You did not ask to be born! You had no choice about your race, colour, time or place of birth.. Whether you like it or not, you are here! Why? What is your life?
Your life is sustained by a wonderful mechanism. Your body is a miracle of organization and planning; its many complex organs are inter-related to enable you to live -- to breathe, eat, see, walk, write.
The development costs of your body, if it were possible for men to produce such an incredibly complex piece of electric machinery, would make the costs of developing a space shuttle seem like small change. You have been designed! By whom? Anyone who gives this question any serious consideration must, at least, admit the existence of a 'life force' greater than the universe, because cause must always exceed effect.
This argument is usually applied to the physical universe, but it applies equally to the abstract. You have personality and intelligence. It follows that the force which produced you must have both, in infinitely greater measure than any human being. Do not deceive yourself. There is an intelligent, personal life force -- God. He is your Maker. I have made the earth and created man upon it1. You have been designed by Him. What for?
GOD SPEAKS
Can you speak, write and communicate? Cannot, therefore, God do all these things? Listen, then to Him. After all, He, the Creator, like the manager of a factory, should know what the product is for! 'What is your life? It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away. 2This is a quotation from the Bible. The Bible is a unique book in many respects. One of the most important of these is its claim to be God' Word -- the book in which He speaks to man. The Bible claims to reveal God's purpose in the creation of the earth and to show how man fits into the plan.
The claim is surely worth putting to the test. Could anything be more wonderful than the thought that God has enabled you to understand the meaning of life? The purpose of existence is the greatest of riddles -- without a revelation. A study of nature and ourselves alone can never tell us anything of any overall, ultimate plan.
The Bible has already told you something about your life. It is a vapour, here today and gone tomorrow. Life is transitory. Time is not on your side. Do not fritter it away on trivialities. Now is the time to throw away all preconceived ideas, to open your mind and your Bible and start to find the answers to the really important questions of life.
WHO WERE YOUR PARENTS?To know more about yourself it helps to know something of your parents, their habits and personalities. For you have inherited much from them. The Bible does not mention your own particular parents, but far more important, it goes right to the origin of human heredity. It tells about the very first parents - the common ancestors of everyone. And it has some very revealing things to tell us about them too!
Adam and Eve were no myth! Consider the significance of the facts recorded in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis3. Adam and Eve were created to worship and glorify their Creator and enjoy the wonders of God's newly formed creation on earth. They had freewill. They were allowed to eat whatever they desired except that they were to refrain from eating the fruit of one particular tree. The penalty for disobedience was death. A simple command, a plain consequence. Adam and Eve failed. They were tempted by the suggestion of the serpent that they would be as goods, knowing good and evil, and that is why they ate of the forbidden fruit. Whatever their thoughts, their actions are clear. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.4
In this account of our first parent's disobedience, God has revealed the chief motives controlling the lives of their descendents.
HUMAN NATUREThe whole human behaviour is an extension, in one form or another, of three motives. They are expressed very clearly in the New Testament as: -
1. The lust of the eyes - Eve saw... the tree... a delight to the eyes.
2. The lust of the flesh - The tree was good for food.
3. The pride of life5 - The tree... was to be desired to make one wise.
First man is motivated by a lust for what he can see and especially for things that delight his eye. He wants material things above all else.
Secondly, he desires bodily gratification, good food, ease and pleasure.
Thirdy, he likes to think well of himself, and to be well thought of by his fellows. Man is a proud creature. He enjoys the feeling of being free to think and act unfettered by authority or restraint of any kind.
More than this, we see from the account in Genesis that man is at heart rebellious toward God, pleasing himself rather than obeying his Creator. Like his first parents6, he would rather believe a lie and base a life and death decision on it than believe God's simple instructions.7
That is what human nature is! And whether you like it or not this is your life!
A PERFECT MIRRORThe Bible shows the motives that underlie human activitiy. It can also be brutally frank. It holds a mirror up to human nature and exposes it in all its ugliness.
'Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkeness, carousing and the like'.8
These are the natural consequences of the way of life most appealing to human nature (the flesh). They do not bring happiness, peace of mind, security nor a sense of purpose in life. Rather they bring the trouble and unhappiness which we see abounding in the world.
STRIVING AFTER WINDOne of the gods of this world is Money, because with it man can obtain the things which gratify his human nature. 'Everything has its price' is one of the cardinal principals of the world.
Therefore to get more money is one of man's major goals and the getting of it his measure of success. So infatuated is man with this god that he blindly assumes that if he could possess all the money that he could possibly use, he would find happiness.
There have been few who have had the opportunity to test this assumption. Many of them have committed suicide! Read for yourself in the Bible9 of the riches of one of the wealthiest men who have ever lived. After describing all that he had (and surely, after you read his account, you must agree that human ambition could not desire more) he says 'So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a striving after wind.'10
A CERTAIN SOMETHINGThere have been a few, on the other hand, who possessed virtually nothing that the flesh craves for. You can read about them in another part of the Bible.
'Some were tortured, refusing to accept release... Others suffered mocking and scourging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicated and ill-treated.'11
They submitted to all these trials voluntarily, even being tortured rather than accepting release. Why? What motivated them? Not human nature, that is certain! They possessed something which the rich of the world lack. They had faith.
A BETTER LIFEFaith is the very thing that Adam and Eve lacked. They were the richest couple who ever lived -- the whole world was theres. But they had insufficient faith. Belief that God really means what He says is essential, and, from this conviction, the desire to be obedient to Him is important. Very important.
God has not only forbidden man to do certain things. He has commanded positive action and made positive promises of untold good, beyond the wildest dreams of man, to those who are willing to take Him at His word.12
It is the prospect of this good that explains the otherwise inexplicable behaviour of the faithful few. They endured all these terrible hardships 'that they might rise again to a better life.'13 To understand what this 'better life' is you must know something of God's purposed.
God has promised that He will send His Son Jesus Christ to the earth again.14
God has promised that, at that time, He will raise many who are now dead.15
God has promised that those who have obeyed Him will be rewarded with eternal life, to be lived here on earth.16
Alife free from the inevitable frustration of 'striving after wind' or the equally inevitable disillusionment of an existence which is 'a vapour that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away.'
Instead God promises a 'better life.' Does it all sound too good to be true? Are you preapred to believed and obey? If not -- what is YOUR life?
1Isaiah 45:12 2James 4:14. 3Genesis 2 & 3. 4Genesis 3:6 (R.S.V.) 51 John 2:16. 6Genesis 3:6. 7Genesis 2:16,17. 8Galatians 5: 19-21 (R.S.V.) 9See Ecclesiastes 2. 10Ecclesiates 2:17 (R.S.V.) 11Hebrews 11:35-37 (R.S.V.) 121 Corinthians 2:9 13Hewbrews 11:35 (R.S.V.) 14Luke 21:24-36; Acts 3:20-21 15Daniel 12:1-3 16Romans 2:7, Daniel 2:44