Introduction
Beloved, everything exists as though time is running according to our own determinations. Self-determination has been the illusion of man since the beginning. This is the root of freewillism and many other sophisticated philosophies of men today. Indeed, men have been deceived into thinking that they are holding their tomorrows. According to our natures, we are one with the world in thinking that circumstances are in our hands.
The truth is that we look for man in every circumstance. This quest is epitomized in the Protestant Reformed Churches and in the First Reformed Church of Bulacan (now the Free Presbyterian Church of the Philippines). They teach essentially what man can do as he is considered to be central in the work of salvation and fellowship in the covenant. Christ is nowhere to be found in their doctrines; thus they continue according to their own wills. They think that they can do something so that God will bless them. They think of blessing as the end unto which their obedience and activity of faith infallibly arrive. Lastly, they think that the church depends upon the will of a man who dictates the form of polity and doctrine.
If you want to profane the gospel, make man an ulterior doctrine. Hide man behind every lip service. After all, members will not notice that in each acknowledgment of God’s grace in the covenant there is an undercurrent of anxiety for man. And if you can no longer contain yourself, let it out, but let the best professors and seasoned ministers speak for you. You know well that these men have an undeniable charisma and the ability to bewitch most of the members with their words. So easily they gain a following once you let them speak in Latin or Dutch.
Moreover, if you want man’s will to prevail (hierarchy) and to profane the sacraments, baptize an infant whose parents are not members of the church and defend their non-membership by saying that they are elect and believers. Mumble these words in your international so-called apology: “Yes, we erred. But the error does not concern important doctrine. Our judgment is that it was only procedural.”
What?
“What we mean…there was nothing wrong in the baptism. The church is okay and well. We are still Reformed.”
All the fearful wondered at the men who said that. Thus the apology was accepted. Man prevailed. And when that happened, the covenant surely was profaned.
Man is so intoxicated with himself, so wrapped up in himself.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 says that “to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” And what is under heaven? Man. Indeed, in every season, as history passes like a river rushing from the fountain of God’s eternal determination, you will see that he has made everything beautiful in his time (v. 11). It is as if history is impregnated with God’s counsel, so that nothing happens outside his determination. But in the context you can also see man: his birth and death, labor and toil, sin and culture, strength and talents, psychological adaptation, religion and ethics, philosophy and logic, oratory and eloquence, and hatred and love. How we perceive everything as it goes down in history is so centrally humanistic. Everything is about man.
But Ecclesiastes 3:15 says that “God requireth that which is past.” To require is to seek and to demand. God is seeking something. That is the reality in the world. He demands something from his works, and they must answer to him in perfection. And that seeking is consequently a humiliation of man because he is in the bondage of sin; he is serving the devil and his kingdom. While everyone is busy acting and laboring for himself, God looks down and seeks something altogether different, as though he pays no attention to what men are doing. It is as though all the works that men do have no value to God. What a shame! This means that sinners have no part of God. According to their natures, they are separated, alienated, from God, so it is no mystery why God is seeking something as though he does not see the sinners. The natural man cannot have and never will have fellowship with Jehovah. God will shine his face upon the sinners only when he finds what he is seeking—when he finds what is “past.”
The Meaning
In all his works God ever before him that which he purposed to accomplish. He seeks himself in all his works. His seeking is not the search of one who has lost something, as though some object lay beyond his knowledge or control. Rather, the language of seeking speaks of his divine will and good pleasure. What he seeks is precisely what he himself has ordained and brought to pass. When he beholds the works that correspond to his eternal purpose, he is well pleased, for he sees therein the perfect execution of his own counsel. His delight is found in his works as they conform perfectly to what he has determined in himself.
Thus when the text speaks of requiring, we must understand this language in terms of God’s eternal will and purpose. He seeks that which accords with the counsel of his own mind. His purpose is not formed gradually as history unfolds, nor is he discovering what he desires as events take place. Rather, all that God wills to accomplish has been perfectly known and determined in his eternal counsel. What he requires (seeks) in his works is the realization of that which he has eternally purposed in his mind—nothing lacking, uncertain, or missed but that which he has ordained according to his perfect wisdom.
Yet who can know the mind of God? No creature can penetrate the depths of his wisdom. Only the Spirit of God knows perfectly the things of God, for “the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:10). Through the Spirit the Father reveals himself to the Son, and likewise the Son hides nothing from the Father because they seek one another in the Holy Spirit.
Such is the mystery of the eternal covenant among the divine persons and the economy of knowing perfectly and completely the substance of God’s mind. The revelation is complete and perfect as a result of his love toward himself, who subsists in three divine persons. There is no gray area in the mind, will, and revelation of God, for the purpose of every thought is to reveal himself. This mystery of divine fellowship is altogether unlike the fellowship of creatures, in which even those most intimate with one another retain thoughts and intentions unknown to each other. However, no one can fathom what is in the mind of God. No one can search out his secret counsel and not even his will, which has been creaturely revealed. Indeed, “no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end” (Eccl. 3:11).
