Finding Your True Purpose in life
Your purpose in life cannot be fully understood apart from Jesus Christ, who is the eternal Word and the source of all true understanding. While humanity bears God’s image through creation, there is a deeper purpose found in becoming children of God through faith in Christ. This transformation occurs when we receive Christ and allow Him to work through us, revealing our specific gifts and callings. Our ultimate reason for existing (raison d’être) is not merely what we do, but what Christ does through us as we draw closer to Him through the Gospel and His Word.
Automatically Generated Transcript
[00:00:00] We have on the screen that which we used last week, last Sunday morning to make a beginning of going through the Gospel of John. And the question or the topic I want to address this morning is about our finding our purpose in life. Do you know why you’re here? I don’t mean in the church. But do you know why you’re here on earth? It’s a question that many people face along the way when they get out of education because you have a ready-made purpose when you’re at school that’s to go up to the next grade. Or to get into high school or to get into something to do with the high school life. In my case when I was that age it was to get to play cricket. That was more important than anything else that went into school for me. And it worked as a purpose for a little while. But when you get out of school sometimes the next step is people are beginning to talk to you about your career, possible training, what you’ll do in life.
[00:01:17] Sometimes it’s more sensible to go and get a job and make money than to spend your time getting a big enormous debt at the universities. So some people think. But on the other hand, what is your purpose in life? What should you train for? It’s always interesting to watch people go and get a second training. Because something changed as to what was their understanding of their purpose. I’m one too. By going to the Theological College, even though I’d done some university work going to Theological College it was to get a ticket. To get to be a person behind the microphone. Or one of the other various things that happen in churches. What is your purpose in life? How do you find it out? And in this first passage I just want to remind us of one thing where Jesus is described as the word. And there’s lots of reasons for that that we went into last week. But I want to remind us of one of those purposes.
[00:02:29] And that was that they began in consequence of the Greek word, which has a richer meaning than our English one. English one means one little spot in a sentence. It means something spoken, one word. But their meaning was more a message. But more than a message, it also in the philosophy of the ancient days, was picked up to mean something deeper still than a message. It could be taken to be the explanatory principle. In the beginning was that which made you understand the lot. The explanatory principle. And there was a philosophy on the Greek word, logos is the word for word, logos. And there was a logos philosophy whereby people talked about where did the explanation of all things come from. And this passage is telling us in answer to that the explanation comes from an eternal matter of a personage who is a part of our three persons in one God, the Son.
[00:03:48] And he is the one who gives explanation of all things. So what the passage is saying, verse two, he was in the beginning with God, all things made through him, without him not anything made that was made. In him, look at verse four, in him was life, and the life was the light of men, people. And when that extra word, light, comes in, the word life, is linked to light. They’re talking not just only of the physical things, you’ll find that Jesus existed as the light of the world before God made the sun, the stars, the constellations. Before the sun was given to give us light, physical light, during the day and the moon by night. Jesus, in his personage, his very spiritual life, when I say Jesus, at the moment I’m talking about before he became human, when he was what we call the second person of the trinity,
[00:04:53] God’s eternal son, and last time I can’t help refer to a few little things, we talked about the first great council that described how Jesus was forgotten but not made. He was an outcome of what father is, but the little word, begotten, is attached to the word eternal. He was eternally begotten, an issue of the Father, the Father would not be the Father if there would not have been also a son. and the Father was eternally the Father, and the Son was eternally the Son, and we call him in heaven before he came to earth the pre-incarnate Christ.” Incarnate means having been enfleshed, become human, taken on humanity. But before that he was there as the life of all things. And there’s a secret to be learned if you’re looking for where your own purpose is. I want to tell you that your purpose is all wrapped up to do with Jesus. And he, before he was Jesus, was that one with life. And his life made him light, and it’s light in that metaphorical sense
