What is the Essence of Life?

“What is the essence of life?” No small question I know. This is a question that I have been considering deeply the last six months, and strangely, it’s been the process of remodeling our home that has spurred it on.

I’ve also been thinking about the essence of life as I have had the privilege of joining the pastoral team at Grace Athens – a church where hundreds of college students find a spiritual “home” as they live in the most formative years of their life – years full of searching, examining, and pursuing answers to the big questions of life.

It’s these inquiries that stir passion and debate, and bring countless different opinions. But despite their complexity, it seems to me that the answers to life’s biggest questions are oftentimes very simple.

So what is the essence of life? Is it simple, or complex? Can there actually be an answer that meets the unique situations and struggles of us all?

Podcast: Download (Duration: 33:18 — 22.9MB)

Subscribe: Email | RSS

Downloads

Sermon Transcript

Grace Fellowship Church

Brian Burchik

October 12, 2014

What is the Essence of Life?

Deuteronomy 6:1-12

I would love for you to open your Bibles to Deuteronomy, chapter 6. If you need a Bible, just slip up your hand and we’ll get a Bible to you. We have Bible carts going around. This is the same routine we do in Athens. We don’t have Bible carts, so we just call them “Bible humans,” and we just say, “They’ll come out to you.” We do the same thing. We open up the Word.

We are taking a one-week pause on where you guys have been in Amos. I told Jon, “Amos 3 is just too hard to teach. Please let me do something else.” Just kidding…kind of. No, it wasn’t like that. He was gracious to let me share something God has been teaching me and some stuff that has been shared with our students and church in Athens.

Deuteronomy, chapter 6. To give a little bit of context for where we are in history and the story of God’s people, we’re looking at the nation of Israel at a time where they have been liberated out of Egypt, out of 400 years of slavery. They’ve been miraculously delivered out of that bondage. I don’t know if any of you have seen the trailer for the new Exodus movie. Has anyone seen this? It’s pretty epic-looking. Yes, it’s awesome. I’m more excited about that than I am about Left Behind. I’m sure that’s cool too. I haven’t seen it yet.

We’re at a time where they’ve been delivered out of slavery with a promise of entering this Promised Land, of really becoming that people of God that has been chosen to be a blessed people in order to channel God’s blessing to all of the families of the whole earth. That’s the vision. That’s what God has said about this people.

They’re at this time where they’re moving from slavery into that Promised Land to become that people in that place. But it’s not so easy as just going from slaves to free. It’s not so simple as, “Hey, we lived in this kind of lifestyle and this place, and now we’re going to go straight into this freedom and abundance and this new community.” It wasn’t that easy. There was all kinds of brokenness, all kinds of healing and deep internal work that had to be done in their hearts.

In many ways, a new generation of Israelites had to learn what it meant to really trust God, really walk with God, to live a life of faith in God. So we’re at a time where Moses, God’s chosen leader at this time, is giving them a reminder of what he has done. We see throughout the book of Deuteronomy, which Moses wrote, there’s a reminder of the miracles God has done. Not just a reminder of miracles, but he’s reviewing God’s ways, the commands and the laws and how they are to live.

It’s not just a history lesson. It’s not just, “Hey, it’s important for us to know what our ancestors went through.” No, it’s absolutely to empower them to take this new ground and live as this blessed people in this blessed Promised Land. They’re in this kind of awkward in-between time, this wandering in between, these 40 years in the desert of trying to figure out, “How do we move from slaves into being God’s people, his sons and his daughters, this blessed people?”

I think, collectively, we can resonate with and certainly glean from this, because, in many ways, we oftentimes experience an in-between time in our own lives. There are plenty of times where we’re in seasons where we’re looking ahead to something that’s coming down the road or something new. Maybe some of you are parents of a senior in high school and you’re seeing down the road of graduation and the dynamics that will shift when they leave home or go off to college or whatever might be next.

