Dennis Tuuri

I love that song. I always try to use it whenever we can fit it into the liturgy and certainly appropriately for our discussions of vocation and transformation. I ought to probably find out the circumstances of the writing of that song. You know, when it says met for one brief hour of prayer, you know, hour means a season. Not necessarily 60 minutes.

Today’s sermon scripture is found in Proverbs 13:1-6 and Proverbs 21:1-5.

So please stand for the reading of those two pieces of scripture. Beginning at Proverbs 13, verse 1:

A wise son heeds his father’s instruction but a scorner does not listen to rebuke. A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth, but the soul of the unfaithful feeds on violence. He who guards his tongue preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction. The soul of a lazy man desires and has nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich. A righteous man hates lying, but a wicked man is loathed and comes to shame. Righteousness guards him whose way is blameless, but wickedness overthrows the sinner.

And then Proverbs 21:1-5, beginning at verse one: The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord. Like the rivers of water, he turns it wherever he wishes. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. A haughty look, a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked are sin. The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty surely to poverty.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you that this word is unlike any other book we read. It is meant to be transformative to us as the Holy Spirit comes to us and ministers to us the things of our Savior and teaches us of him. We thank you for his work and on the basis of his work, Lord God, we ask that you would bless us now in this time of hearing his word to us. Illuminate our hearts to understand this word and transform our hearts and make us joyful, eager, and delightful in our tasks and vocations you’ve given us to do. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I was at the prayer meeting Thursday morning. This last Thursday was the National Day of Prayer. And here in Oregon City, the churches organize a prayer meeting every year for business people and government officials as well as pastors. This year was at the Abernathy Center right down the hill from us here. Kings Academy sang at the conclusion of that event, and excellent comments from the people that heard them sing.

I wasn’t there quite on time, so I missed there was an Oregon City high school group that sang as well. And I don’t know about their singing, but I understand the appearances were quite different from one group to the other. Kings Academy kids had on boys’ white shirts, ties, black slacks, girls white and black, so that was good. And they sang Psalm 42, “As the Deer” about to falter, wonderfully, and I think also “Sacred Head Now Wounded,” but excellent job. Roseanne did a wonderful job of leading them and it was good.

It was an interesting meeting—prayer breakfast for several reasons. There was also a worship service Thursday night at the Oregon City High School, a joint worship service of the churches in Oregon City. And they had a little card for that worship service that sort of outlined the structure of the service—praying for things. And the three emphases according to this card were to pray for my child, pray for my marriage, and pray for my nation. So kind of domestic appeal as the basis of the prayer meeting.

The way the prayer breakfast worked was there were different people that would talk for maybe five minutes, give emphases in prayer that they would ask for. And then at each of the tables where there was maybe eight or ten people you would have prayer at the table along the ways that the prayer had been guided by the leaders. So it’s guided prayer. And one of those people that spoke was a woman named Amber—I don’t remember her last name—who’s the head of the Chamber of Commerce in Oregon City. And she was very good, and I thought this would be interesting to hear what she has to say. And you know, because all these people are not necessarily Christians—it’s a little bit of a civic religion kind of thing—but you know she quoted from the book of James about wisdom and stuff, and seemed to have a—seemed to speak like a Christian. And then she asked for four specific prayer requests in terms of Oregon City businesses.

They were: profitability—businesses be profitable. Two, that people would kind of think in terms of buying locally and supporting local businesses. Three, that the city would provide adequate infrastructure for the development of businesses in Oregon City. And four, there’s a couple of large development projects going on at Clackamas Cove and at the old landfill of Oregon City. And these will sort of set the tenor for a lot of the development of the city. So she asked that people would pray for wisdom and skill in implementing these two large development projects because they’re so important in the life of the city.

I thought those are great prayer requests and completely in fitting with what we spoke about last week from this pulpit and with what God tells us our job here on earth is to do. But it was interesting to me that at the table I was at—least the other—there was a I think two pastors and another Christian leader, and none of them prayed about those things. And actually there was a pastor also who after the woman spoke—you know, would also kind of conclude the prayer at the end. He’s a good guy, I like him. But you know what he said was, “Well, you know, we know it’s the eternal things that count.” And in a way, I’m sure it wasn’t his intent, but it’s sort of like he took away the emphasis of her prayers, which were not eternal things in the way he was thinking of them, but here and now things—profitability, etc.

And at our table, it seemed like the other pastors didn’t know how or weren’t inclined to pray for those specific things. I did. And I got a report back from another table as well. The pastors didn’t really pray for those things.

Why? Well, because you see, we’re in the midst of a Christian culture that sees those things as not all that important. The important things are the eternal things. The important thing is not whether business is profitable or not. It’s the sort of relationships that happen. Do you act like a Christian? You know, that’s the sort of things that are important to most of the Christian church.

I was listening to another meeting this last week on tape, and a man who I know is called vocationally in a particular area—the discussion was over ministries. What’s a ministry, what should receive the tithe or not, and all this sort of stuff. And it’s not anybody here locally. This man said, well, you know, we all have our tentmaking professions, including himself and everybody else at the church he was talking about. So it appears that he thinks of his vocation that he’s called to full-time as a tentmaking profession.

And by that I think what Christians mean when they use that phrase is, you know, Paul made tents to support his income, support himself, only to preach the gospel because he didn’t want to charge the people. He had a right to get paid from the gospel. But I think that people don’t think about the fact that he was making tents, right? He was involved with construction of homes, even while he was constructing the homes of these churches, and he was called. His primary vocation was to be an evangelist, a pastor, an apostle.

And these men who regard themselves—if you’re here today and you work a 40-hour-a-week job and you think of it as a tentmaking deal—I would want to dissuade you of that notion. What you’re doing is not unimportant. It’s not for the purpose of supporting a family, and that’s what’s really important. It’s not for the purpose just of witnessing to people so they can get to heaven, and that’s what it’s all about. No, I believe your calling is to transform the world through your particular vocation and profession. This is what I said last week. And I don’t know, to me it just seems like the obvious teaching of scripture, but I guess it’s not necessarily to everybody.

