What on earth am I here for?

Sermon: "You were Planned for God's Pleasure"

 Sermon: ‘You were Formed for God's Family"

How are you getting on, then, with 40 Days?  One person told me they couldn't stop reading the book The Purpose Driven Life, and that by day 2 they’d read 7 days worth!  Another wrote on the Message Board: I'm really impressed with how easy the book is to read. From just the first couple of days I've learnt not to look at the next 40 days as being about me but to "start with God". 

Great – I’ve heard a number say those sorts of things. But let me encourage you, if you’re finding it harder than that, to keep going! Don’t give up! The hard work will pay off in the end. You might want to find s/o else who’s doing it, to spur one another on to finish it. Or join with a homegroup to reflect on it together – many groups are meeting this week.

Today, we’re focusing on the initial question of the book, which is surely the question of human existence: ‘What on earth am I here for?’: the fact that we’re able to ask this question in the first place is what sets humans apart from the rest of creation: we alone, of all the creatures on the planet, are able to reflect on the meaning and purpose of our existence.

Some have reflected on this pessimistically: Jeremiah in the Bible, asked: ‘Why did I ever come out of the womb? To see trouble and sorrow? To end my days in shame?

The English poet Philip Larkin wrote: ‘Life is first boredom, then fear.’ Is that right?

Some have been more enigmatic with their pessimism: one famous piece of graffiti states: ‘Life is a sexually transmitted disease’.

But for all the thought on the question, it’s one that moderns in particular have struggled to answer: Douglas Adams summed this up with his ironic solution in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy: ‘The Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is…42.’

We could break the question down into three other questions which are all related to it. Firstly: Why am I alive?

This question is not just academic . Perhaps you, like me, have been in the awful situation of sitting with someone in the depths of despair, perhaps the brink of suicide, as they look back on their life so far and ask ‘What’s the point?’ What’s been the point so far, and if I can’t figure the point out soon, then, why go on?’  Perhaps you’ve felt a bit like that yourself. Not knowing the purpose of your life is a serious thing.

If you’ve been following the PDL this week, you’ll recall Thomas Carlyle’s striking words: ‘The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder – a waif, a nothing, a no man.’  You and I need to know what on earth we are here for.

So where do we start looking? 

In the drama we watched, Jane’s character got a few things right. First of all she got her Bible out. This book represents the maker’s instructions. It’s his guidebook to life. And just as if you want to complete a Lego model successfully you need to look at the instructions, so with life.

The second thing Jane did right in the sketch, was to start at the beginning of the Bible: in the sketch she reads out the first words of the Bible: ‘In the beginning, God.’

Everything started with God. He’s the source of it all. And similarly if we want to find our purpose in life we need to start, not with ourselves, but with the God who made us.

Colossians says: ‘Everything got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him.’ (Col.1: 16 NLT) The more we know God, the more we come to understand his purposes, the more we’ll understand our lives, and our place in this world.

The second question we struggle with in relation to our existence is ‘Does my life matter?’ ie the question of significance. Millions of people struggle with feelings of insignificance and low self-worth. So let me just mention some crucial things the Bible tells us on this:

God knows you: I recently had the experience of meeting someone who I’ve long respected from a distance: in fact I’ve read a couple of his books. When I went up to shake his hand he said to me without hesitation: ‘Hello, Nick’. I had no idea he knew my name: but I was SO chuffed! I thought ‘I must be more important than I’d previously thought!’

I’ve got news for you: the God of Heaven knows exactly who you are: Psalm 139 says: ‘O Lord, you have searched me and you know me…When I was woven together in the secret place, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book, before one of them came to be.’

God knows you. That’s important. It means your life is significant.

More than that, God loves you: This is not sugary sentimentality. It’s about the value of human life: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ John 3: 16

Where does your sense of self-worth come from? God thinks your life is so important, He wanted a relationship with you so much, that he decided to give his Son as a sacrifice to win you back. That’s a measure of what your life is worth.

