Will To Purpose

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Him, saying, "Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask." And He said to them, "What do you want Me to do for you?" They said to Him, "Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory." But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" They said to Him, "We are able." So Jesus said to them, "You will indeed drink the cup that I drink, and with the baptism I am baptized you will be baptized; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared." (Mark 10:35-40)

Jesus declared His purpose in one sentence—to serve and give His life a ransom for many—and that purpose can transform how you understand your own.

A Word About Purpose

Since 2014 I've begun each year here by refreshing our minds on the vision we have as a church. It would be the easiest thing for me to do that again, and it wouldn't be unhelpful. But my wife and I took a short vacation last week, staying with my good friend David Guzik and his wife in Santa Barbara. We visited a new church plant, and while my friend Pastor Nate Wagner was preaching, my mind began to wander—and I became convinced the Lord had a word for me, and maybe for us as well. That word had everything to do with purpose.

Let me begin with a simple question: how many of you began this year with a New Year's resolution? Every year, research shows about forty to forty-five percent of Americans make one. But by about day ninety, less than half are maintaining it, and by the six-month mark, eighty to ninety percent have given up. The top resolution is to lose weight, followed by beginning an exercise program. Others resolve to read more, to be more intentional in relationships, to love their spouse and children better, or to get out of debt and save.

These are all good things. But why do we do them? Each resolution carries a because—I'll exercise because it makes me healthier; I'll read because it makes me more intelligent; I'll get out of debt because it relieves anxiety. The why is important. Resolutions are difficult, and they are all the more difficult if you don't understand the purpose for which you're making them. Without an undergirding purpose for a goal, you are less likely to make good on it.

Having a Purpose Is Important

This leads to our first point: it is important to have or understand your purpose. Many of you went away to college, and at a certain point most schools require you to declare a major. As soon as you determine that purpose, it orients everything—the classes you take, the direction you move. But there are many people in universities today without a clear purpose, and they meander through, picking up a few extra degrees and racking up a nice bill for mom and dad.

The same is true in life. If we don't have a clearly articulated purpose, we begin to meander, and as we meander we begin to lose meaning. Meaning in life is connected to purpose; some even believe that purpose creates meaning. Research has shown that more than pursuing happiness, people are pursuing and desiring a meaningful life. Meaning and happiness are not always connected—I know people in our church who have gone through the unhappy experience of cancer and yet found deep meaning in it. Blaise Pascal said all men seek happiness, but I think you could go a step further: mostly what people are looking for is meaning, and meaning is the result of purpose.

We can see purpose is an important topic by the bestsellers in our culture. Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life, released in 2002, spent more than ninety weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than sixty million copies. And I cannot talk about meaning without returning to Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, who lived for several years in German concentration camps. On page 76 he writes:

Any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how," could be the guiding motto... Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.

The Crisis of Meaninglessness

Consider this: according to the CDC, suicide was the second leading cause of death among individuals between ages 10 and 34 in 2016. And for three years in a row, life expectancy in the United States has gone down—not by years, but the trend is not good. The two drivers, they say, are suicide and opioid addiction, much of it self-medication for mental and physical pain. I want to suggest that the fleeting sense of meaning and purpose in our culture and these rising trends are not disconnected. They may not be causal, but they go together.

For the better part of the last century our society has been instructing us that we are merely the highest form of animal, the result of random chance and mutation over billions of years. The end of that naturalistic, materialistic philosophy is that there is no ultimate purpose and no ultimate meaning—so you must manufacture meaning for yourself. This leads to nihilism. Friedrich Nietzsche predicted exactly this. In his parable "The Madman," the madman runs through the streets crying, "God is dead, and we have killed him—what shall become of us, the murderers of God?" He foresaw the nihilistic meaninglessness that would come. He was about 150 to 200 years too early, but that is exactly what we have seen happen.

As Allan Bloom said, ideas have consequences—and one consequence of the idea that there is no God is the loss of meaning. Martin Heidegger said, "If God is dead, then nothing more remains which man can cling to." That sounds like hopelessness. In this manufacture-your-own-meaning context, we are left, as the atheist Sam Harris says, to conclude that the only meaning we have is found in the moment. Add social media to that philosophy and you get #FOMO—fear of missing out—because everyone curates their feeds to show only the best things, and #YOLO, you only live once. It's funny in a sad way, but that is 21st-century Western culture.

On the other side is Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist whose bestseller 12 Rules for Life asks the right question. He writes that "the pleasure of expediency may be fleeting, but it's pleasure nonetheless... Why not simply take everything you can and get it now whenever the opportunity arises?" Then he asks, "Or is there an alternative, more powerful and more compelling?" That is the question. Is there a more powerful and more compelling alternative to the nihilistic existentialism of our culture?

The Purpose of Jesus

I believe there is, which leads to point number two: the purpose of Jesus gives our life a more meaningful purpose—more than the purpose offered by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, or the late Christopher Hitchens.

Since 2012 I've worked with many men starting new churches through the Calvary Church Planting Network, and I teach a church planting class at the Bible College. One thing you discover is that planting a church, like any entrepreneurial endeavor, requires you to clearly define and articulate purpose, mission, vision, and values—in that order. You start with purpose, because your mission is to fulfill your purpose and your vision is how you'll fulfill it.