Meanwhile, men are occupied continually with their own works. Their lives are marked by a seemingly endless succession of activities: birth, death, planting, harvesting, killing, healing, tearing down, building, weeping, laughing, mourning, dancing, loving, hating, believing, repenting, and many more. There are many things with which they occupy themselves, thinking that life consists entirely of working and striving. But Ecclesiastes 3:9 asks rhetorically, “What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?”
We are born inherently as laborers or workers. Since we fell into sin, God has cursed us to till the ground, and he cursed the ground to turn against us after we till it. Without exception all the world is at work. We are naturally inclined to work. All sinners are workers of their own righteousness—workers who strive for themselves and for their own welfares. We always want to be doing something or contributing something to God’s work. Everything is labor for man. But “what profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?” “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world?” (Eccl. 3:9; Mark 8:36). Absolutely nothing.
Moreover, with all our striving, we still cannot search out what is in God’s mind. What a shame! In all man’s striving, laboring, and toiling, no one can fully attain to the mind of God. No matter how much man strives, he cannot reach or equal the wisdom of God. No matter how much man strives, God’s wisdom is far beyond the reach of his understanding. Thus Jesus said, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). All God’s works are impossible for us, yet many still insist that God’s works can be attained by mere possibilities. If you repent, then God will forgive you. If you do this and that, God will bless you. Surely you actually can experience the goodness of God by a mere prepositional phrase—“in the way of.” O taste and see that the Lord is good in the way of this and that.
In essence many act according to their sinful natures and strive to equal God. But beware, without God’s grace, we are no different. By nature we are coworkers in the sphere of unbelief. We strive to know the mystery of God’s mind through our works, but by doing so we create many lies instead. Ancient lies. Ultimately, we invent much wickedness. We are, after all, workers of iniquity.
By attempting to attain to God’s wisdom, we make ourselves fools. We imagine that if we persevere sufficiently in our labors, we may ascend even to heaven, much as the builders of the tower of Babel sought to establish a name for themselves. Worse yet, even our afflictions and poverty are easily interpreted according to this same man-centered wisdom. That is, when poverty exhausts us, we may suppose that our poverty itself constitutes the means by which God will make us worthy of salvation, as though divine mercy were more readily extended to those who suffer. When sickness overtakes us, we may imagine that our afflictions are what move God to compassion. When we abound in good works, we may even entertain the thought that our diligence somehow assists God in accomplishing his purposes. Thus beneath all our striving there remains the persistent desire to measure ourselves as God’s coequal laborers. Man deceives himself by imagining that God is chiefly concerned with the measure of men’s activities.
The only thing God requires is the “past.” What does this mean?
At different places in the context of Ecclesiastes 3, the present is mentioned. And verse 15 says, “That which hath been is now.” The second thing verse 15 mentions is the future: “That which is to be hath already been.” Now, the “past” is unlike the present and the future, which are altogether set in history, and thus the “past” is not mentioned in the same way but is mentioned to say that it is the only thing that God requires or seeks. And God’s seeking the “past” is not placed in the text alongside the present and future as though the past were missing. History is the perfect unfolding of God’s counsel in time. There is nothing missing, for God determines and directs history’s beginning and end. It is not as though the present and future are already here and the only thing lacking is the past and that is what God is seeking. That is not the meaning. “Past” in the text does not refer to history or to things that have passed away with the passage of time. Rather, the “past” is the goal of history. It is so evident in the text that when God requires it, he demands it. The present and future must serve the “past” that God requires. They both must answer to what God requires.
When we speak of the past, we mean that which has already been finished. These are things already inscribed in history—events whose appointed time has come and gone and that now stand as accomplished realities under the direction of God’s will and purpose. Yet the expression “which is past” means more than merely those things that have ended or passed away. “Past” refers rather to those things that have already been established—things that have been firmly determined and settled according to the counsel of God. Thus the text means by “which is past” things that have been established; things that cannot be altered, revoked, or supplemented. Nothing can be added to them, and nothing can be taken away from them because they already have been established according to the immutable counsel of God. This is precisely the truth expressed in Ecclesiastes 3:14: “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it.”
Therefore, what God seeks are the decrees he established from eternity. And God’s decrees are not like a plan that is still being formed and that God watches as it develops in history. God’s decrees are not comparable to a human architect’s drawing a blueprint and his subsequent observing whether the structure corresponds to his design. Rather, the building, if you will, is really finished and complete in God’s mind. He does not learn what will happen by watching history unfold. Nor does history progressively inform him of what his purposes ought to be. Everything is real in eternity as it was established in the counsel of God.
