Called According to His Purpose

I'd like to share with you something today that I think is very important in our walk with God. And I'll begin by sharing the story from an award-winning journalist named Sebastian Younger. That's J-U-N-G-E-R. Perhaps you've heard of him. In his award-winning book, War, he describes the experience of a small company of soldiers in the Korangal Valley of Afghanistan.

Korangal Valley is an area that experienced nearly 20 percent of total combat activities for nearly a two-year period in 2006 and 2007. It is an area, a forward outpost, of incredible duress, danger, and hardship. The outpost is called Restrepo, and there was actually a 2010 film by that name that was produced based upon his work and his book. Restrepo is the name of a medic, a young medic who was killed in Restrepo, and they decided to name this forward outpost after him. Every soldier stationed at Restrepo is either killed or has a very close brush with death. Literally men walk around Restrepo with bullet holes in their clothes because that's how close the bullets whizz by them. The place is hot. It's dusty. There is no running water. There is no television. There is no internet. There are no phones. There is no cooked food. There is no place to wash or bathe, and there is absolutely nothing to do but to fight and to survive. It is literally perched on the top of a mountain. The men would literally not change their clothes for their full month assignment at Restrepo, and at the end of the month they would return to a larger base like Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan, and the base could not even salvage their clothes. They would just burn them because they literally did not change their clothes for the entire month that they were there. Each soldier would spend a month at a time for a total of 12 months, and after the 12-month assignment some men would quit and return to society, and others would go on to other assignments. By and large, the men who came back into society after spending time at Restrepo suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from their time being under constant fire and threat of death. Mr. Younger describes a team leader named Brendan Overen, who after his return from Restrepo and his reintegration into American society was talking with a woman at a dinner party about his experiences at Restrepo, and the woman asked him if there's anything he missed about being at Restrepo or being in Afghanistan.

And he paused for a very long time as he thought about that question, and he said to her, Ma'am, I miss almost all of it. I miss almost all of it. And so Mr. Younger asks the hard question, how could this be? How could an assignment to a forward base like Restrepo, with all of its hardships and dangers, be a place that a man would miss and long to return to? Mr. Younger talks about the adrenaline rush, the neurological factors of combat in his book. It's a very interesting discussion of the brain chemistry that goes on when you're under fire and you're in a firefight and what happens to your mind and to your body going into those situations and coming out of those situations. But he zeros in on a single factor more than any other, based upon his research and the research of others, that causes soldiers to miss combat. And he expanded on this idea in a fascinating TED Talk, which he gave in January of 2014, which I recommend if you want to take a look at that TED Talk. He explains that despite the incredible hardships that these young men suffered, they experienced something in combat that gives them an incredible sense of purpose. An incredible sense of purpose. A purpose that is focused primarily on taking care of their brother. What they missed more than anything was brotherhood. They missed brotherhood. They missed the connection. And Mr. Younger clarifies in his book that this brotherhood is different from friendship. It's different from friendship. Brotherhood has nothing to do with how you feel about the other person. You might hate the other person, frankly. But that doesn't mean you're not in brotherhood with them. It is a mutual agreement of a group of people that you will put the safety of the group above your own. You say, I love these people more than I love myself, even if I don't get along with them, even if they get on my nerves. And after having experienced this intense sense of purpose of intense brotherhood, coming back to society, Mr. Younger says, is, quote, terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. Not knowing what people would do around you. Because when you're in those situations, you know exactly what the guy next to you will do. He'll give his life for you. He'll do anything to protect you and you, theirs. And when you step out of that environment and you don't know what the guy next to you is going to do, it's terrifying. And it's, in his words, completely alienating. An intense bond among 20 or other people or so is a blessing that these men experienced, in the words of Mr. Younger, that has been documented through the ages.

From the writings of Homer in the 7th century through to the Second World War, the sense of purpose has created bonds among men who survived combat situations.

