Northside Church - Sydney
To Do: The Practice of Work
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Hey, we've been walking through a series called To Do, finding the meaning behind your work. The reason is that we've been saying that you will spend on average 90,000 hours at work in a lifetime. And if that's the case, what we've been asking is that could we discover that your work is something more than a job but a calling, be the actual means to finding greater significance, greater purpose, greater satisfaction in what you're doing day to day, nine to five. And not only that, but if we spend so much time at work, could it actually be the means by which God carries out his mission in the world and your life. And so far we've learned that works a good thing. It was created by God. It's startling that work was a part of paradise. There was a good thing. And then this funny thing called sin enters the world. And as a result, work becomes frustrating. It becomes painful, both at a corporate level, that you're always envisioning far more than you can actually achieve. But at the individual level, that sin causes us to take a good thing, make it an ultimate thing, create an idol out of work. And so now work becomes potentially the basis for your identity and your meaning and your purpose in life. And then not to fear out of that, we saw that there is a hope that we discovered last week. And that is the gospel story, the story underneath every story. And it gives, and it can give you a new perspective on your work. It can give you the ability to see the bottom line, so to speak, in your own life, but in everyone else's life. And so you're always asking of yourself and of your workplace, what's the story beneath the story? And so if we've got this new perspective in light of all of that where we've come from tonight, if knowing the story beneath the story is one thing, how then does that affect our practices for work? What does it mean for us to take that faith into the workplace? How do we work out the practices of our faith at work? Let's have a look at James chapter 1, verses 16 to 17, says, "Don't be deceived my dear brothers and sisters, every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows." Again, because we're looking at this topically, we touch over some of these passages, but we're trying to get a helicopter view of the Bible here. And what I'm seeing, first and foremost, is that the practice of faith at work is like a tightrope. I don't know if you've seen this daredevil dude that's going to walk across the Grand Canyon. What is it? Is it today American time? So basically this guy, I can't remember his name, I think it's Nick. Nick Walenda, he's going to walk one and a half kilometers across this wire, stretching 500 meters above the Grand Canyon, above the Colorado River below, without a safety harness. Now there's a man of faith. And the thing that interested me about how he was going to do this, particularly without a safety harness, is he has this massive pole type attachment, you've seen how a tightrope at work has had this massive pole, and that's what gives him the balance in order to be able to walk across his tightrope for something like 500 meters in length from rim to rim. And so in other words, in order to walk that balance, in order to walk that line from one side to the other, there needs to be a weightiness, there needs to be a heaviness beyond himself in order to keep him balanced and centered. And so what I want to get at tonight is that, you see, church can be a funny thing, there are lots of different ways that we have approached taking our faith in our work, is it on one side of the equation, on one side of the tightrope, is taking our faith into work being the sort of milk stand overtly evangelistic, you come to Jesus or you're going to hell, don't go to Friday night drinks because you're going to hell type stuff, or is it the quiet subtle stuff that if I just work really well and diligently, then people will guess that I'm a Christian and which way is it? Which side do we go because there's always two sides that we can drift to and unless there is a weightiness, if unless that you spiritually, unless you with that story beneath the story, have one of those poles that is weightier and beyond yourself, you'll drift off to either side. And so what does that pole look like, here it is. The first one that we learn from this passage and the general themes of what James was getting at tonight is that God saves the world from what it could be. I have to bear with me, I'll call this the pinata principle, we'll get to that a bit later on. Have you guys noticed how many shops around the place these days are doing the social justice thing? Like I'm in the body shop the other day, shopping for Kristen of course. And I'm there at the counter and the girl, they're supporting orphanages in Indonesia. And you can even go to Grilled up in Crowsness now and they're doing social justice stuff too, right? So there you can, they're helping out their local community. So the hamburger joint is now doing the social justice thing. And I've been thinking why is it that these organizations, which I'm pretty sure I'm not Christian, are doing better