for my life. And then I will also know that in the middle of this, you will give me the grace that I need to be sustained so that I can be faithful to you and fulfill your plan and your purpose for my life." No season lasts forever. Let me go back to this verse in Acts chapter 9 verse 31 about the church enjoying a time of peace, and it was strengthened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit. That's what excites me about this particular passage because you can well imagine that when they were going through their persecution, tough as it was, far greater than anything that most of us have ever gone through, they would have said, "God, where are you? Is there ever coming an end to this?" And yes, indeed, when it had run its course, Saul gets converted. Who of them could have believed that the persecutor of the church would meet the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and would change just like that? Isn't that the power of God? And who would have believed that peace would descend upon the church and it would be strengthened, it would be encouraged in the Holy Spirit, and it would increase in numbers because they lived and they walked in the fear of God. Second lesson I think that we need to learn is that seasons are a necessary part of life. A couple of months ago, my wife bought a package of daffodil bulbs, planted them in pots and put them away, but because the winter was mild and we didn't really pay close attention to it, we didn't really put them in a cold enough place to chill the bulbs, so it didn't take very long and they started to shoot up, so we brought them up and she duly watered them and along came the greenery, but guess what? Not a flower to be seen, why? Because as you know or as any gardener knows, if you want a bulb to flower, it's got to be chilled, and whatever that does internally, it enables it to enter into the new season. Well, remember the same God who creates nature also created you and me, and the same God who created you and me knows that we need changing seasons in our lives to come to full maturity. Full maturity in Christ is being conformed to His image, and God is constantly at work in your life and in my life to make us more like Jesus so that in the coming age, we will love God perfectly, we will love our neighbor perfectly, as Valerie likes to talk about it in the context of the soul care ministry that they're doing with the women, our self-obsession needs to die, and it needs to be replaced with a God obsession, the great commandment is what? You love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and you love your neighbor as yourself. And to get there, we need seasons. We need seasons when the rain falls from heaven and the earth gets softened and the shoots come forth. We need seasons of sunshine. We need seasons of great spiritual vitality where God becomes so real that the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. But if that's all we ever had, then our love for God would never have been tested and our love for God might, in fact, still be love for ourselves, wouldn't it? Because it feels good to love God. In fact, if loving God and serving God always paid off for us in the immediate, everybody in the world would be a Christian. It would be the Christian version of a drug addiction, but it still is all about me. And in order for God to bring me to the point where it's no longer just about me, He brings me through the cycles of life, the times of drought, the times of spiritual confusion, the time when my whole ideas of who God is and what our relationship with God looks like gets overthrown, and I cry out and I wonder, "God, this isn't what I signed up for." Jesus said, "Nobody who puts his hand to the plow looking back is fit for the kingdom of God." But how many times don't we all look back and we say, "This isn't what I bargained for." I mean, ever been disappointed in God? If not in God, ever disappointed in God's people? I dare say maybe just a little bit here and there. Disappointed in yourself? Of course we are. But see, all the seasons of life are under the providential control of God who uses them to bring us to glory. And I love the way the Heidelberg Catechism puts it in Lord's Day 10. The question is, "What do you understand by the providence of God?" And the answer is, "Providence is the almighty and ever-present power of God by which he upholds as with his hand heaven and earth and all creatures and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, all things in fact come to us, not by chance, but from his fatherly hand." Two years ago, as many of you know, I had the opportunity of going to China with my friend Uiba. We visited seven different cities and churches in each of the cities, but the one church that in some ways I think blessed me the most was this church in Wenxiao. And what you see there is three young people who are actively involved in the life and in the ministry of that church. The two young men that you see there are in charge of what they call the Sunday school. It's all the during the week kind of training and the young lady that you see there is actually a professor at an underground seminary. What blessed me most about the church in Wenxiao was that whereas most unregistered churches have to fly very low under the radar to avoid government interference, the church in Wenxiao leaves out in the open. They're still an unregistered church, but they are blatantly open about their faith in Christ and they are led almost exclusively by lay people. And that was the one church where they could just call a meeting of the church together. I spoke that night to a couple hundred people and the city has a remarkable Christian presence. But there's a history to it. Because when the Cultural Revolution hit China and the church experienced an incredible level of persecution, it really had to go underground and they ended up having to have secret meetings in the mountains surrounding the city. And I remember driving through that area and seeing what kind of rough terrain that was where the Christian used to gather. And during that persecution, they lost virtually all of their ordained leadership. Like the early church, they were reduced to practically nothing, but what Satan meant for ill, God used for good. Because into that vacuum stepped the ordinary lay person in the church and God poured out his Holy Spirit. The church rose and came to life and now they are in an entirely new season. We're almost unhindered in that city. They can proclaim the good news of Jesus. And I'm willing to bet, if I were a betting man this morning, that when you look at your life you will see that each