What is future to us is not future to God in the sense of uncertainty or possibility. What we experience successively in time has already been comprehended and determined within his eternal counsel. This is admittedly beyond the full comprehension of the creature, especially as the text clearly says that the present has already happened, and even the future has already happened. From our perspective, we cannot fully comprehend this. Everything has already passed—even the future? Absolutely. From eternity all things were already finished in the mind of God.
The death of the Lord Jesus Christ was not an afterthought in the divine purpose. Revelation 13:8 says, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The cross, therefore, was not an unexpected remedy devised after the entrance of sin (so unlike the view of the Presbyterians and Baptists that the cross was a remedy of the covenant of grace because Adam messed up so badly in paradise). Christ and his crucifixion belong to the eternal counsel of God. Christ centrally belongs to it, so that all things must serve his death as the summary of his perfect work of salvation.
Therefore, nothing happens by mistake. Why did Adam fall into sin? Because “God requireth that which is past.” He determined that Adam had to fall. Why are not all Israel that are of Israel? Because “God requireth that which is past.” He determined the spiritual seed of his covenant, and they only will be incorporated into his fellowship, while the others were eternally reprobated and damned. Why were we born? Why do we study? Why do we have businesses and jobs? Why do we have spouses? Why do we remain unmarried? Why are we few in the church? Why do we have children even though life is extremely difficult in the Philippines? Why did we leave the false Protestant Reformed Churches and her rightful daughter the First Reformed Church of Bulacan? Why do these churches turn away from the truth and the gospel of the Lord? Because “God requireth that which is past.”
This is what many have forgotten. We are prone to explain our circumstances according to human striving and human wisdom. We attribute success to diligence, hardship to misfortune, numerical weakness to insufficient evangelistic zeal, and separation from former churches to a failure of love. Again and again the explanation is sought in man.
Man, man, man!
The Implication
But man is not what God seeks. This is especially evident in the matter of salvation. Why are we saved? Is it because we are good? Because we are obedient? Because we believe? Because we accepted Christ? Because we were baptized? Because we partake of the Lord’s supper? Because we repent? Because we are Reformed and faithfully attend worship? Because we are faithful adherents to the Reformed Protestant distinctives? Absolutely not. The only explanation is because “God requireth that which is past.”
That is plain and simple; that is our gospel. No ifs and buts; no in the way of, for there is no other way but Christ. God sovereignly determined to save his elect through the Lord Jesus Christ. In him all things meet and are ordered according to the eternal purpose of God, that his people might be brought into his everlasting covenant.
Yet to many this gospel appears old and obsolete. They say, in effect, “The past? God seeks the past? That has passed away. Times have changed. Therefore, God must change with them. If everything was once grounded in grace, perhaps God must now recognize the goodness of man. We are no longer as sinful as we once were. Such doctrines are outdated. The gospel must change. Preaching must change. Worship centered upon the preaching of the word is outdated. The times are different now.”
From the perspective of fallen man, beloved, the will of God has always appeared outdated. Indeed, this rebellion began in Eden. Man thought in his heart that God’s will no longer was sufficient for him. He trusted his own judgment and exchanged the commandment of God for his own conception of what was good. He relied on himself and his own view and replaced God’s will with something new. What was that new thing? Needless to say, everything that is contrary to God’s will.
In the perfect first creation of God, something new happened—sin and death. Sin entered paradise, and all humanity plunged headlong with Adam into the pit of sin and death. Once there was truth. Then change happened: We all became slaves to falsehood and servants of Satan. Once our hearts, minds, and souls were devoted only to God, but now we offer our strength, time, and wisdom to earthly things. From the human perspective God’s will has passed away. We have changed everything because we suppose that God’s will is outdated and obsolete. But that is only from the human perspective. From God’s perspective nothing has changed. Everything is already past. All that comes to pass does so precisely according to what he has determined. His purpose has not been frustrated. No one can change the mind of God. The world may rage against him, but he is not surprised by that rebellion. He sits in the heavens and laughs at those who imagine that they determine their own futures and possess sovereignty over their own tomorrows. Man rebels; God always prevails with much power and majesty. For instance, the fall did not frustrate his counsel.
In our fall into sin through Adam, God sought the “past” and found him—the seed of the woman—the same seed who was promised to Abraham two thousand years after the fall. Out of that seed the tree continues to grow, as the covenant line is developed in time and in history. Christ is the seed and the root out of which all the elect will be born and saved. He is the seed at which time and history aimed in perfect precision (as if history were pregnant), as God set Christ at the center of all creation. Christ is not in the periphery of history (both of heaven and earth) but at the very heart of it. Thus the only explanation of the fall into sin is that of divine providence, which directed it. However, God remains holy and untainted with sin and remains thrice holy in his divinity. “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33).
