The New Way ... With Work

All right. If you can, take your Bibles and turn with me. We're going to be in Ephesians chapter 4 this morning, but you can turn first to 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 10. We'll be in Ephesians 4. Continuing our study in Ephesians, and I mentioned to you last week, but by way of reminder as we're re-engaging it in the fall after a little hiatus in the summer, that the first three chapters of Ephesians are all about what God has done for us, chiefly in salvation and everything that flows out of that, but the gift that is the act of God that He has brought, both to reconcile us to Himself and then to also incorporate that gospel into our own lives so that we are reconciled to one another in the context of Christian community.

And so there's this dance in Paul. It always is the same when you read a letter from Paul and it moves in its verbal tenses from an indicative, which is that which God has done or has taken place, a sort of a state of being. And then Paul leaps from that state of being into what he wants you to do in light of what God has done in your life.

So, God has brought the gospel to you in Ephesians 1 through 3, and now 4 through 6 is about how that has. Created a new way, we're calling it. A new way for you to live in your lives. And last week we looked at the new way with words. And we're gonna revisit that next week because he kind of comes back around for round two on the new words.

But for this morning, we're going to look at one verse, one verse about work. You know, you'll spend a third of your life. working, a third of your life working. And sometimes We tend to focus the text of Scripture on our personal lives, our devotional life with Christ, our worship experience as a church, as a body, our relationships with one another, and all of those are valid things, our family dynamics, all deeply important. And yet, it's not often enough, if the truth be known, that we get to talk about how the word lands directly on where you spend a third of your life.

And so this morning we're going to do that and zero in a little bit with that. I want you to look at 2 Peter. Uh 310 as we begin. Reads this way, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up.

and dissolved and the earth And the works that are done on it will be exposed. Will be exposed. What does that mean? It's talking about the return of Christ. And that when he returns, The earth and what's done on it.

So, the emphasis being the earth, what's done on it, is intended for us to think about the crassness. The daily grind of the things we do. the things we do in building culture. the things we do in making money. The things we do in providing, the things we do in building thing upon thing upon thing.

In this material world, they'll be exposed. They'll be exposed before the Lord, and he will give assessment to the things that we have poured ourselves into. If you go to Revelation, and don't turn there now, but if you go to Revelation 21, chapter 20 and 21, one of the things that you'll see is that the kings of the earth bring their treasure. Into the eternal kingdom. What does that even mean?

For the kings of the earth to bring their treasure into the eternal kingdom. It means. That when you sometimes we get this false notion, I've seen this in the way that Christians relate to material stuff. It's this idea that what does it matter? It's all going to burn anyway.

Well, the answer is it matters, and it's not all just going to burn anyway. What you do in this life. Your work matters for eternity. It matters. You know, w we have this brother and sister up here.

They're sharing with you schools. Hospitals and feeding programs. And all kinds of things. And I've been there, I've seen it, and I'm sure it's a lot bigger now than it was then. But when I saw it, I'm looking around going, man, we got a campus here, we got the church here, we've got their house that's invaded incessantly by people back here.

We've got programs out in the community, all these things, and they're tactile. You can see them, you can walk in them. They are part and parcel with what's going on within the facilities and within the structures. We can't have this kind of dualistic worldview where we're so caught up in the spiritual that we have no place for the material. The things that you are doing, God cares about in your workplace.

It matters. It matters. If you're a police officer, it matters that you do your job. really really well It matters that you care about the law and you care about people and you care about justice. If you're a teacher, It matters that you prepare before you go into the classroom.

It matters that you don't conceive of yourself as just a body before students. filling a space. as some kind of pseudo-parental authority. It matters that you take it seriously. You can pick your profession.

If you are working in a warehouse, that you move everything you move. To the glory of God with the body that He's given you and the strength He has afforded matters because He didn't have to wake you up in that body that morning with that energy to do that thing so that He could get glory by how you do it. See, how you are matters, and it'll be exposed. It'll be exposed.

So your work matters Four Eternity. And I want you to think about that as we kind of soak in this message. When I was a kid, my grandfather had what at that time I thought was the world's largest garden. I'm confident it wasn't. He had one leg.

Amputated. He would get me out. He watched me when I was a kid, and my parents both were working, and so he would watch me during the day, and when I got home from school, I'd go to his house, and he would take me out in that garden, and he had a little carpet that was like this big, and he would sit on the carpet, and he would sit in the garden, and he would weed. And I had the wonderful responsibility of being across the row, and he was my weeding mentor. And I was his mentee.

