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Josh McDowell tells about an
executive “head-hunter” who goes out and hires corporation executives
for large firms. This headhunter once told McDowell that when he gets
an executive that he’s trying to hire for someone else, he likes to
disarm him. He says “I offer him a drink, then take off my shoes, take
off my coat, my vest, my tie, throw up my feet, talk about baseball or
football or family or whatever until I get them relaxed; and then, when
I think I have them relaxed, I lean over, look them square in the eye
and ask, ‘what is your purpose in life?’ It’s amazing” said the head
hunter “how top executives fall apart when asked that question”. Then
he told about an interview he had with a fellow recently. He had him
disarmed; he had his feet on the desk talking about football and then
the headhunter leaned over and said, “What’s your purpose in life,
Bob?” And the executive who was being recruited said, without blinking
an eye, “To go to heaven and take as many people with me as I can.”
“Now the first time in my career,” said the headhunter,” I was
speechless.” No wonder. Most people don’t know the answer to that
question, even Christians.
My purpose today is to ask you that
question. “What is your purpose and do you know it?” And as part of
the answer I want to say that God expects you to use all that He has
made you to be and use it to make a difference for Him and His kingdom.
I’ve chosen several scriptures to
read to you this morning. I normally don’t do that but I want you to
hear the witness of the scriptures, the witness of what God is saying to
us. I want you to listen to them carefully; they kind of go in
progression. First from Psalm 139 it talks about how God makes us even
in the womb for a purpose. Reading from Psalm 139 and Eugene
Peterson’s, “The Message” his version:
Oh yes, you shaped me
first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother's womb.
I thank you, High God—you're breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a
creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from
nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from
conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before
you, The days of my life all prepared before I'd even lived one day.
And then from Matthew 22. The commandment we have all heard, the
greatest commandment.
" 'Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it,
says Jesus: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the
Prophets hang on these two commandments."
And finally the familiar parable of the talents. It is the story
of the man going away leaving gifts for servants to use and coming back
to see how they used them. (Matthew 25)
"Again, the kingdom will
be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted
his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another
two talents, and to another one, each according to his ability. Then he
went on his journey. The man who had received five talents went at once
and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with
two gained two more. But the man who had received one talent went off,
dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.
After a long time the master of those
servants returned and settled accounts. The man who had received five
talents brought the other five. He said, “Master, you entrusted me with
five talents. See, I have gained five more.”
His master replied, “Well done, good
and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will
put you in charge of many. Come and share your master's happiness!”
The man with two talents also came.
He said, “Master, you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained
two more.”
His master replied, “Well done, good
and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will
put you in charge of many. Come and share your master's joy!”
Then the man who had received one
talent came. He said, “'Master, I knew you are a hard man, harvesting
where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.
So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See,
here is what belongs to you.”
His master replied, “You wicked, lazy
servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather
where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my
money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have
received it back with interest.”
“Take the talent from him and give it
to the one who has ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more,
and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has
will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into
the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
This is the word of the
Lord.
Please pray with me.
Father, I pray that you will prepare our hearts and minds to hear
what you would have us to hear, each as individuals and as a church, as
well, together. We give this time to you Lord where the word is
preached. Open our ears and our eyes, in Jesus name. Amen.
We are surrounded by
advertising, some good and some not so good. As preparation for today I
have found some things printed on the internet, things that I think will
give you a little bit of a chuckle. Some advertising that you find in
the country and then some other sorts of sayings as well. For example,
there is a slogan on a tow truck in Ohio which says: “We don’t want an
arm and a leg, just all your tows”. (okay, you’ll warm up to this.) Or
a photography shop called Photo-Pro, it’s slogan says: “First we shoot
you, then we blow you up.” Or a restaurant in a fishing town which says:
“Fisherman-- get your first bite here.” In front of a church listing
their pastor’s recent bout with illness: GOD IS GOOD; Dr. Smith is
better. Or, I like this one pretty much, it says: A family named
Husband owns a pest control company and the name of the company is
Husband Exterminating. Or the sign in front a travel agency that says:
“Go away, please”. Or a bargain on a restaurant coupon that says: “Buy
one hot dog for the price of two and received a second hot dog
absolutely free.” A sign in the library: “Last of the big lenders.” And
for you, Paul Tesarek, in a bank window: “Up a tree? Try our branch.”
