BUILDING A LIFE OF PURPOSE
Building a Great Life
- Part 4 of 8
Acts 13:36 & Eccl. 1
04-28-13 Sermon
"David served God's purpose
in his generation..."
Acts 13:36
I. IF I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE PURPOSE OF
LIFE...
...
LIFE SEEMS U______________________
"Life
is useless, all useless. You spend
your life working... but what do you have to show for it? ... The world just
stays the same." Eccl.
1:2-4 (GN)
... LIFE SEEMS T_________________________
"The
sun rises and goes down... the wind blows round and round and back again. Every river flows into the sea...
[then] the water returns to where the river began and starts all over
again. Everything leads to weariness..." Eccl. 1:4-8 (GN)
... LIFE SEEMS UN___________________________
"No
matter how much we see, we're never satisfied; no matter how much we hear,
we're not content. History merely
repeats itself." Eccl.
1:8-10 (LB)
... LIFE SEEMS IN____________________________
"No
one remembers what has happened in the past, and no one in days to come will
remember what happens between now and then." Eccl. 1:11 (GN)
... LIFE SEEMS UN__________________________
"You
can't straighten out what is crooked; you can't count things that aren't
there!" Eccl. 1:15 (GN)
II. WHAT IS THE
PURPOSE OF LIFE?
"Long
ago, even before he made the world, God chose us to be his very own through
what Christ would do for us... His unchanging plan has always been to adopt
us into his own family by sending Jesus Christ to die for us." Eph. 1:4-5 (LB)
"This
is his purpose: that when
the time is ripe he will gather us all together... to be with him in
Christ forever." Eph. 1:10 (LB)
LIFE IS ______________________________ FOR
ETERNITY!
"He
has planted eternity in the human heart." Eccl. 3:11 (NIV)
III. HOW DO I PREPARE FOR ETERNITY?
1. GET TO KNOW
______________________________
"To
all who receive him, Christ gives the right to become children of God." John 1:12 (LB)
2.
USE MY ______________________________ IN VIEW OF ETERNITY.
"Use
your time in the best way you can." Col 4:5 (ICB)
3.
USE MY ______________________________ IN VIEW OF ETERNITY.
"Use
every part of your body to give glory back to God." 1 Cor. 6:20 (LB)
4.
USE MY ______________________________ IN VIEW OF ETERNITY.
"Use
your money to do good... always being ready to share whatever God has given
you. By doing this you will be storing
up real treasure for yourselves in heaven -- it is the only safe
investment for eternity! AND you
will live a fruitful Christian life down here as well." 1 Tim. 6:18-19 (RLB)
The Best Investment: Luke
16:9
LIFE INVESTMENT GUIDE
|--------------------------------------| MY TIME
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|--------------------------------------| MY TALENT
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|--------------------------------------| MY TREASURE
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
BUILDING A LIFE OF PURPOSE
Building a Great Life
- Part 4 of 8
Acts 13:36 & Eccl. 1
04-28-13 Sermon
If you were to ask me what's
my definition of a great life, I would have to quote a Bible verse to you. It's the verse about David: Acts 13:36 "David served God's purpose in his generation." I don't know a better epitaph to have on
a tombstone than to say you served God's purpose in your generation. You did the eternal but you did it in a
contemporary way. That to me is
the essence of a great life.
"He served God's
purpose..." first you have to know what it is. "...and he did it in
his generation"
What happens if I don't
understand the purpose of life?
What if I don't understand the meaning of life? I don't know what the point of it all
is and I don't know that there's more to this life. What do I do?
It causes all kinds of problems.
There's a book in the Bible
written just for this purpose.
It's called the book of Ecclesiastes. It's written by a guy named Solomon who was the wisest man
who ever lived. He said this is
what happens when you don't know the meaning of life. Particularly in
Ecclesiastes 1 he says if you don't know the purpose of life there are five
tragic consequences that are going to happen in your own life.