[00:06:20] of giving vision, of giving opportunity to understand, of being able to see not just the light of the Son. That got made lately, you know, if you read the story in Genesis 1. But he always was because of his life, that which gave understanding, light. He is the explanatory word, and he gives understanding. And the more you know Jesus, the more you know the truth. He’s called in this passage the true light. You know, we call the Bible the Word of God, rightly so, so we do. But it’s one of the features of how you come to know anything spiritually. In fact, it’s how you come to become enlightened, if you like to say, or how you become someone who has discernment of all things. The person who takes the Word of God and ingests it, and reads it regularly, and sets up a habit of going through life, or spending time in the Word who has a time in your daily, whatever you do, of reading from this sacred book. I want to tell you because this
[00:07:33] book has come about because of him being life that made him the light of the world. And he is the one who speaks through this book. The more you read the Word of God here, the more you become aware of the Word of God that these verses are talking about. The eternal Word. This Word, who because he had spiritual life, was also spiritual light. And the more you come to him here, the more you know him everywhere. The more you understand, you can’t know about yourself. And what is your purpose if you’re at distance from Jesus. I have liked in my studies of being forced, I didn’t always admit this, but to study languages at school, French and Latin, and a theological college, and in Hebrew. And overseas in my studies I had to do German and French. I had done a little bit of French at school, and because I have a French ancestor way back, I prided myself as must be able to speak French. And you know the French have got a phrase, raison d’être. It’s the
[00:09:10] reason to exist, raison d’être. Those people who are trained in helping folk in counseling and in psychology know that one of the devastating things that happens to someone is that you don’t know why you exist. The French wording has a far greater grasp on what causes people to commit suicide sometimes. When they don’t know why I’m here, it’s not just what is my purpose that God has given me to do. I’m meant to be a teacher, I’m meant to be a worker with silver, or I’m meant to be this and that. There’s something deeper than just what you do. And the deeper thing is knowing why you’re here. Reason to exist. There’s many a person who’s become good at doing a certain thing, and becomes someone who goes up the ranks and becomes in a place of authority, but deep inside they say, why am I here? The French wording captures it more exactly a raison d’être. The word d’être means to be. De apostrophe then the etre part. Raison is reason, the reason to exist. And it’s deeper than just what
[00:10:36] you do. But if you build up your life, my thing to do is to play cricket, or my thing to do is to get good marks, my thing to do is to train and become a doctor, my thing to do. All of those things can end up in some moment of recognition. You don’t know why you exist. I want to tell you that the word is the explanatory principle, and when you come close to him, you suddenly get a capacity to know who you are. It’s in knowing Jesus you find yourself. And what is your reason for living, or what is your purpose in life? It’s not something that really rests on doing this and doing that. It rests on your connection to this explanatory principle person who’s come into the human race in order to be more visible, and is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, in him was life, verse 4, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it. There is something very powerful about the life of Jesus and how it sheds
[00:12:14] light on all things. The passage goes on, and tonight in the evening service, I’ve taken a lesson from Russell here. He gave a good cheer for coming along and hearing him again on the 5th when he was speaking here morning and evening. And I’m announcing what the topic is this evening. I want to talk about the John the Baptist hack. You’ve heard about people discovering an answer to various sicknesses. The internet is full of telling you how you can get over this and get over that. You never know whether they’re exaggerating or whether it’s a scheme to get your money out of your pocket. But one, I’m giving a go at, and I’m not necessarily going to, it’s alright, but it’s called the cinnamon hack. And it’s by your consumption of cinnamon and a few other things mixed in in the morning and it deals with your diabetes. I’m a person trying out the cinnamon hack. And tonight I want to talk about still keeping this topic of how do you know your
[00:13:34] purpose by referring to the John the Baptist hack. The hack bit’s a bit hard to explain, except it is a thing you do beforehand. It’s a thing that you do in order to have something even better happen. And there is a lesson for us to learn about finding our purpose from John the Baptist. And so tonight do come at 5 o’clock to hear about the John the Baptist hack. But getting back on our topic for today, we noticed that something very interesting is here. That on one hand it refers to the beginning. And the book of Genesis talks about that and some of the language used here is almost a copy if you were to find the Greek copy of the Old Testament. The original one was in Hebrew. But if you found a Greek copy, some of it is very much found at the beginning of each of the gospels. In the beginning, we’ve got it here in John. Back in the book of Genesis it talks about in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He created everything. And talks about how God
