MFM H/Q Sermons

March 3rd, 2024.

Topic: THE GREATEST TRAGEDY OF THE HUMAN RACE.
Text: James 3:16, 2 Timothy 3:1-2, Proverbs 11:26, Exodus 20:17.
Minister: Dr. Daniel Olukoya (G.O. MFM Worldwide)

James 3:16 (KJV) says: “For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.”

Wherever there is envy, strife, fighting, or malice, the Bible says that in that place you will find confusion and every evil work, all kinds of wicked things will be taking place there.

2 Timothy 3:1-2 (KJV) says: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, “

Proverbs 11:26 (KJV) says: “He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.”

The greatest tragedy and possibly the greatest curse on the human race is one thing called “Selfishness”. “….for many shall be lovers of their own selves.” Because they are lovers of themselves, it will lead to envy and strife, and there will be confusion and every evil work.

Almost every sinful action that anyone has ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. When we say somebody is selfish, we mean you are more concerned about your own welfare and interests than others.

“It is just me, my family, my children, and my husband.” That selfishness is the greatest tragedy of the human race. The primary root of all the trouble we are facing can be summed up as selfishness. That is why, when the Bible was describing the tragedy of the last days, the first thing it mentioned was selfishness. “Men shall be lovers of themselves.”

Right through the beginning of creation, there is nothing that has destroyed the human race more than this human heart that is only concerned about itself alone.

A selfish human heart is a big problem. God planned that all His creation would be a blessing to others, but His plan met with opposition in heaven, where Lucifer entertained the thought of being above everybody. He said, “I will exalt myself.” Again, selfishness. Of all four-letter words, “Self” is the worst.

Everything that is wrong in our wicked world can be rooted in the selfishness of man, and this selfishness is the greatest corruption of human nature.

Of all the vices that degrade human nature and character, selfishness is the worst. An undue love for yourself can lead to the most monstrous crimes that man can ever commit, and it creates the greatest misfortunes in families. Selfishness only seeks its own pleasure, its own wellbeing, and its own advantage, not having any regard for others.

Selfishness is Satan’s attempt to create his own kingdom. It is a problem that has plagued man since the beginning of time. Any sin you want to talk about has its root in selfishness.

Our fundamental root is selfishness. This is part of why God created marriages—to eradicate our selfishness so that it would not be all about me. It will be about “we”. But even with that, people still carry their selfish hearts into marriage. “My comfort”.

The bedrock of corruption in a nation is selfishness. What will a man do with 1 million dollars or 1 billion dollars that he has stolen? How much does he want to eat when there are others who have been deprived? Nations are ruined when politicians think for themselves first before thinking about anyone else.

Even those committing suicide are selfish. Because you are not happy, you do not care about how your death will affect others. You just want to kill yourself; it is selfishness of the highest order. That is why any country that allows abortion is not teaching its people to love but wants them to use violence to get anything they want. You went and got pregnant. But because you are selfish, thinking about yourself, you believe that the solution is to kill a life. It still boils down to selfishness. Power is always very dangerous when it is handed over to a selfish man.

One of the greatest diseases on earth is being nobody to anybody. You do not care what happens to anybody; it is just about you. This disease is the greatest curse and tragedy of the human race.

This is a very serious matter, and we as believers, as we enter this new month, need to examine ourselves. A foundation of selfishness leads to adultery. The reason you are an adulterer is because you want to satisfy your flesh; you want to satisfy yourself. You do not care what your wife or husband thinks.

Your flesh is craving something, and you are selfish, and you want to provide it to the detriment of the lives of others. A foundation of selfishness leads to fornication, uncleanness, hatred, all kinds of envy, even murders, and drunkenness. All these have their foundation in selfishness. Men shall be lovers of their own selves. That is why you find a scanty number of people in the ministry of intercession, because intercession is not about praying for yourself; it is about praying for others.

