40 DAYS OF PURPOSE
YOU WERE PLANNED FOR GOD’S PLEASURE
DR. JIM DIXON
PSALMS 8:1-9, ROMANS 12:1-2
SEPTEMBER 18, 2005
Megalithic monuments have been found all over the ancient world. The most famous megalithic monuments are found at Stonehenge in England and of course Carnac in Northwestern France. The word megalithic comes from the word “megas,” which means, “large” or “great,” and “lithos,” which means, “stone.” And of course, megalithic monuments consist of giant stones. Each stone weighs between 25 and 100 tons. Of course, today archeologists and historians and cultural anthropologists discuss why megalithic monuments were built. On some megalithic monuments, the stones are arranged in a circular pattern as at Stonehenge. Other megalithic monuments have the stones in rows like at Carnac in France. Some of those rows are two miles long. But why? What was the purpose of these monuments?
For a time, archeologists believe that they had to do with burial. And of course some of these monuments are used as burial sites. For a while they thought they had to do with astrological phenomena and the stones were arranged in alignment with certain star formations. And that seems to be true in places. But today all archeologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians agree that the primary purpose of these megalithic monuments was simply worship. It was all about worship.
Historians tell us as you look back in time to these prehistoric peoples and these ancients civilizations, you can never find a time when men and women didn’t worship. Psychologists tell us as we look to the future there will never be a time when men and women won’t worship because it’s in the heart of men. It’s in the heart of men to worship. Even if you’re an agnostic, there’s a corner of your heart that wants to worship the divine. Some part of you has some desire to acknowledge and to worship the divine.
This morning we look at “What on earth are we here for?” and the first purpose of the Purpose Driven Life. That first purpose is simply to worship God. With regard to worshipping God and understanding what that means, we have two teachings this morning. The first teaching is this: If you would worship God, you must live life for His pleasure. You must live your life to please Him. That’s what it means to worship. If you would worship God, you must live your life to please and pleasure God.
Now the Bible tells us that God takes pleasure in all of the creation. When an oak tree comes from the earth, when it springs from the ground, God is pleased. When a doe gives birth to her young, God is pleased. When a star goes supernova in the heavens, God is pleased. When a galactic system is formed out of a gaseous nebula, God is pleased. God takes pleasure in His creation.
Today after this service, Barb and I are going to go up in the mountains. We’re taking our little dog with us, our Yorkie Terrier. Our Yorkie is up in the office right now because we’re going straight from the church. Of course, Barb and I are hoping she’s behaving up there in the office. That dog pleases God. All dogs please God. I’m sure particularly your dog pleases God, but God takes pleasure in His creation. He takes pleasure in all of His creation. God wants you to understand today that nothing pleases Him as much as you. Nothing pleases God as much as human beings. This is what Psalms 8, our Psalm for today, is all about. Mankind is the crown of God’s creation, created in the imago Dei, a Latin word simply meaning, “the image of God.” And you bear the image of God. There’s a little bit of the divine in you because you are created in the likeness of God and I’m created in the likeness of God and God takes pleasure in us.
Those of you who are moms and dads, perhaps you can think back. I’m sure you can remember when you had your first child and how much pleasure it gave you just to look at that child. Perhaps that child was sleeping but you just looked at that child and it pleased you. Of course, maybe your kids are grown up now. Maybe they’re teenagers. Maybe they’ve left the house, but still, most of the time when you see them, it pleases you. It gives you pleasure. God wants us to understand He feels that way about us. He feels that way about human beings. He takes pleasure in us. But the question is, do you seek to please Him? Is that how you live your life? Is that how you live each day? Do you live to pleasure Him? Because that’s what worship is.
And so, we have our passage of scripture for today in Romans, chapter 12, and it says there, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living offering, holy and pleasing to God. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so you may discover what is the will of God—what is good, what is pleasing, what is pleasurable, what is perfect.” But worship, biblically, is all about pleasing God. Worship is all about pleasuring God. And so, do you live to please Him? Do you live to pleasure Him?
