Lashed to the Mast – Standing Firm Admist the Storms of Life
Philippians 3:12-4:1
Do we have any readers here this morning? People who love to read? I love to read! Reading became a passion of mine at a fairly young age. I was thrilled to discover new worlds in which my imagination was free to roam between the covers of a book. That passion has stayed with me over the years and if you were one of those who helped move us in a couple of weeks ago you’ll remember, probably without a lot of fondness, the number of boxes containing books which had to be unloaded into our garage. I can’t get enough of books! My reading tastes vary from the detective adventures of Sherlock Holmes, to the far flung expeditions of Jules Verne and Orson Welles, to spiritual autobiographies and missionary journeys as well as many other things besides. A few years ago my interests drifted to what would be called “Classical” novels. Things like “War and Peace,” “The Mayor of Castorbridge,” the works of Charles Dickens and so on. One of the books I read at that time was the ancient Greek epic, “Odyssey” by Homer.
In that book the hero’s name is Odysseus and Odysseus is a man on a journey. He has all sorts of wild adventures during his time away from home and one of those adventures occurs at a place called the Island of the Sirens. Now in early Greek art Sirens are described as huge bird like beasts with large heads, scaly feet, and the manes of lions. They were said to sing a most beautiful and compelling song; a song so overwhelming that no one had been known to resist it. In fact when sailors heard the sound of the Sirens voices they would sail their vessels towards the source of this beautiful music only to have their ships dashed to pieces on the treacherous rocks, enabling the Sirens to feed upon their broken bodies.
Now Odysseus wanted to hear the Siren’s song, but he didn’t want to be lured to his destruction, so he devised a plan. First, he filled the sailor’s ears with wax so that they themselves would be unable to hear the alluring music. Then he instructed them to lash him to the mast of the ship, to tie him there so that he was immobilized and could not respond to the Siren’s song. Fortunately for Odysseus it all worked out for him and he was able to safely sail past the Sirens without heeding their song. Today, of course, when someone refers to the “Song of the Siren,” they are referring, not to an actual song, but rather to an appeal that is hard to resist, but that if heeded, will lead to a bad result.
And as I reflect upon Odysseus’s encounter with the Sirens, I can’t help but think that there are Sirens in our world today, who are calling out to you and me, with their music as well. They aren’t the winged creatures of mythology but the deceptive promises of the things of this world. Their song is as alluring as it is dangerous to us. And unless we can resist that song, unless we can lash ourselves to the mast as it were, we will run the risk of bringing hurt and destruction upon our families, within our homes and amongst our churches.
The Sirens of today go by many different names. You might have struggled against some of them yourself over the years. You might even be listening to their song today, unaware, or unconcerned, at the danger and downfall they portend. As we listen to their inviting promises these Sirens can lead us far from the path we sought to follow. The truth is this type of thing happens all too frequently. We read about it in the pages of the Bible in the likes of people such as Ananias and Sapphira. Remember them? Their story is found in the book of Acts. They are husband and wife who sell a field they own in order to give the proceeds to the church. That’s all well and good but they keep back some of them money for themselves, which in itself is not wrong, but then they lie about it! God reveals these things to Peter and Peter confronts Ananias saying, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? … What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God. When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.” [Acts 5:3-5]. “What made you think of doing such a thing?” It was the song of the Siren – an appeal that is hard to resist but, if heeded, will lead to a bad result. And maybe the Siren that Ananias heard was named “Greed” or “Pride” but whatever it was it tempted him to follow and lured him from the straight and narrow path to his destruction. And the apostle Paul, in his 1st letter to Timothy, say this type of thing also happened to a couple of guys named Hymenaeus and Alexander. They listened to the song of the world, and rejected the things of God, and so shipwrecked their faith upon the rocks of the Siren’s lair that Paul says he handed them over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme. Those are powerful words!