So many people do not like that kind of ministry. They do not want to intercede for others. They will say, “I need prayers myself; why should I be praying for somebody else?” That selfishness still plagues men today and is the essence of all sins. The tenth commandment is God’s warning against harbouring an attitude of covetousness, self-seeking, looking out to be number one, and the desire for selfish gain. Let us see what the tenth commandment says in Exodus.

Exodus 20:17 (KJV): “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”

When you are covetous and you want something that belongs to somebody else by force, you are a selfish person. A selfish fool is a person who says, “It is nobody’s business what I do.” Nobody’s business what you do? You do not care how you talk to people? You do not care how somebody can hang himself just by your words? “My life is my business!”

No, our lives are all interconnected. That is how God made it. The person who lives for himself alone usually dies the same way. If you have ever been to the cemetery during burials, sometimes you just stand at the gate and see them bringing in coffins.

Sometimes they bring in some people’s coffins, and the people following behind are indifferent. They are just waiting for the ceremony to be over. It shows you the kind of person they are burying. Sometimes they bring in somebody, and the people following behind are smoking cigarettes and even playing with women there at the burial ground. That shows you the kind of person they are burying.

Sometimes they bring in a coffin, and people are saying, “This wicked man is gone, gone forever! Do not come back again, please!” That shows you the kind of person they are burying.

But sometimes, they bring in somebody, and everybody is crying and weeping and saying, “Oh, this good person is gone.” When you see such things, you know that they were people who were not selfish about their lives. A selfish person will usually die the same way.

This world is give-and-take. But there are too many people trying to take but not give. Some come to this church now with money they do not contribute to, groups they do not contribute to or even belong to, and they do not contribute in any form.

There are some able-bodied people now who are supposed to be serving the Lord, but they sit at home and say, “I am an online member.” If everybody is an online member, who will be here to conduct that wedding for you? Who will be here to conduct your dedication? Who will be here to pray for those who are troubled? It is selfishness.

The tragedy of selfishness is that it cancels your prayers. The Lord’s prayer says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” So, if you do not forgive those who trespass against you, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you for your own trespasses.

He who lives for himself should be pitied because the person does not have very much to live for. And some people carry that selfishness to another level. Many years ago, a young man came here crying, and they came to fetch me from my office. That time, MFM just moved here. He was crying bitterly, and it was difficult to console him. He was crying because a good person had died. I asked who died, and he said it was his wife. I asked why he was crying so much.

He said that one day, his own father called all his seven children to a meeting, and he warned them that none of them must be greater than him and that if they tried it, they would be gone. But this young man’s wife was hardworking and was making it. One day, all of a sudden, she screamed the name of her father-in-law from her dream and died. The man had taken his selfishness to another level.

If we want an increase of Christ in our lives, there must be a decrease of self. There must be you calling yourself to order. Paul said, “But I bring my body under,” not asking God to do it.

That is, it is not everything that your body tells you to do that you do. You say, “No, I am not doing this.” Paul then made a very profound statement that says, “Lest at anytime after I have preached unto others, I myself should be a castaway,” meaning that your flesh can throw you into hellfire even though you speak in tongues, sing, or prophesy. Have you not read the Bible that some will come to Jesus on the day of judgement and say, “Master, did we not preach in your name? Did we not prophesy in your name?”

And He will say, “Yes, you did, but I do not know you. Get out, workers of iniquity!” So, a person can work iniquity and think he is serving God. Half of our troubles come when we want our way. And then our way of doing things that we want is not what God wants, so we put ourselves in trouble.

When you are blowing out other people’s candles, your blowing them out will not make yours shine brighter. At the end of life, all of us will discover that the only things we have lost are those we were trying to keep. You are trying to keep money or other things, but at the end of the day, you cannot keep anything, for that eternal word of God is sure and unchangeable that says:

“We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out.” (1 Timothy 6:7). In many places now, if a person is buried and there are too many expensive clothes on the body, they come back to the cemetery to remove them. So technically, a selfish man is a thief. As a pastor, the most miserable people that I know are those who are obsessed with themselves. By and large, when people keep complaining about this or that, most times it is because they are thinking about only themselves. When you are constantly thinking only about yourself, our world sinks. And this is a very, very terrible thing.

