Why Success is Your Most Dangerous | Pastor Chris Kouba

I want you to take back in time uh a Friday night in uh 2004.

I know what some of you are thinking I wasn't alive in 2004.

Just go with me, all right?

I just want you to kind of visualize what life looked like for the rest of us who were alive and were part of this uh phenomenon that took place every single Friday night.

You were trying to figure out what you were gonna do for the weekend and you wanted to go and watch a movie.

And so what you did is all of you, the whole family, this is a whole family event.

You would get into the car together and you would go and you would drive to a location.

They had them all over the place that had these blue and yellow buildings, okay?

They were called Blockbuster.

Are you familiar with that?

All right, and then you'd walk in the front door, and right as you came in, there would be all of the new releases, which were$4.99, which was so expensive, but you didn't care.

You just wanted to see if the one you were looking for was available.

And then when you walked in, what you would do is you would literally all the family would split up, and they would all be on a mad dash to go and look at all their favorite genres, to go and look at the boxes, the images of the movie, the boxes, to see if one of them looked appealing and you can make your case to the rest of the family that this would be the one that you wanted.

But it wasn't just looking at the boxes, it was looking to see if behind the box they had one of these.

You know what I'm talking about, right?

Now I know what you're thinking, is this why Blockbuster went out of business?

Because you have one of their movies and you never returned it.

Uh, I'm sure I've got a fine that I haven't paid, right?

But this is a Blockbuster movie, and I know if some of you again who weren't around in 2004, don't know what we're talking about.

Let me show you what this looked like, okay?

This is an actual cartridge.

You would open up and you had one of these, okay?

All right.

This, by the way, is a VHS tape of Sandlock, one of the greatest movies that's ever been made, all right?

Okay, yeah, all right.

You would put this in a machine, and then as a family, you would watch it.

And then if you so much as returned this movie and didn't rewind it, you had a fine coming your way, all right?

It was a big, big deal.

I mean, I'm just telling you, what was wild is that you'd find the movie, you'd all agree on it, and then you would all get in line in a long line behind other families just like you.

And as you were in that line, you'd buy some overpriced candy that would be in line there, which made no sense whatsoever.

But you, you're it was all an experience in every single way.

What I don't think those of you who aren't familiar with Blockbuster understand is how dominant they were in 2004.

Let me just give you some stats here.

9,094 stores worldwide.

Okay, 84,300 employees,$5.9 billion in annual revenue.

25% of the home movie market was dominated by Blockbuster.

One in five Americans visited a Blockbuster every single weekend.

Think about that.

That's how many people were rushing to those stores in order to find one of these.

Hollywood.

Hollywood literally designed their release schedule after checking in with Blockbuster first.

That's how relevant they were at the time.

In the year 2000, you had two guys who had started up a business and they decided to go into the CEO's office of Blockbuster in Dallas at their headquarters, and they made a pitch to them.

These two guys had this little startup very few people had heard about called Netflix.

And they went into Blockbuster's office and they said, We want you to buy us because we think we've tapped into where the future is going.

And the story goes: the CEO of Blockbuster laughed them out of the boardroom.

He told them that dot-com hysteria is a fad and it's not going to last.

He then said what business schools have been debating and trying to look up and figure out the cause of for quite some time.

He said these words.

He said, Why would anybody ever want to wait in the for a movie to show up in the mail when they can drive to our stores and get it right away?

What's interesting is that Blockbuster is a tale of what could have been.

Not of what was, but what could have been.

And what's interesting is that Blockbuster didn't fall because of corporate greed.

Blockbuster didn't fall because of some scandal.

Blockbuster didn't fall because the CEO had a moral failure.

Blockbuster fell because success became its greatest enemy.

What I want to talk to you about today is how you can avoid being blockbustered.

What I want you to discover is this is that success has a way of numbing us from what got us there in the first place.