And it’s kind of hard to think of it that way because, you know, we may change ideas and doctrines and perspectives. But you know, if you change clothes, eventually, if you put on a uniform, it might start to transform who you are. But it’s not immediate. And I think an awful lot of us still have some hangovers of the sort of culture that we’ve come out of in a Christian sense. And of course, we’re still in the midst of that culture. And we think of these, you know, spiritual versus worldly kind of stuff. And vocation is placed in that worldly aspect for the most part, and it just isn’t as important. Or maybe it doesn’t have any importance at all except for providing, you know, support for ministers—your work so you can tithe so I can preach the gospel, ’cause I’m the important guy. See, that’s just all wrong.

God says that my purpose of preaching, I think, is to equip you to do the important work of transforming the world on the other five or six days of the week. God expects us at the end of time not to hand back a mess, saying, “Well, gosh, I guess this house has become kind of dirty and messed up and the vines are broken down and the walls are broken down, and better come rapture us out of this.” Oh no. He expects us to hand back a world better than we got it. He expected Adam to transform the world. And so, you know, it’s been an interesting week to think about this in light of some of these things that have happened to me at this prayer meeting and this tape I was listening to as well.

You know, when we sing at the conclusion of during the offertory today, “Rise Up, Oh Men of God,” have done with lesser things, give heart and soul and mind and strength to serve the King of Kings. Bring in the day of—what does that mean? I hope you don’t think what that means is, “Gee, I shouldn’t spend so much time thinking and working on, you know, writing code for a program or helping lawyers resolve disputes or changing diapers—if you’re a woman—or raising a child, or trying to work with your husband for teenage kids, trying to help them get pointed in the right direction.” I hope you don’t see those things as the lesser things. I don’t believe they are.

When we say “have done with lesser things,” maybe some of the things you could be thinking about: Now, recreation is okay, but if you spend a lot of time playing video games, that’s a lesser thing. It’s not transforming the world. Now, recreation is good. I’m not speaking against that, but that’s the kind of lesser things. Or if you’re doing your job without a sense of trust of vocation and calling from God, and don’t understand or haven’t thought about the transformative powers of labor, then maybe you are doing a lesser thing. But it’s not the thing you’re doing that’s lesser. It’s the way you’re doing it.

And so I—the purpose of these two sermons is to strongly encourage you to think of your work as transformative to the world. You’re making the world better. This is what God has called us to do. And it doesn’t happen with big—

Here’s another thing that’s kind of interesting about a couple of prayer meetings I’ve been at recently. Christians perpetually want to pray about the super thing. So the big emphasis at the last Oregon City pastors’ prayer meeting was getting rid of the meth problem in all of Portland. And so you know, through four or five pastors and a couple of other people are going to pray and we’re going to get rid of the meth problem, you know, and we want to do the super thing, the big thing. We want to do something big for Jesus, right?

At the same prayer meeting I was at Thursday morning, you know, it’s an encouraging tale. I understand it in that perspective. But a guy was reading—one of the pastors that led one of the prayers—about this man who prayed consistently for six months. Well, if you pray for six months consistently, his friend said, change will happen. Well, “I’m going to pray about Africa.” Well, a little too big. Narrow it a little bit. “Nigeria.” Okay. So the man prays for Nigeria for six months. Maybe you know the story. And I guess the providence of God, he ends up going to orphanages over there, providing better living conditions. He meets the president of Nigeria, convinces him to let all the political prisoners go free, and all Nigeria’s changed because this guy consistently prayed for six months for something—Nigeria.

What’s the message? Not maybe not implied. What the guy’s trying to say is it’s really important you pray and God answers prayers. That’s good. But if you’re sitting there, you may be thinking, “I prayed for my son for three years every day. Didn’t work for me.” You see? And what you—the other thing you get is you should be praying for something really big. It’s that super thing again, right?

Now, super things are good and sometimes God does them. But I’m convinced that the only reason God does those things is to show us the importance of the ordinary things that he empowers us to do.

So, you know, today we’re picking up where we left off last week. We’re talking about vocation and its transformative powers. And you know, if you work well, the proverbs that we read responsibly say if you do an excellent job, you’re going to rule and have authority in the context of the land. So, you know, we sat around in our men’s discussion this morning, and why, you know, we’re not in control. That’s right. We’re the tail in this culture. We are not the head. Now, you know, from one perspective, we’re always the head because God is moving in terms of his church. But if the curses of Deuteronomy 28 mean anything, then we have to understand we are not the head. Amen.

Yeah. So, how do we get there? Well, we don’t get there just by going and shouting at some legislator or instructing him on the way it should be run. I think we get there primarily through vocation. It’s excellence in vocation that gives us the privilege of standing before our governors. You do know that men who really do well in their work end up running companies and stuff. They talk to rulers all the time. They have a lot to do with the way a vision of a city or a county or a state is developed. So, it’s vocation.

Now, you young kids—you know, there’s one of those, you know, question things you got to fill in the blanks. For you younger kids, there’s this coloring sheet. It’s a little different this time—two activities going on here are not good. Put X’s through them. And color the things which show us taking care of creation. Well, you know what you should know, and you don’t have to ask your parents, is the two are this little boy down here cleaning things up, and this little girl up here planting things. Well, that’s what we’re supposed to do. Those were the two jobs Adam was given, right? Take care of it—guard the garden from filth and things that get in the way of productivity—and then nurture the garden. Make it more beautiful. Go from glory to glory. If I didn’t make it as beautiful as I can make it, God says, “That’s your job.” And at the end of it, when you give the world back to me, you’re going to say, “Praise you, Lord God, because you accomplished this too.” Which is true. But this is what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be making things better.

