The Purpose of God

[00:00:00] To take the rest of our time this morning to center our hearts and thoughts upon something that has been very much with me this morning. [00:00:15] And that is the purpose of God. [00:00:22] I don't think it is hardly necessary to say that the whole Bible is, of course, bound up obviously with the purpose of God. There is no part of scripture which is not directly related to the purpose of God. [00:00:43] And there is no more urgent need in our day and in our generation than for us, who are the children of God, to know the purpose of God, to understand the purpose of God, to be fashioned according to the purpose of God and by the grace of God, to be an integral part of the purpose of God. [00:01:11] It is a very, very foolish idea, and it is very prevalent amongst us that if you are saved, you are in the purpose of God willy nilly. It does not matter how you live, it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter where you go. So long as you are christians, as long as you've been saved, so long as you've made a decision for Christ, then you are in the purpose of Goddess. [00:01:47] The scripture clearly shows us that it is possible to be a child of God and wholly outside of the purpose of God, to be saved and never to lose ones salvation, to be saved in a way that we shall forever thank God and worship him. And yet in the end discover that we have not been fashioned according to the purpose of God. We have been saved according to the purpose of God, but not fashioned according to the purpose of God. And neither have we been found within the purpose of God. We have not, by the grace of God, become an integral part of the purpose of God. Oh, if we could only just see something of the urgency of this. For all through scripture we have the record of men and women who on the one side have either discovered the purpose of God, committed themselves to the purpose of God and have become absolutely integral part of it, an integral part of it, instrumental in God's purpose or on the other. We have those who, though saved by the grace of God, have somehow wandered. And though theyve served God, and though they have been known by the name of God, and though in many ways they are part of the family of God, yet they have never been inside the purpose of God. [00:03:20] And so you see, it is a tremendously important point for us because I am quite sure that the devils greatest object in the 20th century, when of course, he is so largely believed not to exist, his greatest object is to completely defog children of God as to the purpose of God. [00:03:48] If he can't stop us from being saved. Then he'll make us all mercy. He will make us confused. He will make us people who just don't really know what our salvation is unto what God is doing in us, why he's doing it in us. We won't really know the meaning of the Bible. We shall look upon it very much as literature, sacred literature, inspired literature, but just literature. [00:04:13] But if we understand the purpose of God, then we shall begin to understand a lot more. Everything will begin to fall into perspective, and it is urgent. It is the urgent need of our day. Never have there been so many christians on the face of this earth, and never had there been such ignorance of the purpose of God. [00:04:36] It's an appalling fact to just recognize that when in days gone by there were a handful of christians, their impact was felt throughout the inhabited earth. [00:04:50] The roman empire knew that there was a little handful of born again believers united to Christ in heaven. They turned that empire upside down. Today we can count born again believers in millions, and their impact virtually on world affairs is almost nil. [00:05:15] We may have an effect in many ways, but, oh, our impact, our impact upon world affairs is very, very little. [00:05:29] It is urgent because of the days in which we live and the threatening things that hang over our heads as a race. [00:05:37] All that lies ahead of us. Oh, let's not be deceived. See, to so many people. Are they christians? They will not face the facts. We are running as a race into terrible trouble. [00:05:52] It's coming our way and we're going to see it. [00:05:56] The future is dark, it's black. It's not the least bit hopeful from the natural viewpoint. [00:06:03] And we need to face the facts and understand the facts. Those of you who have families, those of you who are bringing up children, you've got to face the facts. You've got to see what's going to take place in order to instruct your children and get them from the earliest age to understand the days in which we're going to live. [00:06:25] But above all that and beyond all that, there are some very comforting things, and one of them is this, that God's purpose will be completely fulfilled, completely fulfilled. In the end, let us get it absolutely clear that whatever we might feel is going to happen to this world and whatever might happen to us as being involved, God's purpose is going to be utterly achieved in the end. [00:07:06] Oh, you, you read a scripture like that. When the Lord Jesus spoke to Peter, he said, I will build my church and the gates of hades shall not prevail. Against it, I will build my church. [00:07:27] There's no might about it. There's no insecurity. There is no uncertainty. The Lord Jesus says, in complete simplicity, I will build my church. [00:07:41] Never has the church of God been so divided, so scattered, so dispersed and so poor. [00:07:50] When we read the laodicean church that is so rich, so mighty, thinks itself so wonderful, the Lord says, you're blind. You're naked. [00:08:02] But the Lord says, I will build my church. [00:08:07] It may seem to us to be a failure. It may seem to us to have been defeated. It may seem to us that the purpose of God is completely submerged under all kinds of things. But let us get this absolutely clear, that whether we can naturally reason it out or nothing, whether we can logically see that God's purpose is going to be fulfilled or not, it's