Morgan Teruel: Thanks for tuning in to the Sandals Church podcast. Our vision as a church is to be real with ourselves, God, and others. We're glad you're here, and we hope you enjoy this message.
Claude Hickman: Hey, Sandals Church. Welcome back. We're in a series called different, and we're looking at Ephesians that calls all Christians to think differently and to live differently. And this week, we're gonna talk about how God has called us to a different purpose. How many guys would wanna know, like today from God, what your purpose in life is?
Right? Just raise your hand. Okay. Most of you. Alright.
The rest of you, you're just gonna wing it with Satan, I guess. But that's a good thing. Okay? To know your purpose in life is a good thing. Ephesians 5 17 says this, and I love this translation.
Don't be stupid. Right? Don't be stupid. Instead, find out what the Lord wants you to do. That's a wise thing to do, to find out your purpose in life.
Now I've read a lot of books. I kinda stopped reading a lot of books about purpose in life. I've written 2 books about purpose in life, but I felt like most of the books I read, started with the wrong person. They started with you. And when you start with you, you get this rainbow kaleidoscope of options and choices, and you can spend years kinda trying to figure out what is it God wants you to do with your life.
And the reason I think that's wrong is I don't think God wants you to spend half your life trying to figure out what to do with your life. That's why people have a midlife crisis. Right? If it has a crisis in it, I don't want that. And the other problem with that is the only book that doesn't give you all those choices is the Bible.
God calls us to one very specific, one very clear purpose in the scripture. And I believe God wants you to know your purpose as clearly as possible and as early as possible in life. I wanted that for our boys. I remember when they were really young, you know, when they were little kids, you know, it seemed like their purpose in life every day was to go to urgent care. Right?
Amen? We call them the safety inspectors because there's no faster way to find out what's dangerous in your home than put a toddler on the ground, because they'll go right to it. I don't know about little boy you know, little girls, but little boys are kamikazes. You know, they just jump off stuff, everything. So then I remember our oldest, he became a Christian.
I thought, this is great. You know, he trusted Jesus. Then I realized I had a new problem, heaven. Right now, he's not afraid to die. You know, he wants to.
Like, the ball rolls in the street. And I remember I was like, Aidan, man. Stop. You know, that's how people get killed. He turned around and looked at me.
He goes, dad, I'll meet Jesus. You know, like I'm an idiot. Then he put his hand out, and he stopped his little brother. He's like, but you won't, man. You're still going to hell.
So we had to have a couple of talks in our house. 1st, we had to get little brother saved, you know, and then but then I I had to explain to my boys, why do you need to say why are you here on the planet? So I sat him down. I said, boys, you know, listen, it's true. Man, you've trusted Jesus.
If you died, you go to heaven, but you need to try to stay alive as long as God allows you. And they said, dad, why? I said, well, do you know all the people we talk about around the world today? Like how 2 thirds of the planet still has never heard about Jesus, how we have friends that move to different countries and give and do all these things to to tell people around the world about Jesus. If every Christian right now just went to heaven, who would be left to tell the world?
You know? And then my one of my sons is like, dad, you know, that's why when we baptize people, we bring them back up out of the water. I was like, yep. You nailed it, buddy. That's why.
You know? And here's what I think. Man, I think we've raised a whole generation of people in the church that say, I know Jesus, so I'm ready to die. But they don't know their purpose, so they're not ready to live. So I want you to write this down.
This is point number 1, that God wants me to know my purpose in life. This is what Paul is saying in Ephesians 5. Let's look at it in another translation. Don't act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. That's a wise thing to understand what our purpose is in this world, and and we can't start with you.
I think purpose is something that's reverse engineered. In other words, we need to know where the story's going. We need to know where we wanna end, and we work backwards. And other otherwise, you have no north star. You know?
Otherwise, you're lost. So I mean, I don't know if you ever been lost. I mean, it's scary. I remember when I was in high school, I got lost in, like, deep backwoods in Oklahoma. I was with a bunch of my friends.
