#2005-41
Sermon Series: Find Your Focus
Title: Ambition
Text: I Kings 1:5-10, 49-52; 2:21-24
Truth: Improper and self-centered ambitions do not honor God and ultimately are destructive. (Outline from Lifeway.)
Aim: to help you keep your ambitions in line with the Lord’s purposes.
Life ?: How do we keep our ambitions in line with the Lord’s purposes?
INTRODUCTION
The Rolling Stones are one of the most prolific and enduring rock-and-roll bands in history. To date, their career has spanned four and a half decades. Mick Jagger and his three friends are nearing the age to draw Social Security and still perform to sold-out stadiums around the world. Like or dislike their music, their success is hard to deny.
They played to a sold out crowd in the OU Memorial stadium a few years back. I could hear the music and the crowd from my home. Here is what took place before the concert: over two hundred people built a mammoth structure several stories tall and half the length of a football field. A convoy of more than twenty semi-trailers was required to haul it from the last location. Two private planes jet the key people, including the band, between cities. A decade ago their world tour earned more than $80 million in profit.
A limousine pulls up back of the stage. The four band members step out and wait for their cue. When their names are announced the crowd roars, they walk on stage and pick up their instruments. For the next two hours they perform to the delight of their fans. After the final encore they wave good-bye, step into the waiting limousine and exit the stadium.
They don’t get involved in the setting up or tearing down of the stage, figuring out the complex itinerary or a hundred other jobs. They let other skilled people do those things. They do what they are best at doing—singing and performing (Focus, J. Canfield, p.33). That’s focus. They knew clearly what they were supposed to do and they did it.
As Christians we are to live focused on God. But life’s ups and downs and the world’s temptations can distract us from our focus. Fortunately, the Lord seeks to guide us back to the right paths, and helps us to stay focused on Him.
One of the ways that God helps us stay focused on Him is providing good and bad examples of people whose attention remained on God or they began to drift. I Kings provide many examples of people and a nation that was focused on God or lost their focus. The historical books of the O.T., Joshua through Esther, tell us the story of the nation of Israel from its entrance into the Promised Land under Joshua all the way through the tragic downfall of the nations of Israel and Judah. They illustrate the primary theological truth of Deuteronomy: obedience to God brings blessings while disobedience brings judgment (Deut 28). When the nation and/or individuals remained focused on God, they were blessed. When the nation and/or individuals became distracted from their focus on God they were judged.
This is the criterion that the author of I & II Kings evaluates the kings of Israel and Judah. Politically or economically or militarily some of these kings were very successful. But they did not use their position or power to encourage obedience to God and warn about disobeying God. Therefore, God considered their lives failures despite their great earthly accomplishments.
I & II Kings explains why God’s people lost the land they fought so hard to win under Joshua’s leadership. They stopped focusing on the Lord.
If God is going to use the criteria of what we focused our life on to judge our life, then it is important to find our focus. The first subject we are going to deal with is ambition. We need to be sure our ambitions are in line with the Lord’s purposes.
The big question in 2 Samuel 9-20 is, “Who will succeed David as king?” There are two serious challenges: Absalom, David’s son who attempts a cue and a family member of Saul’s family. Answer is given in I Kings 1-2. Solomon is going to be king but only after a power grab by another son of David, Adonijah. Adonijah serves as an example of self-centered ambition that does not honor God and ultimately is destructive.
How do we keep our ambitions in line with God’s purposes?
I. BEWARE OF IMPROPER AMBITION (I KINGS 1:5-10)
Ambition is a strong desire for advancement or success or to achieve a particular end. Christians tend to be ambivalent toward being called ambitious. Most pastors would not want their peers to describe them as ambitious but they would not want to be called unambitious. At its core ambition is related to the pursuit and expression of power. Discerning between good and bad ambition forces a person to discover why he desires power and how he will go about attaining it. Once a person gets the power, how will they use it?
Jesus never undermines ambition. He viewed it as a normal part of human nature. What Jesus does is direct or focus the ambition of his disciples. In Matthew 6 He tells them to stop focusing on the things this world is ambition for: recognition and material goods. Instead, a Christian is to have a strong desire, “to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to us” (v.33). In other words, Christians are strongly motivated for the glory of God and the good of others.
It is self-giving not self-serving. Ungodly ambition revolves around self. The power attained is used to the detriment of others. Relationships are a means to an end. People are used rather than loved.
Keep those things in mind as I read I Kings 1:5-10.
God told David that Solomon would be the son who would succeed him (I Chron. 22:6-10; 28:2-7) and David also apparently had promised Bathsheba that her son Solomon would be the next king (I Kings 1:13, 29-30). We don’t know if that was common knowledge in David’s household and Adonijah was trying to usurp the throne. It may be Adonijah thought since he was the oldest surviving son it was his right to be the next king. That may have been the policy the other nations used to choose their next king but that was not Israel’s policy. God picked their king. God picked Saul, the first king and God picked David to be king. God has already picked Solomon to be king. Adonijah was not focused on what God wanted, he was focused on what he wanted.