I feel really good today because yesterday, my lovely wife, the day before had done a lot of work cleaning up our garage. Can be has an annual day where they come around and will pick up anything you put out on the street. So, I don’t know what—it’s not a good testimony to me, but I always have a lot of stuff for them to pick up. Whole block practically is filled with stuff out of my house. I don’t know why that is, but we went through the garage and the rafters, getting things, and we cleaned up. You know, part of dominion work is ripping things apart and throwing them away, right? Getting rid of that stuff. You’re bringing order, peace. What’s peace? God’s order, his presence in your world. That was vocational work for yesterday. That was transformative work. My house looks a lot better now than it was before I got going on the task. That was no less spiritual than the preparation I put into this sermon last week and this week. Do you understand what I’m saying? I hope you can get this.

If you don’t, think about it. Talk to some of the other elders. Talk to some of the other men. Try to figure out, you know, what I am talking about here. If it’s hard for you to understand, you really shouldn’t be. Maybe it’s hard for you to believe or to think this way because you’ve been trained in other churches perhaps to think in a completely different way. But I’m sure this is what the scriptures say.

Zechariah 1, right? The craftsman, the culture of production, okay? The culture of making things and producing things and transforming the world in the long term defeats the culture of power. There are makers and there are takers. And Christians are called to be makers. You know, if you look at the Muslim religion, it was a taker culture. They would go in and take what other cultures had been developed and then claim it as their own. But they were not a maker culture. They were not a culture of conquest through physical might, not a culture of dominion through production.

And that’s what Zechariah implies, which is a reminder of—and all these other images: the tent peg, domesticity, building a house—is what God is calling us to do in our homes, in the church, and in the world: a house for God’s name. Peter Leithart’s excellent—his name in the survey of the Old Testament, his book of that—domesticity. And not just domesticity, building houses, tent pegs, crushes a skull, upper millstones. You know, upper millstones—the sound, the productivity. We’ll talk about that toward the end of the sermon. Ox, goats, were long pointed sticks to prod the ox. You could keep plowing the field. Production, you see. Vocation is what transforms the world. It’s what defeats the Cain-uras of our day, right? The men of conquest in the long term are overturned by the men of dominion in work.

And as I said last week, do not think you work to support a wife and kids. That is not what you’re supposed to do. Now it is in the sense of the secondary aspect. You’re supposed to support your wife and kids. But that wife is for the work that you’ve been called to do, usually in a family. She may do work too. It’s okay. But the purpose of Eve was to empower Adam for his task. And the purpose of raising kids, and why I can say that changing a diaper transforms the world, is you are preparing more Adams to go out there and make the world more beautiful, to transform it, to build wonderful cities, to have neat gardens all over the world, to take a desert and make it bloom.

It only happens because the hand of man is applied to those things in the power and spirit of God, by his grace. And those men don’t get out there. God in his providence doesn’t birth men into the world at twenty years of age ready to go. He relies on women primarily to nurture them through those first couple of years, and then the husband and wife together. And that’s why changing a diaper changes the world—because you are preparing a young man to go out and transform the world, or you’re preparing a young woman to assist a man, typically, in transforming the world, or some young women who are out there transforming the world through work. That’s what you do. And that’s why I can say that changing a diaper is transformative. It moves the world ahead.

God says that Jesus has come to transform everything. Everything’s in subjection to him. I talk to George, and we were driving around coming back from a meeting. “What is it she did today? Well, I wrote code. I wrote code for one of my biggest clients, a lawyer.” Okay. “So, how does that change the world?” Well, in order to make the world more beautiful, people have to resolve disputes and laws have to be written and then applied by lawyers. And so, George’s client is assisting the transforming of the world into beauty by helping men to figure out how to resolve disputes that get in the way of productivity. And that’s what lawyers are supposed to do. But hopefully that’s what George’s client does. But that’s the idea.

You know, again, I always think of Mike, you know, selling car parts. In order to transform the world, we got to get around. God says that the little isolated stay-at-home thing is no longer the way culture is going to move. It progresses from a tribal form to a kingdom to an empire in the Old Testament. And that’s the model. For that to happen, we have to have transportation. In order for you to come to work and do my thing, or in order for one of you to go to work and do your thing, you got to have a car that runs. Is there something more basic to transforming the world than being able to get men to where they’ve got to go to transform it? No, of course not.

When Mike sells a car part, he can say, “Praise God, I’m helping some guy get to work, right? To transform the world, to make it more beautiful and better.”

Cooking: you feed your husband not just, you know, energy materials, but delicious stuff to remind him that this is what it’s supposed to look like out there when I’m done with my job. Beautiful, tasty, kind of artistically pleasing things. You see, it all works together.

Cleaning: you’ve got to, you know, tear out the old to establish the new. To transform the world means God doesn’t want it, you know, a mess. He wants it transformed, clean, orderly, etc. And again, when the husband comes home, the home is kind of a model for what he’s doing out there in the workplace. He applies that same degree of order. He wants to get rid of bramble and dirty things around the world or his little piece of it. He wants to keep his office clean. And that’s a picture—that what he’s doing is creating order, peace, and stability in the context of the world.

So you see, all this stuff is all about transforming the world around us. This is our way that’s talked about in Hebrews. The way is one of work.

So we’ve talked—we’ve talked about the first I don’t know—twenty or so characteristics, and we’re going to finish it up here quickly now. There’s not a whole lot left. But for you young people, what does God want us to do? He wants us to work so that the world will be better. Men and women, believe that. It’s what God’s word says.

God gave Adam Eve. Why? So he’d be a better worker. Now I know that’s not—that’s not the whole of it. Companionship, delightfulness, relationships, being able to sacrifice for the other person. Again, though, Adam’s kind of being trained in terms of how he’ll exercise vocation by sacrificing for his wife, and her for him. He’s going to go out there and sacrificially serve the world. So, but the original idea: she’s a helpmate. She’s given so he’d be a better worker.

