Freed to Love

So what this class is gonna be about is a theology of vocation, which sounds very heavy and very academic. let's look at it this way, it's, it's God's sovereignty over our work. I played with a variety of titles, God at work, every good work, but I have to give credit to my wife, who said, how about from home to the high-rise, God's sovereignty over our work. Because the emphasis here is not gonna be if you have a 9 to 5 job, this applies to you and if you don't, it doesn't.

This applies to all of us. And there will be 3 parts to our, our class. the first, each one is gonna be 3 weeks in length. so the first one is gonna be God's design for work, sin's impact on work is, part 2, and then the gospel and work is gonna be on.

it's gonna be part 3, and each one of those will, will run for 3 weeks. So let's go ahead and pray and we'll, get started. Father, we're grateful for this new year, and while we are still grieving and mourning the loss of loved ones in this body, that passed in the, in the last year, Lord, we're, we're grateful to be here. We're grateful for the opportunity, to carry on and we pray that we will be faithful to that.

In the coming year for as long as you may give us, help us to, listen and lean in to the work of your Spirit in our lives. Work through, me and these words that will be spoken today and for Pastor Carlos as he teaches later in the morning, we just ask your blessing on us in Jesus' name. Amen. Once you start working, you'll never stop.

Those were the words my mom uttered to me when I was 17 years old and I said to her, Mom, I think I want a real job. And she's, I was heading into my senior year of high school. I've been a paper boy back in my middle school years back when we allowed 12 year olds to ride around the neighborhood throwing newspapers on people's front lawns. but as a now growing young man, I was like I need a real job.

She said those words, I probably rolled my eyes as any typical teenager might do cause I thought, well, what does she know? But after landing my job at Shakey's pizza parlor for $3.85 an hour, I'm old. well, I haven't stopped working. from there, I was on to Ralph's grocery store, for a while, then I was a custodian at a high school.

I became a cross country and track coach, becoming a teacher of US history. I had for just a few short years a little photography side hustle and for, the last 3 years, I've been an adjunct at CBU. It's been 41 years of work and mom was right. When we bring up the topic of work, which is what this class is gonna be about, as you're listening, you might have one of 3 different responses.

For some of you, you love your job. I was talking to my nephew just a couple of days ago and he goes, I can hardly wait to get to work on Monday. For others, you're somewhat neutral on the topic. It is what it is.

It's, it's what you do. For others, the topic of work conjures up a negative reaction. you think, work. It's a four-letter word if you will, to you.

Maybe those of you in that camp can relate to the old, Huey Lewis and the news. Remember that band from the 1980s? They had a hit song called Working for a Living and it resonated with those who didn't like their work. It's it's a song that just kinda bemoans the work that we have to do and the chorus goes like this.

Working for a living, working for a living, working for a living, living and working. I'm taking what they're given. Cause I'm working for a living. It's a negative song.

But when it comes to work, we're like goldfish who when asked how's the water, they say, what water? It's the cultural reality, it's the, the lived experience for all of us. It's the water, the cultural waters that we swim in. If we're not careful, we can go through 41 years of life without thinking much about work.

But God would ask us to think about work and to give it more than a thought. whether we work at home or in the high rise. If we're in the factory or in finance. If we're driving a truck or driving an Uber, drilling teeth or drilling for oil.

Newly hired or newly retired, we are all under God's sovereignty, and he has much to say on the topic of what we do. So this is what this class is gonna be about. I've titled today's talk, Freed to Love, and my goal is to lay down the foundation, cultural, historical and theological for how we view our work as Americans in this culture and how as Christians, followers of Christ, that we should also view our work. This session today is gonna focus primarily on themes that we'll dive into later in the class, but we wanna see the work beneath the work.

That can ultimately free us up to love. Through what we do for a living. So let's jump in. We Americans have a narrative.

For how we think about and talk about and go about our work. We, we cannot escape the narrative. We are creatures of our culture. This is the society that we live in.