And that mention of eternal life leads us another thing: God has eternal plans for you

Very often our questions about the significance of our lives revolve around the shortness of life: The Bible itself reminds us of this shortness:

‘All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.

The grass withers and the flowers fall…’

But then it goes on ‘but the word of the Lord stands for ever.’

Earthly life is short. Yes, but the eternal God has eternal plans for you. Death is not the end. God wants you around for Eternity.

Eternity: let’s be honest: many of us only think about Eternity at funerals!

Our eyes are so fixed on our lives now, that it is only when confronted inescapably with the truth of the shortness of THIS life that we consider what lies beyond it.

What I invariably find at funerals is that, confronted with these realities, people instinctively sense that death isn’t the end.. And they’re right to think that way. The Bible says ‘God has planted eternity in the human heart’ Eccles. 3:11 NLT

At the turn of the Millennium in Sydney Australia, midnight had come and gone, and the extraordinary firework display was sadly coming to an end, and the huge audience were readying themselves for the inevitable anti-climax, when a single word appeared in blazing clarity on the Harbour Bridge: Eternity, it read, and continued to light up the sky for a couple of hours afterwards.

What was the significance of the word? Well, explained the producer of the display shortly afterwards, it was in memory of Albert Stace. Albert grew up in Sydney in a brothel at the start of the 20^th century. His parents had been alcoholics, his brothers and sisters were all alcoholics, and he was heading down that road himself. He went to prison for the first of many visits when he was 15. Then he got called up to fight in France during the Great War, and came back in a bad way. He ended up a down and out. Then, one day, he was eating a free meal at a city centre church. He looked at the people handing out the food and said ‘If they’re Christians, then I want what they’ve got.’ And he got down on his knees and prayed.

Something happened. He subsequently found he was able to give up drinking. As he got his self-respect back he was able to hold down a steady job. Soon he joined a church for keeps. One Sunday, the words of the preacher struck him with particular force. The man said: ‘I wish I could shout Eternity through all the streets of Sydney!’ The preacher kept repeating himself, ‘People need to hear about Eternity, Eternity’.

Stace later recalled that although he was barely literate, as he left the church he felt a powerful call to write the word Eternity. He had a piece of chalk in his pocket, so he knelt down and wrote it on the pavement.  He continued for 36 years, writing ‘eternity’ all over the city, over half a million times, all the time undetected. It became a talking point in all the papers and all the cafes – and years later there it was on the Harbour Bridge: Albert Stace’s ‘one word sermon’.

It is not sufficient to consider eternity only at funerals! You and I need to live our lives constantly aware of its reality. Why is it so important?

Because as well as reminding us of that God wants us around for ever, it also helps us to answer the other aspect of our basic question, namely: ‘Does what I do with my life matter?’

What you and I do with our lives matters because one day we’ll be held accountable for it.

‘For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat…each of us will give an account of himself to God.’ Romans 14: 10,12.

As Rick Warren summarises it neatly: God will ask: what did you do with my Son? and what did you do what I gave you? (PDL p.34) Our destiny in heaven or hell will depend on that moment. We need to live now in preparation for it.

The simple fact, then, the bottom line, is this: God has given you a life: what will you do with what you have left of it? That’s what this 40 Days of Purpose is all about. For now though let me leave you with this:

The Westminster Catechism summarises the Bible’s teaching on the purpose of life in this way: ‘The Chief End of man (ie our main purpose) is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.’

How can we glorify God with our lives? By living, not for ourselves, but according to his Purposes for us. If we do that, then we will enjoy him for ever.

Look at the verse on the card you’ve been given. It’s the Memory Verse for this week.

‘For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God planned in advance for us to do.’ Eph.2:10.

So there’s a choice for all of us to make:

In the time you have left before you give account, what on earth will you do with the life God has given you?

Will you settle for mere existence? Or will you live for God’s purposes?

Will you please yourself, or live for God’s glory?

Will you live for the moment, or in the light of eternity?