Maybe you’re married, but you’re looking toward a day of having kids and growing your family and becoming parents. Maybe you’re single and you have that desire for marriage. Maybe you’re about to get married, or maybe not, but you want that. You’re thinking about that. You’re anticipating what that could be like. Maybe it’s looking ahead for a new job or a new community to move to or a new house or whatever it might be.

I think, in a really broad sense, this idea of being in between is very much defining of our entire reality, because we’re in this time where God’s kingdom is breaking in, where we can experience God’s love and kindness. We can experience the power of his forgiveness. Things can change. Yet we know, by knowing ourselves and what we think and how we feel and also the world around us, that God’s kingdom is certainly not fully here.

It has not yet broken in with all of its fullness. We’re anticipating that. So we are very much in between in sort of an awkward age. In light of that, I want us to read these words of Moses, as he is reminding the people and preparing them to take into the Promised Land. Deuteronomy, chapter 6. We’ll start in verse 1.

“These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.” (Deuteronomy 6:1-2)

Obviously, the focus here is on God’s commands, his decrees, his ways of life, the ways in which they can actually be different than the rest of the world, be a different kind of culture within themselves than everything else floating around them. We see the law here, which I think sometimes can get a really bad rap.

When we think about the law, we can think about trying to earn God’s love, trying to be perfect, never being good enough, legalism, the law, but we really can’t attach all that negativity to it, because, at the end of the day, his ways, his commands, are here so that they may enjoy long life. That’s what it says here. That they might fear God and know God and enjoy long life, that they could flourish as God’s people.

We know we’re all fallen beings. None of us are perfect at keeping these ways. We fall. We break. There’s all of that. The study through the Minor Prophets you guys have been doing has certainly highlighted the reality of the sin in our own hearts as well as the injustices we see out in our world today. Nevertheless, these commands were given so they could enjoy long life. Now look at verse 3.

“Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.” (Deuteronomy 6:3) We see this call to obedience, that you actually have to change your behavior.

There’s an actual right way to live, and it’s so that it may go well with you, that life can work out and go well. It’s not to make you miserable. It’s not to make you different for different’s sake. It is so it may go well in your real everyday life. Real, actual transformation and abundance. That’s the idea of milk and honey. It’s this description of abundance in the land. Not just up here in our spiritual minds or hearts, but that there would be a fullness and abundance in the land.

Verse 4 takes us into the Shema. This is the most important prayer in Judaism. It would be recited daily. This is very central. It says, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) This is vastly important. It’s basically saying you are to be people who love God with everything you are. All of your being is to love God.

I think there’s some benefit to breaking it down and talking about, “What does it mean to love God with your soul? What does it look like to love God with your strength or your mind?” There are benefits to that, but I don’t think we can pick it apart too much to miss that general sense, which is all of us, with all that we are, are made to love God, the one true God. If we do that, practically, it spills out into everyday life. Look at the next verse. See how this seeps out into everyday living.

Verse 6: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7) I love this. This is so mundane and everyday and normal.

It’s just saying loving God with all that you are just spills out when you’re walking along the road, which I guess, for our context, it’s probably more accurate to say, “When you’re driving in your car,” which is unfortunate. I don’t like driving in the car that much. I wish there were more places to walk. But it is a good time to talk to your kids. Some of the best conversations with your kids can happen in the car.

Some of you parents intentionally drove them to school every day because you knew, “This is a time where I can actually talk with them and have some good time.” I get to drive Amyra to school almost every morning, and I love it. We have our little routines we do, and we just get to talk. What it’s saying here is, “Hey, it’s in these ordinary moments that you talk about God, you teach your kids the ways of God, so it may go well with you, so you enjoy a long life.”

I love this. Erin is beginning to do this with Amyra at night. She puts her to bed. Erin is a really good storyteller. She’s very animated. She gets into it. In the last week or so, she’s begun from memory… Not going word by word in the Bible, but just from memory telling Amyra Bible stories and acting them out.

Amyra is under the covers so engaged, which is amazing, because I’ve never seen that kind of engagement when I’ve tried more like the Bible devotions with Amyra. Maybe she just wasn’t ready for Romans. I never saw that same kind of engagement, but Erin is great with it. It’s just that everyday kind of stuff.

