2 Kings 25:8-11 — And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which is the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem: And he burnt the house of the Lord, and the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great man’s house burnt he with fire. And all the army of the Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down the walls of Jerusalem round about. Now the rest of the people that were left in the city, and the fugitives that fell away to the king of Babylon, with the remnant of the multitude, did Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carry away.

In our devotions recently, Myra and I have been on the march through 2 Kings. Honestly, it can get a bit depressing as one failed ruler follows another.
Now, I don’t want to gross you out — but I was in the shower this morning when it occurred to me that the succession of rulers of my home country England — from the House of Wessex to the House of Windsor across nearly 1300 years — might soon peter out into the same futility — just like the Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires before it …

My gloomy thought led me to think about the point of the whole thing. I mean, what’s the point of mankind if all our great successes crumble into nothing much?

I know better than that of course … 

The Bible is full of verses about man’s purpose. Not much about the purpose of empires and dynasties. I don’t really think that empires and dynasties are much to the point except in so far as they provide structure for men and women to live out their lives … but there is a real purpose for man.

Those verses I was taking about … It seems to me that the passage at the heart of the matter is:

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)

It might seem that this passage defines the real point of man … but there is more to it. Love, it seems to me, is the “how” of our purpose. English Puritan, Thomas Watson wrote a wonderful sermon to answer the question, to define the “what” and provides the definitive answer:

Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.

Here are two ends of life specified. 1. The glorifying of God. 2. The enjoying of God.

First. The glorifying of God, 1 Pet. 4:11. “That God in all things may be glorified.” The glory of God is a silver thread which must run through all our actions. l Cor. 10:31. “Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Everything works to some end in things natural and artificial; now, man being a rational creature, must propose some end to himself, and that should be, that he may lift up God in the world. He had better lose his life than the end of his living. The great truth asserted is that the end of every man’s living should be to glorify God. Glorifying God has respect to all the persons in the Trinity; it respects God the Father who gave us life; God the Son, who lost his life for us; and God the Holy Ghost, who produces a new life in us; we must bring glory to the whole Trinity.

This is what I have come to. Man’s purpose is to glorify God. Man’s process is to love God and his fellow man. The process and the purpose work together. The more we love, the more we glorify God. I have been meditating on these thoughts for three days now, wondering how to explain the ways I believe love and glory interact. I can’t say it any better. God has given us a process and a purpose and they work together … and that’s what life is all for.