John 17:1

Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." (John 17:1-3)

What on earth am I here for? Jesus's prayer on the night before the cross reveals the purpose for which we were made.

The Crisis of Meaning

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the issue of purpose. About 22 years ago, Pastor Rick Warren released a book that became one of the biggest Christian books ever sold: The Purpose Driven Life. Christians have many opinions about that book and about Pastor Warren — and that's fine; I don't even agree with myself 99.9% of the time. But in 22 years it has sold more than 50 million copies and been translated into 137 languages. There's a reason for that.

What Warren wrote struck a chord. He didn't identify anything unique; he wrote about things the church has discussed throughout its history. But something in our culture has made this issue more acute. Many have identified that people today are wrestling with the issue of purpose and meaning. It's being called a crisis of meaning.

The Five Existential Questions

Every human being needs to answer some very important questions, and every worldview — the way you philosophically navigate this life — must answer them compellingly or you will lack meaning. I call them the iPod-M questions: identity, purpose, origin, destiny, and morality. Identity: who am I? Purpose: what on earth am I here for? Origin: where did I come from? Destiny: where do I go when I die? Morality: what is right and wrong?

These five are crucial, and I think the most important for human beings is the question of purpose — the very question Warren asks repeatedly. If you cannot answer it compellingly, you descend into a meaninglessness of existence. You can't find your footing for why you are here. And we are seeing that in a huge way today.

A Crisis Across the Generations

This is true among those in their 20s and 30s — Gen Y and Gen Z. But it is also acutely felt by baby boomers now reaching retirement age at more than 10,000 a day. Their culture indoctrinated them to think their identity and purpose were found in their work and career. Now, as they retire and no longer have that, they wonder, what on earth am I here for? They can find themselves depressed and lacking any sense of their worth.

We see it with Gen X too, those roughly 50 to 65 years old. They are now experiencing empty-nest syndrome. That generation found their identity and purpose in their children — especially their children's sports careers. As their kids leave home, they feel a pit of emptiness and ask, why am I here? Where is my meaning, my value?

You may say you have never thought about this. That's probably because you've been very busy — busy getting an education, starting a career, building a family. We don't ask these questions when we're busy. But when the education you invested in doesn't produce meaningful work, or you can't find a job to pay an $80,000 student loan, you start to ask, what on earth am I here for? When the relationship you searched for never materializes, or it does and is met with a diagnosis of chronic pain or terminal disease, you ask the question. At these junction points, people hit what was once called a midlife crisis and is now called an existential crisis.

A Pathological Worldview

In our culture there are two major competing meta-narratives. The dominant counter-story to the Bible is a naturalistic worldview that lacks compelling answers. Identity? You're just the highest form of animal, until something evolves that overcomes you — some are working toward that today; it's called transhumanism. Purpose? Just to pass your genetic material on. Origin? Random chance and mutation over billions of years. Destiny? When you die, you're absorbed back into the ground. Morality? Whatever you think is right for you — your truth, with no objective standard.

And we wonder why our culture questions whether there is any inherent value, worth, or meaning. That cultural worldview, infused into every heart and mind in the Western world for the better part of 75 to 100 years, is pathological. It leads to sickness — mental, emotional, and physical — and we see it constantly. So the question of purpose is very important. I think about it constantly, and I want to encourage you to think about it this morning.

Created for a Specific Purpose

There are two ways to answer the purpose question. One is the very specific purpose individual to each of us — manifested when Christians ask, "What is God's will for my life?" That question itself reveals a desire to know our own individual purpose. The other is the general purpose for which we all exist.

Point one: God created me for a specific and individual purpose. Even the person who doesn't believe in God recognizes a desire for purpose beyond passing on genetic material. This is the issue of telos — the Greek word for ends, purpose, the reason for something's existence. This cup was made for a clear purpose. I could try to pound a nail with it, but it would be ineffective and probably break. That's the amazing thing about telos: things created for an intended purpose, if not used for it, will be broken. If we see a lot of broken people in our culture, that may tell us the purpose we've been telling people they were made for is not right.

I believe we discover the specific purpose for you as you engage in doing the general purpose for which you were made, revealed by God in Scripture. As Rick Warren wrote on page 22: "You cannot arrive at life's purpose by starting with a focus on yourself. You must begin with God, your Creator. You exist only because God wills that you exist. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense. It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, our destiny. Every other path leads to a dead end."

Point two: God desires that I would discover and fulfill His purpose — and in fulfilling His purpose, you fulfill yours.

The Lord's Prayer in John 17

To discover the essential nature of God's general purpose, we turn to John 17. Many of you have heard "the Lord's Prayer" — "Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." That is found in Matthew 6 and Luke 11, and it would more properly be called the Disciple's Prayer, because Jesus is teaching His followers how they should pray.

The prayer in John 17 would better be called the Lord's Prayer, because this is a prayer Jesus actually prayed — the night before He went to the cross. Here Jesus, the Son who is God in the flesh, is praying to God the Father. This brings us into the doctrine of the Trinity, which the church took 400 years to hash out, so I can't fully cover it in 21 minutes. But the Son has the same nature as the One from whom He comes; Jesus is God's nature in human flesh.

And here He prays for you. Not only for the disciples present — Peter, James, John, Thomas — but for "those who will believe in Me through their word." He goes to the Father on our behalf and comes to us on behalf of God, as God — doing the work of a priest, a work He would complete the next day by offering Himself as a sacrifice. The Creator of all things, seen and unseen, is praying for you, and in His will is His purpose for you.