Years ago in college, I was assigned a book to read by a guy named Studs Terkel. Interesting name, Studs Terkel. The book is titled Working. People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.

Frankly, I bought it because I had to pass the class. The title did not intrigue me, but after I opened its first page and read about a guy named Mike LeFever, I was hooked. Mike LeFevre He was a steel worker. Listen to what he says about his job.

He says, I'm a dying breed, a laborer, strictly muscle work. He says, I got chewed out by my foreman once. He said, Mike, you're a good worker, but you have a bad attitude. Well, my attitude is I don't get excited about my work.

I do my work, but I don't say whoop de doo. The day I get excited about my job is the day I go to a head shrink. How are you gonna get excited about pulling steel? How are you gonna get excited when you're tired and all you wanna do is sit down?

If he stops there, we can conclude Mike hates his job, but listen to what he says next. It's not just the work. Somebody built the pyramids. Somebody's gonna build something.

Pyramids, Empire State Building. These things don't just happen. There's hard work behind it. I would like to see a building.

Let's say it's the Empire State Building. I would like to see on one side of it a 1 ft wide strip from the top to the bottom with the name of every electrician, with every, with every name so that when a guy walked by, he could take his son and say, see, that's me over there on the 45th floor. I put that steel beam in. He concludes Picasso can point to a painting.

What can I point to? A writer can point to a book. Everybody should have something to point to. See what Mike instinctively knew was that his steelwork was culturally less valuable than say the architect who designed the building.

Who designed the tower. Everyone should have something to point to, he said mournfully. The desire to be able to say that, to hear others say it about us, to say I did that is an irres almost irresistible pull in our culture. American culture imposes incredibly strong values for how we view work.

What types of work are esteemed, what types of work are not, and ultimately that will impact the way we view our value in society. Well now this lingering, excuse me, this linking of work and identity has very deep roots in the US. In fact, you could take it back to the Puritans. While the Puritans do offer us much for which we can be very thankful for theologically, they are quite honestly, partially to blame for our warped view of work in American society.

The Puritans arrived in 1630 and embraced a belief that they were the new Israel, that they had an actual covenant with God. It was not uncommon to see, read or hear an emphasis on works, even works as a means by which to measure one's salvation. This became the cultural logic they, they would call the visible sainthood. To become a member in the church, they literally had to produce their autobiography of their works.

Visible sainthood was their way that they discussed their effort to prove themselves to one another and to God that in fact, look, we're saved. One of their leaders, Cotton Mather, preached that quote, man is in a boat rowing for heaven. One oar pulls for salvation and church work. The other pulls for usefulness, success and prosperity.

Success by many Puritans estimation was a measuring stick of their value and their virtue. Now, to be fair, lounging or kicking back back in the 1600s or the 1700s wasn't really an option if you wanted to survive. But redeeming the time, a biblical term was baked into Puritan culture. Here we see how one's theology impacts one's lived experience.

Richard Sibbs was an English theologian back in that era and wrote that quote, the life of a Christian is wondrously ruled in this world by the consideration and meditation of the life of another world. From this lived theology, we can trace back and would become what would become known as the Puritan work ethic or the Protestant work ethic. Perhaps you've heard of it. Loosely defined, we see it as hard work equals success and hard work is expected.

This idea would take on even greater significance in the industrial age and was underpinned by Andrew Carnegie, the great steel magnet's gospel of wealth as he called it. But perhaps nowhere in this Puritan tie between work and God's blessing is more evident than in the words of John Winthrop, who was another one of the Puritan leaders. He stood on the deck of a ship called the Arbella in 1630. You can imagine his fellow Puritans as they're heading across the North Atlantic were nervous and so he gave them a bit of a pep talk.

A sermon if you will, and it reverberates across the centuries to this day. It's a the bedrock of, of American exceptionalism. But you don't have to read much of this sermon to see that even Winthrop was right. They, pulling together the threads of the blessing of God and their work.

