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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/frank-sona/purpose/
What is it that is going to enable us to be faithful? What is it as well that will guide us through these seasons of life so that we stay on course? I think it is an understanding and a sense, a grasp of purpose.
If we do not have purpose or lose our purpose, then we'll get discouraged, we'll get disillusioned, we'll get turned aside, set aside. So Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 11, To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord?
I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and of the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats,. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand to tread my courts?
Notice that they were offering the best. These were not the off-scouring. Here you have bullocks, rams, he-goats, the fat is here, and yet God is saying, To what purpose? You do all these activities, you offer all these things, and he says, To what purpose is it?
And I'm reading that passage for this reason. It's possible to be engaged in busyness and still lose our sense of purpose. Now, let's go over to Ephesians chapter 3, and then we'll come back to the passage that we heard earlier.
Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 9,. And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world, the ages, hath been hid in God. Not just hid in the scriptures, hid in God.
Who created all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent that now, unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known through the church, or by the church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose, which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now go back to Jeremiah chapter 29. Jeremiah chapter 29 and verse 1. Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem unto the residue of the elders which were carried away captives, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon.
So this letter is being sent. Verse 3, I'm going to read this by way of, we'll mention this later on. By the hand of Elassah, the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent unto Babylon, to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, saying.
Now God is going to speak to his people through this letter that Jeremiah is sending. But I want to notice verse 10. For thus saith the Lord, that after 70 years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you. Now at first, thoughts and think might seem to be the same word and the same thought, but they are actually different. The word here for thoughts carries a different connotation, a different meaning.
It actually has the idea of devices. It was used for the curious work and the cunning work that was done in the tabernacle. So God is saying, I'm actually going to bring things to bear, things to be. It's not just thoughts.
It's actual deeds and things, devices that God will use. He says, I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord. Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me and ye shall go and pray unto me.
Notice these couplets. Call upon me, shall go and pray unto me. I will hearken unto you, and ye shall seek me and find me. A verse that we've used in the gospel, and yet God was speaking to his people.
When ye shall search for me with all your heart. I want to notice particularly verse 11, for I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end, a hope.
Some translate this, I know the thoughts that I think toward you as the plans that I have for you, purpose. I know sometimes we get things mistaken for purpose. I remember one time I was at a table, the family was together, and I was carrying this, we were all Italian, and I was carrying this bowl of gravy, Italian gravy, I think you call it sauce, we would call it gravy.
And as I was moving there, I accidentally tripped and it spilled all over my uncle, went all over his shirt and everything. And he says to me, you did that on purpose. And I looked at him, I says, why, why would I do that on purpose?
I didn't do that on purpose, I had no purpose involved. There are things that happen randomly, and sometimes they're misinterpreted, they're misapplied. People think we do things on purpose when they just seem to happen.
But when it comes to God, that is not the case. God does not do things randomly or capriciously. God has purpose, intent, direction, and I want to notice that. That's actually the meaning of the thought of the word purpose, intent, planning.
One thing that so characterizes the Western world, the Western civilization that we're part of, is a sense of meaninglessness, of purposelessness. Go on Saturday evenings, walk around the malls and you'll see kids hanging out.
Go to the front of places, they're just nothing to do, they're just shooting the breeze, so to speak. And they're just mobs of people. It's a purposelessness. Why have the suicide rate has skyrocketed?
Celebrities, millionaires, purposelessness, meaninglessness. And it even happens among believers. Because there isn't that grasp of purpose. And people get lost along the way. I'm thinking of a number of reasons why this happens.
We can lose our sense of purpose sometimes because of societal reasons. And of course, I'm talking about believers now. I'm not talking about unbelievers, but because we lose our identity. And we forget who we are and whose we are.
And so we just meld and blend into society. And all of a sudden now, we who are a believer and we have been saved for a purpose, we lose that sense of purpose. And because of society and the way that they think and what we have taken in and agreed with, we can lose that sense of purpose, societal reasons.
