A Life Turned Right Side Up

One of my main aims in life used to be to make money, and I became very proficient at it. I'd jump out of bed in the morning. I couldn't wait to get to my office so I could make more money.

I never minded hard work and sacrifice, and it wasn't long before I was a very successful businessman who wore Brooks Brothers suits to work. My shoes were expensive Italian leather loafers. I had a shiny Rolex on my wrist.

I had a built-in refrigerator in my black Mercedes that I kept cool bottles of Pellegrino water in for when I was thirsty. When I traveled, I stayed at Clearages in London or the Four Seasons in Boston. On the west coast you could find me at the Beverly Hills Hotel in the Polo Lounge or in Carmel at the Lodge at Pebble Beach because I was addicted to the game of golf.

I had the most expensive golf clubs money could buy, and I had played Pebble Beach often enough to be able to draw the course layout hole by hole on the back of a cocktail napkin. Because I was a member of a exclusive country club, I could ask my golf bro to pick up the phone, and she could give me access to any top course in the nation. That's how I played Riviera Country Club with O.J. Simpson's former golf buddies.

I was on top of my world. My wife was drop-dead gorgeous, and when we would enter a room in public, just about every man in there would turn his head and stare at her. That's how pretty she was.

We lived in a big fine home in a upscale neighborhood on a couple of rolling acres of land with $40,000 worth of fine art hanging on the walls. I kept a second home in Florida that I maintained just so I could take golf buddies there to play more golf. It was not unusual for me to make $40,000 in one morning.

I was so successful in business that headhunters called me weekly, and when I changed firms it was not uncommon for the hiring company to cut me a check for several hundred thousand dollars. All I wanted to do with my life back then was to make more money so I could travel and play more golf and accumulate more expensive things of this world. All this time I was a faithful member of a church, but religion was secondary in my life back then, and Jesus was more of a concept to me that I had mentally accepted, but no reality in my life as I was yet an unsaved church member.

Then my life took a unusual turn, and once it turned it never turned it back again. Two things happened that altered the course of my life. I got saved, and I met Stephen Olford.

My life was turned right-side up, but then God began to go to work on me, and it was turned upside down. Alan Redpath once said, Before God can use a man, he must first smash him. Believe me, friends, when I say you don't want to look at the sorrow-filled pieces of my smashed-up life, where my world was smashed apart as I knew it, and it ceased to exist.

All I can say, if you want to know more about it, then take a walk through Philippians chapter 3 and verses 7 through 10. I remember Stephen Olford, who became a homiletical mentor. He taught me how to preach, and he was my colleague and friend, and we were sitting in a study one afternoon, and he asked me to leave the business world and come and join him in ministry as his colleague.

And I looked him in the eye and said, I can't do that. I just accepted a check for $265,000 to go to work for a new company, and I signed a contract. And his face fell, and he replied, Oh, well, I hope you have invested the money wisely.

It didn't make any difference if I did or not, because God had other plans for me, or I wouldn't be here speaking to you now, friends. About three years ago, I went to a Donald Trump rally, and it was a town hall meeting, where me and 1,000 other people were crammed together in a room. Trump was the richest person in that room that day, and I was the poorest.

I had less than $20 to my name. That was my entire net worth, and it hasn't been much higher than that since, friends, as I've learned to live under the discipline of the Holy Spirit. And all I can say, friends, is that it's amazing what God can do, well, with the man who is willing to lose everything for him so he may be gained.

I used to live my life one way, for the world and the enjoyment and accumulation of it, and then God intervened, because I decided to get serious with him. I got real serious with God, and God got real serious with me. He can do that with anybody.

There's nothing special about me except the Christ in me. But if God does something in your life, and it has a higher purpose than what you are doing now, you can't put off God and slide by. I know some men who have tried, and they are miserable individuals with the world in one hand and worry in the other.

Nobody really tells us the real meaning of life, so we just adopt the world's view of it, and there we go, off on our personal adventure of living a life for selfish gain. But the pursuit of this world and its pleasures is like a bowl of wax fruit, attractive to the eye, but empty, full of air, that counts for nothing in eternity. A man gets on a track to success, and on that track, he runs through life in a worldly pursuit of empty things that don't add up to a hill of beans in eternity.

Man drifts along in life with a mundane purpose and selfish ambition to accumulate as much of this world's goods as he can. Why, to leave it to another, to squander aimlessly as well? You can get so wrapped up in this world that this world is what you're living for. King Solomon lamented, later in life, Then I looked on all the works that my hand had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

Back then, when I was a rich man, I had much of this world's goods, but I was an empty man. I was empty like a hole in the ground because God wasn't the center of my life. And it's funny how man can get by with just enough religion to be comfortable with, have a church he can attend when he wants to, and give to it to make himself feel a little better about himself, that it all isn't one big waste.