IF I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE PURPOSE OF LIFE...
Life seems useless. Chapter
1:2-4 "Life is useless, all
useless. You spend your life
working but what do you have to show for it? The world just stays the same." If there's no purpose to life, why not
sleep in? Why not just let
somebody else do it? If nothing
really matters, why bother? Why
make the effort. Life is useless
if I don't see a purpose to it.
Life seems tiresome. We
seem to be just going in circles. "The
sun rises and goes down. The wind
blows round and round and back again.
Every river flows into the sea then the water returns to where the river
began and starts all over again. Everything leads to weariness." When you don't know that there's a
purpose in life, life just seems like we're going in circles. It gives three
examples -- there's the rotation of the earth, the sun goes up and down;
there's the swirling of the wind; there's the cycle of rain and
evaporation. It seems like an
endless cycle. Just about the time
you get the Christmas lights put away it's time to get them out again. We're on this treadmill.
Do you ever feel like you're
on a treadmill? You're using a lot
of energy, a lot of activity in your life, but there's no progress. The fact is, you can win the rat race
but you're still a rat. If you
don't have a purpose in life, life seems useless and life seems tiresome.
Business Week
did a study to find out what is the number one answer when you ask people,
"How you doing?" The
number one answer today is, "I'm tired."
Life seems unfulfilling when I don't understand the purpose of
life. "No matter how much we see, we're never satisfied; no matter how
much we hear, we're not content history merely repeats itself." When you don't see the point to
something you get restless, antsy, you can't stay in your seat. You come late, leave early. We use the zapper on tv. The average
human being will change channels with the zapper 325,000 in his/her life. (Some of you far, far more of that. Maybe that's an annual number for
you!) But we get restless when we
don't see a point to something.
Life is useless, tiresome, unfulfilling.
Life seems insignificant. v. 11 "No one
remembers what has happened in the past, and no one in days to come will
remember what happens between now and then." Fame is fleeting.
You break a record, and yours is going to be broken next week. He's talking here about the certainty of obscurity. Nobody's really going to remember
you. We all want to be significant
but it doesn't happen. Have you
ever been to a class reunion?
That's a humbling experience.
All the heroes are now zeros.
They're all getting fat and going bald -- and those are the women! The guys...
Regardless of your
accomplishments, you're going to be forgotten. If you went to college, my guess
is that every building on your college campus had somebody's name on it. Did it make any difference to you? No. You couldn't care less. You never did any research to find out who those people were
because the only people who care about having their name on a building are the
people who give the big bucks to put their name on a building. Nobody else
could care! The fact is, we don't
remember. Life seems insignificant
when you don't have a purpose.
Life seems uncontrollable. v. 15 "You can't
straighten out what is crooked and you can't count things that aren't
there!" That's obvious.
Have you ever tried to straighten out a relationship that just wouldn't
straighten out? It's tough. Have
you ever been baffled by a problem that you couldn't fix? One of the great
frustrations of life is that there are some things I just can't fix. And it's true with you too. There are some things you just cannot
control. The most important things
in life are things you cannot control.
You didn't control when you were born, when you're going to die. You don't control a whole bunch of
things in between that really do matter.
You certainly can't control other people. You can't keep them in love with you. You can't make them fall in love with
you. All kinds of things like
that.
He says, this is what happens
when you don't understand the purpose.
It's interesting to me that
these five themes -- life is useless, seems tiresome, seems unfulfilling, seems
insignificant, seems uncontrollable -- are the themes of many current popular
books and movies. You see this
over and over. Without a purpose,
life seems pointless.
There's a guy named Hugh
Morehead who 45 years ago began a hobby of writing to famous philosophers and
scientists and authors and asking them, "What
is the purpose of life?"
