Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Vocation and Transformation

I really like that song. That’s why we sing it several times. And I like particularly, of course, the notion of vocation and calling, which has been so important to this church the 20-plus years we’ve been around. “Thine is the loom, the forge, the mart, the wealth of land and sea. The worlds of science and of art revealed and ruled by thee.” We believe that based on our doctrine of creation and understanding of history.

Then as a result of believing that: “Let us prove our heavenly birth in all we do and know and claim the kingdoms of the earth for thee and not thy foe.” So very appropriate to the men’s discussion this morning. We’ll be talking today about vocation and work. And I think what I want to do is I’ll read in just a moment Hebrews 13:5 and 6 once more. And I’ll probably read it in context, but today is basically a topical sermon as opposed to an exegetical sermon of Hebrews.

What we’re doing is we’ve spent a number of sermons speaking about the implications of Hebrews 5 and 6. And today will probably be the last sermon on those two verses, and then we’ll probably move on next week to the next set of scriptures in Hebrews beginning at verse 7. But I think what I want to do is in addition to reading Hebrews 13, I’m going to spend some time a little later in the sermon in Proverbs 10:1-7.

So let me read both of those scriptures as sermon texts, focusing on Hebrews 13:5 and 6, but then going to Proverbs 10 for a lot of what we’ll be saying today. Hebrews 13:1-6. Please stand for the reading of God’s word, and I’ll read all six verses to put the last two in context.

“Let brotherly love continue. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels. Remember the prisoners as if chained with them, those who are mistreated, since you yourselves are in the body also. Marriage is honorable and must be kept pure among all, and the bed undefiled. But fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Let your conduct be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have, for he himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we may boldly say, ‘The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?’”

And then in Proverbs chapter 10, and you may want to mark this text or follow along in your Bibles. I’m going to read the first seven verses of Proverbs 10. We’ll be returning to this shortly in the sermon. Proverbs 10:1-7. And those of you familiar with the book of Proverbs, though this is where the proverbs start—1:9 is an introduction to the formal proverbs of Solomon. Verse one begins “the proverbs of Solomon.”

“A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother. Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death. The Lord will not allow the righteous soul to famish, but he casts away the desire of the wicked. He who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a wise son. He who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame. Blessings are on the head of the righteous, but violence covers the mouth of the wicked. The memory of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot.”

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we don’t want our names to rot. We want to have a long-term vision of who we are and our significance in this created order that you’ve placed us here for purposes, Lord God. We want to be these righteous ones that are spoken of here. We want to be the ones whose conduct, whose way, whose vocation is not marked out by covetousness, but rather serves the kingdom of our Savior. To that end, may your Holy Spirit empower today the preaching of the word and the hearing of it. Transform us, Lord God, in terms of our various vocations and callings, all under the general calling of the great servants that you have called us to be of the Lord Jesus. In his name we ask this. Amen.

Please be seated.

Okay. So work and vocation. The title of the sermon today is “Vocation and Transformation.” And vocation—we know in our website page of Reformation Covenant Church, we have—let’s see what do we have? We also strongly believe in our introductory documents written many years ago. We also strongly believe that a sense of vocational calling is extremely important for the Christian man, and I would say woman, but “man” here.

All legitimate employment—now not all employment is legitimate. It’s not legitimate to be involved in the pornography industry. That is not a calling from God. Don’t do it. It’s not legitimate to be involved in a calling that breaks the laws of the civil magistrate. But all legitimate employment should be seen as kingdom work, full-time Christian service.

Howard L. was mentioning in Sunday school class that after he kind of got, you know, realized where he was going and got serious about the faith, he thought, “Well, what should I do? I’ve got this degree in business. You know, maybe I should become a missionary or a pastor, I guess,” is what he said. You know, we tend to—the churches we came out of, the evangelical churches that we’re reformed out of now, they used to have at least a day when those kids that were going to the mission field after their high school or college graduation were prayed for. And those kids that were going to seminary were prayed for. And so there was a class system.

Now, I understand that. I’m not belittling those churches. Understand that this is not what they’re attempting to do. But what was portrayed in that was: there’s, you know, the great vote or the really good jobs you should do—missionary, pastor—and then the not so important stuff. You go off to the business world, you go off to manual labor, whatever it is. Those kids never prayed for. So, you know, we don’t want to do that.

Vocational calling. You know, early on we all watched that movie in this church, “Chariots of Fire.” Love the scene where the Scottish Presbyterian guy says, you know, you could peel a spud to the glory of God, right? So, no matter what calling we’re doing, it’s a calling from God. And the Puritans understood this and they talked about vocational calling. Now, vocational calling is redundant because to vocate means to speak. A vocation is a vocation—a calling because it’s vocated to you. It’s a calling. But you know, “vocational calling.” Okay, so it’s okay to use them together, I guess, because we don’t remember what “vocate” means. But a vocation is a calling, right? Because it’s something that’s related to vocat­ing, speaking.

So, vocational calling—no matter what you all do, and now I’m going to say limit the audience to those who are working, the men who are working and some of the women. This is kingdom work. It is full-time Christian service. This is off our web page. We still believe it. If we take the first man, Adam, as our model: wives are the perfect fitted helpers so that husbands might engage in God’s work at home, in their community, and in their vocation.