deeds than most churches that we know around the world. How do we reconcile that? I mean, we could take two views of that of their work. We could say, oh, they're not Christian, that doesn't count. You know, they don't know why they're doing it, they're just doing it to feel good, it doesn't count. Or, whether it's the right motive or not, here's the question. What would the world be like if they weren't doing that sort of work? I mean, would the world be better off or would it be worse off? Verses 16 to 17, so don't be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows. In other words, what James is saying here is that the good things are the God things. The good things are the God things. The Bible says, if it's good, it's God. And whether that work is coming from a Christian or not, it doesn't matter. If it's good, we know where its source is, even if the person grilled body shop doesn't know where it's coming from. Now, think about this in a whole other range in your life. What about the wonderful maestro-esque, atheist pianist, that when they play a piano concerto, they do it so sweetly that you think for that instant that you're just listening to a slice of heaven? What about your unbelieving mass teacher who helped you get the marks to nail your HSC and now hold the job that you do? What of the auntie in your family who's done a lifetime of good deeds, but whenever it comes to the conversation of Jesus Christ, she's totally against it? What do we do with this? How do we reconcile with this, what we've been learning, the works are a good thing, and it's through our workers, Christian, the God blesses the world around us. Now do we reconcile that? And here's the point, here's the different slant that we need to get to this whole series. Don't just think that the good work or the God work for that matter is reserved for the Christians only. Psalm 147, verse 13 gives us a fascinating insight as to why it says here, "For he strengthens the bars of your gates and he blesses your people within you, he grants peace to your borders and satisfies you with the finest of wheat." What it's saying there is that every good thing in the creation God does and he loves every good thing in the creation, whether they believe in him or not. And so Martin Luther puts it this way, he says, "All our work in the field, in the garden, in the city, in the home, in struggle and in government, to what does it all amount to before God, except child's play, by means of which God is pleased to give gifts in the field and at home and everywhere. These are the masks of our Lord God, behind which he wants to be hidden and to do all things." Can you see what Luther's saying? And when you go, and if you've ever seen one do this, but you see the milk farmer milking the cows, that's God milking the teats. Okay? When you see the farmer turning the soil and getting his hand sort of halfway down a cow's butt for whatever reason that you've got to do that, I'm not a farmer, that's God with his hand down the cow's butt. If you see the baker baking the bread, that's God baking the bread. When you see the truck driver, singlet and all, driving down the Pacific Highway, transporting the bread and the milk, that's God transporting, you get the picture? God disguises himself, disguises himself in the milker and the farmer and the baker. All of this is happening, so you can be provided for and cared for. Are you seeing this? That God is disguising himself through other people's work. More importantly, God is loving you through other people's work. And even when, wait for it, even when, they're not a Christian. Even when they don't believe in him, God blesses us through them. And that means it's some level, whether it's conscious, whether it's unconscious, everyone in the world participates in God's work. And that's what the theologians call common grace. It's the doctrine that the James passage, Psalm 147, all come together to paint a picture for us here, that we see throughout the Scriptures and throughout the life experiences around us. That God makes his presence known to the world, not through writing his name on the sky or not from dropping big Macs from the sky, so that you can be sustained. I'm not sure if that would sustain us. And you get the picture, not by dropping food, by parachutes, by blessing all people through every act of wisdom and every act of beauty and every act of kindness and every act of justice, even if it's coming from the body shop. Whether or not it's from a Christian or not. That's why I call it the piñata principle. You see, I've got an Italian auntie, so it's big. It was a big thing in my family to have a Christmas piñata. And piñatas, when you get this paper mashay, little thing, it was this little lamb that you would always make out of a balloon animal, you paper mashay it, and you stuff the thing full of lollies and full of sweets. And we would go and hang this piñata, this paper mashay, up on the clothes line up on Nan's place, and then you would blindfold one of us kids, and you would spin us around about 15 times, and you would hand them a giant rod, a big metal stick. And everyone would run for their lives because you've got this dizzy nine-year-old starting to swing