P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

ONE RESOLUTION THAT’S DOOMED FROM THE START

“I want to say one thing to you. This is it! Starting tomorrow, I’m going to get my finances in order, get myself out of debt, pay off my credit cards, start making some real money, and move from this dumpy house to a nicer one. That’s my New Year’s resolution for 2004.”

I imagine a lot of people are using these last few remaining hours of 2003 to take stock of their portfolio and make plans for a bigger and better new year. And certainly here at the Voice of Prophecy we wish you all of God’s richest blessings as you embark with us on the uncharted 365 days in the upcoming calendar. Some of you listeners probably will get rich in 2003 . . . and the Bible doesn’t condemn that.

We look with maybe a shade of green envy at the rich and the wealthy among us who already have their mansions. It’s interesting how many Hollywood movie stars have birthdays here on December 29. Sir Anthony Hopkins, who lives in nearby Ojai, has cake today and champagne tonight. Val Kilmer is a birthday child here on the last day of 2003; so are Tim Matheson and Bebe Neuwirth, who played the ice-cold “Lilith” on Cheers and Frasier for so many TV seasons. All millionaires, all doing well, all enjoying the perks of power.

I suppose they all have to take a back seat, though, to a couple of guys we were reading about a few months ago in the L.A. Times. A man named Jefri Bolkiah, and his brother, Hassanal, piled up quite a bit of money in the petroleum business. And their palace in the little oil-rich country of Brunei just happens to have exactly 1,788 rooms in it. It’s the largest residence in the world, bigger even than the Vatican. Gold-plated toilet paper holders. Gold-plated wastebaskets. A Comanche helicopter flight simulator, a couch that’s shaped like the back end of a Cadillac. And you understand when you find out that this Jefri is really the prince of Brunei, and his brother, Sir Hassanal Bolkiah, the sultan. Until the Asian money meltdown of ‘97, the sultan was listed as the richest man in the world. Prince Jefri, now in some disrepute over losing $16 billion during the 1990s, has to scrape by living in London and Paris on a measly allowance of $300,000 per month. Things are tough all over.

Well, friend, most of us, clutching our recent $300 tax rebates from Washington, D.C., don’t have much sympathy for the Bolkiah brothers and their ongoing misfortunes. But here at the dawn of a new year, it gives us a Bible warning to think about, and here it is: Luke 9:24, 25:

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will save it.” And then this: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? “And lose himself, or be cast away,” it says in the King James. Over in Matthew 16: “And lose his own soul?”

Now why does Jesus say such a thing to His followers? We’ve remarked over and over in recent Bible studies together that He so often seems to say what we would call the exact opposite of the “CW,” the “conventional wisdom.” When you’re drowning in a rushing river, you try to save your life, not lose it. On the 29th of December you do make plans to gain the whole world, not lose it or give it away. You save and save and save, hoping you can move into Sir Anthony Hopkins’ old house when Mr. “Silence of the Lambs” decides to sell. But here Jesus says no. “Losing your life is good,” He tells us, “IF it’s for My sake. “If you lose it in service to Me.”

Again we ask, why this reversal of common sense? Why does the Lord seem to always teach things backwards? You know, when studying a Bible passage, we often shift into reverse and look back a few verses to find out the context, the setting. Actually, in this case we do better to look ahead — to January 2 or 3, so to speak — to discover the reason for this upside-down theology. We’re here in Luke 9, and let’s just skip down, down, down to verse 46. And notice what kinds of New Year’s resolutions Peter, James, John and the other nine disciples were making:

“An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest.”

If you read this brief anecdote the way Mark tells it, over in chapter nine of his Gospel, we find that this sorry little debate happens on the way to the New Year’s eve ball taking place over in Capernaum. Apparently the 12 disciples, as they hiked there from Caesarea Philippi, past Galilee, on their way to the party, got into this heavy discussion. “Who’s going to play first chair trumpet in the Guy Lombardo orchestra New Years eve? Which one of us gets to stand on the tower as the ball comes down?” Actually, it was more like: “Who’s going to be Jesus’ vice president as soon as He dethrones the Romans and takes over the world?” And all the way there, with Jesus out of earshot, they were going: “Me!” “No, me!” “Says who?” “Says me!” “No way!” “Yes way!” Etc. And so Jesus, knowing full well what they were doing, with His divine hearing aid, quietly asked them when they got to Capernaum:

“What were you arguing about on the road?” In the King James: “What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?” And the Bible, rather tongue-in-cheek, comments: “But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves who should be the greatest.”

And friend, as we head into a brand new year, and we make our brave and bold promises and dispute with our neighbors about how we’re going to climb to the top of the heap in 2003, I think we’re on this same fatal journey to Capernaum. Seeking greatness for ourselves is a mission of disaster; it always has been and it always will be. I really like a “quote within a quote” that we find in the Tyndale New Testament Commentary for Luke, and this is written by Dr. Leon Morris. Notice:

“When he gives up all for Christ [the Christian] finds that he has entered that life which is life indeed. Barclay finely says, ‘The Christian must realize that he is given life, not to keep it for himself, but to spend it for others; not to husband its flame, but to burn himself out for Christ and for men.’” Then Morris observes: “Life CANNOT be measured in terms of material things. In a magnificent hyperbole Jesus asks what is the profit if a man gains the whole world, but loses or forfeits himself. Nothing material can compensate for the loss of the self.”

Is it possible to grab for money and power and mansions and a house with 1,788 rooms in it . . . and come up empty because you lose your SELF, your soul? Well, many people who were fabulously wealthy in this world have died without Jesus, and will find that to die without Jesus is to die without anything. True? But you know, friend, even in this life right here, in the year 2003 and however many days or years we get beyond that, real life — pure, holy, joyous life — can only be found by abandoning self and living for the Savior.

Back to the recent brouhaha in Brunei, where the judgment of these international playboys is so clouded that the country is in a virtual state of emergency all the time, and has been for decades. The constitution is suspended; there’s no free press or free speech. Their oil company, Amadeo Development Corporation, has to essentially bring in its entire workforce of 20,000 employees from neighboring Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines so that Bruneians won’t found out about the shenanigans of the two Bolkiahs. And the reason for the newspaper story in the first place is because the sultan and his brother were having to auction off ten million dollars’ worth of those gold-plated wastebaskets and toilet paper holders to stem the losses of their misguided family philosophy. This Prince Jefri, as reported in that L.A. Times story by Richard Paddock, has been charged with luring a beauty pageant queen to Brunei and then holding her against her will as a virtual sex slave. You talk about gaining the world . . . and losing your soul. It’s a royal mess over there.

I think the Bible realizes — and warns us — that we can’t get over this temptation to grab gold-plated toothbrushes and seek our own headlines just by making one New Year’s resolution tonight at midnight. Because the temptation is relentless; it’s every day. Here in Luke 9, when the disciples get into their argument about who would get to sit by the window in Jesus’ inaugural limousine, the NIV text notes observe:

“Which . . . would be the greatest. A subject that arose on a number of occasions.”

No wonder it’s right here in Luke chapter nine where Jesus tells us:

“If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross DAILY and follow Me.”

In the Clear Word paraphrase:

“He’ll have to FORGET HIMSELF.” And do THAT daily as well.

Listen, friend, join me in something. If you’ve made a lot of resolutions about “Me! Me! Me!” and getting to the top, why not tip them in the trash can right now? Gold-plated or regular.