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What on earth am I here for?
Scripture Ephesians 1:1-12 and Mark 12:28-34 |
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What on earth am I here for?
Scripture Ephesians 1:1-12 and Mark 12:28-34 |
Sermon
one in the 40 Days of Purpose programme Rev.
Dr Robert Iles
at Golden Grove Uniting Church, S Australia.
17.10.04
For women born in Australia in 2000, the life expectancy
Is 82 years. For a man born at the same time it is 76.6 years, about 2000 days less than a woman. Those numbers will pass without any comment
About who has the harder life.
Within those years people have done further analysis.
The average person spends 141000 hour sleeping,
86000 hours working (these may overlap) and 10000 hours commuting. 82000 hours watching TV and changing channels 390000 times, apparently mainly a male phenomenon.. Eating takes up 6 years of your life, and a few extra months for some of us.
So amidst all that it is worth taking a look at the number 40.
40 is a good basic batting score in cricket on an Indian pitch.
40 is an age that some of you can still remember. At 40 you can be realistic about the past and the future.
If you are 40 you are probably not going to make the sprints at the Beijing Olympics
But you could still be a good Cobbler Creek walker.
Forty is the kind of temperature we approached on Tuesday, a sign of things to come. Forty points is good for your garden and rainwater tank.
40 is not such a great exam mark, unless it’s out of 50.
It is an important number in the Bible. Noah floated around for that time,
Moses spent 40 Days on Mount Sinai receiving the commandments.
Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness praying and being tempted.
The disciples enjoyed Jesus presence for 40 days after the resurrection.
So amidst all that it is worth taking 40 Days to consider deeply the purpose of life, why you are here on earth. And that is what is beginning today.
40 days thinking about your purpose in life through services, your readings, memory verses and small groups.
It’s a little more than 10% of the year and promises great returns and spiritual growth.
40 days in which to pray, read, meet and think.
And it is all about the greatest question we can ask: what am I here for, what is my purpose in life.
There is a writer by the name of Robert Fulghum. For many years
He did something extraordinary. It happened every time he went to a meeting. Whether he was at a cooking class, a tourism meeting,
Or a university lecture, he waited for the moment when questions were invited. He always asked the same question, to chefs, financiers and tour guides. He asked this of them: What is the purpose of life?
People laughed in embarrassment, speakers looked dismayed, they shuffled their papers, gathered them, left and the meetings ended in disarray.
He said “I always that question because there may be someone present who knows the answer and I would miss it by staying silent.”
But one day a man answered him. I’ll tell you what he said later.
Many Australians have no idea about the purpose of their life.
And so that is why we are looking at the three most important questions of life,
the first being: why am I alive?
There are lots of things to keep us busy. Reading books, making or losing money,
Visiting friends, going to restaurants, praying, reading those solid chapters of Ric Warren’s book each day.
We say that the reason you are alive is found in God. God wanted someone just like you alive at this time. Someone with a unique, fingerprint, heartbeat, personality and approach to life.
Why you are alive is related to God.
If you don’t look for your purpose in God you don’t have a lot of options.
Some people take the mystical approach to life. You’ll find this in New Age store like the one leading into the Village Shopping Centre. You find your purpose by looking within.
All the answers are within. You are god. Sounds spiritual. But looking within
Alone, makes me the centre of the universe. And however inconvenient,
I am not that centre. Most of what happens is outside my control and influence.
And what if the self is the problem more than the solution.
Another approach is the self-help approach.
You can go into Angus and Robertson’s and peruse dozens of books. When my wife sees me lingering over the section headed self-improvement,
She’s loath to interrupt me. However most of these books give the same formula for success. Let me save you a lot of time and money by summarising them all.
They say make up your own purpose: have a dream, aim high, set goals, and be disciplined. That can help you be successful but still not know your purpose in life.
You can be wealthy, popular, successful but still have no idea about your
Purpose in life other than being busy and successful.
Another approach people can take is the philosophical approach.
A few years ago an author wrote to the most successful thinkers, writers, philosophers of the C20 and asked them what is the purpose of life?
None of them could tell him, and some asked to be told
If anyone had an answer.
A French philosopher died during the week, Jacques Derrida. He founded a school of thought called deconstructionism, an offshoot of French existentialism,
Which we won’t pursue in this context.
But in the end, life deconstructed him. He said: “Less and less I have not learned to accept death. I remain uneducable about the wisdom of dying”.
The purpose of life has to cover death or it is just another relativism of our time.
A life without an overall purpose is pointless and not worth living.
It is no accident that as society has pushed God out of life,
The suicide rate has increased. More people die in Australia through suicide than
Through car accidents. 2000 people do so and by a conservative estimate,
40,000 people a year in Australia try to commit suicide
A life without purpose is pointless. It is not worth living.
We were made fore a purpose and He gives us meaning.
Prov. 16 Says He has made everything for His own purposes.
You were not made for your purposes but for the Lords.
The opening verses of the Bible are: In the beginning God, not “In the beginning you”.
You were not made for your ambitions and dream and goals but for God’s purposes.
God has never made anything without a purpose. You were made for meaning. And over the next 40 Days
Eph 1:14 for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
We were created to be the focus of God’s attention. He didn’t make us because he needed someone to talk to; because he was lonely with planets and dinosaurs.
He was perfectly content within the life of the Trinity; but love reaches outwards towards others. He longed to share that love with others
Outside the family of the Trinity. “Long before he laid the
Before he thought of the universe he thought about you”.