In the year 1314 BC, Ramses I died. Of course, Ramses I was the Pharaoh of Egypt. Before he died, by his command a statue was erected in Egypt, the largest statue ever formed in the history of the world from a single massive stone, a statue that weighed 1,000 tons (or 2 million pounds). This was huge. In all humility, it was a statue of Ramses himself. He erected a statue of himself, massive and giant, and he placed it there in the land of Egypt. Religious historians tell us that when the Jewish people, under the leadership of Moses, perhaps a century or so later, left Egypt—when Moses led the children of Israel out of Goshen—most historians believe they would have passed by this place where that giant statue stood. They would have looked up at it, that massive statue of an Egyptian Pharaoh, and it could not possibly have occurred to them that they would outlive their oppressors. But of course, today the Pharaohs are no more, and that statue has gone to dust. It is just broken into bits and pieces in the Egyptian sand. It is no more and it’s a reminder to us of the vanity of seeking your own glory, of living to honor yourself and to please yourself.
There’s no one in this room who has the power of a Pharaoh. But psychologists tell us that each of us, even though we are relatively powerless, to some extent lives for our own glory, for our own honor. Each of us has this tendency to want to please and pleasure ourselves. Of course, the tragedy is and the irony is that that’s the opposite of how God set things up. God set things up so that we would only be satisfied, only happy, only fulfilled, only sense eternal significance when we live to please Him and when we live to pleasure Him. Of course, when we live to please and pleasure ourselves, it is ultimately vacuous.
Some of you might be thinking, “Well, why does God want worship? Why does God want glory? Why does God want honor? Is God this cosmic ego? Is His ego never sated? Can He never get enough glory? Can He never get enough praise? Can He never get enough worship?” Of course, the answer is that God is love. “God is love,” the Bible tells us. God is not focused on Himself. God has an outward focus. God has a focus on us, but God has set things up so that when we please Him, when we worship Him, we’re transformed. When we worship, it’s not really for God. When we worship, it’s for us. So when we look at God and we focus on God and we live to please and pleasure God, somehow we are transformed and we are changed and we’re made into the people God wants us to be and we begin to find satisfaction, eternal significance and fulfillment. So, do you live to please God?
In 41 BC, Roman sailors were sailing their vessels along the coast of Africa. They were seeking to expand the Roman Empire. A storm came upon the sea, nothing as violent as Katrina, but a strong storm and it blew them off course. They lost their way, and ultimately they came upon a group of islands that were uncharted, islands they had never seen before. On these islands, these Roman sailors found packs of wild dogs. These Roman sailors called the island, “Canaria” from the Latin or Roman “canus,” which means “dog.” Canaria, Dog Islands.
The Roman sailors made their way ultimately back to Rome and those islands were put on the map (most of the Roman maps). Plutarch, the great historian, put those islands, the Islands of Canaria, on all Roman maps. But most historians believe that no one went back there, not for centuries, not for a thousand years. There’s no evidence that anyone else went back to the Islands of Canaria until 999 AD. In 999 AD, Arab sailors, using old Roman maps, sought out these Islands of Canaria. They came upon them and they found no packs of wild dogs. The dogs had become extinct, but what they did find on the Islands were birds, beautiful yellow birds with melodious song. And so they called the birds canaries, because they were on the Islands of Canaria. And so, of course, we have this reality that these birds are named after dogs. We really have the first bird dogs, canaries.
Of course, it’s really just a philological and etymological curiosity, but have you ever asked the question, “What’s in a name? What’s so important about a name? Does a name really matter? Who cares whether you call dogs canus or canaries or whether you call canaries dogs? What does it matter? My name is James, and the name James is an Anglicized form of the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name “Ya’aqov,” which means, “supplanter.” Who cares? What’s in a name? You might not even know the meaning of your name. Or maybe you know the meaning and don’t want anyone else to know the meaning. It doesn’t matter. What matters is your character. What matters is your purpose.
