Use and The Lord’s Purpose | Rev. Pearse M. Frazier

Now hear the word of the Lord as it is written in Psalm one twenty seven.

A song of a sense of Solomon.

Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.

Unless the Lord keeps the city, the keeper watches in vain.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, eating the bread of grief.

For so he gives to his beloved sleep.

Behold, children are a heritage of the Lord.

The fruit of the womb is his reward.

As arrows in the hand of a mighty warrior, so are the sons of one's youth.

Happy is the mighty man who has his quiver filled with them.

They shall not be ashamed, for they speak with the enemies in the gate.

And Jesus came down with the disciples from the mountain and stood on a level place with the crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people.

And he lifted up his eyes towards his disciples and said, Blessed are you, poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

And I say to you who hear, love your enemies.

Do good to those who hate you.

Bless those who curse you and pray for those for those who spitefully use you.

Judge not, and you shall not be judged.

Condemn not and you shall not be condemned.

Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.

For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.

For every tree is known by its own fruit.

For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil.

For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Now reading from Divine Love and Wisdom, number 329 and 330.

From the final ultimate end in creation, it can be seen what a form of use is.

The final end in creation is the existence of an angelic heaven.

And because the angelic heaven is the final end, so too is mankind or the human race, since heaven is formed from it.

It follows from this that all other phenomena created are immediate ends, and that these are forms of use in the order, degree, and respect that they have relation to mankind and through mankind to the Lord.

Since the final end in creation is an angelic heaven from the human race, and so also the human race itself, therefore its immediate ends are all the other phenomena that have been created.

And because these have relation to mankind, they have regard to these three constituents of a person, namely his body, his rational faculty, and his spiritual character, for the sake of his conjunction with the Lord.

For a person cannot be conjoined with the Lord unless he is spiritual, and he cannot be spiritual without being rational, and he cannot be rational without having a body in sound condition.

These three are like a house.

The body is like the foundation, the person's rational faculty is like the superstructure of the house, and his spiritual character is like the furnishings in the house, in conjunction with the Lord is like his inhabiting of it.

Apparent from this is the order, degree, and respect in which forms of youth, the intermediate ends of creation, have relation to mankind, namely that they are for sustaining a person's body, for perfecting his rational faculty, and for his receiving a spare spiritual character from the Lord.

Here end the readings: Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.

Amen.

If you get nothing else out of today's sermon, I would hope that what you get is that it would be useful for you to read the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6, on its own in one sitting.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

It would take you about 10 minutes if read slowly out loud.

And it is better than what else we will say.

That said, what is the point?

What's the point of it all?

You could say, what's the meaning of life?

Or you could say, why are you created?

Or you could say, why did you come to church?

What's the point of anything?

The heavenly doctrines for the new church actually give us an answer.

And that answer is a heaven from the human race.

That is the ultimate, final end of everything.

In fact, it is so much so the final end and point of everything that it's why the Lord permits evil.

It's why the Lord gives you freedom and rationality.

It's why the Lord has created marriage, the church, given us his word.

It's why he's given us the illusion that we can do things of our own self, even though we may recognize that it is from the Lord.

It's the reason why anything is either permitted, created, or happens at all, so that there can be a heaven from the human race.

Or what is the same, an angelic heaven.

We have to be careful with these words, though, and understand them very clearly.

And so we're going to break this concept down to really examine what it actually means and apply it to some basic understandings.

First, use.

Use is something that many people in the general church and in the new church and even in society is celebrated, sometimes even worshiped.

You might even say, well, that person's really useful.

Or you might publish a book called Education for Use.

Or what's the point of life?

To be useful.

But wait a minute, that's not actually true, is it?

That wasn't the point of life.

The point of life was a heaven from the human race.

There are useful ends, but they are all in service to the final end or the ultimate point of creation.

Which means when someone says, that looks useful, the very simple question everyone should ask is, useful for what?

How?

How is it useful?

Because use is not the point of life.

Use is how it comes into effect.

The point is a heaven from the human race.

Now, elsewhere in the heavenly doctrine, we are taught that heaven is not some geographic location far, far away.

That the kingdom of heaven is within.

That it is the states of happiness and peace we feel when as a group or a community or a kingdom, we feel the Lord's love by loving others.

Heaven is the states of happiness and peace when love is fulfilled.

So when the Lord is thinking about the purpose of something, he's thinking about how he can love you, and as a result, you can love others, and as a result, you and others can feel happiness and peace.

That's what the Lord wants from you.

He wants you to feel eternal happiness and peace.

And he wants you to love others and receive his love.

So when we talk about what is use, we can say, is it helping us love others?

Is it helping us give them peace and joy, true happiness and peace?

Is it helping us love the neighbor and love the Lord?

Is it helping us create a community of people in that love?

If the answer is yes, it's useful.

Now at another time, in another place, we could have an entire sermon about how evil can be useful.

Because the Lord is able to bend all things that He permits towards that useful end.

But we are also taught that people who are in evil do not experience the happiness and peace that comes from love.

So just for us today, we'll focus on the positive.

How do you feel happiness and peace?

And more importantly, how do you help others?

So we're gonna look at life.

Life can be broken down into four basic parts: shunning evil, your daily occupation, extras or benefactions, and then recreations.

And we are taught that any aspect of the good life can be compartmentalized into one of these parts.