Sometimes there's physical reasons. We've been hearing we live in a busy world. And because of the busyness and the tiredness, we can just get unable to fulfill that purpose because we've become too busy.
Sometimes there's physiological reasons why we lose our sense of purpose. There are actual conditions, physiological conditions, medical conditions that have to be treated. And because of that, they're not addressed.
Things happen in the system, in the bodies of people, the thinking of people. Sometimes there's expectational reasons why we lose our purpose. And faithfulness, as we've been hearing, is replaced by successfulness.
And we are now goal-driven, and we are success-oriented. And we lose sight of the fact that what God expects from us is not results, but faithfulness. And because of that, we raise the bar, and we become disillusioned.
Or we look at other role models, and we want to be like them. Listen, young believer especially, don't try to be in the sense, I know we have our Moseses and our Timothys and so on. I don't mean that.
But God saved you. He has a purpose for you. He has placed you where you are, and we can lose sight of that. And many times, we lose our sense of purpose because of spiritual reasons. We become cold in heart, carnality sets in.
We have a lack of thankfulness, a lack of contentedness. And because we lose our contentedness, as Paul says, godliness with contentment is great gain. And so we lose that sense of purpose. But I want to think of a number of things and tie what we've kind of been hearing already into this.
I want you to think first of all about the God of purpose, the God of purpose. Why does God do what he does? God does nothing randomly, nothing unknowingly, nothing takes God by surprise. And the reason for this is, well, the simple reason is he's God.
That's number one. But if you take the attributes and the characteristics of God and the character of God, you will see why it is impossible for God to not have a purpose. He is omniscient, he knows all.
He is omnipresent, he's everywhere at once, nothing escapes him. He is omnipotent, he is all powerful. God is a God of purpose. Therefore, the book that he has given you, the book that he has authored, really, is a book of purpose.
And the only way you will know and be able to fulfill that purpose that he has for you and be tracked in, clued in, is by knowing this book. If we do not know the word of God, if there's simply a cursory reading and we just pull a page out of a calendar every morning and you don't get to know the book, you will not know the God of the book.
And you will then experience a sense of purposelessness. If you don't know the plans that he has for you, according to Jeremiah 21. God gave those people his word. He was telling his word through Jeremiah the prophet, his word so that they would know the purpose that they were to fulfill.
And so God is a God of purpose. Now let me just say this, on the opposite end is the purpose of Satan. And while you can be assured, and I will use this expression reverently, God plays by the rules because he has established the rules.
God will never work contrary to his word. So if you want to know what the will of God is for you, the purpose for your life, know his word. On the other hand, Satan has no rules. I was speaking to a young man who is now far from God.
He got into an environment that he should not have been. The word of God discouraged believers from moving, and it discourages you and me from moving into spheres that he does not sanction, that he does not take pleasure in.
World systems that are overarching the world in which we live, the political system, the entertainment system, the sports, yes, the sports system, the system of big business and commercialism. Listen, if that becomes your overarching goal, you have replaced God.
And therefore, you have displaced his purpose for you. As I was talking to him, he said, well, I just, I don't know. He says, I just can't trust God. I said, listen, when you move into the sphere you're moving in, you don't know what will happen.
If you put your hands in the hands of God, if you obey his word, I'm not telling you, and neither does God tell you, that life is gonna be a bed of roses. But you will know this, God is good, and God is right, and God is pure.
And you move in that sphere, and you open yourself up to different purposes, there's no telling what will happen. Satan doesn't play by the rules. Not only the God of purpose, I want you to think of the grounds of purpose, the grounds of purpose, because God has operating principles, these grounds that he works with and fulfilling his purpose.
First of all, from the beginning, in fact, prior to creation, and then moving toward creation, and then beyond creation, to today, and then moving beyond today, God's design and desire and purpose is to display, to reflect, to communicate what will glorify him.
And so in doing that, all things start from him, all things will come back to him. So that the ultimate grounds of purpose that God has established, first of all, are loving, they're loving. God is love, so that behind the purpose of God is a loving God.