They were going camping, And I don't even know why. I'm not really, like, camping kind of guy. But I and I didn't wanna go, but I knew there were girls going. And I didn't wanna die single. So I was like, I got me a flannel.
And I was like, we're going. And, dude, I got separated from my friends. I remember at one point I fell down this cliff and rolled like a hobbit. And when I got up, I was lost. Like, I didn't remember which way we came from, which way our campfire was.
And it was scary, you know, like, this was before iPhones. This was before GPS. So you know you know that feeling when you try to leave your phone somewhere in your car for, like, 5 minutes and you feel, like, nervous and anxious and vulnerable, that's how we felt all the time. Okay? And I I remember I had a flashlight though.
And so for, like, 30 minutes, I have this flashlight. And, guys, I remember I looked left and then I looked right and then I realized the problem is that the flashlight's connected to me. That's the problem. The flashlight's connected to me, the person who's lost. I need something else.
I need something outside of myself. Otherwise, I'm gonna die single, right, like in the woods. This is exactly what the world tells you to do though is to start with you, and I think it's the wrong person to start with. You know, the world says follow your heart, things like that. That can I just tell you that's the dumbest advice?
Don't follow your heart. That's the one thing the bible says don't follow your heart. Your heart's deceitful. That's ever dated the wrong person? Right?
You followed your heart. That's how people had end up in prison. Right? You don't think they followed their heart? Christians just say, man, follow your spiritual gifts.
Follow your talents. That's still starting with the wrong person that's starting with you. Jeremiah 10 actually says, you're the exact wrong person to start with. Jeremiah 1023 says this, I know, oh lord, that a man's way is not in himself. It is not in man who walks to direct their steps.
You don't make a good north star for yourself. You need something to aim for with your purpose. 1st Corinthians 925 says this 26. Sorry. Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly.
This is what Paul says. I don't run. He's talking about his life. I don't run like someone who has no aim, who has no finish line. He says, I do not fight like somebody who just beating the air.
Now I don't get a lot of fights, but I I don't wanna be the guy that does the like slap tornado. You know what I mean? Like, that's but that's some of y'all's life. Right? You just go out every day going, man, I'm gonna I'm hoping I'm making a difference.
I hope my life's gonna matter. And Paul says you need to aim. I remember that night in the woods. You know, I wasn't trying to figure out my life. I was just trying to figure out how to not die.
I realized man, the flash The one thing I had in my hand was my biggest distraction, the flashlight. So I had to turn it out. I had to turn it out because I need a different light. You with me? And so I wait for my eyes to adjust the darkness And eventually I see over the left, there's this orange glow.
And I knew it was our campfire because we always had this one weird kid, Kenny, who'd throw gasoline on the campfire, pyro Kenny. You know, everybody's got that friend. And I was like, thank you, Jesus for pyro Kenny. But now I had to aim. And I got back to our campsite, and one of my friends laughed at me.
He's like, you got lost. He's like, why didn't you choose the stars? And I said, I don't know Galileo. Right? Because I'm not an Eagle Scout like you.
But he was right. I needed something outside of myself. I needed something bigger than myself and you do too. If you ever heard of C. S.
Lewis, he's a great Christian author. But before he became a Christian, C. S. Lewis said, I found this desire in my heart that was so big. Nothing in this world could satisfy it.
And now he goes, I came to the conclusion, I must be made for something outside this world. I must be made for a different world. Can I tell you why all those other things that you're trying to do for your life, why they're not gonna satisfy you? Because nothing this world offers is gonna last forever, but you will. You will.
And if you last forever, you need a story that lasts forever. And and if you need a story that lasts forever, you need a different author. You need a author who's everlasting. So number 2, I wanted you to write this down. To find a different purpose, I must start with a different person.
What if we started with God? This is exactly what Ephesians calls us to do. Paul says this, Ephesians 5 10, carefully determine what pleases who? The Lord. Not you.
