Hold Fast to Eternal Things
Hold Fast to Eternal Things HOLD FAST TO ETERNAL THINGS
By Athens Clay Pullias The scripture reading for our lesson is found in the Second Corinthian letter. “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. . . . We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; Know-ing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9; 2 Corinthians 4:13-18; 2 Corinthians 5:1).
“These are times that try men’s souls.” The last fifteen years have witnessed cataclysmic changes in human affairs. These changes have seemed to usher in a reversal of centuries of progress and development. Fifteen years ago we were dreaming of an area of permanent material prosperity, of unparalleled social morality and lasting international peace. When I was a student in high school this beautiful dream of the future was discussed in every class and reflected in the behaviour of the general public. We had recently completed a war to end all wars. The prohibition law had promised to make sobriety and temperance a universal virtue, and political leaders were eloquently portraying a vision of prosperity which would put two chickens in every pot and two cars in every garage. Events of the past few years rudely shattered this glorious dream. Depression, poverty, unemployment and consequent social revolution stumbled over each other in rapid succession. Then before a staggering world could recover its economic equilibrium a war descended upon humanity, which by comparison dwarfs all previous human conflicts. The dream of 1929, at the peak of the golden era of hope, has been drastically transformed into the ghoulish nightmare of 1939. That storm of destruction which struck the world in September 1939 daily increases in ferocity and tends to obliterate the moral, spiritual, intellectual and social gains of fifty centuries. This is no war to end war. Instead, the world is in a death grapple for its very existence. In spite of fifty centuries of practice it appears that man has learned little about how to live usefully and happily in this present world.
Naturally we ask, “What will remain after this tempest is done?” “What will be left when the battle drums throb no longer?” “What are the eternal things?” There are always two separate, and often conflicting, sets of values. These are: (1) The immediate values and (2) the ultimate values. Those who clearly distinguish between these two sets ox values whl gain tremendously in the battle to hold fast to eternal things. This distinction is reasonably simple. For example, a small boy with ragged trousers and a hungry stomach passes by a fruit stand. He sees a shining red apple. He has no money with which to buy the apple. If he gets it, it will be necessary to steal. In deciding whether to steal the apple or to go on hungry he must make this distinction between immediate and ultimate values. Immediately ii would be more satisfying to take and to eat the apple. Physically, he would feel better. Yet there are more permanent values involved than his immediate hunger. To take the apple would be at the expense of honesty, integrity and decency. It might easily be the first step in a criminal career that would end on the gallows. Young people are constantly confronted with this same decisison. They are tempted to “gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” or to “enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” Those who dare to do it will lose the ultimate values of morality and personal purity. It is essential, then, that the intelligent Christian studiously distinguish ultimate values from immediate values. So our question recurs. “What will remain after this tempest is done?” “What will we have after the present storm of war and strife is over?” “What are the eternal things?” Paul said: “The things which; are .seen are temporal.” Those who cling to .the immediate values of wealth, sensual • pleasure, physical ease, and worldly position will lose eternal life and will lose the eternal values that go with eternal life.
Literature, both sacred and profane, is replete with confirmations of this statement of Paul that “things which are seen are temporal.” James Fenimore Cooper, famous author of “The Leather Stocking Tales,” said, “It is the destiny of all things to ripen and then decay.” Job, vexed on every side, poured forth these mournful words: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not” (Job 14:1-2). David in the ninetieth Psalm speaks of the swiftness with which the years roll by. “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou earnest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and with- creth. . . . The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. ... So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalms 90:4-6; Psalms 90:10; Psalms 90:12). In the one hundred and forty-fourth Psalm David said: “Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away” (Psalms 144:4). This remeinds us of the lines penned by William Cullen Bryant:
“As shadows cast by cloud and sun,
Flit o’er a summer’s grass So in thy sight, Almighty One,
Earth’s generations pass.”