In a sense, now this I didn’t write this last week. I wrote this years ago. We wrote it. In a sense, jobs are not primarily means to support wives, but wives are part of God’s means to assist men’s vocational callings. I’m going to talk about that in a little bit so we can peel a spud to the glory of God.

We’re going to talk today about vocation. Hebrews 13 talks about your way. You know, the way that you walk in. And I think that there’s some very important pictures that—not only can you peel a spud to the glory of God, but peeling a spud for the right reasons wins the world for Jesus Christ. It’s what transforms the world. It’s what, as the song we just sang said, it’s what claims this kingdom for Christ.

Vocation, not preaching, not missionary work. All that’s important, but the scriptures tell us over and over again in some very dramatic language—which will get very didactic teaching language out of the Proverbs. But there’s some imagery that should be set up in our minds. And I’ve talked about these things before. Hopefully you remember them. If you didn’t listen, listen real good. Try to get a visual image in your heads of what’s going on.

For instance, here in Zechariah 1, the idea here is the rebuilding of the temple and the kingdom of God. You know, all this stuff is going to happen. “I raised my eyes and looked, and there was four horns. And I said to the angel who talked with me, ‘What are these?’ And he said, ‘These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem, the nations that cause them to be scattered.’”

A horn in the Bible is a picture of strength and power. Now, it could have a positive connotation. Jesus is kind of a horn, but here it’s a negative thing. It’s men who are power men, who do things by force and violence. Okay? It’s a culture of conquest that’s being described here as these horns of power, and they’ve scattered God’s people.

And so then the Lord showed me four craftsmen. Zechariah goes on to say, and I said, “What are these coming to do?” He said, “Well, these horns that scattered Judah, that no one could lift up his head—but the craftsmen, they’re coming to terrify them, to cast out the horns of the nations.”

So God gives us a visual imagery of power men with guns, and you know, horn power, and he gives us a visual. And now, as important as some of those guys can be in proper place, but a culture of power and conquest as opposed to a culture of service and vocation. Craftsmen—what does the spirit of God do when he empowers men in the Old Testament? He empowers them for craft work, to build the temple, to work in steel and metal and wood and all that stuff. Craftsmen, vocational men determine the future of the world. That’s what the image is being given to us here in Zechariah.

Now, this image is repeated in other places as well. Those who have the eyes to see—remember in 2 Kings 6:17, there’s an army around God’s people, and Elisha’s servant is scared. And Elisha gives him the ability to see what the eyes of sight, what really is true at the eyes of faith. He looks around at this army, which would cause us to be fearful of the horns of power, right? An army has come to conquer them. And Elisha gives him the ability to see with the eyes of faith. And he sees all over the place the angels, the hosts of God.

You see, I’m calling us today to see with the eyes of faith. It is not power men. It’s not the big lever pushers in the culture, in the context of our culture that determine the future. It’s the craftsmen. It’s the people that just do their normal work.

The end of the service in Jeremiah—when he tells the people you’re going to go into captivity, at the end of the worship service, I’m going to—I think I’ll read this a little later. I won’t read it now. But Jeremiah, what does he tell them? He says, “You’re going to Babylon for 70 years. Don’t waste your time thinking that you’re going to get out of there quick. Don’t waste your time trying to figure out how to immediately turn things around. What he tells them to do is to plant and build.”

I mean, what he had planned—that he had planted was uprooted. Now, the building had been torn down. But there in captivity, in a land where they don’t know how to do things—you know, it’s like one of those movie voices at the beginning of a movie: In a land ruled by the cruel and powerful, in a land of darkness, in a land removed from the temple of God. How can faith survive? Can faith survive? Can it do anything in this culture?

And lo, here comes Daniel, right? And what does Jeremiah say to do that Daniel did? He says, “Well, hey, get married. Give your daughters and sons in marriage. Do your work. Build, plant.” That’s vocational stuff. Do that stuff. Pray—or work rather—for the peace of the city.

Now, peace isn’t the absence of conflict. Work for the establishment of God in that culture through the simple acts of what you do day by day. Because in their peace, you shall find peace. He gave him a hopeful message that Babylon would be converted, and it was. If we look at Nebuchadnezzar as the head, and then what—when Babylon is ruled again by an evil man, he’s ripped out, and here comes Cyrus, a converted man.

Why do those things happen? They don’t happen because we have a strategy to take over the presidency. They don’t happen because we’re going to go force people to this or that. They don’t happen by people going off to be missionaries or pastors. It’s part of it. But they happen because of what you do when you get up in the morning and you engage in your vocation. You go off to the job place or you go to the office in your house or you start changing the diapers on the kids.

It’s those million little things that’ll happen in the world tomorrow that changes the world. It’s a million little things done in faithfulness to God that end up ruling a culture. You know, the great work of the medieval period, Christianizing the barbarians—that didn’t happen by growing a Christian culture from the top. They grew it up primarily just by doing the little things faithfully to God. And God says do those things, and power will flow to you.

Craftsmen, not horns of power, is what determines the future. There’s lots of pictures like this. You know, Jael—and Cisera, who kills the bad, wicked snake guy. Jael, what does she use? A tent peg. A picture of domesticity, not a rifle, you see. Not a big javelin or a machine gun or something. She kills him with a picture of domesticity. Domesticity rules.