going to be. It's going to be, our eyes are going to see the purpose of God fulfilled. Maybe not in our generation, possibly, but one day our eyes are going to see that the purpose of God from eternity to eternity has been utterly fulfilled. [00:08:46] I believe that that is exactly what John the apostle saw when he was in a copper mine. He'd been put there by the roman government. [00:08:57] He was in the bowels of the earth, and he was going to be worked to death. That was their whole plan. They sent trying people that they considered to be somewhat political influence, had a political influence. They exiled them to the copper mines, and there they spent their days working, working the very flesh off their bones to mine the copper. [00:09:28] And the end was death, always. But, you see, it was there in the bowels of the earth, in some little tunnel, right back in the first century, that John the apostle, whilst he was laboring, and when I say laboring, I mean labor, not just working at leisure, but laboring under. Under God, he saw his vision, and his final vision was the city of God coming down out of heaven to the earth. [00:10:03] Some people seem to think that John saw that when he was sort of having a very nice cup of tea, lying back in his own home with servants waiting upon him. Everything very beautiful, the atmosphere very peaceful, sort of looking out, as I read, in one place, out across the sea, the isle of Pat Marsh. And then as he saw, he saw these wonderful visions, but nothing of the kind. We had discovered that life in those mines was anything but leisurely. The whole object was to work those prisoners to death till they dropped dead. [00:10:40] That was the idea, to make their last days useful to the government, which is a thing that, of course, is strangely modern in some parts. Of the earth. [00:10:52] But you see, that's their eye. That was their idea behind putting John down in a copper mine. But when John was down there he saw something. Whilst I had no doubt he was down in the dark, some tunnel right under the earth mining out something. He saw something. And what did he see? He saw the most amazing series of visions and those visions were filled with conflict and at times it just seemed that the people of God were submerged in their own blood. They were martyred here and they were martyred there. Everything seemed to be in the hands of some huge government that he could only call a beast beast. [00:11:36] And he said it had got everything in its power. [00:11:40] But what was his final vision? His final vision was of the city of God coming down out of heaven and he has this wonderful phrase, having the glory of God, having the glory. [00:11:55] And the end is one of unbelievable beauty, unbelievable joy and unbelievable peace. [00:12:04] That's the end. Now that's something to see in prison. Isn't it all right to sit in a study and see such wonderful visions? It's all right to be mused, be moved while you're listening to music or something else, to be moved somehow, emotionally. It's another thing to be having your life literally worked out of you and there to see when everything seems at an end and when it must seem to anyone that the purpose of God is completely finished, it's defeated there. To see through it all, that the purpose of God is absolutely fulfilled, going to be fulfilled. [00:12:53] Romans 911 is a great comfort to me. It says this, it's a little word like this that the purpose of God according to election might stand. [00:13:05] Now isn't that wonderful? Have you ever thought of that? Of course, Romans 910 and eleven. Of course, people, a lot of heartache because it's all very difficult to understand. It's all about the jewish people. [00:13:17] But the great point is this, what a wonderful thing it is when you look at it like this. Forget all the difficulties, forget all the things that make us question and just think of this, that the purpose of God according to election might stand. [00:13:35] Paul's whole reason is simply this. God has a purpose. He's not going to be foiled. [00:13:40] God has a purpose of it's foreordained. He's not going to allow worldly rulers or even the unfaithfulness of his own people for that purpose because it is according to his own election, it's going to stand, you see? [00:13:59] So I think, as we see this whole picture before us, what a wonderful comfort it must be to us to know this now listen, you may not understand yet what the time of God is in its fullness. You may not have yet seen how it affects you. You may not yet be an integral part in it. [00:14:17] But if you can only first get hold of this, that the purpose of God is going to be fulfilled, whether I'm faithful to it or you are faithful to it or not, God will have those in the end that are faithful. [00:14:30] If he passes on from us, he will find somewhere, somewhere some who are absolutely faithful to himself, and he will take hold of those for himself. And through them he will make an instrument. [00:14:45] You look back at that, the Old Testament, and we see how clear, how clear it is that there is a realm in which the purpose of God operates. And there is a realm in which the purpose of God does not operate. There is a realm in which the sovereignty of God's grace operates, where people can serve him, where people can meet him, where people can be saved, where people can in many ways come into experiences of him. It's all his sovereign grace. But there's another realm in which it is the purpose of God, beginning and end, governed, governed by the purpose of God. And in that we have discovered, have we not, in our studies in chronicles and Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther, that in that realm God moves in a very different way. His whole discipline is different. The way he takes hold of his children is a different way. [00:15:37] Well, I think we must see that. And I want you to note too, that the purpose of God has always been the center of conflict. It doesn't matter where you look in her holds of scripture. The