If you can see it, I don't know if it's too small on the screen, but here's what he says in his famous City upon a hill, sermon. Now, the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work as members of the same body. The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as His own people, and we will and will command a blessing upon us in all of our ways.

So that when he shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, the Lord make it like that of New England. For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. Here it is, the eyes of all people are upon us. Mike LeFevre, that steel worker, he might have yelled if he had been on that deck, preach it.

But we need to go back another century, for we really have Martin Luther to thank for more of a biblical understanding of work or vocation in the life of the followers of Christ. Throughout the 1st 1500 years or so of church history, there had grown a divide. Between what was considered sacred on one side and secular work on the other. Those who were employed by the church doing ministry work were considered called and all others were worldly and thus considered, well, lowly.

In fact, the term vocation, which we will use often in this class, simply means calling or voice. Given that etymology, we can understand why those who worked in some ministerial way, some position in the church would be viewed as called and consequently, others, well, not so much. Clearly it would have been argued a preacher, a minister is called by God, but a farmer, an undertaker? A police officer, a homeschooling mom?

How could such worldly tasks be called by God, they wondered. Well, they answered, they weren't. They were, well, just jobs. Nothing special, nothing bad, just not called.

The spiritual was elevated at the expense of the secular. But as Luther and the other reformers began to look at the scripture apart from the dogma of the church, they began to see that the gospel's great equalizing power has on all aspects of our life. Peter would write in his first epistle, but you are a chosen people, this is chapter 2 verse 9. A royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.

That's the idea of the priesthood of all believers, emphasis on the word all, became part of Luther's argument. It was not just for the trained and formal leaders of the church. This is the way Luther said it from 1520. Quote, it is pure invention that pope, bishop, priests, or monks are called the spiritual estate while princes, lords, artisans, and farmers are called the temporal estate.

This is indeed a piece of deceit and hypocrisy. Yet no one need be intimidated by it. For this reason, all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate and there is no difference among them except for that of office, end quote. Wow.

With this new reformed understanding, every work could be included under the banner of sacred. The pastor and the plumber, the worship leader and the welder, the counselor and the carpenter, the deacon, and the detective. We'll discuss later in this class the dangers that will arise from all of that or from an, excuse me, from an abuse or a misinterpretation of this equalizing of all believers, but I'll leave it here as an appetizer for things to come. Back in the 1960s, an Italian pawn shop owner named Luigi LaRosa was rummaging through the basement of an abandoned villa, looking for things that he might salvage and then sell off in his store at the family business.

He found an old painting, it was rolled up in a scroll type form. It's covered in dirt. He didn't think much of it. Quite honestly, he looked at it and like I can't sell this and so he bought a cheap little frame.

Put the painting inside the frame and gave it to his wife as a gift. There it it rested on the wall of their Italian home for some 50 years. As their son grew into adulthood, he looked up in the corner of this painting and he saw a signature and it said Picasso. And having learned about Picasso in school, he's like, Dad, this thing might be worth some money.

Well, Luigi passed away 3 years ago, but his son has just hit the jackpot. After decades of trying to get art historians to verify the veracity of the actual signature Picasso. They've given him the green light of legitimacy. The painting is perhaps worth 6 to $12 million maybe more.

Martin Luther rediscovered something of far greater value than that for every single one of us. One writer said it this way, they, the reformers had a transcendent view of things. Luther said that when a milkmaid is milking the cow, she is glorifying God as much as the preacher in the pulpit is when giving a message. Now, there is one more element that we need to lay as part of our groundwork and that is the way that we, that our secular society has tarnished our understanding of work.

Interestingly, today, we live in a secular postmodern Western culture that has done quite honestly, the very same thing that the medieval church did to work or vocation. Our culture esteems some work and diminishes others and I think Mike LeFevre would agree with me. The social imaginary that we live in today has its roots in the Enlightenment. Which revolutionized European and American thought on all manner of issues.