Abimelech comes around—wicked guy. And how does he get killed? Well, he finally gets him, kind of commits suicide, but what kills him ultimately, you know, essentially, is this woman dropping an upper millstone on his head from the wall—a faithful woman, and she’s using an implement of work and vocation. An upper millstone was used to grind wheat to make bread, so a picture of vocation crushing the guy with the weapons. Same thing—the craftsman, you know, power to destroy the four horns, the tent peg over the guy with the javelin and the mighty armies.

You see, the pictures and the images in God’s word multiply like this. It’s the simple acts of domesticity and vocation that rule the world. You know, Shamgar uses an ox goad to kill 600 Philistines in Judges 3:31. An ox goad, which might have been used to plow, whatever it is, but it’s again a picture of domestic life, agrarian vocation they were called to.

So, you know, the images abound that tell us this stuff. There’s this relationship, and I’m talking about this because in Hebrews it says, “Let your way be not marked by covetousness. Don’t be covetous in your way.” What does a way mean? Well, it means the whole of your life really. But I think that I’ve given you some scriptures there that tie together, I think, vocation, covetousness, and vocation, defrauding people to sexual sin. We’ve talked about this before, but there’s this link in the scriptures and there’s a link here to talk about sexual purity and then your way.

And I think the emphasis should be seen as the way of your vocation, in your vocation. Now, it’s—I don’t want to limit it to that. It’s a broader term than that in Hebrews, but it is a vital part of that. In your vocation, don’t be covetous. Just like we read in Proverbs, right? Don’t labor to be rich. Don’t go after the things that God will easily take away.

So, the admonition in Hebrews to avoid covetousness—let me pronounce it again to do that as a reminder that God says the way we create heaven on earth. Remember, that’s what’s going on in this section of Hebrews. It matches that section where Jesus is Son of God, Son of Man, mediating the kingdom of God in the opening chapters of Hebrews.

The way that works out in our life is through, you know, establishing solid families and engaging in proper work. That’s what you do. The bulk of your time is spent in those two endeavors.

This is talking about work. I think now I wanted to mention again here the third point of the outline, the dominion mandate. I think that this needs to be said over and over again in the next couple hundred years as we try to rebuild Christian culture. There’s been such an attack on the family, and we have such a great desire to, you know, establish the family again.

The natural tendency, I think—well, the natural tendency of the culture is to denigrate family. But the natural tendency of a response to that, a Christian response, would be to elevate family above what it’s supposed to be. I mean, you get repeatedly the feeling in your own gut, I’m sure, and listen to other people that the reason they go to that workplace is to provide for their family first and foremost. That is not to be the reason.

Now, you know that if you don’t do that, you’re worse than an infidel. I mean, that is so obvious in scripture. You’re supposed to provide food for your family. But you don’t go to work to support a family. You have a family, a wife, so that you can go to work. That’s what it says. Adam has a vocation, work to do, before he has a wife. And then he gets the wife as a helpmate to assist him in his work.

We get it all mixed up. Our job is not to just sit back, relax, and have a great time on planet Earth. That’s part of it. We do that every Lord’s day. But our job is primarily to glorify God by transforming the world. God wants the world turned into his garden. He wants us to transform it. We’re to exercise dominion in the context of it. We’re to take, you know, that beautiful garden imagery and develop it in various ways and different applications of it all over the world.

So, vocation work, going out and turning out paper or, you know, fixing cars or whatever it is—you’ve heard this from me over and over—but remember, this is the job. That’s the task. We’ve been placed here to do that, not to have happy families. I don’t want to—I hope I’m not overstating the case. If I am, I’m doing it. I’m using exaggeration for effect. I love families. It’s important to have great families. But the wife is given so that you can exercise vocation. Okay?

So, let’s remember what it is we’re here to do. I believe Jesus tells us today that what we’re here to do is to go transform the world, to apply his truth to the loom, to the forge and the mart, to science and art and all that stuff. And God says families are important. We need a wife to do that well. And then we need to attend to those kids to the end that they can go do that too, right? So that they can go transform the world.

There’s a goal. It’s not just domesticity. A family is in motion. The father is pointed away from the family primarily to engage in work, and his wife is to help him to do that work, to get him fitted up properly. You know the old story of the woman who would put the armor on the knight, and her wife—the wife—would, and if she didn’t put it on properly, he’d go out there and get killed if it fell off. Well, in a very real sense, that’s what wives are called to do: to buttress their husbands up to go out and do that tough work they’ve got to do, particularly in the context of a culture that’s turned its back against Jesus so much.

So, a wife is given, and then you get these kids. Well, the idea of kids is not just to sit around and have a great time with them. If that’s your view of them, you’re going to feel real bad when they grow up and move away. You’re going to enter into the kind of melancholy and, you know, sentimentalism that our culture is known for, because our culture exalts the childhood state because our culture is slothful, lazy, and doesn’t want to exercise dominion.

Don’t be like that. That it’s hard. I’ve got kids, grandkids. It’s tough not to see them. It’s tough to see them grow up. There’s a very strange emotional set that goes along with that. But see, if we understand we’re given these kids so that the world can become better, you know, so that the world can go from glory to glory. That’s the purpose. You see, so let’s remember that in terms of work and vocation, the goal is the transformation of the world.

