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עֵת (Et): A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reformed thinking. It is good to be here.
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We are. We were doing something a little
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different today. Usually we take a pretty broad
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theological concept. Right, like justification or
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sanctification? Yeah, and we look at it from
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10,000 feet. But today we're going to do the
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opposite. We're going to zoom in.
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I mean all the way in. We are looking at a single word.
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Just one word. One Hebrew word, but it is a
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word that controls literally every aspect of your life.
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It controls when you wake up, when you eat, how you feel about
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your career, and honestly, it is probably the source of about 90%
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of the anxiety you feel on a daily basis.
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That is a pretty bold claim for one little word.
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I stand by it because today we are doing a deep dive into time.
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Time. And before we get into the
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Hebrew and the theology, I have to confess something.
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My relationship with time is, well, it is not great.
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It is actually pretty hostile. Hostile.
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How so? Yes, hostile.
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I feel like I am in a constant fistfight with the clock.
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I view time as this, you know, scarce resource that I am just
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hemorrhaging. Every minute that ticks by is a
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minute I have lost. I'm trying to manage it, save
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it, send it wisely, but mostly I just feel like it is slipping
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through my fingers. I am running out of it.
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You and everyone else in the modern world, we are totally
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obsessed with the shortage of time.
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We treat it like a bank account that is constantly being drained
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and we cannot make any more deposits.
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That is it. It's a ticking clock.
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It is a linear countdown. Here is the problem with that
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perspective. It is exhausting, it is anxiety
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inducing, and most of all, for our discussion today, it is not
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how the Bible talks about time. And that is the hook.
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That is why we are here. Because we are two Protestant
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Christians. We hold the Westminster
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Confession, we believe in a high view of God's sovereignty.
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And yet, we often live like atheists when it comes to our
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calendars. We really do.
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We act as if time is this autonomous machine that is
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eating us alive rather than a creation of God.
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So we dug into the sources. We pulled the lexicons.
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Brown, Driver Briggs a lot the theological word book of the Old
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Testament. We looked at the usage in the
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Septuagint and we found that the primary Hebrew word for time in
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the Old Testament suggest something radically different
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than a ticking clock. It does.
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The word is ETH ETH. Yeah, spelled I and Tav and.
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If we can wrap our heads around what this word actually means
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and what it does not mean, it changes everything.
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It shifts us from managing a schedule to trusting in
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Providence. So let's get into the weeds, or
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I guess into the roots, because looking at the etymology of this
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word, the history of where it comes from is actually a bit of
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a detective story. It is a bit messy right out of
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the gate, to be honest. If you open the Brown Driver
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Briggs lexicon, which is sort of the gold standard for biblical
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Hebrew definitions, they actually struggle to pin down
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where this word comes from. It is a very ancient word.
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It appears, what, nearly 300 times?
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Roughly 296 times in the Old Testament, so it is very common,
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but scholars are divided on its parentage.
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There are two main camps here, and the difference between them
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is massive theologically. Layout Camp A for us.
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Camp A suggests that ETH comes from the root E, spelled East
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Nunhe now in ease means to answer or to respond or to
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occur. To answer.
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Right. So if you are in this Cam, you
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view time as something that presents itself.
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It is a reaction. An event happens, and the time
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is the response to that event is a very fluid, almost passive way
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of looking at it. Things just, you know, occur.
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But looking at our notes and looking at how Reformed
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theologians usually handle this, we don't think that is the right
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take, do we? Most of us don't.
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Grammatically, it is a bit of a stretch, but more to the point,
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it doesn't fit the way the word is actually used in Scripture.
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We lean toward the second camp. This is the view supported by
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scholars like Bauer and others. They trace ETH to the root eat,
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spelled yud ayandalit. Yud.
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And what does that mean? This is where the lights turn
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on. YAG doesn't mean to answer.
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It means to a point to designate or to fix.
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To fix as in fastened in place, not to repair something that is
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broken. Precisely.
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Think of a peg driven into a wall.
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It is fixed. It is designated.
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If this is the true route, and we believe it is, then biblical
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time isn't a flowing river of seconds.
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It is a series of fixed points. It is a series of appointments.
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That is a huge shift. We're moving from flow to
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appointment. And it gets better.