We can all do this. We can all spend some time before eating dinner to thank God for something that day. Just go around the table and say, “Let’s all thank God for two things that happened today.” As the passage describes, as we lie down, as we go to bed, we can all pray. We can go around saying, “Let’s pray to God about one thing each,” or “Let’s together as a family lift up one thing.”

As spouses, we can all decide from time to time, or maybe every morning, to get up a little early, which can be challenging with little ones, but to get up early enough to have some coffee together and pray as husband and wife. We can do this. This is just everyday normal living as God’s people. So it may go well with you, so that you may enjoy a long life.

Now look at verse 8, as it shows the intensity of this devotion. It says, “Tie them [the commands] as symbols on your hands, and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:8-9) There are groups within Judaism that literally wear the commands on their heads.

I think the modern evangelical American response to this has been, “Get them tattooed on your bodies everywhere so you can be reminded of them.” At least down in Grace Midtown and Athens that’s what’s happening. The idea, though, is the intensity. Keep these words of God. Now look at verses 10-12.

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers…” This is the Promised Land. “…to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you––a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant––then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Deuteronomy 6:10-12)

Here’s our dilemma that was back then a dilemma and is a dilemma today. I think there’s something to this. There are times when we experience God’s abundance. Clearly, that’s his heart. “Vineyards you didn’t till, houses filled with good things you didn’t even build.” God’s heart for his people is abundance, and yet there are many times when we experience his fullness…

Say we experience a breakthrough in some way. It can be so easy for us to end up drifting away and forgetting the one who gave us those things in the first place. It can be challenging. Practically speaking, I just think of my own life. There was a time when I was younger, going through high school and college, where I had all kinds of insecurity, and it affected all of my interactions.

In my inner consciousness, there was an awareness like, “God, I need you. I need you to not be so insecure and not be so focused on what others think about me. I need you to be my confidence. I need you.” God did an amazing work in that regard and brought all kinds of identity and strength and a sense of real love and acceptance regardless of what people think.

It’s amazing how, after that, I can tend to drift away and be like, “You know what? I’m a pretty confident dude. I’m pretty good,” and forget it was God who brought me to this place in the first place. Maybe it’s financial. Maybe early on you’re building a living. You’re getting things going, and you’re very aware, “God, we need your provision.”

Over the years, by his grace, maybe there’s a growth in your business or maybe there are bonuses. You climb ladders and get to a place of real financial stability, and you feel good. It can be easy to drift and forget the God who equipped you to be able to make that money and have that level of comfort in the first place.

There are different ways we have this dilemma. It’s like that classic hymn that says, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.” That is the warning in verse 12. “Do not forget God when you go into this Promised Land and actually experience a real abundance. Don’t forget him.” This passage from Hosea… I know you guys just studied Hosea, but this to me is such a powerful passage packed into just a few verses. It’s this cycle I think all of us can feel at moments.

“But I have been the Lord your God ever since you came out of Egypt. You shall acknowledge no God but me, no Savior except me. I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of burning heat. When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.” (Hosea 13:4-6)

I feel like I’ve watched that cycle happen in my own life many times. There’s a certain pride. Once you experience a breakthrough or the abundance, there’s some level of confidence. It’s like, “I’m good. I’ve got this.” We can forget. That’s exactly what we’re warned against. Now what I want to do is go and see how Jesus continues to fulfill and expand this idea of loving God with everything.

Go to Matthew 22, if you would. To set the stage here, basically some particular groups of religious leaders are trying to stump Jesus. They’re trying to prove he is not who he is, trying to trip him up. Unsuccessfully. The Sadducees have already tried in prior verses. You can read about that. Then in verse 34, which is where we’ll pick up, we see the Pharisees, another group of religious leaders, are going to give it a go and see if they can’t create a stir.

“Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘”Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.'” (Matthew 22:34-40)

“All the Law and the Prophets are fulfilled in these.” What a massively important and essential statement of Jesus. Hundreds and hundreds of laws and commands and decrees, what we’ve been talking about, as well as all of the prophets. This is, in essence, the whole Old Testament. You’ve been reading and studying the voices of the prophets in those books.

Jesus says they all hang on this: “You are to love God with everything you are. Love him and love people as you would want to be treated. Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is huge. Again, Jesus isn’t giving this command to make life miserable for us or to make us oddly different than the rest of the world. He is giving us this command so it may go well, so you might enjoy the abundance of life he is offering, so you could flourish. That’s God’s heart. That’s the point of these commands. It’s so we could flourish and be those blessed people of God.

I’ve been thinking about this a little bit over the last few months. It has been kind of a crazy time for my family, because we’ve been renovating our home. It started back in the summertime. If you’ve ever been part of a major renovation, you know it’s crazy. It has spilled out into a lot of different things. I think we ate Chick-fil-A 49 times in a month. You’re not doing a whole lot of eating at the table. You’re eating out, on the run. You have to do this. You’re going to Home Depot.

Normally I would go to Home Depot at least two times, because you always need something. You always hit some obstacle, something unforeseen, so you have to go run up to Home Depot or whatever. It was a crazy time. I know this will be shocking to many of you, but I’m actually not that handy. I can see you’re really surprised by that. You’d assume I was really handy. But no, I’m more of a wordsmith. I build sentences and paragraphs and type. Not so much hammer and screwdriver and all that. But it has been fun.

One thing that has been interesting… There have been so many decisions to make that Erin and I have been trying to do, really looking at our house and trying to reimagine, like, “What’s the best way to make this a home?” There was one question and only one question we filtered all of those decisions through, whether it was what wall to knock out or what color to paint or what type of flooring, obviously all within a strict budget.

In general, the filter for all of those decisions came down to one question…Is this essence? That’s not a normal question, and essence is even not an everyday word. The idea of essence really comes down to being this intrinsic nature, this indispensable quality of something. It’s like the soul, the heart, the core, the crux of something.

What we meant by that was, “What is the essence of our house? How can we make it the best version of what it’s to be?” Not just doing what we like, but trying to figure out, “So if this is our home, if it’s this farmhouse-type feel and it sits off the street and this is what it is, how can we, in the decisions we make, draw out the best version of this thing? Is it essence?”

I have text messages from Erin with a picture of a paint color just with “Essence?” “No, I don’t think so.” She’s like, “I do think so.” I was like, “Okay, fine.” Is it essence? We’d look at all kinds of things. It could be stools. It could be whatever. It was like, “It’s not a bad stool. It’s just how can we draw this thing out?” We would even get a little obnoxious with it, but in the end it was fun.

Now here’s what I want to say to you. When it comes down to it, what’s the essence of being a person, of being a human being? I think from what we see in these central passages woven throughout the Scripture, it’s clear the essence of being a human being is to be a lover of God with everything we are.

The core nucleus of what we are as humanity, what we’re designed for to flourish, is to be lovers of God with everything we are. This is the soul of being human: to love God. That’s what we’re made for. That’s what we’re designed for. Frankly, until we come to that conclusion, I don’t think we’ll be fully alive.

I think it has everything to do with accepting and embracing that reality. It’s powerful to say this to many of our college students in Athens. The essence of what you’re looking for and who you really are is a lover of God. Look at this quote from C.S. Lewis. I’m a big C.S. Lewis fan. Any C.S. Lewis fans in the house? Awesome. Check this out.

He says, “Your real, new self…will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom.

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. […] Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.” Amen? That’s amazing. I love that.

It was especially powerful to say this to such a young crowd in Athens and say, “Listen. Your college years, everyone says, are the time to find yourself. It’s the time to find Jesus, because that’s the essence of who you are: a lover of God. You can go down the typical road of college and make mistakes and do some things you’re going to regret and chase life in all of these other places, or you can start in living the most full life right now today by following God.” That’s our prayer. That’s our hope.

