The Seduction of Success - (Chapter 4)
Notes
Transcript
When you think of success, what comes to mind?
A dream job?
No debt?
Or maybe recognition for something you’ve done?
We live in a culture where success is almost sacred.
And the scary thing is,
it can look so harmless.
Who’s going to argue with wanting to work hard and do well?
What’s the alternative?
Being lazy and living off the government?
This is what makes the idol of success so devious.
Because it recognizes that success isn’t a bad thing,
but it tricks us into thinking it’s an ultimate thing,
which becomes a counterfeit god.
And that counterfeit god enslaves us.
For example:
The pop legend Madonna once talked about the pull of success, saying:
“I have an iron will, and all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy… I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and think I’m mediocre and uninteresting… Again and again. My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre… Because even though I’ve become Somebody, I still have to prove that I’m Somebody.”
For Madonna, success is like a drug.
It gives her a high,
a sense of self worth
but the high fades quickly.
And like a high, she has to chase it all over again.
But what’s driving this isn’t joy,
slavery….
she had to constantly prove her worth to her cruel master over, and over, and over again.
In the movie Chariots of Fire,
one of the Olympic runners is asked why he runs.
He doesn’t say,
“Because I love it.”
He says,
“I’m more of an addict.”
And then says:
“I’ve never known contentment. I’m forever in pursuit… and I don’t even know what it is I’m chasing. I have ten lonely seconds to justify my whole existence.”
Similarly,
Film director Sydney Pollack once said he couldn’t stop making movies,
because every time he finished one,
he felt like he’d “earned his stay” on earth for another year.
But then it wore off.
And he had to start over.
Now, if we aren’t careful, we can easily look at these people and think:
“WOW! That’s so stupid!”
“Why would you live for being a singer, runner, or movie director! What a waste!”
But if we think that,
it means that we haven’t yet come to see the same counterfeit god at work in our lives.
We haven’t…
Because once you have,
you look at these people and instead you say:
“That was and is me part from the grace of God.”
I want us to stop and think about where this counterfeit god shows up in our lives.
Not IF it’s there—because it is there.
I’ll go first.
As a pastor I’ve gone through two hard seasons of ministry.
One of them happened here.
Before that season,
God had blessed our church in ways that went beyond normal expectations.
When I first came, we averaged about 35 people on Sundays.
Soon we broke 50, and I thought, “That’s good, but we can do better.”
After Covid, things really picked up.
We hit 75, then 100, then 120.
Soon we were averaging 140 or more,
bringing in extra chairs and even setting them in the lobby.
The energy in the room was exciting.
But then last year came.
We had to do church discipline,
and it cost us,
not just those involved,
but over 30 more people who left.
But you know what…
That’s when I realized something.
I had a counterfeit god.
And that god was success.
And it’s hard to see because who thinks a growing church could be an idol?
But it was.
And I finally figured it out because it was affecting my joy.
It fueled anxiety, worry, and fear.
Questions ran through my head:
“What if more people leave? Will I have to work part-time? Will the church shut down?”
Now, it’s not wrong to want your church to thrive.
But when a good thing becomes the ultimate thing, it becomes a counterfeit god.
You start looking to it for joy and worth.
You start thinking,
“I matter because my church is growing. I’m not like those other pastors who aren’t very successful.”
But, when success becomes your god,
your value rises and falls with your performance.
which is an absolutely terrible roller coaster ride.
And you can do this with literally any kind of success at all.
Maybe for you it’s being a good parent and raising godly kids.
Or maybe it’s success in your marriage.
Good things,
but terrible ultimate things.
Another problem with the idol of success is how it leads to a distorted view of yourself.
Because if I’m successful,
then success in one area makes me think I’m an expert in all areas.
When I’m not.
It blinds me.
And Scripture says idolatry always does that
15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. 16 They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; 17 they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. 18 Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.
This idol is everywhere in our culture.
and it starts early.
In fact, the author David Brooks calls it
“the professionalization of childhood.”
And that’s so true…
In our culture,
Parents, schools, and sports create a pressure cooker to produce winners.
The family becomes the training ground for competition instead of a refuge from it.
In the past, people typically used to pick careers based on whether it helped someone,
but today, many people pick them based off money, prestige, and status.
And why?
Because the counterfeit god of success forces them to.
which leaves them miserable.
And there’s one BIG area this happens,
which we talked about in our Biblical Manhood & Womanhood class.