God so loved the world, gave his only begotten son. Here in his love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us. The only absolute concrete thing, listen, I'm speaking to people, and there's a vast audience here, and there are going to come things in your life that will rock your world, that will shake you, and you will question.
Go back to this, the one solid concrete thing is this, hereby perceive we the love of God, in that he laid down his life for us. And you can always go back to the reality of Calvary, and know that a God that would do that has your absolute and ultimate good in his purpose, God is love.
Number one, so the grounds of his purpose is loving. Number two, the grounds of his purpose is linear, is linear. And what I mean by that is this, God moves, we talk about the purposes of God. And we use that expression, but you won't find that expression in the Bible.
When it comes to God, purpose is in the singular. You don't read about the purposes of God, we read about the purpose of God, so that it is linear, moving through from creation, through staggered dispensations, moving through nations, moving through this age, God is moving in a linear way, ultimately, so that all these, what we would deem to be tangential truths, actually are concurrent, are convergent, and they flow into, like tributaries of streams and rivers, into ultimately the vast ocean of God's ultimate purpose.
God is beyond our thinking, we can trust him. Number three, the grounds of God's purpose are lasting. They're not just loving, they're not just linear, they're lasting. We have read in Ephesians chapter three of the eternal purpose.
There are things that we do that have a purpose. We make things, we build things, we do things. And the purpose is satisfied, and it's done. And when that's done, we move on to the next project, we do the next thing.
But God has eternal purpose. And that in the ages to come, God is going to display the wonders of the riches of his grace, God is moving. Ephesians 3 tells us that the eternal purpose is that the very mystery of what was hid in God will be revealed in a day to come through the church, that that eternal purpose is something that is so unique that only God could do it himself.
That that church, the body, Ephesians is the epistle of the body of Christ, from Pentecost to the rapture, and that body will be on display. There is a union, there is a, words fail me. I would think of the prayer of the Lord Jesus in John chapter 17, that they all may be one.
And he says this, as I am in thee and thou art in me, O Father. There is a unity that is beyond, goes beyond our understanding to grasp. And it will be on display in the ages to come through the church.
God has been working, creation was wonderful. The nation of Israel called out, and God making them his peculiar possession was amazing. Among all the nations, God displaying his wisdom and his ways through the nation of Israel.
And in the future, in the millennium, there is going to be the wonder as the curse is removed, and the lion will lay down with the lamb and so on, and that will be. But nothing will eclipse us, upon whom the ends of the ages have come, that God will display his eternal purpose one day.
What a thing, the grounds of his purpose. Let me very quickly talk about a generation of purpose. A generation of purpose, we talk about generation X, the millennials and so on. And yet, humanly speaking, humanly speaking, Christianity has always been only one generation away from extinction.
So that while this generation is vastly important, it's because you're this generation, the last generation was just as important. Now there's nothing you can do, this generation. Let me speak to those people in that age group of the spring, was it the spring of their lives, right?
So let me spring one on you. You can do nothing about the generation that passed. It's gone, it's going, going, gone, except this. Make sure you listen to them, and you learn from them. Because God has purpose in that generation.
They were there for a reason, and you're here for a reason. The purpose of this generation will be to take and handle what has been passed on from that generation. It is in your hands. How are you gonna handle it?
How will you know the purpose? When it comes to personal truth, when it comes to assembly truth, there are things that are being uniquely faced by this generation in this day that were not faced by previous generations.
How are you gonna handle that? You will have to know the purpose of God for that truth to be held rightly, for you to be faithful. The evangelical world around them, I don't wanna get sidetracked, but the evangelical world around us, you are bombarded by their teaching.
And it is not now as it was in past days, where you had to be able to pull a book out of a shelf, or maybe possibly turn the television on. Now, with the Internet, with every type of multimedia presentation, the rabid availability of material that you are inundated with.