We don't start with you. We start with God. We say, God, what are you doing? Right? God, where are you headed in history?
What's what are the passions on your heart? God, where's the story going? And how can I adjust? How can I change and be different and align my life with what I see you doing? And here's the good news, Ephesians 3 says this, this is God's plan.
You wanna know it today? We're gonna we're gonna find out today. This is God's plan. And here's what He says, that both Jews and Gentiles who believe the good news will share equally in the riches inherited by God's children. Both are part of the same body.
And Ephesians says, both enjoy the the the same promise of blessing because they belong to Christ Jesus. Now this term Gentiles, we talk about Jews and Gentiles, and you see this a lot in the scripture. Let me try to explain to you what the term Gentiles means in the scripture. I don't think a lot of us know. It was a Jewish term.
I don't know if we have any other terms like this. It's basically the Jewish term for everybody else in the world that's not Jewish. Right? Probably couldn't pull this off today. You know, sounds a little racist.
It it's kind of ethnic, but it's also religious. They're saying God is for us. We are the people of Yahweh. We are the people of God. Everyone else is pagan.
And a lot of cultures are regional like that. Shintoism in Japan, or for all Arabic speakers, it's Islam, or if you're live in India, you're Hindu. So that's not that's not unique to the Jewish culture. But, you know, Gentiles is such a strange term. Right?
The only comparison I could think of, and this is so nerdy. Alright. Forgive me. But if you're a Harry Potter fan, it would be the mudbloods. Right?
The non wizard folk out there that just don't have it. And if you intermarry with a mudblood, it's even worse. We call what is that? The or sorry, the muggles, you know, and the mudbloods. If you intermarry, you're the mudblood.
And it's it's offensive. It'd be like the Samaritans for Jesus. Imagine Jesus telling the parable of the good mud blood. That would have been shocking. They couldn't imagine that God, His family would extend to the pagans, to the Gentiles, to bring them in, that God would that His blessing that Ephesians talks about that would be extended to them.
So Paul says, man, when I try to explain this, pray for my words. Right? Like when we pray for pastor Matt, we pray for his words. Paul's like, man, pray for my words. Pray for me too.
Ask God to give me the right words because this is touchy. Right? This is a touchy thing to explain. So I can explain God's mysterious plan that the good news is for Jews and God is gonna include the Gentiles. I'm gonna show you.
I mean, Jesus almost got Himself in trouble for this. His first sermon in the synagogue, Luke 4, He opens the scroll and says, God is here to bless you know, the Messiah is here to bless the Jews. They're like, woo. They says, and Gentiles, like Naaman. They're like, say what?
And then they try to throw him off a cliff. Go back and read it. They didn't like this idea. Ephesians 3:9 says this, but Paul says, I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the creator of all things, has kept secret from the beginning. In other words, this is not new with the new testament.
It's always been there. They the Jews just hadn't seen it. Many of us just hadn't seen it. Some of you guys might remember the Northridge earthquake happened like 30 years ago, Los Angeles knocked out all the power, it's pitch black, you know, people are freaking out, they go outside, and they started calling 911, but not because of the earthquake. They called 911 because when they looked up over their neighborhood, there's like they started calling and saying, man, there's some kind of glowing gas over my neighborhood.
Is this radioactive? Somebody said it looks like a dragon, you know, over Los Angeles. And they said, is there some kind of nuclear? You know, what is this? And the 911 people finally kinda figured it out.
They said, sir, it's okay. You know, don't wrap your kid in tinfoil. You know, it's it's fine. That's that's called the Milky Way. And that's the galaxy you live in, sir.
Okay. It's fine. It was it was there for a long time before, and, it it's gonna be alright. And they just had never seen it. Right?
But it always been there. I wanna show you this theme that Paul is talking about because it's all through the old testament. It's all through the Bible that God has always had this plan to bless the world. And many of us just haven't seen it. I wanna go back to the first book in the Bible and show you this, Genesis 12.