And as I observed the events taking place in Ukraine this week, I could see hints of that purpose, even as I've watched some of the news coverage of men and women who are defending their country against an evil autocrat, who is invading their country purely for the purpose of regional dominance. And so there is that sense of purpose on camaraderie among Ukrainians in defense of their homeland. But in general, this brotherhood I speak of is quite rare. What I see are people who are longing for connection in society and longing for purpose. And frankly, I see it in God's church from time to time, too. And I wonder if we really understand what that connection and purpose is. What I see in society is a general lack of purpose, a lack of meaning, a lack of what this all sums up to. And sometimes that turns into sort of a godless atheism, which says we just have to accept that there is a purposeless universe out there. In fact, it even goes all the way to some point that says, really, we have no free choice at all. All these things just sort of randomly happen, and you would randomly choose that tie if you were another random person in that random circumstance. It actually gets into quite some interesting philosophy. But purpose is something that is sadly missing. And there's a lot of discussion about how to fill that void. Perhaps you've heard of a book called The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren, pastor of the megachurch in southern California, the Saddleback Church. There's a reason Joel Osteen is so popular. He writes, I think, his book, Is Your Best Life Now, again trying to infuse purpose. And the problem with purpose and brotherhood is sometimes it's hard to pull these things apart. If you study the invasion of Afghanistan by the Russians in the late 70s and the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, what a lot of scholars began to see was that the only reason the Russians were fighting in Afghanistan after a while was just to protect their colleague. They really had lost heart and meeting and purpose in the war. And indeed that same sort of feeling began to take over as the American time in Afghanistan came to an end. And so it's very hard sometimes to pull apart the purpose and the brotherhood because sometimes it becomes too much about the brotherhood and not enough about, well, why is the brotherhood there to start with? And if it's all about the purpose, then we become disconnected from the brotherhood. And so it's hard to pull these two apart. And today I'd like to focus on one aspect of it, and I hope in a second sermon I can bring up the second. And today I want to talk about purpose. If you'll turn with me to 2 Timothy 2 verse 3. The reason I wanted to bring up Restrepo is because I think it's very relevant from a biblical analogy that Paul gives us in 2 Timothy 2 verse 3. And we'll talk about brotherhood, as I said, in a follow-up sermon, but I want to focus on purpose because when we have a common purpose, when we have a singular focus on what our mission is, then the brotherhood evolves around that. And we begin to discuss and understand what that brotherhood means. 2 Timothy 2 verse 3 says, You therefore must endure, you must endure, or the another translation says, share hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

It says, then no one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. And Paul also used the analogy of a soldier in 1 Timothy in his first letter to Timothy in chapter 2 verse 18, where he says, wage the good warfare. So when Paul says that soldiers don't entangle themselves with the affairs of this life so as to please the person who enlisted them, isn't really there a message for us in this as followers of the way, followers of Jesus Christ, believers, to learn from the example of the purpose and the brotherhood of soldiers in combat? You know, we talk about Homer in the 7th century BC, but really what Sebastian Junger is talking about is as long as we've had a recording of war, we've had this recording of this intense brotherhood among soldiers who are in combat. And Paul says we are soldiers who are in combat. And so in that sense, I think there's a lesson for us in terms of purpose and brotherhood. Sadly, our self-help society prefers the counsel of taking your unfair share. I don't know if you've heard that expression before. Take your unfair share or suck the bone marrow out of life. You know, this kind of get what you can while you can get it kind of attitude. So today I want to talk about purpose. I want to go through a couple things in Scripture that help define our purpose. Give some meat to that. Today's message is called Called According to His Purpose, taken from Romans 8. And I'd like to start in Ephesians 2 verse 10. If you turn with me there, and I hope when we're done with this, we'll have a better understanding of purpose for the purpose of brotherhood, because I think that's the order that they have to come in. They have to come in from purpose to brotherhood and not brotherhood to purpose. Ephesians 2 verse 10. It's a very interesting passage here, and I think it speaks to our unique contribution in the purpose that we've been given. Ephesians 2 verse 10 says, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. There's a lot in here to unpack. There's a lot to understand about purpose and meaning. The first thing that doesn't necessarily come across so well in English is this workmanship word is actually the Greek word poema. I don't know if you've studied. I'm new here, so maybe you've studied into Ephesians 2 verse 10 and what this Greek word means, but it's essentially the word poem. It hasn't changed. Poema, poem. We are his poem. Now, what's a poem? Poem is such an interesting thing. A lot of times we kind of get scared of poems. You know, you maybe had to write one in school and you're like, what are you supposed to write? You know, it's supposed to be witty or it's supposed to rhyme or it's supposed to have sort of this very terse sort of language that conveys very deep meaning or something. But fundamentally, a poem is just defined as a thing created. That's what a poem is. It's just a thing. It's created for a purpose by its author to do something, to convey some kind of message. That's what a poem is. We are God's poem. We are his workmanship. Or another translation, I think, says, handywork. We're created for a purpose according to the Creator's purpose for us.