this stick around the place, and they don't know where they're going, and they're blindfolded. And the whole objective is that they're supposed to find the piñata with the rod, and if they hit it, they keep hitting it hard enough and hard enough and hard enough until the thing busts open. And as a result, all the lollies and all the blessings of that piñata just explode all over the backyard, and all the other kids run for it and grab all the lollies and off the ground. I guess the point is the Romans, Romans 1 has a really interesting insight when it says that people that don't believe in God are actually suppressing the truth of God through their unrighteousness. In other words, you've got to work at ignoring God. That you can be a person who doesn't believe in God, you can be blindfolded to the things of God, and sometimes if you go swinging hard enough, you're going to hit the jackpot, and all sorts of blessings are going to come falling from the sky into your life. That's what common grace is. And as a result, all those other kids that run in for the lollies will weather their believers or unbelievers. It doesn't matter, but God showers these blessings down from outside of us, even though some of us might be blindfolded to where and why they really fall from the sky. That's what common grace is. Now through His common grace, through His common grace, the question really is, does God work through the broader reaches of society for common good? Yes. He works with beauty and kindness. Could the world be worse off? Of course. And so through common grace, God saves the world from what it could be. Let's be real, that this world is a better and a more beautiful place because of many non-Christians. I'd hate a world in its current format in which it was just a whole bunch of Christians hanging out together, serving each other, coffee, just doing that. There are many blessings and gifts that non-believers give us that you benefit from every single day of your life. And so through His common grace, He saves the world from what it could be. He saves it from what it could be so you can help him make it what it should be. He saves it from what it could be so you can help him make it what it should be. All of this series that we've been talking about here is that God uses us, His children, through work, to tend the gardens around us, to flourish the world around us, to take our gifts and our abilities and the way that He has created us and use them in ways just to serve our neighbours and just to love our neighbours through our work. So if we've been learning that throughout this series, how do we as Christians take our faith into the workplaces? Do we get the soap box out? Do we stand up? Do we run a church service in our open plan desks? Or again, back to that question, oh, do we just quietly work away? Which one is it? And the problem is you'll always go off balance unless you have the gravity of this concept of common grace that we've just heard about, the piñata principle. Which one is it? Here's the problem. We need to have a balance view of common grace and here's why. Without a balance view of God's common grace, the first thing to happen is that you'll withdraw from the world. That's what happens when you diminish God's common grace. When you diminish God's common grace, you say that God really doesn't love the world around us, whether they believe in Him or not. And so, as a result, I call that the Amish principle and you put on funny hats and you live in Eastern America and you create communities in which only the believers live together and you don't watch much television and it's best not to engage the world around you. In fact, you actively withdraw from the world around you because here's why just in case the world might pollute you. I kid you not, you know, ask Michael Thomas, he's watching Crazy Christians on YouTube all week, right? And in this particular clip, there were some of our brothers and sisters, and yes, they're our brothers and sisters, who were asking whether or not my little pony was demonic. Yes, whether or not my little pony was demonic, including other things such as whether Pokemon was demonic. But here's the question, this is what happens when you diminish common grace. You look at my little pony and you look at Pokemon and go, oh my goodness, they're going to pollute you. They're going to pull you away from the love of Christ, which has been enacted in your life by a super magnet that somehow bought you to faith, but somehow Pokemon is going to upset that balance for you tonight if you go and you play Pokemon this week. You know, let's get practical. You withdraw from the world around you. This happens when you go to, maybe you go to youth group for the first time. And then as a result of that, you stop hanging out with all your other friends at school because they don't believe in Jesus. It happens when you're at Mac uni, for example, and you become a Christian, you only hang out with the student lifers because they're the Christians on campus, and that's all that you should hang out with, lest anyone else in the world pollutes your view of the truth. It means for you as a mum where you choose to only actively go to our Bible studies