01-Our Purpose: “Love God, Love People .”

Chapter 1: Introduction — Purpose, Mission & Vision 2026

Well, today we begin our annual purpose, mission, and vision series for 2026. And we must first clarify that many churches treat these words that you see up here, this purpose, this mission is, and vision, they treat them as synonyms, like they're just they treat them like they're exactly the same. Here at Sunrise, we don't do that. The reality is that these words are very close to each other. They have a relationship with one another, but they're very distinctly different.

And this is what I mean when here at Sunrise, when we talk about purpose, right? When we talk about purpose, we say that purpose answers why we exist. Why we exist. When we talk about our mission, right? Mission answers this question of what we do as a result of why we exist.

And then when we talk about our vision, vision answers this question. How do we specifically live out our mission? How do we live out our purpose? They are built on one another. Purpose being the very foundation of these three words.

Mission then adding direction. Vision. Vision providing the details. And today we start with purpose. Now we must know our purpose.

This is a thing that we have to understand that we should know. Many people in this world walk around and they don't know why they exist. But this is a foundational truth. It's a fundamental truth. It's it's what the rest of our lives are built upon.

So let me give you an example of what I

Chapter 2: The Chick-fil-A Example: Purpose in Action

mean. So most of us in this room are familiar with this particular establishment, Chick-fil-A. All right? Many of us love our food. Some of you might be craving chicken right now and saying, "Thank you, Pastor Chris, for that." And then you remember it's Sunday.

If you don't know why that's significant, you'll see that here in a second. But Chick-fil-A was founded in 1946 by a man named S. Truit Kathy. He was a devout Southern Baptist uh from Georgia. Now, what makes CH Chick-fil-A fascinating for today's discussion is that they're one of the very few companies that actually have a very specifically defined purpose.

And it's a purpose that many look at and go like, "What? What are you talking about?" So, their official corporate statement reads this, "To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A. Now, that's kind of remarkable on its own if you think about it. But here's where it gets interesting. Because Chick-fil-A knows its purpose, it's made decisions that many other companies would never consider doing.

And this is what I mean by that. In 1940, since 1946, every single Chick-fil-A, over 3,000 of them at this point, are closed on Sundays. And you think about that. Industry estimates suggest that Chick-fil-A walks away from over a billion dollars in potential revenue every year because they stay closed on Sundays. Now, you might be thinking, some people might be thinking, and I know many do think, well, that's crazy.

Why would you do that? But TR Kathy didn't see it that way. He once said, "If it took seven days to make a living with a restaurant, then we need to be in some other line of work." And in his book, he wrote this. He said, "We were not so committed to financial success that we were willing to abandon our principles and our priorities." Family, here's a remark the remarkable part. Despite being closed every Sunday, Chick-fil-A per location generates more money than nearly every other fast food restaurant in the company per store, including the ones that are open seven days a week.

Why? Because when an organization or a person knows their purpose, it can say no to things that would pull it off course, even good things, even profitable things. And God has a way of honoring that. Now, you might be thinking, "Well, that's a great story, Pastor Chris, but what does a chicken restaurant have to do with me? What does it have to do with us?" Well, in reality, has everything to do with us.

Because if a fast food company can orient its entire existence around glorifying God, how much more should we? The people of God actually are actually created for a relationship with him. And that means that we need to know our purpose. Now, Chick-fil-A is unique. Their state of purpose actually says glorifying God.

But most companies are not that transparent. Most companies don't typically want you to know why they exist. They don't want to state it because that seems bad in our current culture. And so let's take a company that most of you know and I I'll show you what I mean. So we we're going to

Chapter 3: Amazon's Hidden Purpose

look at Amazon. Now, Amazon doesn't have a purpose statement, but they have a mission statement on their website, and it says this, that Amazon's mission is to be Earth's most customer centric company. Now, that sounds kind of innocuous. Some of you might like, okay, I mean, that sounds pretty decent, but that doesn't answer why Amazon exists. Can you guys guess why Amazon exists as a company? to make money.

Now again, this doesn't make sense in our culture. Oh, rich bad, money bad, unless it's mine, right? That's the thing that just completely confounds me is how many people talk about the evil corporations and they're invested in those very same corporations hoping that their stock price will go up so that their portfolio goes up so they can buy that car or that house or they can retire early. There's nothing wrong with making money in and of itself, right? Is love.

The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil, right? But you can use money properly. And Amazon does this well to the tune of $600 billion dollar per year.

Chapter 4: What Is YOUR Purpose?

Now, this brings us to well, what about you and me? What is our purpose? What is your purpose? What is my purpose? Why do we exist?