One day, a young lady was thrown out of her house, and I met her somewhere. I saw the terrible state she was in, and she was crying bitterly. All her things were on the street. This was years ago. I said, “Get out of here, get a room,” because she did not look like somebody who could not afford to get a room. She said, “Sir, I cannot afford it.” So I checked my bag, and fortunately there was enough money, so I gave it to her. I told her to leave the street and get a place to stay. She first of all stood and stared at me for a few minutes, then broke down again in tears.

I begged her to stop crying. When she stopped crying, she said, “Sir, this is the first time in my life that anybody is doing anything for me for free.” It shows you how selfish our generation has become. Selfishness is one of the most common faces of pride. Pride is when you are concerned about how something is affecting only you. Pride is at the centre of all that matters to you. It is self-gratification and self-seeking. Selfishness stops the flow of blessings into the lives of others.

Let me ask you a few questions before I ask you to pray now:

• Are you insensitive to the sufferings of others?
• Are you excessively angry when everything does not go the way you want it to?
• Do you have this exaggerated sense of self-importance?
• Do you possess this strong sense of entitlement? Somebody gave you a gift of fifty thousand naira, and you open your mouth and say, “Ordinary fifty thousand naira.” Something that you did not work for. If you are a daily-paid labourer or bricklayer and they pay you 5,000 naira per day, you have to work for 10 days to make that money, and then you open your mouth to say that kind of thing. All that sense of entitlement is selfishness. “I know that my uncle can afford it.” So, because he can afford it, you feel entitled? No, you are a selfish person.
• Are you here and have this unreasonable expectation? You want to be favourably treated all the time?
• Do you expect automatic compliance with everything you want?
• Are you one of those who uses others to obtain your needs? You start planting seeds of discord at the place where you work in order to cause people to start fighting. This is a very serious matter.
• Do you treat your spouse as a sexual object? Do you see your wife as just a baby factory or your husband as just a sperm donor?
• Are you highly critical of others? Unwilling to identify with the needs of others?
• Are you very arrogant and haughty in your attitude? It is selfishness.
• Are you that adult who sometimes acts like a spoilt child, always demanding to have things go your way? And if things do not go your way, you get angry and walk out.
• Do you talk about yourself excessively? You do not like attending to the needs of others.
• Are you often very envious of others?
• Are you lazy? Laziness is selfishness. You do not want to stress yourself out to do it because others will do it.
• Do you cling to a fault just because you do not want to do something?
• Are you fond of blaming others for your failures or shortcomings?
• Are you the kind of believer who does not enjoy giving? Offering time is a sad time for you.
• Do you seek to be the centre of attraction?
• Do you drink alcohol, thereby spoiling the temple of God? You say, “It is not much; it is just small.” The Bible says that you should not pollute the temple of God. You are destroying the temple of God; you are selfish.
• Do you take hard drugs to destroy the temple of God? It is selfishness on your part.
• Do you resent working at home? A man sits down in the sitting room, puts his two legs on the table, reading newspaper, with a pregnant wife who has to go to the kitchen to cook, pound yam, prepare the table, and serve everybody. When the man is just there watching television, that man is not only selfish but wicked.
• Are you the kind of person who believes that when something goes wrong, it is always another person’s fault?
• Are you here, and you expect to be recognised as superior all the time, even without any commensurate achievement? I find it strange sometimes among pastors. You say you are the senior pastor of a church, and the total offering is 6,000 dollars per month. So you say, “Because I am a senior pastor, my salary must be 5,000 dollars.” How will that church survive? I had to sack one pastor like that.