We are his poem. We're his workmanship. And we're created in Christ Jesus, that is to say our life is redeemed and made meaningful and purposeful by Christ's sacrifice for the purpose of good works, to get something done, to contribute, to contribute in some way. We are not passive participants in this process. We're active participants. We have what's called agency. We act. We respond. And we move forward. And we do something according to that purpose, according to what God put in us. Now, if we skip up a few verses in verse 5, we get a little context to this really summary of what Paul was describing in verse 4. It says, But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. Now, you might have noticed something interesting here. This is all present tense. It's not future tense. It's present tense.

Raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

And scholars say that Paul wrote this way as a way of describing sort of the immediacy. The imminent, the reality, the truth, the reliable confidence that we can have that we will be raised together and sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The imminent reward that we'll receive. I think we also get a little bit of a glimpse into perhaps God's sense of time in here. God's sense of time. Because you see, we have a perception of time. And our perception of time is that time is like a river, and it flows in one direction. There's sort of what happened in the past, and that was the water there, and then it flowed to where we are right now. And then in a certain amount of time, it's going to be the sermon will be done, and then we'll go home. And there's that flow of time from past to future.

But theoretical physicists are beginning to understand that that may actually be a false notion of time. That this concept that we have of time is really a concept that is from our perspective, given where we are as human beings in our short lifespans, and where we sit on the earth, and where we sit in the universe. Kind of like in times gone past when people would stand and they look at the sun, and they'd see it would come up here, and it would go down there, and people said, well, the sun must be orbiting around the earth when in actual fact it was the other way around. You see, God is outside of space and time. He's not constrained by space and time. So for him to say this in the present tense, or to inspire Paul to say this in the present tense, just means it just is. It just is. It just exists. It is our reward. And it's like we're there right now. It doesn't flow in that same sense. And so Paul is giving us a little bit of a glimpse of what this reality really is. This reality that leads ultimately to our purpose. If we continue in verse 7, "...and in the ages to come might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship." You see, we have this great calling, this great purpose, this great meaning, and from that springs, then, this set of activities that we engage in, this grace that we respond to. This is the springboard of that purpose and what it means. So then, what is our purpose? What is our purpose? What is your purpose?

I don't know. Have you ever written that down? My purpose is...

That's a scary question to answer. Maybe an embarrassing question to put down on a piece of paper. If I write too small, will I be small-minded? If I write too big, will I be haughty? Will I be prideful and boastful? My purpose is to save the world. My purpose is to this. My purpose is to that. It's a frightening question, frankly. Maybe you might write down, well, my purpose is to make enough money to support and feed my family and take care of my children. Maybe you put that down. Maybe you say, well, my purpose is to care for my children and leave them to God. You might say, well, my purpose is to encourage my friends with phone calls and messages. It's hard. How do you encompass my purpose? What is my purpose?

