When the walls of a man’s life move, it is a most fearful thing, because he senses that the only home he has is about to be destroyed. The life is built upon doctrines which must support it whatever takes place. If those doctrines are in error, they cannot stand the force of reality that comes against them, but if they are doctrines of truth, they can stand any amount of pressure.
If you say I will ignore God and I will believe the agony aunts – I can do as I like with my body; there are no moral guidelines, then you are saying you can live with no foundation. There are many reasons why you should not believe these false prophets of our time. They cannot make their teaching work for themselves. They cannot make their relationships work; they get partners at a rate that leaves a wake of misery in their path; they are a cohort of failures.
Suddenly the whole structure collapses. Down comes your house; it is reduced to a pile of rubble. It looked such a great house maybe: so much study for promotion; so much attention to the things of this life; so much effort to harvest the praise of men; so much self-pampering and dedication to sinful pleasures. You have done all that work and built it for nothing. What a fool! What you see is all there is to it, and it is not designed to stand the tests which a child could have told you were coming. You will suffer great sorrow, and great fear and it is irreversible; you cannot repair this damage. You have been given one life and it is gone, and now you are a naked soul standing before Christ. What a humiliation! Is that your house? You didn’t consider you had an eternal soul, that life goes on beyond the grave, that you are a sinner, that God is holy. What pain and heartache you will experience because you have never loved the Lord!
Do you have a plan, a policy for building the house of your life or are you missing the point of life? There are so many deluded Christians who think they have a place in heaven and walk with him. Some don’t even attend church. They have never truly repented and understand Calvary, never trusted, never yielded their lives to him.
Are your chief interests all in this world, so that you have no time for God? Do you admire man, human endeavours, scientific achievement, or sport, or entertainment, or latest gadgets? Do you love to talk about these things, but hate to discuss the standards of God or how you should live in order to please him? Or do you live for your stomach: you are an expert on food and wine, and can name all the best restaurants in your area, and choose the best vintage wines, but you are ignorant of where to find a good Bible-believing church you can attend? Or are you dedicated to your job, so that you work all hours of the day, but completely neglect the soul? You may look scornfully at Christians – what pathetic people who take religion so seriously, you think. They need a crutch in life to get by which I can do without. The foolish builder looks at wise builder digging down to rock and says, ‘Why is he bothering with all that? What a waste of time! There is not much to show for all that work; my house is already half built. What does he think is going to happen, digging so deep? Anyone would think there was going to be a flood. The non-Christian may think he has life sorted out. He makes detailed plans for the future, but none of these include any consideration of God, of God’s plan for his life, of how he will face the Lord at the end of life.
You know how to insure yourselves against fire or theft, how to eat good food and take bodily exercise, how to take yourself to hospital when you are sick. But with the soul you take a calculated risk. You live in a flood area: seventy years of life and it is all swept away. But you pretend it won’t come. You do the most foolish thing possible. You build a life with nothing to protect it in the final day. The wise men has an invisible dimension to his life. He has come before God and built his house. He has said I am a sinner. He has dug out the loose soil, which will cause his life to settle and fall. He seeks the help of God to dig deeply, repenting of sin and sincerely designing life. ‘Forgive me for my pride, my selfishness, my uncleanness.’