Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In week 2 of Life’s Big Questions, we consider the question of meaning and purpose. It’s the question that seems to chase us throughout our lives as teenagers, young adults, and for many, it continues to chase us as we grow older. What question is that? Why am I here? What is the meaning and purpose of life?
The seats in the back of cop cars are not comfortable. At all.
They don’t have any cushions, no leather, they are just hard plastic. Needless to say, it’s not a fun place to be—the back of a cop car.
Some parts of that night I remember vividly. Other parts are foggy.
We had gotten pulled over in Fort Wayne. And the next thing I knew, I was somewhere I never thought I’d be. I was worried. I was scared. What would my dad say? What would my mom say when she found out?
Did I mention those seats were uncomfortable?
It’s dark. It’s late. And we’re driving down N. Anthony Blvd. The view of familiar places becomes altered when you’re sitting in the back of one of those cars.
What would my dad say? Well, I didn’t have to wonder about what my dad would say for very long. Because I was taken back to his house. Yes, I wasn’t arrested. But my step-mom at the time was. She had a warrant for something minor if I remember correctly. And I was with her while we were on our way to the store or something.
Here’s the point: Why we are where we are matters.
Why I was there mattered. The why of my location impacted the purpose and the significance of that moment.
Why am I here?
And that brings us to this week’s big life question: why am I here?
When you’ve asked that question, maybe you didn’t word it that way. There’s all kinds of ways to ask it:
- What is the meaning of life? What’s it all about? Who are we?
Why are we here? What are we here for? - What is the origin of life?
- What is the nature of life? What is the nature of reality?
- What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of one’s life?
- What is the significance of life?
- What is meaningful and valuable in life?
- What is the value of life?
- What is the reason to live? What are we living for?
When you boil it down, when we ask the question, why am I here? we are yearning for an answer to the meaning of life.
And meaning really has two parts to it. (1) purpose and (2) significance.
In other words, we’re asking, is there an intent to our existence and do our lives, does our very existence have any meaning beyond ourselves? Is our existence a piece of a bigger story? Are we a part of a grander narrative?
3/4 of the World Thinks About This Question
It has been shown that nearly 3/4 of the people around the globe think about the meaning of life on a regular basis.
And since most of the people in the world are thinking about the meaning of life and asking some version of the why am I here? question, it’s reasonable to assume that there will be an assortment of answers offered.
Answers to the meaning of life
- The meaning of life is to live your truth. What’s true to you? Live that out. Live your truth.
- To live your dreams. In fact, there are plenty of self-help gurus out there who will gladly help you decipher your life’s purpose and meaning. Here’s how the recipe goes:
- Consider your dreams
- Clarify your values
- Set some goals
- Figure out what you’re good at
- Aim high
- Go for it!
- Be disciplined
- Believe you can achieve your goals
- Involve others
- Never give up!
- The meaning of life is to achieve biological perfection. To live forever or die trying. To keep your consciousness even after your physical body dies through downloading your brain onto a computer (I’m not kidding).
- The meaning of life is to seek wisdom and knowledge.
- The meaning of life is to do good.
- Life or human existence has no real meaning or purpose because human existence occurred out of a random chance in nature, and anything that exists by chance has no intended purpose. Life has no meaning, but as humans we try to associate a meaning or purpose so we can justify our existence.
- And if all this talk about the meaning of life frustrates you, then join David Seaman in saying, “The meaning of life is to forget about the search for the meaning of life.”
- Or go with the American dream as it has evolved: work, retire, and get a hobby.
- Or feel free to look inside yourself. Your meaning is what you decide it is.
- The meaning of life is that this is all an illusion.
- The meaning of life is to keep doing this life over and over again until we get it right.
Create or discover
At the core of these answers are two categories: created meanings or discovered meanings.
In other words, people have made a choice. They either believe that the meaning of life is up to them to create or it is up to them to discover.
It is either a subjective creation of their own volition. Or it is objective and discoverable, but it is not up to them to dictate.
Another answer to consider
And while many people have offered many different answers to the question why am I here? there is yet another answer to this question that we’re going to consider. And that is what God says about the matter.
