Tag: work

Sermon Download: A Higher Calling (1 Cor. 7:17-24)

~ Bob Hayton ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever heard a Labor Day Sermon? I don’t remember one either. So when I had the opportunity to preach this last Sunday, I thought I would try to focus on the topic of Work (or Labor) from a Christian perspective.

My text was 1 Cor. 7:17-24 which emphasizes that we don’t have to change our condition (or our vocational calling even) in order to be able to better please God. One of my main points was that we can please God through our work and that any profession, or any station in life, is sanctified by our Higher Calling.

I hope this message is a blessing for all who may hear it. If you don’t have time to listen to the entire sermon (48 minutes), please do look over my notes.

Place: The Heights Church, St. Paul
Date: Sep. 2, 2018
Title: A Higher Calling
Text: 1 Corinthians 7:17-24
Notes: Download PDF
Audio Link: Click to listen (right click to download)

Tim Keller on a Gospel View of Work

~ Bob Hayton

Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work by Tim KellerLiving out the Christian life on Monday morning is just about the hardest thing there is to do. Everything can seem so great on Sunday. The worship music is great, the time spent in the Bible so precious, and the pastor’s message equal parts (hopefully) convicting and inspiring. But when the alarm goes off on Monday morning, many of us have a problem bringing Sunday with us throughout the week.

Tim Keller’s new book Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work (Dutton, 2012), goes a long way toward helping out those of us who find ourselves immersed in the work-a-day world. I can’t launch off into a full review of this excellent work at the moment, but I wanted to excerpt some of Keller’s thoughts on how a gospel worldview can help us look at our work in a different way.

To be a Christian in business, then, means much more than just being honest or not sleeping with your coworkers. It even means more than personal evangelism or holding a Bible study at the office. Rather, it means thinking out the implications of the gospel worldview and God’s purposes for your whole work life — and for the whole of the organization under your influence. (168-169)

So when we say that Christians work from a gospel worldview, it does not mean that they are constantly speaking about Christian teaching in their work. Some people think of the gospel as something we are principally to “look at” in our work. This would mean that Christian musicians should play Christian music, Christian writers should write stories about conversion, and Christian businessmen and -women should work for companies that make Christian-themed products and services for Christian customers. Yes, some Christians in those fields would sometimes do well to do those things, but it is a mistake to think that the Christian worldview is operating only when we are doing such overtly Christian activities. Instead, think of the gospel as a set of glasses through which you “look” at everything else in the world. Christian artists, when they do this faithfully, will not be completely beholden either to profit or to naked self-expression; and they will tell the widest variety of stories. Christians in business will see profit as only one of several bottom lines; and they will work passionately for any kind of enterprise that serves the common good. The Christian writer can constantly be showing the destructiveness of making something besides God into the central thing, even without mentioning God directly. (179-180)

Of all the ways the Christian faith affects work, the realm of the worldview is the most searching and yet also the hardest to put into practice. All Christians live in cultures and work in vocational fields that operate by powerful master narratives that are sharply different from the gospel’s account of things. But these narratives work at such a deep level that their effects on us are hard to discern. An American who first moves to a foreign country is shocked to discover how many of her institutions and practices that she considered common sense and universal are actually particularly American ones — and are ridiculous to many other people. By living in another culture she gets a new vantage point from which she can be critical of herself, and as a result she will slowly change, dropping some attitudes and adopting others.

Becoming a Christian is a lot like moving to a new country; only it is more profound, because it gives us a new perspective on every culture, every worldview, and every field of work. In the long run, the gospel helps us see everything in a new light, but it takes time to grasp and incorporate this new information into how we live and pursue our vocations. And we can be sure that this ultimate learning experience will never truly end; we are told the angels themselves never tire of looking into the gospel to see new wonders (1 Peter 1:10-12). (181-182)

You can pick up a copy of this book at any of the following online retailers: Westminster Bookstore, Christianbook.com, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or direct from Dutton (Penguin).

Global Mission = Integrating our Christian Identity into All of Life

~ Bob Hayton

What Can I Do? Making a Global Difference Right Where You Are by David LivermoreI’ve been away on a business trip to the Philippines for 2 weeks now. I have been finding time to keep up on my reading, and turned to a book I’ve had on my shelf for quite some time. What Can I Do? Making a Global Difference Right Where You Are by David Livermore (Zondervan, 2011) is a couple years old now, but the message is proving to be as impactful now as ever. I wanted to share this exceprt from one of the opening chapters in this book because it is so true. Conservative evangelical Christians like myself and many of my readers, are instilled from a young age with the idea that somehow full-time Christian ministry is where the big stuff for God gets accomplished. This excerpt displays how this way of thinking is so untrue.

To live out our part of this story as the church means weaving our priestly identity into every part of our lives. Politics are not somehow off-limits for Christians, but they need to be reformed. The domains of art, business, and science should be reclaimed for Christ, not segregated as secular distractions from the “real” work of ministry. My dad used to proudly declare, “Both my sons are in full-time ministry,” and almost as an afterhought he would add, “and my daughter is a nurse.” I realize that “full-time ministry” is sometimes a shorthand way of referring to people who earn their paycheck from full-time employment in a church or ministry. But what could more closely resemble full-time ministry than the work my sister does daily as a nurse, caring for cancer patients and their family members? We have to reject the notion that it’s the really spiritual people who should become the pastors and missionaries. We are all invited to partner with God–as nurses and truck drivers, aunts and uncles, engineers and musicians, and, yes, pastors and missionaries. The problem isn’t that the Christian community lacks doctors, farmers, businesspeople, or musicians in our midst. The problem is that there are so few doctors, farmers, businesspeople, and musicians who are truly living out their priestly identity in their profession. That’s the central idea of this book. Most of us don’t integrate our Christian identity into our daily tasks. While serving as a missionary overseas is one way of fulfilling our priestly calling, so also is serving in a local hospital near home. What matters most is how you live out your unique vocation as a follower of Jesus Christ.

