Sermon Tone Analysis

Rhythm and Blues: Ambition

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

April 20~/22, 2007

Ecclesiastes 4

 

Good morning~/afternoon and welcome to Rhythm and Blues, this series on Ecclesiastes where we are looking at how to find God’s redemptive rhythm in this world of blue…in a broken world, subjected to futility, subjected to the curse, how God wants to work in our lives to reverse the curse and help us build solidness and depth and meaning.

Today Solomon is going to talk to us about ambition, and keep in mind that Solomon was a man who had accomplished a lot.

He was a king of Israel who took a small nation and turned it into a wealthy super-power nation.

He had amassed great wealth, a stellar global reputation, and accomplished the ambitious goals he had set for himself.

He is going to talk to us about the futility of ambition.

Let’s get a picture of ambition’s futility as we see this scene from one of my favorite movies, /The Christmas Story/.

Let’s join Ralphie as he sets out to write the class projects of all class projects about his biggest dream in life: getting a Red Ryder BB gun.

Christmas Story Clip

Poor Ralphie.

All he wanted was a BB gun.

All he wanted was to write an A++++ paper…but for Ralphie out of reach, futile.

Let’s talk about ambition, the drive to accomplish, to drive to be significant.

I think we would all agree that much of what we run after and strive for doesn’t amount to much and might be futile, but does that mean that ambition itself is bad?

That the drive to achieve is just futile?

In the church world, the answer often seems to be yes.

Ambition gets a bad wrap in the church, especially in ministry.

What would you think about a pastor that described himself as a “highly ambitious pastor?”

Doesn’t sound right.

Pastors are supposed to be humble, not ambitious.

In business, if someone is considered “driven,” you want to hire them.

But if that same person was in some small group and described themselves as driven, people would want to pray for them…that God would fix them.

When you read the Bible though, you get a different story about ambition.

Ambition itself can be very good or can be very bad, deeply significant or incredibly futile.

The world ambition is used in the NIV translation of the New Testament 7 times, sometimes in a positive way and other times in a very negative way.

The truth is that you and I were created to be ambitious…we are created with a desire to accomplish, to achieve, to do something that makes a difference.

Ambition is a divine gift.

Yet, the reality that we talked about last week of the fall of man and the invasion of sin into this world means that we take all of God’s good gifts and mess them up…we tend to pervert them, ruin them.

The wrong kind of ambition gets us nowhere…yet God can redeem ambition in our lives to allow us to build true greatness, lasting significance.

Today we are going to talk about both kinds of ambition, futile ambition and redeemed ambition, as we learn how to funnel our God-given drive to achieve away from futility toward something solid and truly significant.

As we do, I’m going to challenge us to be very honest with ourselves.

If we are, I believe this will be a highly life-changing and life-challenging message.

I know that, because it was for me this week as I was preparing it.

Be honest with yourself and with God, and be willing to ask yourself some hard questions about what is really driving your life right now and what, if you stayed on the same course, you would end up accomplishing.

We are going to contrast Solomon’s teaching about futile ambition with the example of the apostle Paul who shows us how to trade futile ambition for redeemed ambition.

Paul made a clear choice, and revisited that choice every day of his life.

Let’s look at both Solomon and Paul to find out how to make the same trade.

Slide: _____________

·         Futile ambition is driven by selfish motives…redeemed ambition by kingdom motives

What really drives our lives, fuels our activity?

Solomon is going to accuse every one of us who are goal-oriented, who are working to achieve things, with this charge:

Slide: _____________ Ecclesiastes 4:4

/And I saw that all labor and achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor.

This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind (4:4)./

Solomon observes that most of what drives us boils down to envy and greed, wanting to have more and do better than the people around us…for our houses to be as up-to-date as everyone elses, for our cars to be as good as the guy next door, for our job titles to be respected ones by people who ask what we do for a living…for us to be able to have a good answer when someone asks, “So, what does your son or daughter?”

Or if still kids at home, “How is your child doing in school right now?”

In other words, much of what drives us, he claims, is keeping up with the Joneses.

The great news for me is that I can relax on that one, because I am the Joneses.

All you poor people have to keep up with me…but that’s actually more pressure.

As a Jones, I’ve got to stay ahead of you.

All you goobers are always trying to catch up.

Solomon says that the futility of being driven this way is that even if you do stay ahead or get ahead, in the end who cares?

He says it is a chasing after the wind.

You can never catch it.

Trying to be seen a certain way by others, or to be more successful than others, is an unreachable goal, because there is always somebody ahead and somebody behind—and even if you become #1, like Solomon did, who cares?

It’s like the dog chasing the remote control car…if he catches it, big deal?

Did you notice in the video when he does catch it?

He doesn’t know what to do with it.

It’s nothing.

I would love to say I’m above selfish ambition, but I can’t…even though I’ve learned the futility of it over and over again.

School was that way for me.

At some point in school, the desire to not only get good grades but to be at or near the top of my class took over.

I would never have admitted it, but it did matter to me.

In college, my GPA was a 4.0, and I graduated at the top of my class.

Secretly, it mattered to me, though I wouldn’t have admitted it if you had asked.

I skipped a lot of fun alternatives to stay in libraries and study to accomplish the goal, but I got it…and then came graduation, and the awards, and you know what?

Big deal!

Who really cared?

After all, I was going to graduate school, to seminary, to get a masters degree in theology, so my sites were already set on grad school.

At DTS, I approached school the same way…finished with the GPA I wanted and at the top of my class.

My goal was not just to pass tests, but to embarrass tests…not just write papers that got an A but write papers that made the professor cry with pride and joy at the insight and the thoroughness.

Graduation came, awards came with it…but that day was one of the emptiest days of my life.

I felt so stupid, so small.

Who really cared?

I looked around the room at some really great people who were going off into ministry, and I realized how much I sacrificed to stay ahead of them in the rankings.

I didn’t take much time to get to know them.

And in the end, who cared?

When I graduated, not one church asked me what my grades were or where I finished up?

I wanted them to, but they never did.

I felt the futility.

I got what I wanted, but big deal.

Contrast that with the apostle Paul, who traded futile ambition for redeemed ambition.

In Philippians 3, he says,

Slide: _____________ Philippians 3: 4b-6

/“If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;  as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

/In the Jewish world, Paul was a superstar.

He was a better religious zealot than anybody.

He out legalized all the legalists…but in the end, big deal!

Paul gladly threw all that away when confronted with the opportunity for redeemed ambition.

He says,

Slide: _____________ Philippians 3: 7-14

/But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.