Living By the Book
Jeremiah 29:11-13
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
Introduction: Today we begin our Forty Days of Purpose. We have been talking about it and preparing for it for weeks. Tomorrow many of you will start the coordinated reading plan through Rick Warren’s best selling book. For the next seven weeks, my Sunday morning messages will preview what you will read. Beginning Wednesday and then Sunday, our various youth and adult growth groups will discuss and review the themes of the previous week’s reading.
Today I want to talk to you about “living by the book.” It is critical that you understand that the book I am talking about is this book (Bible) not this book (Purpose Driven Life). The value of The Purpose Driven Life comes from its biblical character. This is not just another self-help book. It’s a God’s help book. The forty simple, back-to-basics devotional readings can help us understand what this book tells us. We will benefit most from the next forty days if we remember the relationship between these two books.
Purpose matters. We understand that on an everyday level. I have here a small paring knife. It once lived among a bunch of other knives in my wife’s kitchen drawer. I have kept it in my desk for several years. The demotion began the day I needed a screwdriver. I’ll bet most of you have some knives like this. I was changing an electrical switch plate or maybe tightening a drawer handle. I could have been working on a door lock. Maybe all of the above! There wasn’t a screwdriver handy so I looked for the next best thing. The knife still looks fine but its days as a paring knife are long gone. Years ago it was demoted to a letter opener. If the truth were told, it never was much of a screwdriver. It was never meant to be.
Lots of things are that way. I was reminded the other day of an old car we used to have. At the time it was at least a dozen years old VW beetle. I paid a few hundred dollars for it in our hometown on Christmas break and then drove it back to Rolla where we lived at the time. I bought it as a second car so I wasn’t expecting much. That’s a good thing. I drove it for several years. But the tales I could tell about that old car! It could go forty-five—downhill with a tailwind. If it weren’t for the rust it wouldn’t have had any paint job at all. You could stick your hand through the holes in the rear floorboard. But the most distinguishing feature of the car was the absence of a back bumper. It actually had a back bumper. The previous owner usually carried it in the backseat. I always intended to have it re-attached, but I never did.
What happened to the back bumper, you ask? You would think I bought it in Arkansas. The previous owner decided the yard in front of his mobile home needed graded, leveled and reseeded. He didn’t have a tractor and blade. He didn’t want to hire someone to do work. A shovel, rake and wheelbarrow were entirely too much like work. SO—he chained a metal bedspring to the back of his VW beetle and proceeded to pull it back and forth across his lawn. It worked fine until he hit a stump. That’s when the bumper went to the back seat.
What’s true of knives and bumpers is also true of you. You were made for a purpose. You were designed with a plan in mind. You can make yourself tackle things you weren’t made for. But when you do, you always pay a price. You will have to live with the nicks, the scars, and the brokenness. And most of all, you will miss what might have been.
This raises one big question. How do we know what our purpose is? Or as the question posed by the first section of the Purpose Driven Life puts it, “What on earth am I here for?” We can speculate about it. Read any popular magazine or browse the self-help section of a Barnes and Noble and you will find all kinds of quick fixes for the human condition. We could take an opinion poll. That seems to be our society’s first impulse these days. Or we could give up and conclude that life has no point or purpose. We could tell ourselves, we are all just accidents. Everything around us is just a coincidence. Some think that way and then try to drown the despair in a bottle of booze or a handful of pills. Others try to fill their lives with busy-ness or some other trivial pursuit that never satisfies for long.
That’s the story line of the popular ABC television show “Desperate Housewives.” I am seldom home when it’s on. I have seen a few bits and pieces and read the reviews. The plots are always an strange mixture of the racy and the funny. But beneath the odd humor is a serious commentary on life. On the surface, the suburban women who live on Wisteria Way have everything going for them. They are all rich, beautiful, and desperate! The title tells it all. What makes the housewives desperate? Possessions without purpose…money without meaning …success without satisfaction … extravagance without eternity!
The late Norman Vincent Peale tells of seeing this kind of desperation on a visit to the orient. He recounts walking through the twisted little streets of an older section of Hong Kong. He happened upon a tattoo studio. The window display contained samples of the many tattoos available inside. A customer could chose from anchors, flags, mermaids, and countless others pictures and words. Peale explains that one sample in particular caught his attention. A person could choose to have three words tattooed on his skin, “Born to lose.”
Peale entered the shop out of curiosity. Pointing to that last sample, he asked the Chinese tattoo artist, "Does anyone really have that terrible phrase, “Born to lose”, tattooed on his body?" The elderly oriental man nodded and replied, "Yes, sometimes." "But," Peale continued, "I just can’t believe that anyone in his right mind would do that." The old man simply tapped his forehead and said in broken English, "Before tattoo on body, tattoo on mind." [Born to Lose, Citation: Norman Vincent Peale in Power of the Plus Factor, in Christianity Today.]
