What's the Meaning of Life - Philip Hess

We make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to Him. The motivation for obedience is to be well-pleasing.

But my message this morning is, what is the point of life? You could maybe just abbreviate and say, what's the point? Sometimes we feel discouraged in life. We're not sure why we're here.

We don't know what to do next. And we say, what's the point? What's the point of it all?

So I typed the word Jesus Christ into my search bar on Google this past week, and Google has this handy little way of telling you how many results, how many hits you get, and declared up there in that bar, 516 million results.

I'm not entirely sure what that means. I know that means a lot of a lot of results for the term Jesus Christ. And then I typed in the question, what is the meaning of life into the search bar? And again, I don't know how Google's algorithms work and how they come up with this stuff, but it returned 10 billion 490 million results. That's about 20 times as many.

So there's a lot of people that are interested in that question. What is the meaning of life? What is the point of life?

A lot of people are looking for meaning. A lot of people are trying to understand why they're here, what to do with their time. And unfortunately, most people are getting the wrong answers. So if you type in a question like, what is the meaning of life, and you start looking through, you can find lots of answers to that question. Here's a couple that I found.

And some of these are the sort of first answers that come up. A bold headline declared, what is the meaning of life? A study found the answer. That ought to be interesting, right? The study found out what the meaning of life is.

And I copied a line out of this article that was a lot more of the same. It said, when you find more meaning in life, you become more contented. Whereas if you don't have a purpose in life and are searching for it unsuccessfully, you will feel much more stressed out.

Okay, well, so I guess the meaning of life is to find some purpose in life so that you can be happy and healthy, according to this article. Find some purpose, and then you'll have meaning. That sounds somewhat circular to me.

Another fellow suggested to this question. This is from a magazine. The article title was, what's the point of life? Big questions. Perhaps the wisest thing we could try to do is to make peace with pointlessness. This is not so much a prescription for personal happiness as a petition on behalf of creation. Right now, expressions of human purposefulness are transforming the planet, reshuffling the biosphere, altering the atmosphere, and changing the chemistry of the oceans.

We've ushered in a new geological age, the Anthropocene, which is likely to be marked by the highest extinction rate since the asteroid impact it did in the dinosaurs. So there you go. Just make peace with pointlessness. Lots of bad things are happening. Can't do much about it. You might as well get used to it.

I don't know about you. I don't find that to be a totally satisfying answer for finding meaning in life. From the website quora.com, someone provided a list of answers. You might find these interesting. The religious answer, to be tested and returned triumphant to an eternal reward.

The evolutionary answer, to survive long enough to reproduce and ensure the propagation and advancement of the species. The selfless answer, to help others as much as possible. Purely capitalistic answer, to amass and generate as much wealth as you can.

The hedonistic answer, to have a pleasurable time. The singularity answer, to help advance technology to the point of exponential awesomeness. The nationalistic answer, to help your country continue to be the best. The vainglorious answer, to achieve historic cultural immortality through writings, conquests, or deeds.

Now, perhaps not many of those answers to what is the point of life sounded very meaningful to you, but as you look around, it's even if many people wouldn't say, for example, that the answer or the meaning of life is to amass and generate as much wealth as you can, there's a lot of people who clearly are living their life based on that belief.

Maybe there's not many people that would say, oh yes, the purpose of life is to have a pleasurable time. Some would. But as we look around, we can see that for a very large group of people, that is all they really see as the point of life. At least that is what they're attempting to do with their life.

So a lot of people are looking for how to find meaning in life, getting the wrong answers. We, of course, have the answers been given to us, and we're very thankful for that. As we think about these wrong answers people get, deep with inside many people, perhaps not everyone, there is a wish to be important, to leave an enduring legacy.

But think about how few names actually go down in history in this world we live in. How many people actually get to leave a legacy that many people know about or care about? Few names go down, the rest are forgotten.

So let's think about outside the Bible. We all have a bunch of Bible names memorized. How many people that lived 3,000 years ago, this is 200 years before the poet Homer, can you think of outside of the Bible? How many names have survived?

You can probably come up with a couple, but not very many.

Many of us here, or at least some of us here, are descended from the Anabaptists. Maybe more of us have taken on an idea of an Anabaptist heritage. This movement started just 500 years ago. That's pretty recent.

And it produced 5,000 martyrs, or at least several thousand martyrs, approximately. But how many Anabaptists from 500 years ago can you think of the names of? I took a pencil and paper, pen and paper, and sat down to think about this question. And I came up with a list of less than 20. Now, if I had read through the Martyrs of Mir recently, which I have not, maybe I would have a good many more.