Now, it’s not as if you’re Atlas out there, with the world on your back. You got a small thing to do. You got to make it to work on time. You got to work. We’ll talk about some of that stuff. You got to change diapers. Your children will get diaper rashes and all that sort of stuff. That’s the stuff you do that changes the world. But that’s your purpose. You see, that’s what you’re doing: entering into vocation to transform the world, being buttressed for that vocation by the wife, and then raising up children to also engage the world and to transform it.

The work of Christ and the transformation. So, I have here—and I won’t look at this in any detail—but this again is a reminder that chapter 1, verses 5-18 of Hebrews is the section that matches this section. It’s the second day section. Second day is the firmament between heaven and earth. Jesus is the firmament. He’s what brings the heavenly pattern down to earth and empowers us to do those things.

And then matching that, the sixth section says, “Well, what does that mean?” Well, it means you have good relationships with your wife and it means you engage in work correctly. That’s what it means. And so what that means is that—if we understand that—then how we engage sexually with our wives and raising of families and how we engage in our work becomes quite important because it’s a task that’s related to the purposes of Christ in dying for our sins, that the kingdom of heaven might be fulfilled on earth, that God’s will in heaven might be done on earth.

This connection between the two—I mean, it says right in that section in Hebrews 2:13, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” Jesus is there, you know, working through his people to make all of his enemies his footstool, to transform the world. That’s what it’s about. He’s the Son of God, the Son of Man, to the end that all of his enemies might become now his footstool, him having completed his work of redeeming us.

And then in that very section, remember quoted from Psalm 8, you know, “You’ve made man to exercise dominion. You’ve set him over the works of your hands. You have put all things in subjection to his feet.” You see, that’s the matching section.

God through Christ has restored man to his original calling to exercise dominion over everything. And he makes it clear here. He says, “For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not under him.” Okay?

Now, he says, “We don’t see this now,” but how are we going to see it? It’s in the matching section in the section we’re in Hebrews: you know, Christian charity, Christian family, Christian vocation. That’s how it becomes manifest. So, there’s a direct link between the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, in mediating the kingdom to earth in the second section of Hebrews and directly stating that the purpose of this is that all things might be brought in subjection to Christ, that he’s over everything, and man himself, Psalm 8, has been restored to that dominion calling.

And so that’s the purpose of this work that it’s telling us about.

All right, work and tribute time. I talked about this last week. Again, these are wonderful images. And if we burn them home—burn them in our memory here, in our memory banks and in our hearts—it’ll go a long way toward helping us be empowered to do work in vocation. Because remember, the tithe is the New Testament equivalent of the tribute offering.

And the tribute offering was very important. Remember, it’s the only non-animal one. It’s grain, and it’s not raw grain. We’re not environmentalists. We’re not, you know, into the stewardship men or the caretaker mentality of the earth. It’s transformed grain. It’s got to be roasted, baked, made cupcakes. Something’s got to be done with it. You have to add value to it. It’s a picture of your vocation, is what it is.

The tithe and one implication of that tribute offering in the very presence of God in the worship service—in the old covenant and in the new covenant. One of the things it tells us is that you can peel a spud to the glory of God. It pleases him. You bring that spud here, then represented by money and maybe sometimes by things you bring in the Old Testament. It was represented by the grain that was cooked. You bring that peeled spud to him in worship, and it pleases him.

Leviticus 2:2 says God is pleased with this. He’s pleased with the tribute offering. You could peel a spud to the glory of God. Your work rather is acceptable. More than that, though, you don’t just peel a spud to the glory of God. There’s a sense in which that—if that’s all we think about leaving today, I’ve failed—because the purpose of peeling the spud is to transform the spud into something that’s more useful, right? You’re getting it ready to eat. You’re taking off the stuff that could poison somebody with those little tubers or things that grow off them—I don’t know what they are. But you’re adding value to it.

So we don’t just say—I don’t want you to leave here today and say “Well, I just want to be a good worker because God likes that and that’s the whole thing.” That is not the whole thing. He is pleased with you as your work transforms the world. So it’s not just having a good attitude toward your work and doing it unto God. If you’re doing it unto God, you’re doing it as unto his purposes. You believe that peeling that spud has an effect on the world.

So this is wonderful. Not only does God say your work is great and he’s pleased that you all worked this last week doing your various things you did. He’s telling you also that, you know what, you probably haven’t thought about it today. But when you change that diaper or when you, you know, fix that car or when you sold that all that paper or whatever it is, you changed the world, and you’re even used by me to transform the world, to take it from glory to glory.

So the tribute offering is a reminder of this whole view of what vocation is. It represents a transfigured, transformed creation. You know, it kind of—reconstruction is a good word. Rebuilding. Transformation, I think, is a little better because we don’t recapture what was in the past. We progress into the future. At the end of the book of Revelation, at the end of God’s Bible, there’s not a garden. There’s a garden that’s been transformed into a city. You see? So, there’s a transfiguration. There’s a going from glory to glory.

The world is glorious. Potatoes are cool, neat deals all on and of themselves. They’re what God made. But then he wants us to transform them further and to have the created order go from glory to glory. We want to offer back the world to God in an improved state because of our labors. And he finds this—uh, he finds this delightful, and he takes great pleasure in it.

We’re supposed to transform the world, make it better. We’re not supposed to bury our talents, right? We’re supposed to use them for the purpose of the kingdom. Progress, cultural progress, is the purpose of vocation. Not provision of just our basic needs. Not just doing it in a Christian way with a good attitude, but the purpose of our work is progress, transformation. Our work is eschatological. It has an eschatological, a future component to it.

