Fulfilled? Or Frustrated?

DEUTERONOMY 5:32-33; 6:24-25

FULFILLED? OR FRUSTRATED?

“You shall be careful therefore to do as the LORD your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess.”

“The LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us.” [1]

People must imagine that the Word of God has been superseded by the “wisdom” of this age, (which really isn’t all that wise after all). At least that is the way it appears, if my assessment of the attitudes displayed in this day approximates reality. Nevertheless, we are assured both by the Word of God and by multiplied ancient divines that because the promises of God are true, people will find personal fulfilment only in obedience to the Lord and to His precepts. However, modern philosophies appear to teach that we are assured of fulfilment through pursuing self-esteem and through seeking to fulfil our personal desires. According to the former perception, man is responsible to the Creator first, fulfilment and purpose thereafter flowing from obedience to God Who gives man his being. The latter view holds that people are first responsible to seek self-fulfilment through building self-esteem, after which obedience, whether to the Creator or to their own conception of what is right, is incidental.

Obviously, these are two radically different ideas concerning fulfilment and how to achieve the same. It should be obvious that it will be impossible to reconcile the two views—they are diametrically opposed to one another. Resolution of the question raised by the conflict between these differing viewpoints is determinative to our sense of being, and it is certainly vital to our ultimate fulfilment. Nothing less than our happiness now and our ultimate fulfillment are riding on the manner in which we decide the issue.

Let’s think about this issue in an honest fashion. If the contemporary view is correct, if fulfilment is to be found through exalting self-esteem until it becomes the ultimate good or if we are to engage in a determined search for self-fulfilment while jettisoning every other pursuit that normally occupies mankind, then it must of necessity follow that this present generation has to qualify as the happiest, most fulfilled in all history. Alternatively, if the ancient view is correct, then we can never be fulfilled until we have turned to the Word of God. If this is in fact the case, it must mean that this present generation is miserable, and we are exposed as a people “having no hope and without God in the world” [see EPHESIANS 2:12b].

Reality demands that we acknowledge that contentment is clearly not a hallmark of this present generation. Despite what any happiness index may assert, there is a marked restlessness throughout contemporary Canadian society. There is a nagging sense that something isn’t quite right, a worrisome thought that for all our possessions and for all the “freedoms” we suppose we have, we are not really free, we actually possess nothing.

There must surely exist for most of us an unrecognised flaw in our worldview, a flaw that though it may be obvious to a few discerning individuals, has yet to be discovered by the most. Without doubt, Augustine was correct when he wrote his paean of praise to the Lord, “Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.” [2] Augustine was confessing that fulfilment is to be found in embracing the will of God. Our frustration is the result when we reject the will of God. And people have known this conclusion to be accurate for millennia, as our study today will reveal.

THE COMMANDMENTS OF THE LORD — “You shall be careful … to do as the LORD your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess” [DEUTERONOMY 5:32-33].