He became the chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Northeastern
University in Illinois. The
responses he got back were depressing at best. Isaac Asimov wrote back, "As
far as I can see there is no purpose to life." Karl Jung, the Austrian psychiatrist,
wrote, "I don't know what the
meaning or the purpose of life is but it looks like as if there were something
meant by it." Albert
Ellis, the psychiatrist who invented RET therapy said, "As far as I can tell, life has no special or intrinsic meaning or
purpose." Thomas Nagle, "I'm
afraid the meaning of life still eludes me." With a sense of resignation Joseph Heller wrote, "I have no answers to the meaning of
life and I no longer want to search for any."
These are tragic
statements. A life without purpose
is a life not worth living. It is
no accident that as our culture has increasingly turned its back on God that
coincidentally the suicide rate has gone up. When you remove God out of the picture, the options for
meaning and purpose become very slim. So why not just check out? Suicide is now the second greatest
killer of teenagers in America.
Why hang around if there's no meaning or purpose to it? If you take God out of the equation,
your options are extremely limited.
Bertrand Russell, the famous
English philosopher. He was an
avowed atheist. One thing I have
to admire about Bertrand Russell, at least he was intellectually honest. He admitted that if you don't believe
in God there are severe consequences to it. He said, "Unless
you assume a God, the question about life's purpose is meaningless." Freud, who was also an atheist, said
the same thing. "The idea of a purpose stands or falls
with the religious system."
In other words, if you don't accept that God exists you're on a dead end
street.
The conclusion is this: If there is no God, then you are just a
random accident, a freak of the revolutionary chain, a complex germ. Admit it. If you're not created by God, then your life doesn't matter
and there is no significance to it.
So if you get shot by a drive-by shooter why should we care?
This is why atheistic
humanism is intellectually bankrupt.
I can't understand why anybody with a brain would hold to that
position. Atheistic humanism says
you came from nowhere; it's a freak of nature. You're going nowhere.
But right now, while you're alive, you have dignity and value. Do you see anything wrong with that
picture? It doesn't make
sense. It's absurd. It's
irrational. If there is no God and
you are just a freak of evolution, slime that happened to progress, if there is
no afterlife of heaven and hell after you die then your life does have no
meaning. You do not matter. And we shouldn't care at all about you
because you're just a blob of cells.
This is why it's very important that you understand what the purpose of
life is.
There's another group of
people that say the purpose of life is simply to perpetuate life. In other words, your whole purpose of
life is just biological -- eat and reproduce. That the whole purpose of life is to have babies so that
life goes on. A quote from the
rapper Ice Tea "The reason we are
here is to reproduce. Chill out
and reproduce. Keep the species
alive." To me that seems
like a pretty lousy goal in life, that your only goal in life is to create more
life that itself will have no purpose except to create more life. It seems like, if that were true, why
not stop the insanity?
You were made, God wired you
up in a way, to have something at the center of your life. It's supposed to be God. If God is not at the center of your
life, there's a void there, and so we try to fill it with all kinds of other
things.
What is God's purpose for my
life? Ephesians 1:4-5 "Long ago, even before He made the
world, God chose us to be His very own through what Christ would do for
us..." Notice that God
was thinking about you before He even thought about the world. The world came later. God thought about you in His mind
before He thought about the world. "...
His unchanging plan [purpose] has
always been to adopt us into His own family by sending Jesus Christ to die for
us."
Here's what God says: God made you to be a part of His
family. If you want to know why you're here, God made you to be a part of His
family. He made you to have a relationship
with you. He made you to love you
and to be loved back by Him. He
wants a relationship. He wants you
to be a part of His family
Isn't everybody a part of
God's family? No. Isn't everybody a child of God? No. Everybody is created
by God, everybody is loved by God,
but not everybody is a child of God. You only become a child of God when you
say, "God, I want to be a part of
Your family."
How do you get to be a part
of His family? There's only one
way. Faith. If I don't put my
faith and trust in Jesus Christ, I'm not part of God's family. I am loved and I'm created by God, but
I'm not a part of His family. I'm
not a child of God.
