Meaning
Notes
Transcript
Church, last week we started this series on the four core questions of life—
The four questions every worldview must answer:
Origin, Meaning, Morality, and Destiny.
We began where the Bible begins: Origin—Where did we come from?
And we said plainly: we did not come from nothing.
Rather, we came from Someone, on purpose, with design—because God created.
Now today we move to the second question:
Meaning—Why are we here?
What is the point of living?
What are we supposed to do with our lives?
Why do we
wake up,
work,
love,
lose,
laugh,
grieve,
build,
break,
and keep going?
Notice, when Jesus is asked for what matters most—
what everything hangs on—He goes straight to love.
Not vague love. Not sentimental love.
But a love that has direction and weight:
Love God with everything you are.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
So let me say it as plainly as I can,
Meaning is not something you invent, buy or yourself.
Meaning is something you receive—
Only because, you were made by God, for God, and for others.
I remember having a conversation with my dad one time about the issue of faith
and the need to get right with Jesus. In that conversation he quipped something
like this:
“If a person wants to believe in a rock, then that rock will be a god to that person.”
Boy, I’m not sure he understood just how correct he was in that statement.
People have been believing in rocks since the “Stone Age”—PUN INTENDED.
But it’s true: people have been believing in many things—
Not just things made from rocks, but of wood, gold, clay, porcelain, and
everything else—ever since.
Some have even believed in animals as gods, as in certain forms of Hinduism.
Others have believed in human beings like Jim Jones, or David Koresh.
And I’ve often wondered:
What in the world could cause people to believe such foolishness?
How could someone lend themselves to something so outlandish—especially the
Belief systems that have involved animal sacrifices, human sacrifices, and even
abominable ritual sexual practices?
But then that question could be turned back on us, doesn’t it?
I mean after all, We Christians believe that Jesus was both God and Man,
That he was born of a virgin and walked on water.
Not only that—we believe He rose from the dead.
The more I look at the world, the more I realize something:
human beings don’t have the option of living without belief.
Everybody has faith in something.
Some have faith in God.
Others have faith in science, nature, self, or progress.
Even the atheist ends up trusting some story they can’t fully prove.
And many Darwinists defend evolution with the passion and loyalty people usually reserve for religion.
So maybe the question isn’t “Which belief is true?”
Maybe the deeper question is:
Why are humans such believing creatures in the first place?
Here’s why: Because the human being is a meaning-seeking creature.
Everybody lives for something.
And whatever you live for becomes your God.
And this is exactly why the question of meaning is not “Do you have meaning?”
The question should be: What is giving you meaning?
When the lawyer asks Jesus, “Which is the great commandment?” he’s not just asking about rules. He’s asking what matters most. He’s asking what holds life together.
And Jesus answers with two loves:
Vertical love: Love the Lord your God
Horizontal love: Love your neighbor as yourself
And then Jesus says this:
“On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
So if you want to know why you exist, Jesus is telling you:
You were made to love God—fully—and to love others—faithfully.
Meaning is not finally found in
money.
Not in success.
Not in comfort.
Not in pleasure.
Not in “finding yourself.”
Meaning is found in belonging to God and being poured out for others.
Meaning is not just a feeling.
Meaning is the truth you stand on.
When you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you did so because
you were convinced that He is who He claimed to be.
That doesn’t mean emotions weren’t involved—but it means you weren’t asked to
check your brain at the door.
And the only way to convert someone else is not to manipulate their emotions,
but to speak the truth in love and appeal to the mind—
because God made the human being as heart, soul, and mind.
So, today I want to ask:
What are we to do with the mind once God gives us meaning?
Because if meaning is: Love God and love neighbor, then the mind has a job:
It must be brought under the Lordship of Christ so that we can live out that
meaning with clarity, endurance, and faithfulness.
Lets examine the words of Pilate, when presenting Jesus with a crown of twisted thorns
4 Pilate then went out again, and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in Him.” 5 Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, “Behold the Man!”
Pilate said:
“Ecce Homo”—Latin for: “Behold the man.”
And there He stood—true man and true God.
And that matters for meaning, because Christ shows us what humanity was meant to be.
If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus.
He loved the Father perfectly.
He loved neighbor sacrificially.
He spoke truth clearly.
He obeyed joyfully.
He suffered faithfully.
He gave Himself freely.
Meaning is never found by looking inward. Ever
Meaning is only found by looking to Christ—behold the man—and then following Him.
Keep in mind, we aren’t to allow anything to control the mind.
Not people (“you should do this or that”),
Not places (“don’t forget where you come from”),
And definitely not things—drugs, alcohol, material things—
or even feelings.
Because when something else owns your mind, it begins to rewrite your meaning.
And Scripture is clear about bondage:
19 While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.
16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?
Listen carefully,
If your meaning comes from anything that can be taken from you,
Your life will always be unstable.
If your meaning is your health—what happens when the diagnosis comes?
If your meaning is your job—what happens when the company downsizes?
If your meaning is your reputation—what happens when the rumors spread?
If your meaning is your relationship—what happens when they leave?
If your meaning is your pleasure—what happens when you’re empty again tomorrow?
But if your meaning is anchored in loving God—who never changes—
and loving others in His strength, then even suffering cannot erase your purpose.
Jesus knew how important the human mind is. That’s why He includes it:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
Meaning is not only something you feel.