Three, on your kids’ outline: the tribute offering was cooked grain. Again, the tribute is the tax you owe the king. A joyful thing you give to God in the Old Testament was one of the offerings, one of the ways to approach God. You couldn’t approach him empty-handedly. And so, the tribute offering—but it had to be processed stuff. You couldn’t just grow grain or go find a grain field and bring that raw. That’s the environmentalist mentality. That’s the sluggard’s way. The created state in which things is, as opposed to what we all we can do is mess it up.

I used to believe that. I remember years ago, long ago, walking around thinking, “I just hate being a person. People make this place messy.” It was snowing where I was, and there was like exhaust from cars that made the snow kind of look not good. And oh, I just hate my humanity, you see. Well, that’s horrible. You know, that’s now fallen humanity does make the world kind of messy. And there’s a sense in which work creates a little bit of some disorder as well before you can clean it all up. But the idea is the tribute offering says it’s good and holy to process the world and bring it back better than originally, grew. Its best state, I think, is that transformed state. It becomes really tasty when you put it into a donut, all right? As opposed to just chewing on grain.

Tribute offering: cooked grain. The tribute offering was a symbol, then, of man’s work. Work, work, work. Work is what this is about—to be wise workers. Many people go to college. And this comes from chapter ten of Proverbs. Just a moment. Material rearrange just a little bit on your outline.

Now, what I’ve done this week is I’ve filled in these characteristics of what I think make for a good worker. So, on your outline, number one, under what makes for a good worker, is wisdom. Wisdom for the tasks he’s called to do, which will bring joy to others. Verse one of that section of scripture—the Proverbs. The formal Proverbs of Solomon begin with that. And this is—you know, I believe that there’s a progression of seven commandments in 10:1-7, which really all can be seen as having to do with man’s creative original reason he was created.

So in order to be a good worker, you got to be wise. And we tend to abstract that out and just think of it as kind of wise, you know, spiritual, and stuff. But there’s no reason not to think of that in very concrete terms. Words. And in fact, Proverbs over and over again tells us it’s very concrete stuff he’s talking about. And so there’s there’s lots of reasons to say that whether it’s through an apprenticeship program, college, self-study—in order to be a good worker, you have to understand the task you’re putting your hand to do. You have to develop and continue to mature in wisdom.

So kids, on your outline there, you know, God calls some people to go to college so that they’ll be better workers.

And then continuing in the review, then let’s move this here.

Wisdom.

Two, seeking justice, righteousness in the workplace.

Three, you have to have busy hands instead of slack hands. So kids, busy. Your hands should be busy to be a good worker.

Four, they’re busy because you have a heart for the task. And this is one of the big problems with the state of the Christian church. It doesn’t really—it’s moved away from having a heart and an understanding of vocation. And so men are not encouraged to have this heart for the tasks they’re given to do.

If what you’re doing is just providing for a living, well, that doesn’t take a whole lot. And if all you’re supposed to do is witness to your fellow employees, that doesn’t take a whole lot either. You don’t got to, you know, your task level is going to be fairly minimal because you don’t have a task—or you don’t have a heart, rather—for really doing great things, being an excellent worker, except maybe it buttresses your testimony to your fellow worker. But yeah, you’re a Calvinist, you know. If he believes, he believes. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t. So, we tend not to have a heart that will maintain diligence in business.

And so, we—I think Christians tend to be somewhat slothful. You know, you have these Christian phone directories, and you see people at Christian businesses, and they have a fish sign on them. You know, early on I was real excited, glad you, but then I found out that an awful lot of times the people that advertise that way are substandard, or they’re slothful, or they’re deceptive. I’m sorry, I’d have to tell you this. Many of you probably had the same experience if you’re very old—that just because somebody calls themselves a Christian business doesn’t mean they’re better. And frequently it means they’re worse.

And the rationale is, “Well, they just don’t have a heart for it. It’s not that important. You know what a great job they do.” Well, it is important—not just for witness sake, but it’s the essence of what we do for work.

Energy level and heart, speed in performing the task. This word “diligent” that forms the basis for the citations in chapter 10, 12, 13, and 21 in Proverbs—it’s the same word. Chapter 22 is different. We’ll talk about that at the end. But the same word “diligent” here has a connotation of being speedy and being productive—cutting and being productive, been speedy in doing tasks as well. Not hasty, but you have to have a degree of speed.

Productivity in one’s work. You know, it’s not enough just to sweep the floor. You got to keep it clean. You got to do a good job in your work.

A sense of timeliness. You know, if you’re not timely to work, you don’t understand the seasons—when it’s time to sleep, get up, the daily seasons, and beyond that the timeliness of the seasonal pattern God puts work through—you’re not going to be a very effective worker for your employer. Rather, you’re not going to be a good employee.

Sense of timeliness, diligence, and getting up, and then understanding the timely fashions, the seasons of a business and your particular vocation’s movement.

Future orientation. You know, you don’t work for the present, you work for the future. You have that future orientation. You be a good worker for somebody. They should know you’re in it for the long term. And you’re seeking blessing for that company and that guy. You’re seeking God’s transformative powers in the world long term—a long-term perspective.

And then in chapter 12:24-28, I put here on your outlines today the context. So there’s a big long section of Proverbs beginning at 10:1, going to about the middle of chapter 22. Big long section. And these are the Proverbs of Solomon. And then in 22 we have a different collection—the words of the wise. Probably not original to Solomon. So maybe Solomon and some other guys. Words of the wise. This big long section—really, think commentators typically divide it up into two sections because they see at the beginning of chapter 13 what they saw at the beginning of chapter 10. So it’s like a new section starts there. So chapter 12 concludes the first half of the first section of Solomon’s Proverbs. Okay. So it’s sort of from one perspective it sort of sums it up.