purpose of God has always been the center of conflict. Sometimes we don't know why conflict is raging over our heads. It's because some new step is going to be taken in the purpose of God. Always, always there is conflict. Psalm two speaks of a terrible conflict. You know psalm, you know the contents of psalm two, about the nations being moved and the kings of the earth hastening. They're going to say, let us cast his bonds asunder. Oh, it's a terrible thing. What is the heart of it? Listen. Yet I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. That's the heart of the conflict. God has a purpose. I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion, the Lord Jesus and his church. [00:16:40] That's it. That is the purpose of God, the heart of the whole thing. And over that they will wage upon conflict. [00:16:50] Let us understand straight away that now that the purpose of God, there will always be a tremendous conflict over it. But we need not fear, because God's purpose is going to be accomplished. You remember when the Lord spoke to Zechariah, things were at a very poor state indeed. A little group had gone back to build the house of God. They were in the purpose of God. But they became very, very dismayed. They looked around, they saw themselves, they looked at each other, they looked at the work, they looked at the lack on every side and the strength of heathen nations around them, and they gave up. And I have no doubt the prophets, Haggai and Zechariah felt more like giving up than the people. Because generally speaking, those who have real responsibility in the work of God do see a little farther. And they don't just see Father and the purpose of God either. They often see just as clearly the might of the enemy. [00:17:46] And for one moment, I believe that Zechariah, you know, he just stumbled. And then you remember what the Lord said to him? He said to him, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of holy. [00:18:06] This great mountain before thee, o zerubbabel, shall become a plain, and the top stone shall be brought forth with shoutings of grace. Grace. [00:18:21] That was a great word. In the day when only the foundation of the house had been laid, do you see? A conflict was waging over this whole question of rebuilding the house. They have a little contest, and no doubt these people said, if we got the might, if we got the power, if we got something natural, something worldly. Behind us here were a little group of people, and everything was against them. But you see, the key to it was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will do it. [00:18:53] So I think as we view the situation today, many of us might well think that the purpose of God is fail, has failed, and is failing if we're real. [00:19:08] I'm not just saying it by a kind of ethereal faith. We look at God's work everywhere, submerged into a million fragments. [00:19:20] We wonder, how can God ever do what he really wants? And how can he ever achieve what he's ever been after? [00:19:31] We might well question, but if we look at our Lord Jesus, we can say this as clearly as anything else. We can say that he's going to achieve that purpose and he's going to utterly fulfill all that he set out to do. He said, I will build my church. And when John saw everything breaking up and all kinds of heres his coming in and everything seeming to go under, then he saw coming out from heaven, having the glory of God, the city of God. [00:20:08] And I want you also to see then, from that very simply, that the purpose of God is, if we may put it in its simplest terms, the purpose of God is that he might have a habitation. May I put it even simpler way? God wants a home. [00:20:29] God wants a home. [00:20:32] Not a bricks and mortar, not geographical as such. God wants a home in a people. [00:20:44] This is what he has ever wanted from eternity. When he first created man, he constituted man in such a way that man could only really function and find his own right self fulfillment in being joined and dependent on God. The moment man became independent of God, though he could still live, he became a perverted creature. [00:21:09] And he became a creature that in his very being could never be happy, really happy, and never truly satisfied. God made us. He so constructed us that we are meant to be part of himself. We are meant to be, as it were, as the New Testament describes it, the body of God. [00:21:36] The body of Jesus. He is the head. We are the body. [00:21:41] We are meant to be the visible expression for God. God wants us to be, as it were, something in which he can be expressed, in which he can move out. Not just automatic, not just a kind of channel, but something truly original, truly responsive, a vessel that can have fellowship with him and with whom he can have fellowship. [00:22:11] You see, when the Lord first instituted marriage as a temporary thing on this earth, he instituted it as an illustration of an eternal principle inherent within God. God is love. Love must have something to love. And love must. Must have something that can respond. God is love. God is sufficient. God is self sufficient in a right way. But because his character is love, he has always desired to have that upon which he can, as it were, lavish his love and which can respond to him. [00:22:49] We call this the church. Originally it was to be humanity. Humanity has lost the path, gone back from God's purpose. And now it is rejected. It is cut off. Now God is calling out a people from that humanity. And we call that people the church. The church is not a new testament thing. The church is the people of God in every age and in every generation, under the old covenant, under the new. [00:23:17] That is the church of God. What is the church? Church is humanity. But it is humanity according to God's mind. That's all. That's all. It is humanity according to God's mind. The humanity that God originally intended. That's all. We are that humanity, by birth, by spiritual birth. All right, what is the purpose of God? It is