[00:14:48] set things up. And if you read those first early chapters, you realize that God created humanity and put him in a paradise. But the paradise to get a paradise for man was not what was God’s purpose, it was just where he put him. God’s purpose had to do with his relationship with that created couple in the end. And they found their purpose in what God had done. And now our passage is referring to the fact of the parallel between talking about in the beginning of creation and also the everlasting beginning of the son. Begotten but not made. The one who always was son to the always being father. You’ll never untie that fully. There’s a mystery. He’s eternally father. He has eternally a son. And they relate to each other. I might just say that the very way that they’re described in the beginning is in the beginning he was with God. And the little word with that’s chosen is the word not to be alongside where you’re going down the road holding hands. But it’s face to face. Pross. In the
[00:16:23] beginning the father and the son were face to face in relationship and in communication. And though there are times when one member of the trinity is the chief person doing it, never to the extent of the others being left out. But there is some specialization. What’s given to the son and what’s given to the Holy Spirit and what the father chooses to get done. And it just says God. There’s such a mystery in that. You could dwell on it all week long and you’d never exhaust it. And this one who is face to face with God. This one created for our human race in the garden of Eden. And explanation and an existence that didn’t need to have anything else to do. They were given a job of looking after the garden. They were given a job to name the animals. They were given things to do. But the essence of their raison d’etre wasn’t just that you do those things. Do you know that those same sorts of things, looking after the gardens,
[00:17:45] versus looking after the planet Earth, looking after the animals—human beings find purpose in doing it. And you find people all around. You could watch on TV the people who love the animals and over in Africa, and they’re tending to them and they’re caring for them and they’re trying to help nature. Yeah, there is a sense in which we have in our humanity certain aspects that all of us have different measures of, but we do find some of our purpose in terms of how we exist, that which is given to us from the beginning. But what’s interesting is in this passage as we go on further down and we go to the next little part of John, let’s see if I’ve got it, let’s go to the next step, John 1 and verse 6. I think it was the verse I wanted
[00:18:37] to be, oh well, I didn’t tell you, sorry, but you’re doing well. And it says about this, go past John the Baptist pit, you’re going to do that tonight. And when we get down to, there we go, in what I can see is the second half of the screen, do they see up there? Oh, thank you, you’ve done well. But you’ll notice how it says up here about him being the true light. And then it says he came into the world and the world didn’t know him. They didn’t receive him. But to as many as, verse 12, who believed in his name, he gave the right to, and notice the next word, he gave the right to become children of God. Now that’s unusual because creation also made us a child of God. That idea of being a child of God or we being children of God has two parts of it. One by creation, we’ve wrecked it a lot, so not everybody cares for the animals in Africa, some go on to shoot
[00:19:48] them to get their tusks. Not everybody does all the things that creation has set us up to be good things for humans to do. But nonetheless, there is a sense that you can find meaning to human existence in that which is ours through creation. And even people who are not Christians or people of other faiths or people who don’t have any religion, nonetheless often displays something about them that’s just there because God put it in all of us as human beings. How to understand that we’re sinful, some people mean it’s all been obliterated and we don’t have anything of the image of God. That’s not totally true. I liked the illustration best to liken the humanity to be like a castle I saw when I visited Scotland. Some of my forebears are Scottish. And then when I went over there and walked around the streets, there’s a strange feeling of being at home. It happened to be also in England and also
[00:20:53] in France because I’ve got forebears that come from those places. And I don’t know what psychological tricks was going on in here that I just feel at home in Scotland. And we went around this big lake. We found an old castle. It was so beautiful. It was broken down. It was useless for getting shelter inside. There were birds that were flying out of it all everywhere, scary birds. But this castle, you could see the beautiful lines in which it was made. I think in World War II, it might have got bombed and gutted. It was no longer useful for the purpose it was made, but still it was beautiful. I think that’s a description of humanity. But no matter how much sin is ravaged it, if you meet a person whose life is really wrecked totally from sin or from other people’s sins or by clashes of war or by cancers and things that go wrong, yet you meet a person who you can
