The True Measure of Success

One day, a very successful businessman was riding to work in his chauffeur driven limousine when he happened to notice a little boy sitting at a table by the side of the road. On the table sat a mangy, decrepit old dog. His fur was all matted and scruffy. Around the dog’s neck, the boy had hung a sign which said “Dog for Sale… 10¢”.

Day after day, the businessman passed the boy and the dog sitting there by the side of the road, until one day he decided to stop and give the boy some business advice. Folding his Wall Street Journal under his arm, the businessman stepped out of his limousine and went over to the curb where the little boy sat.

“Young man,” he said, “I see you have a dog for sale. But it doesn’t seem that you’ve been successful in finding a buyer so far. Let me give you some good business advice. You need to think big. First, you have to take this dog and give him a bath. Then comb his coat till it is shiny and sleek. Tie a big red ribbon around his neck. Nobody wants to buy an old flea-bitten mongrel like you’re offering now.

And while you’re at it, change your sign. Raise the price. Think big. People won’t think this dog is worth anything if you’re only willing to sell him for 10¢.” At that, the businessman climbed into his limousine and drove off.

The next day as he drove by, he noticed that the boy had followed his advice. There sat the dog, only now he looked beautiful. His coat was glossy and sleek, and he had a big red bow around his neck. But what really caught the businessman’s eye was the sign. In gigantic letters, it read “Champion Retriever for Sale: $10,000!” The businessman chuckled to himself as he drove by, figuring that the poor boy would sit at that table forever with a dog that price.

Imagine his surprise though later that day as he returned home from work to find that the table was empty. The dog was gone. Spying the little boy, the man ordered his chauffeur to stop the car and he beckoned the boy over. “I see you’ve sold your dog.” he said. “Did my advice work?” The boy replied “Oh yes sir. Thank you so much for teaching me to think big. But I didn’t exactly sell the dog. I just traded him to the little boy down the street for two $5,000 cats.”

We live in a world where success is measured on the bottom line. Your worth as an individual is determined by how much money you make. What sort of house you live in. What neighborhood that house is in. The kind of car you drive. The clothes you wear. As the bumper sticker says: “Money isn’t everything, but it’s a great way of keeping score.”

The world also defines success in terms of fame and recognition. Michael Jordan… Oprah Winfrey… Tom Cruise… people recognize those faces anywhere because these folks have reached the top of their profession.

We measure success in terms of accomplishments. If you’re a baseball pitcher, how many strikeouts did you get last year? If you’re a lawyer, how many cases did you win? If you’re a doctor, how big is your practice? If you’re a pastor, how big is your church? And even as we ask those questions, we are subconsciously measuring each other on that stern, unforgiving yardstick of performance.

You see, the truth is: we are obsessed with success. It’s part of our culture, it’s in our upbringing. It’s woven into the stories we tell, and the dreams we dream.

But I’d like for us to explore a different question this morning. We already have a pretty good idea of what it takes to be a success in the eyes of the world. Our bookstores are full of books on that subject.

But the real question that matters in life is: What is success in the eyes of God? What standard of measurement does God use to determine how successful a person is? Because ultimately, success in life is going to be determined on God’s scale of values, not ours. His verdict is the one that’s important—He’s going to have the final word, not us.

Now in order to answer that question, I thought it would be good for us to spend a few weeks looking at the life of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. Why Jeremiah? Because Jeremiah was a man who, when all was said and done, turned out to be a failure by the world’s standards, but a success by God’s standards.

Jeremiah was a preacher whose people wouldn’t listen to him. He was a communicator whose colleagues contradicted every word he said. He was an author whose critics crucified his writing. In fact, after the king read his book, he tore it up and burned it!

Jeremiah was a patriot who was arrested and accused of being a traitor. During his lifetime, in spite of the fact that he was a man of God, his people went completely off the tracks spiritually. The nation Judah, where Jeremiah lived, was overrun and crushed by a foreign power who worshiped false gods.

Jeremiah was physically assaulted and abused. His enemies threw him into a hole into the ground, a cistern—an underground chamber designed to hold water—and held him there. Then, when he was an old man in his 70’s—when he should have been sitting in a rocking chair on the veranda of the Home for Old Prophets—they dragged him in chains to Egypt where, according to Jewish tradition, they stoned him to death.