What's fascinating is that when you read the Gospels, Jesus on about a dozen occasions clearly articulates His own purpose in His own words, often through "I have come" statements. If you search what people think Jesus was all about, you'll find many opinions, and very few of them are good, and hardly any come from His own mouth. It would be a valuable Bible study to highlight every place Jesus says, "I have come for this." I keep a list of about a dozen on my phone. Over the next few weeks we'll examine three of these purpose statements, because when we grasp His purpose, it begins to inform, affect, and infect our purpose.

James and John Want Greatness

We begin in Mark 10. The context is important: Jesus is journeying to Jerusalem for the last time, heading toward betrayal, condemnation, and crucifixion. He has explicitly told His disciples this, but they don't get it. Two of them, the brothers James and John—John was likely the youngest disciple, possibly still a teenager—come to Jesus and say, "We want You to do for us whatever we ask." That's how most people approach prayer: drive-through Jesus—"I want a double-double, animal style." It's not new.

You'd expect Jesus to rebuke them, but He doesn't. He asks, "What do you want Me to do for you?" They say, "Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory." In another Gospel they even get their mom involved—who can say no to a Jewish grandma? Their mindset, and the mindset of all the disciples, was that purpose and meaning are found in power and greatness. Remember, the thing they often argued about was who would be the greatest.

Many people in our culture still believe purpose and meaning are found in power and greatness, though they define it differently. For some it's likes and subscribers—I read about PewDiePie, a 29-year-old with seventy-nine million YouTube subscribers, far more than the NFL or the nightly news, getting six to nine million views every time he posts. For others, power is the commas and zeros in their net worth—Mark Cuban has an organization called "Three Commas," meaning a billion-dollar net worth. For others it's the top of business or politics, or the letters after their name.

It Shall Not Be So Among You

Jesus says in Mark 10:42 that the so-called rulers of the world lord it over people, and the great men exercise authority over them. Going back to Nietzsche, he believed this was the driving force of all humanity—what he called the will to power, the desire for achievement, ambition, and the highest possible position. That may be the way of the world, but look at what Jesus says:

Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. (Mark 10:43-44)

This brings us to point three: the purpose of Jesus is contrary to the natural inclination of man. Our nature inclines us toward the will to power, but Jesus says, "It shall not be so among you." He's speaking to His disciples—and if you have trusted in Jesus, He's speaking to you. He is calling His followers to a higher purpose, and He asserts it will be better and more meaningful for you.

Notice He doesn't rebuke the desire for greatness as Buddhism would, demanding you deny all self-desire. When His disciples ask how to become great, He says, in effect, "You want to be great? Here's how: you shall become servant, you shall become slave of all." Then He gives the first of His purpose statements:

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45)

The Purpose of Christ Was Sacrificial Service

Here Jesus uses a Jewish rabbinical form called antithetical parallelism—stating a truth twice, once negative and once positive. He came not to be served, but to serve, and the expression of that service is giving His life a ransom for many. This brings us to point four: the purpose of Christ was sacrificial service.

This is the theme verse of the Gospel of Mark. Why did Jesus come? It wasn't merely to heal sickness, though He did that; to feed the hungry, though He did that; to raise the dead, though He did that; or to be a revolutionary, though He transformed the Western world. Those were byproducts, not the primary purpose. Underneath all the great things He did was this driving purpose: to give His life a ransom for many.

Every one of you has various things you must do daily—as an employee, a boss, a husband, a wife, a parent, a child. But underneath those things there needs to be a driving purpose that gives them greater meaning. When you fully grasp the purpose of Jesus, it will begin to alter your purpose and make your life all the more meaningful, because you will be living for a higher purpose.

This is so important. Right after the first service this morning, a man came up—it was his first Sunday—and said, "I've been suicidal these last weeks because I don't know what I'm here for. This message was exactly for me. Have you been following me around?" No—but I know who has. This is so important that Jesus, the night before He was crucified, gave us the bread and the cup so we would never forget. We remember His body broken for us and His blood shed for us, recalling His defining purpose: He came not to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.

Here is your homework: read Philippians 2:1-11 and see the outcome of Jesus's sacrifice—the One who thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Then ask: how does this purpose of Jesus alter the way I see my day-to-day things at work, at school, in the home, in the neighborhood? Where you feel you're just doing a job because you have to, I suggest you're there because God placed you there for His purpose.

Closing Prayer

Father, I pray that You'd open our hearts to receive from You as we think about these things. Direct our attention to You as we sing, and as we hold tangibly in our hands this little piece of cracker and this little cup of juice that remind us of what You did in laying down Your life for us, God, cause it to infect and affect our understanding of why we're here. We pray this in Jesus's name. Amen.

Lord, as the disciples looked forward to it, we look back and remember Your body broken and bruised for us, Your blood shed for us. This You did because You came to give Your life as a ransom—to serve and not be served. Your purpose was characterized by sacrificial service, a life laid down for the lives of others, and not just a physical life but an eternal one. You have given us a message of eternal life to share with those we work with, go to school with, live next door to, and are related to. I could think of no higher purpose than to share the greatness of this good news—that there is a life beyond this life, and it makes this life even better. So God, help us take hold of this, and let Your purpose change how we understand ours. We praise You, Jesus. Amen.