You wanna understand, how many people Google something and just check out something? You wanna look up justification. You wanna look up election. You wanna look up this truth, that truth, and you just Google it.
You need to be absolutely careful about what you take in, because it is so available. And there are thousands and tens of thousands of unregulated sources that do not have a grasp of the purpose of God.
Men that are teaching, very popular teachers that know absolutely nothing about what an assembly of God is from the scriptures, a generation of purpose. I think of Numbers chapter 13. There was a generation.
They had come out of the wilderness. And because of their failure to grasp the purpose that God had brought them out for, they couldn't go in. They couldn't go into the land of Canaan. They had missed it.
And there was another generation that they went in. If you fail, if this generation fails, you will fail to hold on to assembly truth. I know there's always a remnant. Thank God, there is always a remnant.
But we hope and pray that the ones that we're looking at now are not those that fail to hold on and grasp the purpose of holding this truth today. I think of something else here. I think of 70 years, let me go over to the passage very quickly.
A grasp of purpose, a grasp of purpose. It's interesting, 70 years, God is speaking to Jeremiah, 70 years. It just struck me. I've always thought of the weeks of years and the 70 years, but it just hit me.
I know, maybe I'm just slow. I probably am, I am sure I am. But that 70 years is a generation. It's a generation. It's not just a segment of time. It's a specific segment of time linked with a generation.
Now picture these people. We were hearing Daniel, he's too old to go in. And maybe others were hearing. And they're thinking, from Jeremiah's standpoint, 70 years? 70, I'll be dead by then. What does it matter to me?
I hope and pray there's nobody here that thinks that way. What does it matter to me? I'll be dead by then. Listen, I've got enough to worry about with me. That is true. We all have enough to worry about with us.
But you have more than that to worry about. Because you're not an island unto yourself. And you don't stand alone and you aren't alone. You are part. In fact, that's what you said when you came into assembly fellowship, isn't it?
You wanted to become part of that company. When you trusted Christ, you became part of a larger company, 70 years. So I want to think about this grasp of purpose very, very quickly. Babylon was used as a tool.
Egypt was used as a tool. Babylon was used as a tool to place them. Because of numerous reasons, God was going to put them, place them into captivity. Egypt was used as a tool to pry them out. And God, it's amazing how God, with tremendous majesty and power, uses mighty nations as easily as you would pick up a pry bar or a hammer and nails, and he moves his purpose.
And so he tells his people here, and he threw Jeremiah 800 miles away, gives Jeremiah to write a document. Now picture this, 800 miles from Jeremiah to the sending of this document. A document that was a letter, a letter.
And look at the content of this letter, unbelievable. A letter that's filled with purpose, given by men. In fact, the names of these men are very interesting. This one man, if you were to go back to chapter 26, there's a man named Ahakam.
And he delivers Jeremiah from death. A mob of angry priests wanted to kill Jeremiah. Ahakam delivers him. Then there's this man in chapter 29, and his name is Elasa, and he delivers a letter. One man delivers Jeremiah, Ahakam.
Another man delivers the letter, his name is Elasa. You know who they were? They were the brother and son of Shaphan. You know who Shaphan is? He's the man who found, remember, the scriptures under the floorboards of the temple while it was being restored.
What I'm showing you is this. Here are people, because they were obedient, because they were focused on faithfulness, the purpose of God in such a great large way, without them even knowing it, was being carried out by what they were doing, even though they didn't know what they were doing fully at that moment.
Listen, what I'm trying to say is this. The largeness, the scope of what we do by being faithful to God, obeying his word, with what we've been entrusted with, can have a ripple effect far beyond what you will understand.
You do not know the largeness of what you are part of. I want you to think something else, too. Three things were accomplished by this, now, this grasp of purpose that God was speaking to them with, speaking to them about.
Number one, at this time, there was a purge of idolatry. Number two, did you know this is actually the time when synagogues rose and came into being? Synagogues, teaching institutions for teaching the word of God.
