What is My Purpose? :: By Sean Gooding

Matt. 5:16 “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.”

Ezekiel 34: 29-31 “And I will raise up for them a garden of renown, and they will no longer be victims of famine in the land or bear the scorn of the nations. Then they will know that I, the LORD their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are My people,’ declares the Lord GOD. ‘You are My flock, the sheep of My pasture, My people, and I am your God,’ declares the Lord GOD.”

As many of you will know, Dr. John MacArthur went home to be with the Lord this week. He was a great Bible scholar. I did not agree with all that he taught, in particular the idea of Calvinism, but in just about every other aspect, his theology was solid. In an interview a while ago, he was asked about his goal in life, and he simply replied that his goal was to ‘glorify God.’ There was no fanfare, no accolades, and no pretense, just the plain and simple truth of his life’s goal, to ‘glorify God.’

We are told in many places to keep the main thing the main thing, and Dr. MacArthur knew how to do that. In every interview, in all of the interactions that we often see online, he was able to live out his goal of glorifying God. He never wavered in his doctrinal stands and did not compromise for money or fame. May we all be like this.

But as I was thinking about this, it hit me, and it kept hitting me that too many of us have missed the point of why we exist and why we are saved; it is to glorify God. But what does that mean?

The word glorify is not as mysterious as we think it is; it simply means to ‘form the right opinion.’ Our goal, our purpose, and what should drive us is to live in such a way, carry ourselves in such a way, operate our local churches in such a way as to help people form the right opinion of God. Let that sink in; we are to live in such a way as to help the people around us form the right opinion of God.

Are you and I doing that? And, if we are, are we doing so faithfully? Are we doing so consistently? These are legitimate questions about how we are living our lives.

Let us take a look at Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God”; the heavens help people to form the right opinion of God. Now, there are a lot of people who do not come to the right conclusion, and that is because they have preconceived opinions that hinder them from coming to the right conclusion about God. Over and over again, I see that when these supposed ‘evolutionists’ are confronted with questions about origins, they get stumped and fumble their words because intrinsically they know that the world in which we live, the planet on which we live, was intelligently designed. There are no ways around it once they begin to dissect the science.

One has to ignore several very concrete laws of life, physics, and science to be an evolutionist. One has to suspend rational thought to be an evolutionist, and one has to take a huge leap of faith to be an evolutionist. Thus, the heavens do their job, but sinful people refuse to come to the right conclusion. We learn from this that we are not responsible for how people react to our glorifying, but that we do glorifying right.

Many people disagreed with Dr. MacArthur on same sex marriage, on the simplicity of the Gospel, on the fact that Jesus was and is the only way, and that there is a Hell to shun and a Heaven to gain, but nonetheless, Dr. MacArthur stood firm and stood on the sanctity and security of the Holy Bible. We should endeavor to be just as secure, just as sure, just as dogmatic, and just as well-versed as he was. We should all be diligent students of the Holy Bible and be secure in its doctrines.

Do our marriages show the glory of God? Do our relationships show the glory of God? Do our churches show the glory of God? On and on we can go with these questions.

What if we based all of our actions on this simple foundation? Will what I am about to say, do, act, re-act, and endorse help those around me to form the right opinion of God? How would this simple action change the way we live out our lives? How would it make our marriages better? Our churches better? Our spending better? Our whole approach to life better?

If we make glorifying God the sole goal, the sole focus, I am not sure that we know how that would change the world around us. We have to be ready for the pushback, even from Christians. Dr. MacArthur and other leaders like him were hated by just as many or more people than those who loved him. But his sole goal was to please God; all else was second, and at that, a distant second.

All too often, when the world thinks of glorifying God, they only think of Him as loving, as kind, as a big jolly spiritual Santa Claus of sorts. But if we are to let the world know who God is and to form the right opinion of Him, then we have to also show the other side of God. He is a God to be feared, not only in the respectful sense, but in the drop on your face, trembling kind of fear.

Isaiah 6:5, “So I said: ‘Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts.’”

He created Hell; He sent the flood; He sent snakes to kill thousands of Israelites in the wilderness; He allowed some 600,000 men to die in the wilderness because they refused to enter the Promised Land; He poured out His wrath on His own Son when He became sin for us; and one day, billions will go to the Lake of Fire as a consequence of rejecting the free offer of salvation that our gracious, loving God provided. This is the part of God that we do not often show, that we try to avoid, and that we ourselves fear. God is good, and as such, He hates evil; we must be careful not to condone it.

How do we love our brothers and sisters in Jesus? Can they see and form the right opinion of God from our love? Are our churches dens of Godly love, forgiveness, grace, kindness, peace, safety, holiness, security and joy for our Christian family? Can a saved stranger walk in and feel as if they have been here for a lifetime? They should be able to because of Jesus and His Spirit in us that binds us together.

What is my purpose, our purpose, the purpose of my family, our local church? It is simply this: we are to glorify God, and in so doing, help others to form the right opinion of Him.

Jesus is coming soon; let us be about the Master’s business.

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

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