If you're in a desperate situation, if you find yourself in a place where you're needing God, you find yourself in a place where you're needing provision, you find yourself in a place where you're crying out to the Lord, begging Him for His provision and His goodness and His mercy in your life.

That's one thing.

But when you get success, it has a way of making you think you no longer need to do those same things.

You've arrived.

And what we see so often is that success makes us coast, and coast is the first line that leads you down the path of destruction.

I want you to take your journals out on page 31.

I want you to write down this key point.

This is the main emphasis of the message today.

It is this leaders never arrive.

Leaders never arrive.

Have you ever worked really hard for something?

A promotion, a degree, getting in shape, maybe a spiritual breakthrough.

You've achieved it, and then you find yourself coasted.

You're not working as hard as you used to to get to that finish line.

You've crossed the finish line, and so you kind of just ride it out.

Success makes us comfortable, and comfort is the enemy of growth.

So far, we've talked about leading whenever you're in the pit, but today I want us to consider what it looks like to lead when you're in the palace.

We've been walking through the life of Joseph.

We've been learning leadership lessons from the greatest leadership book that has ever been written, and that is God's Word.

And we've been talking at the end of the book of Genesis what it tells us and shows us about this up and down life of Joseph.

What we've seen along the way is he's experienced betrayal, he's experienced hardship.

But right now in Genesis chapter 46, he is riding high at the top.

Genesis 46 · chapter mention

And what we're gonna learn is that that brings different dangers than it does whenever you experience opposition, whenever you're just beginning and starting out.

Begin reading with me.

Or actually, let me requote a verse to you first.

1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 12, which says this.

1 Corinthians 10:12

If you think you're riding high and have it all figured out, that's a breeding ground for danger.

Until we get to heaven, there is no finish line.

You might get a retirement party from your job, but you do not get a retirement party from leadership.

You lead others, you lead yourself, you lead your family, you lead in the church.

These responsibilities never end.

The question is, how do you lead when you're winning just as well as when you're losing?

I want to answer that by giving you four questions to ask yourself.

The first question we're gonna see comes from not Joseph, but actually Joseph's dad, Jacob.

He makes an appearance on the scene again.

He talked about him earlier.

He now comes back in the story.

The last three questions we're gonna learn from the person of Joseph, the one we've been studying up to this point.

Let's pick up the reading, Genesis chapter 46, beginning in verse 1.

Genesis 46 · chapter mention

It says, So Israel, Israel is another name for Jacob, who is Joseph's father.

Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.

And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob, and he said, Here am I.

Then he said, I am God, the God of your father.

Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation.

I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph's hand shall close your eyes.

Then Jacob set out from Beersheba.

The sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, their little ones and their wives, and the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him.

They also took their livestock and their food, and their goods, which they had gained in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his offspring with him, his sons and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters, all his offspring he brought with him into Egypt.

First question that you should ask to be a never-arriving leader is also the most important one.

I want you to write this down.

Number one, God, what do you want?

God, what do you want?

Have you ever moved before?

We moved in March at our house, and uh it was an exciting move.

We were we were we were grateful for the opportunity to do so, but moving is an absolute pain.

And Hillary and I said the same thing to each other that we've said multiple times every other time we've moved, which is like, this is the last time we will ever do this.

Like it is, it doesn't matter how you go about it, doesn't matter how excited you are, doesn't matter how great it is.

At the end of the day, moving is a hassle.

There's a lot that goes into it.

And we later find out in chapter 46 that that that Jacob is 130 years old when this is going down.

And it says that he's gonna move not only himself at 130, but all of his descendants, which we find out is 70 people.

So he's moving 70 people at 130 years old over along to Egypt.

Now, I know what you may be thinking, like, yeah, but age is relative.

Like, people lived a long time.

Look, I don't care how old people were in the Bible, 130 is old, all right?

Let's be honest.

Like, that is old.

I mean, just think about how relative age can be, all right?

In your 20s, you're hearing an opportunity, and no matter what it is, absolutely I can do it.

