Hi. Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan your host for the Daily Challenges. It’s Wednesday. It’s the day we take the topic we’ve been exploring all week. We try to see how the bible’s words on it challenge and transform our thinking. This week we’re talking about how following Jesus resets everything including our views of work. We saw that yesterday in the bible by exploring a challenging passage one where Paul was writing to the church in a city called Colossae and he spoke directly to those who were bondservants, kind of a mixture of employees and slaves in our thinking today anyway, and those who owned them.

The jest of what he was telling them was to act as if they were not wholly owned. Even though a slave was wholly owned by somebody else they were to act as if God owned them and to remember that those who thought they owned them on paper were their earthly masters not their real ones. The same way those who own slaves were to treat them with dignity and respect as human beings owned by God, not owned by another human being.

Challenging stuff for us to wrestle with because of the ways these passages have been abused and used to condone terrible oppressive slavery, but also the way that it applies to our world today it’s not always easy to see. That was my question for you yesterday to try to figure out how this actually connected with our world of employment in the 21st century. I think it’s pretty true though to say that slavery is alive and well. It’s alive and well for real when people are enslaved for sex trafficking and things like that or when they’re paid extremely low wages overseas and oppressed and we don’t even know it. We’re just buying products and we don’t know where they came from and who made it under what kind of conditions. Those are examples of modern day slavery.

Another form maybe a bit closer to home we can be slaves to work. We can be slaves to our own work yes we can. There are some signs that Christian author and speaker Timothy Keller tells us to watch out for. One thing to watch for is if our work becomes our sense of security in this life. If we don’t have a sense of what we would do if we lost our job. If everything underneath us would crumble. If we would have no foundation in life. If we feel that our work and our income is supposed to insulate us from life’s tragedies then we need to be careful. Tim Keller says that he gets asked often by those in high level jobs and positions how terrible things can happen to them. People say life wasn’t supposed to be like this. He says I have never heard a working class person say that. So many working class and poor people simply know that life is full of challenge and difficulty and tragedy and yet those with resources tend to think implicitly or explicitly that wealth and work can insulate us from life’s reality.

When our work becomes our sense of security we need to pay attention to what kind of work we’re really pursuing. What our real goal in life is. If it is something eternal, unchanging and safe and solid and secure or whether it’s something that simply has that appearance. The other thing that Tim Keller says to look out for is when our work begins to give us our sense of identity and confidence in life. He spoke about people he knew who because of their success in one area of life would pontificate at dinner parties about every other area of life about which they knew nothing. Their sense of confidence and authority in their work made them think that the whole of their being was completely knowledgeable about everything and completely confident and completely correct. We take our work one aspect of our lives and we make it the whole of our identity and that’s very dangerous.

The other way our sense of identity and confidence in ourselves can get all out of whack because of our work is when we start to think that we are our own saviors. That our work whatever we are a part of whether it’s our work ourselves or our work as a human race can somehow save all that we’ve done wrong. That we can completely fix our environment and the destruction we’ve caused. That we can completely find ways to be at peace with one another and end all wars. When we think that we eradicate all disease. When we come up with these things that we think we can work hard enough to achieve what we’re doing is we’re putting ourselves in the place of God.

We have thousands of years of human experience to show that we cannot save ourselves. Every time we get close to eradicating polio some other country has an outbreak. It’s tenacious. It’s like sin.  Sin is tenacious as well when we think we’re going to eradicate war. When we think we’re going to eradicate famine. When we think we’re going to eradicate any of these things that enslave us in this life we’re starting to elevate our work to the level of God and we’re saying that we can work hard enough. We can be good enough, perfect enough to save ourselves and it’s a very distorted view of our work.

If you’ve taken our Christianity 101 course you’ll recognize some of those things I just said as what we call the consequences of sin in Christianity 101. Sin messes with our sense of identity. It messes with our self-worth. It pollutes our lives. I can go on, but when we take work and we elevate it to God level that’s actually sin. Remember we defined sin last week as when we take something in this world even a good thing and we pretend it is our ultimate good and that’s ultimately very bad for us. We do that with work a lot. In the passage we explored yesterday I see three things that Paul specifically advises the workers, the bondservants to do given their present situation.

