Ecclesiastes Chapter Three cont... Cast away unprofitable works

6    “A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;”

A time to get, and a time to lose - these are cycles that repeat themselves many times over in our life. We must fight off the temptation to place our worth or confidence in acquisitions (The world would, and does, say: “He that has the most toys in the end wins”). Substance and wealth are transitory and temporal, they are listed as one of the broken cisterns of Jeremiah 2:13 (See 9:23 for wealth listed as a broken cisterns). Two examples warning of this very thing come to mind; One is Luke 12:18-21 – “And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God”. we want to lay up treasure in heaven and be rich towards God (Matt 6:20-21 a mans heart is with his treasure). Another is Phil 4:11-12 Paul learned the lesson of how fleeting things can be and disciplined himself to be content in whatever state he was. We would do well to learn the same.

A time to keep, and a time to cast away - this, to me, addresses a very important discipline and it deals in the realm of idols. There are things God deals with each of us on and they are very personal and individual; for some He requires this and for another it is something completely different. At the core of this exercise is this question we have to ask ourselves what place does this "thing" God is asking us to give up have in our hearts. If it is small and lawful it is doubtful God will require it, however, if it has occupied a disproportionate or inordinate place in our hearts it is likely God will require us to cast it away from us. This is really at the heart of this statement Christ made Matt 18:8-9 “…if thy hand offend thee..”, Christ is not endorsing mutilation but rather is stressing in the most demonstrative ways how important it is to maintain one's heart condition and if it a member of your body that feeds that idol then it would be best to have that member removed than to go to hell over a vice.