Before the rings of Saturn and Hailey’s comet, you were in his mind.
And he planned the universe to be a perfect environment in which to grow, receive his love and love him back.
2. Does my life matter?
Most people live life on one of three levels.
The level of survival. Not really living, just getting by. They are just coping.
Go to work but life is only lived for the weekends or holidays or long service leave
Or retirement.
The level of success.
You have attained something. You can go where you want, when you want.
You have a lot of control over your life and its future.
You are on a level most of the world just dreams about.
If you live in Australia, no matter how much debt you have,
You are way ahead of 90% of the world’s population. But success does not satisfy. Material things can create anxiety about their preservation.
I find it much more relaxing to drive our 1980’s Magna
With its dents, missing paint, reluctance to change gears, as I do the more modern cars.
There is less at stake. Less risk, less anxiety.
But so I won’t embarrass you in front of your neighbours, I’ll only
Come to your place in the old car at night.
Success creates new problems and our purpose is not found in it.
The third level is significance.
Finding your meaning and purpose and why he has put you on earth.
Do we matter to God? Psalm. 139: 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
Even before you were born God cared for you, He planned you, and you are not an accident. There are accidental parents but no accidental children.
There are no illegitimate children even though there may be illegitimate parents.
He is interested in every part and detail of your life, from conception to graduation.
You matter so much to God that he wants to keep you around forever.
He wants you with him for eternity and so he has put us on earth
To prepare for eternity. Now this is not the same as a Muslim view held by some extremists that this life does not matter, so you can blow up a few infidels and work your way into heaven. No this life matters and people have value whatever they believe.
But the big picture matters most.
We have eternal significance.
Death ushers us into eternity. So we practice on earth what we will do in eternity,
Loving God and his people. The biggest mistake you can make in this life
Is to say “All I have in this life is 60-70-80-90 years and that is it.
It’s not true. One day your heart will stop beating,
Your brain signals will be a straight line, but life goes on forever.
Where you spend eternity will depend on what you do with Jesus Christ in this life.
We are made to last forever. We are not like the items on a Foodland shelf; we do not have an expiry date in God’s eyes.
The fact is that we will be spending much longer on the other side of the grave than on this side, because we are of significance to the Lord.
So get prepared. Find your purpose and follow it.
3. What is our purpose?
He has made us to receive his love, he has made us for eternity, he has given us eternal significance but where does that leave us now.
What is our purpose.
Psalm 89 why did you create us – for nothing?
If there is no God there is no meaning or purpose if life.
If you are just a freak, random accidental freak of nature then there is no purpose to life. If you are just some educated complex pond scum that has evolved into who you are, there is no right or wrong, you do what you like.
As the great epileptic, alcoholic Christian ( he had his problems!) Fyodor Dostoyevsky said in The Brothers Karamazov: If there is no God then everything is possible.
God is behind our purpose, our life, our morality
Logically there is only meaning and purpose where there is a creator.
No Creator no meaning. And a Creator who didn’t just say when He has finished creating: Well that is that. I’ve done my bit. I’ll have no more interest in this planet and its occupants. That’s deism not Christianity. No, “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us full of grace and truth.” Jn 1:14.
He created and he redeemed. He has invested his life, hope, purpose and power in you.
The fact is he has built purpose into life that relates to whoever we are, wherever we are. And in doing so He had to make a purpose for life
To suit all circumstances and people.
The purpose of life had to take into account factors like these:
Whether we are children or old; whether we are Einstein’s or less so;
Whether we are male or female; whether we are affluent or poor, western or eastern,
Latham OR Howard; Crows supporters or supporters of another team.
The purpose of life had to be just as relevant to an ancient and a modern, even a post-modern. It must be relevant to whether you can sing or destroy a song;
Kick a footy or drop one, whether you are single or married
Have no children or a lot, prefer choruses or hymns.
So the purpose of life has to take into account the incredible diversity of life
We experience, and are a part of even here this morning.
So would he make the purpose of life about being or doing or both?
Someone wrote Sartre said be; Bentham said do but it was Frank Sinatra who first put them together: do, be, do, be, and do.
Well the Lord could not make our purpose completely depend on what we can do. Some can do something others. Some can repair a car, other burn out the oilless engine!
Some can cook a roast, some can draw and paint others can landscape.
But not all could do the same or in the same way. Some have to live life from a wheelchair or a hospital bed. PURPOSE has to take that into account.
So the Lord decided being would come first. A relationship with him would come first. So he disclosed the purpose of life in Mk 12: 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'
The purpose of life is firstly to love God. Love reaching out in love to the beloved, us. The infant can do this in his or her own way; the athlete and the dependent, male and female,
Black and white, the literate and illiterate, the ancient and the modern.
The teacher and tax officer, the parking inspector and the truck driver, can all do this; they can all find their purpose in life is firstly to love God.
In this next 40 Days we will explore this further through the five ways God gives us to live lives of purpose. We’ll do that in our services, in our readings, our groups.
Oh the answer to Fulghum’s question.
A professor pf philosophy asked him if he was serious. He said he was.
He replied: When I was a boy a Nazi motorcyclist had an accident and wrecked his motor bike. “I was playing around the wreck remnants when I found some broken glass from the rear view mirror. I played around with it.
Then I found a rabbit burrow. I reflected the light in to the hole in the ground,
Into the darkness. And that is our purpose – to reflect the light into the
Darkness around us. How God helps us to do that we will
Explore in five special ways.