What does it mean that we have eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11)?

Verses 1-11. There is a time for everything. Twenty-eight "times" are mentioned, beginning with the time of birth and ending with the time for peace. Everything has a fixed time: Life-death; seeding-harvesting; killing-healing; breaking-down building-up; weeping-laughing; mourning-dancing, etc. These are the times of the entire race; that is what human life is. All moves and changes; all appears unto him profitless. "What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboreth? What is the gain of it, to be born and to die, to plant and to pull up, to weep and to laugh, to mourn and to dance, to get and to lose, to love and to hate?" But he advanced a step. He recognizeth that all this travail must be of God, who has produced these never ceasing changes, so that men's hearts might be exercised thereby. "I have seen the travail which God has given to the sons of men to be exercised in it." Yeah, there is something which is in man. "God hath set the world in their heart," the correct rendering is, "God hath set eternity in their heart" (verse 11). Man has the sense of the infinite in his heart.

All that time offers, all these changes cannot satisfy, nor can man with eternity in his heart find out the truth about it by himself. He may feel but cannot understand.

Man is shown that he is in a time state: there is a time for everything 'under the heaven,' but only 'a time.' God made everything beautiful in its time: He hath set 'the age' in man's heart. Ecc. 3: 11. (The word rendered 'world' in the A.V. in this verse is olam, often translated 'ever' and 'everlasting.' Some translate 'he hath set eternity in their heart,' but the sense doubtless is that man's heart can only naturally embrace the age characterised by time.) "No man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." God is working out His own end during this time state: man lives in time, but what God does shall be for ever. God will judge the righteous and the wicked, but as far as man's real knowledge extends he dies as the beast dies. This is only man's conclusion drawn from beholding what takes place under the sun.

291 This chapter brings out in a remarkable way the dealings of God in giving strength. There is a wonderful scene going on in the heart of man. God does not let us always see it - it would not be good for us: we could not bear it. Sometimes the veil is drawn aside, and, as in the case of Job, the heart is exposed to itself; God and Satan there. It is a serious thing when God thus lifts the veil and shews what is going on for good and evil in a poor little heart like ours! "God hath set the world in their hearts"; and if it ends there, it is all vanity and vexation of spirit.

The book of Revelation gives us the prophetic record of the closing up of the history of this world as the platform on which the ways of God in time have been worked out. It speaks of the accomplishment of the mystery of God (Rev. 10:7), the ushering of the time-state into eternity. It has been said of this time-state, that it is "a divine parenthesis in the midst of eternity." The eye of man naturally can only look at the condition of things in which as a creature he is set. Hence we read, in Ecc. 3:11, "He hath set the world in their hearts," that is, this time epoch (aion<span font-family: 'Graeca'">aijwvn</span>), "so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from beginning to end." God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end (Rev. 21:6), while man lives in a state of things by nature where there is a time for every purpose under heaven. God in His goodness uses the travail which belongs to such a state to exercise the sons of men in it; but there is a moment coming when the mystery of God, which from beginning to end He has been working out through this time-state, will be finished. "What God doeth it shall be for ever," and the words, "It is done" (Rev. 21:6), tell us that time is no more. It is God's for ever - eternity.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." (Eccles. 3:1.) Every thing under the sun is measured by "times." There is a time to be born, and a time to die. No matter what the purpose which the sons of men may take in hand under the heaven, each has its time, but only its "time." It is not "for ever," and its time passes on and is gone. Well is it if they who are passing through these varied times are exercised by the travail which they occasion. (Eccles. 1:13; 3:10.) But beneath the exercises of these times there is a "work that God maketh from the beginning to the end;" for there is a path which the vulture's eye hath not seen. It is hid from the eyes of the living, but God understandeth the way thereof (Job 29), and this work, wrought in ways of infinite wisdom, is "for ever." "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it: and God doeth it that men should fear before Him." It is done to produce holy fear, the beginning of wisdom in man, and becomes the means of the senses being exercised to discern good and evil in those who otherwise would put good for evil, and evil for good. (Isa. 5:20.) Man cannot find out this work, because his vision is bounded by the horizon of time, and he can but take in by his own powers and senses those things which are thus measured. Very different is God's "for ever." He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End; and blessed it is to know that as the varied seasons roll round, and a time to weep and a time to laugh succeed each other, that a feeble creature of time, by faith, and through sovereign mercy, can find his dwelling-place in the eternity of God. "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations … from eternity to eternity thou art God."

As all the rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full, so all the waters of this world's resources may flow into the heart of man and he remains unsatisfied. His heart is too big for the world; for he was created for God, and God alone can satisfy his thirst. The world's pleasure is totally inadequate to give him lasting joy, and its religion cannot save or uplift his soul.

Finally, in other cases, the divine Worker is pleased to awaken the soul to the painful discovery and consciousness that it is not within the boundaries of earth to furnish a satisfying portion for an immortal spirit, that all under the sun wears the stamp of death upon it, that human life is but a vapor that speedily vanishes away, that if a man were to live a thousand years and possess the wealth of the universe and concentrate in his own person all the honors and all the dignities which this world could bestow — were he at the very highest pinnacle of power and be renowned throughout the world for genius, intellect and moral worth, if he had all that earth could yield or mortal man possess — the heart would still want something. There would still be a painful void. There would still be the cry, “Oh! for an object.”

What an infinite mercy it is that, amid the bustle and excitement of this vain and fleeting world, any should have their attention arrested by eternal realities! There are realities, both of sorrow and of joy, which never pass away. And when the light of eternity shines into the soul, how solemn the conviction which presses on the conscience, that not only has one's life been wasted in pursuing that which satisfies not, but worse than wasted, as having been spent in sin and rebellion against God! As long as my thoughts are limited to time and sense, I may regard nothing but myself — or, which amounts to the same thing, my own immediate circle, which becomes a kind of second self. But the moment eternity is seriously thought of, God must be brought in; and then I find that all my restless longings and searchings after something to satisfy and fill my heart, are the fruit of that heart having been alienated from God. When once this discovery is made, the question ceases to be, How am I to be satisfied? The one all-absorbing question becomes, How is God to be satisfied? How is His deserved wrath to be appeased? How is His favour to be secured? Happy the man whose attention is thoroughly aroused to such inquiries! Thrice happy he who has had them all resolved, by the light which the gospel affords as to the person and work of Christ!

Our labour should be "for that meat with endureth unto everlasting life," which the Lord gives to those who seek it. This is a challenge to our every heart. Are all our energies concentrated on obtaining that which will endure, that which is divine and heavenly, that which is spiritual and eternal? Alas! so much of our lives is given up to what is perishing. We must labour to provide for things that are necessary for our present life, but present things should not absorb us or be the motive of our hearts. Christ desires to meet every longing of the heart after Himself, and after the things of the Father that He brought down from heaven to satisfy the desires God has implanted within us.