rather than your community mother's group that's been assigned to you, whether it be in a Mars field or a crows nest because it feels more comfortable. It means that as a co-worker, you don't go out on Friday night with a crew for fear that it's not the right Christian thing to do. And even worse, heaven forbid that someone does something on a Friday night that's going to require you to take a stand and declare what your faith is to the rest of your co-workers. See, you see how you can actively withdraw from the world? If you have an unbalanced view of common grace, God loves the world, he blesses the world through everyone. And so if that's the case, we shouldn't withdraw from the world, we should engage the world. But then what happens if we go too far when we engage the world? You see, if you have an unbalanced view of common grace, then you capitulate. If you give up, you just give in to the world, that's what it means to capitulate. That's what happens when you overemphasize God's common grace. When you overemphasize that, "Hey, God's just going to bless me anyway." And so it doesn't matter how I live and how I act in the world around me. When we give up being any different from the world around us, that happens when you actually confuse common grace with saving grace, they're two different things. The saving grace, the grace by which God makes you a Christian and brings you into His kingdom and calls you a child of His and gives you a whole new life in the Holy Spirit that changes you and grows you to be like Jesus Christ. That's saving grace. When we confuse that with common grace, you see, saving grace, you save from something to something. You save from death and sin and that type of life to a life that is meant to go in and engage the world for God. And when you confuse all of that, this wise guy once said, "Ah, you're salt and light, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it ever be made salty?" And it's useless. Throw it out. And those who are light, you don't have a light and put it under a bowl. No, you let your light shine before all men so they might see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. It was a wise sounding guy, wasn't he? That was Jesus. Anyone need to take any notes? Matthew 5, "Jesus says, 'My followers are to be distinct from the world but to be distinct from the world.'" And so in other words, if you give up on that, then you just salt that's losing its saltiness. If you just give in, in other words, if you privatize your faith, then we do that all the time. At those moments at the Friday night when we should be just that slightly bit different that people are going to ask questions, if we bury that on the inside, we privatize that. No one ever gets to know that we're a Christian, and as a result, we've capitulated. And so can you see the degree to which you get common grace is the degree to which you'll effectively engage your workplace for God? Are you either going to withdraw from the world in a way that my little pony is going to pollute you? Or are you going to capitulate from the world? You salt that's lost its saltiness. You privatize your faith. You give in. You just look like everyone else. That's the balance of what common grace means in our life. And so what does that look like? Because some of you are saying, well, Sam, you're a preacher that's easy for you. You work in the church. You don't have to deal with that. You don't have to privatize your faith. Or James, who wrote this, he's a preacher too. It's fine for him, what's that supposed to look like? How do we effectively integrate our faith and our work? And that is how do we engage the world without withdrawing excessively, and how do we engage the world without capitulating and looking like it? Let me give you an example. Let me give you an example. Just to show you a biblical example, show you the principle, though it's going to be worked out differently for all of you tonight, the principle is the same for everyone. In 2 Kings, chapter 5, there's this guy called Naaman. And he was like the military prime minister of Syria, the region where we have Syria today. And he was a non-believer, but he was also a leper. A leper had all sorts of swords over him. And so when he hears about this great prophet Elijah, he sends off some of his men to go and ask if there's anything that Elijah can do for him. And Elijah says, "Go down to the river, bathe in the river." He goes down there, he comes out and says he was spotless like a little boy. And he was healed. And so as a result, he says now to Elijah, he says, "Now I know there is no God except in Israel." In other words, he's converted, he's converted. And then what happens? What's he going to do? Whatever that there's a one true God, and he has received healing both on the inside and on the outside, he's become a believer in this God. There are two things that Naaman doesn't do. The first thing he doesn't do is say, "Elisha, let me stay here." There's nothing but dirty pagans back there. They're all unbelievers. They're all idolaters. You know, do you know what my job is as a military prime minister? I've got to go in with the king of Syria, and I've got to go with him on my arm and I have to go