In a clothing store: “Our prices are trivial per suit.” On a plumber’s
truck: “A straight flush beats a full house.” “Don’t sleep with a drip
tonight. Call a plumber.” “If it wasn’t for your plumber, you’d have no
place to go.” Last but not least, an optometrist’s window: “We’re the
best in sight.”
There is advertising all
around us, some good and not so good. I think particularly the most
insidious advertising is the philosophies that are all around us that
intellectually we’d say are not true and yet they affect our lives. One
of those philosophies, false advertising if you will, is that you and I
are accidents. I’m not here to debate teaching evolution or creation in
school at this point but there is a philosophy out there which we see
everywhere. And that is that we are basically accidents. These
philosophies do affect how we live. After all, if we are accidents,
maybe it really is okay. to destroy thousands of unborn lives every
year. Or if we are all accidents maybe it really is okay. to kill
ourselves, or maybe it is okay to not think very highly of ourselves.
You know in teen age life suicide is a huge problem. I have come to
believe that part of it is the messages that some of our kids hear. I
have always said to my children and to the youth groups I’ve usually
worked with, “you know it really isn’t the music it’s the words.”
Listen to the words. I don’t now how many times I have kids say to me
from youth groups, where ever, “oh we never listen to the words”; but
then they are running around singing them. They do affect. Be
discerning about what the message is in every arena, particularly the
songs. A lot of the songs say life is worthless. The bible says, God
says, “I made you. Your life is a gift.” As David says, “Like an open
book you watched me grow from conception to birth. All the stages of my
life are spread out before you, days of my life all prepared.” Not only
our birth but our lives have purpose because God has given us purpose.
Another false advertising
which I think is even more insidious is that we are here just for
ourselves. You know in this room we probably certainly would deny that
we’re accidents and we would all say we’re not here just to live for
ourselves. And yet, if we’re honest with ourselves if we open our check
books and we open our day timers, we find that ninety-nine percent of
what we do is just about us. You know, God tells us two things. One we
are fearfully and wonderfully made, made in God’s image, special. But
it also says, as Doug mentioned, that we are broken. We’re sinful.
Part of the program of that sinfulness is that we are masters of our own
faith, captains of our own ship. It’s all about us. Almost all that we
do is about our own success and our own lives. So we might say, “Well
what am I supposed to do then.” Well, I really don’t believe that the
bible is rocket science. There’s this kind of myth out there that the
bible is this book that was written several thousand years ago and
nobody can understand it anymore. It just means that you haven’t opened
it and read it. Most of it is pretty simple. Like, “Love the Lord your
God with all your heart and mind and soul and love your neighbor as
yourself.” Of course we can ask, “What does that mean?” That’s a great
question. Our culture again we have become to believe that love is
mostly a feeling so “you’ve lost that loving feeling” and all the songs
that go with it, and certainly it is.
I wasn’t born a
Presbyterian. I chose to be a Presbyterian. I chose it because I love
the theology that goes with it. But no theology, no group, bats a
thousand. One of the things in which I think Presbyterianism has struck
out on is, even in the Westminster confession, it talks about how God is
an emotionless being out there somewhere. We have become to believe
that true worship is only when we have awe and reverence; in other
words, we come in fear of God and certainly there are times we ought to
be full of awe and reverence. But it also says that God is our Father
and our friend and there are times that we should love God with all our
hearts. When it says love the Lord your God it uses the word “agape”
and agape is chiefly an action. You want to know how to love God, serve
God. God made us to serve Him. That’s our purpose. You know we do a
fair job of preparing for life. We start our children out at age, what,
two or whatever it is and we put them in school. Then we raise them up
into all these grades of schooling and then we send them off to college,
and then to graduate school and all these things. We prepare people
for life and there’s nothing wrong with that. I am a great supporter of
education. I said to my children, “college first, marriage second, in
that order, or you’re on your own”. They came to me the other day and
said “we got two out of three so far Dad”. The third one’s working on
it. Nothing wrong with education but we fail in the kind of education
that’s being talked about in the bible. In this parable of the talents,
it is a parable using the image of money. A talent was a huge sum of
money back in ancient days, so even the one talent guy got a huge sum of
money. But the parable is not chiefly about who got what; it’s about
what they did with it. One used it to invest the master’s money, in
this case it’s God’s money or God’s talents or whatever it is, and it’s
not chiefly talking about success in this life. Some of us are wildly
successful in this life. Some are not. Many of you by the world
standards are very successful in this life. What it’s talking about is
using our talents, our resources, our gifts, this gift of life, to
further God’s kingdom; and the message of the talents is that in the
end, that’s what God is going to ask you and me about. “What did you do
with your life, for me? I expect a return on my investment.” We might
say “Oh, Lord I was wildly successful. I had a huge bank account, a
huge house, all of that kind of stuff.” Nothing wrong with that in one
sense but if that’s all you got, do you want to stand before the Lord
with that answer? Often we are failures in the life that counts,
disregarding the most important reality of our relationship with God
until it is too late. Some wag once said most people want to serve God
but only in an advisory capacity. Really true.