But there was something else that was created by this letter. And my time is running out, but I want to get to this. There was a deeper longing for their Messiah, for the Messiah, the promised Messiah.
As Jeremiah writes this letter, something else is going to happen. God says now, I'm going to visit you. I'm going to, he says, I'm going to perform a work. My thoughts are not your thoughts. He's telling them about thoughts and his thinking and so on.
You know what the amazing thing is? God is telling them all this in the midst of disciplining the nation. I just want to emphasize that again, because of this. Even in the midst of that discipline that they were experiencing, God loved them mightily.
And you will go through things and do not doubt that God loves you. He says, I am with you. Now, that's Jeremiah giving the letter. Let me take you 70 years later. 70 years later, Daniel is reading. And now he's reading in Babylon.
And he starts and he understands by the scriptures. He gets a hold of the purpose of God. Jeremiah had it in giving it. Daniel had it in getting it. It was personal for Daniel. You remember how Daniel begins, don't you?
Chapter one, he purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the meat from the king's table. So the man that purposes in his heart to obey God and to be faithful, to carry out his word, is the man that God is going to reveal his purpose to.
But here's the thing I want to tell you. When Daniel got this, he grasped something larger. The further purpose of God was unfolded and understood. Because Gabriel informs Daniel in chapter nine, that the very chapter that Daniel, as we read, Daniel was reading.
If you were to turn to Daniel chapter nine, it says he understood by the books of the prophet Jeremiah. And he understood this, the 70 year prophecy that was in the scroll of Jeremiah really equaled 70 weeks of years.
Not just 70 years, 70 weeks of years. In other words, 70 times 7, which would be 490 years. It's giving Daniel insight into the purpose of God. But wait, there's even more. Not just the time frame of it, but the truth of it was greatly expanded.
Because the 70 year prophecy was true, but its full meaning had to be learned from further revelation, and this is how it ends. These 490 years are given to finish the transgression and to put an end to sin.
It's the coming of the Messiah. It's far beyond what they took in in Jeremiah's day. This man got a hold of that purpose. What I am telling you is this, do not lose your purpose. Do not lose your sense of purpose because you will fail to grasp truth that God wants to give to you.
Truth how to live, truth in your expectation, truth that will take you beyond today. And you will live a meaninglessness sense of life. You will be swept away, you will be caught away. The winds of society will take you away.
And you will lose your distinctiveness and your impact as a child of God. I cannot be more emphatic. I wanna leave you with this, can the purpose of God be thwarted? Yes and no. Individually, it can be.
There's multitudes of people that have had it happen. God, his purpose for you and because of disobedience, the purpose of God for that individual was thwarted. Ultimately and collectively, no, it cannot be thwarted.
God will win in the end. He will accomplish his purpose. But sometimes through ignorance, people say, I didn't know. Through delusion, they can fail to enter into the purpose of God. Through distraction.
Distraction is merely being attracted to something that you hold more valuable, you esteem more highly. And you will lose your purpose, your sense of purpose. And through determination, self will, pride, arrogance.
You will disobey and you will again lose your sense of purpose. You will lose your focus. Let me end with this. One of golf's, you heard about baseball, let me do something about golf here. I don't play golf anyway.
I'm a worm burner. If I try to hit one, goes right across the, I'm not a golfer. But one of golf's immortal moments came when a Scotchman came to the USA and he tried to teach President Ulysses S Grant how to play golf.
He carefully placed the ball on the tee and he backed up and he took a mighty swing. The club, the golf club hit the turf and it scattered dirt all over President Grant's beard and head and all around the area.
He watched and the ball just sat there. The Scotchman swung again and again and again. The President waited patiently through six tries and finally he stated quietly, there seems to be a great amount of exercise in this game.
But I fail to see the purpose of the ball. Keep your eye on the ball. Keep your eye on the focus. That God has purpose for you. Do not lose your sense of purpose. Whether it's in the assembly, whether it's personally, as an individual, as a family, do not lose that.
Keep your eye on God and his word.