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A Man and His Work (GA2021 Men’s Seminar)
Christ Church on August 14, 2021
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Grown Up Christian Business Principles (Further Up #6)

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INTRODUCTION

Another one of the ways God is blessing our community immensely is through the explosion of businesses and industry. As this grows, the opportunity for business bumps will increase. Of course it’s often a great gift to be able to do business together as believers, but there is no guarantee that Christians will not sin, make mistakes, or botch projects. These are challenges that we must embrace, and work through as Christians. And this process is essential to growing up into a mature Christian city.

THE TEXT

“But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more; and that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing” (1 Thess. 4:9-12).

LOVE IS OBEDIENCE FROM THE HEART

We cannot say this enough in our current cultural moment, but “love” is not whatever we want it to be. Love is obedience to God from the heart. And in this case, the “love” that Paul is urging the Thessalonians to “increase more and more” is clearly spelled out. Just before our text, love means abstaining from all fornication and not defrauding one another sexually (1 Thess. 4:3-7). We may as well spell out the fact that this means: monogamous heterosexual marriage. And then he adds to that here: study to be quiet, mind your own business, work with your own hands so that you are known for your honesty and lack nothing. This is love. Notice that Paul doesn’t say anything here about warm feelings or following your heart.

The connection here between sexual ethics and economic and business practices is not accidental. Rampant sexual fraud in the bedroom leads to rampant economic fraud in the public square. The family and home are the basic building blocks of business and economy. Covenant keeping in the home is practicing to keep your word at work. Of course it goes both ways, and shoddy work in the market place is a great way to practice unfaithfulness at home. The foundation for our commitment to this kind of love is the gospel of Christ: He was obedient to the death for our salvation. This is love. And we love because He loved us first (1 Jn. 4:9-11).

GIFT GIVING ECONOMY

God so loved the world that He gave (Jn. 3:16). And so it is that the basis for all truly free markets is this kind of love: gift giving. This means that when it comes to doing business, our instinct should always be to blessothers, especially brothers and sisters. This is the opposite of looking for or expecting a deal or a discount – as a buyer or a seller – simply because you’re both Christians. It is more blessed to give than receive, and therefore, the accent is on you giving, not you getting other people to give to you. So, if you need the goods or services of someone else, you should want to give as big of a gift as you can in exchange for it. You are of course free to shop around, but you should want to bless them (pay) so they can give even more. And if you are giving the good or service, pricing should be set sufficiently so that you can keep on giving a good gift that is high quality, excellent, and thoroughly honest. God does not want us to give beyond what He has actually given (2 Cor. 8:12). We are to work in such as a way that we lack nothing (1 Thess. 4:12). In terms of quality of products and services, Christians should despise the sentiment of the bumper sticker that says, “not perfect just forgiven.”

WRITE IT DOWN

Paul said that the Thessalonians didn’t need him to write to them, but he did it anyway, and given the challenge that they would soon face (2 Thess. 2:2), it was very important that he did. We are people of the written word, and therefore one of the hallmarks of Christian civilization is the written contract. Therefore, write all business agreements down. Do not say that since they are Kirkers you don’t need to write it down; do not say they are fellow believers so everything will be fine. Do not write some of it down, and have additional verbal agreements and handshakes. No, from the beginning God wrote everything down for us, not because He would forget His word, but because we are the kind of people who forget. This is central to our commitment to honesty. This need not be a suspicious or accusatory thing; it should be considered one of the central ways we love one another. In the absence of a written contract, the Bible says elsewhere that we should rather be defrauded than bring shame on the name of Christ by making a big stink about it or taking a brother to court (1 Cor. 6:7).

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS

Of course, as members of Christ and bound together by membership vows, we have promised to watch out for one another and bear one another’s burdens (cf. Gal. 6:2). But in the same place it says, “let every man prove his own work… for every man shall bear his own burden.” If the great principle of Christian business is love (defined as obedient and glad gift-giving), then our duty to work hard and mind our own business so that we lack nothing means that our goal should be to mind our own business, which is not at all the same as autonomous self-sufficiency. Part of minding your own business means take care of your own garden. It also means not assuming you know anything about your brother’s situation. This applies to what you might be tempted to think your brother can afford to pay or give; this also applies to various business decisions, whether it’s your competitor or the fact that somebody in the church went with your competitor. Don’t assume the worst; don’t assume anything. Life is complex. Related is the fact that you must not take business decisions personally. And while you should want to do everything you can to be at peace with a brother and cover a multitude of sins, a negative review of work need not be cause for being out of fellowship.

CONCLUSION

When a business deal goes south it can be a real tangled mess, especially in a small, tight-knit community, but the gospel applies here as well. This doesn’t mean being naïve, gullible, or being walked all over. The cross teaches us is that love is obedience from the heart. Obedience is scrupulously honest (Ps. 15:4), but love also speaks the truth, holds brothers accountable, and is willing to work long and hard to bring resolution and make things right, because Christ suffered for us. They will know we are Christ’s disciples not just because we get along but because we love one another even when by all human standards we shouldn’t (Jn. 13:35).

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The Power of Sabbath-Driven Work

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INTRODUCTION

In the beginning God created everything as sheer gift, and He made the man and the woman at the tail end of that project and gave them work to do. But the first full day that Adam and Eve enjoyed together was the seventh day, the day God rested from all of His labors (Gen. 2:1-3). While Adam and Eve had no sins to be justified for on that first Sabbath day, it still functions as a type of what God is like, what His grace is like, and where Christian work always comes from.