Global mission is something we all get to be inolved in. It might involve uprooting yourself and traveling overseas, but just as likely it might mean making subtle changes in the way you go about your work and life, all without ever pulling out your passport. We all get to be part of this. This is who we were created to be.

— pp. 40-41, What Can I Do? Making a Global Difference Right Where You Are by David Livermore (Zondervan, 2011), emphsis original

Disclaimer: This book was provided by the publisher, via the Amazon Vine program. I was under no oblgation to post a favorable review.

God Working in Us: Philippians 2:13 And the Will

~ fundyreformed ~ 13 Comments

I’m getting ready to start up my series on the Calvinist view of the atonement soon. One of the objections which has already arisen in the comments on part 1, is the idea that Calvinists believe God somehow forces unbelievers to believe the Gospel. Faith is not a gift from God, it is claimed, but rather something the lost must do. They are offered life upon the condition of faith, and while God may help them believe, He will not “force” them.

What I find amusing in this objection is how the same people who hold that view find no problems with the following verse.

Philippians 2:13, “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

This verse teaches clearly that in the lives of believers, God works in them both providing the will and doing the works in and through them. This is why Paul says:

“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” (1 Cor. 15:10)

Christians have no problem affirming that God works in the very hearts and minds of believers. God empowers them for every good work (1 Cor. 12:6, 1 Pet. 4:11). He equips us with everything we need to do what is right. But He does more than that, He works in us the very things that please Him:

Heb 13:20-21 Now may the God of peace… equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

In doing all of this, is God forcing believers to please Him? Doesn’t God’s work negate the goodness of the works we believers produce? On the one hand, the good works of believers testify to them and others that we are truly justified and actually regenerate. They provide assurance that we are God’s children. But God is the one producing these works. God requires this of us, but then He works in us to do what He requires.

I think most of us agree with this and find no problems. What is the difference then when it comes to unbelievers? Do they have to give God the key to their hearts before He’ll work in them to believe? Is God’s work in believers okay because we sanctioned it, but not okay in unbelievers because they haven’t? If God works in unbelievers to will to receive Christ as Lord, is this forcing them to do something against their will?

For my part, I don’t see how we can draw a line between believers and unbelievers which limits God’s ability or right to work in hearts. I see the teaching of Scripture that God works in us to will as fitting nicely with the passages which teach that faith and repentance are gifts (see Acts 11:18, 15:9, 18:27; Rom. 12:3; Phil. 1:29; Eph. 2:8-9; 2 Tim. 2:24-26; 2 Pet. 1:1; 1 Tim. 1:14; Acts 3:16; 1 Pet. 1:21).

I have further support in this idea of there being no hard and fast line which limits God from working in unbelievers like He does in believers. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul starts out by thanking God for the believers growing faith. He doesn’t point to the believers as the source of the growth in faith, but thanks God (1:3). Then later in the epistle, Paul goes on in the same vein:

“But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.” (2 Thess. 2:13)

Paul thanks God for choosing them to be saved. God accomplished that through His Spirit’s work, and by providing belief in them.

So I conlude we should praise God for working in us to trust Him, and to grow in His grace to the degree that we have. Praise God for mercifully energizing my heart and giving me a desire to live for Him!

We Believe (#7): The Saving Work of Christ

~ fundyreformed

Part 7 in a series of Sunday posts celebrating the glorious Truth we believe as Christians. The readings are quoted from the Elder Affirmation of Faith, of my church, Bethlehem Baptist (Pastor John Piper). I’m doing this because every few weeks our congregational reading is an excerpt from this document, and every time we all read aloud the truths we confess, my soul rejoices. I pray these posts will aid you in worshiping our Lord on His day.

The Saving Work of Christ

We believe that by His perfect obedience to God and by His suffering and death as the immaculate Lamb of God, Jesus Christ obtained forgiveness of sins and the gift of perfect righteousness for all who trusted in God prior to the cross and all who would trust in Christ thereafter. Through living a perfect life and dying in our place, the just for the unjust, Christ absorbed our punishment, appeased the wrath of God against us, vindicated the righteousness of God in our justification, and removed the condemnation of the law against us.

We believe that the atonement of Christ for sin warrants and impels a universal offering of the gospel to all persons, so that to every person it may be truly said, “God gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have eternal life.” Whosoever will may come for cleansing at this fountain, and whoever does come, Jesus
will not cast out.

We believe, moreover, that the death of Christ did obtain more than the bona fide offer of the gospel for all; it also obtained the omnipotent New Covenant mercy of repentance and faith for God’s elect. Christ died for all, but not for all in the same way. In His death, Christ expressed a special covenant love to His friends, His sheep, His bride. For them He obtained the infallible and effectual working of the Spirit to triumph over their resistance and bring them to saving faith.

*Taken from the Bethlehem Baptist Church Elder Affirmation of Faith, paragraphs 7.1 – 7.3. You are free to download the entire affirmation [pdf] complete with Scriptural proofs for the above statements.