And what we saw from chapter 12 last week was you had to have management skills relative to other people. So, how do you do that? You’re supposed to help others. Kids, it’s not enough just to be a good worker. You’re supposed to encourage your brothers and sisters to be better workers, too. Okay? And how do you do that? You better do what mom told you to do. Oh, oh, you’re not sweeping hard enough. You’re not doing good. No. How you do that is to encourage their hearts, right? Because Proverbs 12 says that, you know, an encouraged heart makes for a good worker. And a depressed person, he doesn’t do very good.

So the way you encourage children, other children, other teens, other fellow workers to do better work—one of the most important ways are kind words, encouraging words. And indeed, good employers know that to have good employees, they have to be encouraged, rewarded, and encourage with your words. Kind words from the part of functional superiors, or even people that are working with each other in a team, kind words helps them to do a better job.

You got to be a team player. Now, we talked about this last week. You know, your friendships, your associations are a given at work. And you got to understand the connection with your team. And you got to try hard to be part of a team of people that are not sinful, because then they’ll start to affect you in sinful ways. So, a team player.

In order to be a good worker, you got to add value. Remember, this is the summation of this section of Proverbs. What’s it all about? It’s all about taking the garden and making it better. It’s all about going out to the desert or some other part of the world and making it like that garden. It’s all about adding value to what God gives you. And hunting—he gives you what you got. You’re supposed to take it and add value to it.

You should think of this as an employer, employee. Do you add value to the product of that company? Is your job adding value? Are you trying to add value to your own position? See, in a summary fashion, this concludes—includes the first half of these Solomon’s Proverbs—and it says the whole purpose of the book: wisdom and righteousness is to bring you not to be slothful, but to add value. And then the end result of that is you are a lifegiver. You’re a fragrance of life, in all its fullness and blessings—you’re a lifegiver.

An employee, you know, think of yourself with the work you do: are you bringing added value, and are you blessing the company with life, with profitability, okay? Like was asked for by the head of the chamber of commerce. Wonderful thing for her to ask for.

All right. Now, we move into chapter 13. And we didn’t look at this last week. This is where we left off. So, turn to chapter 13, the one we just read. And we’ll begin to work through those again—or for the first time, actually.

Chapter 13. Now again, there’s a context for this. If you understood what I just said, then 13—if 12 was the end of the first section, then 13 kind of begins the next section. And you can see why, right? In verse one: “A wise son heeds his father’s instructions, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.”

And remember that—that’s kind of the wise son and the father thing is how 10:1 read as well. And that’s why people see here a header to the second larger collection of Solomon’s Proverbs in the second half of this. So it’s a again—it’s not an isolated text. It’s a header text, and it brings us into something. And it’s interesting. I don’t know if you noticed this as we read through these. But you know, this is all about from one perspective mounds. Now begins with hearing instructions. So it’s ears. But your father is speaking using his mouth. Man eats well by the fruit of his lips. Guarding the mouth. Opening wide lips shall have destruction. Desiring and having nothing. Lying—see use of the tongue improperly. And then the summary statement of his way in verse six: “Righteousness guards him whose way is blameless.”

I think—and I cannot prove this to you today or probably even convince you part way—but I think that this whole chapter 13 is an echo of the garden, and it’s an echo of eating the wrong thing, of opening wide the mouth to take what was not properly theirs to take yet, okay. And you know, just kind of a side comment—it’s not important for what we’re going to talk about in terms of being a good worker. But I do like to give you a little sense of the context for some of these proverbs. And I think if you think of it that way, it sort of makes more sense that this is the dominant theme.

When I’ve taught through Proverbs before, I’ve had to think about, you know, the original version of Kings Academy—a class that I taught in Proverbs World History. Provided me lots of time to think specifically, take a whole year meeting—I don’t remember how often it was—and it gave me the opportunity and drove me to think about these Proverbs in their context.

Well, anyway, so what do we have in terms of how—what instruction is brought to us here in terms of how to be a good worker? Well, a good worker is submissive. That’s the bold term. He’s submissive in actions and attitudes. And I say in actions and attitudes because we got this messed up idea of submission. Submission is just saluting and then walking away grumbling, doing the task. That is not submission.

Submission isn’t just doing what the husband says or what the parents say or what the boss says. Submission desires to follow the lead of those that the Lord God has placed in authority, whether they’re Christians or not. That’s submission. Submission is in attitude as much as in actions. Now, if you just got the great attitude and don’t follow, don’t obey, that’s not good either. But the point is submissiveness is what’s going on here.

So, “A wise son heeds his father’s instructions. A scoffer doesn’t listen to rebuke.” So, to heed instruction—now the father-son relationship here is a king to Israel as well, right? This isn’t just Solomon writing to one of his sons. He tells us in the introduction of Proverbs, this is for all kinds of people. So, don’t think of this as being domestic. Again, I mean, it has that implication. Surely it’s about that. But you go way wrong. You miss, you know, the purpose of the introduction of the book if you narrow all these things down to a father-son relationship, for instance. This is Solomon speaking to Israel and speaking to all kinds of different people in different states. He tells us in the opening few verses, so don’t just reduce us to the family.

That’s one of the problems we have in churches like ours that are trying to recover a sense of biblical family, as we tend to get really myopic in the way we look at some of these texts.

So, I think that the broader thing here is you certainly have father and son. Certainly, sons are exhorted to hear their father’s instruction. But beyond that, if you’re going to be a good employee, you better listen to what your employer is trying to teach you to do. You see, listen to the instructions. Go out of your way to try to figure out what is the task and what am I doing that could be done better according to my boss? That’s what a good employer-employee is, you see. Heed instruction. That’s good across the whole realm of functional superior and inferior relationships—to heed the instruction of the people that God have brought into the context of your life.