But there is an alternative. We don’t have to resort to speculation or give up in frustration or desperation. God has given us his revelation. The Bible is that revelation.
This book answers three big questions that matter to all of us. 1) It answers the question of existence—why are we alive? We are alive because God made us. We are made us in his image. We are here as the beneficiaries of his affection. 2) The Bible solves the question of significance. “Does my life matter?” The ancient prophet posed the same question. “My work all seems so useless. I’ve spent my strength for nothing and for no purpose at all’ (49:4a). The Bible assures us that whether we matter to anyone else or not, we matter to God. He knows us inside and out. We are the apples of his eye, the crown of his creation. 3) This book does what no other book can do. It also provides an answer to the question of intention. Why did God put us here? What is our Maker’s purpose for our lives?
But there is another question that may be even more important. I call it the question of motivation, not our motive but God’s. Why does all of this matter to God? The answer always affects what we think of God. Is God a tyrant who enjoys telling people what to do? Is he like some pampered prince who expects everyone and everything to jump at his beck and call just because it makes him feel important? If that’s our view, we will worship that way. We’ll want to stay as far away from such a God as possible. We will also read the Bible that way. We may go through the motions of obeying because we think we have no choice. But we will never enjoy it. We will never have much enthusiasm. Our heart will never be in.
We will be like the little boy who was told to sit in a time-out chair by his mother. He refused at first. Finally he sat down with a big frown on his face. He looked defiantly up at his mother and said, “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I am still standing up on the inside.”
Our text offers a different perspective. Jeremiah was God’s spokesman during the awful days of the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jewish people in ancient Babylon. (Babylon is modern Iraq, by the way.) The prophet announced God’s judgment before the fateful battle. He denounced the false counselors who promised success without God’s blessing. When hard times eventually came, Jeremiah encouraged God’s people to faithfully wait for God’s deliverance.
Our text is actually part of a letter from the prophet to the people who had been carried away to Babylonia. The letter contains two important messages from God. First, surprise your captors by becoming a blessing to them. “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Secondly, he said, “Don’t despair. God has everything under control.” That’s the point of our text. Listen to Jeremiah 29:11 again, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
That promise of God is just as true of us as was of those ancient exiles. God is not against us. He isn’t ignoring us. We are on his mind. He hasn’t given up on us. We dare not give up on him. God is at work in every situation, even in the bad times. He works through us for a purpose—a good purpose. Note what the Lord promises in these verses—prosperity not harm, hope and a future! He promises to always act in our best interests. That’s good to know!
That’s the perspective we need as we enter our forty days of purpose. Please hear this! The Bible is more than a rulebook or a law book. Rules can seem arbitrary. Laws limit our options. The Bible is more like our manufacturers handbook. The one who made us knows how we were made, why we were made, and the purposes for which we were made. Someone has said, “We don’t so much break the Ten Commandments, as much as we break ourselves on them.” That’s true of the whole book! The creator knows the conditions that can bring out the best in us. He knows what on earth we are here for.
Most of us wouldn’t buy a new car and totally ignore the manufacturers manual. We might buy a VCR or DVD player and ignore the operator’s manual. As a result we never quite learn how to use all the functions much less make the clock quit blinking 12:00! What’s makes us think we can operate our lives without our manufacturer’s instructions?
Over the next forty days, Rick Warren’s book will walk you through what God’s Book says about heaven’s purposes for your life on earth. The sermons and the growth group discussions will reinforce the same message. Listen and read, not for a new set of rules to live by, but for the tender call of your Maker whispering to your heart what he alone can tell you. If you listen close, you will hear the sweet voice of the Heavenly Father, not the just the loud demands of a Lawgiver. He has your best interest at heart.
Over the next forty days, you will hear this same message in countless ways. God made us on purpose and for a purpose. We are not accidents. Our lives are not pointless. Life at its best comes when we live out those purposes, when we live by the book!
Over the next six weeks, we will explore these five divine purposes for our lives: 1) We were planned for God’s pleasure. 2) We were formed for God’s family. 3) We were created for Christ likeness. 4) We were shaped for God’s service. 5) We were made for a mission.
Conclusion: Today I am asking you to devote the next forty days to exploring those five truths—the five purposes for which you were made. I am not asking you to sign your life away. This is no thirty-year mortgage or forty-eight month payment plan on your car. Just forty-days! That’s something every one of you can do. I am convinced of that!
I am asking you to make your spiritual life, the well-being of your soul, your top-priority for the next forty days. Getting the most of this won’t be easy. It will require effort. Forty days will take a lot more commitment and determination than a one-day wonder, a weekend special, or even few days of frantic activity. But it will be worth it. I guarantee that!
Did you hear the rest of the text from Jeremiah? It begins with the assurance of God. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” It concludes with a clear statement of what it will take. “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
That’s what I am asking you to do for the next forty-days. Let’s see what happens!
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College of the Bible, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
