Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk. Near where we live is a place called St. Anne, and many of you probably know it — some of you may have gone there to fish. It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue, the waters were beautiful, reflecting that blue, and crowds of people were out enjoying themselves. St. Anne is near McDonald College and is a place with a lot of boats — there is a lock there that raises boats over the rapids, and the whole long jetty was lined with boats. Big ones, medium ones, small ones; some were so large that a whole family was lounging on board, dining table set out on the grass beside the boat, everyone enjoying their diet Coke and diet Pepsi. Very sensible — they need to diet. And when you looked at these boats, you wondered how much each cost. The big ones had radar on top, radio wires everywhere, colored TVs and carpeted living rooms inside.
As I looked down the long row of boats one by one, I thought: in order to earn the money to buy one of these beautiful boats, you cannot spend much time in the boat. You spend most of your life sitting in the office so that you can enjoy this thing for one or two weeks of the year. On top of the purchase price — say sixty, eighty, one hundred thousand dollars — you've got the marina fees, the painting, the insurance, the maintenance for the other fifty weeks of the year. The logic of working so hard for so long in order to sit in a boat for two weeks is something I have trouble following. I mean, what is life about? And that is my message today, from 1 Peter chapter 4 verse 7 — one simple sentence: the end of all things is at hand.
Imagine if I had taken the loudspeaker the dock master uses for the boats and called out through it: "The end of all things is at hand." They would have looked up at me and said: "This guy needs to go to hospital." Here is a beautiful day, everybody enjoying themselves, speedboats shooting across the water with the nose lifted, people at their tables with their diet Pepsi — and here this fellow comes and gives us a message: "The end of all things is at hand." They would have laughed, or called the nearest telephone to say: come and take him away; I think his brain is overheated.
And my mind went back to another picture, from Matthew 24. A bright sunny day rather like the one at St. Anne. People in their beautiful clothes, enjoying themselves, having a good time. And then comes this killjoy called Noah, saying: "The end of all things is at hand." "Come on, Noah. Do you know how many years I worked to buy this boat? I'm just about to enjoy two weeks of the year in it, and here you come along." And Noah keeps on going. And he builds this ridiculous-looking box there, which he calls an ark — when you study the dimensions it looks absolutely like an oversized shoebox. The artists tried to improve its appearance for Sunday school pictures, but when you actually look at it, it is clear that Noah knows nothing about building boats. He might know something about building shoeboxes. And that ridiculous thing is going to survive the flood? Noah, you are more crazy than I thought.
Do you believe what the apostle Peter said? Because think of the nice holiday you are planning for next year — Hawaii, the Caribbean, the visit to a brother you haven't seen in thirty years, the plans for your degree, your research project, your PhD. All these plans will fall to pieces if Peter is right. Let's hope he is wrong. And what happens to my degree? I am just going to college. A degree means a lot to me. It is not easy to get into college these days. And I'm going to go to heaven without a PhD? Can you imagine a disaster of that magnitude? Well, I'm overdoing it a little, but I hope you get my meaning. I am preaching perhaps my last message in Montreal, and it is not inappropriate to speak about the end. The end is nearer than we think.
Now, the Lord Jesus addressed exactly this issue in Luke chapter 12. He was with two brothers who asked him to settle their inheritance dispute. He would not even look at their question; instead, he replied at verse 15: "Take heed and beware of all covetousness, for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." He goes right to the root of their lives. You have a problem — what am I going to do with my studies, my possessions, this and that? And he says: I don't even want to hear the question. What are you living for? When we get that settled, the rest will be taken care of.
There are two types of thinking. For one type of person, life is about possessions — and therefore the Lord's teaching simply does not register. For another type, life is not about possessions. What is the alternative? We have been completely brainwashed. Communism says life is about matter, about production, about riches. Capitalism says exactly the same thing — what is capitalism about? Making money, profits, riches. Between capitalism and communism in this area there is no disagreement whatsoever. Both agree that life is about material possessions. The only quarrel is about how you get those possessions and who gets what faster.
I was impressed with Lao Tzu. Let me read to you just one or two sayings from the Tao Te Ching, chapter 46. He wrote: 祸莫大于不知足 — there is no disaster greater than not knowing when to stop. Why do people sin? Because they don't know where to stop. A thing may start out perfectly innocent, but it ends up sinful because they do not know when enough is enough. 罪莫大于欲得 — there is no crime greater than avarice. You see how close his saying comes to the words of the Lord Jesus. He also wrote of non-desire and non-action: if you are not covetous, you have no desire; if you are not fascinated by this and that, the world does not grab you. When there is non-desire there is non-action — it is the desire for all these things that prompts us to labor so frantically to own an eighty-thousand-dollar boat to sit in for two weeks.
That is why I say Lao Tzu's thoughts fly above the skies while Confucius walks upon the earth. He had a spiritual depth and profundity that I have trouble finding even in the church. He knew that this world is passing away, all passing away; I am not going to put my desire and my energy into things which will not last. I am interested in the things which are eternal. No wonder it is said that those who try to read Lao Tzu and don't understand him say, very politely: "He is very hard to understand." The impolite way of saying it is: "Lao Tzu is crazy." Just like all those Christians. Two ways of thinking, two ways of living.