Isaiah almost screams out the frailty of man. “The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the godliness thereof is as the flower of the fields” (Isaiah 40:6). James reminds man that he must be humble in view of the frailty of the flesh: “Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted: But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it wit.hereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways” (James 1:9-11). The same writer reemphasizes the uncertainty of life in the fourth chapter of his epistle. “Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye knowr not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:13-14). The apostle Peter adds these words: “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass wdthereth and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you” (1 Peter 1:22-25). “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long- suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy convex sation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless” (2 Peter 3:8-14). Jesus shocked his Jewish hearers by predicting the destruction of the magnificent temple, which was the heart of the Hebrew nation. “And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:1-2). In Gray’s Elegy this verse is found:
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
Another poet has said:
“ ’Tis the wink of an eye, ’tis the draft of a breath
From the blossom of youth to the paleness of death,
From the gdded salon to the bier and shroud
O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”
Indeed “the brightest glories that earth can boast just glisten then are gone,” for “the things wdiich are seen are temporal, and the things which are not seen are eternal.” The ultimate destiny of this generation, and of all generations to come, does not depend upon our productive capacity or our striking power. The immediate future may' well depend upon these purely temporal things, but the final future does not. Physical powder, on which we are so inclined to depend, will not and cannot decide the eternal issues. The trust which we so complacently place m material things is misplaced. In a neighboring state there lived an old Southern gentleman, who owned several hundred acres of river bottom land. We will call him Uncle Tom, for he was a ty pical old Southern gentleman. Uncle Tom was past b:s eightieth year. His physical frame was stooped and feeble. At best his sojourn upon the earth could only be a few more days.
Early one Autumn Uncle Tom fell sick, desperately sick. In view of his advanced age and enfeebled condition there was no hope for him to recover. Uncle Tom was not a Christian. To use his own words, he handled all his religion by proxy through his wife. He wasn’t a bad man, as men go. He was a stable, reliable, honest citizen, who was so interested in the affairs of this life that he took no interest in the eternal things. During his last illness a preacher of the gospel visited Uncle Tom. He tried in vain to arouse some spark of interest in religion in Uncle Tom’s heart, even in those fading moments of his life. This preacher thought that he had made some progress. Just as he was about to leave the. old .man raised up feebly on his elbow and said, “Preacher, I am worried almost to death, and I want you to do something for me.” The preacher’s face lightened up, but then Uncle Tom said, “Preacher, the backwater is rising, and I have got 300 acres of corn that must be gathered in the next few days or it will ruin. I want you to go down and see Jim Jones, who runs my river land, and tell him to get that corn out before the backwater gets it.” Then, Uncle Tom fell back exhausted, and the preacher fell back bitterly disappointed. Poor old man! With only a few days at most to live he could think of nothing but river bottom corn. He thought those 300 acres of corn to be very important. In reality they constituted about the least important thing in his life at that moment. “The things which are seen are temporal.”
There is a story in the Bible which is similar in many respects. There was a foolish rich man who thought up to the very last that a program of bigger and better barns was more important than anything else in the world. Not until it was too late did the foolish rich man realize that “the things which are seen are temporal, and the things which are not seen are eternal.”
Jesus would never stoop to the material things. For him life was first spiritual and moral. He nowhere expressed this better than in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew, verses twenty-four through twenty-six: “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sak shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Our original question recurs. “What will be left when this tempest is done?” “What will remain when the present tempest is o’er?” “What are the eternal things?” Paul said, “The things which are not seen are eternal.” The Bible begins with the eternal cornerstone: “In the beginning God.” Before everything else, and over everything else, as the author of all things stands the limitless personality of the Almighty God. All eternal values are in him and through him, for in “him we live and move and have our continual being.” In the ninetieth Psalm David spake of God in these eloquent words: “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or even thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Psalms 90:1-2). In the book of Deuteronomy Moses said: “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” The Son of God is the everlasting personification of mercy, grace and love. The word of God is eternal wisdom revealed to man through the sacred pages of the Holy Bible: “The word of God which liveth and abideth forever.” The kingdom of God, which shall never be moved—a kingdom which is the symbol and substance of eternal victory, the “gates of Hades shall not prevail against it”; the children of God, who shall inherit rest in that home where changes never come—these are the eternal things. God the Father, the Son of God, the Holy Spirit of God, the word of God, the Kingdom of God and the children of God—these are the eternal things. Time and circumstance will never overcome these eternal forces. Therefore, we say, “Hold to the eternal things.”
Those who hold fast to eternal things can face with confidence, complete confidence, and unshakable cour-age, whatever fate may lie ahead. Even death, the final destroyer of all that is temporal, holds no fears for the faithful children of God. The Christian who has laboured faithful and true can say with calm faith;
“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
--Robert Louis Stevenson. With the aged Tennyson the faithful Christian can say:
“Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moanmg of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns agam home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.” With the aged Paul those who hold to the eternal things can say: “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:68). Therefore, we plead with you: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19-21). In a world gone mad, in a world of uncertainty and death, hold fast to eternal things.