But even my faith heritage, I don't know the names of that many people off the top of my head.

So we're pretty limited as human beings. Our brains are very finite in their understanding and their ability to remember. And we only have a few years in this life to accomplish anything. So I've been adding on to my house for the last year. I'm just amazed at how long it takes. It doesn't really feel like I'm getting anything eternal done. I'm building this house. Maybe it'll last for 200 years if I'm lucky. Somebody else doesn't think they can use the space better for something else.

And I'm only going to get to live in it for a fraction of that time. And I'm putting all this effort into something that feels like it's not that important. And that's kind of how life is. We spend a lot of time just trying to stay alive.

So as I think about the limitations that have been placed on us as humans, I've come to a conclusion. We were not placed here to get something done, particularly. That is not the particular point of life. Rather, we were placed here to become something that God wants us to become.

Now, don't get me wrong. Some things might get done in that process. Praise the Lord if He uses you for some great work. He does. But God has the ability to get a lot of things done all by Himself. He can make the entire universe in six days.

He can make a donkey talk. He can calm the stormy seas at His word. And He can even use pagan emperors to accomplish His will. So I don't think God is primarily looking for some accomplishment in the external physical world from your life. But He's looking for you to become something.

And that, I think, is because He is interested in a bride. He's looking for you to be part of that bride.

And perhaps some of you men, when you were looking for a bride, you were looking for a woman of accomplishment. That's not exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for a friend. Now, there was a time when men did live over 900 years. And talk about having time to get something done. That's a long time.

So let's just imagine for a moment that this is the year that Methuselah dies. According to the Masoretic text, at 969, 2022, Methuselah is going to pass away. Methuselah, by the way, was born back in the year 1053.

And the next year, the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox Church will go through the great schism.

In 13 years, William the Conqueror will invade England and bring the English people under French rule. The Old English, the language that is being spoken in England, is totally unrecognizable to us. You would not be able to understand it.

When Methuselah is 46, the First Crusade will capture Jerusalem.

Well, we're going to skip over a few centuries of Methuselah's life. As he passes his 330th year, John Wycliffe, the first translator of the English Bible, dies.

As Methuselah turns 493, Christopher Columbus discovers America. Methuselah hits 470, and the Protestant Reformation is underway. Martin Luther has started it six years before.

Methuselah turns 558, and the King James Bible is translated into English. He turns 723, and the American people revolt against King George. He turns 886, and the world turns to war, World War II. No doubt he would sigh. He has seen a lot of wars.

2022, this is his final year. Talk about some time to get something done.

Now, Methuselah lived in a world that was very different from our world. We don't really have any sure idea of why people lived so long back then. Almost certainly their genetics were better. Maybe the environment was better. Maybe it was a healthier world to live in. We don't really know why.

We do know that God somehow changed something because at the time of the flood, human longevity went into a nosedive. And it didn't take too many centuries until it leveled out into what we have today. Moses said, "Three score years and ten, and if by reason of strength we have four score years, yet is there strength, labor, and sorrow." That was something that had happened between the time of the flood and the time of Moses.

So I don't know how God changed that, but apparently God would rather have us live a few years and have just enough time to become what He wants us to become and to live hundreds of years so we could really get some things accomplished.

Think about how it worked out for men to live for 900 years. The records we have from before the flood are fairly sketchy, but it didn't seem like it worked out very well for them. Things got so bad so quickly that God said that Noah was the only righteous person left, or his family was the only righteous family.

And maybe life was too easy for those people. Imagine if you had six or eight hundred years to experiment with sin and get hardened in your sin before you had to face your mortality. What would that do to your soul?

Even today, we see that the vast majority of people who are willing to follow Christ do so in their youth. We praise the Lord for those who come to Christ at an older age. But a statistic that's been thrown around in America, the average age of conversion to Christianity is 16 years old.

And for every year that a non-Christian grows older than 25, the odds increase tremendously against his or her ever becoming a Christian. Once in a while, someone who's 70 or 80 or 90 becomes a Christian, but this is amazingly rare.

So why? Well, I think it's because people get hardened and they get set in their ways. They learn to cope with life on their terms, and they're not necessarily looking for answers outside of that.