The scripture says he “put himself forward.” Literally it means that he “lifted himself up.” It reveals his motives. His motive was to exalt himself. He was self-serving. He states, “I will be king.” He breaks with tradition of leaving this decision in the hands of God.
His improper ambition is seen in that he assumes the trappings of being the king by creating a special guard and riding in a chariot. He’s acting like the king before he is made king.
One of the marks of improper ambition is the unwillingness to follow God’s will. Because of that we sacrifice peace, harmony and love. Adonijah’s selfish desire to outshine everyone else in his family brings ruin to his life and his family and his friends.
His improper ambition was never checked. Read v. 6.
David never said to this boy what you have said to your children. “This family doesn’t exist to serve you. We all work for the good of everyone in this family. It is not you against me, instead of me, under me, or over me. It is you in service to me, and I to you, both of us serving what’s best for this family.
You know what those conversations are teaching your children? We don’t use people in this family to get our way. We serve people for their good. David never had that conversation with Adonijah.
The Bible tells us he was handsome. The word has many nuances. He was physically attractive, but he was also a man people liked and whose company they enjoyed. People in that day put a lot of significance in the outward appearance of their king. They believed that the Lord blessed a person who was unusually handsome and that the Lord had an important mission for that person’s life. Saul and David were described as good-looking men.
Joab was the general of David’s army. This gave Adonijah strong military backing. Abiathar was a priest, and this gave him religious backing. He invited other influential people to a feast with the intent of uniting them to support him as king.
His deceptive motivations are seen in that he leaves out some significant people and he doesn’t hold this at the traditional place for crowning a king. He didn’t intend to make peace with these people. He intended to kill them when he became king.
Adonijah didn’t seek the Lord’s will about who would be Israel’s king nor the Lord’s will in choosing the king. His actions reveal his ambition was improper. He illustrates that Christians are to beware of improper ambition.
I wonder how many examples it takes to burst the bubble of Christians that ambition that is not focused on the glory of God and the good of others ultimately leads to futility. Alexander the Great was not satisfied, even when he had subdued all the nations. He wept because there were no more nations to conquer; he died in his early thirties in a state of debauchery. Hannibal, who filled three bushels with gold rings taken from knights he had slaughtered, committed suicide by swallowing poison. When he died no one mourned him. Julius Caesar bragged that he had stained his garments with the blood of one million foes, conquered 800 cities, but died by being stabbed to death by his best friends at the scene of his greatest triumphs. Napoleon died banished. Hitler intended to build an empire to last a thousand years. It didn’t make it one decade.
It is hard to resist the pull of the world and the pull of our own selfish pride. We are schooled all our life to go up the ladder of human promotion, to be outstanding, to succeed and win the prizes. God is not against ambition. But we must redefine success. It is pleasing God rather than our self by becoming more like Christ. We must tune our ear to hear heaven’s applause rather than the temporary praise of humankind.
How do we keep our ambitions in line with God’s purposes?
II. WARNING ABOUT AMBITION (I KINGS 1:49-52)
The prophet Nathan learns of Adonijah’s bid for power. He instructs Solomon’s mother Bathsheba to inform David of what is taking place and remind him of his promise to make Solomon king. While Bathsheba is still speaking to the king, Nathan comes into the room and corroborates her story. David tells the appropriate men to take Solomon to the proper place and anoint him king. Solomon returns to sit on the throne. Jonathan, Abiathar’s son, reports the turn of events to Adonijah and his supporters.
When they hear that Solomon has ascended to the throne, they flee for their lives. In the ancient world those on the winning side often consolidated their win by killing their opponents. It was winner take all. Adonijah finds himself all alone.
Fear for his life he flees to the place of worship and takes hold of the horns of the altar. The idea seems to be that the altar is the Lord’s table. This person is a guest of the Lord. In that day, you not only provided food and shelter for your guest, you protected them from enemies. Being the Lord’s guest, he deserved the Lord’s protection. It also was a way to provide refuge for those fearing for their lives. It was designed to protect innocent people from being harmed. The guilty were not afforded the same protection.
Adonijah asks Solomon to spare his life. Solomon gives a conditional reprieve. As long as Adonijah proves himself a “worthy man” he will live. It describes someone of upright character. Solomon was demanding his brother be a loyal subject. If he will keep his selfish ambition in check he would not be executed.
The comedian Jim Carrey stars in the movie Bruce Almighty. He plays a TV reporter who thinks his being overlooked for promotions and various other misfortunes mean that God doesn’t care, or at least has let him down. When God, played by Morgan Freeman, shows up to offer Bruce His own power for a season to see if he can do any better with it, Bruce accepts the deal.
