Present at the Birth (Part 3): Creation Reveals His Purpose

Are you following? You’re not following. You are following. Does anybody want to ask any questions about this? Okay, I want to stop right here and just say, let’s not rush this. Where is your commitment? Where is the purpose in your life? If it’s to get saved, you know, the unbeliever doesn’t even have that kind of commitment. He’s just going to live here and die here. The Christian—he’s committed to a fire insurance policy. He doesn’t want to go to hell. And he knows he’s supposed to pray, read his Bible, attend church, do good, and win others to the Lord. And therein is his commitment. And there are the four spiritual laws. And there are all those people who go up to Nepal who just try to win people to the Lord and then leave. Makes Prem Pradhan so mad, doesn’t it, Prem? I’ve seen Prem Pradhan upset about people who come to Nepal, win others to the Lord, and then leave. He says, “Stay away. We don’t need you.”

Everything about the Christian gospel today is pretty much an emphasis within redemption. I want to say again, I don’t discount redemption, salvation, Christ’s work on the cross of salvation. But I do want you to know that I am, and have been, an evangelist. And I have a gift in evangelism. I’ve written two books on evangelism. But I want you to know there’s something greater than the lostness of man and the lostness of this creation, and that is a purpose that is not finite. A purpose that does not have beginning and end. But a purpose of God and a purpose in God; a purpose formed in Christ. A purpose that was made visible on this earth in Christ, that reaches before creation and after the fall. It is to that I take my stand. It is for that the church really exists. There is an eternal purpose.

Now I’m going to try to give you a couple of illustrations to really impress this upon you. Let us say that someone leaves a hundred million dollars. That’s a lot of money. I use a hundred million because I don’t know how long these videos will last; I figure a hundred million will be impressive in 25 years from now, although I realize that 10 years from now, I may not buy a hamburger. A hundred million dollars to set up an institution to do research in order to look for a way to make it possible for man to live longer, to increase man’s lifespan on this earth. Now, did you follow that? It’s to increase the amount of time man can live before he dies. And so, the institution is set up, and the people are hired, and the research begins. And in one of the laboratories, it looks like they have discovered a cure for cancer. And they pursue it. And the entire institute is very excited. And the money begins pouring into that project. And the word goes out all over the world, we may have finally found a major breakthrough in the cure of cancer, and the world’s attention is on this institute, working on a cure for cancer. And one day, the board of directors says, “You are in very serious trouble.”

Now, has anybody figured out anything about what I’m saying? You have not. You have missed it completely. I’m going to repeat the purpose of that institution. It is to increase the lifespan of man on this earth. It is not to cure a disease. Do you see? And in the pursuit of curing cancer, it forfeited its franchise to exist. Do you understand? It got off the bigger view for something important, but was not its purpose. Its purpose was to find a way for men to live longer. Curing cancer would only cure diseases that would still allow man to live to about 70-75 and die.

Alright, are you seeing this little illustration? Let me give you another one. The year is 2400— that’s about—if you don’t know where 2400, that’s about where Star Trek: The Next Generation is, right there. Are you with me? Now you’re following me. That’s about 400 years from now. And now we have warp drive. Just been invented. The first spaceship to leave our planetarium system is going to try to visit the nearest star; first time this ship’s ever been built. Very tricky thing. I mean, it’s not like you can use it to travel around in our universe because it passed our universe so quickly. So, we’re actually not even getting to explore all of our universe. We’re getting to go to someone else’s because of the enormous speed it generates. You couldn’t stop between here and the moon or Mars.

So here it starts. And just about the time it ignites its warp drive, the warp drive breaks down, and they sail past Pluto. The last planet. Nobody’s ever seen Pluto before. They’ve gotten that far; the warp drive broke as soon as it started, and they’ve got to repair that thing or they’ll never get home again, and it is discovered that there is, near Pluto, another planet, and in between them is an asteroid. And between this smaller planet around Pluto or near Pluto, there has been magically created an asteroid that is incredibly beautiful and will support life. And so, the ship lands there, and they get out, and they establish a colony there. And they take some of the little spaceships that they have, and they begin circling around, exploring Pluto and the other little, almost invisible planet, and the asteroid. They begin sending information back to Earth about how beautiful this place is, and they begin sending photographs back. Everybody is entranced. Everybody wants to go to Pluto and this place, and they’re just awed by this magnificent and unexpected discovery.