The Song of the Siren is heard all too frequently in our day and age as well, isn’t it? Think of all the high profile church leaders who have followed the Siren’s Call to their downfall. Men who had fruitful ministries, men whom God had used to change lives, men who had the privilege of sharing God’s word, but who didn’t lash themselves to the mast, so that when the Siren’s Song was heard, they followed to their own destruction. Even more to the point think of those within the churches you might have attended over the years and who have heeded the Song of the Siren. And even more importantly still … think about yourself. Where do you fit into this picture? Have you answered the Siren’s call or have you lashed yourself to the mast?
I want to suggest to you three songs that the Sirens of today are singing to God’s church. They are all the work of the god of this world, who is Satan, and their purpose is to keep in bondage those who have never been set free through faith in Jesus Christ, and to lure away those who have set their hearts to follow God, that their faith may be shipwrecked and their witness and testimony be made powerless. Now, the Sirens are singing more than three songs but I want to highlight these three because they are amongst the most dangerous to our churches, to our families, to our homes and they are amongst the most prevalent within the church today. We will look at them quickly and then we will turn to the Word of God and see what it will take to lash ourselves to the mast so that when the Siren sings we are able to resist her alluring song.
The first song the Siren sings is Hedonism. Hedonism is the belief that pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind. It’s the, “If it feels good – do it,” type of attitude. The belief that if no-one is getting hurt than it’s all o.k. Now pleasure isn’t wrong. God created us to experience pleasure. The ability to experience pleasure and happiness and joy is a gift from a loving God. But the same God who created us to feel such things, also established boundaries in which they were to be experienced, because he understood that when we step outside of those boundaries someone is going to be getting hurt over it. Sometimes that hurt is easily visible, as in the case of a man or a woman who gives in to their lust and has an affair. Their spouse gets hurt, their children suffer for it, and those are just the wounds that you can see. Sometimes the wounds aren’t as obvious as that. There is also the rift that their willful disobedience drives between themselves and a Holy God. In the book of Isaiah we can read these words, “Your iniquities have separated you from God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” [Isaiah 59:2]. There is always a cost to our sin, there is always a cost to responding to the Siren’s Song.
So when someone steps outside of those God ordained boundaries, in order to satisfy their own desires, they have succumbed to the song of the Siren which says pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind. They have valued their own satisfaction more highly than the word of God. They have set the desires of their own heart above their love for God. And their witness, if indeed they had been living as a child of the light, is extinguished. They no longer have a living testimony that glorifies God! Our society has made the pursuit of pleasure it’s highest ideal. It is our excuse for all kinds of sexual immorality. It’s our excuse for excesses of all kinds. It is what causes us to only want to pay attention to that part of the Word of God that is easy and convenient for us to do so. And brother or sister, if you give in to the call of the Siren in your life, think what will happen to your witness in your family, in your church, in your community.
Many years ago I was a groomsmen at a friends wedding. To some degree our lives had paralleled each other. We both had an interest in history. We both had an interest in pursuing careers in aviation. And the time came when we both left flying to go into the ministry and head to Bible College and Seminary. We both did practicum work in our respective churches but there our paths diverged. He got involved in youth work at his church and things went well for awhile. But things weren’t all that good at home. There were things that needed to be worked out. Working them out would have been the God honoring way of dealing with them – God has given to us the ministry of reconciliation after all – but working things out is hard work. It’s painful work. It often means having to accept at least some responsibility for the way things are and maybe even changing our ways. It can be a difficult and painful process. But the world promised him an easier way. He didn’t have to work things out because there was a girl in his youth group that he got interested in and that was interested in him. The siren sang her song, and promised the world, and today his marriage has failed and he is out of the ministry and his testimony destroyed. What happened? He didn’t lash himself to the mast – he didn’t place safeguards in his life and he allowed himself to view his own pleasure and satisfaction as the most important pursuit in his life. And if we’re not careful, and if we’re not lashing ourselves to the mast and standing firm in the faith, that temptation can be there for everyone of us. All it takes is the right – or maybe we should say the wrong – set of circumstances in our lives, and the opportunity to present itself, and if we are not solidly grounded with our eyes focused on the Lord, the call of the Siren can pull at our hearts as and lead us down a path that can only end in heartache and sorrow. And the imminent danger of the Siren Song of Hedonism is that it destroys our testimony as it replaces our love and passion for God with a love and passion for something other than God.