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This route connects ETH to another very weighty Hebrew
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word, ETA. I know that word ETA means
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congregation right? Like the assembly of Israel?
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Yes, but why? Why is the word for church or
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gathering related to the word for time?
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I've never thought about that. Because a congregation isn't
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just a random crowd, it is an appointed meeting.
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It is a group of people who have agreed to be at a specific place
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at a specific moment. And ETA is a gathering by
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appointment. So ETH time itself carries that
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same DNA. It is a meeting.
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It is a time in the Bible is not just a blank slot on a calendar
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waiting for you to fill it. It is a fixed moment.
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It is a designated encounter. If the route is ETA, then ETH
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implies a time that has been appointed by God.
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This fits perfectly with the Westminster Confession, doesn't
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it? God, from all eternity did, by
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the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and
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unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.
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That is the connection. We believe God has four
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ordained. He has appointed whatsoever
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comes to pass. He hasn't just wound up the
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clock and let it run. He has appointed the specific
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moments, so when we encounter an F, we are encountering something
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God has set. It is not empty duration, it is
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a date on God's calendar. That is a highly accurate way to
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put it, and we can see this distinction even more clearly if
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we look at how the ancient translators handled this word.
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We have to look at the Septuagint.
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The Greek translation of the Old Testament.
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Right. A couple of centuries before
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Christ, Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures
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into Greek. Now, Greek has a much more
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specific vocabulary for time than Hebrew does.
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Greek basically has two main words, Kronos and Kairos.
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I think many of our listeners might have heard this
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distinction in a sermon before, but let's break it down because
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it is crucial here. Kronos is.
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Kronos is where we get chronological chronometer
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chronic. It is quantitative time.
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It is the ticking clock. It measures duration.
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If I ask you how long you waited in line and you say 10 minutes,
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you are talking about Kronos. It is a container that you fill.
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And Kairos. Kairos is qualitative.
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It is the right time. It is the season, the
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opportunity, the decisive moment.
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It is not about how many minutes pass, it is about the
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significance of the event. If I say it is time to get
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married, I'm not talking about 2.0 PMI am talking about the
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season of life that is Kairos. So you have these translators.
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They see the Hebrew word S have to pick a Greek word.
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Did they pick the clock word Kronos or the opportunity word
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Kairos? This is the data point that
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really blew my mind when I was reviewing the sources.
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Remember, Kai appears 296 times. How many times do you think they
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translated as Kronos, the quantity word?
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Given how we usually think about time, I would assume a lot, like
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at least half. Why wait only twice out of 296?
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Only twice, but they translated it as Kairos, the quality word,
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the opportunity word, 162 times and another 26 times they used
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hora, which means hour or moment.
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Essentially the same idea. That is overwhelming.
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That is a landslide. It is, it tells us, that for the
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Hebrew mind and for the early Greek translators, high Earth
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was almost never about duration. It wasn't about how long.
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It was about the point in time, the occasion.
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So when we read time in the Old Testament, we should be thinking
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of a timeline stretching out. We should be thinking of
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specific points on a map. Yes, it is the occasion when
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something happened and we actually see this outside the
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Bible to the sources mentioned the lashish letters.
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Oh right, the pottery shards. Yeah, these are ancient Hebrew
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Astraka military correspondence written right before the
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Babylonians destroyed Judah. And in those real world
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historical dispatches they use this concept.
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They talk about watching for the signal fires of Lakish according
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to all the signs, the appointed times given by the commander.
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So it wasn't just a high minded theological concept, it was how
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they lived. You watch for the signal at the
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appointed ass. Exactly.
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It grounds this whole idea in real history.
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Our sources list a bunch of phrases where this pops up in
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the text. Let's look at a few because they
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really paint a picture. One of those common ones is BF
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Ha ha. At that time it is used 68
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times. You see it constantly in
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Deuteronomy, in Jeremiah. At that time, sounds like a
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storyteller's phrase. You know, like Once Upon a time.
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But it is actually the total opposite of Once Upon a Time.
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Once Upon a Time is vague. It is a fairy tale.
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BF Haha is specific. It locates God's acts in real
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history. When Moses uses that phrase, he
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is saying at that specific appointed moment in history.