season that you have gone through will have been used of God in some way to bring you to where you are today. Seasons of spring when God's presence was just so powerful that you said, "Hey, I want to give my life to him." Seasons of summer when you just saw growth happening, seasons of autumn when you saw how God used you and you stood amazed at how influential your life could have been in somebody else's life and even seasons of winter where it seemed like God was gone and you thought it was all hopeless. And the cycle continued and out of that barrenness, new life came forth. As you will recall, Jesus said, "Every branch of mine that bears fruit, he does what to? He prunes in order to make it bear more fruit." Every season of life is important and is used of God. And then finally, and I wind up with this, our job then is to learn to trust the Lord in the different seasons of life. And I think if you were to ask me what is my favorite verse of scripture, and if I were to try to pick a verse or two or three of scripture that I think I could identify with as a life verse, I would pick Romans 8, the verses 28, 29, and 30. Or Paul says, "On behalf of the Lord, we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God for knew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called. And those he called, he also justified. And those he justified, he also glorified." And you see there what's been known as the golden chain of salvation, how God predestines us for glory. He calls us, he chooses us, he brings us to faith, he justifies us, he sanctifies us, that is to say, he changes us from glory to glory, and one day he is going to glorify us so that we will be like Jesus without any corruption, living in God's eternally brand new creation. And God uses the seasons of life then to flush out in us places of sin, places of unbelief, places of rebellion, places of anger, places of sorrow, places of brokenness. You know, how many of us aren't like Peter, who in moments of great optimism says, "Lord Jesus, I'll even go to the cross and die with you, only to run away like cowards when life turns against us, and life is difficult." It's in those moments that God teaches us his character. It's in those moments that he teaches us who Christ is and who it is that we are in Christ, and it's in those moments that God comes along and we discover his resurrection life and his resurrection power in places that we never, ever imagined it was possible. And the key to all of that is just faith and patient endurance. And I don't profess to know this morning what season of life you find yourself in. Some of you, I'm sure, find yourself in seasons of spring where the things of God are exciting and new and you can't imagine it'll ever be any different. Some of you, you'll find yourself in seasons of summer where there is just a good growing consolidation. You're solid and you're stable and you're just glad to rejoice on the line. And some of you, you're in a season of autumn and it's harvest time and you see the changes that God is producing in you. You see the changes that God is producing in your family. You see the fruit that you're bearing, perhaps at work or perhaps in your relationships with other people. And some of you, I'm sure, perhaps many of us here, have found ourselves in a season of winter when the ground is hard, our hearts are cold, our faith is dim. We go through the motions, we go through the routines, but it's only the discipline of one step in front of the other. There isn't a lot of extra energy to pour into anything and we wonder sometimes, will the season ever change? And I can tell you by the authority of God's word itself, that winter will yield to spring. Spring will yield to summer. Summer will yield to fall. And the cycle will continue for as long as we live until God presents us before himself without any wrinkle or blemish or spot. Like the Lord, there is no one besides you. There is no rock like our God. The Lord brings death and makes alive. He brings down to the grave and raises up. The Lord sends poverty and wealth. He humbles and He exalts. He raises the curve from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash. He lowers us to raise us, so we can sing His praises. Whatever is His way, all is well. He makes us rich and poor, that we might trust Him more. Whatever is His way, all is well. All my changes come from Him, He who never changes. I'm held firm in the grasp of the rock of all the ages. All is well with my soul, He is God in control. I know not all His plans, but I know I'm in His hands. I'm in His hands. He closes now, then strips us, yet with His Word equips us. Whatever is His way, all is well. And though our seasons change, we still exalt His name. Whatever is His way, all is well. All my changes come from Him, He who never changes. I'm held firm in the grasp of the rock of all the ages. All is well with my soul, He is God in control. I know not all His plans, but I know I'm in His hands. All is well with my soul, He is God in control. I know not all His plans, but I know I'm in His hands. I'm in His hands. I'm in His hands. Lord, we sing it because we mean it, Lord, that all is well with our souls. Lord, we trust You, and we rely on You alone. Lord, though our seasons change, we will still exalt the name of the Most High God. Sing it with me. All is well with my soul, He is God in control. I know not all His plans, but I know I'm in His hands. [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:44:01.240; remove through 00:47:48.000] All is well with my soul [CUT], He is God in control. All I once held dear, built my life upon, all this world reappeared, and wars to own. All I once thought gain, I have counted, lost, spent, and worthless now compared to this. Knowing You, deep well, knowing You, there is no greater thing. You're my all, You're the best, You're my joy, my righteousness, and I love You all. My heart's desire is to know You more, to be found in You. And though it's yours to possess by faith, what I could not earn of surpassing Him of righteousness. Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You, there is no greater thing. You're my all, You're the best, You're my joy, my righteousness, and I love You all. Oh, to know the power of Your risen life, and to know You in Your suffering. To become like You in Your death, my Lord, so with You to live and never die. Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You, there is no greater thing. You're my all, You're the best, You're my joy, my righteousness, and I love You all. I love You all. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:47:48.000; resume after this marked segment]