Soon Bruce is indulging himself in the fulfillment of his fantasies and manipulating his way to the coveted anchor position. This obsession with advancement causes an estrangement with his girlfriend Grace, who discovers how low down on the priority list she has become.
Bruce discovers that a part of God’s job is answering prayers, and there are billions of them. Lacking God’s wisdom, he grants a blanket “Yes” to all requests, and trouble begins. Not only that, but because he can’t violate human free will, he finds he is losing Grace, and all the power in heaven and earth cannot make her come back to him. His ambition, coupled with great power, has resulted in his life being a bigger mess than ever.
In one of the best scenes of submission to God’s will ever put on film, Bruce realizes he has much to be thankful for, and that someone else can run his life better than himself. He learns that he is not fulfilled by the desired promotion, but by serving others with his God-given gifts (“My Will Be Done, Alex Wainer, Breakpoint).
You can’t get home safely from church without warnings. Stoplights, stop signs, yellow lines are all warnings to stay within the parameters of traffic laws to arrive safely. You can’t raise a child to health without warnings. A baby’s cry is a warning to parents something is needs attention. A shooting pain down the arm and pain in the jaw are warnings about our health.
God warned Cain before he killed his brother Abel. God warned Peter before he denied Christ three times. And this morning God is warning you about improper ambition.
Solomon was generous and merciful with his brother. His warning was an act of mercy, but he warned him that improper ambition would lead to destruction. Ambitions are normal, but they become destructive when they lose their focus of bring glory to God and good to others.
How do we keep our ambitions in line with God’s purposes?
III. BEWARE OF STUBBORN AMBITION (I KINGS 2:21-24)
Adonijah stubbornly clings to his ambition to be king. Following David’s death he approaches Bathsheba to ask a favor. He told her all Israel recognized that he was king. That was not true. He said that he had accepted Solomon’s kingship as God’s will.
Since the throne had been stolen from him, he hoped Solomon would give him something of value to make up for his loss. Could he have Abishag as his wife? She was the young virgin that slept with David to keep him warm. Although that did not have sexual relations, Solomon viewed her as a part of David’s harem. For anyone other than the king to ask for a member of the harem implied the asker desired the kingship as well (2 Sam. 16:21-22). Solomon instantly understood that Adonijah was attempting to seize the kingdom. He had him put to death.
Strong ambition that is focused on putting Christ first and following Him at all costs is commendable. Stubborn ambition that is self-centered and ignores the Lord and his purposes is wrong and even can be fatal.
It was a trip of a lifetime for the entire Ferguson family from Laguna Hills, California. Mr. Ferguson had arranged for a 10-day cruise on the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s Legend of the Seas for his wife and four daughters. They set sail from Ensenada, Mexico, en route to Hilo, Hawaii. But halfway through the cruise the ship came to a sudden halt. The reason? The Ferguson’s youngest daughter, 20-year-old, Kelley.
Kelly was homesick for her boyfriend back in California. She wanted to go back home instead of going through with the family vacation. So, she decided to leave a couple of fake terrorist threats in one of the women’s restrooms in hopes it that one of the ship’s stewards would find them and the ship would return home. One of the notes said, “I have been sent on a mission to kill all Americanos aboard Legend if we port on American soil.”
They found the notes and dropped anchor in waters off Oahu. There the FBI boarded the Legend of the Seas, 120 members of the Hawaii Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Coast Guard. An intense search ensued for biological, chemical and explosive weapons aboard the ship as well as an interrogation of all crewmembers and 2400 passengers. It cost the Coast Guard alone $336,000.
Kelly Ferguson was quickly singled out as the source of the notes since she is the only one who reported seeing someone leave the notes. She was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury, under the USA Patriot Act, with two counts of threatening acts of terrorism. Each count punishable by a maximum of 20 years imprisonment. She faces anywhere from 2-20 years in prison and up to $25,000 in fines. Her charges do not allow for probation.
Her family went home. She went to a Honolulu jail for several weeks. She didn’t get to see her boyfriend. When she went back to Laguna Hills, she was under house arrest wearing an anklet transmitter so that authorities knew where she was at all times.
Do you think that young woman ever thought her determination to go back home to her boyfriend would ever result in such a massive mess? Probably not. But neither do we. We think if we can get what we want, everything will be better. Selfish ambition is never constructive and almost always destructive. It never helps us but always hurts us, and hurts far more people than we imagined.
When Jesus is quoted in Acts 20:35 saying, “It is more blessed to give than receive,” it was not in the context of money. It was in the context of meeting other people’s needs.
It’s just as foolish for a Christian to stubbornly pursue his own selfish ambition rather than do what is pleasing to God and minister to others. We harm others and ourselves.
CONCLUSION
Jesus never undermines ambition. He made us to have strong desire to advance and want to achieve. But He wants to focus our ambition on self-giving not self-serving. He wants us to find our focus in glorifying God and doing good to others because improper ambition dishonors God and is destructive.