We as a society have been slow cooking in a worldview crockpot that while beneficial in some regards, has in recent decades for sure been looking more like a Trojan horse. This is especially the case when it comes to notions of the self. Our culture has been bear hugging what is defined as expressive individualism. We see this played out in many of the culture wars of our day.

The enshrinement of expressive individualism on the altar of our national culture has arguably been the main cause for the unraveling of any sense of national cohesion and its erosive effects on our notions of work cannot be underestimated. Sociologist Robert Bella was best known for his 1985 book, Habits of the Heart, in which, in which he gave voice to this notion of expressive individualism. If that surprised you that it was that long ago, don't be surprised. This has been growing for decades.

He wrote, quote, we are moving to an ever greater validation of the sacredness of the individual person, but our capacity, to imagine a social fabric that would hold individuals together is vanishing. The sacredness of the individual is not balanced in any sense. Of the whole, and here's the key words or concern for the common good. More to come on that in part two of this class, but for now, let's look at the tension.

That expressive individualism creates with a biblical view of work. Our desire as Christians to bring the Bible to bear in our workplaces, in our vocations runs into conflict with expressive individualism. Our culture preaches, follow your heart or you do you, or discover the better version of you and to me the most illogical of them all is live your truth. We'll take a look at the chart on the screen that can help us to see this tension.

That we live with. On the left-hand column, I would say this is a good thing. I, I wanna provide for my family. So I have to get my boss to like me.

I, I wanna be excellent at what I do. Now I have less time and energy for my family and church. Excellence, I've achieved it in the workplace. And I just got promoted and that's gonna lead to more hours away from home.

Hey hey, hey, look what I've done. Why is no one noticing what I do? Do you see how the postmodern age can wreak havoc with good and beautiful things? Timothy Keller, to whom I'm indebted for much of my learning in this subject, wrote in one of his books, the following.

The modern process of identity formation tells you to go out and create a self from scratch. You must identify your dreams, especially the most vivid ones, and fulfill them or feel like a failure. that prospect causes those in many segments of our society where money and power, success, sophistication all become not just good things but necessary identity, factors. The question for us then in this identity factory called the US of A is, how are we to view our work?

Will we frame our work as many do in this culture as a monument to our self-worth or a machine to grow our bank accounts, as a means to compete, a measure of our comfort, a momentary stop on my way to something better, a merry go round. That we can never get off of? Or, or will we see it as a God-given opportunity to serve others and glorify Him in the process? Well, scripture, of course, has much to say about this subject both directly and sometimes obliquely.

It's full of warnings about our work, roadmaps for our work, and insight into God's plan for our work. So with this cultural framework in place, let's turn to the scripture. We'll start with one of the biggest work projects of them all, the famous story of the Tower of Babel written about in Genesis 11. The Tower of Babel has had an enduring legacy on human language and culture from its very moment of, of, of the events happening.

The Tower of Babel has influenced art. In literature for at least the last 600 years and in the word, in, in the language of English, the word is defined as incoherent language. I learned a new slang last month, a couple of months ago when my students said, Mr. Peters, you're, you're yapping.

I go, what's yapping? And they said you're just talking incoherently, just going on and on. So we've, we've rewritten the word Babel. Ironically though, what God reveals in the story is, is actually pretty clear.

It says much about our desires, our attitudes, our posture towards God and ourselves, and it is for our purposes today in this class, very insightful to note that the warnings come. Couched in a story out of a construction zone. It's an outdoor factory. It's a building project not unlike anything we would see in New York or LA.

So let's read the passage. Now the whole Earth, this is Genesis 11. Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east that they found a plain in the land of Shannaar and settled there.

They said to one another, come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they use brick for stone and they use tar for mortar. They said, come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.

The Lord came down to see the building, or excuse me, to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. Verse 6, the Lord said, behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language, and this is what they began to do and now nothing which they purposed to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and they're confuse their language so that they will not understand one another's speech. Verse 8, so the Lord scattered them abroad and there over the face of the whole earth and they stopped building the city.