Any ideas?
It’s the idea, that if a woman is going to live a happy and fulfilled life,
she has to climb the corporate ladder.
She cannot and must not “settle” for being a homemaker and raising her children.
Because that wouldn’t be “successful.”
But my question is,
“by what standard?”
God’s?
Or culture’s?
Because when it comes to success,
I, and the Bible,
would argue that raising and nurturing your children’s soul’s is one of the most important things there is.
And the same holds true for Fathers.
Your primary metric of success isn’t putting food on the family’s table,
it’s feeding their hearts, soul’s, and minds with the truths of God.
Why do we so easily trust and serve this counterfeit god?
Well to fully answer that,
we’ll look at the story of Naaman in the Bible.
In 2 Kings 5,
Naaman had what people dream about:
1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper
He was the commander of Syria’s army,
He was wealthy, decorated, and honored.
But there was just one small problem…
Naaman had leprosy.
Notice how the author of 2 Kings piles up the accomplishments,
and then suddenly adds,
despite all of them,
he was a dead man walking.
If you know anything about Leprosy,
you know it was a slow death,
with your body decaying piece by piece as parts began to fall off.
Naaman had everything:
wealth, physical strength, fame.
He was in the inner ring…
but under it all he was literally falling apart.
C. S. Lewis wrote about the craving to get into “the Inner Ring”
which is that exclusive group that we think really matters.
He wrote:
“I don’t believe the economic motive and the erotic motive account for everything that goes on in the world. It’s a lust . . . a longing to be inside, [which] takes many forms . . . You want … the delicious knowledge that just we four or five—we are the people who (really) know… As long as you are governed by that desire you will never be satisfied. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain…”
What did Lewis mean by “an outsider you will remain?”
He meant this:
Naaman had success and money and power,
everything you needed to be an insider,
but he was a leper - the ultimate outsider.
Which meant all his success was useless.
Naaman’s story is like a parable.
People often chase success to feel like insiders,
believing it will win them acceptance from those who matter.
But in the end,
success can’t deliver that kind of satisfaction.
And Naaman’s leprosy is a picture of this truth.
Because even the most successful people often still feel like outsiders who are unsure of themselves.
2 Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman’s wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”
Naaman’s wife had a young Israelite servant girl who told him about a prophet in Israel who could heal him.
It was a small lead,
but Naaman was desperate enough to chase it.
So he set out for Israel with a staggering display of wealth,
ten talents of silver,
six thousand shekels of gold,
and ten sets of fine clothes,
along with a personal letter from the king of Syria to the king of Israel.
The letter read,
“I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
Naaman did not understand that there are some things only God can do.
The slave girl had told Naaman to simply go see the prophet in Israel and ask for a cure.
But this did not fit Naaman’s view of the world.
Instead he brought a large amount of money,
brought a letter of recommendation from the highest possible source,
and went to the top man in Israel, the king.
However, the king of Israel, however, was not pleased.
7 And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me.”
Naaman and the king of Syria assumed that Israel’s religion worked the same way other religions worked.
They believed it was basically a system of social control.
If you lived a good life,
the gods would owe you blessings and prosperity.
So, in their minds, the most successful people in society must be the ones closest to God.
They were the insiders,
the ones who could get whatever they asked for.
That’s why Naaman didn’t go straight to the prophet.
He went to the top,
because he figured if anyone could arrange a miracle, it would be the king.
When the king of Israel read the letter,
he tore his clothes.
He knew right away what the Syrian king didn’t,
that the God of Israel isn’t like the gods of other nations.
You can’t order Him around.
You can’t bribe Him or buy His favor.
Which is quite different from the gods of other religions,
those gods can be managed.
Do enough good works,
perform enough rituals,
and they owe you.
But the God of Israel doesn’t work that way.
Whatever He gives is pure grace.
So when the king cried out:
“Am I God? Can I kill and bring to life?”
he was putting his finger right on Naaman’s problem.
Naaman had made an idol out of success.
He assumed that the same wealth, power, and connections that worked everywhere else would work with God too.
but it never does.
The God of the Bible is not tame or controllable.
He cannot be put into debt, because everything He gives is by grace.
And He is not a private deity for a select few,
but the God of all people, whether they acknowledge Him or not.
8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king, saying, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha’s house.
Eventually, Naaman arrived at Elisha’s house,
but what happened next shocked him.
The prophet didn’t even come to the door.