And He would weed. And then he'd move down slowly. And slowly, and slowly, and we'd spend a whole afternoon working down half a row in this thing that was so big.

So I actually thought about Google earthing you, because you wouldn't believe me, and showing you the plot of land. And he would work his way down this row. And as we would go, he would always say the same thing to me. No, no, no, stop. Don't pull it that way.

Now what what's wrong? You can't see it anymore. Right, that's the point, right? You can't see it. No, that's not the point.

The point of weeding a garden is not the aesthetics. A garden's different than your daybreak flower bed. The point of weeding a garden is to get it by the roots so that it doesn't grow back. The point of weeding a garden is to get subterranean in that way so you keep things from emerging later on. And as a young boy, I learned something real simple.

from him and it went like this there's a way to work And there's a way not to work. You can do the same act. And you can do it right? Or you can do it wrong. You can do it and it can be futile.

or it can be an investment. But how you happen to something. is way beyond that garden even. It says something about your life. The kind of person you're becoming.

in a way.

So if you're not a good worker, I'm going to say this. Listen carefully. This isn't to be judgmental, it's to state a truism of the Christian life. If you are not a good worker, You're not a good Christian. I want you to hear that again.

If you're not a good worker, You're not a good Christian. Because a Christian is called into service. And a Christian is supposed to be a worker. And they're supposed to be the best. You're supposed to be the one who garners the competency.

You're supposed to be the one who brings all the chutzpah. You're supposed to be the one who, when everybody else has a pathetic attitude, you don't. You're supposed to be the one that's looking out for others, not just for yourself.

So u as a Christian are to be a great Worker. I want you to go in your Bibles to Ephesians 4. And let's look at this text, and we're going to spend our time in one verse in chapter 4.

So we won't have a long scripture reading, that's for sure. It's verse twenty eight. As we do so, I'm going to show you three facets of the new way with work. That comes from this verse, but we're going to dig into some other texts a little bit, just show them to you. and put some verses up.

Verse 28, let the thief no longer steal. but rather let him labour. doing honest work with his own hands.

so that he may have something to share with anyone. in need. I'm going to tell you up front, you see that word honest. I'm going to have you read that the Greek word is agathos, which is the Greek word for good, moral goodness. I want you to read it like that.

So I'm going to read it again. And we're going to read good work. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing good work. with his own hands.

so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

So the first thing you get is an imperative. And it's an obvious expectation. It's simple. Don't steal. Don't steal.

So Let me I want to give you a few statistics. Um Employee theft in the U.S. costs businesses around $50 billion every year. $50 billion. from people paid to work Taking stuff from their work.

22% of small business owners have had their employees steal from them.

So, one in five small business owners have an employee who takes something. Employers lose. $400 billion a year to time theft. What's that?

Well, it comes in a bunch of different ways. There's a whole thing called uh buddy punching. Have you ever heard of buddy punching? That's where your buddy goes in and punches you in on the clock while you're not there.

So you get paid for not working?

So there's a whole deal that we have with buddy punching that goes around. I thought buddy punching, I heard it. I thought that meant you hit your friends, but it's different. 43% of employees, listen to this, 43%.

Okay. half almost of employees exaggerate how many hours they work. Forty-three percent. Right.

So they actually say, well, I'm working, I'm just a slave for the man. They're exaggerating. 20% of every dollar earned by a company in the U.S. is lost to employee time theft. One out of every five dollars that's earned.

is lost because an employee steals time. Um Christians don't steal though, right? I mean none of you guys do that. No, Christians don't steal time. Christians never exaggerate their hours.

The church is not a place where stealing happens. Uh the church income in 2020. I'm going to give you a couple of stats. The church income in 2020 in the U.S. was $320 billion.

That's how much churches took in in nonprofit giving. That's a lot of money. $320 billion. Parachurch And other Christian institutions took in $490 billion. Um $47 billion.

Uh went to missions, basically income for global foreign missions, $47 billion.

Now listen to the final stat. $53 billion. In the church. $53 billion in parachurch institutional ministries, $53 billion related to global missions was embezzled. Fifty-three.

billion dollars was stolen. You know, in the early days of Lifeline, I don't know what the statue of limitations is on a story that happened in your church, so I may violate it here, but. We're coming up to 20 years and this is real, real, real early on. We had a guy in a church. Got so involved in ministry.