There is reality in some of those comments. I hope that we feel a purpose to lead our children into God's truth that they might make their choices based upon the best circumstances possible. I hope that as men we provide for our families. I hope that as God's people, we reach out to our brothers and sisters and encourage them in difficult times.

But I'd like to take those and perhaps take them to another level.

If we consider some of the great leaders of our time and you think about what those leaders and how they think about purpose, we could take, for example, Elon Musk. It's no secret that Elon Musk believes that his purpose is to take humankind from off this planet and establish humanity on Mars or the moon. That is his purpose. And everything he's doing is driving towards that purpose. He created SpaceX to be able to launch vehicles into space. He created the boring company to be able to bore caves and giant caverns underground so that people could live in high radiation difficult environments like Mars or the moon. He created Tesla to develop battery technology and other technology such that people could exist solely with battery power. And it goes on and on. He has this overriding purpose. And sometimes when we say purpose, which is a biblical word and it's a good word to use, we sometimes miss larger words like mission or legacy.

And this is what Elon Musk wants. He wants to be remembered as the man who took humanity off the earth and placed humanity someplace else. If we look at the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, he's made no secret of the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Empire was a great calamity that fell upon the Russian people and the Russian Empire. And he wants to restore greatness to Russia. And he's doing it! Maybe. We'll see. But he has that in mind as his purpose, as his mission, as his legacy. And that's what he wants to be remembered by. If we look at the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, he desires to be the leader of Europe.

He wants to step into the role that Angela Merkel held for a decade. And he wants to be the leader of Europe. He wants to take the great ideas of the French during the Enlightenment, which led to many documents in the United States, like the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was highly influenced by the French intellectuals of the time. And he wants to take all of that intellectual capital, and he wants to create an alternative voice in Europe, influencing world affairs. That's what he wants. That's his mission. That's what he's striving for in terms of a legacy. These leaders, in their own way, have set a long-term vision of what they want their legacy to be. They want to be judged as to whether they achieve their mission.

What is your legacy going to be? How will you be judged based upon your mission? How will I be judged? What will I be remembered for? Please turn with me to Luke 4, verse 43. Luke 4, verse 43. And we'll see what Jesus said his purpose was. Because if we're asking, what is my purpose? Well, it's a pretty good idea to start with Jesus Christ, right? Because we're supposed to follow Paul as he followed Christ. We're supposed to be imitators of Christ. We're supposed to grow into the image of Jesus Christ. So let's look in Luke 4, verse 43, if you have a Bible, and look to see what Jesus said his mission and purpose was. Luke 4, verse 43. He said to them, I must preach the gospel of... I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent. For this purpose he was sent. It was Jesus Christ's purpose to speak of a world to come. And we don't need to turn there. In fact, the presentation that we heard just a few moments ago, we heard Matthew 28, verses 19-20, didn't we?

And so we follow in his footsteps when he says, Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them all the things I have commanded you. So Jesus said preaching the gospel was his purpose, and he established that same purpose for us as his disciples. So that's a good place to start if you think about what's my purpose. My purpose is to preach the kingdom of God, just like Jesus Christ did. That's a good place to start in terms of purpose. But how? How do I do that? You might ask, how do I preach the kingdom of God? How do I imitate Christ in this way? And you know what, frankly, I hope that's a question that we're all discussing. I hope that's a question that we take our time to discuss. How can I preach the kingdom of God? How can I follow in Christ's footsteps? How can I follow Matthew 28? How can I do that? How can we do that? How can we work together to do that? Now, we know some answers to those questions. We know that God's tithes and first tithes go towards the preaching of the gospel. We know that there are individual and collective efforts that we can make, so it's not like it's a mystery. That's not a mystery question, per se, but a lot of times we want to connect to that in ways that maybe we didn't connect to it before. And how can we continue to connect to that? You know, I recall my days I worked nine years at Intel Corporation in Northern California, and I came across one of the great quotations of the founder of the company, Bob Noyce. Bob Noyce was a mentor to Steve Jobs, and along with Gordon Moore and Andy Grove, changed the world through the mass production of integrated circuits, what we call now computer chips. Bob Noyce was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan.