to build us together and to build us up into Christ so that we become members, one of another, so that we cannot do without each other, so that we become so blended, so harmonized, so fused together, that in the end we become a corporate, collective vessel in which God can forever live and dwell. And that is not the end. Some people seem to think that heaven is just a place where you eat and you drink and you sleep and you worship. [00:24:09] Heaven is not that at all. We have no description of heaven, really, no complete, thorough description of heaven in the world. [00:24:18] All we have is this, that at the end of this dispensation there's going to be a city. What is this city? It is this humanity. It has the glory of God. God is inside of this city. This city is but the expression of God. You can hardly tell what is God, as it were, what is his people. The two have become so blended together that they have become, as it were, God himself. They have entered into God. Now, what do we. We read about nation living in the light of it. We read about a tree of light to be the healing of everything you see. What does that mean? Well, we know it's figurative, but it speaks simply. When God has achieved his purpose, that's not the end, it's the beginning. [00:25:03] Do you know that this whole thing that we call humanity at present is a parenthesis? [00:25:09] It's in brackets. [00:25:11] It's something that should never have happened, but it has happened. [00:25:14] When God gets us back to where we should be, then we shall go on where God meant to go on. If only humanity had taken the tree of life at the beginning, why, we would have. Well, what would we have been doing now? [00:25:30] Just think of it. No sin, no satan, no evil. [00:25:36] We wouldn't be here. Oh, we might be on the earth, but we wouldn't be in the condition we're in, even as believers. Oh, you see, you and I, we've not yet grasped what the purpose of God is for eternity. We have only the scriptures, and scriptures deal with this parenthesis, they deal with what's in the blankets. That's all. That's all. [00:25:55] We are here. We're dealing with something that's inside those brackets. [00:26:02] We don't know what's beyond it. But I do know this, that in God, all these things that we see in his salvation and everything else that we've discovered about him is so wonderful. What's in store for us? [00:26:13] We have. We have an eternity of service, an eternity of instrumental work. [00:26:22] Do you understand what I mean? I mean, being instrumental in God's works, that's what I think. You don't think that we're just going to laze around. Do you, do you think that God has created this object from ages and ages to just sit there doing nothing? I tell you, God has a tremendous purpose in this thing that we call the church, and that's we're going to discover more and more tremendous purpose in. [00:26:54] And I think we must leave it there because our time has gone. [00:26:59] But you ask me what the purpose of God is. [00:27:03] I tell you the purpose of God is that he might have, speaking in language that we understand, a blind, or let us put it in another way, that he might have a home, or let me put it in another way, that he might have a city, a center of administration. [00:27:29] That's what God wants. [00:27:32] And you know, we have thousands of years of conflict over that purpose. It began right back in the garden when someone in God's a harappi said, I, I will be this, I will have this, not you. [00:27:54] And he has injected that spirit into this humanity of God so that everywhere it is I, I, I. [00:28:07] Now you see, the purpose of goddess through the cross of our Lord Jesus, through the grace of God through his death and resurrection, is to bring out of that, that lost humanity, that broken humanity, that rejected humanity, to bring out of it a people for himself. [00:28:27] But that's only the beginning. To be saved is a glorious thing. But you know, we can be saved and lose the purpose of God. [00:28:38] We must go on into what is our inheritance. [00:28:44] We must go on into what God has saved us. Unto all the foolish people who think that salvation is the end of things, they think that the Lord Jesus came to die to save us. He did not come just to save us, he came to save us. That we might be part of God's achieved purpose. [00:29:07] What's the good of just being saved if we're not back where God wants us to be, if we're not in what God has wanted from the beginning, that's why he saved us. [00:29:19] So you see, this whole question of the church, what a tremendous thing it is. It is not something outside of the Lord Jesus. It is not something apart from the Lord Jesus. It is the body of the Lord Jesus. He is the head. It is Christ. That's all. To be saved is to be brought into a direct, living, personal relationship to the Lord Jesus as our head. [00:29:47] Once we make the Lord Jesus head, then we begin to understand something of the church. And anyone who's got a battle about being fused into other believers has not known anything of the headship of Christ. [00:30:02] It is I. [00:30:03] And when I is there, unbroken, unyielded, undeveloped, with, then there is no real fellowship. You can only talk spiritual phraseology, that's all. [00:30:15] But when the eye is broken down, yielded, then you begin to blend with others. Then you begin to fuse. Then you begin to feel your need of others. [00:30:28] Then you begin to enter into an experience in the church. Some silly people think it is not necessary to go through deep, deep and dark ways to bring us to this. But I tell you this, I principle is so terrible, it can only be ever dealt with by very deep dealings of God. [00:30:47] When the Lord deals with us in that way, the eye starts to crumble. It starts to break up. It starts to feel its need of others. It starts to find that it cannot take decisions just on its own natural strength of reasoning. [00:31:03] Then we begin to discover the church of God. We discover we are in the back of God. There we go.