And we're going to go through them, a few of them right now.

First, we'll start with worship, external formal worship, what you're doing here now.

What part of the good life, the life of charity, is that?

Well, it is recreation.

It is the forth of charity.

It is getting ready.

It's like taking a bath or brushing your teeth or eating healthily.

It's like relaxing.

Hence, it's part of a good Sabbath, the day of rest.

We are taught that external worship is necessary but not sufficient.

And when we think about it as part of the fourth aspect of charity, that begins to make sense.

But it is also useful.

It is useful, obviously, to take care of your health.

Because if you can't take care of your health, how are you going to be useful to anyone else?

But the same is true with your spiritual health and your worshipful health.

It's useful to go to church.

Not because going to church is the point, but because it prepares you for the rest of life.

It gives you that rest, that reconnection with the Lord.

It grounds you.

Just as morning routines of brushing your teeth and eating healthily and maybe taking a shower can ground you for the rest of the day.

Now, one of the main things that you learn at worship is about repentance.

Repentance and all of the work that you go into your own life, again, is a little bit of four, but also one.

Meaning it is a recreation, it is taking care of your health, but it is also the first of charity, shunning evils.

It is easy to see how shunning evils can be useful.

The obvious example is if someone is doing work for you, maybe a craftsman or a tradesman in your house, and they are dishonest and they're lying to you about the work that needs to be done, they're not very useful to you.

A chef who poisons his customers is not a useful chef.

Shunning evil lets good happen.

We're taught elsewhere in the Heavenly Doctrines that man does not do good.

Rather, the Lord does good through us when we shun evil.

That's so very important to remember because the second aspect of a good life is daily occupation.

This is where many people fall into the biggest trap with the idea of use.

They think, well, I'm useful when I'm doing my job.

Yes, that is one of the ways that you might be useful, in as much as you're doing your job honestly, justly, and faithfully.

But it is not the main way that you might be useful.

It's just one of the ways.

What's more, that daily occupation is not synonymous with job.

And this is so important if you are a kid and you don't have a job.

Or if you're 87 years old and you're stuck in bed and you don't have a job.

Or the countless ways you can think of yourself as not having a job.

Your job is not your use.

What's more, a lot of jobs can be productive to society, might contribute to the GDP, might contribute to the tax coffers of a kingdom or a nation state.

That's fine as much as it's fine.

And might even be like mechanically useful, like fixing someone's toilet.

But again, so what?

To what end are any of those things good and therefore truly useful?

To the degree that they help people become angels and experience heaven.

Now, if you work in the education world, you can think pretty quickly how being a good teacher helps students become angels.

But think slowly about that.

What's more important, that the children see you demonstrate that you have a spiritual life, that you don't do evil to them and for them, that you encourage them to have a conscience and learn about what is right and wrong, or that they go to good grade.

What's more important?

Where do we as a society put our emphasis?

Because it's very easy for us as natural people to say, ah, we have a good school because so many of our graduates are going to such great colleges.

Or look at our test scores, compare them to other schools, see how good we're doing.

Who cares?

Well, actually, we might care.

In as much as it serves that ultimate end: a heaven from a human race.

And yes, we can do many great things with the natural good that we might be able to do.

But did you notice that the Lord has not cured cancer?

Have you noticed that the Lord has not built amazing power plants all over the world to give us free energy?

That the Lord doesn't even fix our toilets.

What the Lord has prioritized is giving us his truth and trying to get us to love one another.

Which means all those other things that someone might be educated to do is in service to that higher love.

So think about other jobs.

How can a job like a plumber or a doctor be serving an angelic kingdom?

Well, one example I like, I had a friend who was a carpenter.

And he came to our house, and we had a little family with a baby and a mom and dad who are very tired, and we needed a wall knocked out between the kitchen and the dining room so we could see our kids better.

And he came in and knocked out that wall.

And it helped us love our children better.

But the amazing thing is, talking to this person, is that they talked about how before they begin every job, and before they begin every job day, before they walk into the house of the customer or client, they try to pray.

And they pray, Lord, I'm doing this job for a whole host of reasons.

I'm getting paid, they need this mechanical thing done.

Help me love them in my work.

And when I heard that, I thought, Lord, when I'm receiving this naturally useful thing from a carpenter, help me be aware of your love in Him being shared with me.

That closes the loop.

That elevates something natural, a contract between a carpenter and a family, into something heavenly.

But it doesn't happen automatically.

It happens with prayerful intention.

It's why it's so important to pray.

Pray out loud.

If you have a voice, literally say the words out loud so that your ears can hear those words, so that you can experience that connection, so that all those other natural things can be elevated to that wonder and that love.

There are many ways in our lives we can have occupations that can serve that higher love.

When a woman is old and invalid and can't leave her house, can't leave her bed, she's still useful.

She can be useful when someone comes to serve and help her.

Maybe one of the nurses that visits her daily.

And you can imagine being that kind of nurse.

You have different kinds of clients.

You have that one client that's probably very confused, another client who's maybe always grumpy, then you have that one lady who always smiles and says thank you.

That's the client that gives you the energy to face all the others.

A woman in that situation, when she gratefully and graciously receives love and care with gratitude and returns that love, that's not a mere benefaction or a recreation.

That is her daily occupation.

She is building the kingdom of heaven.

What a wonderful, beautiful thing that can be.