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God did this. It anchors our faith in reality,
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not mythology. And.
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Then you have the phrase for the present KF.
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At this time or no, it is used to grab immediate attention.
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There is a specific usage of that which caught my eye on the
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source material. Genesis 18.10.
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This is the story of Abraham and Sarah.
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Yes, this is when the Lord visits them by the oaks of
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Mamre. Sarah is barren.
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She is old, humanly speaking. Her time for having children is
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long gone. The biological clock has stopped
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ticking. But God says something
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interesting. He says I will surely return to
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you, Caiaph. Which is usually translated
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about this time next year. Right, but literally it means at
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the time of life or when the time revives.
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The time of life. God sets an F He sets an
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appointment for life to begin even when the chronos, the
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chronological age says it is impossible.
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God brings the Kairos. It really drives home the
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theological point. We don't decide when life
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begins. We don't manage that schedule.
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God sets the time of life. And that applies to everything,
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not just human life, but the life of the world around us.
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If we look at how is used in nature, we see that God is the
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Lord of the seasons. He is the God of the calendar of
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creation. Let's move into that.
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Section two of our outline focuses on Providence in nature
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because I think we, especially as modern people, we have a very
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mechanistic view of nature. We think, OK, the Earth tilts on
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its axis, the sun hits the equator, the seasons change.
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It is just physics. We view it as a clockwork
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universe. God wounded up at The Big Bang
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and walked away. But the Bible doesn't see it
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that way. The sources show F being used
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for harvest, for rain, for migration.
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Right, Jeremiah 51.33 mentions the time of harvest.
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Ezra 10.13 talks about the time of rain.
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Deuteronomy 11.14 promises rain in its season, be ito.
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Be ito in its time, this is where we see the doctrine of
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common grace and Providence intersecting.
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Can you define common grace for us?
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We use that term a lot in reformed circles, but just to be
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clear. Sure, common grace is the favor
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God shows to all of His creation, regardless of whether
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they are saved or not. The sun rises on the evil and
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the good. The rain falls on the just and
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the unjust. That regularity, the fact that
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we can plant a seed and expect it to grow, is God's kindness.
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So nature isn't just operating on autopilot.
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No, the Hebrew worldview sees nature as operating because God
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is constantly decreeing the the right time for the rain to fall
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and the harvest to be ready. It is personal.
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It is intensely personal. Psalm One O 4.27 says all
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creatures look to God to give them their food and due season
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be ito. I love that image.
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Think about it. The Lions.
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The Ravens, the Fitch, they aren't waiting on the laws of
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physics or a biological algorithm.
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They are waiting on God to mark the appointment for dinner.
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They are looking to his hand. So the creation is In Sync with
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the creator's appointments. Yes, completely.
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But we aren't. No, we aren't.
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And there's a stinging rebuke in the book of Jeremiah that brings
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this out. Jeremiah 8.7.
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I have it here. Even the stork in the heavens
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knows her times, and the turtle doves, Swallow and Crane keep
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the time of their coming. But my people know not the rules
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of the Lord. The stork knows her F.
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It is amazing when you think about migration.
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A bird with a brain the size of a pea knows precisely when to
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lift off and fly thousands of miles.
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It knows the appointment. It submits to the A of God
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designed for it. It doesn't argue.
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It doesn't say I'm busy right now, I will migrate next week.
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It keeps the time. But my people know not the rules
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of the Lord. That is the tragedy of the human
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condition. We are the only creatures who
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fight the calendar. We want to set our own times.
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We want the harvest when we want it, not when it is appointed.
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We want success on our timeline. We want relief on our timeline.
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And that rebellion creates so much of the anxiety we feel.
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We are fighting the appointment. We are out of sync.
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We are trying to be the Lord of Time, but that position is
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already filled. This leads us naturally to the
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most famous passage about time in the entire Bible.
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You cannot talk about this topic without addressing the elephant
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in the room, or rather the poem in the room.
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You mean the one verse even people who have never touched a
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Bible know by heart? Ecclesiastes chapter 3.
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The birds wrote a song about it in the 60s.
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To everything. Turn, turn, turn.