I mean this guy was killing it. I mean, he was. I actually had a mentor of mine come and he said, that guy over there? That was a good man. It's a good man.

It was interesting because I can remember where he told me that's a good man. I remember literally where I was standing. And I remember what I thought in that moment. And I thought, yeah, he's, and I think I said, yeah, he's a good guy. And I can remember in my spirit thinking, I don't know, something ain't right.

And we were thinking that something ain't right, something just unsettled. Right?

Well It ends up But this guy At a previous ministry, had been married to the church secretary. And when you're a pastor, one of the ways that you file your taxes in the United States is you file a quarterly estimate like you're self-employed in that way.

So you're in between two worlds. You get a W-2, but you file self-employed.

So when you file, you or your church sends your taxes in on a quarterly estimate. This guy was taking The quarterly estimate tax payment that the pastor was sending to the government, and he would deliver it. For the sake of the church, only he would just take it to the bank and he was signing it over to himself. and he was embezzling the pastor's tax income. I didn't know about that.

But I found out about that. while he was still in our church. I found out about it while he had the church debit card getting ready to buy something. Oh. He ended up stealing from people in our church.

He ended up out in Colorado. And I saw a few years ago he was up for fraud in the state of Colorado and was on his way to the big house. for a while. He had a history of this in the church. in the church.

in the church. So Listen. None of us are above. Stealing time. None of us are above exaggerating.

how much we do or don't do. None of us are above not giving our best when we ought to give our best. None of us are above the baser urges of our nature. There's an expectation, and the expectation is have enough integrity. That you don't steal and that's More Um Lower level, subjective, hidden, surreptitious than just stealing a candy bar.

or overtly embezzling money. It comes in the form of stealing time. It comes in the form of taking product that's not yours to take. It comes in the form of angling in different ways, where we want something but we're not able to have it, so we take it anyway. The expectation is Christian people won't do that, and he starts off just with a simple injunction.

Let the thief Literally the one who's stealing no longers steal. But rather let him Labor doing honest work with his own.

So, I want to think, this is where we're going to spend most of our time. I want to think about the ethic of work. And there's three things that come from this little verse right here, where you see. Um Let him no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing good work or honest work. We're going to think about three facets of this, three facets of our character.

As we do, I love this quote by Billy Graham. When wealth is lost, nothing's lost. When health is lost, something's lost. When character is lost, all is lost. When character is lost, all is lost.

And yet we spend a lot of time thinking about wealth and a lot of time thinking about our health. Not near enough thinking about our character. Three characteristics of Christian work. Here's the first one. It's pretty obvious, right?

It's honest work.

Now, I mentioned to you that word, agathos, means good. We'll come back to that. But honest work comes from earlier. Don't be a thief. Don't be a deceiver.

Don't exaggerate. Don't say, I worked this when I didn't work this. Be honest about it. Don't be a bean counter in every way. Don't be somebody who's seeking only to give just what you can get back.

Be somebody who is honest in how you present yourself in work. Proverbs 11:1, a false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. It depicts the idea of ancient scales. Or you might weigh out some type of whether it's gold or silver or mineral of some kind over against what you're purchasing. And he's saying, listen, they're balanced here.

But a false balance, where you load something in an inappropriate way, where you change the scale, where you put your finger down on it so that you can get a little bit more and grease your palms in a way that isn't quite just, where you are getting ready to pay your taxes, and if you just say this. Or you just don't claim that. It'll help your financial portfolio considerably. But and all of a sudden you feel liberated by the spirit of the law because the government's so crooked. And now the government's lack of ethics have liberated your ethics.

Now. That's the kind of thing a Christian person isn't allowed to do. Don't go to work. Don't go to finances. on the hunt for loopholes.

Don't look for loopholes. Look for stewardship. Look to be an honest. Yeah. person when it comes.

to work. Hard work. I want to think about this a little bit deeply with you. The word hard work, this word for labor, it's where you see the word for labor in your text, rather let them labor. It's the idea of someone.

Who is Working Is working hard by the sweat of their brow, copio. There's an intensity. That's going on. It's toiling. Listen to a few uses of it.

Acts 20, verse 35. And all things I've shown you that by working hard in this way, Paul says to the Ephesian elders as a model of how to lead a church, we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, It's more blessed to give than to receive. Colossians 1.29, for this I toil. It's the same Greek word. Struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

When he gives metaphors of discipleship, he talks about an athlete, he talks about a soldier in 2 Timothy, and Paul talks about a farmer. And when he talks about the farmer, he says it's the hardworking. Same word, hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Get all the way to Revelation. We saw this actually early in the summer when we were looking at the churches of Revelation.