The second Song the Siren sings is the Song of Materialism. This one’s pretty straight forward. It’s the craving, the desire, the longing for the things of this world, whether it be new clothes, bigger houses, faster cars - whatever the case may be. Again, none of those things is wrong in and of themselves. But what the song of the Siren invites us to do is to make these things our idols, make them into our gods. In many ways the Song of Materialism is the sound of money and Scripture teaches that we cannot serve both God and money because the love of the one will over rule our love for the other. Materialism is the desire for the things of this world at the expense of desiring God. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus tells a parable that goes like this …
“The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” - Luke 12:16-21
The call of this Siren tempts us to replace our desire for God with the desire for the things of the here and now. Those who have been lured by the call of the Siren of Materialism store up for themselves the things of this world. But how do we measure that? How much is enough? Are we all supposed to just get by on the bare minimum? What’s at issue here is not how rich one is in the things of this world, but rather, how rich one is toward God. You can be relatively poor and still answer the Siren’s call of materialism – valuing the things of this world above God – or you can be rich and do it as well. I know a man who is always trying to keep “Up with the Joneses.” If one of his friends buys a new fifth wheel trailer he feels the need to buy a bigger one. If one gets a motorcycle he gets one as well. His life is driven by material things and he’s got the resources to live that lifestyle. He is rich in the things of this world but his god is his money and it consumes his life. As a result his family has been estranged from him, his marriage is falling apart, and he is completely barren when it comes to God. He has spent his life working for those things that are fleeting and temporary, that will pass away and which have no eternal value. Our society calls us to materialism and to store up our treasures here on earth. God calls us to store up our treasures in heaven where they will not perish, spoil, nor fade, for where our treasure is, there will our hearts be also. [Matthew 6:21].
The third Song of the Siren that calls to the Church today is the Song of Secularism. Secular comes from a word meaning “of this age” so to be secular means to be of this age rather than eternal. It is to be worldly in our desires, our passions, our interests, our values, and our morals. For the Christian Church this is a deadly song. The Bible tells us that we are in this world but not of this world. But the deceptive lure of secularism is the call to change our beliefs, our values, our morals to be more acceptable to the world in which we find ourselves. The bottomless pit we fall into as we embrace the world’s ways is that we lose our ability to reach out to a hurting world and share with them, with any degree of authority, the love and transforming power of God in our lives. For many Christians today, the way we live our lives, looks very much the same as how those who do not claim faith in God, live theirs. Let me give you a few examples. Marriages, within the evangelical church, are coming unraveled at nearly the same rate as those of unbelievers. Studies have shown that in nearly 50% of Christian homes someone is struggling with pornography. [David Robinson, article.] We aren’t a whole lot better about solving our differences than the world is either. How many churches have split because of seemingly insignificant issues? How many rifts exist between fellow believers that you can think of? How many brothers and sisters in the Lord are at odds with one another and have no interest in working things out? How many won’t speak to each other on Sunday mornings? There are churches like that out there. Is that the way it should be? In how many of our homes is there Bible reading, and teaching, and family prayer on a consistent basis? Friends, what sets your life apart, what makes it look different from the world in which we find ourselves? If you can’t think of anything that sets your life apart in honoring the Lord – and it needs to be more than just Sunday mornings at church – then maybe it’s time to take a really hard look at your life and see if you have answered the Song of the Siren. Peter writes that we are to live in such a way that we are always prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have. [1 Peter 3:15]. That means that we must be living in such a way that people are going to notice something different about our lives. What do people see when they look at your life? It doesn’t mean you’re perfect, it just means that even when you do mess something up you try to deal with it in a godly manner. See, we read the gospels and we see Jesus living out his Father’s will, and we see a society and individual lives being transformed. We see someone boldly, but lovingly, proclaiming a better way, and people were moved by that and lives were changed. What do people today see when they look at the church? What would people today see if they were to examine our lives? Would they see kingdom values and principles being lived out and applied to the moments of each day? Or would they see a life that looks remarkably like their own?