to the temple of Rimon, and there the king bows down and I bow down to this God. And I can't do anything like that. I can't set foot in the temple anymore. I know the true God therefore, I just, can I stay here with believers? He doesn't do that. Nor on the other side, he doesn't say, "You know what? No problem. I've got my healing. God's touch me. Amen. Hallelujah." Praise the Lord. Now I'll just go back to work and do what I've got to do. And that's just a me thing, it's a private thing. He doesn't go back saying, "Look, you know, there's no reason to rock the boat. I don't want to rock the boat here." He doesn't do that either. You know what he does? You see, he is what he doesn't do. He neither avoids his culture nor does he capitulate to his culture. He neither runs away from his culture nor does he privatize his faith. You know what he says? He says, "There's something that I think both believers and non-believers are shocked at when they hear it. This is amazing what he says here. This is just out there. He says to Elisha 2 Kings 5, 17, he says, "If you'll not take anything from your Elisha, so he wants to give back. Give Elisha a couple of bucks for healing him." And Elisha says, "No way." He says, "Please let me your servant be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry for your servant and for your servant will never again make burnt offerings or sacrifices to any other God but the Lord your God. But may the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing? When my master enters the temple of Remont and bow down and he's leaning on my arm and I bow there also, when I bow down in the temple of Remont, may the Lord forgive your servant for this?" And I love this because this is so crazy that this proves you probably can't apply this this week. You know what he does? You wouldn't dare copy it. He goes and gets some dirt. He goes and gets some dirt and from those mules in Israel and so whenever he goes to bow down in the temple of Remont, he spreads all this dirt from Israel on the ground. So when he puts his knee on the ground, he says, "I bow before my God in Israel." He says, "I'm going to do my job. I'm the Prime Minister. That's part of my job. But when I go in there, I'm going to have some dirt from Israel and my servants are going to spread it everywhere. And I'm going to kneel down so that everyone who sees knows that I'm sacrificing not to rim on but to the God of Israel." Now someone will say, "Oh, that's superstitious. That's superstitious." No, no, it's not superstitious, it's a witness. It's a symbol. Can you see that? Here's what he's saying, "I'll do my job but I'm going to let everyone know that this is my way of showing people. People here are going to ask me about it and I'm going to tell them that I don't serve the way that I used to serve. I don't worship the way I used to worship. Everything I'm doing is in honor of the one true God of Israel, everything I do." Now it affects his work, that affected his work and that's thousands of years ago and it should affect our work. You see, because here's the principle, he neither privatized his faith nor did he run away nor did he stay away. He doesn't run from the culture nor does he capitulate to the culture. He integrates his faith into his work. Now someone's going to say here tonight, "Nobody's going to do that, I'm not throwing dirt on the carpet tomorrow." And of course, you shouldn't throw dirt on the carpet tomorrow, that's not what I'm asking you to do. Of course, you're not going to do that. That was Naaman's out working of faith and work, but here's the thing, you're going to have to work it out for yourself. I don't know why people say, "You Christians, you've always got all these simple answers to life." You know, the Bible doesn't have simple answers, it's just got simple principles, like the Naaman principle, or like the Pinata principle. It doesn't have simple answers, it has simple principles that are very difficult to apply. And so don't you feel it, that if you're taking the Bible seriously, then you shouldn't be walking out of here in 10 minutes saying, "You know what, I'm just going to follow the three-step process that Stan told me to do tonight about my work." Because you know what that is, that's a simple answer. Each and every one of us, like we've been processing over the past three or four weeks, come from vast different fields. There are actresses, there are accountants, there are lawyers, there are landscapers, there are violin players, there are the bean counters, there are doctors, there are all sorts of different fields that from the same principle of integrating your faith are going to have totally different outworkings. And so instead you should be saying tonight, "Oh wow, I see what I need to do," in light of all this framework that I'm building now, or week four under the series, I'm getting a framework here that works a good thing and singing comes into it and then there's the hope of the gospel. And now, yeah, common grace and it should be a balanced approach. See, see how we're trying to talk frameworks for your work, so that you tonight can say, "I've got to work it out, I've got to get creative, I've got to apply some wisdom, I've got