Musing – What is the ultimate purpose of Life?

Hebraic Musing – What is the ultimate purpose of Life?   
or   Donate your life as suggested in Leviticus 16:8-10

We are all familiar with the ‘scapegoat’ story and typically consider the scapegoat to be the lucky one who is allowed to live.  “On the other hand” let’s look at Leviticus 16:8-10 from a different perspective.    He is to cast lots for the two goats — one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat.  Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering.  But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat. NIV

This sacrificial process was central to the Yom Kippur service and message. Drawing ‘lots’ determines the fate of two identical goats. One of the two goats becomes a sacrifice before the Lord.  The other would symbolically be given the sins of Israel and sent off into the wilderness where it would obviously die later.  Which one was the ‘lucky’ one?  What can we learn from this?  How is it relevant to us today?  Are there two different ways of living, and dying? 

We will all die at an unknown time someday.  In the meantime, we get to decide how we live.  Rabbi Eckstein* says it well – “The goat that is sacrificed to the Lord represents a life lived in service to God, full of purpose and meaning. The other goat represents a person who wanders about aimlessly in this world without any clear sense of purpose, contribution, or meaning. Both goats die in the end, but only one goat lived a worthy life.”  The first goat’s life is deemed worthy because his life was a sacrifice to the Lord; and the second goat lived with sin all the while he wandered in the desert for the rest of his days.

God has given us life and all the blessings associated with our ability to do things here on earth. The first goat, the one sacrificed to God, reminds us of the challenge to believers to die to ourselves and live our lives as living sacrifices. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”  NKJV Romans 12:1    

In summary – We need to be giving our lives in service to God, dying to self, so that others may live.  Unsaved, unredeemed or selfish folks have selected the option to live their lives as the scapegoat – wandering around in a spiritual desert, still living in the sins of the world and finally dying without having served God.

Points to ponder

How can we be a living sacrifice to God now?  

What is your purpose for living?  Are we still living for ourselves? 
Have we died to ourselves, so we can live for others?

Romans 14:8 “If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”  Paul said in Philippians 1:21 “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” NIV

L’Chaim (To Life)

Yosef   a.k.a.  Joe Brusherd                                                                   April 29, 2014

Author of two books “Hebraic Insights” and  “Biblical Marriage”
And weekly “Hebraic Musings” e-mails
Yosef1@cox.net  or  www.InsightsByYosef.com

*  Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein’s “Donate Your Life”  April 8, 2014