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For everything there's a season and a time for every matter
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under heaven. But here is my issue with how
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that passage is usually taught. It feels resigned, like hey,
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sometimes you cry, sometimes you laugh.
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Circle of life, deal with it. It feels very fatalistic or just
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like a generic observation of the world.
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That is the Stoic interpretation.
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It is the idea that the universe is just a wheel and you are
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stuck on it. But if you look at the Hebrew
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text, Solomon isn't engaging in stoicism, he is engaging in high
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theology. He uses our word if repeatedly,
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a. Time to be born and a time to
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die if we. Stick to our definition that if
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means an appointment or a decree.
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This isn't just an observation of nature, it is a legal
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declaration. God has appointed a time to be
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born. God has appointed a time to die.
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God has appointed a time to plant and a time to pluck up.
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So these aren't just things that happen randomly, they are
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appointments on God's calendar, yes.
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And that changes how we handle suffering.
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It means the suffering isn't an accident.
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It is an ETH. It is a season appointed by a
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sovereign God. A time to weep and a time to
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laugh. That means God has decreed a
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specific moment for my tears. He has, and if he has decreed
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the tears, he has a purpose for them.
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It is not senseless pain. There is a fascinating
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distinction in the sources about the right time versus the wrong
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time, because F often implies the proper time.
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Yes, Ecclesiastes 10.1 scene says Blessed is the land whose
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prince's feast at the proper time bathe.
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So there's a right time for feasting.
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Timing is moral. If you feast at 90 AM when you
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should be working, that is drunkenness or gluttony.
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If you feast at the appointed time after the work is done, it
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is celebration. The action is the same eating
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and drinking, but the F makes it right or wrong.
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That is a deep thought. The timing sanctifies the
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action. But then there is that tricky
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verse. You know the one.
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Ecclesiastes 7.17. Be not foolish.
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Why should you die before your time?
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Before your time Bello itika. This creates a bit of a
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theological headache, doesn't it?
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It really does. If we just said that God
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appoints the time to die in Ecclesiastes 3, how can
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Ecclesiastes 7 say we can die before our time?
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Is God confused? No, God is not confused.
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We have to distinguish between God's secret decree and our
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human responsibility. Break that down for us.
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From the perspective of God's secret decree, His eternal plan,
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our days are numbered. Nothing catches God by surprise.
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You aren't going to die one second earlier than He ordained,
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but the Bible often speaks from the perspective of human
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responsibility and the general course of nature.
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So, practically speaking. Practically speaking, if you
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live foolishly, if you drive drunk, if you engage in
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violence, you are likely to shorten your life relative to
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what it could have been. Naturally we look at it and say
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that was premature, that was not the EF for a natural death.
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It is a warning against wickedness, not a loophole in
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sovereignty. Correct.
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It doesn't negate God's sovereignty, but it stresses
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that our actions have consequences in time.
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But then we have Ecclesiastes 3.11.
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God has made everything beautiful in its time.
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Be ito in its appointed time. This is the comfort.
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We see the pixel, God sees the whole image.
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I really like that analogy. We see a time to mourn and it
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feels feels like a disaster. It feels ugly, but God sees how
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that dark pixel fits into the beautiful image He is creating.
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The source notes mentioned that human limitation here is the
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problem. He has put eternity into man's
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heart yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the
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beginning to the end. We are stuck in the timeline.
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We cannot see the full calendar, so we have to trust the one who
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holds the pen. We trust that the F is
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beautiful, even if it feels painful right now.
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There's one word verse in Ecclesiastes I want to hit
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because there's another one that people get wrong.
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Ecclesiastes 9.11 Time and chance happened to them all.
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Time and chance, F Wappinga. Now, when a modern person hears
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chance, they think of Las Vegas. They think of randomness, luck,
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rolling the dice. Is the Bible saying that
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sometimes things just happen randomly outside of God's
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control? Absolutely not.
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That would contradict the rest of Scripture.
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We don't believe in a God who says, oops, I didn't see that
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coming. That's what does Pega mean.
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Pega doesn't mean random luck. It means an occurrence, an
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incident, or even an encounter. It comes from a root, meaning to
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meet or to fall upon. So it is a meeting.