to ask the Holy Spirit for some help." This could take the rest of my life to do this, but that's what it means to integrate your faith into your work. So I'm sorry if I disappointed you if we thought that there would be a simple answer coming out of the message tonight to say, "How do we integrate our faith and our work?" No, it's up to you to work that out. It's up to you to go into your work and to engage it without withdrawing and without capitulating this week. And so as I finish up, look really, there's just two types of people I think in any service that we have this tonight. There of course are the namens. They're the people that have encountered the one true living God, that have felt His power both on the inside and the outside and have a response to His grace that say, "I just want to give back, I just want to praise Him. Let me do something in there." And then as a name and it's now your job to go and work out where you're going to spread your little patch of dirt. In other words, you've got to work out tonight what that patch of dirt represents for you, what thing for you will be a distinctive for you to say, "I will not run away from my culture nor will I become part of my culture." But there's always in a service like this, another type of person and they're the princes and the princesses of the pinata. They're the ones who maybe tonight for the first time you're recognizing that they're are good things in your life and those good things are dropping from the sky like volleys. And if you think hard enough, my question for you is, you're asking yourself that question, where do they come from? Why is the world around me so beautiful at times? Why do I hear that piece of music and get transported to another plane? Why do I feel like that? And it's because by His mercy, it's possible to be blind to the things of God and still hit the jackpot. My question for you tonight, are you willing to open your eyes to Him? Are you willing to just acknowledge that the beauty and the wisdom and the wonder and the blessings and the justice in the world around you might be little more than a coincidence because at Northside like we're saying in that wonderful song, there's a universal pinata, there was an ultimate pinata, not a paper lash mache lamb, but the very lamb of God, the way the Bible puts it, that it says in 2 Samuel 4, around there where the prophet Nathaniel prophesies to David and says that there will be one after Him who will create a kingdom that will last ever, and it said through His voice, "I will be His Father and He will be My Son and through My rod He will receive the punishment of all men." You know what that was getting at the cross, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ was the universal pinata that is He suffered blow by blow by blow by blow the rod of God upon Him, it busted Him open. And what can sound like the most glorious of ways, but as He was broken open for us, all sorts of blessings from heaven began to fall, He can be a child of God, you can have meaning that you can have unconditional love, that you can be an heir to a kingdom that would blow your mind. All of these things fall on the ground, if only you would pick them up and receive them. Are you willing to, are you willing, if you're a prince or a princess of the pinata tonight, recognize that there's a blindfold that you might need to open your eyes to the work of God through Jesus Christ tonight? If you're willing to acknowledge that, come and talk to us after the service, it's the first step to being a Christian, but here's what it is, look, we learnt tonight the balance, the tight wrap that we work, is that God saves the world from what it could be. Let's be real guys, let's be a balanced church. There are lots of wonderful non-Christians in our lives, let's not be a crazy Christian. Let's recognize that there are so many wonderful unbelievers out there that are blessing us every day and the good things are the God things. And so to be a Christian is to recognize that the world could be a heck of a lot worse, and if it weren't for His common grace, that is that God can and He will and He does priorities, blessings through all people's work, and the degree to which you get that, the degree to which you get His common grace will be the degree to not only recognizing that the world could be worse than it could be, but you participate in helping God make it the way that it should be. A balanced view of God's common grace means you won't withdraw because the world's not your enemy, the people aren't there, aren't inherently bad people that are trying to pollute us, that God's lost lottery tickets there, He's precious kids that He yet to walk into His kingdom, but more importantly we don't capitulate, we don't privatize our faith when we walk into work or school or university tomorrow. To walk the tightrope between withdrawing from the world or integrating into the world or capitulating into the world requires the weightiness of His common grace, do you get that? Is it the first time you've heard that tonight? It's for you to work out how you apply all of this this week as you move into your work and seek to integrate your faith with your work this week. [BLANK_AUDIO]