What On Earth Am I Here For?

Welcome to the first Sunday of 40 Days of Purpose: A Show of Hands! Over the next 40 days we’re going to be talking about one thing and one thing only: How to identify and live out God’s purpose for our lives.
The focus of the sermon today is captured by today’s banner. You see there are three hands, they’re kind of joined together . . . but there are question marks on them. It’s as though these hands are saying, “What do I do now? What’s my purpose? What on Earth am I here for?” Well, I suppose you’d expect a preacher to give you that answer from the Scriptures, so let’s take a look at what the Bible has to say about that . . .
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 (selected verses) “The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: 2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." 3 What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? 8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. 11 There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.”
That’s a pretty bleak picture of life, isn’t it? And that’s in the Bible! In Ecclesiastes, the Teacher writes over and over again that everything in life is meaningless! There is nothing new under the sun! Is that true? Is that it? Is that all there is to life? Just a treadmill that we run on, going round and round and round but never getting anywhere?
One of the most horrifying questions I can think of that a person would ask at the end of their life would ask would be, “Is that all? Is that all there is?” And yet we know people or hear of people or are people who wake up every day wondering, “Is that all there is? Is that all I’m going to get out of life? Just another day of work?” I used to work with guys whose philosophy of life was living for the weekend. Every week they’d just kind of slide on by, barely earning their paycheck, until Friday came and they’d take every cent they could possibly afford and blow it at the bars or the casinos, living it up until they had to come back to work on Monday. Those guys had not true sense of meaning or purpose, so they tried to fill themselves up by living for the weekend.
People are hungry for meaning in life. I did a little informal survey the other day. I was at the checkout line in the grocery store when this magazine caught my attention. The big cover story is “How to be (and stay) happy: 3 researched-tested secrets to change your life.” And I thought, “Well, isn’t that interesting . . . here’s an article for people who are interested in being more fulfilled in life. Sounds like finding your purpose.” And then I saw another magazine with a featured article on “Tips that make you SO HAPPY!” And I realized that was two magazines with articles about finding meaning, about finding purpose, in your life. And so I put my stuff down, told the cashier I’d be right back, and I headed over to the magazine rack. And you know what I found? Rack after rack of magazines, each of which—no matter whether it was for guns or quilting—each of which had some article telling you how to be better, to get more, to look nicer, to be healthier, to give your life more meaning. Men—Have Your Best Year! Women—Start The Year Off Right!
Is this a something new? Hardly. These articles are in every magazine, every month. Every month they’ll tell you a new way to be fulfilled, to live a life that is satisfying, a life that has learned its purpose and follows it. But if those articles are in there every month . . . what are they really telling us?
See . . . I don’t want to be like that. I have actual answers I can give you. Stick with me, and over the next 40 days we will learn about not just one, but five purposes for our lives that God Himself has planned for us.
(read together) Ephesians 2:10 says, “10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” So what is His will for your life? What is His plan?
His plan includes 5 purposes for your life, and we will learn what they are in the weeks ahead. But for now let me just tell you that there are 5 purposes, but they can be summed up in four words: Salvation, Redemption, Vocation, and Connection.
Now let’s take first things first. God’s primary plan for you, His absolute will for your life, His biggest purpose for you, is your salvation. In the very first sentence of the very first chapter of Purpose Driven Life, what does Rick Warren say? Right . . . “It’s not about you.” And that’s true, if we are speaking from our point of view. I am not to be the focus of me. But from God’s point of view? It’s all about you. God is crazy about you. He loves you with a passion that can’t be matched. It began at the beginning of time, with the Triune God saying to Himself, Genesis 1:26 “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” When God made you, He fashioned you after Himself, causing you to be a reflection of Him, and He set mankind over everything on earth, the very pinnacle of His creation! It’s as though He wanted to make sure that everything could see what He was most proud of. It means that your picture is on God’s refrigerator.
But what happened? I’ll tell you what happened: we took His great gifts to us, we took God’s love, and we broke His heart with it. We sinned against God—we disobeyed His commands—and we turned our back on Him. And because of that, because of our disobedience, there is only one punishment: We deserve the life we had chosen: a life without God, and an eternity apart from Him. That’s the punishment for sin—a life that is hell and an eternity in Hell.
