Our Purpose: 1 Peter 4

Mark Dunagan
09/04/16 - Sunday Evening

Our Purpose

Wisdom fears the appropriate realities to the appropriate degree. There's nothing more sobering than Jesus' reminder that there is a God with whom we must give an account Who has the power to cast the unrepentant sinner into hell (Luke 12:5).  In the first part of that same discussion, however, Jesus encourages believers not to be afraid of such things as the power and opinions of mere men (12:4). I have seen the misplacement of fear in those around me, have you? It is so easy to spend a superfluous amount of our invaluable life being afraid of things that should never have been our concern. I find the culture often moving from one fear to another. Throughout the years I have seen our culture preoccupied with:

• The fear of a nuclear winter or nuclear annihilation.
• The fear of a comet or meteor slamming to the earth.
• The fear of a certain disease or super disease decimating the human race.
• The fear of a future climate that either results in a frozen earth, or an earth in which the polar ice caps have melted and just about everything is under water.

When I was in Junior High, one of the major fears of the time was over-population. In 1968 Stanford University Professor Paul Erlich published a book entitled The Population Bomb, in which he predicted coming famine and as a result millions of people dying. He also said that if he was a betting man,  he would bet that by the year 2000 the nation of England would no longer exist. Yet these predictions ever arrived. I am impressed that often the Bible tells us, "Do not be afraid", and do not be terrified by what terrifies people in the world (Jeremiah 10:2). Jesus made the same observation when He saw so many people in the world (and too many believers among them) worrying about food and clothing (Matthew 6:32). For other "do not be afraid passages", see: Deuteronomy 18:22; Jeremiah 10:5; 1 Peter 3:14; Revelation 2:10.

The Danger of False Danger

One of the dangers of being preoccupied with the fears of the culture is that we can miss the things about which we truly need to be concerned. This was Jesus' point in the Sermon on the Mount. We can scurry around with our heads down worrying about earthly things, and never get around to the most real and pressing problems of eternal consequence (Matthew 6:28-30).  God does a great job of sending fruitful seasons to ungrateful men (Acts 14:17). Yet a mere "here and now" earthly focus results in people missing what they were created to discover: God, His kingdom, and all the other eternal and thus indispensible things in life (6:33). So while the Bible encourages good stewardship of the planet, the climate it says is most worthy of the believer's focus, is the moral climate. It often warns us about our adversary the devil (1 Peter 5:8) and the dire consequences of sin and decay in the moral climate (2 Timothy 3:1ff). Sin ruins lives. In fact the bi-product of a healthy, virtuous spiritual climate will be a healthier, well-tended physical planet.

My Purpose

After Paul warns Timothy about the false teachers he would encounter as he preached the word, he then tells Timothy, "… followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance" (2 Timothy 3:10). How significant that Paul includes among the things Timothy was to follow, was Paul's divine "purpose". And just what was Paul's purpose?  Paul's life and teachings provide a crystal clear answer. Paul's purpose was to:

• Live for Christ: Galatians 2:20
• Glorify God by his life: 1 Corinthians 10:31
• Reach as many people with the Gospel as possible: 1 Corinthians 10:33
• Spend himself out for God's people: 2 Corinthians 12:15
• End strong, finish the course, and faithfully teach what Jesus told him to teach: 2 Timothy 4:6-8
• The fight the good fight right up until the end: 2 Timothy 4:6-8
• Faithfully pass on to the next generation the gospel without addition or subtraction: 2 Timothy 2:2

Be impressed that the heroes of faith mentioned in the Bible were men and women of the very same purpose:

• Enoch walked with God: Hebrews 11:4
• Joshua was determined to lead his family in obedience to God: Joshua 24:15
• Daniel had made up his mind to keep himself pure: Daniel 1:8
• Joseph was determined not to sin against God: Genesis 39:9
• Abraham had his sights set on a heavenly city: Hebrews 11:6
• Moses made a definite decision to side with God and His people, even when that meant a life of difficulty: Hebrews 11:25
• Jesus definitely came with a mission and a purpose (Luke 19:10), and we are to be like Him in this mission (1 Peter 4:1).

Do You have a Purpose?

When Jesus arrived He observed that the multitudes were just wandering about like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36). He witnessed people who were just leading purposeless lives, and worrying about so many things not worth their obsessive focus. Maybe another way of saying this is that Jesus came to this earth and told us what is and what is not a big deal. The big deal is consistently obeying God, and prayerfully putting forth effort to avoid spiritually drifting (Hebrews 2:3).

Mice Without Purpose

A man by the name of John B. Calhoun spend his life building rat and mice utopias. He had been doing this since the 1940's. In the early 1970's he built another one of these he named Universe 25. He started with four breeding pairs who were disease free. What he wanted to see is what would happen to a population of mice if they were given a perfect world and the effects of population density upon a group of mice. This mice utopia had plenty of room for 3800 mice. The temperature was perfect, there were no predators and the population had all the food they wanted. What he found was:

• Long before the space was full, at around 2200 mice, everything started to  collapse.
• In such comfort and ease a number of male mice, that he called the "beautiful ones", lost all interest in breeding, did not protect their territory, did not fight or defend themselves. They opted for seclusion and spent their time doing nothing more than eating, sleeping, grooming themselves and being very lazy. They simply withdrew from all social interaction and lived for self. Sounds familiar. Luxury, arrogance, abundant food and careless ease was also a problem in Ezekiel 16:49. These factors contributed also to an increased instance of random violence in the group, infant abandonment, and mothers killing their young.
• The mice that were born during this time were completely out of touch with reality. They grew up alienated from the other mice, but did not see themselves as alienated. They were simply messed up. All of the above Calhoun called the "first death", that is, when this happened the mice culture was at the point of no return and would simply be followed by the second death, that is, the entire colony dying out.

Yet there were some "outliers" who continued to function, but they were mice that were very relational. The desire for relationships and being around other mice saved them from going into the craziness and anti-social behavior that had ensnared the other mice.

Even many non-Christians after reading the results of such studies have seen the immediate parallels with our modern culture. We must have a higher purpose in life than just wanting to be comfortable, look good, hang out, have free time, and be well fed. In following Jesus can we avoid becoming like one of the "beautiful” or "messed up" ones. Let's determine to crave God and value being with His people, for we have such a higher purpose than just living for the here and now: Life is about relationships. and existing for His glory and the good of one another. Be an outlier.   

Mark Dunagan | mdunagan@frontier.net
Beaverton Church of Christ | 503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net