The ensnaring power and deadly influence of worldly vanities!
(Charles Simeon) LISTEN to Audio! Download Audio
“Vanity of vanities! Vanity of vanities–all is vanity!” Ecclesiastes 1:2
By the word “vanity,” we understand all those things which are apt to engross the desires and affections of men. The Apostle John classes them all under:
“the lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eye,
and the pride of life!”
They all justly deserve to be called vanities, because they are sure to disappoint the desires and expectations of all who look to them for any solid and permanent satisfaction.
Yet these worldly vanities altogether captivate and enslave the minds of the generality of men. The unsaved man seeks nothing but them. His mind is not occupied with anything above them. He “is in the flesh;” he “walks according to the flesh,” “fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.” His “affections are altogether set upon things below, and not on things above.” His thoughts, his conversation, his labors from day to day–all arise from, and terminate in, the things of time and sense. And from these things alone, spring all his hopes and fears, his joys and sorrows!
In order to escape the ensnaring power and deadly influence of worldly vanities, we should set a guard upon all our senses. The senses are inlets to all manner of evil! Alas! alas! how often has the mind been contaminated by what it has either seen or heard!
Many of the vilest lusts have found an entrance into the heart by the senses! Some have found to their cost, that one sinful idea which they have either seen in a book or picture, or heard in conversation–has abode with them through life, when they have greatly desired to forget it; while hundreds of sermons which they would have been glad to have remembered, have passed from their minds like the morning cloud!
Behold David, the man after God’s own heart; what reason had he to curse the day that he ever looked upon Bathsheba! What reason too had Solomon’s fool to lament that ever he listened to the voice of the enchanting adulteress! Proverbs 7:6-23. It is not without reason that Solomon advises us not to look upon the wine when sparkling in the glass, Proverbs 23:31-32
We must resist the very first entrance of sin into the soul; for it will operate like fire on a house of wood. Alas! “how great a matter does a little fire kindle!” James 3:5. Sin’s progress is very rapid. Who shall stop the conflagration, when once it has begun? “When lust has conceived, it brings forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death!” James 1:15
We exhort all then, like Job, to make a covenant with their eyes, and with their ears also; yes, and with the very imaginations of their heart, that neither their physical nor intellectual eyes become an entrance to sin, or traitors to their souls.
O! bear in mind the true character of worldly pleasures–they are altogether vanity!
“Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity!” Psalm 119:37