12 chapters into God's story. This is what He says to Abraham. It was global from the very beginning and God says, Abraham, I'm gonna make you into a great nation and I'm gonna bless you. Right? We want God to bless us.
God says 7 times in this passage, I'm gonna bless you Abraham, but not just for you. I'm gonna bless you and you will be a blessing. You see that? You're you're gonna relay this blessing on. And then He says, all peoples, that's the Gentiles, that's the nations, all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.
This is known as the Abrahamic covenant. It's one of the most important promises in all the Old Testament because God's promised to do it. We look later, we see the prophets like Isaiah. He knows this. He speaks about the Messiah that God's gonna send.
He says the Messiah, you will do more. In Isaiah 49:6, you will do more than just restore the people of Israel to me. I'm gonna make you a light to the Gentiles, and you will bring my salvation to the ends of the earth. You starting to see this theme? That phrase light of the Gentiles, by the way, when Simeon dedicates baby Jesus in the temple, he says, Now my eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord, a light to the Gentiles.
And Mary and Joseph said, say what? And she pondered it, right? But this is all through the storyline of scripture. If we had time, I I could show you. Man, Isaiah 496 I'm sorry, Psalms 40 610 says this, be still and know that I'm God, I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
Psalms 86 says, all nations whom you have made shall come and worship before you. That's a promise. Habakkuk says, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Malachi says, from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations. Jesus sends the disciples out, says, go make disciples of all nations.
God is saying, man, this is what I'm doing. I don't know what you're doing, but this is what I'm doing. Right? This is my story. This is my purpose.
Right? And you get God just kinda dialing up the volume to 11 all through the scripture. And say, man, if you're not aligning your life mission with this, you might wanna get a different holy book. Because about 2,000 more times, 2,000 more times, God says, I'm gonna bless all the nations, all the Gentiles. That's why Galatians, Paul says, man, this is what scripture has been saying to us this whole time, this mystery.
So scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announce this gospel in advance to Abraham saying all the nations will be blessed in you. If God has promised to bless all of them, don't you think He's gonna do that? Not most of them, but all of them.
Morgan Teruel: Thanks for listening to the Sandals Church podcast. Our vision here is to be real with ourselves, God, and others. At Sandals Church, we wanna see a movement of authenticity take place all over the world, and donating to the work of Sandals Church helps make that happen. If you wanna support this movement here at Sandals Church, I wanna invite you to visit donate dot sc. Thanks again for listening, and god bless.
Claude Hickman: Let me tell you something, man. This theme, I missed it. I missed it. Like, so much of my Christian life, I I I I I've been a Christian for a long time. I went to Dallas Theological Seminary.
Like, I knew the Bible like some of you, but I missed the story. I missed it. I remember when a friend of mine invited me to come to a mission conference, and I said, no, thanks. That's like not my thing. You know?
And I asked but I didn't, you know, tell him that. I said, well, I know plenty of lost people. That's what I told him. I said, I know plenty of law I got lost family, lost friends. I I know plenty of lost people in our city.
I don't think we do we really need to send people to other countries and spend that money? And that was kinda my logic. And he said, well, Claude, maybe that's part of the problem. You know them, and they know you. I said, what do you mean?
He goes, well, we're talking about billions of people on the planet who have nobody like you. They're not sleeping in on Sunday. There is no church. And he introduced me to a new term that I'd never heard of and never even thought that there I knew there there are people who are unsaved, like my family and friends, but I never realized that there are people in our world who are unreached. And I learned a new term.
And I think the apostle Paul was onto this idea that there are some people who still haven't heard of Jesus even in his time. Romans 15:20, he says this. How are we doing at all? Like, I think he just says, man, if God has promised to bless all, show me the stats on all. Let's open the map and talk about all.
Right? Give me the give me the total count on all. And in Romans 15:20, he says, so my ambition, my purpose has always been to preach the good news where the name of Christ has never been heard yet. He's thinking about the unreached so I wouldn't be building on someone else's foundation to build a church where there's already somebody's already started one. In other words, Paul opened the Bible and saw, man, this is God's promise.
