Good morning saints,
Let’s Pray and ask God to help us apply
this message today.
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on
me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has
sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to
proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor – Isaiah 61:1-2a
Jesus read this passage from Isaiah after
He had been tempted in the wilderness by Satan as recorded in Luke 4:13-20 it
says that He returned to Galilee in the Power of the Spirit, and He went into
the synagogue and as was His Custom He stood up to read. And they handed him
the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and He found the place that this passage was
written then He read it. Then He sat down and said today this scripture is
fulfilled in your hearing.
Now I referenced Isaiah verse 1 and the
first part of verse 2 here because that was what Luke recorded. But there is
more to verse 2 and the thought continues into verse 3.
to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor
and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for
those who grieve in Zion to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the
oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a
spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the
LORD for the display of his splendor. – Isaiah 61:2-3
So why did Jesus not read the rest of
verse 2 and all of verse 3? Apparently, even though the rest of verse 2 and all
of verse 3 applied to Him, His purpose and His ministry, on this day He wanted
to reveal only four of the purposes that He was anointed and sent.
1.
To
preach good news to the poor.
Now Jesus had many more purposes for His being anointed and sent. These
are revealed in other places in the book of Isaiah and also in the rest of the books
of the Bible. But on that day Jesus chose only to reveal these four.
In Rick Warren’s book
titled “The purpose Driven Life” subtitled “What On Earth Am I Here For?” Warren
suggests that we have five purposes for being here on this earth.
Purpose # 1 You were planned for God’s
Pleasure.
Warren sites Isaiah 61:3
that says in the Living Bible “For God has planted them like strong and
graceful oaks for His own glory” (LB) (Note: This is from the same section in
Isaiah that Jesus chose to read).
Purpose # 2 You were
formed For God’s Family. Warren sites John 15;5 that says in the Contemporary
English Version of the Bible “I am the vine and you are the branches” John 15;5
(CEV) and Romans 12:5 that says in the God’s Word Translation of the Bible “Christ
makes us one body connect to each other” Romans 12:5 (GWT)
Purpose #3 You were
created to become like Christ. Warren sites Colossians 2:7 that says in the
Living Bible “Let your roots grow down into Christ and draw up nourishment from
him. See that you go on growing in the Lord, and become strong and vigorous in
the truth.” Colossians 2:7 (LB)
Purpose #4 You were shaped
for serving God. Warren sites 1 Corinthians 3:5 and 6 that says in the Today’s
English Version of the Bible “We are simply God’s servants…Each of us does the
work which the Lord gave Him to do; I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plant,
but it was God who made the plant grow.” 1 Corinthians 3:5 and 6 (TEV)
Purpose #5 You were made
for a mission. Warren sites Proverbs 11:30 That says in the New International Version “The
fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who is wise wins souls.” Proverbs
11:30 (NIV)
Now God has made
everything and everyone for a purpose.
According to A. W. Tozer
in the book “The Purpose of Man” “If you major on knowing God and cultivate a
sense of His presence in your daily life, and do what Brother Lawrence advises,
‘Practice the presence of God‘ daily and seek to know the Holy Spirit in the
Scriptures, you will go a long way in serving your generation for God. Now Warren’s
Purpose #5 correlates directly with Tozer’s view on this (i.e., serving your
generation and winning souls) Tozer also said “No man has any right to die
until he has served his generation.” Correct doctrine was not enough for Tozer.
He also said that “You can be straight as a gun barrel theologically and empty
as one spiritually.”
Now God made man in his
own image and blew in Him the breath of life to live in His presence and
worship Him. God sent man out into the world to increase, multiply and fill the
earth with men and women who would worship Him.
According to A. W. Tozer our
#1 purpose. i.e., is to reflect God’s image.
Throughout the Bible the
prophets and apostles all testify that God made us for a purpose and, according
to them, that purpose is to sing His praises before the hushed audience of all
creation. According to Tozer’s Purpose of Man, ultimately man is to enter God’s
presence and unashamedly worship God, looking upon His face while the ages
roll. That is why man was created, that is man’s chief end. …God gave you a
harp and placed it in your own heart. God made you in order that you might
stand up and charm the rest of the universe as you sing praises to the Lord
Jesus Christ. That is why you are made in His image.
When a baby is born, the
father and mother look intensely at him or her to see if the baby looks like the
father or mother. Everything we create is a reflection of our personality. In
the world of art, a Monet is easily distinguished from a Rembrandt. Each
painting reflects the personality of the artist.
God made man to be like
Him so that man could give more pleasure to God than all the other creatures. This
correlates with Rick Warren’s Purpose #1 You were planned for God’s pleasure. Only
in man, as created by God can God admire Himself. Man is the mirror image in
which God looks to see Himself. Man is the reflection of the glory of God,
which was one of the purposes and intention of God originally. Man’s supreme
function/(Purpose) through all eternity is to reflect God’s highest glory, and
that God might look into the mirror called man and see His own glory shining
there. Through man, God could reflect His glory to all creation. This is even
more evident at the moment of our salvation when He gave us the Holy Spirit as
a permanent guarantee of eternal life. According to His WORD, He and the Son and
the Holy Spirit are One and will live inside of us for all eternity.