Notice what the Bible also
says. Not only does God want you
to be a part of a family but He wants you to spend eternity with Him. "This
is His purpose: when the time is
ripe, He will gather us all together to be with Him in Christ forever." One day you're going to be with God, if
you put your faith in Christ. His purpose is first that you get to know Him,
that you be a part of His family, and that you spend all of eternity with
Him. The Bible says that history
is moving toward a climax. There
is a grand scheme, a destiny. One
day, God's going to take everybody that's put their faith in Him and bring them
all together to spend eternity with Him.
I know you've heard about the
Circle of Life. That's the great
Buddhist concept and makes a fine song and Disney movie, but it's not
Biblical. Life is not a circle. Life is linear. Life is moving toward a focus, a
purpose, a climax. One day Christ
is going to come back. One day
God's going to take everybody who's put faith in Him over all the years and
bring them together. Notice how long we're going to spend with Him. He says "to be with him in Christ forever." Circle "forever."
Here's the purpose. You could take forty philosophy classes
and never get this. Life is
preparation for eternity. The
Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3:11 "He
has planted eternity in the human heart." That means you were made to last forever. You were made for eternity. You are going to live forever. Every human being is going to live
forever one of two places -- with God or apart from God. We call them heaven and hell. You're either going to live with God
for eternity or apart from God for eternity because you were made to last
forever. When you die, this body
dies, but you don't die. You go
into eternity. And you're going to
live forever with God or without God based on what you do here, your faith in
Christ here.
It is a gross understatement
for me to say that God has long range plans for you. Long, long range plans! He didn't just create you for the 60, 70, 80 or if you live
to be 100 years here and that's it.
God has much longer long range plans for your life. So what is this life here? The Bible says it is preparation for
eternity. What that means is that
God is more interested in preparing you for eternity than He is in simply just
making you happy here and now. Of
course God wants you to be happy here and now because He's your heavenly Father. He loves you and wants you to be
happy. But not at the expense of
having you being ill prepared for eternity.
The fact is, this life is
just the appetizer, the entree is coming.
This life, if you were to put it on a scale, is like the first millimeter
of a yardstick that goes on for millions and millions of miles into
infinity. You will spend, at the
most, probably 100 years on this planet.
But you're going to spend millions, billions, ga-zillions of years in
eternity. Which one do you think
God's more interested in? Where you're going to spend the most time.
So, He put you on this earth
for a reason. Why? To prepare you for what's coming
up. This life is the dress
rehearsal. This is the warm up act
for the big event. This is
kindergarten, preschool, the prep class for the way you're going to spend the
rest of eternity. You must be
prepared for eternity.
How do I do it? How do I use my life whatever years
I've got here to prepare for eternity?
Four ways:
1. GET TO
KNOW JESUS CHRIST
That one's a no brainer. Establish a relationship with Him --
God's Son, Jesus Christ. The Bible
says, "To all who receive him,
Christ gives the right to become children of God." Notice: Not everybody's a child of God,
just those who receive Him into their lives. God wants you to establish a relationship with Him.
How do I establish a
relationship with God? If that's
one of the goals, the purposes of my life, how do I do it? How do you establish a relationship
with God?
You do it the same way you
establish any relationship. If I
want to have a relationship with my wife, Peg, what do I have to do? First, I
have to spend time with her. You
cannot have a relationship with somebody you never spend any time with. Then I have to talk to her. And I have to listen to her. I have to see her in all kinds of
situations and she has to see me in all kinds of situations and how we
respond. Over time of talking,
listening, spending time together, we develop a relationship.
There's three other things
you've got to do to prepare for eternity.
First you get to know Jesus Christ.
2. USE MY
TIME IN VIEW OF ETERNITY.
"Use your time in the best way you can" Time is
our most precious resource. It's
far more important than money. You
can get more money but you can't get more time. You only have a certain amount of time you're allotted. In life, you can't make time, you can't
borrow time, you can't save time, you can't extend time. You can only use it. We all have the same amount every week
-- 168 hours. If you don't learn
to manage your time well, you cannot manage anything else in your life because
your time is your life.
