"Life is a bitch and then you die," so says the bumper sticker. This philosophy is so pervasive as to be axiomatic. So, in reaction, people waste their days and their nights, their weeks and their years in the relentless pursuit of pleasure rather than purpose. Their lives are hollow and meaningless. Personal happiness has become the god of our age, whose countless minions here, there, and everywhere sacrifice their souls upon his altar. But Jesus said, "...what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul (Matt. 16:26)?"

"Who am I, and why am I here?" are age old questions with contemporary significance, but now they trouble the conscience of nearly no one. Pleasure rather than purpose so consumes the interest of most people that they rarely give serious thought to the claims of their Creator. Many never consider the reality of hell until they feel the flames. They may have gained the whole world, or at least a small part of it, but they have lost their souls. No profit, just eternal loss.

The choice, however, does not have exist between pleasure and purpose. A few thousand years ago a very wise king disclosed the secret to having both. King David declared, "I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved (Ps. 16:8)." Purpose and pleasure meet in God because the chief end of man "is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." Certainly King David never heard the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism's first question and answer, but his steadfast focus upon God shows that he probably would have understood their meaning. In the same psalm, Psalm 16, he prays, "O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Yes, I have a good inheritance (Ps. 16:5-6)." David knew what we can know.He knew that our ultimate purpose is to glorify God; he knew, also, that our ultimate pleasure is to enjoy Him forever.

Our ultimate purpose in life is to glorify God, but what does that really mean? The essence of glorifying God is captured in the response of Jesus to the Pharisees when they asked him, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law (Matt. 22:36)?" Christ answered by saying, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment (Matt. 22:37-38)." To glorify God is to make Him alone the preeminent object of our thoughts and our affections. It is to subject all of our motives and our methods to His revealed will. It is to maintain a clear conscience before Him at all times and in all things. To glorify God is to do what King David did- it is to set the Lord before us, always.

God knows nothing of the distinction we try to make between the secular and the sacred. These are humanly devised categories which find absolutely no warrant in Scripture. God categorizes all human behavior either as obedience or disobedience to his revealed will. Whether we like it or not we live out our lives before an all-knowing God who sees everything we do and why we do it. Nothing escapes his knowledge. The Bible warns us that "...there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account (Heb. 4:13)." Either we bow our intellect, emotion, and will before the Sovereign over all, or we rebel. Either way we do not go unnoticed. Whole-hearted obedience is the practical manifestation of glorifying God. First Corinthians 10:31 tells us to what extreme we are to take our submission, "...whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."

It is very important to note that I Corinthians 10:31 is contextually located in a passage dealing with Christian liberty. The question being asked at the time was, "Under what circumstances is it lawful for a follower of Christ to eat food that has been offered to idols without committing idolatry himself?" The Apostle Paul carefully addressed the issue by equating participation in any pagan religious feast as idolatry (1 Cor. 10:14-22). Eating the food that had been offered to idols in that specific situation would be unlawful for a Christian. However, in those days it was common practice for the proprietors of pagan religious feasts to sell the leftover sacrificial food to a meat market, where it would be resold to the public. Under that circumstance the meat lost its ritualistic character and was perfectly legitimate table fare for any Christian who wanted to eat the stuff. Paul tells the Corinthian Christians to eat whatever is sold at the meat market, and do not ask questions about where it came from for conscience's sake (v. 25). He also tells them to chow down at a pagan's place as long as the dinner is really a dinner and not the kind of religious feast which involves its participants in idolatry, again asking no questions for conscience's sake (v. 27). However, Paul goes on to emphasize that if eating meat once offered to idols will bother someone it is best to abstain while in their presence (v. 28). The general principle laid down by the Apostle is this: in matters of Christian liberty- those things which are not definitively forbidden by God- do not practice what will violate your conscience before God, or what will offend the conscience of another person while in his or her presence. For example, the Word of God does not forbid me the pleasure of a cold beer on a hot summer day. I am free to enjoy a bottle of Sam Adams provided that in so doing I neither offend my own conscience before the Lord, nor the conscience of someone in my company. Because there is definite danger of slipping from the use to the abuse in matter of Christian liberty, and thus into sin, God governs the freedom of his people by limiting it to what can be done for his glory. Therefore, under the influence of divine inspiration, the Apostle Paul wrote, "whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."

The apostolic exhortation to glorify God is not limited solely to the issue of Christian liberty. Paul enjoins the Corinthian believers to glorify their Lord in whatever they do. The whole spectrum of life is colored by this command. From the mundane to the monumental we must conduct ourselves in a manner consistent with God's redemptive purpose in Christ. Jesus came into the world to save his people from their sins. We manifest the reality of that salvation by trusting Christ alone to save us from our sins and then by seeking God's will instead of our own. Glorifying God in whatever we do means taking the lordship of Christ so seriously that our desires and decisions are controlled by the Cross. We consider the cost of redemption- the death of a sinless Man on behalf of sinful men- and we walk in grateful obedience to the Word of God, thankful that Christ died so that we may live. Glorifying God in whatever we do means also that we regularly look to the resurrected Christ for the reasons why we must resist the world, the flesh and the devil. We see ourselves in the resurrected Christ�seated at God's right hand�and we realize that our true citizenship is in heaven. Because this present life is preparation for the next, consistency is essential to continuity.

"A good cigar to the glory of God." Criticism is a loaded gun. Sometimes it is pointed at us, sometimes we are pulling the trigger. Poor Spurgeon- after his remark on that fateful night in 1874 he was looking down the barrel of an elephant gun. He was the most famous preacher in the world at the time. Everything he said or did either pleased or displeased somebody. He could not escape the scrutiny of the public eye. Spurgeon had no choice but to defend his comment. Here is what he said, "Together with hundreds of thousands of my fellow- Christians, I have smoked, and with them I am under the condemnation of living in habitual sin, if certain accusers are to be believed. As I would not knowingly live even in the smallest violation of the law of God, and sin is the transgression of the law, I will not own to sin when I am not conscious of it...When I have found intense pain relieved, a weary brain soothed, and calm, refreshing sleep obtained by a cigar, I have felt grateful to God, and have blessed His name: that is what I meant." Few of God's people would condone Spurgeon's cigar smoking, though none should condemn him for it. Whether we approve of his practice or not we must appreciate his heart attitude. No detail of his life was secularized for private indulgence. Publicly, when he stood in the pulpit preaching a sermon, or privately, when he sat on the edge of his bed puffing on a cigar, Spurgeon tried to set the Lord before himself�always. He understood the real meaning of life. He understood that his ultimate purpose was to glorify his Lord in all things. Perhaps that is why he emphasized before a congregation of several thousand people one night in 1874 that before retiring for the evening he intended to smoke a good cigar to the glory of God.