So, you are a mirror of
the Almighty and, this is the reason you were created in the first place. This
is your purpose. You were not created so that you might only take something
from here and put it there (i.e., only to do work).
According to Tozer a
second purpose of God in making man was to have somebody capable to properly
and sufficiently worship Him and satisfy His own heart.
All the prophets and the
apostles teach that man fell from his first estate and destroyed the glory of
God reflected image in man, and the mirror was broken. God could no longer look
at sinful man and see His glory reflected. Man failed to fulfill his created/planned
purposes of reflecting God’s glory and worshiping his creator.
It is terrible what people
will worship if they lose God. They were created to worship God but since in
there fallen minds, they believe there is no God or they refuse to worship Him
as God then they substitute something else to worship. Be it money, fame,
music, cars, pleasure etc. or even self.
God made man to reflect
His glory, but unfortunately, fallen unforgiven man cannot. The flowers still
shine as beautiful as God meant them to be. The sun still shines yonder with
spacious firmament on high. Evening shadows fall and the moon takes up the
wonders and tells us that the hand that made us is divine. Bees still gather
their honey from flower to flower, and birds still sing a thousand songs, and
the seraphim still chant “holly, holy, holy” before the throne of God. Yet fallen
man sulks in his cave. Due to the fall man who was made more like God than any
creature, has become less like God than any creature. Man made to be a mirror
to reflect the deity, now reflects only his own sinfulness.
Change the figure or
metaphor now from a mirror to a harp. God has put in man a harp bigger than
anything else and He meant that harp to be tuned to Himself. However, when man
sinned and fell in this tragic terrible thing that we call the “Fall of Man”,
man threw the harp down into the mud and the strings were broken.
The mightiest disaster
ever known in the world was the soul of man, more like God than anything, and
more fitted to God’s sweet music than all other creatures, with the light gone
from his mind and love gone from his heart, stumbling through the dark world man
endeavors to find himself a grave. From God’s point of view, man needed
redemption. What is the purpose of redemption? Redemption is to restore us back
to God again; to restring the harp, to purge it, cleanse it and refurbish it by
the grace of God and by the blood of the lamb.
A friend of mine Bill
Hollis told me recently that I should watch the movie “Hacksaw Ridge”. This
movie is based on a true story of a man named Desmond Doss that put his trust
in God and fulfilled one of his purposes. Bill only had a 4K DVD of the movie,
but I didn’t think it was worth me going out and buying a television set with
4K picture quality capability just to watch it. But while I was at the library
with Christine the other day, I found that the library had a standard DVD
version of the movie available for checkout. So, I checked it out of the
library and watched it. Now let me say to all of you up front that, this is not
a mommy movie or a children’s movie and if you have a weak stomach, you should
definitely avoid watching it altogether because it has some scenes that are
very gory. Much the same way the movie The Passion of the Christ has scenes
that are gory when the scenes depict Jesus being beaten and crucified. Thus,
both movies earn the R movie rating from the Motion Picture Association of
America (MPAA) film rating system.
As I said this movie was
based on a true story. The following are some excerpts of the true story from a
book that I own titled Medal of Honor Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of
Duty:
In April of 1942 Desmond
Doss was drafted into the army. Because of a vow that he had made to God he
chose not to bear arms, so he joined the Army’s Medical Corps. He served as a
medic with the 77th Division on the islands of Guam and Leyte in the
Philippians in 1944. On April 29th 1945 on the island of Okinawa his
battalion was assaulting a jagged cliff rising up four hundred feet whose
summit was commanded by a well-entrenched Japanese force. The battle lasted for
nearly three weeks. At one point Desmond treated four men who had been cut down
while they were assaulting a strongly defended cave. Only a few yards away from
the Japanese guns, he dressed their wounds and made four trips to drag them to
safety. On May 5th he was the only medic available as the ongoing
assault met heavy resistance. They seemed on the verge of finally taking the
position when the enemy concentrated massive artillery, mortar and machine gun
fire on them, driving most of them back down the face of the four-hundred-foot cliff
and leaving dozens of casualties behind. Desmond alone stayed with the fallen
soldiers. Under constant fire, he tended the wounded, dragged them to the edge
of the cliff and lowered them down in a rope sling. Each time he got one of
them to safety, he prayed “Dear God let me get one more man. By nightfall he had
rescued seventy-five wounded GIs. Several days later he was seriously wounded
in the leg by a grenade. He treated himself and then waited five hours to be
rescued. As he was being carried back to the aid station on a stretcher the
enemy counter attacked. Along the way Desmond insisted on giving his stretcher
to a badly wounded GI. Another soldier who was slightly wounded came along and
suggested that the two of them try to reach the aid station together. As they
were making their way a sniper’s bullet struck Desmond in the arm, entering at
his wrist and traveling to his upper arm. Desmond improvised a splint out of a
rifle stock, and he and the other wounded man eventually made it to the aid station.