Created to Know God

Point three: I was created by God to know Him experientially in relationship. Jesus says: "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."

In verse one we see the glorification of Father and Son — from Son to Father, Father to Son — which speaks to their shared nature: co-equal, co-eternal, co-substantial, yet distinct persons. We see in verse two that Jesus has exousia, authority and power, to give something we all deeply desire: eternal life. The drive to live is one of our most fundamental drives. As a pastor I've spent time with people approaching death, and it's amazing how this body holds onto life. But we desire not just to live here — we desire to live on and on. That desire is only ultimately satisfied in God.

I'm not convinced we are by nature immortal. I don't believe we have inherently immortal souls. The Scriptures say God alone is immortal, but Jesus has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, and He has authority to grant eternal life. And that eternal life is to know God — an experiential, relational life, unbroken by time.

The problem is, from Genesis 3 we learn we are separated from God because of sin. At the beginning, humanity walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day — at the very least, a real relationship between God and His creation. But rebellion separated us. Yet Jesus came — which we celebrated at Christmas — to redeem us from sin and death, to reconcile us back to God, and to restore all things to the way they were before the fall. He restores us back to our purpose, part of which is relationship with God.

Created to Glorify God

Point four: I was created by God to glorify Him forever. The word glorify appears eight times in this passage. "I have glorified You on earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do." What was Jesus's purpose in coming? Elsewhere He says, "I have come to seek and to save that which is lost," "to give My life a ransom for many," "that you may have life and have it more abundantly." Here He says, "I have glorified You here on earth."

And He calls us to share in this work. In verse 9 He prays, "I am glorified in them." Jesus was glorious before creation, glorified the Father on earth, and was about to return to the Father's presence — and He desires that we would glorify the Father in and through Him as well.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, "What is the chief end of man?" The answer: "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." All of God's creation was made to bring Him glory, the way a masterpiece brings honor to the master who made it. The painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel proves there is a painter; the existence of all things, seen and unseen, declares the existence of the Artist, the Architect, the Engineer. As the psalmist said 3,000 years ago, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth His handiwork. Day unto day they utter speech." The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the mountains, the animals — all cry out that there is a God who made them.

All of creation glorifies Him — except one part: you and me. We rebelled and turned away. As Paul writes in Romans 1, "Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful... professing to be wise, they became fools," exchanging the truth of God for the lie and worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. That's idolatry, and we see it all around us. For the last 165 years our culture's intelligentsia has said there is no God — all is random chance — yet we should honor and praise the creation. But in spite of our rebellion, we were created to glorify God forever, and Jesus came to fix that: to redeem, reconcile, and restore.

Created to Live in Oneness with God

Point five: I was created by God to live in unity of purpose, communion, and oneness with Him. In verse 11 Jesus prays, "Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are one." This is the triune nature of God: one God in three distinct, co-equal, co-glorious persons united as one. Jesus came that we might be joined back together and experience oneness with God.

In verse 20 He extends the prayer: "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me." On the night He would be betrayed, condemned, and crucified, Jesus prayed for you — that you and I would experience oneness with God through Him.

Life in Connection

This is why our whole focus here is life in connection — with God, with one another, and with the world through Jesus. It is a restored connection: Jesus redeems and reconciles us back to God and one another by His death on the cross, bringing us to the place where we fulfill His purpose.

I see it as part of my call as a pastor to lead you into this discovery — that you were created to be connected to God, and your heart will not rest until it rests in Him, as Augustine said 1,600 years ago. I am pessimistic about Western culture but long on Jesus and His kingdom. Our culture is falling apart because we have indoctrinated it for nearly two centuries with a pathological worldview. Unless it is refocused on the purpose we find in Christ, there is no hope for Western culture. But our optimistic vision is fixed on the kingdom of God.

There are many ways we connect with God. We connect when we gather and worship Him in song — studies show that in corporate singing, your heartbeat begins to tune with those around you. So make a joyful noise, even with a bad voice. We connect through His Word, through serving together, through praying for one another. And it completes us, because it fulfills the purpose for which we were made.

Communion

That is what Jesus accomplished through His broken body and shed blood, which the church has long called communion. We always begin the year partaking together. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." On the night He was betrayed, He took bread and broke it: "Take, eat. This is My body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me." In the same manner He took the cup: "This is the cup of the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." Let's partake together.

Closing Prayer

God, we live in a culture that is sick because it has been told a devilish false truth — that purpose is found in some trivial, insubstantial thing in this world, when in reality our ultimate purpose is only found in You. I pray You would help us who are here to know this — not just intellectually, but experientially — and to live it and express it to others, because there are nearly a million people within ten miles of this building in desperate need of this truth.

Lord, we cannot fully comprehend the goodness revealed in what You did for us on Calvary; we only begin to scratch the surface of Your love demonstrated through the cross. You desire that all people would come to the knowledge of the truth and find the fullness of their purpose in You — to be in united relationship with You, to glorify You, to no longer be in rebellion but to magnify Your awesomeness as all creation does. When we look through a telescope into the cosmos or a microscope down to the subatomic level, we see the awesomeness of Your existence. May we glorify You as those things do. Do a work in us, we pray. Thank You for Your grace and mercy and goodness. Amen.