Joke: Two men were seated next to each other as they were flying across the US, along with each of their sons. During the flight, they became acquainted and were discussing their respective occupations (something men tend to talk about). One man was an evolutionary biologist at a major university. The other was the pastor of a Baptist church. At some point, their conversation had touched upon the subject of origins, about which they shared few, if any, areas of agreement. Toward the end of the flight, the biologist’s son began acting up and embarrassing his father. The biologist complained to the pastor about his son’s behavior and asked why he thought that his son was behaving so poorly, whereas the pastor’s son was a model of adult behavior. The pastor replied, "My son is descended from Adam, the perfect creation of God, whereas your son is descended from a monkey!"
What on earth am I here for?
1. More and more people in our world are finding a purpose-less life.
1. With an increasing god-less culture, we are led to believe that we have no purpose in life other than to find satisfaction for our fleshly appetites.
2. Viktor Frankl, who endured 3 years of a Nazi Concentration Camp called a purposeless life an existential vacuum.
i. Just as we try to satisfy the inner hunger with more than food, so we also try to satisfy the emptiness of life with meaningful and purposeful thoughts and activities.
3. If meaning is what we desire, then meaninglessness is a hole, an emptiness, in our lives.
i. Whenever you have a vacuum, of course, things rush in to fill it.
ii. Frankl suggests that one of the most conspicuous signs of this is boredom.
iii. He points out how often people, when they finally have the time to do what they want, don’t seem to want to do anything!
iv. People go into a tailspin when they retire; students get drunk every weekend; we submerge ourselves in passive entertainment every evening (television).
4. As Frankl observed people living and dying daily in the concentration camp, he asked the question, -- what is the difference between what drives some people to continue fighting for life, while other people simply die?
i. His answer was: Survivors had some MEANING or PURPOSE -- some HOPE in the future to propel them forward.
ii. You might remember the classic movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” We all need to know our purpose in life. We cannot go on unless we do.
2. In order to Understand the purpose of my life…
1. It all starts with God.
i. “it” is not about me.
1. It’s not about what I want.
2. It’s not about what my dreams are
3. It’s not even about what seems to make me happy.
ii. Focusing on me will never reveal the truth about the purpose of my life.
iii. My Theology Professor at SWBTS told us….you cannot begin with man. You must begin your search for God with God.
iv. Looking inward won’t bring you answers…only more questions.
v. "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools" - Romans 1:21-22
1. The delusion of trying to understand ourselves apart from God will lead us into further delusion.
a. We will only believe bigger and bigger lies and drift further and further from the truth.
b. We will find ourselves trying to “explain” our experiences and feelings with myths and half-truths.
c. It is absolutely amazing what things people believe about themselves in an attempt to explain themselves and their feelings.
d. I am often amazed at how people will believe things like western reincarnation…(which is not what the Hindu’s believe).
i. They “feel” something…a memory or a they have an experience, and they build a fiction to explain it.
ii. Their fiction takes a great deal more faith to believe than God would ever require.
e. And it is all because they began with themselves instead of with God.
2. All of our attempts to “figure it out” fall short if they start with “me.”
2. Romans 8:6 “obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.” (The Message)
3. We discover our purpose and destiny only through God.
1. He is the author. We must start with the one who made us.
2. The bible is the owner’s manual.
i. It tells us why we exists, how life works, what to do, what not to do, and what the future holds.
ii. “It is in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, He had His eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.” (Eph 1:11 message).
iii. You see, “without God, life makes no sense!”
4. You are not an accident!
1. Isaiah 44:2a says, “I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born.”
2. Your parents may not have planned you. But God did.
i. Long before you were in your parents mind, you were in God’s mind. It is not luck, chance, fate or coincidence that you exist. You and I are alive because God chose…because God wanted to create you and me.
ii. In fact, Psalm 139:15-16 says, “You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your Book!”
3. There may be illegitimate parents but there are no illegitimate children…because even if you weren’t planned by your parents, you were still planned by God.
i. This is because God’s purposes take into account human error and sin. He does nothing by accident and has a reason for everything that He creates.