That’s what matters, and that’s true of a church too. We’re called Cherry Hills Community Church. That’s kind of like canaria. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why are we called Cherry Hills Community Church when we’re in Highlands Ranch? But of course, it has to do with our history. We started out in a Bible Study in Cherry Hills. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just a name. What matters is our character. What matters is our purpose, and I promise you, our purpose is simply to please God. That’s our purpose. That’s why we exist. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to please God. We’re here to give Him pleasure. We’re here to worship Him.
Is that why you’re here? Is that how you live your life? Is that what you think of when you get up each day? Do you think about how to please yourself that day, or do you give any though to pleasing God when you get up in the morning? When you go to bed at night? As you walk along the way? Do you live to please God? Do you worship Him?
Remember, worship is not simply something you do on Sundays. We think of Sundays as going to church to worship, and of course this is part of worship. But worship is how we live our lives. Every single day it’s whether or not we live to please Him, whether or not we live supremely to pleasure Him.
A second and final teaching this morning is this: If you would worship or pleasure God, then you must love and honor His Son. If you would worship and pleasure, if you would please God, you must love and you must honor His Son. Nothing is more important than this.
Now if we look at history, there are many significant dates. I suppose historians might differ one from the other on the dates selected but most would say 313 AD was a significant date. That’s when the Edict of Milan was signed by Constantine the Great, legalizing Christianity and transforming the Christian world. 476 AD—that was a big date. That was year the Roman Empire fell. Romulus Augustulus was the last Roman emperor of the West. Pretty significant. 1066, that was significant. That’s when the Norman Conquest of Britain occurred, and it changed the whole flow of European history. It changed the course of European history.
Of course, 1453 was when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and that changed the way we live. In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered or arrived at the so-called New World. In 1517, Martin Luther signed and wrote the 95 theses. He posted the 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, launching the Protestant Reformation and ultimately the Protestant work ethic that impacted and transformed the world. In 1776 was our American Revolution. In 1850 there was the invention of the internal combustion engine. 1945 was the unleashing of atomic power. In January, 1998, the Broncos won the Super Bowl.
I suppose different people would come up with different years, different dates, but the most important day in all of history was the day when Jesus Christ came into the world. That was the most important date, the day that God sent His Son into the world. That’s the focal point of history. The world has never been the same and it’s not just because ultimately from the coming of Christ into the world came the Gregorian calendar which divided history BC and AD, centering everything on Jesus Christ (or BCE and CE—it still centers everything on Christ).
Why is Christ so important? Why did God send His Son into the world? God sent His Son into the world to show us what God is like. No man has ever seen the Father, only Son who is in the bosom of the Father. He has made Him known. He is the visible image of the invisible God. Pretty important stuff.
Of course, God sent His Son into the world to die for the sin of the world and atoning sacrifice and substitutionary atonement. He died for you. He died for me. God sent His Son into the world to start His church and build an eternal family. God sent His Son into the world and God wants you to love Him. God wants you to honor him. If you would please God, if you would pleasure God, you must love and honor His Son. It pleases God that there are people all over the world who live to please Him but once you’ve heard the Gospel, once you’ve heard about His Son coming into the world, then if you would please God you’ve got to love and honor His Son. This is critical.
I love the story of Maximillian Kolbe. Maximillian Kolbe was a German priest. During World War II, Maximillian Kolbe rescued Jewish people. The Jews were of course being apprehended. They were being gassed. They were being incinerated. They were being tortured. And Maximillian Kolbe loved the Jewish people, and he brought them into his home. He hid them in his basement. He hid them in the attic. But ultimately Maximillian Kolbe was apprehended by the Nazis and he was thrown into Auschwitz, one of the worst of the German concentration camps.
He was put in Barracks 14. On August 10, 1941, a commandant came into Barracks 14 at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. He announced that ten people would be selected for death. They did this from time-to-time. Arbitrarily and capriciously, they would just come into Barracks 14 and say, “We’re going to kill ten people.” One of the ten people that they chose that day, August 10, 1941, was a young Jewish man named Boris Janjanavitch. Boris Janjanavitch was the father of three kids. He had his wife. They were all there in Barracks 14. When Boris Janjanavitch was selected for execution, his wife cried out and screamed. His three children began to cry and beg and Boris asked, “Please, let me live. I have a wife. I have three kids. Please let me live.”