And as I said, he really changed the course of human history through his work in semiconductors. And there's a very famous quote. It's on the wall of the main lobby and the entryway to Intel. If you go down to their museum, he says, Don't be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful. And you know, sometimes I think we don't want to start taking all sorts of things onto ourselves necessarily, but I think in regard to the gospel and how we preach that and how we follow in Christ's footsteps, I don't think we should be encumbered. I think we should step out, and I think we should feel empowered to have discussions and to think about these things and how we can support the collective work that's obviously being done from headquarters and can be done locally and can be done individually as we shine a light. And we're going to get to those two other aspects of it here next. There's a phrase in French. You might learn some French while I'm here.

I think I might mention this perhaps. You've heard about 30% of the English language comes from French, so you know a lot of French already. You just don't know you know it. There's a phrase called raison d'etre, the reason for being. What is our raison d'etre? What is our reason for being? Well, preaching the gospel must be one of those reasons, but there's another one. In fact, there's two more that I want to share today before we finish, and they're in Matthew 5, verse 13, if you turn back with me to those. Because again, the question here is mission and purpose and how that leads to brotherhood. And really asking ourselves a hard question, what is my purpose? What is my mission? What is my legacy? What will I be remembered for? Sometimes people might say, what do you want to have written on your tombstone? I find that a little bit kind of macabre. I think we can be a little more positive than that. What is our mission? What is our purpose? Matthew 5, verse 13. You are the salt of the earth. You are the salt of the earth. Jesus says we are the salt. Now, you might say you are supposed to be, and maybe that's applicable, I think, to us, and I include myself in that. We're supposed to be the salt of the earth. And the question is, are we the salt of the earth? Because if Jesus says that's what we're supposed to be, then that has to be part of our purpose. That has to be part of our mission. So let me talk about salt for a moment. Do I have any salt lovers here? Okay, yeah, admit it. You love it. Who doesn't love salt? It's so good. If you have a chance to get to the south of France, there's a town there called Egmont where they make salt. And during the feast one year, we took an excursion out to see the salt production, and they go through all the details about how they produce salt. And if you go to that town, you can go into several shops. And one of the shops, there's literally a wall of salts.

There must be a hundred different kinds of salt, and all the sort of things that go into how they create those different types of salt. And the restaurants in that town all serve different kinds of salt. And you just never, I think, appreciate salt until you really get into the details of salt production and how they can create the different flavors through the production process. And again, salt is just a naturally occurring thing based upon a certain set of processes of sun and water and evaporation and so forth. And you know, leave it to the French to create some sort of culinary art about it, but they have. And so when you actually put different types of salt on your food, you just bring out so much incredible flavor. And perhaps I didn't have a chance to bring with me down different types of salt, but perhaps during one of the potlucks here, the weekly potlucks, I guess, that we're talking about, we can enjoy different types of salt. Salt is interesting because salt brings out the flavor of the food and sometimes it can mask the flavor of the food. Sometimes it can take something that has absolutely no flavor and give it at least something that's passable. But if we continue, it says, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. And if you've ever walked on salt flats, I don't know if you, you know, there's Salt Lake City, there's big salt flats out there, you know, nobody would want to, you know, get down and start licking the ground. But, you know, that's a salt flat. But it's kind of not what we have in mind when we think about salt and how salt is supposed to flavor things.