This is His heart. But then he did what we rarely do. He opened the map. He opened the map and looked at the world and said, how we doing? We don't you know, first of all, world geography in America, that's not like our strong thing.
Okay? Open the map. I mean, we're good at a lot of things. You know? Basketball, hot dog eating.
I don't know. Help me out. We're good at a lot of things, but world we can't point to anything on a map, man. I told somebody I moved here from Oklahoma. They said, what is that?
And I was like, that's a anyway, there was a National Geographic survey. This is a real survey. National Geographic of they surveyed North Americans. Half of them could find Russia. Nobody could find Japan.
But listen. This is the bad part. 1 out of 7 North Americans could not point to North America on a map of the world. Okay? That's really bad.
Like, if you got abducted by aliens and you had to take a space Uber, you know, back, you couldn't hit the right hemisphere. You know? That's pretty bad. But if we if we did a quiz on where is Christ not heard this morning or today, what how would you do? Right?
If we pass that out at church on the weekends, how would you do with that quiz? And in my experience is most of us have no idea. You have no idea. You couldn't hit the right hemisphere. Our world, if it was 3 islands let me make it really easy for you.
If our world, our whole population was on 3 islands, one island would be 2,000,000,000 people that call themselves Christian. The island next to it would be a 1000000000 people who are unsaved, but there'd be a bridge. There'd be a relational bridge where they could hear through evangelism, something, a 1000000000 people. But next to it would be an island 5 times as big, 5 times the size of that one with no bridge. In other words, Gordon Conwell did a study that said that 5 out of 6 non Christians on planet earth today today, 5 out of 6 non Christians on planet earth will not get an opportunity to hear the gospel in their lifetime unless somebody changes their address.
They're they're relationally cut off from Christians. You with me? They're unreached. As far as the world goes, missionaries call that area where those 3,400,000,000 people live. They call it the 10:40 window, and it just represents the area North Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Japan, Indonesia, where those people are.
And in when it comes to that 10:40 window, God has called us to reach him, but, man, when it comes to giving, we're not reaching him with our giving. Can I give you some statistics? Because you're probably not gonna hear this anywhere else. If we were gonna stack, if we're gonna look at how much Christians earns $53,000,000,000,000 If we stacked $1 bills and stacked a 100 of them, you know, 50 feet high, like stacked them on top of each other like that, if that represented what Christians earn, we only give the first $2 on the floor. That's just what we tithe, we give.
Any giving is just the first $2. Dollars. But if we wanted to look at what is given to the 10:40 window, which is given to missions, we'd have to take those $2 and lay them flat on each other and lay them on the floor because that half millimeter, you with me, is how much is given to missions. When it comes to our missionaries, there's 436,000 missionaries in the world right now. That's great, but 97% of the missionaries right now are working on island number 2 and island number 1.
Only 3% of missionaries. We're talking about people who've learned a different language, moved to a different culture. Only 3% of them are working on the island number 5 that I'm talking about, the unreached peoples. It's a big deal. And I realized that, man, this this situation, it's a problem and it's my problem because those people who are unreached, they're not lost because of their choices.
They're lost because of my choices. Because you and I, we have stopping points in where we choose to live and where we choose to give. Now here's the good news. There's still time. Right?
There's still time to make this our purpose. I remember for a year, we had our kids playing baseball and it took me a while to realize that our kids were our our team was no good. Okay? And I realized that the first time we had a game and I was kinda just listening, you know, as kids went up to bat. And other kids, you know, the other team goes up to bat.
It's like, okay, Jimmy. Elbow up, Jimmy. You know, find a gap, Jimmy. You know, squash the bug, Jimmy. I didn't even know what that was.
Squash the bug, Jimmy. Then our kids go up and you hear this. Don't cry. Open your eyes. You know?