Okay.

In your 30s, I'll see if I can do that.

In your 40s, do I have to do that?

In your 50s, I'll get back to you on that.

In your 60s, I need to check with my doctor about that, all right?

At 130, I gotta take three naps before I'm able to make a decision about this, right?

I mean, like, this is a big, massive move that he is doing here.

And what we see is that Jacob gets word that Joseph is alive in Egypt.

Now, this is a big deal because remember, back in Genesis 37, the brothers had told Jacob that Joseph had died by being eaten by an animal.

And he had been his whole time believing that that was the case.

So you can imagine how excited he was to be reunited with the son that he thought he had lost.

But he's 130 years old.

So, one, you can imagine and not blame him if he's kind of like giving word to Joseph in Egypt, hey, can you maybe make a trip over here and come see me and we can be reunited?

Or you wouldn't give him any any any fault if he decided, hey, I'm gonna make a trip over to Egypt, see Joseph, be reunited, then come back to my land with all my people, and there I'm just gonna go ahead and die.

Okay.

Instead, what you see is that he gets a vision from God, and he is told, Jacob, I want you to get up, 130 years old, all 70 of your family members, and I want you to move them to Egypt.

And he says, Yes.

What causes him to do that?

Obedience doesn't have an expiration date.

What I've seen is this most people retire from obedience long before they retire from their jobs.

Here's the number one thing that you can do with your life ask God what he wants and say yes.

Period.

You never retire from obedience.

There's no age limit on saying yes to God.

There's no season where you get to coast.

If you're not dead, you're not done.

One of my heroes in my life is Merle Aaron.

Merle and Linda have been members of our church for over 50 years.

Merle is 87 years old.

Uh Merle was the former mayor of the city of Umble.

Uh in the last six and a half years that I've been here, Merle has been one of the most encouraging men that I've ever been around.

Just after the service, I had the opportunity just to see Merle again, gave me a hug and says, Pastor, I love you.

He says it to me all the time.

Uh I can't tell you how much I love that man.

Uh Merle is somebody who has served this church so faithfully in so many capacities, in so many ways.

It'd just be every everything that's out there, he's probably done.

Yet Merle, despite the fact that he's kind of reached the spot where he could easily coast, he could easily just kind of let the let everybody else figure it out, let everybody else handle all the mess.

Instead, Merle every single week shows up and he teaches his life group class, who he loves and shepherds so faithfully and so well.

Merle visits people at the hospital all the time.

We don't have to ask him to.

He just does, he just shows up.

And anytime there's a need at the church, if Merle hears about it and he is able to, he's gonna say yes and he's gonna serve.

Merle has a had a very successful business that continues to this day in this area.

Aaron Mechanical, he is an amazing man with an amazing legacy and incredible family.

And Merle is somebody who I know, I've watched him, he lived his life this way, which basically said this, God, what do you want me to do?

And he just said, Yes.

He said, Yes, I'll do it.

Where so often what we most of the times we'll do is we go to God saying, Hey, this is what we've decided that we want to do.

Can you rubber stamp it?

And what God is trying to call us to is a lifestyle which basically says this my hands are always open.

First Merle represents what I believe is one of the great success stories of United City Church, which is the senior adults of this church.

It's Lonnie and Jeanette Cook.

Just who've been just so faithful for forever, who just allow our church to ride on their coattails.

We've had eight senior adults get baptized this year, this year at United City Church.

What does this show us?

It's never too old to be obedient.

You're never too old to be obedient to God.

Ever.

And what we need to make sure that we realize is that whether you are a senior adult or whether you are a young adult, you need to always ask this question God, what do you want me to do?

How do you want me to serve?

How do you want me to be faithful to what you've got and say yes before you give him time to answer the question?

You see, some of us want to hear what he says, evaluate it, see if it fits our schedule, see if it fits our time, see if it fits our checkbook, and then we may decide whether we want to do it.