So we only have a few years to get things done. We only have a little strength in which to get things done. Modern technology has greatly amplified that, of course, but God didn't make us all as strong as Samson and able to pluck out city gates and do feats of strength. He has put very definite, very clear limitations on us as mortals.

So it would appear that God is more concerned about what we become than what we get done. Let's think about Abraham. Abraham is the father of the faithful. What did Abraham accomplish with his life? What did Abraham really get done?

Well, he sacrificed some cattle and sheep to the Lord as burnt offerings. He fed a meal to the Lord. I'm sure the Lord appreciated that. I guess he probably ate to be polite. I'm not sure that he was really that hungry. Maybe he was.

Abraham rescued Lot and all the men of Sodom from being carried away as captives of war. That's a pretty big accomplishment. But not long after, everybody that he rescued, except for Lot, got destroyed in the blazing fire.

He submitted to a very painful but minor surgery without anesthetic. I suppose that was an accomplishment. He wandered around without a patch of land to call his own. When he departed from this life, he hadn't left any cities that he built, no towers of marble, no books that he had written, no organizations started.

So what did Abraham really accomplish?

But did I mention that Abraham left behind a son who kept the faith? And did I mention that he left us a record of a hundred-year walk with God, a hundred-year walk of growing in faith? Now, at the beginning of his walk with God, he was willing to lie. He even risked his wife's body to save his own skin.

We shouldn't probably be too hard on him. Maybe some of us wouldn't have done any better. But still, I think he could have done better in that circumstance. But near the close of his life, Abraham has grown to the point where he's willing to lay his very own son on the altar and offer him as a sacrifice as a burnt offering to God.

So as far as I can tell, Abraham accomplished two things in his life. He raised a son, and he became something that God wanted. He became a man of faith. And in the process, he left us a story to teach us what God is looking for: men of faith.

And he was called the friend of God. What a testimony. Wouldn't you like to be called the friend of God? Abraham wasn't called the warrior of God or the green beret of God because he went off on secret missions and got things done.

But he was called something that really counted with God: God's friend. So I want to turn to Titus 2, and we're going to read the passage. And we're going to think about this as your commission. Now, I'm not taking away from a great commission. A great commission is important. We, as a people, we, as a church, are called to fulfill the great commission to the best of our ability.

But in Titus 2, there are words for every Christian. And here's what Paul wants us to do. And as we read through this, I want you to think about how the emphasis here is on being, what God wants you to be.

You are called a human being for a reason. You're not called a human doing because God wants you to be something. But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine that the older men be. Be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, and in patience.

The older women likewise, that they be. He wants them to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things. That they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be. He wants them to be discreet, chased, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.

Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded in all things, showing yourself to be a pattern of good works, in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you.

Exhort bondservants to be, to be obedient to their own masters, to be well-pleasing in all things, not answering back, not pilfering, but showing all good fidelity that they may adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior, in all things.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works.

Speak these things, exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you.

I'll pull two verses out of chapter 3, verse 1. Remind them to be, wants them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work. And verse 8, this is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.

So Paul is describing a sort of people, a people of character. He gives them a description of the kind of characters that he wants them to develop: to be sober, to be godly, to be kind, to be obedient, to be faithful. This is because God is looking for these people to be prepared to be his bride.

Now, perhaps you would rather have a commission like the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul got a personal commission. Maybe someone here will get a personal commission from the Lord. Maybe someone has, and that is wonderful. The Lord gives that. Here's what the Lord told Paul in Acts 26, verse 16. For I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness, both of these things which you have seen, and of those things in which I will appear unto you, delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send you to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them who are sanctified by faith that is in me.

So Paul was given a very specific mission. More than just being obedient to his master, he was told to go to the Gentiles and convert them. And that sounds that's when we think about getting meaning in life, often we're thinking about things like that. How can we do something great for the Lord? And that is good.

If someone is called to that, the Lord calls people to that. Maybe you're feeling called to it. But I think the reality is that the Lord calls few people to be apostles.

And the chances are far, far greater. In fact, if you're a Christian, the chances are 100% that you will be called to the Titus 2 type of life. So if God calls you to the Titus 2 life, can you be satisfied with that?

Can you be satisfied with becoming a pure and holy person, a vessel prepared for the master?

Let's not minimize the importance of the Titus 2 life. Here's a little bit of math. So you have two parents, you have four grandparents, you have eight great-grandparents, 16 great-greats, and so forth. So we have exponential growth in the number of ancestors you have as you go back through the generations.