Therefore, its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth and from there, the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. So look at the first verse. Now the whole earth. This is interesting because it's not an indictment on a particular group of people that lived at a particular place at a particular time.

The whole earth, it says. It's as if the, the word of God is saying this is your, all of y'all's problem. This is not just this group's problem, it's, it's everybody's problem. We all humans are susceptible to all kinds of pride and hubris.

Now this Tower of Babel would not have been uncommon in that day, but what these people were up to was a construction project to create an edifice that for all intents and purposes was gonna be an altar upon which they could stand. It seemed like an ingenious plan to them, a plan to be their own kings. But look at verse 4. It reveals the motive of the builders.

Then they said to each other, let's build for ourselves a city, a tower that will reach to the heavens and let's make a name, make a, make for ourselves a name. Not hard to miss, is it? The tower is not an effort to create a great work of architecture or beauty. Or design, it's not an endeavor to honor God or create something that in which humans could thrive.

It was bluntly an effort in self-promotion. Whatever this zigguro looked like, whatever form it ended up taking, perhaps we can make, imagine it again as an altar. Look at verse 4 again. Let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered over the whole earth for ourselves.

Ourselves, no mention of God, nothing but rank selfishness, a motive of singular self-aggrandizement. The term can be understood to mean that what they were really wanting from their work was to be separated from God. Like God can be over here, but we're gonna build our tower over here. They wanted individual distinction, self-promotion, self-addoration, self-centered devotion.

And what drove this? Well, you can see it, fear. Unless we are scattered, tossed to the winds of history and forgotten, we must build a tower to the heavens. Then forevermore we'll be known by what we have created.

Their names etched in brick would be etched in history, or so they thought. And now we see God looking in on this project. It was like God opened up the factory door and said, what's going on in here? I was intrigued when I was studying this, that in this, in the ancient text and context, this passages could actually be understood as satire, almost comical.

It shouldn't be seen as the Lord is suddenly curious like what are these people up to? I, I, I gave them a chance to do their thing and what are they doing? It's not that at all. Why would it be satire?

Well, we'll think about it or picture it. This is the God who made the cosmos. This is the God that flung the galaxies into space. This is the God that created all of the planets and perfectly situated planet Earth to sustain life and not just any life but complex, beautiful life.

That God. is now looking at his creatures and saying, let me see, what is it you're up to? Look at us, we're building a tower. Are you kidding me?

The verse really does read that way. We can kinda picture it like I, I, I, I take out a piece of paper and I draw a little stick figure, a little happy face, a little hair coming off the top cause I don't have much hair and then Picasso walks in the room and I'm like, look at my picture. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. R.

Kent Hughes, the commentator. says, It was as if God stooped down like a man on his hands and knees and lowered his face to see the earth, to see the great tower. But God recognizes that this work was downstream from very misguided motives, and the results would be catastrophic, so he puts an end to it himself. Verse 6 says, now nothing that they begin to do, says the Lord, will be withheld from them.

This is the beginning of man's intent. One thing is going to lead to another and God knows it, and so he steps in and he says, enough. Note God is not rivaled by the tower. Or even the building project.

It's, it's, it's, it's their motives that gets his attention. It was the arrogance of them and the arrogance of us that is of God's greatest concern. As Proverbs reminds us, there was, there is a way that seems right to man. But it's, it's end is the way of death.

We should build a tower, they said. It could be so big and so beautiful, it'll look like, let me think, it'll look like a city upon a hill. The eyes of everyone will be upon us, and at the end of the day, a guy could bring his son and say, look, that's me over there on the forty-fifth row. I put that row of bricks in.

Well, here's how it ended. Look at verse 8, paraphrase, the Lord stopped them and scattered them. I think you get the point. In our work-centric culture, where we so often are quick to judge ourselves by what we do for a living.

What we build, what we make, well, our accent can sound a whole lot like the people of Babel. Like the way John Bloom said it, he said, quote, and in these ancient Babylonians, we can see a picture of ourselves. Like them, we are sinners too often full of pride and selfish ambition, giving way too much thought about what others think about us and what our legacy will be. Like them, we too often have a ridiculous, exaggerated desire for our own glory and can put great effort into marshaling our resources and systems to achieve it.