I mean, in today's cynical society, many have declared that it's just to get as much as we can while we can before we die. That's what a lot of people say. But what is our purpose? Now, when I was young, I spent a considerable amount of time asking God this question. God, what is my purpose?

And I wanted it to be so unbelievably unique. That's what I wanted. And then I came across this book called Experiencing God. Some of you have already heard this story in in years past, but it's still so relevant today because even though it's not a perfect book, it asked to me an incredible question or actually pointed it's like, "Hey, what's your purpose?" But it's like, "Hey, you're supposed to join God in his work." And I just kind of stopped at that. I was like, "Wait a second.

So this isn't about me. It's about him because I don't know if you guys have been to this point. It's like God, where do you want me to go? Who do you want me to marry? Where do you want me to live?

What job do you want me to have? And then it was like this question just stopped me in my tracks and said, "Find out what God's doing where you're at and join him in it." And it just blew my mind. So, one of the things I had to ask is God, what is your purpose? God, what is your purpose? What is it that you're doing?

Ask Jesus, why did you come?

Chapter 5: Jesus Declares His Purpose (Luke )

For what purpose did you come? And let me join you in that. And then asking then, how do I fit into that purpose? And so as I was combing through the scriptures, I came across Luke 19:10 because Jesus just declares the reason why he came. And it's so unbelievably simple.

He says, "The son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." This is the simple reason why Jesus came. We without Jesus are what? We're lost. People outside these walls without Jesus are lost. And before Jesus came, they didn't know by the name by which they may be saved. o Jesus came to seek and to save the lost.

Jesus came to find the lost and see them saved. But what about us? Why do we exist? I mean, we know we exist to come alongside Jesus. But what does that mean?

Some people will tell you that we exist to worship and glorify God. And I will tell you that's part of it, but it's not the fullness of what it is. And for the actual purpose for us, we find that in Matthew chapter 22, specifically in verses 34 through 40. Now to give you a little bit of context coming into this section, what's been happening is Jesus has been engaging with a group of people called the Sadducees. These were religious leaders.

Most of us know about the Pharisees. The Sadducees were another group. They were actually more highulutin than even the Pharisees. And they've been engaging with Jesus. He shuts them down.

And at the point where the Pharisees come in, right, Jesus is now going to engage with them. And just to kind of give you an idea of these two groups, think of them as like different denominations within the Jewish faith. So you have like Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians. They had Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes. Those were like the three major denominations, if you will, of the Jewish faith.

And so as we're coming in here, the Sadducees have been shut down. The Pharisees are thinking,"Hey, we think we have an angle of attack here." And so, we're going to jump into Matthew 22, starting in verse 34, where we read this. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him, that's Jesus, a question, testing him and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. one of these two commandments on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

All right. So Jesus what he's done here that first section that he says where he talks about love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. What Jesus is doing is literally quoting from what's called the shama in Deuteronomy chapter 6. It literally is the correct answer for these religious leaders. It is what they would have seen to be the great commandment.

But then Jesus does something interesting because he elevates things. He elevates and says there's something else that you're missing though. Something else that is in the Old Testament that you are missing. And it's recorded in Leviticus 19:18. Now there's other places in the Old Testament where this is, but this is the one I'm going to read to you right now that becomes the second greatest commandment.

This is something that has been around all the way back for 14,500 years that the Jews have already known. This is from Leviticus 19. You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. And it's through this combination of these two commands that we clearly find our purpose.

So what is our purpose? Why do we exist? We exist to love God and to love people. Now, what does it mean to love people? Well, we're going to answer that question more in the next two weeks as we're going.

But let's lay some groundwork for this discussion. So, first starts with loving God, right? From the ancient Jewish perspective, to love God meant to choose him for an intimate relationship and to obey his commands. Loving him was to be wholehearted all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Everything that we are.

And this was to pervade every aspect of the Israelites being of life. And the same is true for us today. Now, when we read a truth about God in Hebrews 13, it helps make sense because again, our culture loves to say, well, God has changed. God does not change. We change.

God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He just we we say he just is that there is no changing. There is no shifting shadow. He is the same.

And if our God does not change, the way we love God also does not change. Loving God is not just part or a portion of a believer's life. It is to be the totality of our lives. Everything we are, everything we're about stems from the love of God. This includes loving people.

And if we say that we love God, we should evidence of his love pouring in, out, and through us anywhere and everywhere we find ourselves. Jesus says that through accomplishing these two commands, one has accomplished all of the law and the prophets. In fact, these two commands are literally summaries of the Ten Commandments. And again, I brought this up in recent weeks. We have a movement right now in the country that's trying to say that the law is irrelevant because Jesus says, "I have fulfilled the law." And so, they're like, "Well, well, that means that they're irrelevant." Okay, here's the thing.