Now, it's not quite that simple because you have certain people that fill multiple slots the further you go back in your family tree. Someone might be both your uncle and your grandfather in the way that your family tree is constructed.

But just for simplicity, if you go back with a generation every 30 years, by AD 1000, you have 258 million ancestors.

And that is approximately equal to the entire population of the world at that time. So another way to put that is that you were descended from everybody that was alive a thousand years ago. Now, it's obviously that's way oversimplifying it. But if you look up what scientists say about the most recent common ancestor, most people agree that with the possible exception of a few Pacific Islanders or a few tribes in a rainforest somewhere, the possible exception, probably everybody in the world descended from somebody within the last 2000 years.

We're all within 16th, 25th cousins, something like that of each other. Now, think about what that means. So in practical terms, everybody alive today could be descended from the Apostle Peter, just to take one person who lived in the last 2000 years.

And another practical implication is that if everyone had managed somehow, and I don't know how this could have been done, I'm not blaming those who have not accomplished it, but if everyone somehow could raise their children to keep the faith and their children could raise children to keep the faith, everybody in the world today would be a Christian.

I say that to say let's not minimize the importance of raising a godly family, even if you don't get anything big done in life. It will take an enormous investment to do that. It might take all your energy.

Now, we have a lot of singles in the church, and they're special. They have a special place. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7 that he that is married has to think about how to please his wife, but he that is unmarried cares for the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. So single people have a unique, special ability living their lives for God and pleasing him. And I want to bless you in that. I don't know what all kinds of things the Lord is going to call you to do as a single person, but I do know that your basic commission is to be the same, to be a man or a woman of God, becoming more and more like Christ, more and more transformed into his image.

And as you allow him to do that in you, you will have done no small thing, no thing to be ashamed of.

You can accomplish an awful lot in this world that has no eternal benefit. Some people do. Think about Augustus Caesar. Augustus brought peace and prosperity to Rome. He built roads. He established laws. And his achievements were so remarkable that his citizens worshiped him as a god. And the true god, Jehovah, even used him. One instance in which God used Caesar was he had him give a decree that all the world should be taxed. And that decree was what brought Joseph and Mary to the town of Bethlehem for Jesus to be born at the right place, at the right time to fulfill the ancient prophecy.

Here's what historians recorded as Augustus' last words. And I think they did this because historians like to make history sound interesting. Supposedly, he said, "I found Rome a city of clay, but I left it a city of marble." Sounds like a lot of accomplishment. According to his wife, Livia, though, and his adopted son, Tiberius, his last words actually were, "Have I played the part well?

Then applaud as I exit." So what eternal value did his life have?

If your life is not lived for Christ, in Christ, and by Christ, what will it profit? So the Roman Empire is gone. Did Augustus Caesar accomplish anything that will benefit him in eternity?

Now, we read that life described in Titus 2 with a slightly different application to each class of people: young men, old men, young women, older women. And I think that the life in Titus 2 is essentially describing the life of a person who's living the Sermon on the Mount. You think about the Beatitudes: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the meek, and so forth. But Titus 2 life is the Sermon on the Mount life. That's what God is calling us to. What would the impact be if Christians would live that? Mahatma Gandhi said this, "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians.

Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." What if Mahatma Gandhi could have looked at the Christian church and seen a majority of people that looked like Christ? How could things have turned out differently in his life? That is the importance of fulfilling your commission: being like Christ, being a testimony to the world.

So in Hebrews 11, we have what's been called the Faith Hall of Fame. And these are people who are pulled out for us as examples of great faith. There are 16 names in that chapter, 16 names of people who are remembered as heroes of faith. But there's a great number that are referred to, but they're not named. They're called those of whom the world is not worthy.

It says they were tortured, not accepting deliverance. They had trial and mockings and scourgings and a change and imprisonment. They wondered about in sheepskins and goatskins being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. So you might not be on the list of the 16 who get named to have your name go down in history, but you can certainly be on the list of the great cloud of witnesses.

Every one of us can make it to that list, those of whom the world is not worthy. And you know there's something about those 16 people who made it onto the list of the faithful, famous, perhaps we could call them. I don't know if any of them started out and said, "You know, I want to go down in the annals of fame as being one of God's faithful."

They were just being faithful. They were just living their lives. Isaiah was serving in the temple. God called him. David was out shepherding sheep. God used him. Noah was living righteously. God said, "I want you to build an ark."

So they were busy being faithful when the Lord called them to a special work.