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It is an intersection. Time and occurrence happened to
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them all. It means that for everyone,
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swift or slow, strong or weak, there is an intersection where
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their timeline meets an event. And since God controls the F, he
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controls that intersection. Yes, from our vantage point,
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looking through the windshield of our car, it looks like
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chance. It looks like bad luck that the
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flat tire happened on the way to the big interview, but from the
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reformed interpretation, that chance encounter is actually a
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divinely overseen if it is an appointment we didn't see
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coming. That is deeply reassuring.
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It means there is no such thing as bad luck in the Christian
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life. There is only Providence.
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I want to shift gears a bit. We have talked about time in
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nature, time in our personal lives.
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But the Bible also uses F in a much heavier, more prophetic
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sense. If God has appointments for rain
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and for birth, he also has appointments for nations.
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We have to address the prophetic.
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If the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, they use this
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word like a hammer. One of the key phrases in the
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source material is ETH picuda. If picuda the time of visitation
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or the time of punishment. You see this in Jeremiah 8.12
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and 10.15. Now visitations sounds polite to
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modern ears, like a neighbor stopping by for coffee.
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In the Bible, when God visits, it is rarely for coffee.
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It is an inspection, it is an intervention.
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When the prophets warn of an F picuda, they are saying God has
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an appointment on his calendar to come and judge this sin.
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It is fixed. It is inescapable.
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It is Nations might think they're getting away with
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injustice. They might think God is asleep.
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But Jeremiah says no, there is an F.
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The appointment is set. The auditor is coming.
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And there's also Ethera. The time of trouble or time of
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evil. Jeremiah 14.8.
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Psalm 37.39. These are seasons of distress
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appointed by God for discipline or judgement.
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It is sobering, but it also leads us to the absolute end.
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The Book of Daniel uses F to talk about the end of history.
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S Krets, The Time of the End. Daniel 8.17.
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Daniel 12.1. This is where the linear view of
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history really shines through, isn't it?
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It is a fundamental part of our worldview.
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Many ancient cultures and even some modern philosophies view
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time as cyclical. It is an endless loop repeating
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itself. Reincarnation, the circle of
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life histories goes nowhere. It just spins.
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But the Bible says. The Bible says time is an arrow.
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It is going somewhere. It has a talos, a goal.
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There is a fixed ETH krets, there is a finish line appointed
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by God. History is not an open-ended
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loop. It is a story with a conclusion.
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The sources mentioned the time of the Gentiles in Ezekiel 30.3.
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Nations have their hour. They have their F Rome had its
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time. Babylon had its time.
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The modern superpowers have their time, but godly limits it.
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No empire lasts forever because God has not appointed an eternal
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if for them, only His Kingdom has no end.
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This idea of a fixed end creates a sense of urgency, and that
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brings us to the adverb derived from F, the word ATA.
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ATA it means now. It is just 8th modified.
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Essentially it is the immediate time and in Deuteronomy 10.12 we
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hear and now Israel. What does the Lord require?
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Because God controls the F when He says now.
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It demands immediate obedience. It is the urgency of the gospel.
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Now is the day of salvation. We don't own the future ETH.
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We don't know if we have tomorrow.
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We only have the ETA the now to respond.
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There's a verse in Psalm 119.126 that really struck me in the
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notes. It is time for the Lord to act.
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ETH Los La La YHWH it is time to do for Yahweh or it is time for
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Yahweh to do. It is a plea.
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It sounds impatient. It is urgent.
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The psalmist looks at the wickedness in the world, people
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breaking God's law, and he says God, the appointment must be
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close, intervene in history, mark the time, do something.
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It is a prayer for God to keep his appointment with justice.
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And we know he will. He is never late.
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OK, we have covered a lot of theological ground, etymology,
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nature, judgment, history, but I want to land this plane on the
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personal level for you, the listener who might be driving to
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work or folding laundry or sitting in a hospital waiting
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room right now. What does Toth mean for you
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today? Section 5 of our outline focuses
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on this pastoral application, and there is one verse that for
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me sums up the entire Reformed view of time.
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It is Psalm 31.15. My times are in your hand.
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Yadka ito Tai. Now I have read that 100 times
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and I always pictured it as a singular thing, like my lifespan
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is in your hand, like God is holding a stopwatch for my life.
