A Wild Goose Chase
The title of today’s article is a phrase taken from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and simply means something that is a fruitless effort. It may be someone has sent you off on a wild goose chase, or you have gone off on your own, but the end result is the same: wasted time and effort.
In the days of Elijah and Elisha the prophets, during the decline of the kingdom of Israel, we see such an effort. After Elijah was taken up from Elisha by the whirlwind (2nd Kings 2:1, 11), Elisha took up Elijah’s mantle and headed back to the other side of the Jordan River. After he struck the waters with the mantle and divided them by God’s power, then crossed over (vv. 12-14), Elisha was met by some prophets of Jericho and, seeing Elijah’s mantle, perceived that Elisha now had God’s Spirit (v. 15). But they didn’t believe that Elijah had been taken up into heaven; they thought that God may have deposited him [alive or dead] on some mountain top or in a valley, and they just couldn’t see it. Having been an eyewitness to what had happened and having been told by some prophets from Bethel that Elijah would be taken from him that day (v. 5), Elisha refused them permission up to the point they pressed him into an embarrassing position of having to deny their requests yet again and appear uninterested in the whereabouts of Elijah, so he relented (vv. 16, 17).
As Elisha expected, they did not find Elijah — alive or dead — and Elisha rebuked them for their stubborn insistence (v. 18). In effect, their search was a wild goose chase.
While we may shake our heads at the stubbornness of these prophets and the wasted time and effort, seeking something that just wasn’t going to be found, we might ought to take a good, hard look at our own lives first to ensure we are not currently on such a fruitless effort at this very moment. How so? Let’s consider a few “wild goose chases” in which we might be unknowingly involved or, for some of us, stubbornly so:
Righteousness Not of God, But Sufficient to Save. It is not a new thing for men to think that because they are “good” that they are pleasing to the Lord, or “good enough” to get into heaven. For many centuries, men have pursued this arbitrary standard of righteousness that is defined only by one’s imagination, falsely believing that their human wisdom will lead them to find this ‘righteousness’ that, though it does not come from God, is sufficient to obtain eternal life and a place in heaven. Honestly, “pursue” is too strong a word because many people do not seek after any form of righteousness, but resort to their arbitrary standard of ‘good’ when someone asks them about God, the Bible, or their soul.
Still, there are some who make great efforts to be ‘righteous’ [by their own standard], falsely believing it will save them. In the first century, Jesus warned, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). These men were “ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (Rom. 10:3), and they were those whom Jesus saw “trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9).
The only righteousness we should be pursuing is that which comes because of the death of Jesus Christ to those who believe and obey Him (2nd Cor. 5:21). Anything else is just a wild goose chase.
A God Who Would Never Condemn Anyone to Hell. It is a popular idea among men that God is simply “too loving to condemn anyone to an eternal hell.” It might be popular, but it is terribly wrong.
Does God love us? Absolutely! To argue otherwise would go against many Scriptures, one of which (John 3:16) is known by many who would otherwise never open their Bibles. But while He certainly loves us, that love will not excuse our unforgiven sins, if we have any. God loved us enough to send His Son, but He didn’t send Him to us without any expectation of obedience on our part. The same God who loved us enough to send His Son to die for our sins is the same God who will send His Son “with His mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2nd Thess. 1:7, 8) — not because He doesn’t love us, but because we refused to acknowledge that love through our obedience! God doesn’t want any to perish (2nd Pet. 3:9); if we do, it will not be because He didn’t love us enough.
While many pursue this god of unlimited love and a god who would never condemn us, he will not be found in the Bible and he will not be found anywhere but our own imagination. It is a wild goose chase.
Salvation Without Obedience. Those of the world who have no interest in obeying God will, in the final judgment, rest their hope in this idea of salvation without ever having obeyed. Sadly, there are many who profess to be Christians who daily hope for the same thing; many of them do so because they have been deceived into thinking “man can do nothing of himself” when it comes to salvation. While man certainly cannot do any work to earn salvation or obtain it by effort, that does not, however, mean that man does nothing at all if he is to be saved.
Many professing believers do just that; profess — but nothing else. Some do nothing more than profess their faith because they have been deceived into thinking God has done it all, or will do it all; others simply do nothing more than profess their faith because they are too weak spiritually and have no real interest in doing anything. Many of these “professors only” may go so far as to occasionally show up for a worship service, but they refuse to actively participate in it, excuse themselves from contributing any financial support, excuse themselves from doing their share of the work, and generally absent themselves from any gathering where they might be expected to contribute either time or effort. All along, they falsely believe they are walking the road to heaven while, in reality, they are stalled by the side of the road and going nowhere.
James reminds us, “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (Jas. 2:17). No, works do nothing to earn salvation; but works certainly can prove our faith is a living faith, and not dead. As James also wrote, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (Jas. 1:22). If we think that we can sit back and do nothing, once we were converted to Christ, and if we are pursuing this way of life, thinking it will bring salvation in the end, we are off on some wild goose chase because salvation will never be found in those whose faith is dead.
There are many other “wild goose chases” in which we may be involved, but let us consider these few — and everything we are doing spiritually — to ensure we are not wasting our time and effort, pursuing something that will do us no spiritual good. Don’t allow someone else to deceive you, and don’t deceive yourself, either. If we persist in chasing after these things, in the end, we will have been no more successful than those prophets of Jericho. And then God will say, “Did I not say to you…?”
Steven Harper