THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

1 Introduction

A. What is the purpose of life? This is the one question to which most people are longing to find the answer.

1. We look enviously at others and imagine that their lives are more satisfying than ours

2. We think the attainment of this thing or that job will bring us satisfaction.

a. When we finally do gain these things, we find we are no happier than we were before.

b. The older we grow the more frustrated we feel and we find ourselves asking;

c. What is the purpose of life?

II. The Bible Has the Answer

A. When we turn to the Bible we find a clear and simple answer.

"What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to

love Him.'t (Deut. 10:12).

"He hath showed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to... humble thyself to walk with thy God" (Mic. 6:8 (margin)).

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength" (Mark 12:30).

1. The Bible's answer to that question is; The purpose of life is to know, love and walk with our God.

2. Men of God in former times spoke of this as being the "Vision of God"

a. Westminister Confession - The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever

3. Church history records the hunger some have had for God.

a. We see them living in desert caves and bleak monasteries

b. They tortured their bodies and gave away possessions.

c. They were often fanatical, morbid and introspective.

d. We look upon them as poor misguided souls.

e. Lets not forget however these things were done in the longing and search for God.

B. Today we have great light - we don't repeat the errors of these mystics

1. But the coming of more light and greater truth has not brought about an increasing passion for God.

a. In fact it seems to have had the reverse effect.

b. A deep hunger for God is patently lacking in most of us.

c. We have lowered our Christian goal in life to something less than God himself.

III. Emphasis Stand Out Today

A. First the emphasis is on service for God.

1. We have come to think the Christian life is our serving God as effectively and efficiently as we can.

2. Techniques and methods by which we carry out God's message is the important consideration.

B. Second emphasis is related to the first in order to carry out this service we need power in order to do it.

1. We want God's power not specifically Him to carry out this service.

2. So much has service become the center of our thinking that very often a person's rightness with God is judged by his success or the lack of it in his Christian work.

3. Both these ends fall short of the great end God has designed for man.

IV. Turn Your Find Back to the Beginning

A. To understand why the pursuit of God should be the main goal of our life lets turn our minds back to the beginning.

1. Rev. 4:11 says; God has created all things and for His pleasure they are and were created.

2. We were brought into being for God's pleasure, His delight.

a. We are meant to be the object of His affection and that affection is to be returned.

b. Fan's one great concern is to know the Lord and as a result do His will.

c. As we live in submission to God and in fellowship with God, our being is satisfied.

" As C. S. Lewis puts it in describing that early unfelled relationship. "In perfect cyclic movement,., power and joy descended from Cod to man in the form of gift and returned from man to God in the form of obedient love and ecstatic

adoration."

B. Man through disobedience and self will has lost the original Divine purpose for life.

1. Redemption is the love of God reaching out to bring mankind back to that original purpose.

2. To create a world God had but to speak.

a. But to redeem God had to bleed.

b. Yet He did so in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.

3. All of this was done for the one purpose of bringing us with our proud, unbroken natures back to that relationship with God Adam had before the fall.

a. In the light of this we see how far short are the goals we have set in our Christian lives.

b. To concentrate on our service for God can often thwart us from our true goal - God Himself.

V. The Reason I Say That

A. Christian Service of itself does nothing toward the breaking of our self centered natures

1. Service seems so unselfish while concentrating on our walk with God seems selfish and self centered.

2. This is the reason why there is no church or mission station that is without an unresolved problem eating at its heart and thwarting its progress.

a. Christian service often gives people opportunities for leadership that they have not attained at home or in secular business.

b. We can quickly fall into pride and self seeking.

c. With those things hidden in our hearts, we only have to work alongside others to find;

d. Resentment, bitterness, rivalry, criticism, jealousy and a host of other things issuing from our hearts.

3. We say we are working for God but the test of how little our service is for Him is revealed when that job may be taken from us.

a. We become resentful toward the person who caused us to relinquish that position.

b. We lick our wounds for days with the tongue of self pity

4. In this condition we are working to give others an answer we have not found ourselves.

a. I am not for a moment implying God does not want us actively engaged in service.

b. Our service is to be the potters wheel on which He can mold us into the kind of person He is looking for.

5. A Christian leader puts it this way:

"He sees within our hearts the motives of self- seeking and pride. He, therefore, allows some one to come and work Alongside us who will rub against that sharp point and round it off. Or He allows someone to thwart our plans and to step into our shoes. If we are making service for Him an end in itself we will be full of reactions and will want to fight back or to break away and start an independent work of our own, and we become more self-centered than ever. But if we will bow to what Cod has allowed, and repent of our sinful reactions, we will find that very situation has led us into a far deeper experience of His grace and allows us to know and draw from Him those graces that only He has.

6. We might wish that God would be content with something less than this but He isn't.

a. If fellowship with God xs our first concern, then we can have that fellowship in the kitchen or in the hospital.

b. As soon as our emphasis is changed from "doing" to "being" there is an easing of tension.