And I would tell you this, that's not what that's not what Jacob did.

He had a posture of being like, I'll move at 130 with 70 people.

If that's what you want me to do.

The story continues at the end of chapter 46, where there's this emotional reunion beginning in verse 28, where it talks about how Jacob and Joseph get reunited, and it's just a beautiful, beautiful picture.

And then what we see is now after that re that that that reunion has taken place, now you got 70 people trying to figure out how to move into Egypt.

You can imagine this is kind of a logistical problem that we've got going on here.

And I want you to see what happens beginning in verse 1 of chapter 47.

It says, So Joseph went in and told Pharaoh, My father and my brothers, with their flocks and herds and all that they possess, have come from the land of Canaan.

They are now in the land of Goshen, that is in the land of Egypt.

And from among his brothers he took five men and presented them to Pharaoh.

Pharaoh said to his brothers, What is your occupation?

And they said to Pharaoh, Your servants are shepherds as our fathers were.

They said to Pharaoh, We have come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for your servants' flocks, for the famine is severe in the land of Canaan.

And now please let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen.

Second question I want you to see from never arriving leaders that they always ask.

Number two, who do I need to honor?

Who do I need to honor?

Here's the leadership trap.

The higher you climb, the more you don't think you need anybody's approval.

But the thinking, that kind of thinking will destroy you faster than any external enemy will.

Joseph had incredible authority in the nation of Egypt.

He basically was running the country.

He's second only to Pharaoh.

He could have very easily quietly arranged things to make it work for his family to be able to live in the land.

I mean, who's gonna question the guy who literally is responsible for putting together all of the strategy that's keeping all of the people alive in the midst of the famine?

But Joseph doesn't presume anything.

This is leadership 101 right here.

He brings five of his brothers, a formal delegation.

He then rehearses with them ahead of time.

He makes a professional presentation to Pharaoh.

And here's what I want you to see: the posture is this he submits to whatever Pharaoh decides.

He doesn't presume, he honors the authority.

Folks, let's be honest.

In our culture today, which is all about criticizing anybody and everybody, we have lost the discipline of honor.

Modern thinking says that reaching the top means you got no more accountability.

But leaders who never arrive understand this: there's always somebody to submit to, which means there's always somebody to honor.

You're either submitting to your boss, you're submitting to your manager, you're submitting to your coach, you're submitting to your board, or if you truly are at the top position, then you're at minimum are always submitting to God.

I'm just telling you this, okay?

I'm the lead pastor of United City Church, which means this.

I have people that I submit to as well.

I place my life under authority.

I submit to my family, I submit to my wife.

I've got a group of seven pastors.

We texted this morning.

These are guys from all over the city, and we keep each other accountable.

We pray for each other.

These guys have access into my life.

They can ask me the hard questions, and they regularly do ask me the hard questions.

What I want you to see is this is that just because you're in charge doesn't mean you don't have somebody to honor.

You instead better honor your Lord.

In fact, Colossians 3 23 even says so.

Here's what it says it says, Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men.

Some of you are thinking, Well, you don't know my boss.

You don't know my superior.

There ain't no way you're gonna be able to honor him if you had this.

Let me remind you, Joseph was giving honor to a pagan leader in Pharaoh.

This wasn't a Bible-believing Christian who made it really easy.

He was giving honor to someone who believes something very different than him, meaning this you can honor your imperfect boss.

So let's talk about how to do this.

Speak well of your leaders.

Don't join in the gossip sessions that everybody talks about why the person up at the top doesn't know what they're doing.

Even if they don't know what they're doing, it's not your responsibility to point that out to people besides him.

It is your responsibility instead to not presume anything for you to serve them, for you to help them succeed, for you to show what having influence should look like.

And what I want you to see, if we were to keep reading in chapter 47, is that whenever Joseph shows honor to Pharaoh by not presuming, but by asking him permission to move his family, something happens.

Pharaoh blesses Jacob, and Pharaoh blesses the family.