The first one he says is to keep working. He doesn’t tell them to run away. He doesn’t tell them to quit. He tells them to keep working. He doesn’t want followers of Jesus to withdraw from every area of life except those that have somehow been blessed and considered holy. He wants followers of Jesus to be in every area of life working for his Kingdom so he wants them to stay where they are. Now we live in a different world where slavery is not a reality for most of us who are watching this video and in that case we actually do have the option of leaving. We just want to check our motives though.

Are we leaving because we are enslaved to something dangerous and we need to escape it or are we leaving simply because we’re tired, lazy, bored, running away from something that’s difficult. We need to check our motives, but I definitely want to make sure that this isn’t seen as a message saying slaves who are oppressed, who are being violently abused need to stay where they are because God says they should stay where they are and bless people somehow. This isn’t meant to be used as justification for that. It is talking about a very different mode of slavery than what we would see around the world today or what we’ve seen in the last few centuries. We talked about that more on Tuesday.

The second thing that Paul said the bondservants should do is they should work well. They should not just be people pleaser’s, but they should actually genuinely work hard, work to do good work. The reason for that is that God created us to do good work. He said work was good. He gave humans jobs to do. He said it was good. God himself did work by creating the world. It was seen as work in balance with rest. What He wants us to do through the words of Paul and the Colossians is continue to work and continue to work well. Work as if those we work for are human beings who need us. Serve them as real human beings. Do our jobs in ways that show the dignity that’s in every human being that makes the world a better place that builds the Kingdom of God. Whenever we can find work that is consistent with God’s values for the Kingdom that’s a good thing or whenever we can do our work in ways consistent with God’s Kingdom that’s a good thing too.

Finally, he wants the bondservants to work for God to recognize they are not wholly owned by human beings. They are wholly owned by God and to work as if they work for God to see a higher purpose in everything they do. A higher identity in them than just servants. They are created in the image of God. He wants the bondservants to start living in God’s Kingdom even as they live in the broken Kingdom of this world. Even as they live in a world that uses slavery for all sorts of terrible things He wants them to start practicing the Kingdom of God even if they can’t escape that. He wants them to remember they are created for a different kind of world than the broken one we live in.

Imagine how that would impact the life of an employee today. What difference would we see when they’re working well and working for God. How would we work differently? Would the gossip change? Would the griping change? Would the stealing change? Would the laziness change? It sure would.

As a challenge if we’re going to be followers of Jesus in the working world we need to watch ourselves and say am I working or am I just going through the motions. Am I working well? Am I working to care for others and to be generous even to my boss? Even when they don’t deserve it. Even when they use and abuse me. Finally am I working for God? Do I recognize that everything I do here is for my true owner God who created me and not for my employer, not for anyone else. This is between me and God and so I’ll work well because God created work and it’s good for me to do good work. You can see how connected all three of these things are. To continue working, working well, working for God.

My question for you today is to think about how this looks in your work. What aspect of your work have you stopped doing that you need to start again? What aspect of your work have you not been doing well? How can you do it for God? Think through some of the aspects of your work and where that might apply. I gave some examples earlier. Maybe those apply to you. Maybe different ones apply, but think through the aspects of your work where you have been less than attuned to God’s Kingdom. Don’t do that alone. It’s going to be hard so do it with a friend. Share this with somebody you know from the train or bus or from work or from the neighborhood. Make sure you’re sharing these challenges. Start a little discussion group where you watch the videos wherever you are through the week and when you do come together in person you have something to discuss. It could be the start of a great friendship. Have a great discussion. Don’t forget to read the bible on sync and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Read the Bible in Sync Today

