SCRIPTURE speaks of two kinds of pleasures, and most people enjoy either one or other.
There are the “pleasures of sin,” very enjoyable and to many fairly intoxicating, but the drawback to them is that they are not lasting. We can see this from Luke 15, where a young man went into a far country to enjoy his wealth far from his father’s control. For a time, no doubt, he was what men call happy, but there came an end to all he had and he began to be in want. The swine’s company and the swine’s food were good enough for him then. Nobody gave him anything; they only served themselves of him, sending him to the fields as a swineherd!
The other pleasures mentioned in Scripture are the exact opposite of all this. They are not in “a far country,” but in the “Father’s house,” in fact at His right hand, and they are not, like the pleasures of sin, only “for a season,” but they are “for evermore.”
What a contrast! Which are you enjoying? Which do you seek? You can have the pleasures of sin for a season if you can buy them with youth, beauty, health or money, but the “end of those things is death.” “I perish with hunger,” says the poor young man who finds famine and want in the far country after spending all he had. “At Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore,” says the man who seeks those pleasures. How am I to find them? do you ask? By taking God’s way to blessing. Have you ever told Him simply from your heart that you have sinned and have no hope but in Christ’s atoning work for you? Christ has borne all God’s judgment against sin, finished it completely and perfectly, so that the soul that trusts in Him is entitled to God’s favor and eternal blessing. Dear reader, will you not seek that blessing now? S. M. K.