Our calling by God is definitely eschatological. It’s to exercise dominion over the world. And so the tithe or the tribute offering, as I said last week, I think this is wonderful imagery. It begins your week. You consecrate your services to God. It empowers your week because now you know that what you’re doing is something that is going to be received back into the worship of God. So, you do it for him and his purposes. And it culminates your week or your work because you’re bringing the world back in a transfigured form.

So the tithe, the worship of the church, is the beginning, the blueprint, and the culmination of what we are in our vocations. It informs our vocation, empowers us for them, and then it culminates our vocation. We’re to the end that the whole world, at the end of the created order, our job is to hand the whole world to God and say, “By your grace, by your wonder, by your beauty, and by your love, this is now a more beautiful thing than you gave it to us as. And it’s not more beautiful in our eyes. It’s more beautiful because we’ve learned to see it through your eyes and we’ve transformed what you’ve given us to do.”

That’s what the tribute offering is all about. That’s what our work is all about. There are huge implications, wonderful pictures or imagery. The scriptures give us. And then the scriptures give us some very explicit teaching in terms of vocation. And that’s what I want to turn to now. And I’m going to—I’ve already done kind of number six. On your outlines for point number seven, “Work and Rule.” And this is—I want to—this is really the bulk of what I want to spend time on here: these sections from the Proverbs.

Okay, so first of all, turn to Proverbs 10:1-7. And you really kind of have to look there, I think this time, instead of just hearing what I have to say. What I’ve done here is there’s several places in the Proverbs. The culminating verse we’ll look at is the one you read responsively, that a man who is excellent at his work will stand before kings. But these other proverbs we’ll look at lead to that, and they talk about diligence. And all, except the 2:24, it’s a little different word there, but the rest of these will have the same word. And there are these verses that we know from the Proverbs, right, about diligent hand and all that stuff. But I want to put them in a little broader context and try to think of what these things mean. Then, what is our way to be? What is our vocation to be characterized by?

And I think—don’t know—but I kind of think that there is this here at the beginning of Solomon’s proverbs. These are not a miscellaneous collection of one-liners. There is a structure to this. And I believe that the first seven of these proverbs of Solomon flow through the creation sequence. This was a big part of the biblical revelation, and we’re learning to think that way more often. And Solomon, as the covenant king of Israel, certainly thought this way.

So for instance, in number one: “A wise son makes glad father, foolish son is the grief of his mother.” So we have this wisdom from God that is transcended to us, okay. And then so there’s this relationship to wisdom. And then in number two we have “Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death.” There’s a transformation of wisdom to our actions in culture. Wisdom is seen in reference to God. The synonym for it in the Proverbs is righteousness, which refers to actions in community.

So there’s a vertical aspect to the wisdom thing—son and father is a picture of that. And then there’s a horizontal aspect to the righteousness thing in the context of our culture.

Three: “The Lord will not allow the righteous to famine. So he casts but he casts away the desire of the wicked.” So the third day is the day when things grow up that we’re going to eat. And so there’s a reference to that.

Four: “He was a slack hand becomes poor. But the hand of the diligent makes rich.” So you know rule and authority is the fourth day. It’s the sun, moon, and stars, the things to rule the day and the night. And rulers are those who work well.

Five: “He who gathers in summer.” Now the fifth day, you know, there was the teeming things, an abundance. Now, you know, kind of a harvest sort of motif on the fifth day.

Six: “Blessings are on the head of the righteous. Violence covers the mouth of the wicked.” Sixth day, the day of the creation of man. And the two kinds of men are described here.

Then the seventh day is the eschatological day. And what happens in seven is about the future—whose memory is retained and which one rots. So there’s this movement, I think. And I think that gives me justification for looking at this whole section of seven and trying to draw some aspects of what it means to be a Christian worker, to engage in Christian vocation.

And number one: The Christian worker is informed by wisdom. We should be wise about the callings that we have gotten. Okay, that’s where it starts. Number one talks about wisdom and following. So to do your job tomorrow, you should try to increase in understanding of what it is, wisdom in terms of your task and calling.

So this is why a lot of people end up going to, you know, higher education. They need to obtain wisdom about their calling. Now you don’t always have to do it through formal education, but it must be a part of the training of our children for vocation, to teach them that there is a wisdom. Now, what’s wisdom? Wisdom is all about the world. It’s not some abstract, removed thing. Wisdom in the Bible is very concrete. And God says that there’s wisdom in the things of the world.

In Proverbs, you in order to know wisdom is you look at what’s around you and you evaluate it. It’s a godly mind. So wisdom has to do with this reality, the application of God’s truth to this reality. And so it’s certainly important in terms of our vocation. So number one: In order to enter into vocation as a Christian, you want to have wisdom about the particular calling you’re engaged with.

Secondly, you need to engage in the workplace with justice, right? Because that’s what it moves from—wisdom to justice. Righteousness, righteousness and justice are synonyms. So, a good worker will try to exhibit a justice toward his co-workers in the context of what you do. Are you just? Do you seek justice in the place of business you’re employed at? You see, that’s the second thing we’re supposed to do. We’re to be just in our dealings and whatever we have put our hand to do tomorrow. There should be a justice in it as well as an understanding of it, so we can be wise.

