But it's just good business

Ezekiel 28:4-5 (NIV)

By your wisdom and understanding you have gained wealth for yourself and amassed gold and silver in your treasuries.

By your great skill in trading you have increased your wealth, and because of your wealth your heart has grown proud.

What is wrong with this picture? You've been successful beyond your dreams. People admire and respect you. You have arrived. But you know something is not quite right because you are not satisfied, you want even more. But the more never seems to be enough. You put up a front which people interpret as confidence, competence, and calculating. You begin to believe what people say about you, how smart you are, the self-made man. You fill your life with the best of everything the world has to offer. Soon you realize that all your toys just become burdens. Later you are shocked that someone might challenge your position, someone younger, smarter, more ruthless. What is the point of it all?

Let's hope you come to your senses before the following happens as Ezekiel continues his prophecy:

Ezekiel 28:6-8

Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: "Because you think you are wise, as wise as a god, I am going to bring foreigners against you, the most ruthless of nations; they will draw their swords against your beauty and wisdom and pierce your shining splendor. They will bring you down to the pit, and you will die a violent death in the heart of the seas."

Now I am not saying this is you, it is about Israel. But you can see the heart of God and the heart of man in this picture. How can you be satisfied? It was not the amassing of wealth that was the problem, it was the "heart has grown proud" that was the problem. See what Jesus says:

Luke 9:23-25 (NKJV)

Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?