So submissive in actions and attitude, right? What happens, kids, if you do this? If you really, you know, are a good worker for your mom and dad—you work hard, you listen to what they’re telling you. What happens to dad? He’s happy. He’s got joy, right? Got the joy of Jesus down in his heart because you’re acting like Jesus. You’re listening to the Father. See? And he knows that he’s raising a godly son. He’s going to make a good worker. He’s going to change the world. He’s going to transform the world. So, he’s joyful. Joy is what results from that.

Two, not only does he submit—he’s actually teachable as well to the parent. So he’s listening submissively, but to the end that he would indeed receive this instruction. He doesn’t just heed what his father says, he heeds specifically the instruction. So not only is he submissive in attitudes and actions to his father’s just commands, but secondly, he’s a learner. He’s teachable. And man, if you’re not teachable at your task, no matter how long you are there, you’re not a good employee. And you’re not going to be—as you’re not doing as good a job of being your little day-by-day action part in transforming the world.

The super thing is done through tiny little things. And the little thing you need to have going on in your vocation, man, is to be teachable, a learner. Your ears should be wide open, right? Shama—the great Shama here, O Israel, open your ears. You know, the Bible says that his God’s people have circumcised ears. They’re open. They don’t have a membrane over them anymore. It’s been taken out. They’ve had carved, dug out ears—open, wide open, big ears, listening ears, you know, to listen to your father. Teachable.

He hears rebukes. That’s verse 1. A scoffer doesn’t listen to rebuke. Not only are you supposed to have a submissive attitude and actions, obeying—not only are you supposed to be teachable—but when your boss corrects you, you should hear it. In fact, we know if you’ve been here during the sermons I spoke on rebuke, we’re supposed to be loving rebuke. We’re supposed to be desiring it. And to be a good employee, you have to be able to take rebuke.

Now, you know, it may not be right, maybe wrong, all that stuff. I understand all that. But in general, you want to hear a rebuke. You want to be able to, you know, come to correction. If your boss needs to rebuke you for something, don’t let pride rear its ugly head. You’re going to be less of a worker, less able, and you’ll be reduced in your transformative powers for the world if you’re not hearing rebukes.

So those are ear things, right? Submissive, learning, hearing rebukes.

And then we go to explicitly for you now—tongue things. Number 18 in verse two: “A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth.” So a good worker, he’s going to eat well. He’s going to be rewarded for his labor. Neighbors. But what is it? He’s going to eat well by the fruitfulness of his tongue. Your tongue should add value to your company. Your tongue should be fruitful. You should be able to instruct others and encourage people, produce positive blessings in the workplace through the proper use of your tongue. A good worker has a fruitful tongue in the context of the workplace.

Now, not only does he have a fruitful tongue positively speaking, but then he also is supposed to guard his mouth on the other side of it. He’s to have a guarded tongue. Your tongue is to be fruitful. It’s not good never to say anything in the context of your work. No, that’s not good because you’re supposed to have a fruitful tongue. But on the other hand, you have to be careful of what kind of fruit it is. This is all garden imagery. There’s good fruit and bad fruit. You got to guard your mouth from opening wide too often and speaking bad things.

If all you’re doing—well, in fact, if you ever do this—jimber stamber at your boss and kind of snip at him and, you know, carp a little bit. Don’t do it. Make a commitment to Christ today to be God-honoring in your speech, to guard your tongue.

What happened to Adam when he opened that mouth too wide and ate that apple? Everything falls apart. Everything falls apart on him. I think that’s kind of lying behind this is: “A man who opens wide his lips has a scripture.” This in contradiction to “him who guards his mouth.”

So, we don’t want to open wide our—we want to guard our tongues. Okay? So, a good worker guards his tongue in the context of the workplace.

And then in verse 5, he has an honest tongue. Verse four, of course, is the center of these verses where the kind of the culmination in terms of work. Again, “the lazy man desires, has nothing. The diligent one is what is made rich.” We spoke about diligence before, so I’m not going to repeat that there. But that’s why we’re skipping over four. It would be diligence. But five: “A righteous man hates lying.”

You should hate deception in the workplace. Other people lying and you lying. Fruitful tongue, guarded tongue, honest tongue. No deceit coming out of your tongue. And this is very hard, of course. This section of Proverbs heading up this whole section of Solomon’s Proverbs—this is what, you know, we can think about in terms of James. You know, the tongue is really hard to do. Do this stuff well, is it not? And yet it has such great opportunities for bringing a proper sense of vocation, fulfilling your vocation, the proper use of your tongue.

And so very important to focus on this, to have an honest tongue, hating lying.

And then verse 6 is a summary statement: “Righteousness guards him whose way is blameless.” There’s that way again. And see, we read that verse and we think of our private lives, don’t we? Our way. But the way is mostly for the man, at least, and for many women—some women—the way is mostly what you’re doing in terms of vocation, what you’re doing in terms of the workplace, right? That’s your way. And so this says that our way should be and can be blameless. This word blameless has the context of the sense of integrity, completeness, no blemish. You see? And you think, “Well, how could I possibly be blameless? I’m a Calvinist. I know I’m a sinner. Sin kind of gets into everything. I believe in total depravity.” Well, from one perspective, all that’s true, and you’re not blameless in the ultimate sense. But if you think about it, which of the Ten Commandments did you break last week? I mean, I know that there are implications from them we can think about, but did you commit adultery? Did you steal from somebody? Did you spit on your parents or call them names, treat them less than honorably?

Well, maybe some of you kids did, but probably you adults didn’t. It’s not hard. It’s not that difficult to be from one perspective blameless. And the Bible talks about people, you know, lots of people that are blameless. And we know that can’t mean they’re morally perfect. It can’t mean that they’re doing everything right with the right motivation. But look, we can’t let, you know, that get in our way of these texts that say, “You know, if you want to be blessed, if you want to be guarded, you got to have your basic conduct at your work should be blameless.”