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But the source notes point out something quite interesting
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here. It is not singular.
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No, it is plural. Ito Tai my times.
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Why plural? Why not just say my life?
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Because our life is not one monolithic block, it is made-up
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of many different if the vicissitudes, the ups and downs,
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the chapters exactly the chapter of poverty, the chapter of
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wealth, the chapter of health, chapter of sickness, the time of
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raising toddlers and the time of the empty nest, those are all
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different times. So when David says my times are
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in your hand, he is saying all of these different episodes, you
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are holding them. He doesn't say my clock is in
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your hand. He says my events, my destinies,
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my crises are in your hand. Let's talk about the comfort of
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that, because that is the core of the Reformed faith, finding
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comfort in God's sovereignty. But honestly, sometimes it is
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hard to trust. It is easy to believe God
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controls the day I die. It is much harder to believe he
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controls a time of the flat tire or the time of the layoff.
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Think about the alternatives if my times were in my own hands.
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I would be a wreck. I would be anxious constantly.
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I would be trying to manipulate every outcome.
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I would be crushed by the weight of trying to be my own
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Providence. You aren't strong enough to hold
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your times, you would drop them. If they were in the hands of my
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enemies. Which is what David feared in
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the context of Psalm 31. He had enemies surrounding him,
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people who wanted to destroy him.
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If his times were in their hands, he would be in despair.
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He would be hopeless. But since they are in God's
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hands. We have security, We have peace.
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We know that the one holding our times, the scary ones and the
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happy ones, is the same one who appointed the seasons for the
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stork in the rain. He is good and he is sovereign.
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It brings to mind the Heidelberg Catechism, seeing as we are
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doing Reformed thinking here, that without the will of my
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Heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head.
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That is the spirit of it, to tie.
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My appointments are held by Him. There is one more famous passage
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we have to touch on before we wrap up.
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It is in the outline under Ester 4.1 scene.
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This brings the sovereignty of time right down to our choices.
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This is Mordecai speaking to Queen Esther.
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She is in a position of authority, but her people are
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facing genocide. She is terrified to act.
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And Mordecai says, who knows? Is whether you have not come to
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the Kingdom for such a time as this Lief Kazaf?
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For a time like this. This brings the doctor of
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predestination right down to human agency.
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God places his people in specific ETH specific moments
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for his purposes. Esther wasn't queen by accident.
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She wasn't there because she won a beauty pageant and got lucky.
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No, the ETH was prepared for her and she was prepared for the
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ETH. God matched the person to the
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appointment. And that applies to us too,
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doesn't it? It has to You are not living in
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the 21st century by accident. You are not in your specific job
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or family or neighborhood by random chance.
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You have been placed there, Lieth Kazaf, for such a time as
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this. That gives so much dignity to
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our daily lives. We aren't just punching a clock,
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we are stepping into divine appointments.
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And we are stewards of the F. We don't own the time, but we
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are called to occupy it faithfully.
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So let's summarize what we have learned about if today it is not
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a ticking clock. No.
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It is an appointed time, a season, an opportunity.
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It is a moment of judgement and it is a moment of grace.
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It is a meeting place between God's decree and our reality.
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And it is almost entirely distinct from the Greek concept
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of Kronos or duration. It is about the quality and
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purpose of the moment. That is the big take away.
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Stop counting the minutes and start looking for the purpose of
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the appointment. We usually end with a final
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provocative thought, something for you, the listener, to Mull
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over. What have you got for?
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Us Well looking at the sources there is a reference in Hosea
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10.1 it says it is time to seek the Lord ETH Raiderosh time to
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seek. Here is the challenge, if God
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holds every F in His hand and if He has appointed this very
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moment right now for you to be listening to this deep dive,
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then this is an appointment. It is not an accident.
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So the question is. What is the duty of the day
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required of you right now? If this moment is an F from God,
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how are you supposed to fill it? Are you seeking Him in it or are
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you just trying to get through it?
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We do not own our time. We are stewards of God's
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appointments. That is the thought to carry
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with you. Thank you for joining us on this
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deep dive into F. We hope it changes the way you
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look at your calendar This week. Reflect on your own times.
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And remember, they are in good hands.
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Until next time.