Are you following me? But somewhere in all of this great exploration and discovery of riches and beauty, they have forgotten that their original purpose was to go to the stars. You follow me? Do you understand this is the kingdom of God today? It has forgotten where it was going. Forgotten where it came from. Forgotten its purpose. And it is absolutely enthralled with redemption. Everything is toward redemption. Man-centered in its declaration of that redemption. Now, is that not true? Is not the gospel of redemption that was preached to you very you-centered, with virtually no thought of what redemption meant for the heart of God and His greater purpose? Is that not true? Did anyone ever tell you—ever, ever, ever, ever tell you—that there was a greater purpose in redemption than your just being forgiven of your sins and being able to go to heaven when you die? That there was behind all of this an enormous and an incredible purpose toward which God was working? I never heard that gospel, did you? No one ever called me to that purpose for which I was redeemed.

This has been illustrated in many ways. I think T. Austin-Sparks was the very first Christian who ever spoke on this subject. And I don’t know what his illustration was, but someone has used the illustration of a man going from New York to Chicago, but he reaches a detour, and he comes along a country road, and he sees spectacular country he never knew or dreamed about, and he is so delighted with it that he decides to move there and make his place on the detour. And he’s going to live on the detour because it is so gorgeous and so beautiful, and he has forgotten he was going from New York City to Chicago. And he is now going to camp and live out his life on the detour. Are you following me? We have decided to set up housekeeping on the detour. There was a place we were headed to, and there was a detour, there was a problem, and we had to take that detour. And it was so glorious—our redemption was so glorious—that we forgot that God had some place He was taking us that was in His mind, in His heart, for Him. For Him. Unto Him. Say it—unto Him.

Now, let me show this to you. Let’s start down here. Here is God, and there is only God. There’s no creation. And God births within the glory of the innermost portions of His infinite being a plan. That plan is not to save me from my sins. I don’t exist. I have never sinned. God has a plan that reaches from the eternals to the eternals. And so, His plan starts out, and He creates, and He’s headed that way, folks. And then Adam eats of the forbidden tree, and the plan is stopped right there. Man, who is part of His eternal purpose, falls. God started here; He’s moving up. We come to sin and the fall, and man falls. Are you following?

What’s right down there? A cross. Thank you, brother. And a tomb—a cross and a tomb—and this has done nothing but just stop God for a little while. That’s not His purpose down there, saints. Are you following me? It’s not His purpose. But that cross, and our salvation, and our redemption, and our regeneration, and our being given righteousness, and our being given holiness, and our being made new, and our being born anew, or born again, or born from above, and our inheritance in Christ and all of that is to get us back up to; it’s not stay down there and rejoice. It’s to come up and rejoin God’s eternal purpose. So here we go.

God has a plan. God conceives an intention. God’s eternal purpose—not His temporary purpose—His eternal purpose comes to here, is thwarted; man falls. God provides for the fall in Christ, in the deliverance from sin, the dealing with Satan, and we are raised back up to continue on in His eternal purpose, which goes on and on forever. Yeah, don’t just sit there. Tell those people listening, “Amen.” My life as a Christian, your life as a Christian, will never make sense as long as it is totally involved in the detour. I do not take away from that detour. I’ll preach redemption to man anywhere on this earth, but when I have finished, I have another purpose, and that purpose is to show him God’s purpose—God’s purpose in his life.

And now I am trying to say to you all, I’ve preached the eternal purpose before, but I will preach it differently this time. I don’t want to preach it toward you; I want to preach it toward Him. I want to get into the mind of God and the mind of God alone and see it all from Him—His view, what He wants. Nothing toward me, all toward Him. And this is an invitation for you to join me in this venture. I’ve never done it before. I’ve always preached the eternal purpose toward your part in it and how glorious it is for you. I really wish to take all the arrows and just bend them back toward Him. Unto Him. What was it the Lord wanted back here—if what He wanted was to do nothing but bless me—then I want all the arrows pointing toward me.