I saw this title of a book, and though I hadn’t read it, I thought “How true”. To glorify God is the purpose and goal of every life – Ps.150:6. Man proposes but God disposes. Prov. 16:9. God will have His way and His purposes will be fulfilled whether man is in obedience or disobedience (consider Pharoah: Ex. 9:16; Rom. 9:17). God approached him gently, respectfully, through Moses and Aaron “God wants you to let His people go”. If he had let them go, then God would have been glorified by his obedience, by the people of Israel in their rejoicing, and by the surrounding and lesser nations who would have said, What sort of God is this that even Pharoah obeys His voice and loses his slave labour in the process? Pharoah chose the path of disobedience and God was still glorified. The ‘word on the street’ was, Did you hear about how the God of those Israelite slaves judged Egypt and forced Pharoah to let His people go?!
We will be a testimony to God’s righteous judgement or God’s merciful salvation.
What am I here for? What a great question. Does God have a purpose for me? Yes. In Phil. 3:12 Paul speaks about that for which I was apprehended. It was certainly far different from what he or his parents had mapped out for him. Does God choose a life for us? Yes. 1 Cor. 12:18. Bear in mind that none of this is without our co-operation. Also it can be without our understanding or expectation. Jeremiah said to God, You have deceived me! (20:7). It was not so. God had told him at the beginning what was in store (like Paul in Acts 9:16) for him as he laboured to declare the word of God amongst a people that were hooked on false prophets and quackery. Jeremiah suffered from the pressure and quit for a while but repented and went back to preaching.
The latter part of the 20th century saw a shift in the basic philosophy of life. Instead of life being centred on work and service to God and fellow-man, God was dispensed with and life was thought to be about me. Looking after No.1 became the aim of life in many popular philosophies. Man pretended to knowledge that he did not have (Jer. 10:23; Prov. 14:12). What does this mean? It means that man does not know the meaning of life! It appeals to our selfish nature to assume that life is all about me, but it’s not.
It’s all about God.
Some of the more famous agnostics and atheists who have tried this route include Somerset Maugham, who said, If we put aside the existence of God….if death ends all, if I have nothing to hope for good to come nor to fear evil, I must ask myself what I am here for…the answer to this question is plain, but so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life, and life has no meaning. J.J. Blackham said, Life leads to nothing. Frances Bacon said, Man now realizes that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason. Eugene Jonesco said, Cut off from his religious roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless. Jean Paul Satre said, Here we are, all of us, eating and drinking, to preserve our precious existence, and that there’s nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.
This is a difficult conclusion to live with though it is a quite natural and straightforward conclusion if God is not. So people try to create meaning. This is true even if we believe in God but hold God at arm’s length. If God created me and I want Him to take me to Heaven when I die, but I rule my life in the meantime, I have the same problem as the agnostic and the atheist. Many people are theoretical theists but practical atheists. Thinking is important to happiness and fulfillment, but the concepts we entertain and the creeds we believe are not all of life – a life is also what we live! For many the meaning of life is pleasure, for others it is a stiff upper lip in the face of absurdity which they construe as nobility. For others the way to live with the absurdity of life is to write about it- as Satre said, I still write, what else can I do? For yet others it is protest – Albert Camus wrote, I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my own proclamation and I am compelled to believe, at least, in my own protest!
Alister McGrath from Oxford University wrote a book entitled The Twilight of Atheism. In the book he makes observation that by 1970 it looked as though the world would become thoroughly secular – atheistic communism in the Soviet bloc, and ‘God is dead’ theology in the western industrialised world. He said that atheism is now in retreat, a shrunken province of a handful of learned cranks. Whether he was right history will confirm, but his premise was that the rejection of God and the enthronement of man as his own director and saviour just hasn’t worked.
It’s not about me, it’s about God. Humanists tells us that to believe that we are a creation of God, a creature by definition, we lose our dignity. However, it is the fact that man is a created being, a being created by the express will of God and with a meaning and purpose, that gives man his dignity. How can accidental and meaningless existence have dignity? What kind of creature are we having been created in the likeness of God? In the two passages where the Old testament writers ask the question, What is man?, (Ps. 8:3-8; Job 7:17-21), the essential thought is, O God, what is man that you make so much of him?!
Life is not a game – it is earnest. We are not playing here or practicing here to come back and do it better next time. This is the only life we have and eternity rests upon the life we live in the flesh. Bushfires, tornados, hurricanes continue to dominate our news illustrating the seriousness of life. If life is just about me, just about my wants, my desires, my fun, then those tragedies are an awful contradiction of what is supposed to be. Life is, in fact, life and death and God powerfully reminds us of that.