Meaning is something you commit to—whole person.
The mind is part of worship.
The mind is part of obedience.
The mind is part of love.
So when we talk about meaning, we are not talking about a motivational poster.
We are talking about a life-direction.
This is why the enemy of life is out to get your mind.
He doesn’t have to kill your body to ruin your life.
He only has to capture your focus.
Because if he can fill your mind with anything other than what you were made for,
then you will spend your days busy—and still empty.
Don’t you remember being a young teenager and being infatuated with a crush?
It occupied your mind, didn’t it? You couldn’t think straight.
And if you ended up losing—or never gaining—the affection of that person, you
couldn’t stop thinking about it.
You’d stop eating. Stop going out. You’d be sad and depressed—because that
interest took up residency in your mind.
Or have you ever received a bad medical report about yourself—or someone you love?
It’s all you can think of.
It takes up residency.
So it is vital that we protect the mind from every invader—foreign and domestic
because meaning can be stolen by obsession.
God gave you a mind—and that mind is unique to you.
Like a fingerprint. No two are the same.
Ever heard of a doppelgänger?—an apparition or double of a living person.
There may be a person who looks like you, but there will never be another you.
And that uniqueness is not for vanity.
It’s for vocation.
It’s for calling.
It’s for worship.
It’s for love.
Jeremiah 29:11 reminds us God has plans—future and hope. And while we must be careful not to rip that verse out of its context, the truth it echoes is consistent with Scripture: God is not random with people. God is intentional.
So we need to take care of the mind, don’t we?
We don’t get another one.
And church—our culture is living in that very tension right now:
We want freedom without God.
We want identity without creation.
We want morality without authority.
We want purpose without a Designer.
But you can’t have the fruits if you cut down the tree.
In contrast, consider King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4. He’s the picture of a man whose meaning was himself:
“My power. My majesty. My glory. My kingdom.”
And God humbled him until the day he looked up to heaven and acknowledged the Most High rules.
And when he acknowledged God, the text says his sanity returned.
Here is the meaning lesson:
When you make yourself the center, you lose yourself.
When you worship God as the center, you become whole.
Because you were not built to carry the weight of being your own god.
But you were made to love the true God and live under His good rule.
So then, what is the mind for?
God gave us the gift of thought for one reason:
So we could use it to choose to love Him.
That’s not a small thing. That’s everything.
Animals have brains. They know when it’s time to eat, sleep, fight, run, reproduce.
But they do not seek the living God in worship.
Human beings are different.
We are moral creatures. Spiritual creatures.
Meaning-hungry creatures.
But the enemy has been hard at work filling our minds with other things, so instead of being in bondage of love to God, we are duped into bondage to other things that control us.
And we are living in a noisy world:
“Do this.”
“Believe that.”
“Follow them.”
“Cancel that.”
“Redefine this.”
And we’re all clamoring around, confused then: who to believe, what to think, who to love.
Even within Christianity, within denominations and opinions, people say:
“You can’t eat this.”
“You can’t eat that.”
“This is a sin.”
“That isn’t.”
So what do we do?
Brothers and sisters, that is why you have a mind—
Not to replace God, but to seek Him.
To analyze, compute, compare, and execute judgment based on what the evidence allows you to conclude.
And if you do that sincerely, you will come away with the revelation that God exists
—and not only that: God has spoken most clearly in Jesus Christ.
Aldous Huxley made an honest confession. He admitted he had motives for not
wanting the world to have meaning, and that the philosophy of meaninglessness
became an instrument of liberation—so he could do what he wanted.
And that’s the uncomfortable truth:
Often people don’t reject God because the evidence is absent.
They reject God because God’s meaning challenges their autonomy.
So let’s bring it back to the text.
When Jesus gives the greatest commandment, He is not giving us a ladder to climb into heaven. He is giving us the centerline of reality—what humans were made for.
And meaning is loving your neighbor faithfully
But loving them as image-bearers—because you are loved by God.
So here’s how you can test what is functioning as “meaning” in your life:
What do you get most angry about when it’s threatened?
What do you sacrifice for without being asked?
That thing—if it isn’t God—will eventually demand more and more, and it will never fully satisfy.
But when God is the center, everything else finds its proper place.
And let me take it one step further: the deepest meaning is not just a command—
It’s a Person.
Because none of us has loved God with all our heart, soul, and mind the way we should.
And none of us has loved our neighbor as ourselves the way we should.
So if meaning is love, then we’ve all fallen short of meaning.
But the good news is: Jesus did it for us.
He loved the Father perfectly.
He loved neighbor completely—so completely that He went to the cross.
And when He rose from the dead, He didn’t just prove He’s powerful—
He proved that meaning is not fragile. Meaning is resurrected.
So if you’re asking, “Why am I here?”—the Christian answer is not:
“Try harder.”
It is: Come to Christ.
Because meaning begins when you are reconciled to God.
So I’m asking you today:
What is your life hanging on?
Because Jesus says everything hangs on these two:
Love God. Love neighbor.
And if you will use your mind honestly—wade through the evidence, look at creation, look at conscience, look at Christ—
you will come to the logical conclusion:
He is God.
And if He is God, then your meaning is not a mystery you must invent—
your meaning is a call you must answer.
Love Him.
And in Him, you will finally know why you’re here.