Ouch. See, if we allow our sinful nature. And our culture to run the show. At the heart level, we become tower builders ourselves.

So we build towers of steel and towers of words and towers of wins and towers of likes and customers and sales and clients. We build towers of money and towers of influence and towers of the bottom line, and towers of education, and even towers of our kids and grandkids. All neatly arranged in glowing resumes or blazoned on t-shirts or bumper stickers. Donald Trump's name might be literally at the top of his towers.

But I think if we're honest, we've imaginatively done the same with the little building projects of our own. If not, we are tempted to for sure. It's a daily battle of my own. Now hard work is the standard throughout the Bible.

We'll talk about that later in the class. We do well though to remember the warning from the prophet Jeremiah who said, quote, the heart is incredibly deceitful. It's not hard for us to take our work and then use it to justify ourselves and our existence. Now what follows as we conclude here is really important.

We can so easily be be deceived and replace the corporate ladder with a spiritual one. We can replace a tower to the heavens with a stairway to heaven. Remember, it was salvation by works that was the most theologically, most significant theological error that Luther called out of the church 5 100 years ago. So we need to remind ourselves daily of this.

The ultimate work. Is already done. And Christ is the one who has done it, and with it, our striving should cease. So we do well this morning to listen again to the words of Paul who lays out for us the much needed antidote to the poison of our own striving.

I just pulled a few passages. There's way more than this as we know, but he writes in Romans, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 3:28, for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. To the believers at the Church of Galatia, he said, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus.

Even we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, since by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified. Work, work. Work, work, 4 times he mentions it, as if to beat it into our work's obsessed minds. We're justified.

There's nothing for you to do to be right with God. There is no checklist that exists. In the repetition, it seems as Paul knows our tendencies, of course, through his writings, we know that he knows our tendencies to try and use our works as a means to gain salvation. Our work becomes our merit.

God, are you seeing this? Do you see what I've done, God? Here's my offering, God. Here's my business, God.

How far off base we are. The work beneath the work. Is the work that Christ has done. So why do we do this?

Why do we so easily emphasize our work at the expense of Christ? There are many reasons, of course, but look around and you'll see that we often place our hope in other things. Our jobs, careers, social status, rank, relationships, our families, there are endless options available. To us idol makers.

We Americans love the old myth of rugged individualism. And we can so easily and quickly get working on our own towers of Riverside. With our names etched in gold at the top, it seems to me that we are most vulnerable. I will admit I am most vulnerable.

In this regard, inside of my work, my vocation. Some time ago, I was talking with an acquaintance who knows that I was a, I am a teacher by trade and this person was telling me that they were having a conversation with another person who knows of my profession and this person leaned in and said, so are you still a hard nose in the classroom? Though a different term was used. I immediately interpreted that as a criticism of what I do.

A criticism of my standards. To be frank and fair, could have been interpreted positively or negatively, but I went with the negative. I stumbled through a few lines of explanation, but the shrapnel fell and I went to bed that night wounded, literally head on the pillow, looking at the ceiling thinking, that wasn't fair. When I woke up, the same nagging thoughts were there like daggers in my mind.

Is that what my reputation is out there? I wondered Of the thousands of students and parents I've worked with over 35 years in education, is that the term that people use to, that, that, is that what they associate with my name? It was humbling. And while the presumed criticism of others can at times be the scalpel of the Holy Spirit.

I bring up this story to illustrate how quickly my heart ran to self-justification on the basis of my work and what perception of my work might be out there. Is what I do for a living. Moving the needle on my reputation. Does my work define my living, my existence?

Was that, that really was my concern that day. How utterly pathetic. By mid-morning the next day, I was literally having to preach the gospel to myself. The gospel of justification by Christ, not justification by Brad.