So what kind of salt are you? Because there's different types. They all bring different things, as it were, to the party. And there's lots of explanations for what Jesus meant here. Lots of commentaries, you know, you are salt, but if salt loses its flavor, what does it mean? But I think it's fairly straightforward. The underlying food, or by analogy, the situation or circumstance in your life, really aren't going to fundamentally change. This world we live in is the world we live in. We have an invasion now, first time in 80 years, that one country has just invaded another country purely for the purpose of regional domination. There's a lot of discussion about what this means. I really do believe this is a milestone in prophecy in terms of what this will set off in terms of a new order of things. But it just shows the violent nature of men and how we resolve issues as human beings. So that isn't fundamentally going to change, that sort of flavor, as it were, of the food. But when you put salt into that, suddenly that difficulty, that pain, it becomes a little more bearable, the digestion process. It's a little bit easier to eat that food. And as disciples of Jesus Christ, we can take whatever difficult situation that there is, and we can bring an entirely new flavor to it.

What seemed dry and tasteless, perhaps something we would gag on, can somehow have some kind of passable flavor that we can get the food down or maybe even enjoy. That's what we bring. And I don't know if you've been in those situations where you've been able to encourage somebody who is going through what is the existential crisis of being alive, which is their suffering.

The question of suffering is one of the great questions of life. And we're going through suffering, and maybe somebody is going through some suffering, and you bring some salt. You bring some flavoring. You bring some ability to get through the suffering to somebody.

This is what Christ is talking about. Maybe you've heard the expression, courage is contagious, or laughter is contagious, or a smile is contagious. See, that's what you bring when you salt something. When the fruits of God's Holy Spirit are showing through, people are drawn to this. People are drawn to that because it's flavorful. It allows people to get through the day. They want it. They may not want to do what they need to do to have it, but they're thankful for people in their lives who share it. And that's what we can be in the world. That's part of our purpose. But if we lose that saltiness, well, there's nothing else to really do because our purpose isn't really fulfilled, and we're kind of useless. It's actually kind of a scary scripture because if we're not flavoring, if we're not seasoning, then we're not fulfilling a purpose, then what good are we? It essentially is what Christ says. When I was born, I looked it up. 3.3 billion people on this planet. So just in my lifetime, the population of this planet has doubled, which I find just remarkable. More than doubled.

And I think about the fact that there's an extra 4 billion people in this world since I was born. Now, you might say I was one of those extra 4. I'm part of the extra 4 billion people crowd. So if you were born before 1966, then I'm one of the extras. Is my life worth more or less than you because I was one of those extra 4 billion? I mean, that's an absurd question, right? God gives value to all 7 billion people on this planet, wherever they are, whatever circumstance they're in. And we, as God's people, have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters in the church and to our brothers and sisters in our communities to be flavorful. Nobody's extra. Nobody's kind of in a different status than somebody else.

I think Jesus Christ would say that every life is precious, and he died for every single one of us extra 4 billion people born since 1966.

And yet, if we don't fulfill what's put here in verse 13, then we could be part of what's described this very ominous warning in Matthew 7, I never knew you. You said, Lord, Lord, but I never knew who you were. That's how important purpose is. How many people have been to a very large city like Mexico City, Hong Kong, Shanghai?

Yeah. Isn't it frightening? The number of people! I mean, when I was in India on a business trip, and I was at some sort of outdoor event, and there must have been 10,000 or 20,000 people. And if you've ever been in a crowd that big, or if you've been to the Rose Bowl with 100,000 people, it's just, it blows your mind. Who are all these people? Who are all these stories? Who are all these lives? Where will they go after we're done? Where did they come before they came here? You know, the world is immense. The world is immense.

And sometimes we just see right in front of us, I drove here, I got out of my car, I came in here, I'm going to have some food, I'm going to go home. God does not have that perspective, and he does not want us to have that perspective. He wants us to have a bigger perspective than that. That's why we're salt. Let's go to the next verse. Another purpose. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Light of the world. God's people should be illuminating. We should be illuminating the way for others. Lights in a dark world. Are we lighting the way for our neighbors and our co-workers? This is our purpose. Again, we're answering this question, what is our purpose?