This is the great command. Certainly, loving God with all you are can look different at different stages of life. For many of those college students… We challenged them. “You have the time. You need to spend significant time alone with God. You need to get on your futon in your dorm room and just sit with God. You need to open up his Word. You need to pray. You need to listen. You need to learn how to be quiet and still your hearts and be with him. You need to find him in those ways.”

Once you’re working, it can look different. When you’re married, it can look different. When you’re married, loving God with all your heart can look like really trying to see that other person and accept the fact they are different and it’s not your job to change them. I think that takes five years at least. Right? That takes a little while. But to really see them and honor them. “God has made them unique and different than me, and it’s not my job to mold them into my own image. I have to truly see them.” It looks like serving them.

As a parent, loving God with all you are looks different in different seasons. It can look like waking up in the middle of the night and taking those sheets off the bed because your kid wet the bed and throwing those in the washer. It can look like being with them when you’re just so tired or you just want some alone time.

It can look like spending quality time with them. There’s always more work to do. At some point we just have to say, “I’m going to take a break and give them my time. I’m going to sit with them. I’m going to be with them. I’m going to waste some time with them.” Because there’s always more to do. It looks different in different seasons.

Here’s the thing. The posture is always the same. The posture is always, “God, all of me was made for all of you and no other. I am yours.” It’s a posture of openness and trust and surrender and, hopefully, a growing vulnerability. “I just want you, Lord. All of me I give to you, because I am made to be a lover of God with all of me.”

This essence idea has been profound for us as parents as well. We started to realize in the same way we’re making decisions about this remodel by that idea of “What’s the essence of the house?” as parents, one of our main jobs is to draw out the truest essence of our daughter Amyra. Our job is not to make her like us, make her have the same personality as us, the same likes as us, as tempting as it is. I mean, I did put up a basketball goal for her to play on. I haven’t given her a baseball glove. Just basketball…

But no, my job is not to make her like me. Our job is to be a student of her, to pay attention to what she loves, what she doesn’t, her gifts, her passions, her insecurities, all of those things, and with God’s grace help draw out the truest essence of who God has made for her to be. I know many of you parents know exactly what I’m talking about, and this is the work you’re doing.

Here’s the thing. If we as fallen people can have that heart for our kids, we have to know that God, our perfect Father in heaven, that he and only he is able to draw out the truest version of us, that he and only he is able to make us fully the people he has dreamed for us to be, he has created for us to be. So to surrender and submit ourselves more and more to him is what we should do, because he’s the one who knows all of us, and he’s the one who can draw it out continuously in each new season life brings us.

Are we surrendered to that? Do we believe that? Do we believe it gives him so much delight when we live how he has made for us to live? Think about the environments you create for your kids. We’ll use the basketball example. I spent all day Saturday a couple of weeks ago, with the help of my dad, putting this basketball goal up. The heart was we want to have this goal here because we want to have family fun here. We want to have random games with each other. We want to have times where she can just go out there and have fun.

It’s like you’re creating this environment for them to fill. As a parent, to now see Amyra go out there and play with it, not just go shoot baskets, but even innovate a little… She has her chalk out and she’s making different boxes that are worth different points. Do you know how much joy that gives me as a parent, to see her fill an environment I’ve created, and not just fill it, but innovate it and be creative within it?

Is this not God and his creation? Does he not get so much joy when he sees his people fill the very creation he has made and live out the design he has for them to be lovers of him? This gives him such delight and joy, and it ought to spur within us this desire to continuously become more and more the people who love him and who live out his calling for our lives, because it makes him so happy and so joyful. It’s the heart of Dad, the Creator, the Redeemer. I want to end with another quote from C.S. Lewis. It says, from God’s perspective:

“Give me all of you! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want you! All of you! […] I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them all over to me, give yourself to me, and I will make of you a new self––in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you myself. My will shall become your will. My heart shall become your heart.”

May we become people with that kind of surrender and that kind of commitment. We can try every other thing in this world, but we’ll never be fully alive until we become people committed to loving God with everything we are.