Revelation 2:3, I know you're enduring patiently, bearing up for my namesake, and you've not grown weary.

Sometimes the words translated weary.

So the idea is you're working to the point where you're weary. You're working to the point where you're spent. You're in toil, exhaustion. You got nothing left, is the idea. You're spending yourself in hard work.

Work.

Now, I want to give you two concepts that play into hard work. The first is the term diligent.

Now, some of you who are here, you took our the better man course that we did that was a short five-week course on work. You'll recognize a couple things from that. And since I wrote the curriculum, I thought I could steal it. Right.

It's not a thief. I wrote it. Diligence. Diligence is the first thing that contributes.

Now, I want you to think about diligence this way: diligence has to do with the intensity with which you happen in a moment to something. You're in it. And it's got all of you. You're not out there somewhere. You're zeroed in and you're focused.

Proverbs 21:5, the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. You know, one of the siren songs of bad work is when you get thinking about the product rather than the process. as a siren song of bad work. You get thinking about what's going to come from it rather than thinking about the doing. of Yeah.

So it's like every good coach in athletics does this. They don't talk about the championship. They don't talk about winning the division. They don't talk about raising the banner. What they talk about is they talk about today.

They talk about the process. They talk about what it means to put your head down and to be as good as you can be in practice today and then tomorrow and then the next day and the next day and the next day because focusing on the process keeps you engaged in the moment and the product takes care of itself and that's the way it is with our work. If you get thinking about the product, you're going to cut corners. You're going to want to get to that product as quick as you can, and that product will not be what it could be if you focused on the process. That's true in study.

That's true in building stuff. That's true in repairing things. That's true in accounting. That's true in teaching. That's true in civil service.

That's true in any form of work you enter into. 2 Thessalonians 3, 10 through 12. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies. You look like you're doing a lot.

And in the Greek, you're doing jack squat. You're doing nothing. You're busy bodies.

Now, such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work. And look at the language, quietly and to earn their own living. Do you see the sense of it? We encourage you to not stand up in the cubicle and look over and see what everybody else is doing. We encourage you to not look down the row and make sure they're doing their part.

We encourage you to not go knock on the office door or peek in the window to make sure he's doing his job. She's doing her job. We encourage you to not think so much. About your teammates and how they're performing as you're performing. To just Put your head down.

Settle down. And work. And work. and work and trust that the Lord will honor Your sacrifice. of work.

Diligence. Let me give you a second idea: faithfulness. They're not the same exactly, they're related. But I think you should think of faithfulness. in a in a kind of equation.

So I think faithfulness is like diligence, time. Times time. Faithfulness is like diligence times. Diligence is the intensity with which I happen to any given task, and faithfulness is when I do that again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. I stay at it.

There's a perseverance that's happening with faithfulness.

Now Faithfulness is hard because diligence, on the one hand, if you're excited enough, You can get after something. Who here has not started a project unbelievable and finished not so unbelievable?

Okay, yes. Guilty as charged. You start something with incredible passion. And you are so perseverant that you're good for about three days of that. But get you into day four and all of a sudden You're falling by the wayside.

Okay. Let me let me in. Let me discourage you with something. How about that? Faithfulness isn't.

heading the same direction for a couple of weeks. Don't do something for a couple of weeks and expect a red badge of courage. Because you were so faithful. I've watched over my own life the concept of faithfulness shrink chronologically. Where, like, people now, it's as though they do something for a month, and you'd think they conquered the world.

I've been just hammering it, man. How long? Three weeks. Oh, well, my goodness. Aren't you a dynamo and a half?

No, no, no. Faithfulness walks it long. But faithfulness is hard. It's hard. Because it's not sexy.

It's painstaking. It's painful. And it means sacrifice, and it means saying no to a lot of other things sometimes.

So, what are some of the deterrents? I got five deterrents for you for faithfulness. Here's the first one: is distraction is a deterrent? You just get off. You just get off.

You just get off. There's a lot written about this, by the way. If you want some good common grace literature about this, and you were to step out in a way from even just the biblical text, and you were just to look about some common grace stuff, there's a book by a guy named Cal Newport that I've recommended before called Deep Work. He also wrote another book called Digital Minimalism, How You Exist Without Getting Caught Up With Your Phone All the Time and All That Kind of Stuff. He's written another book called, I think it's called Slow Work.

