This morning we’re looking at the human cravings for purpose, order, and freedom. It’s our last look at the topics that came up in a Wirral Gospel Partnership online survey.
We asked people what they would most like to have in their lives right now. Purpose, order, and freedom came up as separate answers, but they’re also closely linked. So we’re going to think about what people mean when they say they want more purpose, or order, or freedom. Then we’ll look at Moses in Exodus 3, and how he experienced those things. And then we’ll come to you, and what God has in store for you.
These notes accompany a sermon on YouTube delivered at Bromborough Evangelical Church in April 2026. You can find more in the series in our sermon index.
What’s it all about?
Let’s start with a sense of purpose.
I spoke to an older man recently and he felt like his life had amounted to nothing. What had he achieved? Young people can feel that way too. In our individualised culture, you lose a sense of what life is about, if life is only about you. I remember being a young teenager on a school bus, thinking about all the people around me, thinking how small we were, how insignificant. What’s the point of anything? That’s what I wanted to know
It’s difficult if your job is mundane. My dad worked in a plastic-colouring factory before retiring. Plastic pellets came in one door, got melted down and mixed with colours, and turned back into coloured plastic pellets to go out the other door. It’s not exactly fulfilling in itself. Lots of jobs feel like that. You’re part of the machine, and the machine doesn’t fill you with a great sense of purpose.
You want to know that your life matters, that you matter. You want to do more than just go through the motions. It’s natural to want a purpose to drive you.
Other people felt a strong need for order.
That’s not necessarily about a tidy house or car. It’s about having a life with predictability and a sense of control. Life comes at you with so much unpredictability. The Americans bomb Iran and you wonder if it’s the start of World War Three – or just a huge hike in petrol prices. No-one’s job is guaranteed forever these days, and serious sickness can affect any of us. Amid the uncertainty of life, lots of people just want a little stability, a little order. And we live in a country in peacetime.
If you have purpose, but no order, you can feel very frustrated. Instead of achieving towards your purpose, you end up just surviving the chaos.
But if you have order without purpose, you’re in a rut. Life is routine, empty, boring. Pointless.
A third group of people said they wanted more freedom. Maybe they wanted freedom from restrictions; they feel shackled by their job, their kids, their parents. Or the desire might be more about freedom to something, whether art, DIY, a new career – something of purpose.
If you have too much freedom, life can feel chaotic or aimless. Especially if there’s no sense of purpose, a life of freedom is just drifting, full of indecision. So some people with too much freedom might seek more order! Even as people with too much order feel confined, and want more freedom.
It seems to me the desire for freedoms feels especially human. You want to be able to make decisions, to take choices. Who wants to be a wind-up toy? Freedom of thought and action feels core to being human.
And yet when you have a purpose, you voluntarily give up certain freedoms. If you decided to run a marathon for a charity that means a lot to you, you give up the freedoms of diet and laziness. If you want to be the best in your field at work, you voluntarily give up other career opportunities (or money).
Life feels balanced when you have the freedom to order your life to achieve your purpose.
But here’s the thing: That’s not always good for you.
The LORD brings purpose and order
Let’s look at the life of Moses in Exodus 1 & 2:
- As a baby, he was placed in a basket in the river Nile.
- The Israelite slave women were told to throw their baby boys into the river to drown.
- As it happened, Pharaoh’s daughter came across the baby and had him brought up under Egyptian rule.
- He would have had an Egyptian education, and knew his way around the Egyptian court and royal family.
He had no purpose in life other than to please his family. The only order in his life was that of the Egyptian nobility. He was a victim of circumstance, but it wasn’t a bad life compared with other Israelites living in poverty and slavery…
But then, when he was forty, he stepped up to rescue an Israelite slave – Moses killed an Egyptian. He was acting with great purpose – and with freedom. But without wisdom or order. What was he thinking?
As a result he had to flee into obscurity. He became a shepherd in the wilderness. He did that for forty years.
So he was eighty by the time we get to Exodus 3 and the burning bush.
Forty years a somebody, forty years a nobody, and still a man with no real purpose or direction in life. He had the freedom of the hills, but trapped in a job that would just be the same year in year out until he died.
But this is where something remarkable happened to him, and you need to make the same shift he did. God intervened in Moses’ life, and included Moses in his own plans. What happened from the burning bush onwards wasn’t about Moses “finding himself” or “learning his true vocation” – it was about being taken hold of by God.
God had a plan to deliver Israel from slavery. And because God had a plan for the people, he had a plan for Moses in particular. Read Exodus 3:9-10.
And as this point we can see something remarkable about Moses’ life to date: God had engineered Moses’ life to give him a grounding in the politics and mechanisms of Egypt’s royalty. Moses would know how to approach Pharaoh. And Moses’ forty years in the wilderness would be ideal training for what was to come, leading the Israelites out into the wilderness.