# The End of All Things Is at Hand (Part B) — Freedom from Material Bondage, the Chained Eagle, and the Vision of the Eternal
To fly once a week to church, and let this unarchic pastor there — with his unarchic moral values, who talks about pie in the sky — lift me up once a week to the height from whence I get a little glimpse of freedom from the matter below. But then after the service I quickly must return to what I call real life, with my feet on solid ground, trudging, chained to the ground. I have returned as a son of the earth. I spent a few hours as a son of God in the high places; hopefully that will guarantee my place in heaven. But the rest of the week I am, like everybody else, the chained eagle. Does that picture sound unfair? Or does it sound rather true?
Do you know what freedom from material bondage is? Have you even remotely experienced it? Do you know what I am talking about? If you have experienced freedom — what Lao Tzu speaks of as non-desire, what Paul speaks of as having been crucified to the world — you think it is easy? Go down to the shops again tonight and see. Your heart is being pulled away again. Non-desire only happens when this pastor is preaching, for those few minutes. A little bit, for a few moments, you are set free from the world. You have some idea what I'm talking about. Freedom — if only you were not so attracted by the world. For those few moments your mind is undistracted and you rise into eternal things. But even in your prayer time, the world gets you. You try to rise and you discover that your chain will allow you to rise about one foot off the ground, and then it is all struggling, until exhausted you fall back. Unable to break the chain of material desire.
Throughout this ministry in Montreal, I have longed, if God permits, that God will build for himself a people of power. A people who know their God. A people free, not just from sin, but from the world. Because let me tell you: you will never be free from sin until you are free from the world. So long as you are bound — not crucified to the world, but bound by the world — you will always struggle in defeat and sin, like the chained eagle, unable to rise.
In Luke chapter 12, the Lord went on immediately to tell the parable of the rich fool. He was the image of success in the world — get more, get more, build bigger storehouses. He is successful. And isn't that what you want? The Lord said: that man was a fool. Tonight your life will be required of you. Was the rich fool able to take even a handful of his grain with him? Not to mention his pills and his diamonds. For him, the end of all things was at hand — nearer than he thought. You may think you are young. You may think you are healthy. I am not going to scare you with death; fools can be scared, but wise men are not afraid. If you are wise, I just ask you to think about the facts of the matter.
And Peter in 1 Peter 4:7 is not just talking about the end of one particular life. He is talking about the end of this entire materialistic system. What are you going to get out of all your toil and turmoil, when your whole life has been orientated to a material system which is coming to an end? Is this alarmist? We live towards the end of the twentieth century and are in a particularly good position to appreciate it. Near on five billion people in the world — the geographical spaces of the earth are pretty limited as to where you can plant food. Population has not stopped increasing. You don't have to be a genius to see that one day the food will not be enough, the land will not be enough, and we are going to fight for it. With the advancement of technology our wars become more and more destructive — the pollution makes the land ever more poisonous, the water more dangerous. Am I frightening you, or are we looking at facts? And there is enough nuclear destructive power to wipe out this earth several times over. Not alarmist — those are simply the facts. These are the things even non-Christian scientists tell us.
None of this frightens me. Neither famine, nor war, nor disaster, nor destruction frightens me. It frightens the man for whom this world is everything. It does not frighten the man for whom this world no longer binds his heart. The wise are not frightened; it is the fools who are frightened. The question is not whether you are frightened or not — it is whether you are ready. And if you are tied to this world, when this world blows away, you are gone with it.
I was reading the other day about the prizes given at the ancient Greek Olympics. I almost burst out laughing when I read what the crown was made of — wild celery. Sometimes a crown of pine. These are the heroes of the world, and they ran for a crown of wild celery. Today at least they dignify it with a piece of metal. Bronze, if sold in the open market, might get you a dollar or two. Gold might get you more. You train so hard to get a cheap piece of junk metal? Paul says: they run for a crown that fades away. I am running for a crown that does not fade. Why would I be in that other race?
The result of playing the game both ways is that the church is full of Christians — affluent, wealthy, well-to-do — and they are miserable. They tried to play the game both ways, and they do not know God. They know that God is not real to them. And on the day of judgment, the Lord will say: all your life you were bound to the earth; all your life you pursued the same things the world pursued, in a more disguised and subtle way. But I look in your heart, and you were every bit as attached to this material age as any non-Christian. Your thinking has not changed. You could not walk past these things in non-desire. There is the difference between true Christianity and false.
Can you for a moment imagine — though you have not yet experienced it — what life would be like if you were truly free? Free from craving to be admired in your office because of your degree, to strut down the road because you have a new suit, a new earring, a new hairstyle. Imagine what it would be like if you were free from all of that, and could turn your mind and energy, without distraction, into the freedom of fellowship with God. And then you will have a surprise — a surprise you never expected. Because while you were chained to earth, you tried to commune with God and it was so tiring, so futile. Every time you rose with wings like eagles, the chain rudely dragged you back. But once that chain is cut — the chain of covetousness, the greatest of all crimes — you will know a peace you never knew before. The exhaustion of struggling for things just out of reach, of fighting within yourself — all gone.
My ministry here in Montreal will be a total failure if there is not one person at the end of these nine and a half years of ministry who has been freed from the chains of this avarice, this covetousness, this bondage to material things, and has flown away like a bird from the snare into the joy of knowing God. May God grant you ears to hear. Let us pray.