And his whole thesis is that a lot of the time we don't get stuff done because we're just pinging from thing to thing to thing. You're checking your email every 15 minutes.

Well, then what happens? Your brain biologically, physiologically needs to reset, and it takes your brain, studies show us, twenty minutes to get back on task.

So what happens if you're checking your email every 15 minutes? you're actually never getting back fully on task all day. No, I'm a multitasker. No, you're not. There's no such thing.

You're just distracted. You just distract it. Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits like sins. You see this often. What happens is, instead of doing what you need to do for a season, You might do what you want to do instead of what you need to do.

And in doing what you want to do, you actually end up following a worthless pursuit, giving your time and energy to it all the while. This thing that needs to be done, God in His wisdom has placed it before you as a need to be done, gets sacrificed. Distraction. Haste. A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.

When you see the sign, Technical. on the telephone pole as you're driving around town. And it tells you that there's a man who's going to mentor you in some venture, or a woman that's going to mentor you in a venture. And by the time they're done mentoring you, you're going to be making $4,000 a week. Don't call the number.

Don't call if it worked everybody'd call the number You know what it wouldn't be advertised as? On a cardboard sign. Written with a sharpie.

Okay. People who make $4,000 a week. Don't put their ads out on cardboard signs on sharpies on telephone poles.

Okay. Just so you know. Doesn't work that way.

So if you're 21... and you're looking to make money. Don't call that number. Death is in that number.

Okay. Get you a regular Boring. Non-sexy job. And you go to it every day. And you show up on time every day.

And you work harder than all your co-workers? And you make yourself essential. To that place. because of your diligence. times your faithfulness, and you watch and see what happens as God begins to honor it.

Okay, so begins on it. Don't try to get rich quick. Don't look and go, I know, but I watched this YouTube video and this kid is making mint on YouTube. And I'm gonna make men on YouTube. Listen.

Yeah, every once in a while somebody catches lightning in a bottle. More people get struck and die from it than catch it in a bottle. Right.

Waste. 1 Corinthians 4. One and two. This is how one should regard us as servants of Christ, and I want you to key on this word: stewards. Stewards.

Of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it's required of stewards. What's required of stewards? What's the one thing you're supposed to do if God's given you something? What does it say?

That they be found. Faithful.

Okay. So You have a job. That's a stewardship. You have a body to stewardship. Your job.

There's one. That God would look And see you. Diligent over time. That's your that that's it. You're to be faithful.

in whatever that thing is.

So if you're taking classes, study. Like a mad fool. Study. Don't not study and then pause for prayer before you take the test. Don't insult God with your prayer.

Lord, help my worthless wasting of time and rescue me by your sovereign grace. And then when you fail, look and go, God, you blew it. Study. Work.

Work.

Hard. As a steward, don't waste God has gifted you. He's given you abilities and responsibilities. He's given you a mind. You are accountable to be a steward.

Of that. Think about how you'll do that. Listen, you're in midlife. Like me, you're 29 like me, and you're coming along. No, you're in midlife.

I want you to think about getting old for a minute. Just think about getting old. How are you going to get old? Really, really well. How are you going to steward your work?

So that as you age, You can work with grace and be productive for years. How are you going to steward your mind? That you're going to actually attend to your mental faculties through the middle portion of your life.

So that as you age, you're able to be mentally acute and sharp. It's not just going to happen. How are you going to steward your body and your physical frame?

So that as you age, You can have that frame. Under God's sovereign grace, to be able to work and labor and be productive and enjoy things in your life. Be a steward. of the things that God has given you. Triviality.

And here's what I mean by this. Don't fall into the idea that anything That is good is trivial. Nothing is menial. in God's economy. One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much.

Do you think? Four bolts. Going into the door of a Boeing aircraft matter. Ask Boeing. Ask how many millions of dollars Thankfully, no lives were lost when that happened in that Alaska Airlines flight.

But how many millions of dollars has Boeing, one of the five to seven greatest companies really in American history probably. That is now We're wondering if it's on life support. Because somebody Didn't put in the bolts. And somebody else didn't check in quality assurance. And the widget of the product getting out the door was more important than the process.

What's the big deal? It's only four bolts. It's a big deal. The thing is this. You don't know sometimes what the bolts are.