And then third, in verse four: “He who is a slack hand becomes poor.” So the diligent man is contrasted with the slack-handed man, right? So to be a good Christian worker, you should be busy. The slack hand is a hand that hangs down. Okay? And that means that Christian worker should be a guy whose hands are engaged. He’s not goofing around. He’s not walking slow. He’s not dragging things out. He’s got his hand engaged. He’s not slack-handed. He’s not limpest. He’s engaged with his hand. So, he has wisdom. He has justice in the context of his co-workers or who he has relationships with. He aims for that. And he’s busy. He puts his hand to the task.

Now, I would say that in addition to this—this putting our hand to the task—and you’ve heard this from me before, most of you—but it involves putting our heart to the task. The word for slothful that the early church used was a word that its translation means “without heart.” The slothful man has no heart for the task that he has been given by God, and that’s why his hand hangs slack.

Now he could be just lazy, but the point is laziness is the result of not having a proper heart to do the task that God wants you to do. So as you enter into work tomorrow, men primarily here, you should have a heart for the task. Yeah, you know, it may not be what you want to eventually. You may not understand how it contributes to the kingdom. You may not know anything. That’s okay.

Psalm 131: you may not have control over a thing or understanding of a thing, but you can trust that God is in control. And you can then go about saying, “If I don’t have a heart for the task, it’s sin.” Okay? If you get up tomorrow morning, you don’t thank God for your work and enter into your work with a heart saying, “This is what God has called me to do. I’m going to be busy at it,” it’s sin. Okay.

And if you do these things, then the scriptures say you’re going to have great stuff. So: wisdom, justice, busyness, and a heart attitude toward your job. The hand of the diligent makes rich. Now, this is an interesting word. This word “diligent.” It can mean like “quick.” The word can be translated as a threshing instrument, sharp. So, the word “diligent” means you are effective at a task, you’re sharp at it. A diligent man can attend to the task quickly and well, not hastily, but quickly. Okay, so number five here: you are quick. You have a speed that is applied to your task. Okay, that’s what the word means in its original form. It means to be speedy. Okay, so you got to have a heart, you got to be busy at work, and you got to be speedy at the particular task God has called you to do.

Six, you’ve got to be productive. The word doesn’t mean just speedy. It means you’re like a threshing sledge, right? You’re a machine that’s going through, and you know, you’re doing some work. You’re cutting the furrows. You’re separating the chaff from the wheat. You’re productive for your employer. You see? So, you got an energy level, a hard attitude toward it that results in the speed of doing things, but that has to also include that all that makes you a productive worker for your employer. Okay.

Children, you can think of all this stuff in terms of your tasks at home. This is where you learn it. Do you have a heart to do the dishes? Do you have a heart to sweep the floor? Are you quick to do it? Does your hand hang, your hands kind of hang slack, and you push the broom a little bit? No. That’s sin. Mom says you got to do it. Dad says you got to do it. That’s what God says. Jesus is saying sweep the floor.

And now remember what I just said: Jesus doesn’t give you tasks that are unimportant in life. When you sweep the floor for your mom, you are doing one of these million little things that will happen tomorrow that, either done faithfully, will move the world toward more glory for God, or done unfaithfully, will move us in the opposite direction. You have a hand in making manifest the kingdom and work of the Lord Jesus Christ by sweeping quickly, energetically, productively, right? You’re doing the task. Get a heart for it. Your hands are busy. And not only that, but the floor is clean afterwards. You see, that’s kind of the metaphor here.

Now, you got to have a little wisdom. Might be using the wrong broom for the task, right? And you want to be just—not sure how that applies to sweeping, but it probably does in some way. So, these are the attributes. Write these things down. I’ll try to make a list for next week, but you should be writing these down.

The first thing I said was wisdom. The second thing I said was justice. I came up with this long list. You can at least write them down. Number two is justice. Number three is busyness. You’re a busy worker. Number four is you have a hard attitude toward work. You’re a committed worker—we should say. I don’t know. You have a hard attitude for the task. Number five, based on this word “diligent,” you should be fast. It’s different than energetic. Your hands are busy, but now you’re also supposed to be fast in accomplishing your work. But this fastness has to be related to the next thing, the sixth attribute, which is being productive.

We have to get the floor clean. Not enough to have a lot of energy to do it quickly, to have a heart for doing it. You look at the end of the work and the floor is dirty. No, got to be productive. Okay?

“He who gathers in summer is a wise son. He who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.”

You have to be timely as a worker. You got to kind of, you know, timely. You have to understand, you know, the seasons of your vocation. Now, this isn’t quite as easy at home, but you men kind of know what I mean. There are busy times at work, slack times. There’s some times you really got to pour it on. There’s times you can relax and become a little meditative about your work. There’s a cycle to most work. And as a good worker, you got to kind of know the cycle and you got to know when it’s summer and when it’s harvest. You can’t be tempted to drop out of your productivity because of the blessings that are coming to the place of work.

Now, clearly this time aspect—I mean, it should go without saying, you should be timely in getting there. You know, what I said earlier is true about worship and work. It all starts here, doesn’t it? We can take all these things. I haven’t done this yet in my mind, but we can do this and apply it all to the liturgy. And where it begins is getting here on time, right? So, timeliness. If you’re late to work, it’s sin.