So the question I was wrestling with is, will I trust in the Lord? Which is how he created me, or will I put my trust in something that is wholly inferior to Him? Something that is puny. Do I, after 35 years of working in education, still place my primary trust in what some might think of me positively or negatively, or do I trust in what God thinks of me?

Time and again the Bible cautions us, what the heart most loves is what it most trusts and commits itself to. Proverbs 23:26. Jesus, said, for where your treasure is, there's, there's your heart. In that moment, I realized what I love is praise, not criticism for my work.

Even if the criticism is justified. The ultimate bondage, said DA Carson, is rebellion against the God who has made us. The despotic master is not Caesar but rather shameful self-centeredness, and evil and enslaving devotion to the created things at the expense of the worship of the Creator. Hmm.

So what's the solution to my problem? Our temptation to use work as a means for self-justification, I think, batters at our doors almost daily. Well, what I can offer you and what I'm trying to offer myself is this. Remember, the work is done.

The cross ended the ultimate work. Think, think through this with me, it, it's, it's there on the screen. Justification by faith is the reversal of the Tower of Babel. In our flesh, we work to make a name for ourselves, believing we can build a tower to heaven.

Of course, we'll always fail, sin breaks the beams that we erect. But the gospel is the great reversal. Christ descended to earth and did the work we couldn't do for us to get to heaven. Any work, quote-unquote work we do, whether it's in the church or in secular society is ultimately futile.

Since Christ has already done the ultimate work, we are therefore freed up to love, to do the good works that He has prepared beforehand for us. Ephesians 2:10. And with that, we have the opportunity to fulfill the greatest commandment to love God and love our neighbors. And at the end, it's his name that gets the glory.

Hmmm. Let's be reminded at the start of this study in vocation that the foundation is that God doesn't need our good works, nor does he want them. But our neighbor does. The work of Christ frees us up to love others with whatever talents and gifts and jobs that we may occupy.

Working for the glory of God is shorthand for loving. Your neighbor Wonderful. And therefore bragging about any work that we've done. Well, that's yapping in the ears of Christ, that's gibberish.

We live and work in two worlds, the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God. As followers of Christ, who live in a fallen sinful condition, I guess you could say we're bilingual. We can speak and understand the language of both kingdoms. The steelworker, Mike Lefever was fluent in Americanese.

A worldview that told him that his steel work was inferior to the other work. That the job that he had was lowly in comparison to the jobs of others. And so Mike instinctively groused and complained about the injustice of anonymity. He wanted, he deserved, I deserved to have my name up there on the building of that wall that I helped build.

He complained to Studs Terkel. If we're being honest. I think there's a little like, a little Mike LeFever in all of us. Certainly there is in me.

There's a little John Winthrop as well. We all wanna build a city upon a hill. Such as the tug of sin and culture. It's a war that we will fight until Christ returns.

And starts to build his actual city upon a hill. But by God's grace, we can begin to see through gospel-centered eyes. And we can begin to grow in understanding that working for a living, to use the lyric again, can actually free us up to love others through what we do for a living. All because the ultimate work was done by the one whose death on the cross gave him the right to say, the work is finished and I have done it.

That is our beginning, that's our foundation. We are freed up to love. If you wanna join in the weeks to come, we'll be in room 104 as we study what God has to say about our work. Let's go ahead and pray.

Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word that is a lamp to our feet and a guide to our path. Thank you that you have taken on this thing that we have been called to do, work, and you have modeled it for us, you have designed it for us, and then ultimately, Because of the fall and our futile attempts to do it ourselves, you came and did it for us. help us, Lord, this week, to, to live in, in the gospel, to live in the presence of the work that you've done, and your love and your care for us, in the, kaleidoscope of occupations and vocations that we all in our gifting and in our capacities, put our hands to.

May you be glorified in that work and may your name, be lifted high in whatever it is we do, tonight or tomorrow in the place that we call work. Thank you, Lord, for your love and your grace, something we desperately need, in this week and in this New Year. We say these things in Jesus' name. Amen.