You don't always know what they are. That's why you got to be faithful. That's why you got to be focused. in every single encounter. Let me go back to you're a teacher.

We have a lot of teachers in our church. You're a teacher. You don't have a clue. You don't have a clue. what the future of any of those students are.

It is often the case that some of the Weirdest, craziest, most frustrating student you have. Is the one who's the mover and shaker someday. You can't be presumptuous about where you pour your energies. You have to just be faithful. Faithful, faithful, faithful.

Nothing is menial in God's economy. And then five, myopia, myopia, narrow. Merrow viewed. Short-sighted. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abiding in the work of the Lord, knowing that what?

In the Lord your labor is not in vain. Knowing that this thing right now is contributing to a larger whole. Don't get frustrated by it. Don't get lost in it. Keep placing the puzzle pieces in the larger puzzle of what God is doing with works that will be exposed.

Before five deterrents that you gotta be aware of and steer. clear of Third characteristic is Christian work is moral work. Not every job is a good job. You can get paid to do things that tear apart the fabric of culture and society. Unfortunately, you can.

You can do things that are largely worthless. that are largely worthless. You can also miss the worth of certain things. I go back to the warehouse. Moving product.

Making sure that people have what they need. Making sure that companies can do what they need to do. Making sure that bolts are milled properly. I mean those things matter. Intensely.

to a society. If somebody doesn't make sure the bolts are milled properly and somebody doesn't make sure they're installed properly, then the person that's on the aircraft who might be heading to Uganda to share the gospel with somebody might not get there. And that might go back to the bolt miller. And all of a sudden, It's all networked and it's all connected in God's economy. Separate from that is just the act that God, who instills in you, in me, the power, the capacity to work with His energy, Colossians chapter 1, working through us, just expects.

that the milling of the bolts will be to the glory of God. Full stop. Cul-de-sac right there. That's what he desires.

So he says, do. And again, agathos. Work, the text says. Let him labor, doing Good work. Galatians 6.10.

So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith. Is your life for the benefit of people? Which leads us right to the final thing, which is the end.

So, you have the expectation, the ethic, and the end. What's the end? It's right at the end of the verse.

So that he may have something to share with anyone in need. I'm going to work hard so that then I can retire. Because your Bible says that in What chapter and verse? I would love to know where that is. I'm gonna kill myself today.

So that I can live for tomorrow. Oh, okay.

Well, what is it? That is the goal of the intensity of your sacrificial. Labor.

So that you can feast upon all of its fruits? Yeah. It is so that you provide. It is so that you provide for yourself. If he doesn't work, don't let him eat.

We read that verse. But there's something more. It's called generosity. It's called generosity. It's called a life that looks outward.

It's called the kind of life Where your life is never disconnected from the lives. of others. to have a generosity about Yeah. Right, Jesus, I'm sorry, John the Baptizer. Preaching.

Message of repentance in Luke 3. What does he say to the people he's preaching to? He tells them in Luke 3:11, You got a tunic? Give it to somebody else who doesn't have one. Give to somebody else.

Share. Share. Um I want to give you a quote about generosity. And I want to show you this quote because sometimes generosity is hard. You come upon the man holding the cardboard sign.

What do you do? It's hard. You might be giving to an addict that's just going to go. Blow it. And you might actually be enabling them.

You might not. It's hard to know what to do. It's hard to know when the person who isn't working has come back and asked for a handout for the third time. It's it's hard to know. with family.

what generosity can look like.

Sometimes the line between enablement and love gets a little blurred. Luke Timothy Johnson in his book, Sharing Possessions, says the following: It is the task of faith's discernment to determine in specific circumstances how possessions are to be shared. Herein lies the freedom that is proper to the life of faith. The spirit that works in believers as it worked in Jesus does not express itself in a set of inflexible structures that suit our desire for good, order, and control, but rather expresses itself inflexible. And creative responses to the real needs of others.

Such freedom, such faith, is filled with risk and ambiguity, for we can never be certain at any given moment that our response truly does respond to the other's needs rather than our distorted perceptions. But the risks of such freedom given by faith are gladly embraced by those who seek to live by the pattern of Jesus, whose entire existence demonstrated such extravagant and carefree sharing of God's wealth. Yeah. I wanted to give you that quote because I want you to live in the tension. I want you to always ask the question.