I sent people to go look at the MFM church he was pastoring. It had corrugated iron sheets, benches, and no toilet, and yet he was driving a new Mercedes-Benz to that church. I said, “This one is not a pastor; he is a businessman.”. This is a very serious matter, and I want you to understand it very well.

• Are you here, and you always demand admiration? If nobody tells you how beautiful you look or how beautiful you are, you get depressed.
• Are you here, and you are controlling?
• Are you financially irresponsible in your family?
• You do not like to show appreciation to others?
• You do not like to open up? It is an indication of selfishness in your life.

The Bible says, “Men shall be lovers of their own selves.” I read a story many years ago about a dog who was crossing a bridge. Somebody has already given that dog a very nice bone. So the dog held the bone and was passing on top of the bridge. But while passing, he looked at the water. He saw another dog in the water with a bone—his reflection—and the other dog had a larger bone. So he got angry, thought, “This dog has a larger bone,” and opened his mouth to fight the other dog.

He opened his mouth, his own bone dropped into the water, and he ended up with nothing. That is what happens to selfish people. You must have heard about dead people, dead beasts, dead trees, and dead flowers, but have you ever heard of the Dead Sea? Yes, there is something like that. It is called the Dead Sea because it receives water from different sources but gives out nothing.

This Dead Sea receives about 5 million metric tonnes of water daily but does not give it out. Therefore, because it does not give out water to any other water body, the water there is very salty, very bitter to taste, and oily to touch, and when it touches a place, it leaves a yellow stain. No fish live in that water. No flowers bloom near that water. No fruit grows on its shores. No bird sings in the neighbourhood of that sea. It is a striking emblem of a selfish life. It is very stingy and hates generosity.

What is the cure for this kind of thing?

1. Ensure that you are a friend of God. Surrender your life to Jesus.
2. You must pray for the spirit of humility. You have to be humble.
3. You should pray and meditate seriously and deeply on the scriptures.
4. Let your affection be on things above. The Bible says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you.” Other things are what we call in our language as “jara,”, meaning “extras”.

You cannot go to a market and ask for jara when you have not bought anything. You have to buy something first. So seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all other things will be added.

5. Mortify your flesh. Do not allow that flesh to throw you here and there. Do not allow it to control your life. You have promised to pray in the night, but Mr. Flesh is saying, “You are tired. Do it another time,” and you listen to him? Trouble.

Somebody is saying something you do not like, and Mr. flesh is saying, “Are you the true son or daughter of your father? Are you going to keep quiet for somebody to insult you like this? Open your mouth and talk!” But you say no; I am not saying anything.

That is how to mortify the deeds of the flesh. It is a personal desire and determination for you to do so. My wife was coming home one day, and I met one of my colleagues fighting another person on the street. And my wife was saying, “Daddy, it is okay; enter your car and go away.” Instead of my friend to enter his car and do as my wife advised, he said to my wife, “Mrs. Olukoya, do not ask me to enter my car o. Be praying for me to suppress the spirit of anger.”

Here is a person who is not ready to deal with his flesh. It is his personal responsibility. No prayer that my wife can pray will do it for him; it is he himself that will tell his flesh, “No, I am not doing it.” Just like I always tell them in the youth church, “It is not a sin for a man to have an erection, but the sin is following the direction where the erection is going. So you have to be very careful and mortify your flesh, which is on earth.

PRAYER POINTS.

[Before Message]

1. Strangers defiling my destiny in the dream, you are liars; die in the name of Jesus.
2. Arrows of bad luck, fired against me and my family, backfire in the name of Jesus.
3. Every battle surrounding my progress, scatter, in the name of Jesus.

[After Message]

(Ask the Lord to forgive you of every selfishness and to wash you in His blood that you want a new you to operate in 2024).
(Ask the Lord to break any idol in your heart that will not make you satisfy heaven).

1. Power of resurrection, power of the Holy Ghost, overshadow my life, in the name of Jesus.
2. Powers assigned to rubbish my salvation, clear away, in the name of Jesus.

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