God is watching to see how
you manage your time on this earth to determine what He's going to have you do
in eternity. He's giving you a
little test --- this is the kindergarten.
One of Satan's strategies is to just get you so busy doing unimportant
things that you don't have time for the important things in life and that you
don't spend any time preparing for eternity. Satan doesn't have to
get you to sin. If he can't get
you to be bad, he'll just get you to be busy.
Acts 20:24 "Life is worth nothing unless I use it
for doing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus." You got to use your time in view of
eternity. How much is this going
to count five years from now, ten years now? How much is this going to count in eternity? Use my time in view of eternity.
3. USE MY
TALENTS IN VIEW OF ETERNITY.
That's how I prepare. We covered this last week so we don't
have to repeat it -- twelve reasons God wants you to give your life in
serving. 1 Corinthians 6:20 "Use every part of your body to give
glory back to God."
There's a big misconception
about heaven that even many of you may have. Some of you may think that when you get to heaven all you're
going to do is sit around and eat bon-bons, kick back, wear a white robe and
float on clouds. Neither of those
things are in the Bible. Some of
you think that you're going to play a harp in heaven. Angels might play harps but you're not. This is another misconception. You're not going to be an angel in
heaven. Angels are angels. People are people.
So what are you going to do
when you get to heaven? All those
millions of years, what are you going to do? God has plans for you to serve in heaven. There's going to be things to do in
heaven. Enjoyable things to do in
order to serve God. What He's
doing right now is He's giving you time on earth to practice serving. Why would God give you a place of
serious service in eternity when you've done nothing in this world but live for
yourself? You sat on the bench all
through life and said, "I live for
me," and then when you get to heaven you say, "OK, God, take me off the bench and put me on the A team. Let me serve You now." God's going to say, "You developed no serving ability, no
serving skills."
You're not going to take any
of your money into heaven. You're
not going to take any of your possessions into heaven. And you're not going to take any of
those other kinds of material things into heaven.
What are you taking to
heaven? Only two things. Your character and your skills. Your attitudes, the things that God has
put into your life. God is saying,
"Now's the chance to get
ready." This is pre-school.
Are you doing anything in your life to use your talents for God? Or are you using all your talents on
yourself? God says He wants you to
serve Him.
4. USE MY
TREASURE IN VIEW OF ETERNITY.
In a time when the stock
market moves up or down whenever someone just sneezes, everybody's asking, "What's the safest place to invest?" I'm going to tell you!
Let's suppose that Congress
passed a law that some time in the next twelve months, the Japanese yen would
become the official American currency.
No longer would we use dollars but everybody would have to use yen to
buy or sell things. Since the
dollar would be worthless after the exchange date, to make it fair to
everybody, nobody would know the exact day of conversion. We just know that some time in the next
twelve months all of a sudden you'd have to start using yen to buy and sell and
all of a sudden dollars are worthless.
If you knew that -- that it
was going to come within the next twelve months but you didn't know when --
what would your strategy be?
If you are wise, what would
you do is take most of your American currency and immediately convert it into
Japanese yen so you wouldn't be caught with worthless dollars after that date.
Knowing that they were going to be worthless, you would take most of what you got
and immediately convert it. You
would only hold on to enough American dollars to meet your daily needs. Because, on the exchange date,
everything that was still left in dollars wouldn't amount to anything.
Jesus says, One day there's
going to be an exchange day on your life.
You are going to die. Only
a fool would go all through life unprepared for something they know is
inevitable. In America, the
mortality rate is 100%.
You know what? We're all terminal. Everybody in this room is terminal.
It's just a matter of time. We're
all terminal. So there's going to
be an exchange date. In eternity,
the wealth that you leave on earth is going to be worthless. The only way what you have now can
count in eternity is for you to begin converting it to the economy of
eternity. Does that make
sense? That's called storing up
treasure in heaven.