Which leads us to the
second thing, loving others; again it’s about serving. A lot of people
say to me, “How am I supposed to love my neighbor, I can’t stand the
guy? How am I supposed to love my children, I can’t stand my” (oh, I
won’t get into that). We can do well by people. We can serve them and
not necessarily love them emotionally. It means to serve. I want to
say something to you that my sound difficult but I really believe it to
be true. If we are not serving God in some way and serving others in
some way in the end our lives are going to be in some sense wasted. I
want you to know what that means when I say serving God and serving
others, I’m not necessarily saying that you have to become clergy or you
have to go to Africa or go to Mexico. You can do it right where you
are. You know I met a wonderful woman in Mexico, Hispanic woman; she
was born in Mexico, she was one of our translators, it was great. She
wound up married to a man in Omaha and she was basically a loan
officer. She was telling me all she was doing and she said “Pretty soon
I’m going to serve the Lord.” I said, “ How’s that?” She said, “Well
I’m going to bible college pretty soon and I’m going to serve the
Lord.” Those of you that were with us remember that; I may have heard
it wrong, but that’s the way I heard it. I had so many people say the
same kind of thing. And yet when she described how she worked as a loan
officer and tried to help people find loans and do all the things in her
daily life, she was really serving the Lord and others. God bless her
to get a bible college degree, but she was serving the Lord. That’s the
practical part of what I’m trying to say to you. You don’t need a bible
college degree; you don’t need a change of jobs, or even to move to
Africa or Mexico. What it depends on is your attitude and it depends
on your desire and availability and maybe your repentance. Of course we
need training.
You know one of the
wonderful things about Stephen Ministry is that we really do train
people well to listen. The program trains people and it is a huge
commitment. It takes quite a few hours of training. It was designed by
German Lutherans and they’re just very detailed oriented. No offense.
It is a great program. It’s wonderful. Whatever they do is good.
We’ve had this program in our church for years and some of you have been
through the program. You know what it is and I would encourage you if
you feel God nudging you in that way just find out more about it. But
you know a lot of people ask me what my vision for our church is. I
want our church to be a place where we prepare people to serve. That’s
my vision for us. A lot of churches have a lot of bible studies; they
have wonderful worship; and they have all these classes and that sort of
thing. But it’s kind of like a “bless me” club, you know, we go and we
get blessed but we don’t do anything with it; and we need to do
something with it. That’s what I want for us. Stephen Ministry is part
of that. It’s exactly right. It’s taking ordinary folks and training
them to do extraordinary things. Each one of us should make a
difference for Jesus while we are here. We might say, “Well I’m not
qualified to do anything.” Well that’s the whole point. None of us are
qualified. I’m not qualified. I don’t stand before you here because
I’m qualified. But that’s the message of the bible. God doesn’t call
the qualified, He qualifies the called.
You know, it’s
interesting to note that in Matthew 25 where the parable of the talent
is, there are three parables all really with the same kind of message:
The land owner leaves and then returns after a long time and then the
judgment comes. See God does expect a return. God expects us to work
for Him not to bury our talent. Again a lot of you are wildly
successful in life but you’ve buried your talent of what God has given
you to do. Earl Loomis wrote a book called “The Self in Pilgrimage” and
he says “Literature is full of stories of people who knew they had
talent, yet failed to use it. The untold stories are those of millions
of individuals who unconsciously disguised their virtues lest they be
obliged to use them and lost the riches of true living in the process.
In this sense, we human beings are akin to the battery in a flashlight;
unused it corrodes. What we do not use is wasted, what we do not share
we cannot keep.” As Jesus says, “Even those who have more will be given
more.”
There is one final thing
to be said and it’s the good news. That if we do use that which God has
given us for His glory, He will take our meager gifts and multiply them
and use them in ways we never dreamed possible. That’s what faith is
all about. Someone has said, “Our life is God’s gift to us. What we
make of our life is our gift to God.” God takes what we offer and adds
even more. So again, what is your purpose? For what are you living
your life?
In the name of the
Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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