I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced that He’s an expert on this matter.
So strap on your seat belt. You’re going to need it.
Isaiah 43:6-7—Created for His Glory—Microscope/Telescope
God is speaking to Israel here through the prophet Isaiah and in the midst of speaking to Israel, God drops a truth bomb of epic proportions that was true for Israel and is now true for the Jews and Gentiles who are in Christ Jesus, who are in God’s family called the church.
Here’s what He says.
6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back!’
Bring my sons from far away,
and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
7 everyone who bears my name
and is created for my glory.
I have formed them; indeed, I have made them.”
Created for His glory
Did you catch that?
They, we, were created for God’s glory.
Why am I here?
I am here for God’s glory. What does that mean?
It means that I am here to magnify the truth about who God is. I’m here to honor Him, to magnify Him.
Microscope/Telescope
Think about this: there are two ways to magnify something. (John Piper gave this illustration and I think it’s helpful.)
You either use a microscope and make small things big. Or you use a telescope to make big things that are at a great distance closer to their true size.
Too oftentimes, we treat God like He is small. We consider Him a little here and a little there. He is on our mind a little here and a little there.
We do not glorify God by magnifying Him through a microscope. We magnify Him through a telescope. He is mighty. He is light. He is the source of all things. He is love. He is holy. He is beyond our comprehension. He is full of grace and truth.
And He created us for His glory. He created us so that we would be living testimonies and telescopes magnifying Him to all people.
Going Back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3 — With God/Know God
But let’s go back to the beginning because I think it shows us the picture of what God had in mind when He created us for His glory.
As we talked about last week, God created all things. And as He created, He would comment on the progress of the canvas He was painting. He created the Universe and He called it good. He filled it with planets and stars. He called it good. He created the earth, He created water, He created plants. He called it good. He created animals and fish. He called it good.
But then He did something different. He made human beings in His own image. He made human beings to be like Him and then the canvas went from being good to great. And this was far before Jim Collins wrote his book. God’s creation went from good to great.
And what do we see moving forward?
We see God being with Adam and Eve. We see Adam and Eve knowing God. They dwelled together in the garden. They enjoyed each other’s company. God walked with them. He dwelled with them. They knew their God. They knew their Father. They knew their King. And He knew them.
But then that relationship was fractured when they dishonored God by doing the exact thing He told them not to do. The beings that were made for His glory, that were made to honor Him, that were made to magnify Him, they dishonored Him, they ceased to live out their purpose. They elevated themselves above Him.
And ever since then, we have had a relational void in our souls.
So what do we see? We glorify God by knowing Him and honoring Him
So what do we see here? We were made for His glory. And what does that look like? It looks like knowing God and honoring Him.
But sin shattered our ability to do that. And so sin came in and separated us from the source of life. And with that came death.
Jeremiah 31:33-34—He will change us—Restore knowing Him
But God isn’t leaving us in our mess. He has been up to something ever since. And He speaks through the prophet Jeremiah 600 years before the birth of Jesus and tells His people about what He is going to do in the future.
33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.
God is going to do something new. In fact, He already has.
He’s saying, you need to be changed. I’m going to change who you are. Why? Because I want you to know me again.
This is the beauty of what Jesus has done.
He has bridged the chasm that separated us from God. Through His blood, we are brought back to God and we are able to KNOW God again.
In Ephesians 2, Paul talks about how this new covenant, through Jesus, includes both Jews and Gentiles. And what that means is that the question why am I here? has an answer for all people.
Romans 11:36-12:1 — Means Instead of Ends
If you were here last week, I said that how we answer the question where did I come from? impacts the way we answer all the rest of life’s big questions.
Here Paul connects the question of our origin with the question of the meaning of life.
Read Romans 11:36-12:1
36 For from him and through him
and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever. Amen.
12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.
From God, through God, and to God are all things. He deserves all the glory forever and ever.
And in light of that, here’s what our response ought to be: to offer our everything to Him who owns everything as a living sacrifice that would be pleasing to Him, set apart for Him. And when we do that, what we’re really doing is worshiping Him.