How do you do that? How do you store up treasure in
heaven? 1 Timothy 6 "Use your money to do good, always
being ready to share whatever God has given you. By doing this, you will be storing up real treasure for
yourselves in heaven. It is the
only safe investment for eternity.
And you will be living a fruitful Christian life down here as
well."
I'm looking forward to that
day. The exchange day. Because for over 50 years years I've
been converting time and talent and treasure into the currency of
eternity. Which bank are you
storing up in? The bank of earth
or the bank of eternity? You
cannot take it with you. But you
can send it on ahead. How do you
send it on ahead? By investing it in people who are going there and in causes
that stand for the kingdom of heaven.
One of the most obscure
verses, one of the strangest quotes of Jesus is Luke 16:9 God's investment
strategy "Use worldly wealth to make
friends who will welcome you into eternal dwellings." What in the
world does that verse mean? What
is He talking about? Obviously
He's not talking about buying your way into heaven. Because you can't do that. It's a gift.
It's free. You just accept it by faith. You can't pay your way into heaven.
He's saying the best strategy
of investment is to take your money and help use it to get people into heaven
so that when you get there they'll all welcome you and say, "Thank you for helping me get into
heaven." That's the best
strategy to use your money. Every time you give to help a missionary win
somebody to Christ you're investing and storing up treasure in heaven. Every time you help a Christian
organization put on a tv show or program you're helping get people into
heaven. You're storing up treasure
in heaven. Every time you help a
church, plan a program, build a building, give to their ministries, you're helping
people get into heaven. That's the
best use of your money.
When you think in terms of
whether I'm going to spend 100 years on earth and a ga-zillion years in heaven,
when I get to heaven I hope a lot of people are going to say, "Hey, Frank! I'm here. How's
it going? I'm here because of
you." I'm looking forward
to that day. Is anybody going to
welcome you in heaven? They will
if you're investing your money in bringing people into heaven. "You
were one of the pioneers to help bring me into heaven because that church, that
ministry reached me for Christ."
The exchange day is coming
and for your own good, be ready.
Use the Life Investment Guide
at the bottom of your outline to evaluate yourself. Put an X on each of these where you are now and then put an
0 where you want to be in six months.
Nobody can tell you what's right for you. This is between you and
God.
In TIME. Put an X estimating what percent of
your time each week is invested in spiritual growth, spiritual matters,
developing ministry skills. We all
have 168 hours a week. What
percent is being invested of my time in living in light of eternity? Put an 0 where you would like to be in
six months.
How about
TALENTS. What percent of your
talents are you using investing in service, practicing serving and ministry?
What percent do I want it to be in six months? Give yourself a goal.
How about your
TREASURE? your money. How much of your money are you
investing in God's kingdom? Where
do you want to be for a goal as you grow as a believer? Where do you want to be six months from
now?
Don't trade your life for
temporary things. That's a
waste. The most important decision
in your life after you have accepted Christ is this, "Am I going to live for here and now or am I going to live in
light of eternity?"
That's the most important question after you've received Christ. I am saying if you want to be wise, use
as much as you can, of whatever you've got to prepare for eternity. Time, talent, treasure.
Prayer:
If
you've been living just for retirement, you are missing the point. You're put here for a purpose. The wisest investment you'll ever make
is to tell God, "I want to make the
rest of my life count for eternity." You're going to live in eternity one of two places. We call living for eternity with God,
heaven. We call living for eternity
without God, hell.
Have
you established a relationship with Christ. Why don't you say, "Jesus
Christ, I want to get to know You.
And I want You to come into my life and I want to follow Your plan and
purpose for my life for the rest of my life."
Lord,
thank You that you've made it very clear that we don't have to wonder why we're
here. You've told us what to do.
Now help us to do it. In Jesus'
name. Amen.
