“WHERE PURPOSE BEGINS.” PS. 8:1-6; HEB. 2:8b-10, 14-15.
PSALM 8: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6; HEB. 2: 8b-10, 14-15.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO PSALM 8.
The Life Question in today’s lesson is “Where should I begin in my search for life’s purpose?” This lesson moves beyond the dead ends that plagued Solomon’s life as he, with his wisdom, investigated everything only to find that great wisdom brought great grief.
He then turned to pleasure, enjoyment, and laughter, only to find this was another dead end in his search for life’s meaning.
Third, he tried to find ultimate purpose in possessions of all kinds. None of these satisfied him. Then he began to think of how his legacy would be treated after his death. He realized that a fool could squander it all. His conclusion was that personal achievements do not provide ultimate purpose for life.
Today’s lesson should help us know that God created each of us for a special purpose and through Christ empowers us to fulfill that purpose.
This lesson should help us discover our God-given purpose and help us life according to it by understanding the source and nature of purpose in our life, and acknowledging that only through a proper relationship with Jesus Christ can we fulfill that purpose.
The lesson focuses on God’s purpose for humanity and how it has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Looking to ourselves, it is hard to tell whether we are the highest creatures of the universe or are worthless heaps of dust and fluids. Measuring our selves by each other, we can do no more than compete for an advantage.
PLEASE READ PSALM 8: 1-2.
The 8th Psalm is a great song of worship. It opens and closes with the same words; “O Lord, Our Lord, How excellent is your name in all the earth.” Here in vs. 1 we find that looking to God is the antidote to both despair and arrogance. Psalm 8 gives us six teaching that directly relate to our purpose for being.
First, we were made for the purpose of knowing God. The Psalm tells us that God’s magnificence is known throughout the earth. This is surprising, to some extent, because the Psalm begins with the Lord, which here stands for Yahweh, the name of the God of Israel. But if David was praising the God of Israel, how could he say that His name was magnificent in all the world?
The nations at that time did not worship Israel’s God. David could do it because he knew that the God of Israel is the one true God, the maker of heaven and earth. All people, even if they do not acknowledge Him, see and deep inside know that He is God. God’s glory is seen by all, whether they want to see it or not.
Theologians refer to this as “natural revelation” or as “general revelation.”