But because God is so crazy about you, He made a way for you and I to be saved from the punishment we deserve. His plan was simple, but effective: He would die in our place. He would suffer the punishment we deserve. And so Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross to pay for your sins. You know this, you’ve been told it before.
But the thing we’ve got to grasp today is the Why. Why did Jesus have to die? Because to God, an eternity without you was simply not acceptable. God’s love for you is so deep, so wide, so high, so long that He would die in your place. For God, it’s all about you, because He loves you so much.
But for us, it’s all about Christ. Without Christ as the center of our theology, without Christ as the center of our church, without Christ as the center of our lives . . . if He’s not the one thing we return to again and again and again, if we rely upon anything other than Him, then we’ll miss everything we have to talk about over the next 40 Days. Without Christ, there is no purpose in life. Without Christ, life isn’t going to make sense. But in Christ we live and move and have our meaning. In Christ, God says to you, “It’s all about you.” And because of Christ, we turn back to God and say, “Lord . . . it’s all about you.”
If we have that firmly rooted in our minds—that for us it’s all about Christ: about Christ’s purposes for us, about Christ’s purposes for our church, about Christ’s purposes for Our Saviour Lutheran church in Hudson, MI—then we have a solid foundation to build upon not only for the next 40 days, but for the rest of our lives.
The next thing in God’s plan for our lives is Redemption. Now, I understand of course that “salvation” and “redemption” are often synonymous; they often mean the same thing. But I want to make a distinction between the two. See, for me, when I think of “salvation” I think of God saving me from my sin. But when I think of “redemption” I think of the way God takes my past and makes it holy, how He takes all the negative events of my life—my pains, my bad choices, the lessons I’ve learned—and He puts those to use in my new life in Christ. 1 Peter 1:18-19 says, “18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”
How many of you have had experiences you’d rather just forget? Maybe it’s something that’s happened to you, some painful event. But maybe it’s something you brought on yourself through the choices you made. How many of you have something like that? Right, really all of us have. And now tell me, how many of you have been able to help someone else because of your bad experience? How many of you have been able to say to someone who was hurting, “I know exactly what you are going through”? See, we’ve been able to do that because Christ has redeemed our past. Christ even gives purpose to suffering.
It’s all about Christ. He saves us, He redeems us, and He places us into a Vocation. Now, I know that typically when we speak of “vocation” we have in mind the place where we go to work, what we do for a living. Vo-tech schools, things like that. But in theological terms, “vocation” implies every single station of life that you have. “Vocation” is not simply what you do for a living, but vocation is everywhere that God has placed you to interact with others.
Okay, some quick examples: Mothers—show me your hands. God has placed you in the vocation of “mother” for the benefit of your children. Fathers—same thing. How many of you have neighbors? Raise your hand. God has placed you in the vocation of “neighbor” for the benefit of your neighbors. And so wherever you go, whatever you do, whether it’s father or mother or child or an employer or employee or even if you’re a preacher . . . God has a purpose for you being where you are, He has a purpose for placing you there in that particular vocation. His purpose is for you to serve those people that He has placed you in contact with.
Salvation. Redemption. Vocation. And finally, Connection.
In the Scriptures, there is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian. The idea of being able to worship God in your own way, in your own time, without being connected to a local church—that idea is just as foolish as your feet saying, “I don’t like these shoes, so I’m not going to walk anywhere today.” It’s as foolish as your ear saying, “I don’t like what I’m hearing, so I’m not going to listen.” (Despite the fact that children seem to have that ability . . . it’s still kind of ridiculous.)
In some selected verses from 1 Corinthians 12:12-20, the Apostle Paul says, “12 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body-- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. . . .17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”
God’s purposes for you include you being connected to a local church. He places you there—really as one of your vocations—He places you there NOT so that you can be served in the way you’d like, but so that you can serve others. Look around the room today; I don’t care who you are, how long you’ve been here, or what you give—you have a responsibility to everyone else in this room to serve them in the way God has gifted you. It would be just as wrong for you to refuse to serve these others as it would be for me to stand up and say, “I don’t feel like preaching today, so I’m not gonna.” But because it’s not about you, and it’s all about Christ, you function best as a member of His body, performing those unique things for which God has gifted you. It’s part of Christ’s purpose for your life.