When you get your evaluation at the end of the year, there shouldn’t be a lot of black marks on there, right? And usually there won’t be if you’re a Christian and doing your job right. So, if you’re going to be a good worker, you have to shoot to have integrity in the workplace and to not have any black marks against you. “Yeah, I stole just once. I mean, I was honest most every day. I just stole from the till once.” No, say blameless.

I had a conversation with a young man this week about something, and you know, “Well, I don’t do this very often.” Well, you know, probably if you tell your wife you don’t sleep around very often, it’s not getting very far in terms of an excuse. You know, not everything is on that level, of course. But, you know, the idea is you’re supposed to be a good worker every day for your boss. You’re supposed to put in an honest day’s work. You’re supposed to have integrity in the workplace. And you’re supposed to be basically blameless at the end of the day.

You’re supposed to be going—you go home and you should look back and say, “Man, if I did something wrong, you correct it. Then you take away that black mark.” And if you—but mostly you should think, “I just haven’t done all that much wrong today. I’ve tried to do what’s right.” Okay.

Now we turn to chapter 21:1-5. And this is still in the first section of Solomon’s formal Proverbs, but chapter 21 is moving into the kingly section. Okay. So here’s the way it works. Proverbs, several times throughout it, has this movement from being a child and attaining vocation to then getting married and then ruling in the gate. There’s a progression of vocation and family and rule. And this is a major movement of the whole book. But each of the individual sections has the same movement as well.

So in chapters 10 through 22 in this one long section, it sort of starts with very simple things. As you get to the end, the proverbs get a little more complicated, and you’ve moved from being a son and going into vocation and having a family to then kingliness. Kings are not mentioned, you know, for I don’t know—maybe eight, nine, ten chapters—up until about chapter 20, I think, or 21, I don’t remember exactly. But so this is in that last little part of Solomon’s first collection. And so it’s kingly stuff. But again, we attain kingly rule in the context of being good workers. Okay.

So what does 21 tell us about what a good worker is?

The king’s heart’s in the hand of the Lord. Summary statement at the beginning. So we talk about kings—like the rivers of water, he turns it wherever he wishes. So how do we interact with this king? Okay. Well, verse two: “Every way of a man. So again we can think vocation. Is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.”

So verse two: A man has to know his limitations. You know, his boss is his superior. In the movie, he says, “I didn’t have to pull my gun out of the holster for twenty years on the force.” And Eastwood’s response is, “Well, a man’s got to know his limitations. You can’t shoot that thing.” Well, in the Bible, this is true, you see. Selfdeception is a real problem. “The heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it?” We can’t. And a good worker—good at anything else as well—he’s going to understand his limitations.

Everything you do makes sense to you. That doesn’t mean it’s all right. You need people around you. So, a good worker knows his limitations. He knows that at the workplace he will be tempted. He’ll be tempted to give way to selfdeception about his own worthiness, his own abilities, his own way—he’s doing something is, “Oh, he’s going to look better, right?” Somebody else comes along, “Why don’t you do it this way?” Well, no, why would I do that? I’ve done it this way. You see? So, a good worker has to be humble enough to know his own limitations. This is kind of linked to the whole teachable thing. But it’s teachable because we know that what we do is right in our own eyes. And the Lord God is going to weigh this stuff.

Number three: He’s a people person. He knows the horizontal tests of his vertical relationships. Well, that’s not explicitly stated in verse two, but I think it’s implied. How does God weigh your heart? If you have selfdeception—if it always is going to look right to you what you did—how is the Lord God going to communicate to you? He—you’re going to understand your relationship to God through others. You see? Your way looks right. But the Lord is going to weigh you and evaluate you not through some mystical bolt out of the blue way. Sometimes he’ll do that, but more often than not—ninety-five percent of the time—the Lord evaluates you through other people.

See? So you have to understand the importance of having good people skills, to hear from them, to seek counsel from them. You see? This is the thing that bothers me most about young men who’ve grown up in this church for twenty years, hearing over and over again, “Seek counsel, seek counsel, seek counsel, seek counsel.” They don’t do it. And if they don’t learn to do it, they will not be good workers. And what they have to understand is that all always looks right to them. Of course, it does. But the Lord evaluates you, and he evaluates you through other people.

The horizontal relationships you have with people test the vertical. You’ve heard me say this a hundred times if you’ve been here very long. But in John, you know, “How can you say you love God whom you haven’t seen if you don’t love your neighbor whom you have seen?” That is a very significant verse. A very significant verse, because it says that, “Hey, don’t tell me you love me unless you’re loving other people.” The horizontal relationships are tests of the vertical relationship. It’s so easy if it’s just me and Jesus, right? Oh, that’s the easiest thing in the world because we’re selfdeceived. But if it’s me and Jesus’s people, that’s harder. And if it’s me with people that aren’t even Jesus’s people in the workplace, now that’s really hard. But that’s what you have to learn to do. The horizontal tests the vertical.

Number four: Again, kind of a summary thing. You got to be humble. “A haughty look, a proud heart. Plowing of the wicked is sin.” The busyness and the diligence, even of the wicked, is sin to God. It’s not enough to be a hard worker. You have to be a hard worker who is humble before God. And remember, the test of that is if you’re humble before people, you see. So, the proud and haughtiness—God hates pride. It’s the root sin of all the others. And if your work is linked to your pride, even your productiveness is sin. You see? The plowing of the wicked is sin. So humbleness: you have to be a humble worker to be a good worker and transform the world.

Number five: A planner. Verse 5: “The plans, the plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty surely to poverty.” You got to make good plans. It’s not enough just to go do your job and just sort of do things as they happen. A great employee is one who makes plans for his task. On the other hand, you must execute those plans deliberately. You know, you don’t want to be hasty. You don’t want to get rich quickly. You don’t want to do things too quickly. You want to take your employment of your mind, produce ideas in your workplace. That’s what plans are, right? You put the mind at work to produce specific ideas for the workplace, and you want to implement those plans not in a hasty fashion. So that’s the balance in verse 5. The plans are executed deliberately.