The moment you pull up and you're just dismissive of the guy. That might be a danger. Because you might just becoming cynical. The moment you come up with cash waving out your Car at every guy. might be naïve.

and might be an enabler. But that you sit. that you ponder. That you think creatively. that you wonder what you ought to do in the moment as a Christian.

is the right space to be in. I'll never forget an early lesson to me in ministry from a mentor of mine in Texas who I was serving on staff with. A guy came in to the church. which wasn't that all that rare necessarily because of where the church was located on a major road. A guy came into the church.

And he had a story. And the story sounded pretty good. And he made a comment to my mentor. He said, You know, I came to the church because my mother growing up when I was a little boy always told me, son, if you're ever in trouble, go to a church. If you're ever in trouble, go to a church.

That's a good word. If you're ever in trouble, go to the community of God if you're ever in trouble. And so My mentor gave him some cash. He had a policy, we had a church policy that we didn't have petty cash on hand because you could get just floods of people coming in asking for cash. But he just gave him cash.

And I remember he just said to me in passing, He said, Yeah, I gave him some cash. And then he looked at me and he said, I don't think the Lord will hold it against me. And then he walked into his office. And I thought, you're right. Yeah, I don't think the Lord will hold it against you.

If you're gonna err. Err on the side of love than legalism. If you're gonna err. Err on the side of generosity. rather than hoarding.

If you're going to make an error, make it with your hands out, not with your fists closed. This teaches me that I got to live in that tension. The moment I get out of that tension, That's when I might be going sideways one way or the other. Everything you do in your labor. Matters to the Lord and how you handle the fruits of your labor matters to the Lord.

Close with a quote from Leslie Newbing and one of my favorite quotes ever about work. Every faithful act of service, every honest labor to make the world a better place, which seemed to have been forever lost and forgotten in the rubble of history, will be seen on that day at the final resurrection to have contributed to the perfect fellowship of God's kingdom. All who committed their work in faithfulness to God. Will be by him raised up to share in the new age, and will find that their labor was not lost. but that it has found its place in the completed kingdom.

Work hard. Work honest. Work moral. Work, work. God made you as a worker.

Don't hate it. Is it frustrating? Yes. Yes. Do you feel the fall sometimes?

Yes. If my wife asks me to hang a curtain rod, the fall has never landed more severely anywhere on the globe. Those walls feel my wrath. And within five minutes, my sanctification is out the door.

Alright.

So it can be frustrating. I understand that. But offer yourself. You get up in the morning and you're going to work. Are you praying?

Are you asking the Lord to just take the day? Are you offering the members of your God Take my hands today. And for your glory, use them. Take my feet and take me to people. that need what I am offering.

in this place, in this space. Use my mouth around this place. to be one that furthers the labors of others in your glory in this context. Get help my mind to be Zeroed in and focused. Not always thinking about everything else, but just zeroed in and trying to glorify you.

By how I am focused in that moment, God, take me and use me. Keep me from distraction, keep me from haste, keep me from waste, keep me from triviality, keep me from myopia. I want to be faithful. On the way out. You're driving home.

Your sanctification will be tested again because you're driving in Utah. And you thank the Lord. Thank the Lord that you were able to work today. You didn't have to be able to. Thank him for it.

Thank him for your co-workers. Even the ones that frustrate you. Because they're helping make a better you. Thank you. That if he wills, he'll wake you up tomorrow to go do it again.

And then again. And then again, and then again. Or you could get up. And you could roll out of bed. And you could roll your eyes.

And you could think, here we go again. Oh boy. And you can think of all the things you don't want to do. If you want to. And you can leave the workplace and you can think about all the people that said something that bugged you.

Anything about all the things you had to do when you really want to do something else and you had to do all this other stuff. You think about how tired you are. Wasted. Get up and do it again. Just pawn for the man.

Which of those two do you think would bring more glory and honor to God? Which of those do you think you'd be a better steward with? Let's shoot for that. God, I pray that you would help us. Just to be better.

At work. Not always thinking about how we move up the ladder. Not always thinking about what's next. Not always thinking about how things could be better. Take us away from the greener grass.

Take a cinder. Sweat on our brow. Calloused hands. Let's offer ourselves. holy and Holy.

To you. I pray that you'd do that, Lord. I don't think we have the power in ourselves to do that. We're too fleshly. We're looking out for ourselves too much.

Yeah. eyeing our efforts in correspondence to everybody else. Pray that you'd help us, Lord, to be Christians at work. In Jesus' name. Amen.