4. If you remember from our “Entering God’s Rest” series, that God had a purpose for making creation. The entire first 6 days was to create an environment for mankind, with whom He had plans for a relationship. In other words…all of the creation, “cosmos”, was designed with you and I in mind. It was intentionally made so that we could exist and enjoy a relationship with God.
i. You and I are the most valuable things in all of God’s creation. James 1:18 (message) “God decided to give us life through the word of truth so we might be the most important of all the things he has made.”
ii. The greatest evidence of God’s concern for us is the fact that He sent His only Son to take away our sins and to restore us to a relationship with Himself. There is no greater evidence of God’s love for us than this.
iii. God didn’t need to make us. God wasn’t lonely. God chose us and made us because He desired to express His love and to reveal Himself in a personal way to each one of us.
iv. The information that is in the SEQUENCING OF human DNA…
1. Our human genetic code, though microscopic, would fill 100 books, each 1200 pages thick.
2. Mathematically, there is ZERO chance life is a cosmic accident.
5. If there is no God…
i. We would all be just accidents. Evolution teaches that you know. It teaches the world that there is no master plan. It says that man is just another chance organism, a biological splot of DNA that happened to adapt to its environment. Evolution says that the strongest survive and that mankind must act like the animals and fight for survival because he is only an animal.
1. Evolution says that the important people are the strongest and smartest.
a. Evolution says that the origin of humans is a random, unplanned event of nature that serves no purpose other than to fill a niche in the ecological scheme.
b. Therefore, the human species is not any more valuable than any other species on the earth. (This is evidenced by the ecological movements that tell us animals have more rights than people).
c. If you feel that human life is worth more than the life of other mammals, then you didn’t get this moral perspective from evolution. The Bible says that God made each of us with a purpose and for a reason, and that each person is of infinite value to Him.
2. Evolution says that humans are a collection of chemicals fashioned and controlled by genes.
a. Morality is an illusion.
b. Ultimately, the only important behavioral law is survival of the fittest
c. There are no hard and fast moral laws.
d. Any behavior that fosters the survival and reproduction of the individual with the best genetic makeup is evolutionarily selected.
3. Evolution says that the ultimate goal of every species in evolutionary theory is to reproduce successfully through continued evolution and adaptation to their environment.
a. Men and women fulfill their evolutionary goal best by producing as many copies of their genes as possible that survive to reproduce.
b. Ultimately, the only thing that really matters is passing on ones genes.
c. These ideas gave rise to the modern eugenics movement as well as to selective genetics in baby selection.
4. Evolution ultimately says that we are accidents and that there is no God.
5. Evolution starts with what already exists and builds its belief system. It fails because it does not begin with God.
6. Frankl: The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment--or, as the Nazi liked to say, of "Blood and Soil." I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.
5. Knowing Your Purpose gives meaning to your life.
1. You and I were created to have meaning. That is why so many people try so many strange things. Strange things like psychics, astrology, new age mumbo jumbo…to explain their purpose in life. Everyone wants to have meaning.
i. A meaningless life is a life that is not worth living.
ii. And there are many people who survive day to day, wondering why they are here…is it just to extract a bit more pleasure out of my existence, or to accumulate more stuff?
iii. Without God life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning.
1. And the bible gives a wonderful word about that purpose:
2. Jeremiah 29:11 “I know what I am planning for you. I have good plans for you, not plans to hurt you. I will give you a hope and a good future.”
3. Ephesians 3:20- “God is able to do far more than we would ever day to ask or even dream of – infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts or hopes.”
6. Knowing Your Purpose simplifies your life.
1. Your purpose becomes the standard by which you measure every activity as either being essential or not.
i. You use your purpose as a litmus test as to whether or not you should be doing something or not.
ii. You allocate your time, resources, energy based upon what you know about God’s plan for your life…and aren’t simply pulled in every direction.
1. People who don’t know their purpose either do too much (and suffer burnout) or can never commit to anything and never see anything fruitful come from their lives.
2. Your purpose becomes a tool for understanding what the will of God is in many areas of your life. You learn to say “no” to things.
i. It will lead you to a simpler lifestyle and a saner schedule.
ii. Is. 26:3 “You Lord, give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in you.”
7. Knowing your purpose focuses your life.
1. You become effective by becoming selective.
2. Henry David Thoreau once said, “people live lives of quiet desperation” but it could be said that people now days lead lives of aimless distraction.
i. Perhaps you feel that sometimes. Like your life if chock full of activity, and you never get anywhere.
ii. The bible says, “Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants.” (Eph 5:17)
iii. The power of focus is seen in light.