Now, maybe you’re providentially hindered and it’s not that kind of sin, but maybe you should have prepared better, right? If you just can’t get up in the morning, you know, be ashamed of that fact. I mean, not of the fact maybe that you’re a heavy sleeper, but you have not, as an adult man or woman, done something about it. You know, they used to have—those Rube Goldberg—well, you don’t know, but they used. There was a Rube Goldberg device—a very complicated thing to accomplish the simple task. And saw one cartoon once with this Rube Goldberg device in terms of getting the guy up in the morning. And you know, when the alarm clock went off, it would trigger this, that, and the other mechanism, and the bacon would start cooking and the coffee would start. So, he’d smell that, and then there was a big sledgehammer come down on his head to wake him up, you know, fine. So, he’s awake.

So, you, you know, I had a brother—one of my brothers—heavy sleeper. He had to take his alarm clock, put it in a couple of bags—not just one, a couple of bags—opposite side of the room. When it went off, he go over there, take it out of the first bag, and by the time he was taking it out of the second bag, he’d realize, “Oh, it’s the alarm clock. I got to get up.” So, it may be like that. So, it’s not a sin to be a heavy sleeper, but it is a sin not to be at work on time.

I mean, so timely is the seventh thing I’ve talked about here. Number seven: “The memory of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot.”

Well, I think what this tells me—that this statement about diligence is set right in the dead middle of these first seven. All seven can apply to it. And I think we can infer from that the Christian vocation—Christian vocation should have a long-term perspective to it. You’re working with a thought to the future. So, you know, the eighth characteristic of a Christian worker is that he’s future-oriented.

Again, you see, this is what the Lord’s day is all about. You know, we’re moving on. We’re moving ahead. We’re progressing. And in your labors, in your job, you should have a future orientation in terms of your vocation. Okay.

Now, let’s look at the next set of wisdom texts, which are found in Proverbs 12, not too far away. Verses 24 to 28 is the group that I’ve blocked out. And again, here there’s kind of a culminating verse in verse 28: “In the way of the righteous is life, and in its pathway there is no death.” So you know it’s got this eschatology to it.

I think there’s—these verses are linked together. They start in verse 24: “The hand of the diligent will rule, but the lazy man will be put to forced labor.”

Now I think we can take that in a descriptive way: that over time, if you are diligent and have a heart for your task and you’re productive and you’re quick and you have wisdom to do the job that you are supposed to do, you take whatever schooling you need—advanced education, continuing education—is a great thing because it’s really based on being wise about your work. And you’re trying to work in the context of justice with your co-workers. If you’re doing all these things, I think we can take this in a descriptive way. God will, you know, cream rises to the top, right?

But I think that beyond that—I mean, we could take a lot of these things as that God will give us these gifts. But I think that there’s also a prescriptive element to this: that it should be the goal of the diligent who are productive and speedy and energetic. It should be our goal to rule. And so that doesn’t mean, you know, head of the company, but it means that it should be our desire, particularly in our culture, to move into some degree of exercise of authority in our particular calling.

The lazy man will be put to forced labor. So, you know, probably always, but certainly at this stage in our economic affairs in the culture of our country, there are Christians and non-Christians out there, and the non-Christians predominate. And they’re not doing all these things that I’ve just described. They may be doing a couple three of them, but they’re not doing all of them together.

If you do all of them together, not only will God have you rise, but should be your goal. I believe if we’re going to, you know, if we’re going to transform the world, we can either just be content to work alongside of or even under the law, the slothful man who is destroying wealth instead of creating it. Or we can say, “Wait a minute, God wants this operation to be more efficient. God wants it more glorious. He wants the world changed more.” And we can seek to head toward management.

Now, I think that’s what is an implication, at least of this text. I don’t want to make anybody see—I’m real. I’m hesitant to say this because our pride always wants to run everybody’s lives, and it is good for man to be humbled and to be submissive. And the last thing I want is to encourage an attitude of a failure of submission to employers.

You know, there was a—I remember years ago Jim Jordan mentioned that some of the worst guys they’ve had in terms of being contentious spirits in the context of a local church or people that disturbed the peace of a local church were men who had engaged neither in group sports nor had been in the military. And why does he say that? Because people that engage in the military or sports have to learn submission. They got to learn to trust the coach and the fellow guys that they work or labor alongside of. And that’s good for a man.

So I don’t want to make you discontent about your boss. But I do think that the other ditch you can fall into is being content in the long term with that boss. You should want to exercise authority in the context of the workplace. And our children should be raised to realize that’s what they’re called to do ultimately. You know, in the providence of God, it may never happen. They may be the last rung on the totem pole. And that’s okay. But I think it should be our goal usually to orient our children to supervisory positions, to positions of influence and authority in the context of the workplace, because that’s what God wants to do. And I think that’s what we ought to do: align ourselves correctly.

So this ninth characteristic is to strive toward management—to strive toward management in the context of the workplace.

And now this one isn’t something you can do necessarily, but if you’re an employer, you can do this. The next verse: “Anxiety in the heart of man cause depression. A good work makes it glad. A good word rather makes it glad.”

The Christian worker, the good Christian worker, is an encouraged worker, right? I mean, again, I’m taking these and saying there’s some connection between these verses. They’re not little isolated things there that we’re supposed to completely wrap apart from each other. This is true in a general sense. It’s true in the specific sense of the diligent man who will rule. He needs encouragement toward that end. He needs to have a good word spoken, right?