If you measured Jeremiah’s life according to the success standards of the world, his life was an abject failure. Nothing panned out. Everything went from bad to worse. You wonder about his spiritual impact? There was no revival under Jeremiah’s preaching—in fact, just the opposite: the people grew colder spiritually. It’s no wonder that he became known as the “weeping prophet”. It’s no wonder that he wrote a book called Lamentations.

And yet, in spite of all that, on God’s scale Jeremiah was a success. Why? Because he measured up to the way God defines success.

According to God’s definition, success involves four ingredients:

1. Submission to the will of God

2. Faithfulness to the call of God

3. Obedience to the Word of God

4. Confidence in the sovereignty of God

If you pattern your life on those four principles, you will be a success in the eyes of God. Your life will count in His estimation. And ultimately, God’s estimation is all that matters.

Let’s look at these four principles:

1. Success is submission to the will of God.

Jeremiah 1:4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

“Ah, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”

But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

Notice that God takes complete responsibility for who Jeremiah was. Look again at what God says to him in v. 5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

God said “Jeremiah, you are who you are because I made you that way.”

Now Jeremiah had a little bit of trouble accepting that at first. He said “Wait a minute… I’m only a child…” Jeremiah may have been just a teenager when he began his ministry. And he said “I’m not a good speaker.” Like Moses, Jeremiah had his doubts.

But gradually, he came to understand that he was the person he was because God made him that way. And I believe that that is the first key to his success in the eyes of God. He didn’t try to be anyone other than the person God made him to be. He accepted his unique identity as a gift from God, and in that way submitted himself to the will of God for his life.

So many people today are dissatisfied with who they are! They are not happy with the way God made them. They say “Oh if only I were more beautiful, or if only I were more intelligent, or more athletic. If only I had been born into a better family. If only I didn’t have the background, the upbringing I had.”

And all these “if only’s” are really an indictment of their Maker. They are saying “God, when you made me, you didn’t know what you were doing. You made a mistake. And because you made a mistake with something so important as my very identity, because you stuck me with this person I see in the mirror, I really can’t trust you anything else in my life.”

Chuck Swindoll has said that there are just three things that lead to a successful life in the sight of God. “Know yourself. Like yourself. Be yourself.”

Jeremiah was submissive to the will of God. He accepted the way that God made him and he didn’t try to be someone else. He accepted God’s plan for his life, he didn’t try to go his own way.

2. Success is faithfulness to the call of God.

Jeremiah 1:5b …I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

Jeremiah 1:7b …You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.

The word prophet in Hebrew is the word “nabi”. It means “one who is called”. Jeremiah was called of God to be a prophet, a spokesman for God.

Notice that when God called Jeremiah, he didn’t say anything about results. He didn’t give Jeremiah any “sales quotas” to reach, or tell him that a certain number of people had to be converted so that he could know that he was doing a good job.

No, he just said “You just go to the people I send you to and you just say what I tell you to, and you let ME take care of the results.”

Did you know that nowhere in Scripture does God call us to be successful—he calls us to be faithful.

1 Corinthians 4:2 Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

God is in charge of results; our responsibility is to be faithful to what He has called us to do. Take the apostles for example. They were faithful to the calling of God on their lives. But what about their results? Well, the apostle Paul went to Europe and planted lots of churches. Thousands were saved, and the work of Paul became the basis for the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.

But what about someone like the apostle Thomas? Early Christian tradition tells us that Thomas went East; as far east as India preaching the gospel. And presumably, Thomas planted churches there as well. But we really don’t know how successful Thomas’s ministry was. There’s no record of it.

Does that mean that Paul was more successful in the eyes of God than Thomas? No. Both men were faithful to what God had called them to do, so both men were successful in the eyes of God.

Take Noah as another example. God called him to preach. So he preached for 120 years and didn’t make a single convert outside of his own family. Was he a failure? No, he was a success in the eyes of God because he was faithful.

I’ll bet you don’t recognize the name Edward Kimball. Edward Kimball was an obscure man who taught Sunday School in a little church in Boston in the mid 1800’s. One day, a young man attended his class as a visitor. He came for a couple of weeks, and then Kimball visited him at his place of employment, which happened to be a shoe store.