But how do we do that? — 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 — Holy Spirit
But how do we do that? Scripture tells us.
19 Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you,whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.
Do you see what this means?
The meaning of life is to glorify, know, and worship God the Father through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We were created for His glory. We were created to magnify Him.
But we can’t do that, we can’t live out our purpose in life, we can’t live out our why for existence apart from Jesus.
We can’t glorify God apart from Jesus. We can’t know God apart from Jesus. We can’t worship God apart from Jesus.
In the same way, we can’t glorify God apart from the Holy Spirit’s power. We can’t know God apart from the Holy Spirit’s presence. We can’t worship God apart from the leading of the Holy Spirit.
It’s all about God.
Why am I here?
It’s not about me. It’s about Him.
Don’t Waste Your Life
Young people, don’t waste your life. And those of you who are more seasoned in this thing called life, don’t waste it.
Don’t buy into the lie that you can find purpose apart from Jesus. Don’t buy into the lie that you can find meaning in your life by simply looking within yourself and living your truth and writing your destiny and chasing your dreams.
Don’t buy into the lie that your best life is to get a good job, pursue a lot of pleasure, maybe get a family, buy a house, work, work, work, retire, and then start enjoying life.
Your best life is lived when you come to the end of yourself and you realize an important truth.
We are better means than we are ends…
God created us for His glory. We were created to be instruments of worship. We were created to be spotlights shining on Him. We were created to know Him and love Him and honor Him.
But what we tend to do is to diminish God, ignore God, and elevate ourselves.
We tend to make ourselves into the ends of life. In other words, we make our own pleasure and our own glory the goal.
But we are terrible ends. We are means. When we make ourselves ends, we become ugly living examples of selfishness.
Individualism Enslaves You
No matter how we slice it, we have been influenced by the broader culture we are a part of in Western Civilization.
We believe in individualism and we oftentimes let that creep into how we understand our meaning and why we exist.
We look out for what’s in it for me, what’s best for me, how can I get ahead, how can I live my dream, how can I be more free to do what I want, and all the while we are enslaving ourselves to a master that will inevitably let us down—ourselves.
But there is a better way. The way of our real why.
Draw Near (The Story Flipped From Gen. 3—They Hid) James 4:8
God created us to glorify Him and know Him. But when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, sin stained all of creation. And when God entered the garden, Adam and Eve, knowing they had dishonored God, knowing that something was wrong, knowing that their relationship with God was fractured, they hid from God.
They were created to know Him. They were designed to be with Him. Their why was the way of knowing God. But because of sin, they hid.
But thanks be to God that He flipped the script of the story of humanity. That through Jesus, we no longer need to hide.
Now we can what we yearn for and were created for…
James 4:8 “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
Humanity went from being with God and knowing God to hiding from God and now, through Jesus, we can draw near to Him and He will draw near to us.
Captain
Ami Ayalon said, “when a captain is without direction no wind on Earth will take him there.”
I’m curious. Who is the captain of the ship you’re on?
Are you trying to be the captain? Are you floating directionless in the middle of the sea?
Or are your sails full of air and is your direction headed to the heart of God?
Is your life, as it is now, drawing near to God or are you avoiding Him?
Are you mindful of Him or is He an afterthought?
Is your life a means to glorifying and honoring and magnifying the awesomeness of God?
Or is your life an end in and of itself? Is your life characterized more by mindless wandering or by worshipful stepping?
Do you surrender to the Holy Spirit everyday and ask Him to have His way with you? Or do you only go to God for what’s in it for you?
Why are you here? I want you to really wrestle with that.
Why are you here? Because why we are where we are matters.
Scripture is clear:
The meaning of life is to glorify, know, and worship God the Father through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We are to tell of His glory, to love people and tell them about what God has done in our lives and what He desires to do in theirs.
We are to magnify Him to others. We are to serve each other, love each other, encourage one another, bear one another’s burdens. Our togetherness, the church’s togetherness should be a witness to a world that is asking “is Jesus real and does He make a difference?”
Without Jesus, we cannot live out the why of our existence. — Invitation
