There is a Time for Everything

Day 39: Deuteronomy 31–34; Ecclesiastes 1–6; Acts 22–24

Moses dies, Solomon cries and Paul flies into prison.  And all this is from God.

OK, I am behaving like a journalist trying out eye-catching headlines. Well there is a time for headlines and a time for headstones.  Did I mention there is a time for headaches?  OK! Enough cuteness, let's get into today's summary response.

Moses dies at the end of Deuteronomy.  He has fulfilled his part of God's purpose.  He has written down the law and put it in a form that the priesthood (the sons of Levi) can teach.  He has also passed on his authority to Joshua, who will lead the Israelites across the Jordan to take the land from its inhabitants.  Moses commissions Joshua before all Israel at the tent of meeting.  God's presence is seen in the pillar of cloud at the entrance to the tent.  It is a time of reminders for the elders to lead Israel to keep the laws, commands and statutes of the covenant given through Moses.  It is a time to remember that God is their deliverer and provider and protector.  The Lord goes before them into the battle.  Deut. 31:8 says, "The Lord is the One who will go before you. He will be with you; He will not leave you or forsake you. Do not be afraid or discouraged.”

It is also a time to to remember their weakness.  Moses prophesies that Israel will be unfaithful and as a result they shall bear God's wrath. The Lord told Moses, "these people will soon commit adultery with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will abandon Me and break the covenant (Deut 31:16).  It is a bleak forecast.  Moses even writes a song to teach the following generations how the failure of the Israelites to keep covenant with Yahweh lead to their undoing. Their turn to idolatry leads to their fall to the hands of enemies.  Israel will fall to "an inferior people" and "a foolish nation."

There is a time for correction, discipline.  But there is also a time for restoration.  For God promises to bring them back home "when He sees that their strength is gone."  He will have "compassion on His servants (Deut. 32:36)."

Moses blesses the twelve tribes of Israel by name and then goes up the mountain (Nebo/Pisgah) to see the Promised Land and dies.   The text implies that God buries Moses' body.  The New Testament letter from Jude draws on material outside the Bible in a book called "The Assumption of Moses."  In it the archangel Michael wants to bury Moses' body but the Devil tries to stop him claiming authority over the earth(Jude 9).  There is a time for mysteries and myth which calls us to deeper truth.

By now you may realize I am inspired by the despairing thoughts of the writer of Ecclesiastes, traditionally attributed to King Solomon.  His very first words are "Absolute futility!" "Everything is futile (Ecc. 1:2)."  I cut my teeth on reading the New International Version in the 1980's which says, "Meaningless, Meaningless! Everything is Meaningless!" 

Back then these words liberated me.  Because I found comfort and catharsis in having my own experience validated by scripture.  The good book spoke affirmation to what most people would tend to censor.  I had a friend in Solomon.  We understood each other.  For I too had tried just about everything by then and found that everything was nothing...a chasing after the wind (Ecc. 1:14).  There is a time for recognizing that all the pretty things of this life are empty when one realizes death will steal it away. 

Life has its moments of joy and pain, gain and loss.  The wise man realizes that God is in the midst working His good purposes (Rom. 8:28).  I used to spend a lot of emotional energy fretting over a world that won't bend to my will.  A wise man realizes there is one will by which the world turns.  And regardless of what meaning there is for me or not, It is my Father's world.  I am only a child in His world.  According to Solomon, we are no better off than the animals (Ecc. 4:19). We both die and return to dust.  While Solomon may hope in his spirit rising upward to God, nobody really knows for sure (Ecc. 3:21).  So just learn to enjoy life as it comes.

This is the wisdom of a man worn down by the world but who trusts in God's faithfulness.  Solomon was not wise to the coming promise of eternal life through one of David's sons.  But the apostle Paul knows the promise and preaches resurrection.  His preaching lands him in prison.  But he is in prison more to protect him from the murderous threat of the Jews in Jerusalem than for any crime he had committed. His preaching stirs anger and jealousy from the Jews (because of his ministry to the Gentiles), but fear and amazement in the Roman governor Felix who married a Jewess (Acts 24:24-27). 

Felix kept Paul in prison and conversed with him a number of times over a two year period before being replaced by his successor Festus. One might think that Felix's desire for a bribe kept Paul in prison (Acts 24:26), but there is more going on here than Jewish rage and Roman greed or curiosity.  God has designed all this for His purposes to spread the gospel all the way to Caesar's ears in Rome, the center of the western world (Acts 23:11).

There is a time to decide who is really in control of your life.  Will it be you, prone to despairing or happily ignoring the futility of life lived invested in this world? Or will it be God, whose purposes are always pure, right and good, even when it means you will suffer while doing His will? 

There is a time for ultimate decisions which lead to life or death.  May God give you courage as you consider the time you face.