This is part of our purpose. And when the going gets rough, what I found is that's when the true colors of people come out. You might say that's when you know who your friends are, is when the going gets tough. And if you take that to the ultimate extreme, you end up at Restrepo in the Coringall Valley.

Because that's like the ultimate duress that somebody might be under. War. When the going gets tough, that's when you really understand who you are and who the people around you are. And that's when things really come out. And that's when we really see ourselves in a way that we maybe have not seen ourselves before. And that's when this type of brotherhood is established. That's when our purpose and our mission, if it's not clear, that's when we go off the rails.

So are we lights to the world? A city set on a hill. Are we a moral compass to people around us? Do people come to us because they're like, I want to talk to you because I just want to get your opinion on something. Because they know you're going to do the right thing, even if that means it hurts.

Even if that means it probably is not going to be beneficial to you. Do men see our good works? Not because we're trying to show off, but just because who we are. That's our purpose. And most significantly, we don't do these things on our own. We do these things because we reflect the Father. We reflect the Son. We reflect God's Holy Spirit living inside of us. Being a light to the world, providing seasoning, this is our purpose. But it's not easy. And it brings us back to this analogy of Restrepo that I talked about in my introduction.

Because just like the leaders I cited, you know, I talked about Emmanuel Macron and Valet Merputin and Elon Musk and so forth. The experiences that they have shape their purpose. Vladimir Putin just came out. He was a taxi driver. I don't know if you heard that during after the fall of the Soviet Union. He lived what he considered to be a shameful moment, and that influenced his life. Elon Musk and his experiences, each of us are shaped by our experiences. And that is what allows us to sort of move forward from this moment forward, is those set of experiences. And it shapes how we think about brotherhood and sisterhood.

And again, I'd like to go back to the example of Jesus Christ, because he set an example for us in this regard as well. If you turn with me to John 12, 27. John 12, 27.

So if we think about preaching the gospel, if we think about being the salt of the earth, if we think about being a light, if we think about how we connect and understand what our purpose is in the communities that we've been set in, we can't leave out the example that Jesus Christ gave in his life and the example that he set for us in this way, which can be quite troubling. John 12, 27. He says, this is Jesus speaking, now my soul is troubled. And what shall I say, Father? Save me from this hour. But for this purpose, I came to this hour. For the purpose. He knew his purpose. His purpose was to preach the gospel. And then his purpose was to die that we might live. But he was troubled. He was troubled by that.

We don't have the time to turn there, but you can look in 1 Peter, it talks about he set an example for us of suffering. And so if his purpose was to die that we might live, and we understand that we are to be living sacrifices, then we begin to connect the dots on these things and realize, well, we've got some hardship and some difficulty and some enduring. Oh, yeah, I guess we're soldiers, aren't we? I guess there's a brotherhood here. I guess there's a connection in this purpose that moves us forward in our lives. So here we see the Son of God confront the reality of his impending terrible death, which he understood was his purpose. He knew what was coming. He knew it was going to be awful. He didn't want to endure it. But he, and often different from us, was 100% aligned to his purpose. And when we're 100% aligned to our purpose, we can move forward even in duress, even in hardship, because we know that our elder brother moved forward in duress and hardship. We can flavor. We can be a light. We can preach. We can do the right thing, even if it means that we suffer for it. And there's a peace that comes from this, a great peace that comes from it. Verse 28, Father, glorify your name. And then a voice came from him, saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it would thunder. And others said, an angel has spoken. Jesus was troubled, and God was there. And when we're troubled, God will be there for us as we follow this example and as we move forward according to our purpose. You know, our spiritual ancestors in the first century, the second century, endured great hardship, more than we could even imagine.

Eusebius writing in the second century speaks of the martyrs of Gaul, those people who died in what is modern-day France, who lost their lives in 180 AD. And he writes this, They went forth gladly. Glory and great grace were mingled on their faces. So they wore even their fetters as a becoming ornament, like a bride adorned with golden lace. How would you feel if you were being marched to your death, and you wore your handcuffs as if they were ornaments given to you by God?