Here's been my observation personally, and here's been my own experience as well.

Honor produces favor.

What this means.

Is this honor your boss?

Honor your coach.

Honor your parents.

Honor the past.

Everybody criticizes.

What we need is godly leadership which shows honor.

Again, you may be thinking, I've got nothing that I can define.

Make it up.

But honor.

You instead need to come in there.

You are not God's gift to your situation.

You instead are part and place there for the purpose of showing honor and letting God do work out all the details.

This doesn't mean you need to submit to leadership that's going to be asking you to do something against your God-given conscience.

Obviously, that's not the case.

But what I am saying is this we got a lot more people complaining, and we need a lot more honoring.

Who can I honor today?

Let's skip down in verse 13.

I'm encouraging you to read 46 through 48.

There's so much there.

We're not going to have time to read every verse, but I want to show you what happens when Joseph kind of starts getting into the process of managing the crisis.

Pick up with me in verse 13.

It says, Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe.

So that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished by reason of the famine.

And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan in exchange for the grain that they bought.

And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house.

And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, Give us food, why should we die before your eyes?

For our money is gone.

And Joseph answered, Give your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock if your money is gone.

So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them food in exchange for their horses, the flocks, the herds, and the donkeys.

He supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock that year.

I want you to just make sure you understand, we we see another couple of layers of this in the future years.

Joseph could have exploited the people and taken advantage of their desperation.

But instead, he created systems which help them survive.

He used his power to serve them, not to exploit them.

He helps the people maintain their dignity while also helping them stay alive.

This leads to the third question for never-arriving leaders, which is this Who can I help today?

Who can I help today?

There's a clear contrast in how the world works and how the kingdom of God works.

The world system says when you get to the top, you better look out for yourself.

Get your perks, enjoy your privileges.

The kingdom of God says something else.

It says the greater influence means greater responsibility.

It says greater blessings mean you get to give more and have greater giving.

The moment of truth for every successful person is are you going to use your power to serve, or are you going to use your power to stockpile?

Because how you answer that question determines whether you're a leader or whether you're somebody that just has a title next to your name.

Jesus, of course, is the greatest example of this.

He came to seek and to save the lost.

His sacrifice and his death on a cross and then his resurrection from the dead shows that he gains power not through dominance but by service.

We see that Jesus, when he comes into the upper room on that last, that last evening there with his disciples, and there's all of these men have been walking all day, and it's normally the role of a servant to go in to wash the disciples' feet.

And Jesus doesn't wait for one of the guys who weren't volunteering to raise their hand.

He instead gets down, grabs a towel, grabs a basin, and he washes their feet.

This is the same exact people that he would ultimately die for hours later.

What does this show us?

The King of Kings is a servant.

It's important to understand something.

I'm not saying it's wrong to have nice things.

God wants to bless you.

We know that's a biblical principle as well.

But you're meant to be a conduit of those blessings, not a cul-de-sac of those blessings.

It's supposed to flow through you.

It's not supposed to end with you.

So practically, this week, I want to ask you to do something.

I want you to use your money, your skills, your connections, your time to help somebody who can't help you back.

Parents, let your kids see you serve someone.

Business owners, let your employees see you bless them or bless your community in some way.

What you'll discover is that there's actually more blessings when you let those blessings go through you than when you let those blessings end with you.

Never arriving leaders are always asking, man, how can I use the way God's blessing me to help other people?

How can I help serve somebody else?

Let's keep reading the story, skip down to verse 23.

It says, Then Joseph said to the people, Behold, I have this day bought you and your land for Pharaoh.

Now here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land.

And at the harvest you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field, and as food for yourselves and your household, and as food for your little ones.

And they said, You have saved our lives.

May it please my Lord that we will be servants to the Pharaoh.

Joseph proposes a plan that is completely out of the box, but it leads us to this fourth question, which is this for a never-arriving leader.