This is a comfort, for it means that our salvation is sure. It is certain as long as Jesus Christ is at the heart of every counsel and work of Jehovah. Now everything serves that purpose of God of saving us. That is declared to us in the gospel. That is implied also in our text. Everything is for our good. The present and future are already established because the “past” is what God seeks, and he finds it constantly in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The End
As members of the church of Jesus Christ, we also live in the past. We live in Jesus Christ, in the fellowship of Jehovah. By his Spirit he has given us new hearts that always seek his word. Therefore, as he dwells in us, we consider even his perfect law. Moreover, we live in the principle of the Reformed faith.
Our doctrines come from the past, from things firmly established by the Lord and carefully handed down through every generation of believers. Every article of our faith is old. This is precisely why the world despises it. The world is continually changing and demands that the church conform her thinking to the spirit of this age. Many churches therefore live according to the present, adapting their teachings to the prevailing ideas of the culture. Their gospel no longer comes from the past but from continual modifications of doctrine. Their gospel is shaped according to the will of man and what is palatable for a natural man, yet repugnant to the word of God and to the continuous practice of the church of Jesus Christ. Thus our gospel is regarded as something that belongs to another age and world. Risum teneatis, amici? (Can you hold back your laughter, friends?) These Christians! Their gospel! Strange!
For instance, in our worship we seek the past. We seek God’s will rather than our own preferences. The elements of our worship are regulated by the ancient principles of divine worship according to the truth as it has been recovered by our Reformed fathers. But to many such worship appears boring. In their churches preaching becomes humanistic and purely practical. It centers around man, as it begins with man and ends with man. Jesus Christ is nowhere to be found in their worship services because their pulpits are destitute of the truth. They may bear the names Reformed and Presbyterian, but the names they bear do not establish the presence of Christ’s Spirit among them. Where the Spirit of Jesus Christ is absent, the mere possession of a Reformed or Presbyterian name is void and empty. Rather, the assumption of these names by false churches serves only to bring the great Reformation of the sixteenth century into ignominy, casting reproach upon the Reformed faith and giving the world occasion to despise what the Reformed fathers recovered from the darkness of the Romish church. We, beloved, are children of that great Reformation.
We are children of the past. And that claim is determined by our union with our Lord Jesus Christ. We are children according to the decree of predestination. We were elected in Christ Jesus so that we might be conformed to his image in all things. We were elected in Christ so that at the appointed time he would be born of a virgin, and at the appointed time he would suffer and die for us. We are unashamedly children of the past. We were purchased by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ more than two thousand years ago. There on the cross we were sealed by the Lord’s blood and cleansed from our sins. We are declared righteous because of the death and resurrection of Christ. From that past Jehovah looks upon us. He always looks at Christ whenever he regards his elect people. He always looks at the finished work of Jesus Christ. From eternity he looked upon us in that past, though it was not yet established in time and history.
Indeed, Jesus Christ is the one whom God seeks. Jesus Christ is the past, the present, and the future. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Amen. He is the eternal wisdom of God whom God seeks. Why do all things happen in heaven and on earth? Because of Christ. Because of him, God is pleased. Whether evil or good, God is pleased according to what he has determined. When heaven and earth pass away, God will still be pleased because Christ is what he seeks.
Beloved, Christ is at the center of our salvation. When “God requireth that which is past” in the church, he finds the Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the cross. And he declares, “I find no iniquity in Jacob, neither have I seen perverseness in Israel: the Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them” (Num. 23:21). We have been forgiven our sins because God found that the Lord Jesus Christ had fulfilled all righteousness on our behalf. Christ is the one established from the beginning for our righteousness. He is our election, justification, regeneration, sanctification, and glorification. For his sake God is pleased with and has fellowship with the church. Though we suffer persecution and ridicule because we belong to the past—to Jesus Christ—nevertheless, we rejoice that we have a part in the past that God requires. That is, beloved, we are intimately joined with Jesus Christ through the bond of faith.
Finally, the day will come when we shall receive in fullness what God has appointed for us in Christ. There will be no more persecution, no more sin, no more suffering, no more mourning, no more death, and many other things that belong only to this world. All the things that belong to this present age—destruction and building, weeping and birth, sorrow and death—surely will have passed away.
The day will come when we shall be with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thus the sufferings of this present world, however grievous they may be, cannot be compared with the glory that shall be revealed when our Lord returns in a cloud with power and great glory. Then we “shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17). This will surely be, beloved, for “God requireth that which is past,” and he finds it in Jesus Christ alone.
Amen.
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