The commandant refused, but Maximillian Kolbe, this German priest, a Christian man, stepped forward and said, “I will go in his place. I’m a priest. I’m single. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have kids. I’m old and he’s young. Let me die in his place.” And so it was done. Those ten people, including Maximillian Kolbe, were sent into this dungeon to starve to death. After a period, days without food or water, six of them were dead. Four were still alive, including Maximillian Kolbe. But on August 14, 1941, he died by lethal injection. Today his name is honored in many Jewish communities. He was a Christian man who gave his life for another, that someone else might live. It was a beautiful thing, and yet it kind of pales when compared to what Jesus did, you understand.
Jesus came into this world and He gave His life for you. He gave his life for me. He gave His live for the whole world. He gave His life for the sin of the entire world. He died for us in substitutionary atonement. God sent Him for that purpose and God wants you to love Him. God wants you to honor Him. You can’t worship God, you can’t please God, unless you’re willing to love and honor His Son. In a real sense, the key to worship is Jesus.
You’ve all heard of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci was 43 years old when the Duke of Milan commissioned him to paint the Last Supper. He painted that famous picture on the dining hall wall of the Monastery at Santa Maria delle Grazie. Many of you have been there to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper or you’ve seen a copy of it. Of course, Jesus is seated in the middle. There are six disciples on his right and six disciples on his left—two groups of three on the right, two groups of three on the left. Of course, immediately to the right of Christ is the beloved disciple, John. Of course, Dan Brown in his book The Da Vinci Code identifies that person to the right of Christ as Mary Magdalene, a bogus assertion. He apparently is unaware that in all the art of this time in history, John, because he was considered the youngest disciple and he was called the “beloved disciple,” was portrayed in a kind of effeminate way. That’s true of all the art of this period. That disciple was John, but the focus of The Last Supper is not on John. The focus of The Last Supper is on Jesus.
There’s a legend. It’s very old and very ancient. It may be true. Historians are not certain. According to this legend, Leonardo da Vinci completed his painting and he asked the Duke of Milan to come and look at it and tell him what he thought. The Duke of Milan looked at it and said, “It’s beautiful and I just can’t believe how my eyes are drawn to the Holy Grail, to the Cup of Blessing, to the cup that Christ used at that last supper, that cup that Jesus holds in His hand.” Leonardo da Vinci knew immediately he’d made a horrible mistake because the focus shouldn’t be on the Holy Grail. The focus shouldn’t be on the Cup of Blessing. The focus should be on Jesus Himself.
So, it is said, according to the legend, that he repainted the image of Christ in the picture. You can look at it today. I looked at a copy of it yesterday. Christ is sitting there, and His hands are stretched before Him. One hand the palm is up and the other the palm is down. You can hardly find the Holy Grail but the whole focus is on Jesus. It’s all on Jesus. It’s all on His face. It’s all on Him. That’s what Leonardo da Vinci wanted.
And there’s something kind of analogous here to our lives, because your life is a painting. All the years of your life form a painting. My life is a painting, all the years of my life. When people look at the painting that is your life, what do they see? What do they focus on? When people look at the painting that is my life, what do they see? Of course, if they see Jesus, then I’ve worshipped. If they see Jesus when they look at you, you’ve worshipped. You’ve loved and honored the Son of God sent into the world by the Father. When people look at you, do they see Jesus? When you wake up in the morning, do you think about Jesus? Do you love Him for what He’s done? Do you seek to honor Him, follow Him, and thereby please God and worship God?
This morning before the praise team comes back up as we conclude in prayer, I want to give you a chance today to please God. I want to give you a chance to honor and love His Son. I want to give you a chance today to take Jesus as your Savior and your Lord. You can do that today, just between you and God in the privacy of your heart. As our eyes are closed, let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.