He further writes of a woman who was about to be fed to animals in an arena. You know, they did that. Her name was Bladina. She says, You see, in fact, Christian's ability to suffer persecution with such grace and joy in the first two centuries after the death of Christ so completely confused and befuddled the Romans, they didn't know what to do with us. They didn't know what to do with us. They just, we drove them crazy.

Because they couldn't figure out whether we were just stupid or whether we were just so full of grace and understanding that we would just let this life go. Edward Gibbon, in his book The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, quotes Antonius, the pro-council of Asia, as saying this about the phenomena of Christians being ready to face duress, hardship, and even death. He says, quote, In other words, could you just spare us the pain of killing you? We're just so tired of it. It just doesn't seem to have any effect on you. You just want to worship your God. You won't worship our gods. And when we punish you, it doesn't bother you. Now that's the ability to handle duress. That's an understanding of mission and purpose. That's brotherhood and that's sisterhood. And it drove the Romans crazy. And Christianity grew and grew and grew.

When I read these stories, when I hear and understand how my spiritual ancestors consider their lives, I just feel, frankly, inadequate. I feel silly sometimes.

In terms of the things that bother me.

There's a short passage, but if you just turn back there, Luke 17, verse 33, I think this, again, speaks so powerfully to this purpose, this notion of purpose and meaning. Luke 17, verse 33, he says, whoever seeks to save his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life will preserve it. See, it just, the Romans is just like, what? What? That makes no sense. See, it doesn't make sense if you don't have God's Spirit. If you're not called according to his purpose. I think these early Christians truly lived this verse and they focused on the life to come. They focused on the kingdom of God. They focused on being that flavor and that light to the world. And it doesn't mean we abdicate our responsibilities. As I said, you know, we're supposed to be a living sacrifice, a living sacrifice.

May conclude in Romans 8.28. I've practically quoted it, made reference to it, title of the message. Romans 8.28. I hope it's a memory verse. If it's not, I encourage you to write this on some piece of paper and stick it on your bathroom mirror and start memorizing it. It's just that important. Romans 8.28. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose. Now, the his is in italics in my Bible, might be in your Bible, because it's not there. It really reads in called according to purpose. Now, I think it's a fair assumption, and I'll rely upon the Greek translators that they inserted his, but I think it's interesting if you even take his out. Called according to purpose. Called according to purpose. And of course, that purpose is God's purpose. I want to be in the Scripture. And I'll tell you, a lot of times I'm not in the Scripture. A lot of times I'm in what I want. I'm in what my goals are. I'm in what my individual thought of purpose means for me. And generally, it's probably about, you know, sort of a very narrow, tiny, small-minded way of thinking. But I want to be in the Scripture, and I hope we all want to be in the Scripture, that we know that all things work together for good because we are called and we are acting according to his purpose. And we know what Sebastian Junger discovered on that mountaintop looking over the Korregal Valley at the outpost of Ostrepo. We know that when we have purpose, and when we have purpose with those around us, we're part of a body. We're part of a body. We're part of an organism that functions together and we don't have to be terrified of what the person next to us might do. We know what our brother and sister in the church is going to do. And I think, sadly, over the number of years, some of that confidence has been lost. And we need to build that confidence and regain that confidence that we know what our brother and sister is going to do, that our brother and sister is going to lay down his or her life for us, just like we would lay down our life for him or for her. And we've heard it before. Love God and love your neighbor. This is what we're talking about. The purpose comes from loving God and being aligned to what he wants, and the brotherhood comes from loving our neighbor. I hope we can claim this promise. I hope we can be Christian soldiers who have an incredible sense of purpose, who understand a mission, who understand what legacy means, and I hope we can make our calling and election sure by fulfilling God's purpose in our lives.