And so if you have the opportunity to do that, you know, either on a horizontal level or in a vertical level to an employer, employee of yours, it’s a very important task of management to understand, you know, that depressed workers are not good workers. And what men need to avoid depression is a good word to them to make their heart glad. No, it can’t be a bunch of baloney. They’re going to see through that. It can’t be for your own economic purposes. It should be because you really value your employee and you value his healthy state of mind, and you want him to be a good dominion guy. And in order for that to happen, you want to speak good words to him of wisdom and gladness.

“The righteous should choose his friends carefully.”

So the eleventh characteristic of the godly Christian worker is he’s a team player. He has relationships. Now, he wants to be on the right team. Now, you know, sometimes you don’t have control over this. And you know, my son-in-law, one of them, works in the automobile industry. Real hard to put together a godly group of friends or team at that particular kind of vocation. For some reason, it’s just prone to bad guys. But it puts this labor in the context of relationship. So, I think that the good Christian worker is a team worker. He’s a team player.

Number twelve: So important. “The lazy man does by the way that he should choose his friends carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray.”

You see, if you’re going to be around a place like my son-in-law works or some of your places and everybody’s wicked around you, it’s—you have to be more on top of it, of evaluating its effect upon you. And sometimes you’re just going to have to leave and go someplace else. So because, you know, bad company corrupts good morals.

A Christian employee or worker is a team worker, and he wants a good team.

Next, he adds value. “The lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting, but diligence is man’s precious possession.”

And there’s two things here. One: the Christian worker adds value to what God gives him. You’re out there hunting. You get the deer, the rabbit, and the sloth guy just eats it raw. But the Christian man, the diligent man, adds value. It becomes tastier when you cook it. Really does. So I think the idea here is that we’re called to add value. And of course, this is essential to understanding our whole purpose for being here. We are value-added implementers. That’s what we are. God wants a value-added product at the end of the day from planet Earth. And that’s why you’re here: to add value to it and to transform it.

And so the Christian worker—I list this as a separate—this is the thirteenth characteristic. He adds value to what the product is that he’s working with. He adds value.

And then fourteen, and I’m going to stop with this. I said maybe next week we move on. Stop with this one. Number fourteen is verse 28: “In the way of righteousness…” I’m sorry, still at verse 27: “But diligence is man’s precious possession.”

Diligence is man’s precious possession. The ability to add value. And so the fourteenth characteristic here—maybe this is—I guess this is the thirteenth. Adding value is twelve. I’ll make a list next week of the ones we’ve covered. But the thirteenth one here is: listen, a Christian worker esteems, holds in high regard his own diligence. He sees it as a possession granted graciously by God, but it’s something that is his. He has diligence, and he sees it as a very precious possession.

Now man, if you go to work tomorrow and you just remember this last one, “Oh, this Christian perspective of what it means to work and enter into vocation is supposed to be a most precious possession to me.” You see, then you’re going to, well, what is it? “Oh, yeah. I got to add value and I should be fast and productive and timely and just. I should know my tasks that I’m putting my hand to do. I should have wisdom, all this stuff.” And all that will be summed up with you when you go into work tomorrow and say, “My diligence is a precious possession.”

The description of who I am as a Christian vocationally called guy is supposed to be really important to me. If you had, you know, the Hope Diamond, you would keep it safe. You would attend to it. You would make sure that it didn’t, you know, somehow get hurt. Well, that’s what you’re supposed to do. Count this diligence, this view of what it means to be a godly Christian worker. Count that as like a Hope Diamond. It is your precious possession.

We’ll finish with the rest of these next week. But let me close by going back to the original illustration of the horns and the craftsman. The ultimate craftsman, the one who works in wood and brings about the new world, is the one who hung on that wood, right? He’s the craftsman. His father was a carpenter, as it turns out. He’s the craftsman. Ultimately, our craft abilities, our working, must be under the great craftsman, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The worst thing we could do is try to attend to all these moral virtues and not see them somehow as related to the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t want to raise good-working children. We want to raise good-working Christian children. The tribute offering could not be offered by itself. It was always offered in relationship first to purification, but then directly in terms of the ascension offering. We’re transformed so that we can transform the world. But the ascension offering was bloody, and the purification was bloody.

Cain wanted to be a good worker guy and bring his work to God apart from the blood of Jesus Christ. And God cursed him because of that. No way. That’s bad. Well, he didn’t curse him. He cursed him after he doesn’t respond to the correction. So ultimately, the Christian worker, more than anything else, knows that he walks into that workplace tomorrow under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, under the great craftsman. You’re called to be a craftsman under the one who is diligent to the point of death and suffering the pains of hell for us. This is the one who oversees and provides all of his energetic, skillful working qualities to us. This is what transforms the world.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for the wonderful truths of your scriptures as they relate to our life, our common, ordinary things—set in the alarm clock tomorrow morning and getting dressed in our mind and our hearts as well as in our clothes to go to work. Bless us, Father. We’re a people that want to honor you. We want to transform this world, Father. We want to attain to positions of influence, not for our own pride or glory, but rather that we might continue to glorify this world that you’ve given us.

We want to come back next week with representations of the work that we’ve done, work that has transformed this world, all under the auspices of the Lord Jesus Christ who died that we might live. We thank you for him, and we thank you for assuring us today that he indeed holds the future in his hand.

In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.