[00:22:05] see like that castle, the beauty of how it was made by God. This is that aspect of being the child of God from creation. But our passage in front of us says, it says, go back a verse or so from what’s on there now, he, I think it was verse 12, yeah, but to all who did receive him. That’s Jesus coming into the world to be the Saviour, to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, his name, Jesus Jehovah saves the beans, who believes in his salvation, who trusted his name, all who believe in his name, he gave the right to become, and that’s the word I want to underline, that there’s another type of discovering your purpose when you find out what you’re meant to become in Christ, when you come and receive him. Not only just the beginning moment of accepting him as your Lord and Saviour and Prince and King, not only that
[00:23:24] coming to him in the first place, whether it be a gradual process you didn’t notice, you were just taught the scriptures and you ended up trusting him and somewhere down the line you say, oh look, I believe this, I don’t know when it’s darling. You don’t have to have a crisis conversion necessarily, it is a crisis but your understanding of it might have come slowly, that’s not the point. But all who have received him end up that some things happen because they became the children of God and there is an application of the term child of God which is not just your child of God because you’re human, you’re created, but because you’ve come to Christ. And when you have that transaction of coming to Jesus, something happens and you become that which can have his divine
[00:24:25] purpose. And the divine purpose for every person who’s actually become a Christian is found in Jesus. It’s found in Jesus and the deeper you go into his word and the more you take his promises and the more you experiment, as how the the promises of prayer and so you try praying and see how you get to learn how to pray. The more you learn to do what this book says because it is the Word of God, the more you take up having become someone who is a child of God, the more you’ll find his purpose it actually just comes out as your purpose. You don’t have to stress about it. You don’t have to say what am I to do where am I to go I want to tell you just go closer to Christ and he’ll shove you, he’ll lead you. Sometimes he tells you I met people who knew when they came to Christ what
[00:25:34] their purpose was and other people who later in life as they came closer to Jesus discovered is outworking their purpose. I remember visiting my sister down in Canberra when she had her first child and he would be my nephew and my children’s cousin. And I went down to visit and both Jenny and Neil, her husband, were working and were out during the day they left me in the house. I didn’t mind. But I got talking to the neighbour and this was a brethren lady and with great delight she told me how, I think in her later years, she found her purpose as a Christian. She told me it was in writing letters. Now being in the brethren church, they weren’t let do too much as women but she found something God led her to do, to write letters, those sort of semi-prophetic letters or letters that told people things and God blessed them through them. And it’s something Jesus did
[00:26:48] through her and she found it. I’ve had some people recently talk about our church which is very encouraging as to how many people there are here who are serving the Lord. One way or another in different forms, some of it totally away in their work, some of it to do with missions overseas, some of it to do with what they do on Sundays and when we have our fellowship time after the service, there’s people, we have people here who’ve got eyes to see someone who needs a talking to or needs a helping with or what. And I got a beautiful bouquet of praise for our church as to how many people there were in it who were doing things for the Lord to bless someone else. And that’s something that comes to you and if you’re a baby Christian, you probably don’t know it. And you think you go to church because you like this church because you like what they offer or you’ve
[00:27:59] got a family and so this church suits your family because they can each have a slot of being benefited by coming. But across time, as you give yourself to come closer to Jesus, you’re going to discover that there’s a purpose that’s coming out of you, but it’s not for you. You get blessed in it, there’s nothing more a blessing. I discovered this first as a teenager who went to beach missions and you had to pay your money for the week for the food that you’re going to eat and then you got woken up at six o’clock or something and you worked flat out all day and they had to do things and then you got home at the end, absolutely tired, and you told your family you loved it. Somehow you found your purpose not in what was for you, you found it in what Jesus did through you. That’s where the purpose lies. The Bible teaches that we all have a gift of some sort or other but it doesn’t always turn
[00:29:15] up a parent. You have to go deeper into Jesus. The gift will be found in something Jesus does through you. The purpose is actually, in the long run, not what you do, it’s what he does and repeatedly you know it’s your gift. That’s where your purpose lies. You have become the Children of God. You’re the Children of God already in your humanity and there’ll be things that suits you in your humanity. There are some people just expert at using their hands, there’s other people who are experts at different things and you meet people who are really experts in learning highfalutin theories. Thank goodness for them. They can make the rockets. If there weren’t people who were good at the theories, those rockets would all go crooked. But thank goodness that there are people who have different styles of expertise, but that’s them. But the purpose God does through them in that activity is the actual
