Have No Illusions
Readings
Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
Matthew 7:24-27 (text)
Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, Young people, boys and girls.
You can open any one of a dozen teen magazines available at the moment and the same message will jump out from all of them. A person who has made it in this world wears the latest fashions, has an executive job, goes on overseas holidays and owns their home. Now is the time to grab onto the horns of life with both hands and go for it. Set your goals - make them happen. Aim for a standard of living – seek it with determination. Work hard – you will receive the benefits.
That’s the message isn’t it? But is it reality? Well let’s use Scripture as our point of reference. And we’ll start by having a closer look at the words in Ecclesiastes 2:1-11. These words were written by Solomon – and he is in the process of conducting an experiment. He wants to test every pleasure of life and discover its satisfaction level. If ever there was a person in a position to conduct such an experiment it is Solomon. Solomon has the status and resources to do a most thorough experiment.
The first three verses of Ecclesiastes 2 find Solomon testing the value of laughter and parties – and he knew how to throw a party. Listen to this description from 1 Kings 4:22-23 of the daily supplies used in Solomon’s palace.
“Solomon’s daily provisions were thirty cors of fine flour and sixty cors of meal, ten head of stall-fed cattle, twenty of pasture-fed cattle and a hundred sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks and choice fowl”.
Someone has estimated that 20 000 people would be needed to consume this much food each day. What laughter and celebration were found in the halls of palace as Solomon and his wives and royal subjects and guests and members of the high society ate, drank and were merry.
But Solomon just didn’t waste his time at parties. Eccl.2:4-9 broadens our knowledge about Solomon. In the evening he socialized During the day he worked hard not wanting to be excluded from the greater things in life. Houses. Parks. Vineyards. Orchards. It took 13 years to build the palace. He also had another house in Lebanon – a kind of holiday house in the forest. He built 6 cities from scratch. And if that wasn’t enough his fortune was so great that silver and gold were regarded as stones in Jerusalem. Solomon owned whatever he looked upon – and he looked everywhere.
If Solomon were alive today he would be in oil and the chairman of a large international company. He would have a villa in Switzerland, a retreat in the Caribbean Islands and a Penthouse in New York. He would be a patron of the arts. His legacy would rival any American President. His buildings would as famous as Buckingham Palace and Vatican City.
Wouldn’t be great to be able to do such an experiment? Not a mindless out of control experiment which saw Solomon drunk and on a high every night. Not an experiment which lead to a loss of dignity and respect – “my mind still guarded me with wisdom” says Solomon. But an experiment seeking to make a serious investigation about the pleasures of life. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. But … but … let’s make sure we hear the whole passage. For, not only does Solomon do the experiment. He also gives us a report.
And, in a way, we would expect that report to be very encouraging – after all Solomon has made some brilliant achievements. The legacy he leaves behind is unmatched. The esteem he receives from his peers is of the highest order. As a king he enjoys the deepest and most loyal respect of his subjects. But how does his report read? Have a look at Ecclesiastes 2:11;
“Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun”..
Everything was meaningless. It didn’t bring contentment. It couldn’t answer the great questions of life.
The satisfaction promised by the pleasures of life were nothing but false claims without substance. Meaningless. Empty. A mist. An illusion. The promises of this would are nothing more then a part of a clever and deceptive strategy which Satan has been marketing for many years. Satan cons us with the illusion that we can get by nicely without God – it’s an “in-your-face” message that is put before us everyday. And that faces us with a challenge doesn’t it. Have we been able to avoid the same illusion? Are we chasing the illusion even though we know it get us nowhere?
Have we avoided the illusion? The religious and right answer is to say “yes”. “Yes we have avoided the illusion. Money means nothing. Status has no place in my life. Pleasure seeking is not part of my agenda. Jesus is everything”. Well that is what we tell ourselves anyway. But sometimes it’s worth taking a back seat and having a closer look at ourselves. Sometimes, in very subtle way, the deception may be leaving more of an impact then we think.
• What motivates our ambitions? Is it just to serve God?
• What are our main goals in life? Is it always to give glory to God?
• What about the way we conduct business? Is it pleasing to Jesus?
• What about our priorities? Are they God-first or me-first?
I guess what I am saying is it could be very tempting to sit back and say to ourselves, “This is a good message that applies to everyone else around me, but I am not like everyone else”. Let’s not be so deceived. We all continually need to ask ourselves, “Are we chasing the illusion?”.
To help us answer this question we turn to Matthew 7:24-27. Here we are given a description of two houses. Picture them in your mind. Both seem attractive and clean, freshly painted perhaps. Both are made from the same material – mud bricks for the walls, thatched grass for the roof. Indeed they could even be the same size and shape. But there is one significant difference between them.