The prophet Ezekiel called his wife the desire of my eyes. In Ezek. 24:15-18 God tells Him that his wife is going to die suddenly and he is to make no public mourning for her. Was this too hard? Was this unfair? Questions along this line inevitable come up with respect to this event, and others such as the asking of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the respecting of the vows of Hannah and Jephthah, the allowing of the suffering of Job and other such events. There is no point in even going there. As soon as we start to question the appropriateness of the will of God we’ve lost sight of the point of life. His commands are not grievous (1 John 5:3). As soon as I start to say this is too hard, then it’s a short jump to I can’t do it, rather than I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And it’s a short jump, nay, not even a jump but a moving from one leg to another, from I can’t do it to I won’t do it!. (Note Ezekiel 24:18b)
Ezekiel was really entering into the suffering of God, who also was to see the desire of His eyes, Jerusalem and His people and the temple, be destroyed by the Babylonians. He and his good wife were to be an object lesson for Israel to learn from – for him it meant living in sorrow and for her it meant death. That’s not fair! we might exclaim. Possibly true if life’s just about me – but it’s not! Why does God want men and women to glorify Him in such ways? He wants the world to see the truth of life, the secret of life, the purpose of life, so that it will be inspired and have no excuse. All of us live in different circumstances, all we with certain advantages and all with certain disadvantages, some enjoying good health and others not, some married some not, some with more money and some with less and so on. Through the church God is showing to the world which also has the same variations, that men and women can glorify Him in all the circumstances of life. God has never asked us to do anything He wasn’t prepared to do Himself. He knows what it is to be born of a woman, to be tempted in all points, to serve, to suffer, to die.
Man’s purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Jesus said the one who saved his life (ie. used it for his own ends) would lose it, but the one who lost his life (used it for the purposes of God) would save it. Have you ever wondered what this world would be like if all glorified God? When man glorifies God, God glorifies man, and others glorify God. We see this in Jesus. Note John 17. Jesus says He glorified God (v.4a). How did He do this? Completing the mission God gave Him (v.4b). Jesus’ expectation was that God would glorify Him (v.5). The result was that indeed Jesus was glorified (eg. John 11:4) and others glorified God (eg. Matt.15:31), even in His death (Luke 23:47).
So what is our mission? To glorify God (1Pet. 4:14). How do we do this? By bearing the fruits of righteousness (John 15:80. The result? We will be glorified (Rom. 8:30) and others will glorify God (Matt. 5:16; Gal. 1:24). Jesus put it so succinctly in John 13:32 as he speaks of a four-fold glory. The glory of Jesus has come and the glory in question is the cross. Judas has gone out and the die has been set – the cross is a certainty on the morrow. The greatest glory in life is that which comes from sacrifice. In warfare the greatest glory is not for those who survive and return, but for those who lay down their lives and don’t return. In medicine it is not the doctors who made fortunes who are remembered. It is those who gave their lives so that healing and ease from pain might come to others. Mankind forgets the successful man, but not the sacrificial man.
In Jesus, God has been glorified by His obedience. The only way love and trust of a leader is shown is by obedience. Jesus gave the supreme honour and glory to God by obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. In Jesus God glorifies Himself. It is a strange thought that the supreme glory of God lies in the cross. Had God remained aloof and majestic, serene and unmoved, untouched by any sorrow and unhurt by any pain, men might have feared God, might have even admired Him, but they would not have loved Him. The law of sacrifice is true in the earth because it is a law true in heaven as well. Even so Peter declares we believe in God because of what God did in Christ.
And the other side of the matter is that God will glorify Jesus. In the cross we see the sacrificial glory of Jesus, but what if that was all? What if both God and man acknowledged the glory of the cross of Christ, but there was nothing to follow? God didn’t leave it there but glorified Him with the resurrection and the ascension!
There are men who for one reason or another reject the truth of life after death, yet nonetheless are moved by the dignity of service and sacrifice and by these things seek a form of immortality by making a name for themselves. Some of our past political leaders have espoused this philosophy and have laboured to be remembered by the masses and recorded in the annals of the nation after their death. It must be terribly disappointing to see, after their active life is finished, that their star begins to wane and the masses do not seek out their opinion or judgement anymore even while they are still alive. How will they be remembered in death?
It’s a poor substitute for God’s immortality to have one’s immortality dependent upon what others may think or remember. I was reminded of this the other day in reading about Ezekiel and Jeremiah – men whose task to glorify God happened to come at a crisis point in the history of their nation. Israel was heading for destruction and exile, and it was their job to preach at such a time. In 626B.C. Nabopolassar started the Neo-Babylonian empire, but the year before, Jeremiah was called to his work. Nabopolassar established a mighty empire while Jeremiah stood for truth. Nabopolassar battled for self-glory whilst Jeremiah fought for God. Nabopolassar won territory whiles Jeremiah fought for the souls and minds of men. In the same year as Jeremiah started his work, the wife of a Jewish priest named Buzi presented him with a baby boy – they named him Ezekiel. They have left their mark in the earth and their legacies and gone to their respective destinies. In eternity, who would you prefer to be? Nabopolassar, Jeremiah or Ezekiel?
Glorify God and He will glorify you throughout eternity with the glory of Christ.