[00:30:26] gift we’re talking about. And it’s the most marvellous thing in your life to discover that something’s been happening like that lady down in Canberra. And she just had such a beautiful sense of smile and having found in life how she could be used. Writing letters. Something more, I shouldn’t say this, but to me I could, that would never be easy for me to do, sit at home writing letters, but see how God worked in her. Now this morning, it’s this question that I’m asking you, have you found your purpose? Don’t look at it just to this job or that job. That’s not your purpose. The purpose is what Jesus does in you. The purpose is something you won’t ever have until you have become a son of God. And if we were to track back what the term in the Bible, sons of God, means, that’s what it means, God working through you. Like Nebuchadnezzar looking in on the burning fiery furnace and
[00:31:50] they threw three of the young men in there, all bound up and tired. There was a big hole that you could stand on the side of this big furnace thing, stand back far enough so you weren’t going to get too sizzled. And he and his experts were there standing and they looked inside and he got a sudden shock. Did we not throw in three? And they were tied up, but I see four and they’re walking around and they’re not hurt. And then he said, the fourth is like unto the Son of God. Some people in modern translations, it’s sort of words that he was having a recognition of the deity of Christ. I don’t think that’s what the phrase meant back then. It meant it looks like a God, but he’s walking, he looks like a man and he looks like God. We call that a theophany, an appearance of God in the Old Testament. Or you could call it a Christophany, if your theology teaches you like mine does, that it’s actually the second person of the Trinity before he becomes
[00:32:59] the Christ, the pre-incarnate Christ. The proper name for that is Christophany. And Nebuchadnezzar saw this fourth one and by his presence he delivers the three faithful young men. And so Nebuchadnezzar has to call them out of the fire. That’s a bit of description, a description of what God does often to his people. Not always, sometimes his will was to let them burn. There’s many a martyr that’s happened under God’s will, so don’t just think only the ones that get rescued are nice people and the rest must have sinned. It’s not like how it is. But he saw this fourth person who he said, it’s the features of deity that you’ll see in the eternal Son of God. The Father, the eternal Father’s son that he’s always had, this one that he and the Holy Spirit and he agreed would come down to earth and take on humanity by being born Mary’s child. What a gospel we have of the birth of the eternal Son. Now he becomes the Son, not just the one who always was
[00:34:19] and always will be, which he is eternally, but he’s the Son who’s begotten by being born Jesus. And the Father in heaven who’s already got him as a son can say, this is my begotten Son when he was born Jesus, always eternal Son, but now he’s been born and just as Jesus was born and it was a spiritual thing, so there is an equivalent moment for us when we come to Christ and receive him as our Lord and Saviour to all, verse 12, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. And I finish my talk on raison d’être by asking you, have you become that special sense of child of God by being born through taking Christ as Lord and Saviour? And are you continuing through his word, his divinely given book whereby he speaks, where he’s often the content, sometimes it’s hidden in some of the Old Testament, you could realise that speaking more than just puts the surface topic. This is the Word of God and the chief topic all the way through all that new
[00:35:46] is actually Jesus. Or you say, that’s a big boast, big belief, well you look up Luke 24 and you’ll find Jesus saying just this. He interpreted in all the scriptures the things concerning himself and one of the things that occurs to us when we study the Word of God and let it continually seep into us and change us is this who is the light becomes the revealer to us of all things. It makes you wise and you know your own raison d’être. It is to be close to him and to let him be the one who dictates the way. Let’s have the Word of Prayer. Heavenly Father, I praise you for this passage. I think I’d like to preach on it every week. I can’t do that. But Lord I praise you, praise you Lord for who you are. O our Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal one who was with the Father face to face, this one who’s now become begotten, born of a human. Not that you stopped being the Divine Son but you became the Divine Son. Human, seen, personage, in order to bring God amongst us we praise you for that Father. Help us take up the offer to come to know you more and more and as we come to know Jesus we don’t need anything else to tell us our raison d’être. He is our raison d’être. Thank you Jesus. Amen.