1. Diffused light has little power or impact. It lights up a room with soft light.
2. Focused light has great power. A magnifying glass focuses light and can light a paper on fire…a laser beam can cut through steel.
3. There is nothing so powerful as a focused life…one that is lived on purpose, with intentionality.
4. Paul was one of the most focused people in the bible. He spread the gospel through the entire Roman world.
5. “I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.” (Phil 3:13)
3. If you want your life to have impact, you need focus.
i. Don’t confuse activity with productivity.
ii. You can be busy without a purpose, what is the point?
8. Knowing Your Purpose motivates your life.
1. Purpose produces passion.
i. Remember when you start a new job…you go at it with a passion. But the passion wanes after awhile as the reality of the “long haul,” unlikely nature of promotions and raises, the grind of everyday labor. You no longer work like a person on a mission. Work becomes mundane and rote.
ii. Passion, on the other hand, produces ferver, energy…and the will to get out of bed and make a difference.
iii. Meaningless labor will sap your strength and rob you of your joy.
9. Knowing Your Purpose prepares you for eternity.
1. A lot of people want to leave a legacy, a memory behind on this earth. They want to be remembered when they are gone.
i. I go through the cemetery and look at long forgotten gravestones, and realize very few people leave a legacy that lasts beyond the memories of their immediate descendants.
1. What kind of memory is that?
2. What kind of legacy is that?
ii. Given enough time, your trophies will be trashed by someone else.
1. Dobson, his college tennis champ…but one day someone mailed him his trophy, they had found it in the trash.
2. Living for an earthly legacy is short sighted.
2. We need an eternal legacy.
i. We weren’t put here to be remembered.
ii. We were put here on earth to prepare for eternity.
iii. One day we will stand before God and will have to make an accounting of our lives.
1. Remember, each of us will stand personally before the judgment seat of God. Yes, each of us will have to give a personal account to God. (Romans 10:14).
2. God wants us to pass the test.
3. But many of us will give God an answer like this:
a. I did my best. I tried not to be a bad person.
b. I didn’t kill anyone that I knew of (at least that didn’t deserve it).
c. I got a list here of some good deeds I did…will you look them over?
4. But the bible says that we will fall short.
5. There is no good deed we can present to God or any list of things we didn’t do that will get us into heaven.
a. “It is by grace you are saved, not of works, lest anyone could boast.”
b. Eternal life comes one way.
c. It comes through a life surrendered to Jesus Christ.
d. We give him our sin and we get his righteousness. We surrender our lives and we get eternal life. What a good deal! But it means a life change. It means we stop running the show.
e. And most folks don’t want to do that.
f. Maybe you don’t want to do that either?
g. But today is a day when God gives you a chance to have a life change. A beginning to the rest of eternity, where you can choose where you will spend eternity. Set before you is heaven and hell. You get to choose. If you choose to live for yourself…and make your own way…to reject Jesus Christ, you choose to reject God’s best. You reject God himself.
h. Or you can receive Christ and be changed from the inside out.
i. You may not have done anything horrible in your life, or maybe you have done something you think God will never forgive.
j. But God will forgive every sin you have ever committed. Just surrender. Give it to God and receive His forgiveness that comes in Jesus.
iv. Those of you who have done that but are living for yourselves, because you don’t know why God chose you. You don’t know what you are here for. You get up in the morning, you eat, work and come home and eat and watch the news, some tv, and then start the next day all over again. You don’t have a sense of purpose in your life.
1. Today can be a new beginning for you as well.
Closing Illustration:
There was a field covered with freshly fallen snow. A father and a son enter the field. As they walk across the field, you notice that the father pays no particular attention to where he is going, but his son, on the other hand, follows directly behind, making a special effort to step in his fathers footprints. After the two have crossed the field, you notice that there is only one set of tracks visible in the field, although two had walked across it. The Christian life is that way. In our daily walk we ought to be following Christ’s example. Whether in times of suffering, sorrow or need, whether in times of health, joy, or abundance--if someone were to observe the snow-covered fields of your life, would there be one set of tracks, those of Christ? Or would there be two sets, one belonging to Christ and the other distinctly yours?