Moses was not a great leader at that point. So read Exodus 3:11-12. This would be God’s purpose and order, worked out using Moses (and his brother Aaron).
So get this: This isn’t about Moses, it’s about the LORD.
What you’re seeing here is God’s purposes for his people, and how God’s purposes become his plans, and how he prepares and enables his people to accomplish his plans. That’s the shift you need to make when you think about your own life’s purpose, order, and freedoms. Moses’ life had seemed a bit pointless and chaotic. And finally, at age eighty, all his life and experiences suddenly make sense. All those eighty years – from being a baby in a basket right up to his approach to the burning bush – were all under God’s plans.
Now, some of us are young and some are old. But you are all within God’s plans and purposes. You’ve done all sorts of things in your past; they are all to prepare you for works of service in your future.
Moses stepped into God’s plan in obedience. He could do that because of who God is: Read Exodus 3:14.
We’re all just passing through this life. But God is eternal, everlasting. He is good and does good, and will do all he ever chooses. To step forward in faith in him is to align your tiny pointless life with the eternal purposes of your Creator. It’s not your purpose in life that matters – it’s his.
And your life is fulfilled when ordered by his word. And to understand the freedoms that brings, you need to look to Jesus:
Serve Jesus gladly
Jesus is the eternal Son of God who left heavenly splendour and adoration to become human. He did that so that he could be a sacrifice for sinful humans. For you. Your sin deserves the punishment of death and separation from God. God chose to enter the world as a human to die that death in your place. And now, risen, as a human man, Jesus represents you as a great High Priest in heaven.
As you turn away from your sin and turn to God, and as you ask him for his forgiveness, he will forgive you. You don’t need to know the answer to everything. Being a genius won’t save you. But you do need to ask God for his forgiveness and he will grant it. Forever. Eternal life right there.
What was God’s purpose? To save you. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He set his face towards that cross so that he would die in your place.
Was his purpose clear? Yes, 100%. And saving the Egyptians in Moses’s day was a step along the way. Calling Moses was a step along the way. Calling you when he did was a step along the way to fulfilling his plans to save other people.
Was Christ’s life ordered? Absolutely. He knew the Scriptures and he fulfilled and lived them to the letter. He was without sin. Over and over we read of how Jesus was obedient to the Father in every respect.
So did he have freedom? If Jesus was utterly obedient to the Father, was he free? If his prayer life was characterised by “Not my will, but yours,” is that really freedom? And if you think it’s not, then here’s something uncomfortable: Could it be that you actually desire greater freedom to choose than Christ had? Could it be that wanting freedoms isn’t always good for us? Isn’t this the tree of the knowledge of good and evil again?
Jesus is the Son of God: He is free to do everything and anything he wants. But because he is good and holy, he only wants to do good, to love perfectly, to obey and please the Father, etc. He is utterly free to do good. To choose good things to do! And that is freedom from sin, from temptation, from accusation, from guilt. That’s the freedom Christ has set you free to.
I said earlier that life feels balanced when you have freedom to order your life to achieve your purpose.
But if you’re a Christian, your life is not your own. True Christian balance comes when you are wholly living within the purposes and plans of God in Christ. He is your goal, your north star, the end of your journey. Keep your eyes fixed on him, order your life in his service. Use your human freedoms to please him, to do good, to love others, to forgive. That is real humanity.
As you do that, he lives in and through you. It’s like feeling the Spirit’s breath in your sails.
What if you don’t?
- There are plenty of idols that will lure you away. Retirement plans will tell you that your purpose in old age is self-indulgence and ease. So you order your life around that, free to choose what you want. But that’s not Christ’s purpose, so it can’t be the best way to order your life.
- I know I mention mobile phones a lot, but they’re incredibly dangerous to your spiritual health if you’re not careful: They’re designed to be addictive. Your life is ordered around something addictive. You’re fulfilling the purposes of other people who make money by stealing your time, your freedom.
God’s commands reveal his own nature to you. His word clearly demonstrates his love for you in Christ. It’s obvious that the purpose of God is the salvation of his people. Which means that his commands are good. Human flourishing can only exist where there is obedience to God’s revealed laws.
So for those who seek purpose, order, and freedom in right balance, there’s a decision to be made:
- Will you view your life with you at the centre of your universe, seeking that sweet spot of purpose, order, and freedom in just the right alignment? If you do, you’ll be off target with God’s purposes for you, missing out on his blessing, his love.
- Or will you serve Jesus gladly, making his purposes your own, ordering your life into a life of faith and obedience, using your freedom to think creatively about doing good? That is life in Christ, life in full, the life he calls you to.