In the meantime, the stretcher bearers had returned for him. When they couldn’t
find him, they assumed he was dead. The news of his death made the front page
of the hometown newspaper in Lynchburg, Virginia. Desmond now at a field
hospital had a nurse help him write a letter to his mother to let her know that
the reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated.
So why did I say earlier
that Desmond fulfilled one of his purposes? I am going through a series on the
book of Acts of the Apostles both at the Dominion Dependent Senior Care
Facility and at the Everlan Independent Senior Care Facility. In the book of
Acts each time a miracle is performed more people turn to the Lord. They don’t turn
to worship the person performing the miracle, but they turn to worship God. They
see that God has worked through these men to glorify Himself and His Son Jesus.
They became believers through seeing or hearing of the miracles that God did
through Jesus. And Jesus reflected the image of God’s glory. Hebrew 1:3 says:
“And He is the radiance
of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things
by the word of His power.” – Hebrew 1:3 NASB
Paul says the following in
Romans 12:1:
Therefore I urge you,
brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy
sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. –
Romans 12:1 NASB
So, our spiritual service
is living our lives for God and our lives should point to God and not us.
Now I know the director Mell
Gibson took cinematic liberties in some of the scenes of this movie. However,
it was interesting that in the movie the General was asking the company
commander by radio why he had been delaying the resumption of the assault that
he had ordered. The general was upset because the commencement of that
resumption of the assault was ten minutes late. The battlefield commander
replied to the General by radio that they were waiting for private Doss to
finish praying. The battlefield commander and all of his men knew that they
were going to face an untold number of casualties again when they resumed the
assault. But they also had witnessed the fact that God had worked a miracle
through this young medic to save 75 wounded men’s lives by himself and they
wanted what he had (i.e., the protection of God). God had revealed Himself
through this young man’s actions and prayers. The other men that were preparing
to renew the assault became believers through that revelation. It was God not
Desmond Doss that was glorified through these miracles. Although Desmond ended up being honored by
receiving the Medal of Honor for Valor above and beyond the call of duty his
actions glorified God above all. Desmond attributed the strength and outcome of
those actions to answers from God to his repeated prayer of “Dear God let me
get one more man”.
Now, Warren’s purpose # 5 says
You were made for a mission. and Proverbs 11:30 says “The fruit of the righteous
is a tree of life, and he who is wise wins souls.”
Now God has many different
purposes for each of us here on this earth. Warren listed five, Tozer listed two.
The first was our supreme purpose i.e., to be a mirror to reflect God’s glory and
the second was to worship God. I believe both Warren and Tozer are correct in
these purposes, and I believe that God has many more purposes for each of us to
fulfill in our lifetime.
However, I believe
Warren’s purposes number 1 add 5 and the two that Tozer listed are the most
important and are related to each other.
Remember Tozer also said,
“No man has any right to die until he has served his generation.” Now there is
no greater service to this generation than to tell them the truth of the
Gospel. The good news that Jesus the Son of God died on the cross in order that
their sins could be forgiven.
I believe that when we
have fulfilled completely all the purposes that God has for us here on this earth,
we not only have a right to die but we will also have the privilege of dying
and standing unashamed in the physical presence of God worshipping Him and His
Son for all eternity and reflecting His image. Once we have fulfilled all of
God’s purposes for us there will no longer be any need for us to stay in this
fallen world any longer and God will take us home. But only God knows when all
of the purposes in this world have been fulfilled. Desmond Doss lived another
60 years after he saved those 75 GIs and died on March 23, 2006, at the age of
87. Apparently, God had many other purposes for Desmond to fulfill between the
time that he help save the lives of all those wounded GIs on Hacksaw Ridge and
the time that he died.
Now what about you? What
are some of the purposes that you have already fulfilled in your lifetime for
God in reaching your generation with the Gospel? Though they may be many, do
you still have the attitude to pray like Desmond? Are you still asking God to
let you give one more man or one more woman or one more child the truth of the
Gospel that they too may be saved?
Remember that Jesus said in
John 15:8:
“My Father is glorified
by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” – John
15:8 NASB
When we as Jesus’
disciples win souls, we are wise, and we bear much fruit, and we reflect as in
a mirror the Father’s glory.
So, Tozer’s two purposes
and Warren’s purposes 1 and # 5 are related and as Jesus’ disciples they should
be our purposes.
Actually the 4 purposes
that Jesus said He fulfilled in the peoples hearing in Isaiah 61:1-2a He wants
us to fulfill also in our lifetime as His disciples. Thus, we shall glorify His
Father as He did.
Again those 4 purposes are:
1. To preach good news to the poor.
2. To bind up the brokenhearted.
3. To proclaim freedom for the captives.
4. To proclaim release from darkness for the prisoners.
Let’s pray.
2. To bind up the brokenhearted.
3. To proclaim freedom for the captives.
4. To proclaim release from darkness for the prisoners.
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