We’re looking this week at Psalm 127: Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.
How do we know if we’re working for God or not? How do we know if we are building with him, rather than for ourselves?
We need to know what God is working on. His big story, and where we fit into it.
Bible tells a story with four parts:
1. God created and cared for a good world, where we’d be in close personal relationship with him. IN harmony with world around us, providing needs, us working to sustain it. Were only asked to work with him, and not to try and be him.
2. We found ourselves longing to know what God knew, and rebelled against God in favour of working for ourselves. We separated ourselves from God, and now everything, including our work, is dysfunctional. Even our attempts to get back to God are broken.
3. God hasn’t given up on us, and in fact, became one of us in Jesus Christ in order to close that separation between us, and resolve the dysfunction.
4. He’s inviting us to join with him in recreating that original way of life, us and God in close personal relationship in harmony with our world, in something called his kingdom, moving towards a day when that is the only reality.
Good work is about participating in God’s ongoing creativity and cultivation…working for him, instead of putting our own goals first.
I had a friend studying Environmental Science. He was learning this kind of worldview (simplified to save space, but this was the gist): We are animals, wildly out of control like a virus, destroying the rest of nature, and the solution is to drive a hybrid, recyle, use less energy, the list goes on.
One day, he was finally crushed by the responsibility laid upon him, and said he felt he needed to change degrees. I asked why, and he said it was because I was a better recycler than he was! He felt he needed to save the world, and couldn’t…in fact I seemed to be doing better at it, and it wasn’t even my job or area of study.
The difference between us was that my environmentalism came from knowing and believing that God created, loves this world, and I should too. In fact, he put humans here to care for it, not as a virus. Of course, the dysfunction brought into our world by our rebellion against God (sin) is obvious in our many environmental issues – global warming, pollution, deforestation, etc. I can’t save it myself, but I know the one who can and is – God. I have a job to do, but also know it’s not in vain or overwhelming and futile, because I’m working for and with God.
We’ll see tomorrow some examples of how this good news story impacts other areas of work.
Question: Think about the example of a contractor – how would a home builder build in a consistent way with God’s story?
Then, watch the attached video of Kimberly’s story.
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Here's one of Jesus' most famous one-liners:
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Then he went on:
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:12-14 ESV)
We'll look first at the first part – what's known as the Golden Rule.
You may think this was nothing new. Haven't other teachers said similar things?
Rabbi Hillel was once approached by a young man who asked him to summarize the whole law while the inquirer stood on one foot. He simply said, "What is hateful to yourself do to no other.”
Socrates told a story of a Greek King: "Do not do to others the thing that makes you angry"
Confucius was once asked, if there is one word to sum up the law of life and he answered, "Reciprocity: What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
People will often repeat a similar idea today: you can do whatever you want as long as you aren’t hurting someone else.
If Jesus is just saying what others have always known, it seems strange for him to pair this saying with a story about a narrow gate, and how difficult it is to live this out, and how few people will manage to do it.
But in fact, Jesus isn't saying the same old thing, he says something very new!
When this concept appears in other traditions, it's always in negative – do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.
But Jesus says the positive: Go above and beyond. DO. He wants the motivations to be love, not fear. The object to be the other person, not self. The question to be, not how much I can get away with, but how much can I do for others.
That's what Jesus was all about.
We'll explore this more later this week.
Question: Many have said ‘Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself” – but only Jesus gives the positive – “do to others what you would want done to yourself”. If you were to apply each of these statements to a practical situation you’re facing, would they each lead you to different responses?