Swing. Just please swing. You know, one time we played a team that was so bad, we realized that they couldn't throw. And so all we had to do, if we made contact, we, you know, we had runners on all the bases, and we had the bases loaded. Our youngest kid goes up to bat, and he's just watching pitches go by.
And your heart's just breaking, you know. His dad just like, swing, buddy. Please swing. You know, it's one of those like, dude, I I will buy you anything. Right?
Just swing. Just swing. He couldn't do it, man. Strike number 3. And sometimes I wonder if heaven is looking back at us, if the people in heaven are looking back at us and just going, man, what are you doing?
Right? Swing. Open your eyes. You've got God on your team. What are you doing?
What are you doing with your life? Ephesians 5 16. Before it says, men, find out what God wants you to do. This is what it says. Make the most of every opportunity.
Probably the most convicting verse for me in this whole book was this. Paul says, make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Another translation says it like this, make every minute count. Amen. Make every minute count.
So how do we do that? How can I live differently to make the most impact globally? I wanna give you 3 things. 1, make the most of your blessing. Psalm 67 says this, may God be gracious to us and bless us and cause His face to shine upon us.
God has blessed us, amen. But it says so that. In other words, there's a responsibility attached to that blessing so that your ways may be known on the earth, your salvation among all nations. My wife and I, when we tithe, when we give to Sandals Church, we make part of it go to global engagement, go to global missions. Okay?
And as the end of the year approaches, you might say, man, God has blessed us and we wanna use it and leverage it to bless the world somehow. Another thing you can do is use your words. Make the most of your words. Paul says this, I have been given the privilege of serving God by spreading this good news. It's a privilege.
And our kids love to watch Mr. Beast, you know? He's only popular because he gives away money, that's why I say, he's got no talent, he just gives away money. Everybody loves that guy. Yeah.
You're mister Beast, you know. If you don't know who that is, that's Oprah, if you're old. Okay? But you got the best news in the world. And so telling it is the best job in the world.
And can I tell you something? Some of you might, you know, move to another country, but some of you, your trip to Trader Joe's, your trip to the grocery store is more diverse than any city Paul or Jesus probably ever entered. Okay? You could say hi to the nations. Make the most of your words.
Yeah. I know that looks impossible. So let me just tell you, men, when I look at the world, what gives me hope is I remember this last one. I remember what's most sure. Remember what's most sure.
God has promised to do this, but we have something even better. In Revelation 7:9, we get a picture of the future. John records there's the scene of heaven, and he says this. Thy looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one can count from every, every nation and tribe and people and language. That's how the story ends.
And when I read that, you know what I get excited about? I realize, man, we're not there yet, but somebody gets to do that. Right? Somebody gets to do that, and there's still time left. When you ask and say, God, I wanna find out what it is that I'm here to do.
This is the purpose that he's called you to. And the great privilege is that you and I get to be alive today in the middle of this story. God has put you here to make the most of your life, to bring his blessing to the world. Can we pray that together as a church? Let's pray.
Father in heaven, we don't wanna get to the end of our life and find out what we're supposed to do with our life. Lord, my prayer is this, that we wouldn't waste another minute, that we would waste another minute. Because, God, the good news is not just for the world. The good news is right here, that you have given us a purpose. Some of us may have stumbled into this message today, not sure why they're here on the planet.
Not sure why they're doing what they're doing. But God, you have given us an incredible purpose. It's bigger than anything we could come up with because it lasts forever. But, God, this purpose is different. It's different than what our neighbors are doing.
It's different than what other Christians are doing. And it requires us to change. God, it requires us to be different in how we think about our money. God, I pray you'd call thousands of people to do something different with their finances. You'd raise up thousands of people to say, man, I need to live differently, somewhere differently.
Reach different kind of people, because you've called us to this. And God, would you help us to make the most of every minute. God, you've blessed us, but not just for us. You've blessed us that we might bring your blessing, your good news, your gospel to the whole world. And we pray that in Jesus name, amen.