The Presidents Club – LBJ’s Legacy

Here’s how I used a particular story from The Presidents’ Club in today’s sermon on Genesis 3:

President Lyndon Baines Johnson was an outgoing person, and he really enjoyed it when people needed his friendship and influence.  But he had a very tumultuous presidency.  The country, as many of you who lived then remember, was in a great state of upheaval during his administration.  The Vietnam War was incredibly controversial, yet LBJ struggled to find the right way to end the conflict.  Richard Nixon made many shrewd political moves leading up to the 1968 presidential election, and Johnson’s own party began to turn away from him, until Johnson finally withdrew from the race in embarrassment, even though he was eligible for another term.

Once Johnson had left the presidency, he set about shaping and even reforming his legacy.  In Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy’s book The Presidents Club, his obsession about this is described.  Johnson cared a great deal about his own name.  He put all his energy into his presidential library.  He would go to the parking lot of the historical site of his birth and count the states represented by the cars’ license plates, to see how far people had come from.  He wanted to know how many postcards people bought there, hoping that they would outnumber postcards bought at other similar locations.  He even went so far as to get the announcer at the University of Texas football stadium to tell people as they went to the bathroom at halftime that there were extra restrooms nearby at LBJ’s presidential library!

This is a sad thing, isn’t it?  A man who reached the pinnacle of world power and held the office that so many aspire to was brought to this point of caring that much about what people thought of him, struggling with pride to the point of counting and comparing postcard sales.  But the book makes clear that just about every president deals with this same tormenting concern – “How will people perceive me?”  And the reality is, this concern is not foreign to ANY of us.  Pride eats at us.  It is at the root of every sin.  Its temptation worked for Satan against Eve, and it continues to work today.  Watch out for pride.  Humble yourself before the Lord, and submit to His will.  Look for instances of your own pride, and KILL them by giving them up to the Lord and submitting to Him.  God’s Word says that He “resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”  It tells us: “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will exalt you.”

 

This illustration would work well with texts dealing with pride, like: Genesis 3, 2 Samuel 24, 2 Chronicles 26, 2 Chronicles 32, Proverbs 3:34, Proverbs 16:18, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5, and 1 John 2:16

It would also work with Scriptural texts about pleasing God rather than men, like: Matthew 10:28, Acts 5:29, Galatians 1:10, and Ephesians 6:6

The Presidents’ Club – “Yes” Men

I’m reading an eye-opening book called The Presidents’ Club right now, about the very influential relationships between current and former presidents.  It’s rich with illustrative material and very enjoyable.  I recommend it to you.  I will be placing several illustrations from the book on this site over the next few days and weeks.

Here’s one I’ve already used:

The introduction to the book talks about the value of advice from former presidents to current presidents.  One of the valuable things about this is that advice from former to current presidents is often more straightforward.  Current presidents have so much power that the advisors around them are tempted to simply become “yes” men, just so that they will remain in favor with the president.  The lure of presidential power is too tantalizing to these advisors.

However, former presidents are not really swayed by that power, and thus are able to give more free advice and counsel.  Current presidents often see this as extremely valuable in crisis situations, even when they are from a different political party.  Quite often at strategic moments in history, advice of this sort has been gladly received from across the political aisle – for example, from Hoover to Truman during the post-WWII European food crisis, and from Eisenhower to Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I used this to illustrate the biblical principle that true wisdom is humble and teachable, seeking more than the counsel of “yes” men.  Rehoboam in I Kings 13 clearly was not concerned with truly wise advice.  He rejected the elders’ counsel before he ever went to his young friends; that tells me that he already had his plan in mind and was only looking for the counsel of “yes” men.  That was a big part of such a foolish decision, which cost him most of the kingdom.

This could be used for many other biblical passages that deal with wisdom, counsel, and humility: 2 Samuel 22:28, 1 Kings 3, 1 Kings 12, Psalm 25:9, Psalm 147:6, Proverbs 1, Proverbs 2, Proverbs 15:22, Proverbs 16:18, Daniel 4, James 4:6 and 10, and 1 Peter 3:8

Top 5 Deathbed Regrets

My wife sent me this article today, written by a palliative nurse, who lists the top 5 regrets people have revealed to her on their deathbeds.  She says these are the 5 most common, although it is unclear to me whether she actually tabulated the regrets given to her and came up with this statistical result.  That doesn’t really blunt the power of the article, though.

I think any of the five or perhaps all five could be used as part of any sermon dealing with life and death (Mark 8:36), the brevity of life (James 4:13-17), or having an eternal perspective (Psalm 39).  Below are her five, with other passages that could be used with each one.  I think it would be ok to use just one in a sermon.  You could say something like, “A palliative nurse compiled the 5 most common deathbed regrets, and one of the five dealt with exactly what we’re talking about.  It was ______.”

Here are the five:

1)  I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. [In this case, I’m thinking of it more like: “I wish I had lived a life true to God’s calling, instead of letting peer pressure or the world influence me as much as they did.”  The REAL life lived true to ourselves is the one lived in line with the purpose for which God made us.]

Daniel 3, Acts 5:29

2) I wish I didn’t work so hard.

Matthew 6:19-21, Matthew 6:24-34, Mark 8:36

3) I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Ephesians 4:15, James 3

4) I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Proverbs 18:24, Acts 20 (Paul’s closeness with the Ephesian believers), 2 Timothy 4:9-18

5) I wish that I had let myself be happier.

John 10:10, Philippians 4

 

By the way, you could also use this whole article as a contrast between the author’s this-worldly understanding of “happiness” (which seems to end when someone achieves “peace” and then dies) and the Bible’s infinitely deeper, eternal joy in the presence of Christ.  That would work with Matthew 25, Revelation 5, Revelation 21, Revelation 22, and plenty of others.   [I write all these references out so that they will show up when people search on particular texts.  I’m still trying to figure out how to make tag searches work like I want them to.]