Now if you’ll notice, those four letters, when sounded out, spell “service.” I just noticed that the other day. I thought it was appropriate, because God’s purpose for our lives—it can be summed up in God’s service to us and our service to others. It’s all about Christ, what He has done for us, what He has given us, and then how we respond in love toward God and one another.
On the back of your interactive sermon sheet there’s a 40 Days of Purpose card. You may be asking, why 40 Days? Well, the Bible is very clear that God considers 40 days to be a spiritually significant time period. In fact, in the Bible, any time God wanted to prepare people for His purposes, He took 40 days. For instance:

· Noah’s life was transformed by 40 days of rain
· Moses’ life was transformed by 40 days on Mount Sinai
· The spies were transformed by 40 days in the Promise Land
· David was transformed by Goliath’s 40-day challenge
· The city of Nineveh was transformed in 40 days
· Jesus was empowered for ministry by spending 40 days in the desert
· and the disciples were transformed by 40 days with Jesus after the resurrection.

The next 40 days are going to transform your life. I’m absolutely confident of that. I want you to look at this card. Notice, follow along with me.

Believing that God created me for His purposes and that the best use of my life is to fulfill those purposes, I commit the next 40 days to better understanding of God’s five purposes for me.
· I will participate in a 40 days of Purpose small group. We’ve got over 10 of these groups now. If you’re not in one, it’s not too late. You can sign up for a group today. You can still invite an unchurched friend. It’s not too late.
· I will read each day’s chapter from the Purpose Driven Life book. I want to suggest that you schedule a daily appointment to sit down and read it. Either in the morning or at lunch or in the evening; I don’t care when you do it. I’ve got mine on my planner for 9:00 every evening. Schedule it and do it every day for the next 40 days. It will take you about 15 minutes a day.
· I will do my best to hear all 7 messages in this series, The Purpose Driven Life. What I’m going to be saying on Sundays will set up what you’re going to be studying during the week in your small groups. So what we’re talking about today, you’re going to be studying in a more detail this week.

Now, look up here. The fact is, if you added up what time it would take you to do all those things over the next 40 days – if we took the time to add it all up and even if we were real generous—it would still be less than 48 hours total. So here’s my question – is the rest of your life and is all of the rest of your eternity worth 48 hours of your time now? I would think so. I want to ask you to sign this and I want you to take it home, and I want you to put it up on your refrigerator to remind you. Some of you have the dumbest stuff on your refrigerator, so put something significant up there.
I realize that all of us here tonight are at different stages in our spiritual journey. That doesn’t matter. We’re all going to go through this journey together, no matter what stage you are in. Some of you can be called spiritual seekers, and you’re saying, “I’m not even sure I buy this, but I want to just check it out.” Congratulations, great – we’re glad to have you on the journey. Some of you are newer believers and for you I’m very excited because you’re going to get to start off right, like many of us did not. Some of you might be called spiritual stumblers. You say, “I call myself a Christian, but I’m not really very close to God. And I’ve been really, honestly, living for my plans and not God’s.” Well these 40 days are the time to come home. Some of you are strong believers, and you’re going to go deeper with God than you’ve ever gone before and you’re going to bring others along, too. Regardless of where you are in your spiritual journey, listen to this last verse. “It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from – if you want God and are ready to as He says, the door is open.” (Acts 10:35) George Herbert once said, “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” It’s not too late.
Let’s pray: “Dear God, I realize that if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be alive. But because you made me, you must have a purpose for me. Because you saved me, you must have a purpose for me. Because you have redeemed me, you must have a purpose for me. I admit that I focused on my plans for my life, not yours. But I want to know your purposes for me, so I commit the next 40 days of my life to learning about it. Thank you that you made me so you could love me. Thank you that you cared for me even when I didn’t know you. I want a life filled with meaning. I want to start by getting to know you better. So I’m asking you, Jesus Christ, to help me to know it’s all about you. Come into my life and help me to understand your purposes for me. I want to take the first step today. In your name I pray, Amen.”