Ryan Sim - March 18, 2014

Tuesday - Study It - Reset Nature

Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I'm Ryan your host of the Daily Challenges. Here we are in nature. And that's because this week we're studying how following Jesus resets our views of nature, the natural world around us. And what did Jesus say directly about nature? Well not a lot. There's a time where he kind of admired the lilies of the field and the birds. Other times he calmed nature like calming a storm. He clearly had control over nature. Jesus also withdrew to natural places when he needed a quiet moment of prayer. He clearly enjoyed the opportunity to have undistracted time with His Father. And nature was the place to do that. It doesn't seem Jesus had anything against nature. There was a time He cursed a fig tree. But that was very much a symbolic act, showing how the people of Israel, the tree that they represented and the temple that was their connection to God were starting to wither away. And that their time was coming to an end. That was what he was showing with cursing the fig tree. It wasn't that he hated trees and thought they had no place in the natural world that He'd created. So to really get a good sense of what Christian faith has to say about nature, we have to look to one of Jesus' first followers, one of the first church leaders, who was named Paul. When he wrote a letter to the church that was meeting in Rome, called the Letter to the Romans, here's what he had to say that's really instructive about the importance of the natural world and how it fits into the big story that we keep studying here at Redeem the Commute. "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." Well there's a tendency in our modern world and in some world religions to really think of nature as being perfect. To think that nature is this perfect and uncorrupted, innocent reality. And that we humans are a bit of a virus or a parasite within it. I think what Paul makes clear, though, in this Letter to the Romans is that there is something wrong with the natural world around us. It's not as it should be. And that's not just a functional thing where we have simply abused it and done nothing else wrong. He says it's very much connected to human corruption and rebellion against God. That our human corruption and rebellion against God has led to the corruption of nature and that this wasn't the fault of nature itself. He uses a lot of really passive language there, to say that nature was subjected to something. And it became futile. He's using some very submissive language there to say this happened to nature. And it happened to nature because of the human rebellion against God, but it started with a man named Adam. The first man, Adam, rebelled against God. And this had an impact, not just on his own life, but on all of humanity to follow and then on all of creation around him. There's something wrong with us and now there's something wrong with the world too. But Paul also makes clear that creation is waiting for something and so is humanity. We're waiting for redemption. Redemption is a great word. That's why we named our church Redeemer Church and our main outreach Redeem the Commute. We love the word redeem. Because redeem suggests that there's great value in something that's not being realized right now. I like to think of a gift card. It's a piece of plastic that holds within it some great value. You could have a $200 gift card contained within a piece of plastic. And what you have to do is you have to go to the store in order to redeem its value, in order to release all that value. In order to release all that value, in order to turn it into a DVD player or a computer, or whatever it is. You have to release all that pent up potential. In the same way we humans were created for something amazing and wonderful, as part of an amazing and wonderful creation. God had great plans for us. God created us for a relationship with Him, created us for a relationship with one another and with the natural world around us. There is huge and wonderful potential in the human race. And yet because of our rebellion against God, our sin, a lot of that potential is not being realized right now. It's all locked up and needs to be redeemed. And that's why Paul says we humans and the natural world with us are waiting to be redeemed. When humans are redeemed, he says we'll be the sons of God. It'll be clear that we were created to be the children of God. And even though we've rebelled against God and pushed ourselves out of His life, He still wants to adopt us back into His family. Creation itself, the natural world around us, the animals, the plants, the structure of the world itself, Paul says is also waiting for our redemption so it too can be redeemed. We humans got ourselves into this mess by rebelling against God using our free will to push Him out of our lives. And so this is our problem to fix. And that's why since a first Adam, a first man, broke the world, a second Adam, a second man, who represents all of humanity, needs to fix it. And that's what God has done in coming to earth as Jesus Christ. What Adam broke, Jesus fixed. There's great hope in this, and it's not just a spiritual kind of idea about what might happen in the future somewhere else. What Paul is doing is very much rooting the reality of our sin and our redemption that needs to follow in this physical world. This isn't just a spiritual thing that, oh, someday our hearts are going to change and that's it. No, he says our hearts will change and our whole body will change and the world around us will change when we are redeemed by Jesus Christ. This is very much connected: the physical world, the spiritual world. There is no disconnect. The Kingdom of Heaven isn't some place far off in the clouds disconnected from the natural world here. The natural world isn't something to be hated or thrown away or disposed. It's very much connected to God's plan for the world, for God's plan called the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven. And followers of Jesus, having been reset by Jesus Christ, are invited to start practicing that now, to start practicing the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. As Jesus said, "as it is in heaven." So we're supposed to practice a little bit of heaven right here in the physical world. What does that look like? Well, we'll see later this week what that might look like in practice. And in the meantime I've got a question for you to think about and hopefully discuss with others who you know are also watching these videos every day. Or maybe you can invite some friends to do that as well, to start watching the videos on the same days as you. And when you do come together and have a spare moment, you can discuss what you've been learning. Question: What about this passage gives you hope? Have you ever seen the natural world groaning? Does this give you hope that someday that groaning ends? Have a great discussion. I'll see you tomorrow.

From Series: "Reset"

When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again? The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate. What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives: Reset: Goals Reset: Time Reset: Money Reset: Work Reset: Body & Food Reset: Sex & Marriage Reset: Family Reset: Compassion Reset: Nature Reset: Society Reset: Death Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.

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