He doesn't mind giving a little service to God so long as there's no sacrifice attending it. He lives for the moment, tasting the pleasures of life as he glides down the stream of time, enjoying the scenery of the frolicking waves until he comes to the roaring cataract of death where he tumbles over that chasm and is thrust into an eternity he is quite unprepared for. Over he goes, down he falls, into a silent coffin in the ground.

The thud of the dirt clods as they fall on his casket are reminders of what empty things he pursued in life. Sin is a robber and a thief, for it robs God of his great glory and it steals a person's time and squanders it in light of eternity. Sin comes wrapped in ribbons and bows and it pleases the senses, but leaves a horrible stain that you can't get rid of.

I remember one time I was preaching in a church down in Mississippi and it was down south to be customary for the visiting preacher to have lunch with the congregation in the fellowship hall when he was done preaching, where they treated me to a smorgasbord of southern cooking. Well, I like hot dogs and I especially like them with mustard, so I got in line and filled my plate with a few hot dogs and smothered them in mustard and I sat down with a elderly deacon and his wife at a picnic table. I didn't know why they were staring at me so until I realized I had smeared yellow mustard all over the front of my new blue suit jacket.

The deacon looked at me and shook his head and commented, well, at least we know now you are human after all. But you know what, friends? No matter how many times I had that suit cleaned, that yellow stain never came off that blue suit. It always had a green tint to it and that's how sin stains us as well.

Once it's there, it's always there, so we get used to it. There is only one who can take the stain of sin away. His name is Jesus Christ.

He came down here so we can go up there. But in order for that to occur, he had to become a sin substitute, bearing our curse, bearing the wrath for sin do us. Mankind is nothing but a world of guilty rebels who have broken and trampled all over God's law because of that stain of sin that won't go away.

Our sins stack up like a great mountain towering over us, and if we die outside of Christ's blood, then we die in our sins. And they follow us into eternity to chase us and accuse us like hungry bloodhounds. Jesus had been dripping on me all my life with drops of grace here and there, with the knowledge that what he would eventually plant with my redemption would one day grow and pay him dividends.

But my life course had to be turned. I wish it hadn't turned so dramatically, but I reckon when a structure is built with the concrete blocks of greed and avarice, that it must be brought down to the rubble of a wasted life in order to be rebuilt again into one that is altogether another. I didn't know that a man could be religious and lost.

I mistook church membership for salvation. But I got to the place where I knew the Word of God, but I didn't know the God of the Word. That's a dangerous place to be, friend, religious and lost.

Will you humor me for a moment, friend? Will you take a walk with me in your mind and come with me to a place called Calvary? Look at that scene up on that hill yonder. The sky has just darkened and the wind has suddenly picked up, and there's a chill in the air, but if you look real hard, friend, you can make out the form of that man on the cross. Do you see him? Look at that man on the cross as he hangs there, who says, And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

Look at that man on the cross as he hangs there, suspended in air, his arms outstretched, with the nails in his innocent hands. He cries, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. His love flows out from that cross.

He is the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I can almost hear him say, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

I can hear that man on the cross declare, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. That cross was the place where sinful man sought to get rid of him, but by his death it becomes the place where his saving power flows out to all who come in repentance, confessing they are sinners, and own them as their Savior and Lord.

There's an old hymn that best captures this scene. There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains. Is that your story, friend? Are you stained by sin, like that mustard stain on my blue suit that never washed out? The only one who can take that sin stain off from you is Jesus.

He can wash that stain in his blood and make you new again. The redeemed in heaven can sing unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. Are you weary of your sins? Are you thirsty for Christ? He invites poor sinners to come to him and believe on him.

The duty required is to come, and he has a pure gospel promise to all who come. And you can be the biggest sinner in your town tonight, and he'll still apply to you. And him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.

Will you trust him, friend? I can make you a promise if you trust him with your salvation. He'll be the best thing that ever happened in your life. Jesus is the pearl of great price.

He's worth losing all for and selling all for so he can be gained. If the Holy Spirit has been dealing with you, friend, then I have a little more of God's word for you. Seek ye the Lord while he may be found.

Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. And let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

If you are like the rest of mankind, you are a guilty sinner who needs pardon because you were stained by sin. Jesus is the only remedy and refuge for sin. He can wash your sins away, friend, but you must come to him.

He held nothing back at Calvary. He gave his all. He wants you to give your all to him.

Only one life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last. Let us pray.