As we think about what the Lord wants us to become, I think of a few scriptures from 2 Corinthians 4:16. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. So when your outward man is perishing, that's not much fun. I don't know if you've experienced much of that, either through persecution or health troubles or whatever you're suffering, tapping to us all, although to some of us more imperceptibly. But we can take joy, Paul says, because the inward man is being renewed day by day. We can see the work that God is doing in us to transform us. And we can look to that to find meaning in life.

He is working in us.

2 Corinthians 5:9 says, "We make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to him."

I think that's the answer to what we talked about from Galatians. The motivation for obedience is to be well-pleasing. If you do that, the Lord is going to be pleased with you if you are motivated by love for him.

Paul goes on to say in chapter 7, verse 1 of 2 Corinthians, "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all unholiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord." So in response to what the Lord has promised us and what future awaits us, let's get ready. Let's cleanse ourselves from all unholiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.

Paul, I believe, is encouraging these Christians with a thought of what they're wanting to become.

So here's a poem that I think sums this up nicely. As you think about your mission, the poem is called Your Mission. If you cannot on the ocean sail among the swiftest fleet, rocking on the highest billows, laughing at the storms you meet, you can stand among the sailors anchored yet within the bay. You can lend a hand to help them as they launch their boats away.

If you are too weak to journey up the mountain steep and high, you can stand within the valley while the multitudes go by. You can chant in happy measure as they slowly pass along, though they may forget the singer, they will not forget the song.

If you have not gold and silver ever ready to command, if you cannot toward the needy reach an ever-open hand, you can visit the afflicted or the erring you can weep. You can be a true disciple sitting at the Savior's feet.

If you cannot in the conflict prove yourself a soldier true, if where fire and smoke are thickest, there's no work for you to do. When the battlefield is silent, you can go with careful tread. You can bear away the wounded. You can cover up the dead.

Do not then stand idly waiting for some greater work to do. Fortune is a lazy goddess. She will never come to you. Go and toil in any vineyard. Do not fear to do or dare. If you want a field of labor, you can find it anywhere.

So this message is not about criticizing those who are getting something done. Some people are gifted by God for administrative abilities, and they do get a lot done. And they ought to use their abilities to God's glory. God expects you to do that if you're one of those people.

What I am trying to get at here is not deriving our sense of worth from accomplishments. And what I want to communicate is that if God has placed you in a situation where you just don't feel like you're getting much done, don't be insecure about that.

Ask God how he can continue to make you into what he wants you to become. So there's probably somebody here that has health issues that significantly slow them down. Probably there's somebody here that's struggling to make ends meet, and they feel like all they do is work and sleep and take care of others.

Somebody is single and wishes they could be married.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from working hard for the kingdom, and I don't want to pat anyone on the back for being lazy. But I want to remind us all that it's God's goal to refine us so we can know and love him more.

As we face whatever trials we are facing, we can rest that we are in his hand and let endurance have his perfect work in us.

Thessalonians 4:3, verse Thessalonians 4:3 says, "This is the will of God, your sanctification." May God help us. We can't sanctify ourselves. It's his work in us. At least we can't do it without his working through us. So some years ago, I was on the website quora.com, it's a website where people can ask questions and anyone can answer.

And I found this question. And I read and I looked through the answers to the question, and there were hundreds of answers. And I didn't, as I scanned through pages and pages, I didn't find one Christian answer. That was kind of sad to me. Here's someone that's looking for a purpose in life, and nobody's giving them a Christian response. Now, with so many dozens of pages of answers, I doubt that the person who wrote the question ever read mine, but I'll read their question and my response.

Someone wrote, "I feel like a lost soul without sense of purpose or direction. Sometimes I get this deep sadness within me. I feel like I'm wasting my life away. I don't know how to deal with it, and all I can do is think about it. Has anyone else gone through this? And if so, how did you overcome this?"

I'm a single teenager and an only child in a loving, caring family, but sometimes during the school holidays, when all I do is play video games or surf the web, I get this deep sadness within me. I feel like I'm wasting my life away. I also sometimes feel lost when I think about what will happen after my death. This is due to my desire to be remembered and not forgotten. I don't know what else to do. I don't know how to deal with it, and all I can do is think about it. Has anyone else gone through this? And if so, how did you overcome this?