What's a better way?

What's a better way?

The creativity of Joseph here is pretty amazing because he creates a new system that didn't exist before.

20% tax to Pharaoh, 80% for the people to keep.

And by doing so, catch this, he maintains their dignity by giving them seed for them to work their own land while at the same time ensuring their survival.

This is pure creativity under pressure.

Here's what you need to understand.

This is so important as a leader.

What got you there, or what got you here, won't get you there.

We are in an ever-evolving, ever-changing world.

And in light of that, we should see this as a means by which we say have greater dependence upon God as opposed to thinking that somehow we no longer need Him and relying on what got us here.

We instead must always be discovering new things.

We must always be creating new things.

Now, some of you are creative people, and so therefore you're hearing this and you're like, Man, I love this.

I always think out of the box.

Like finally, somebody's validating the fact that I want to create something new and create something uh uh innovative.

And I would simply tell you make sure you get the order right.

I am first gonna be obedient to what God calls me to.

Then I'm gonna honor the authority that I'm placed under, and then I'm gonna do what I can to help other people.

And when I've done all three of these things, man, you run hard with your creativity.

You allow God to do amazing things, but if I don't put those in the right order, I begin to think my new idea is greater than everything else.

And what I must see is that God now has a plan for this, but you run hard when you're operating within those parameters.

On the other hand, what you begin to see is people that maybe do the first three, but then you don't think about this last one, and you say something like this, ah, we've never done it that way here.

You ever been a part of that?

Been a part of a business?

Been a part of a church, been a part of a small group.

We don't, that's not how we do things here.

Can I tell you that's the first step towards failure?

When you start thinking there's no new way to do it, you're already behind.

Folks, we do this all the time as a church.

Our mission at United City Church is everyone, every day, crossing every divide to live united in Christ.

We are married to this mission.

We believe in this mission.

This is what we are all about, and we're gonna submit ourselves in every way to figuring out how we can go and reach more people for Jesus, not just introducing them into a relationship, but uniting them in a full-fledged following of Him to where they are discipled and they're reaching even more people.

This is all that we are about, but please make no mistake about it.

We are married to our mission, but we are not married to our methods.

There are things that we do at this church that I'm like, ah, I don't love that.

That's not my favorite.

I wish we would do it this way, but you know what?

It's not about me.

It's not about you.

It's instead about what's gonna allow us to be in a position to reach more people with the gospel, and we are committed to do anything within our power short of sin to reach more people for the cause of Jesus Christ.

Folks, what I want to tell you is this is that things are changing.

And in light of that, we as a church must adapt.

We as a church, just because something was really good and because something really worked and something was really impactful in your life, doesn't mean that's what God's gonna choose to use to be able to reach the people that are coming after you.

But that being said, we must choose to celebrate God.

Please hear me.

If you're if you're a uh if we compromise in any way on the core values, if we ever begin to think that the Bible doesn't speak and we speak louder than the Bible, then then we got problems.

If we ever begin to buy into this idea that we're not better together, then we've got problems.

If we ever decide that we've arrived and there's not a next step, then we've got problems.

If we ever begin to think that lost people don't matter because we're a holy huddle and we got what we need, then think that's a problem.

But that being said, we must recognize because all of those things are true, we're constantly gonna say, God, what do you want us to do?

We wanna honor the past, but we want to honor it by reaching even more people in the future.

We want to help those that are around us.

Would you use us to be a blessing because you blessed us so richly here at United City Church?

Would you let us be a people?

Like, yeah, we'll try that.

Yeah, what do you want us to do?

We'll do it.

Like, we're the church that'll say, Yeah, we'll we'll we'll go there, we'll be that.

Because ultimately we know we don't want to be like blockbusters.

$5.9 billion in annual revenue.

13 years later, zero.

Why?

Because success is the greatest enemy.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

We can't wait to see you next week for any of our services at 8 30, 10, 11 30, or Espanol at 1 o'clock.