Kimball was not an eloquent speaker and about all that he was able to say to the young man was, “I’m concerned for your soul.” After he left, the shoe clerk thought to himself “If Edward Kimball is concerned for my soul, then maybe I should be concerned too.” At that, he went to the basement of the shoe store and invited Jesus Christ to be his Savior. That young man was Dwight L. Moody, who became one of the greatest evangelists who ever lived. Everyone remembers the name of Dwight L. Moody. Nobody remembers the name of Edward Kimball. Nobody except God. And in God’s eyes, Kimball was a success, because he was faithful to his call.

Your life can be a success in the sight of God, too. All he wants you to do is to be faithful to Him. Be faithful to Him at home, young mother, with your laundry and your dishes. Be faithful to Him at the office, secretary, with your difficult boss. Be faithful to him on the job-site, tradesman, with your co-workers who curse God. Be faithful to him in the high school hallways, student, with your friends who laugh at your faith. Be faithful to God and God will take care of the results.

3. Success is being obedient to the Word of God.

There are two episodes in the life of Moses which show how important obedience is. The first one is found in Exodus 17. The Israelites, after having escaped from Egypt, have come to a place called Rephidim, where there is no water. They are parched and they begin complaining and whining.

So God says to Moses “Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses obeyed the word of the Lord, and the people had plenty of water to drink. A great success story!

Forty years later—Numbers 20—the people of Israel are still wandering in the desert. They come to a place called Kadesh. There is no water. It’s hot. They are thirsty, so they begin grumbling and complaining.

So God says to Moses “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”

But what did Moses do? Listen as I read to you from Numbers 20:9…

Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

I’m sure that a great roar of approval went up from the people when they saw the water. I’m sure that many of them pounded Moses on the back and hugged him in gratitude. Another great success story, right? Wrong.

Even though he appeared to be at the height of his success as a leader, Moses had disobeyed the Word of God. He had not followed God’s explicit instructions, and so now he would not be allowed to lead the Israelites into the promised land.

You can have what looks to be a successful life—the trappings of success can be all around you—but if you are disobeying the Word of God in some hidden area of your life—you are a failure in God’s eyes.

Joshua 1:8 Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Success is obedience to the Word of God.

4. Success is having confidence in the sovereignty of God.

I’m sure that there were many times during Jeremiah’s life that he was tempted to wonder whether God really knew what he was doing.

Psalm 10:1 Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

Psalm 44:24 Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?

Psalm 74:11 Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?

And yet, when all was said and done, Jeremiah trusted in the sovereignty of God, because he kept on doing what God had called him to do. He was like Paul, who from a dungeon, was able to say “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.”

Jeremiah’s life did not end auspiciously. His resume of accomplishments was not impressive. In the world’s eyes he was judged a failure. He never lived to see any tangible results from his ministry. But there were results.

Fifty years after Jeremiah died, a man of God sitting in a palace in Babylon read words that Jeremiah had written and was moved deeply in his soul. He cried out to God over what he had read and God revealed to him a vision of His plan for the future and the coming of the Messiah. That man was Daniel, and that vision is recorded in Daniel ch.9. And Daniel’s vision happened because Jeremiah had been faithful to his call.

580 years after Jeremiah died, one of the prophecies he wrote was fulfilled about the birth of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. It is recorded for us in Mt.2:17. It happened because Jeremiah was faithful to his call.

Thirty-three years after that, another prophecy of Jeremiah’s was fulfilled concerning the betrayal and death of Jesus Christ. It is recorded for us in Mt.27:9. It happened because Jeremiah was faithful to his call.

2,580 years after Jeremiah died, a group of people located almost 6,000 miles away from where he lived, on a continent unknown to him, met to talk about his life. The group studied the life of Jeremiah as an example of a man who brought glory to God by the way he lived. That group of people is us here at First Baptist Church.

And this is happening today because Jeremiah was faithful to his call. And how many other churches are meeting today all around the world or have met in the past 2000 years of church history to learn about God from Jeremiah?

Let me tell you—that’s impact! That’s success! And your life can make that kind of impact if you’ll just…

1. Submit yourself to the will of God

2. Be faithful to the call of God

3. Obey the Word of God

4. Be confident in the sovereignty of God