And then finally, in chapter 22, give me just a moment.

Chapter 22. You can turn to your orders of worship. The responsive reading. This sort of again sums these things up. A few more brief characteristics. I’m sorry I’ve sort of gone past that hour of prayer.

Chapter 22. And now the context here is the very heart of Proverbs are these thirty sayings of the wise. And the first ten are about vocation and work. The second ten are about getting a family. And the last ten are about rule. So you get to rule through vocational excellence. And that’s hinted well, said explicitly here in this text.

And so, you know, I believe that you’ve got the first four commandments are being articulated for us. One, two, and three—free. Having good vertical relationships and understanding our need to help the poor. Being careful in our horizontal relationships because they can be bad for us. Being careful in contracts. The third commandment: having a full Spirit-empowered witness. And then the last seven of these ten sayings are chaistically arranged as a unit. And they speak about the fourth commandment, the need to labor six days. The fourth isn’t just resting on the seventh. It’s laboring six days.

And so it tells us—so the context, the entire context of these ten sayings is work. And out of all these ten sayings, nine are negative. Nine are “do not, do not, do not, do not, do not, do not.” Only one is positive. And that’s the one that says, “Do you see a man who is excellent in his work? He’ll stand before kings.”

So just by that fact, you see, it draws us to that. A lot of things we shouldn’t do, and we can make inferences of what we should do. But there’s one summary statement of the vocational calling that we’re supposed to layer in a good family to help us with, and that will lead to rule. There’s one necessary thing. It is to be an excellent worker, to excel in your work. And if you excel in your work, then you have this impact on civil rule. Number one, you’ll probably lead to civil rule in your older years. But then you’ll also be able to be a counselor and stand in front of and speak to rulers as well.

How do you get there? How do we transform the world? How do we become the head again and not the tail? Through service. Through vocation. Through being excellent in the context of what we do.

Do you see a man who excels? English Standard Version—skillful? Who’s skillful? Who’s diligent? Different word here, but the same basic idea. We have here the idea of excellence of work. “You see a man excellent in his work. He will stand before kings.”

So, I’ve got number 27: He cares for the poor. That’s the bigger context. He’s self-controlled. He doesn’t just eat whatever he wants to eat. He is cautious in contracts. Okay. But number 29 is really the kicker: He is skillful. He’s skillful. Are you excellent at what you do? The good godly worker becomes excellent. If it’s pushing a broom, he does it well. If it’s be—if it’s peeling the spuds so that men can delight and be empowered to do other transformative work, you do it excellently.

You know, it’s a crying shame. But you know, the church does not do things excellently overall. You know, it’s a real—it’s a real cause of sadness to me. And so often in churches, the task—the ministry task that men and women put their hands to—aren’t done excellently. They should be. And it’s even worse if that lack of excellence bleeds over into your vocation.

How do you—how do we become rulers? How do we change the world? How do we become the head again? We become excellent at what we do.

Can you say that about yourself today? You’re going to do something tomorrow, whether it’s raising kids or going out into the workplace. Do you do it excellently? That should be your standard. You don’t want to get by. We’re not dispensational pretrib people. We want to change the world. We believe that God wants this world made better. How’s it going to happen? It’s going to happen from you being excellent at your vocation.

You don’t work for money. That’s at the heart of this little section of Proverbs—these ten sayings. You don’t strive for money. You don’t make yourself—you don’t wear yourself out getting rich, ’cause money goes away. Well, if it’s not for money, what are you doing it for? You’re doing it to stand before rulers. You’re not doing it just to get the money to go off and have a good time and support your family and give tithes to the pastor so the real work can be done through the preaching of the gospel and evangelism. That isn’t it. Your job is to be excellent in the workplace.

May God grant this congregation excellence. May the Lord Jesus Christ grant us the excellence of vocation that he tends to in what he calls us to do as well.

You know, in Jeremiah 25, when he wants to describe a period of judgment, he’s going to take away to Babylon for seventy years. And what’s going to happen? What’s going to be the picture of judgment? Well, there’s some stuff you’re familiar with. I’ll take from you the voice of mirth, the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. The sound of the millstone and the light of the candle. Sound of the millstone was heard in the morning. Usually enough bread was ground for the day. The millstones would be humming away in the morning in the village or in the area. And then at night you’d light the candle, rejoicing in God’s provision for the day.

He says that the picture of judgment is the ceasing of vocational work—the grinding of the millstone. It’s no longer having a day structured. The purpose of that joy and mirth and the bridegroom and the bride and all that stuff is so the millstones would work and the world would be transformed. And judgment has come to the Christian church because men no longer strive for excellence in their vocations.

Oh, there’s a little bit of milling going on, but it’s more milling around than milling grain half the time in the workplaces. God expects us to be men who strive for excellence in our calling, our vocation before God. A failure to do that is both the cause of and the indicator of God’s curse on a people. And the recovery of being an excellent worker—doing all things well, applying these characteristics—God will bring us before kings. The king’s heart will be changed by the diligence of God’s people.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, that’s what we want. We want your name to be exalted in this culture. We grieve over the horrible state of our state, our nation. We grieve, Lord God, and we know that you’ve told us the key to this is our lack of vocation. Help us, Lord God, to be men and women committed in whatever sub-calling we have as Christians to do it excellently unto you, Father, knowing that this is the very purpose for which we’ve been saved—not to go to heaven, but rather to do work here on earth, and then rest in the eternal light of heaven and rejoice in your presence. Help us, Lord God, to strive for excellence as we come forward with our tithes and offerings, our tributes. May we think of what we did this last week in our callings. May we give it to you, acknowledging your grace undergirding the whole thing and empowering us, Lord God, that we may indeed come back next week and say, “Yes, we strove for excellence in the workplace this week.”

In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.