Instead, he sent a servant with the message.
And the message itself was an even bigger surprise.
10 And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” 11 But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage. 13 But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”
Naaman expected Elisha to take the money and perform some impressive ritual.
Or have Naaman to do something great to earn his healing.
Instead, the command was simple:
go dip in the Jordan River seven times.
Naaman was furious.
His whole worldview was being overturned.
He was meeting a God Who could not be controlled because He only works on the basis of grace.
Which means no one can earn, merit, or achieve His blessing.
Until Naaman understood that God is a God of grace,
whose salvation can only be received and never earned,
he would remain enslaved to his idols.
He would keep using them to chase a security and significance they could never deliver.
Only when he grasped grace would he see that his successes were gifts from God.
Yes, he had worked hard to gain them,
but only with the talents, abilities, and opportunities God had given him.
He had depended on God’s grace his whole life without realizing it.
“Just wash in the river” was hard,
because it was so easy.
To obey,
Naaman had to admit he was helpless and weak,
and that he could only receive salvation as a free gift.
Which means, if you want God’s grace, all you need is need.
All you need is nothing.
But that kind of humility is rare.
Because we want to come to God saying, “Look at all I’ve done,”“Look at all I’ve suffered.”
God calls us to come with empty hands, to look to Him, and simply wash.
Naaman needed to learn how to “lay his deadly doing down.”
Which is a phrase I love that comes from an old hymn:
Lay your deadly “doing” down
Down at Jesus’ feet.
Stand in him, in him alone,
Gloriously complete.
Throughout the Bible, we see that God’s grace and forgiveness,
while free to the one who receives them,
are always costly to the one who gives them.
When someone wrongs you, forgiveness means you absorb the loss yourself.
You carry the debt.
Because all forgiveness is costly.
And that truth appears in Naaman’s story too.
For him to receive God’s blessing, someone else had to bear suffering with patience and love.
It was a character who appears so briefly she is almost overlooked,
the young slave girl who served Naaman’s wife.
This young Israelite girl had been taken captive in a Syrian raid.
At best, her family was sold into slavery.
At worst, they were killed before her eyes.
She was now a racial outsider,
a slave,
a young woman,
likely only twelve to fourteen,
and at the very bottom of Syria’s social ladder.
And the man most responsible for her suffering was Naaman himself, the commander of the Syrian army.
But, when she learned that Naaman had leprosy,
she didn’t rejoice in his pain,
she didn’t keep quiet with the one piece of information that could save him.
Instead, she said,
“If only my master would see the prophet.”
Her words were filled with sympathy and concern.
She wanted to see him healed.
She refused to take revenge and chose to trust God as the judge of all.
But to do this,
she had to suffer.
Because that’s how forgiveness works.
either they suffer, or we suffer.
And for the ultimate proof of that, we have the cross of Christ.
On the Cross,
Christ looked at friends who denied and abandoned Him,
and instead of holding a grudge against them,
He forgive them and paid the cost of forgiveness in full Himself.
He absorbed the debt of sin so we would not have to.
At Calvary, God did on a cosmic scale what we must do on a personal level when we forgive,
which is to bear the cost.
Understanding this is how we break free from the idol of success,
Because the idol of success cannot simply be removed - it must be replaced.
and until it is replacedm
our hearts will always cling to something we believe will give us worth.
So the only way to break the need to “do some great thing” in order to justify our existence
is to see that Jesus has already done it for us.
Which is our all our success,
all our righteousness.
When we believe that with our minds and are moved by it in our hearts,
the grip of success begins to lose its power.
14 So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. 15 Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him. And he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant.” 16 But he said, “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.” And he urged him to take it, but he refused.
The story of Naaman confronts our worship of success at every turn.
His healing came not through kings or the powerful,
but through the words of servants,
people the world considered insignificant.
God’s message came from the slave quarters, not the palace.
And Jesus is the ultimate example of this.
He did not come to the centers of power, but to a small, occupied land.
He was not born in a palace, but in a manger.
And throughout His ministry, people expected Him to take power,
to seek out the influential,
and build a movement the world would respect.
But instead,
He served humbly, suffered, and died.
And when He rose again,
He first appeared to women,
the people who then had no status in that society back then.
Salvation in Jesus is received not by strength,
but by admitting weakness and need.
It was accomplished not through domination,
but through surrender, service, sacrifice, and death.
As Paul wrote,
27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;
That’s how our great God works.