One house has been built by a fool. He started in summertime when the ground has hard and dry. The foolish man saw the bright and sunny days and thought they would never end. So he didn’t worry about a foundation, he just smoothed out a place on the sand and started building. The foolish builder constructs the house as though he is pitching a tent – it doesn’t occur to him that the house is meant to be a permanent structure.
The other house has been built by a wise man. He knows the sunny days will not always be there. He takes into consideration the storm and wind and rising waters. He digs through the sand until he reaches rock. His house took a bit longer to complete then the man next door. Sometimes, while he was working on his house, he thought he could hear the fool laughing about his careful preparations. Once the fool even said that it was a waste of time to go down so deep. But the wise man continued anyway. Until his house was also finished.
But let’s remember that Jesus is not giving us a rundown of construction techniques in Israel. This is a parable. A parable which speak about people and their relationship to God. A parable which has a clear purpose. “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and puts them into practice … is like the wise man”. “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not put them into practice … is like the foolish man”. We are talking here about the difference between obedience and disobedience. About living the reality and living the illusion. And illusions crumble, don’t they.
You can just imagine the foolish man in his house can’t you, as the rains begin to fall, and the wind beats against the house and the waters rise. He’s at the table reading the paper – it’s just another peaceful Saturday morning. After a while a little noise near the wall gets his attention. There is a little trickle of water coming under the bricks. Within minutes the trickle has formed a small stream across the floor and is flowing out under the wall on the other side. That’s not too bad. Until the water starts eroding away the mudbricks and they start to crumble. The hole just keeps on getting bigger and bigger until he can see out the side of his house.
He’s wife is running around in the house yelling , “Do something, do something”. But what can he do? The water has now caused a hole big enough for him to walk out of the side of the house. The few temporary poles holding the wall, and the pots and pans catching the water are useless. Within minutes he is standing in the rain. The place where his house once stood has been washed clean, like a wave which has come onto the beach and demolished every sand castle in its path.
Such is the destiny of those who put their trust in an illusion – for it just gives false hopes, false dreams and empty promises. Psalm 39:5-7 has this to say (read 5b-7).
“You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before You. Each man’s life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: he bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in You”.
The ultimate question is not, “How can I experiment with life?” The ultimate question is, “Where does God fit in my life?”. If you want to have no illusions then you need to be grounded on the rock. And those who stand on the rock are everyone who hear these words of Jesus. The words which He spoke on the Sermon on the Mount. The Words contained in the Gospel. The Words contained in all the Scriptures. The words He said on the cross. Everyone who hears these words and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
We can come with all sorts of rhetoric about our walk with the Lord.
• “Lord I read my Bible”.
• “Lord I come to church”.
• “Lord I am nice and polite”.
• “Lord I can say all the right things”.
But does it change you? Does it challenge your world view? Does it drive you to want to stand out and be different and have your goals driven by God rather then being driven by self. Does it make you realize that, even when you have nothing, you actually possess everything? As we listen to this parable we can see that Jesus is laying down the gauntlet. Either we do things His way and live. Or we do things our way – and suffer the consequences. This is the choice between an illusion and reality. This is the choice between trust the illusions of life, or trusting the reality of the cross of Jesus.
To cut through the illusion we need can picture ourselves floating along in a river – let’s call it the river of sin. God knows that we really enjoy being in the river of sin - in fact we have plunged ourselves into that river. God sees us messing around in the river forgetting our responsibilities. Now this river of sin flows under a bridge, and on that bridge stands Jesus Lord. And for some reason He’s pulling people out of the river. And these people are saying, "I don’t want to be taken out. I want to be with the rest of them. I want to enjoy life". And now Jesus is lifting you. Despite your protests He hangs onto you and sets you on the bridge. Ignoring your protests He directs you to look over the other side of the bridge. 500m down the river is a huge waterfall. You couldn’t see it from river level. Only after you are given the Lord’s perspective of the situation do you realize what the Lord has done. The illusion has given way to reality. Darkness has been flooded with light.
The difference between darkness and light is the cross. The difference between illusions and reality is the cross. It’s the cross of Jesus which opens our eyes to the illusions of this world. We can have a good job. We can be financially set. We can be good people who have a high moral standard. We can be model citizens. But if Jesus is not central to our thinking, and planning, and desires – then we will always be confused by the illusions of life.
It the cross which allows us to cut through the illusions and be real with God. It is this cross which sets the agenda of mercy, forgiveness, grace and love. It is this cross which strips away all false hopes. And only the cross can show us how to live that illusion free life. This is my prayer today. Let the cross of Jesus open your eyes today that you may build on the rock. The cross is the place of forgiveness. The cross is the sign of love. The cross is the reality you need
Amen.