They were never relevant for salvation. Right? We're not saved and nor we have ever been saved by keeping the law because we can't keep the whole law. What it does is it points out a pathway. How do we love God and how do we love people?

And this is the thing that I constantly I'm going to constantly remind us about to help us with this post Jesus giving his life, being crucified on the cross, going to the grave, resurrecting. Has there ever been a time where God's okay with you having other gods before him? Is there other a time where he's he's okay with you cursing his name? I Is there a time where he's okay with you dishonoring your parents or stealing or lying or coveting or committing adultery, murdering? No.

None of them. There's not a single one of them that he's okay with you doing. Now, that tells you that they are still relevant. Okay? So, when when it says if you want to love God, have no other gods before him.

You want to love him, have no carved images. You want to love him, don't misuse his name. You want to love him, get this, keep the Sabbath. And that's a whole another discussion we've talked about recently as well. But this one's not done.

He's fulfilled it. Yes, we know. And we find our rest in him. But this is something still that we do because we can have our focus on him and we can love on him even in the rest. Okay, this is something that's important for us to understand is that we still continue to love our God through the keeping of his commands.

Now, we often say that we don't build our lives on anything else before God. But if we're honest with ourselves, we do so often build ourselves on things other than God. Here's some examples. Numero uno, ourselves. We often build our lives on ourselves.

Could be others, loved ones, spouse, significant other. could be just stuff, things in general, our time, money, even the study of the Bible, which is a good thing. And you're like, "What are you talking about?" All I have to say is Pharisees. These guys built their lives on the word of God, and they crucified God. Okay? God is our God, not the word of God.

And I know that sounds strange, but it's important that we have it in its proper place. Now, please understand when I said that there's nothing wrong that there's nothing wrong with loving others in and of themselves. We're about to talk about loving others. What's critical here is the order in which these things are done. Okay?

What has preeminence? What is first? Our foundation must be unshakable above all else. Here's an illustration. This is what I mean.

So, on June 24th, 2021, just after 100 a.m. in the morning, a 12-story beachfront condominium in Surfside, Florida, the Champlain Towers partially collapsed in seconds, and 98 people lost their lives. Now, from the outside, the building looked fine. It had stood for 40 years. Families lived there. Kids played by the pool.

It was a home to many. But beneath the surface, the structure had been compromised for years. Water had been seeping into the foundation, corroding the steel reinforcement in the concrete. An engineer, he had even flagged it as a hazard some three years before the collapse. The concrete in the support columns was weaker than the building codes required.

And over time, things just added up on top. They put planters, palm trees, sand, weight that the foundation was never designed to carry. The building looked fine from the outside, but the foundation was failing. And when the foundation gave way, the entire that entire section that you see there on the in the image of the structure just completely collapsed. Family, this is not just an engineering lesson.

This is a picture of what happens when we build our lives on the wrong thing. If our love is not founded first on the love of God, if he's not the foundation upon which everything else is built, it doesn't matter how good things look from the outside. It doesn't matter how many good things we pile on top. Doesn't matter how many good works we find ourselves doing. Eventually, it will collapse.

And here's the part that should make us uncomfortable. The warning signs were there for years before the building fell. The question for us this morning is, are there warning signs in our own lives that we've been ignoring? Have we allowed something other than Christ and his purpose for our lives to become our foundation? Because if we have, that foundation will inevitably corrode and then everything else will collapse.

We have to remember that the wise man built his house upon the rock. Now let's focus on the second great commandment loving people. With God in his proper place at the center as our foundation of our whole selves, our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we now are free to pour out our love to the world, to people that are around us. This again is reflected in the ten commandments, specifically the remaining six. that we first honor our mother and our father, that we don't murder people, that we don't commit adultery, that we don't steal, that we don't bear false witness. Translation, we're not lying, and that we do not covet.

Now, it would be easy for us to say that loving God is clearly more important. This is the thing that we'll say. But there's a reason why Jesus came about and he said the second is like it. The thing is is these commandments are inseparable from one another. And this is what I mean.

We cannot love God unless we love those he died for. And we cannot love people unless we love the one who died for them. Are you understanding what I'm saying? Because there's so many times that I talk to people who claim the name of Christ and they're like, "Well, I love God, but I don't love people." And I'll be honest, people are hard. There are difficult people everywhere.

I'm trying. I'm like, uh oh, I'm looking at people. I look up here for a second. There are difficult people anywhere and everywhere that we find ourselves. And the reality is there are always going to be people who are terrible, unlovable, and downright awful.