THE TEXT

If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it (Isaiah 58:13–14).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The prophet rebukes the people for fasting and afflicting themselves in superstitious ways, trying to manipulate God (Is. 58:3-5). The fast that God actually loves is the one in which heavy burdens are lifted, prisoners are set free, the hungry are fed, and the naked are clothed (Is. 58:6-7). This is how light breaks forth in a land, and these are the people God loves to listen to (Is. 58:8-10). God will be with those who seek to meet real needs, and He will make their bones fat and they will be like watered gardens, like springs of water to their communities (Is. 58:11). This is where Reformation comes from, and they will be known for it (Is. 58:12). They call the Sabbath a delight and delight themselves in the Lord (Is. 58:13-14).

FROM THE RIVER TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

In Ezekiel 47, Ezekiel sees water running out over the threshold of the temple eastward (Ez. 47:1). That water runs out past the city gates, and after about a thousand cubits, it was ankle deep (Ez. 47:3). After another thousand cubits, it came up to a man’s waist (Ez. 47:4). And after another thousand, a man would have to swim through it (Ez. 47:5). Ezekiel is then told that those waters flow out to the desert and into the sea for the healing and life of the whole world (Ez. 47:6-12). Where does the water come from? And what is that water? The first question is easier to answer because the text tells us: the water is coming from the altar (Ez. 47:1). But the answer to the second question is available from the context: What does the water do? It heals everything it touches and gives life and fruitfulness (Ez. 47:8-9). And Jesus seems to give us a conclusive answer: “He that believeth in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive…” (Jn. 7:38-39). Jesus (and His death and resurrection) is the altar of the New Covenant, and the living water is the Holy Spirit filling and spilling out of believers, like watered gardens.

WORK THAT IS JUSTIFIED BY FAITH

How does the Holy Spirit spill out of believers and refresh the land? Through joyful obedience and good works. But there is a massive difference between ascetic-driven good works and Sabbath-driven good works. One is a putrid pond; the other a life-giving stream. All people, but especially religious people, have a bad habit of trying to impress God and other people with “fasting” that is actually an elaborate charade of self-service (Is. 58:3, Mt. 6:16-18). There is a do-gooding spirit that wearies the doer and everyone around them and makes a spectacle that God completely ignores (Is. 58:4-5). This doesn’t mean God doesn’t want His people loosing bands of wickedness, lifting heavy burdens, setting captives free, feeding the hungry, or clothing the naked. But God wants that good work driven by delighting in Him and His rest (Is. 58:13-14). In fact, there is no other kind of good work. God only notices the work that is driven by delight in Him. And do not turn that delight into some grim duty.

Paul makes the same point in Titus, insisting that believers be ready for every good work, careful to maintain good works, learning to maintain good works that are needed to be fruitful in every way (Tit. 3:1, 8, 14). But right in the middle of those exhortations is the kindness and love of God our Savior Who, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, saved us, being justified by his grace, and made heirs of eternal life (Tit. 3:4-7). Justification by faith alone means that Christ’s obedience and death is received by God in our place as a free gift: our sins are imputed to Him and His righteous obedience is imputed to us, received by faith alone plus nothing (Gal. 3). Our job is to simply rest in it. But not only are we resting from our do-gooding to try to earn God’s favor or make up for our sins, we are actually resting in the fact that God has already accepted all of our works, our entire lives, for the sake of Christ alone (Eccl. 9:7, Tit. 3:5).

This means that all Christian work is done in joyful (restful) confidence since it is already accepted, already justified by His grace. This is why Christian work aims to loose burdens, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. And while this certainly can and does include various forms of emergency aid and sacrifice, it ordinarily includes infrastructures of labor, business, savings accounts, budgets, and free markets. When God made the world and welcomed the first people into it, they had nothing, but what God prepared for them was a world full of good and profitable work. Just because it’s organized and planned and thoughtful toward the long term, doesn’t make it any less sacrificial or generous. Frequently it is more sacrificial and generous.

TOO GLAD

One of the slanders of the Puritans is that they were grumpy Sabbatarians and fussy prudes. But the reality is almost entirely the opposite. C.S. Lewis writes: “Whatever they [puritans] were they were not sour, gloomy, or severe; nor did their enemies bring any such charge against them… For More, a Protestant was one ‘drunk on the new must of lewd lightness of mind and vain gladness of heart’. Luther, he said, had made converts precisely because ‘he spiced all the poison’ with ‘liberty’. Protestantism was not too grim, but too glad to be true… Even when we pass on… to Calvin himself we shall find an explicit rejection of that ‘uncivil and froward philosophy’ which ‘alloweth us in no use of creatures save that which is needful, and going about (as it were in envy) to take from us the lawful enjoyment of God’s blessings… When God created food, ‘He intended not only the supplying of our necessities but delight and merriment’ (hilaritas)” (English Literature in the 16th Century, 34-35). If Christians are to be accused of anything in their work it should be that we are excellent at everything we do but far too happy.

CONCLUSION

The center of Sabbath keeping is the glad worship of the Triune God on the Lord’s Day: remembering the New Creation and the Greater Exodus accomplished by Jesus. But that joy really should overflow into our homes and lives in joyful celebration of all His good gifts. Understood rightly and under God’s providential blessing, there is an ever-increasing cycle of gladness set off by regeneration. In Christ, we are ushered into a new creation, and whereas the Old Creation ended in a day of rest, the New Creation begins with rest. So we work out of our rest in Christ. Under God’s blessing, you can truly do more in six days than in seven. While grim fear, threats, and envy may make people scramble, only glad grace drives good work.

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