Sunday 19th October, 2014

Success - Luke 12 (Pastor Femi Fenojo)

Text: Luke 12

verse 15: And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life
consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth

Verse 15 claries to us what success is about. Even if we have an abundance of success in all
aspects of our life, that is not our life. Success relates to our life but is not the summation of our
life. Our lives are not wholly derived from success.

But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee:then whose shall
those things be, which thou hast provided. So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not
rich toward God
(Luke 12:20-21)

Everything we have, our bodies, our riches, our talents all of it will be left behind when we pass
away. We nd it easy to focus on our outer man but then neglect and starve our inner man or
soul. It is good to strive for success but we need to be aware of the price we are paying. This does
not mean that it has to be one or the other. But in striving for success we must not neglect our
inner man. Jesus was telling the man not that his riches were the problem but the fact that he was
not rich in his relation towards God. And he was a fool for not realising this.

Becoming successful without falling in short in our relationship with God is difcult and requires
strength. We need to be prepared for the challenges associated with this.

The passage shows three groups of people: the crowd, the he disciples and Pharisees.
Note that the pharisees did not start of being bad. When they started, they were called the
righteous ones because they stood for the truth, often to the point of death. Unfortunately,
somewhere along the line, they substituted tradition for the truth. This is what can happen to us, we
can get so carried away by our pursuit for success that we loose our focus in God.

Jesus was harder on his disciples than he was on the whole crowd. See the example when he
rebuked Peter and called him Satan. The crowd was different, unlike the disciples that were
constant followers of Jesus, they came to Jesus because they wanted feeding. When he
confronted them with this, they left him. His disciples stayed with his as they realise that only He
had the word. Have we come to that point when we crave the Word of God more than anything.

See the story of Mary and Martha. When Jesus turned up at their house, Martha got busy while
Mary sat with Jesus to hear the word. Now it was understandable that Martha was working hard as
she had 13 unexpected guests to feed. However, Jesus wanted her to understand that she had
missed the point. There was nothing wrong with trying to entertain her guests, but she failed to
make the Word of God the centre point.

So, while there is nothing inherently wrong in striving for success, we must make sure that in our
desire to be successful we do not sacrice our desire and thirst for God.