So, how can we be expected to love these people? That's the thing, right? You've probably had this kind of conversation with God at one point. It's like, how am I supposed to love that person? God, of course, notice the key word in there.

How am I supposed to? Because think about how much more difficult it is for him to love that person. And let's be honest, how difficult it would be for him to love us. And yet, we know he gave his life for us. And here's the answer to the question.

How do we we can love because he first loved us. We remember this from Acts 18. And you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the remotest parts of the earth. We remember in recent weeks we talked about we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. You want to know how you love those terrible, no good, very awful, bad people because of the spirit of God working in and through you.

He is the one that makes that very thing possible. Because the reality is is there's none of us who are righteous. There's none of us that are right with God. Not a single person in this room, not a single person in this world. There's only been one of

Chapter 6:

9:10 The Great Commandment — Matthew.40 those. That's the Lord Jesus. That is perspective, family. But the thing is is this is what we struggle with so often is it's very easy for us even in a situation like this that we could look around and we start judging one another.

Chapter 7: The Comparison Trap & The Vertical Jump

I I I know I know I'm in a church that nobody in a church would ever judge anybody else. It just doesn't happen. And we certainly wouldn't compare each other. And and we certainly wouldn't push ourselves up off of the shoulders of other people to raise ourselves up above other people. At least I'm not as bad as that person, God.

And this has been going on again thousands of years, thousands of miles, the same things. Look at what Paul says to the Corinthian church. He says, 'We dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. Right? That that's a very fanciful fluffy way of saying like look, we don't compare ourselves with other people even when they commend themselves.

They lift themselves up, right? He says, "But they measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise." Look, it's unwise for us to compare ourselves with one another because that's not the standard by which we compare one another. That doesn't get it done. That's too easy. And honestly, that's why we do it.

Because if we had to compare ourselves against the actual standard, we don't like what we end up seeing. Another illustration. Imagine I brought every single person outside and when I went out there and I said, "All right, everybody, jump as high as you can." And we're going to judge you based on how high you can jump. Now, the young people didn't really laugh, but a lot of us older people did because we're probably not getting off the ground very well. And there's going to be younger people who are going to jump and be like, "Oh man, that guy's got like a 20-inch vertical, 25 inch vertical." And and when you start thinking about it in the scope of humanity, right?

You could take somebody who's like an NBA player. Some of these guys have like 48 plus inch verticals. That's crazy. Jumping four feet into the air. You know, jump up, they can grab a basketball off the top of a backboard.

And you and you see them standing there next to like a toddler who can barely even jump with both feet. And you could easily judge that. And the whole time, and I'm going to show you this picture, right? You're looking at this. You're like, "Okay, but here's the thing about this picture.

How high that that basketball player is jumping is not the standard. The sun is the standard. 93 million miles away." When you're looking at the difference between a 6-in vertical, a 48 inch vertical to 93 million miles, there is no difference between those two people jumping. No measurable difference. And yet what we do is we look at each other and like, well, I'm more righteous than that person. That's not what matters.

What matters is how righteous are you next to God himself? And what did we just see? There is none righteous. No, not one. So, in the end, there's only one way that we can love him.

And again, we mentioned this earlier because he first loved us. The only reason why we can be found righteous is because he's the one that bridged that 93 million mile gap. He is the one that allows us to stand in his very presence. He is the one who gives us the ability to love him. He is the one who gives us the ability to love every single person around us.

Even that person, whoever that person happens to be, he has given us everything that we need. His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue. We can love because he makes it possible. Now today we ask the most foundational question

Chapter 8: Examine Your Foundation — The Gospel Invitation

of our lives. Why do we exist? Not to accumulate, not to achieve, and certainly not to just simply survive, but to love God and to love people. We learned that this is our purpose. So here's what I want to leave us with.

First, I want us to examine our own foundations. Is God truly first? Or have you allowed that foundation to quickly corrode beneath something that looks fine on the surface? Second, stop measuring yourself against the people that are around you. Yes, measured against a holy God, none of us are enough. not our own.

But the gospel doesn't leave us there. Christ closed that gap for us. His life, his death, his resurrection. That's what makes us adequate. Not our jumping, not our striving, just his finished work.

And it's because of his work in us that we are able to love God and love people at all. And if you're here this morning and you've never placed your faith in Jesus, he offers the same to you. And now he's calling you to confess and he's calling you to believe. And the promise is that if you do, you will not might, you will be saved. So what should we do?

Because we love God and we love people. Well, that family is the center of next week's message as we will look at our mission. And all God's people said, "Amen.