Sermon Tone Analysis

Announce Text

Please turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians Chapter 5:6.

And if you don’t have a Bible, I want to invite you to use one of the Bibles under the chair in front of you.

You can find our passage this morning on page ______.

Scripture Introduction

And as you’re making your way to our passage this morning, I want you to ask yourself a question.

I want you to ask yourself, “what is my goal in life?”

What is my goal in life?

And I want you to be brutally honest with yourself.

I promise you, there’s no quiz at the end… no one is going to grade the answer… I’m not going to ask you to turn to the person sitting next to you and share it with them.

I want you to be brutally honest… it’s between you and the Lord, and He already knows.

So be honest…

I asked the same question to one of the teens in our church a few weeks ago… I turned to him and said, “what is your goal in life?”

And he looked at me and he said, “well, I know what I’m supposed to say.”

And I said, “well, what are you supposed to say?”

And he said, “I’m supposed to say that my goal in life is to follow Jesus.”

And I said, “Okay… that’s a great answer… but is that really your goal?”

And he looked at me and said, “well honestly, I really don’t know.”

And I bet that for a number of us today, we’ve probably never really thought about that question in a deliberate way.

We’ve never asked ourselves, “what is my goal in life?”

So I want you to ask yourself that question, and I want you to think about the answer as we go through out text this morning.

And as I thought about the answer to that question… and just I want you to understand… the way you answer that question is really important, because the way you answer that question really determines the way that you live your life.

It influences your choices… it determines your priorities… it influences how you allocate your resources and how you spend your time and your money.

Your goal in life…

And as I thought about that question, I asked myself… does the Bible have anything to say about this?

Does the Bible help us to answer this question?

Now, we know in the Scriptures that God has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness… so the answer is obviously, “yes”.

And as a matter of fact, we’ll find the answer in our passage this morning… and the Word of God says,

This is God’s Word…

Prayer for Illumination

Let’s pray.

Introduction

So I was online recently and I found this survey…

And the survey asked the same question that I just asked you… “What is your goal in life?”

And as I read through the answers… there were about 20 of them… I realized that the answers were very revealing… but really not all that surprising.

They were very revealing because one’s goal in life is like a window into what they’re putting their hope in.

Your goal in life is like a window into what you believe will ultimately satisfy you.

Now, I’m not going to read all 20 of them… but I’ll give you the Top 3.

These are people’s Top 3 goals in life, according to the internet…

Enjoyment of Life… pleasure… that’s the number 1 goal.

To be happy.

By and large, people want to be happy.

That’s the number 2 goal.

To be healthy…

So people want to enjoy life… they want to be happy… and they want to be healthy.

And as I thought about those answers… yes, they’re very revealing, but they’re really not all that surprising.

Why?

Because we live in a world that is consumed by love of self.

We live in a world where the chief end of man is one’s own personal happiness.

And then I asked myself, “Is there anything inherently wrong with these things?

Is there anything inherently wrong with wanting to enjoy your life… is it inherently wrong to be happy or to be healthy?

And of course, the answer is no… there’s nothing inherently wrong with those things… but what if they rule you?

What if they control how you live your life?

I once heard author and speaker Paul Tripp say something very profound… he said, “even a good thing can become a bad thing if it becomes a ruling thing.”

“Even a good thing can become a bad thing if it becomes a ruling thing.”

If it rules you…

Now, make no mistake about it… if somebody’s #1 goal in live is pleasure and that’s the thing that rules them… they will make decisions that bring them the most pleasure… they will allocate their time and their resources to the pursuit of this goal.

If somebody’s #1 goal in live is health, they will make it a priority to lead a healthy life at the cost of other things… they will allocate their time and their finances and their resources and order their lives in such a way as to maximize their health…

And I’m sure that many of you are aware that it’s a losing battle… one day our health is going to run out…

We need look no further than Hollywood… If we look at Hollywood, what do we see?

We see an abundance of wealth… we see people in pursuit of their own pleasure… basically, people that can have anything in the world that they want… lots of money, beautiful houses… a lifestyle of luxury… and so on and so on…

But what do you see when you look at Hollywood?

You see misery… you see drug addiction… you see sexual immorality… you see divorce… suicide…

And you would look at them and say, how is it that people who could have whatever it is that they want, how are they not happy?

You see… ultimately… if you are putting your hope in those things, they will never truly satisfy you.

They will never satisfy you…

People do some pretty terrible things to themselves and one another in the pursuit of happiness…

But make no mistake… your goal in life… whatever it is… it’s the thing that rules you.

It determines how you live… it influences your choices and your decisions… it sets your priorities… you order your life in such a way as to serve that thing…

And that’s exactly why Jesus tells us that if we are to be His disciples, we must deny ourselves, pick up our cross and to follow Him.

What he’s basically saying is, we have to die.

A cross was an instrument of death.

We have to die to ourselves… we have to stop living for ourselves and start living for Him.

Why?

Because Jesus knows that if we’re living for anything else… if we’re living for anything other than Him, we’re worshiping and serving an idol and ultimately, it will lead to our destruction.

So the question becomes, if Jesus is the One we’re living for, what should be our goal in life?

Look with me at Chapter 5:9… it says,

The goal of the Christian life is to please the Lord.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it this way… in answering the question, “What is the chief end of man?”

“The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

So how do we glorify God?

We glorify God by living a live that is pleasing to Him.

When our goal in life is to please the Lord, we live in a way that honors Him and brings Him glory.

And as we look at our passage today, it gives us three insights about this goal… it gives us three insights about living a life that pleases the Lord…

First we’re going to look at why… why is the goal of the Christian life to please the Lord?

Second, we’re going to look at how… exactly how do we please Him?

And third, we’re going to look at when… when do we make it our aim to please Him?

So why… what’s the motivation...

Then how… how do we do it…

And then when…

So first the why…

Why do we make it our aim to please Him?

Look with me at v. 10… it says,

It says that we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ…

Yes, that includes Christians…

We will appear before the judgement seat of Christ…

Now, this is a passage that is heavily debated among theologians, and the reason why it’s heavily debated is because we know on the one hand that if we are in Christ, if we have turned to Him in repentance and faith… if we are trusting in Him to save us from our sins and the wrath that is due, we have no fear of condemnation.

We have no need to fear condemnation at the judgement seat of Christ…

Romans Chapter 8:1… I’ve heard it said that this is the greatest verse of the greatest chapter in the Bible… it says,

So whatever v. 10 means, if you’re in Christ, when you stand before Him on that day you have no fear of condemnation…