So here's what I wrote for this individual. Read the book of Ecclesiastes. 3,000 years ago, the richest and most powerful man in the world, King Solomon, got to the end of his rope. He attained great wisdom and knowledge, built houses, planted vineyards, gardens, orchards, and water pools. He had male and female servants and great possessions. He said, "Whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure." But he realized this was all vanity and grasping after wind. He tried wine and women and came to the same miserable conclusions.

What went wrong? You can read his conclusion in chapter 12, verses 13 and 14. I would explain it this way. Man looked for something transcendent, something greater than himself. Some people get all twisted up and look only for satisfaction and pleasures and lusts.

These usually end up being the worst sort of people in society. Others rise higher and look for satisfaction and causes greater than themselves. Sometimes these are good causes, like curing breast cancer and saving the wild hippos. Sometimes they turn out to be terrible, like the Third Reich.

But although many find enough fulfillment to appease their inner longings of these kinds of causes, even they fail to fully satisfy the deepest longings of the human soul. This is because of the way humans were designed. You were created by God to be in a loving relationship with him.

His love and favor is the nourishment that your soul craves. Without the love that comes from him, we starve spiritually. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "He has put eternity in their hearts."

Jesus came to earth 2,000 years ago to proclaim, "Peace on earth, good will toward men." But he also had to tell us the truth. There is only one way to access this peace and good will, and that is by coming to God through Jesus Christ.

Many get offended at this and wonder why God made the rules like this. Those who are offended do not understand the nature of mankind's dilemma. God is as bound by morality as we are. He does not lie. He does not sin.

Gravity is a law that will pull you down and will kill you if it pulls you down hard enough and fast enough. The only way to overcome gravity is to overcome it with a superior force like magnetism, etc.

The only way that God made or even can make to overcome the gravity of the state mankind has gotten into is through what Jesus Christ did to conquer sin, death, hell, the grave, and Satan. You can access the overcoming power he has by coming to him.

Hey, I'm not making this up. You can find it all in the New Testament, which, by the way, in spite of many lies and attempts to destroy its credibility, can be shown by history and logic to be a reliable record of what Jesus said and taught. Every book of the New Testament was written in the first century AD. Read it and follow what it teaches about Jesus. And you can find eternal life and purpose, both now and forever. Life continues beyond the grave, and for those who follow Jesus, there are promises of wonder, excitement, and joy forever.

So that's the record that we have of the Son of God, and we can find the answers to life's questions in it as we study it. And we can find a satisfying relationship with Jesus through surrendering our lives to him and seeking to do his will and let him work in us.

Paul says it this way, "What things were gained to me, these I have counted lost for Christ. Yea, indeed, I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him." That's what Paul sees as the pinnacle of meaning in life, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know him. Paul's heart is longing to know Christ, to know him more deeply because Christ is living in him and working in him, that I may know him in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Peter says it this way as he talks about what God wants to do in us, as he makes us into something, as he helps us to become something. He says that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

It's pretty hard to remember this sometimes when our faith is being tested by fire. It's pretty hard to be excited about it and be positive about it, although Jesus told us to. He said, "If men persecute you, leap for joy," because he wants us to recognize what the goal of this is.

So if you're struggling with something, rejoice that your faith is being tested by fire, and it's going to be refined. It's going to be found to praise, honor, and glory. Peter goes on to say, "Whom, having not seen you, love, though now you do not see him, yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, salvation of your souls."

God's goal for us to receive the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls, becoming his people and his pride. I'll close with this poem. Part of it is the words of a song that many of you are probably familiar with. "Great corruption and iniquity abound on every hand. Evil thoughts and base philosophies persist, but the child of God is planted here according to his plan. You have come into the kingdom for such a time as this.

You have come into the kingdom to do the Father's will. The reward is heaven's everlasting bliss. There's a place that God designed for you. None other can fulfill. You have come into the kingdom for such a time as this.

Do not yield to dreams of grandeur on Jesus' picture gaze. He is calling you to faith and hope and love. He has shown to you a pattern to follow in his ways. You have come into the kingdom to dwell with him above.

You have come into the kingdom to do the Father's will. The reward is heaven's everlasting bliss. There's a place that God designed for you. None other can fulfill. You have come into the kingdom for such a time as this.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, the lowly and the meek, those who hunger and who thirst for righteousness, those who joy in persecution, those who turn the other cheek. You have come into the kingdom to grow in selflessness.

You have come into the kingdom to do the Father's will. The reward is heaven's everlasting bliss. There's a place that God designed for you. None other can fulfill. You have come into the kingdom for such a time as this."