Here are some numbers that might shock you this morning. According to Stats Canada 8.7 million fewer Canadians now identify themselves with Protestant churches than they did 10 years ago. That is a staggering number! For every new church which opens its doors for worship, three more close their doors for the very last time. Only 19% of Canadians attend a church of any description on a weekly basis and less than 1% of churches that are growing are doing so from conversions. To put that in perspective … out of every 1000 churches in Canada that report they are growing in numbers, only 10 of those would be growing because they are seeing people coming to faith and being saved. The other 990 that report growth would be growing from transfer growth – Christians switching between churches or moving into the area. What has happened? The church has become secular and Christians have become secularized and as a result we have lost our ability to reach out into the world around us. Instead of transforming society, the church, in many respects, has been transformed by society! To our shame, and to the detriment of the glory of God, many Christians today live lives remarkably similar to those of the society they are supposed to be reaching out to with the Gospel of God’s grace.
So where does that leave us? The Sirens are singing and Christians are flocking to their songs; how do we reverse these trends, how do we stand firm, how do we lash ourselves to the mast so that we do not heed the empty promises of the Siren’s Songs? Turn with me, if you will, to the book of Philippians. Philippians chapter 3 beginning in verse 12 … The apostle Paul writes these words …
Not that I have already obtained all this, [and when he says “this” he’s referring to all the fullness of Christ] or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained. Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. [These are those who have answered the Siren’s call.] Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord. - Philippians 3:12-4:1
We stand firm by putting on the full armor of God as it says in Ephesians. We stand firm by pressing on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus. We do it by letting go of the past which threatens so often to pull us down as we remember our failures and the wasted years. We do it by living up to what we’ve already attained in Jesus. We follow the example of Paul and other godly men and women whose lives are shared with us in the pages of God’s Word. We take note of those who live according to the pattern of holy, godly living which Paul speaks of and we make sure we have some of those people in our lives because they act as a steadying influence on us. We become aware of the Siren Song of Hedonism in our lives which threatens to destroy our testimony as it replaces our love for God with a love for something else. We become aware of the Siren Song of Materialism which lulls us into being worldly minded rather than heavenly minded and so destroys our desire for God; and we become aware of the Siren Song of Secularism which erodes our ability to reach out to others to show them the truth of God’s glory and grace. We become aware of these things in our own lives and then we retake that ground as we apply the word of God to these troubled areas. The Psalmist says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” What a wonderful goal that is for us to have as well. To immerse ourselves in the word of God so that when the Siren starts to call to us, we can recognize her voice, and listen for a better voice which is calling us heavenward in Jesus Christ. We lash ourselves to the mast if you will as we do these things weaving those invisible cords around our bodies that will help us to stand. And it’s not easy, because in our society we are constantly bombarded by the Siren’s Songs. And it’s difficult to resist because the music seems beautiful to our ears. It takes dedication, discipline and beginning with the end in sight like we talked about last week in order not to heed the deceptive promises the Siren makes. Paul really sums it all up as he begins his letter to the Philippians. In chapter one he says this: Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. [Philippians 1:27-28a] We stand firm as we conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ. We stand firm as we contend for the faith of the Gospel. We stand firm in the face of those who oppose us for we know that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. So brothers and sisters, with these truths in mind, let me challenge you as we close this morning to consider these two things: #1: Which Siren Song calls most loudly to you, and #2: How can you lash yourself to the mast so that when the song is heard, it is not heeded?
Let’s pray.
