I. His first mistake was being erroneously materialistic
A. Misconception of the measure of success.
1. The number one issue with most people when it comes to choosing a career is money. But compared to work that you’ll do well and enjoy doing, money is a rotten standard for making or evaluating career decisions.
2. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) - If a man has spent all his days about some business by which he has gotten much money, many houses and barns and wood lots, his life has been a failure.
3. Church at Laodicea - Revelation 3:17 "Because you say, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and know not that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:"
4. By the standards of cultural success models, Jesus was a miserable failure.
5. Always wanting and never achieving - Of those earning less than $15,000 annually, percentage who say they have not achieved the American dream: 95 Percentage of those earning more than $50,000 annually: 94
B. Misconception of the gratification of material goods
1. Benjamin Franklin - Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and triples that want another way.
2. Ecclesiastes 5:10-11 "He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loves abundance with increase: this is also vanity. When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?" (Those who love money will never have enough. How absurd to think that wealth brings happiness. The more you have the more people come to help you spend it. So what is the advantage of wealth - except perhaps to watch it run through your fingers.)”
3. W. E. Sangster - America has more things than any other nation in the world, and more books on how to find happiness.
4. If there is one message that comes to us in ten thousand seductive voices, it’s the message of our country and our century that life does consist of things. You can see it on a hundred billboards as you drive down the highway. It is the message from the sponsor on television. It is sung to you in jingles on radio. It is blared at you in four-color ads in the newspapers. We’re like the donkey that has the carrot extended before it on a stick. The donkey sees the carrot and wants it, so the donkey moves toward it, but the carrot moves, too. The carrot is always there, promising to fill the appetite. But what it promises, it does not deliver.
5. When John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in the world, someone asked him how much money was enough. He replied, "Just a little bit more."
6. The Chicago Tribune (9/1/96) ran the story of Buddy Post, "living proof that money can’t buy happiness." In 1988, he won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lottery. Since then, he was convicted of assault, his sixth wife left him, his brother was convicted of trying to kill him, and his landlady successfully sued him for one-third of the jackpot. "Money didn’t change me," insists Post, a 58-year-old former carnival worker and cook. "It changed people around me that I knew, that I thought cared a little bit about me. But they only cared about the money.” Post is trying to auction off seventeen future payments, valued at nearly $5 million, in order to pay off taxes, legal fees, and a number of failed business ventures. He plans to spend his life as an ex-winner pursuing lawsuits he has filed against police, judges, and lawyers who he says conspired to take his money. "I’m just going to stay at home and mind my p’s and q’s," he said. "Money draws flies."
C. Misconception of permanency of material possessions
1. Jeff Ferrera of Waukegan, Illinois, was reconciling his checkbook and called First National Bank of Chicago to get his current balance. "Your primary checking account currently has a balance of $924,844,204.32," droned the electronic voice. Ferrera was one of 826 customers who were almost billionaires for a day because of the biggest error in the history of U.S. banking. The goof amounted to almost $764 billion, more than six times the total assets of First Chicago NBD Corporation. "I had a lot of people saying in jest to transfer it to the Cayman Islands and run for it," Ferrera said. But, like most of the others, he simply reported the error to bank officials, who could say only that it was a "computer programming error." We need to remember that all earthly wealth is just as temporal.
2. Proverbs 27:24 "For riches are not for ever: and does the crown endure to every generation?"
3. Fortune magazine quotes a comment made by billionaire H. Ross Perot: "Guys, just remember, if you get real lucky, if you make a lot of money, if you go out and buy a lot of stuff--it’s gonna break. You got your biggest, fanciest mansion in the world. It has air conditioning. It got a pool. Just think of all the pumps that are going to go out. Or go to a yacht basin any place in the world. Nobody is smiling, and I’ll tell you why. Something broke that morning. The generator’s out; the microwave oven doesn’t work. ... Things just don’t mean happiness."
4. Proverbs 23:4-5 "Labor not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven."
5. Matthew 6:19-20 "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust does corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust does corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:"
D. The greatest success and wealth is having Christ.
1. Hebrews 11:26 "Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward."
2. Patrick Henry – "I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them and that is faith in Jesus Christ. If they had that and I had not given them a single shilling, they would have been rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor indeed."
II. His next mistake was being appallingly self-centered.
A. Six times the man says “I” and five times “my”.
B. He saw himself as a self-made man, believing his blessings were the fruits of his own hands.
1. In 1863, President Lincoln in his proclamation designating April 30 as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer wrote these words: “Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has grown, but we have forgotten God."
2. Deuteronomy 8:11-13, 17-18 "Beware that you forget not the LORD your God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command you this day: [12] Lest when you have eaten and are full, and have built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; [13] And when your herds and your flocks multiply, and you silver and your gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; [17] ... you say in your heart, My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth. [18] But you shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that gives you power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he swore unto your fathers, as it is this day."
C. When a man thinks he has a good deal of strength, and is self-confident, you may look for his downfall. It may be years before it comes to light, but it is already commenced. - D.L. Moody
D. I Corinthians 10:12 "Wherefore let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall."
E. Here was a man who thought only of self and self-gratification.
1. I Timothy 6:9-10 "But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."
2. The secret of every discord in Christian homes and communities and churches is that we seek our own way and our own glory.
3. If you wish to be miserable, think much about yourself; about what you want what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, and what people think of you. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)
III. His third mistake was being tragically shortsighted.
A. He had a short planning horizon in light of eternity.
B. He was a workaholic. Everything he did was to accumulate and amass for retirement when he could sit back and take it easy. He was consumed with achieving his goal.
C. All he ever really wanted in life was more. He wanted more money, so he parlayed inherited wealth into a billion-dollar pile of assets. He wanted more fame, so he broke into the Hollywood scene and soon became a filmmaker and star. He wanted more sensual pleasures, so he paid handsome sums to indulge his every sexual urge. He wanted more thrills, so he designed, built, and piloted the fastest aircraft in the world. He wanted more power, so he secretly dealt political favors so skillfully that two U.S. presidents became his pawns. All he ever wanted was more. He was absolutely convinced that more would bring him true satisfaction. Unfortunately, history shows otherwise. He concluded his life emaciated; colorless; sunken chest; fingernails in grotesque, inches-long corkscrews; rotting, black teeth; tumors; innumerable needle marks from his drug addiction. Howard Hughes died believing the myth of more. He died a billionaire junkie, insane by all reasonable standards.
D. What is sad about the man Christ spoke of is that he only thought about these things. He never lived long enough to achieve the things about which he thought. He was rich in this life, but a pauper in eternity. – Christ said “this night thy soul shall be required of you...”
E. Mark 8:36 "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
