Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Work and Idolatry
## Reformation Covenant Church | Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Today’s text is Exodus 20:1-11. Our sermon is on work and idolatry. Work reveals our idols. Our work setting can tempt us to idolatry. And so as we sort of finish up this series on difficulties with work before we get to the good news of what Jesus has done for work, beginning next week, we’ll look at idols and we’ll use the term in its broadest sense. But Exodus 20:1-11 is the first four commandments of the Ten Commandments, and it places idolatry in a particular place, and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

So please stand for the reading of God’s word. Exodus 20:1-11. And God spoke all these things saying, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. You nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Father, for gathering us together on the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day, to hear from you, to get a godly perspective, a heavenly perspective on our earthly work that you call us to do. Thank you for this progression of commands in this text before us leading up to laboring six days.

Bless us as we consider, Lord God, particularly the effects of idolatry and false gods being revealed through our work and being revealed in the context of our work. Bless us, Father, to the end that we may indeed have high fidelity to you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

So idols—we want to look at today’s text and look at the distinguishing in the first and second commandments between idols and gods. Although in various communions those two verses, those two what we think of as the first two commandments are kind of bunched together. And the fact that they are bunched together in some communions is because really there’s not as much distinction when we’re using the term idol today, particularly between idols and gods that we place above God. So we’ll talk from Exodus 20 about idols and gods and then we’ll talk about the relationship of that to the workplace.

And we’ll mention briefly the kind of big picture of the gods and idols we could say of our particular time in history contrasted with other times, but then we’ll focus primarily upon trying to think through our own personal temptations to idolatry. And maybe each of us will have some transaction with God today to repent of idolatry and to consecrate ourselves and our work to him.

So that’s kind of where we’re going to go. We’re going to look at the text in the dimension of idols and gods. Then corporate idols or social idols, group idols, and then we’ll look at it very personally and see that what we have as we consider idolatry and work is a call to holiness at its core.

As we just sang, Jesus comes to bring judgment to the earth. This is not a common message these days, but it is true. And so, as we saw last week, the advent of God in particular times involves an advent of judgment. So when we think about the coming of Jesus and Christmas, you know, yeah, we culture likes to think of baby Jesus, but remember that baby Jesus will go to the cross and he’ll reign at the right hand of the Father. And part of what advent always is shaking out evil so that righteousness and holiness can be established.

So may the Lord God during this Advent season help us prepare for a celebration of the incarnation of the Savior and the joy of Christmas by helping us root out any potential or tempting idols in the context of our hearts and specifically in the context of our work.

So we’ve said that work can become fruitless and pointless and work can become selfish. And so today we’re going to talk about work in relationship to idolatry. And in a way, all these other things—frequently idolatry is at the core of them. At the beginning of this list of ten commandments we have false gods and idols. And so theologians of course have noticed—you have too, I’m sure—that before you get to these other sins you’ve really established idols or other gods in your life. So that’s kind of underneath everything.

So as we look at our problems and difficulties and temptations of work, even while we embrace work in its totality and call it a great gift from God to be like him in the world, we really need to think about idolatry in the workplace and in what we’re doing.

Now, Exodus 20 begins, as I said, at first it talks about gods and generally we’re going to talk about false gods. Gods and idols sort of interchangeably today, and I think that’s okay. We just recited that their gods are idols, right? So in the scriptures they’re kind of connected, but there is a distinguishment to be made as well. There are two separate commands here—whether we want to group them together or not at the beginning of the decalogue—are two separate commands and they’re commands that in their particular place are not the full appreciation of them frequently is sort of missed.

So the first one, right? Notice first that in the beginning of the decalogue we have a statement of God saving us. “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” Well, that’s a picture of deliverance from sin and judgment. So the law immediately identifies itself as a way of life to us, not a way of salvation. Very important. So first of all, the law is a way of life to us. “This is the way; walk you in it.” You’ve been saved. You been brought out of your sin and judgment and slavery to sin for a purpose. And God then reveals to us how that purpose will be played out. What our lives should look like, not as a way of earning our salvation, but in response to the great salvation that Jesus has affected for us. This is really how to love God, okay? For his deliverance of us.

And then it says, “Don’t have any other gods before me.” Now again, we in the Bible—this is frequently can be misunderstood, and certainly there’s truth that there are no capital G other gods that we’re supposed to serve. But that’s not really what this says. What it says is don’t have other gods before me. Gods lowercase g are authorities, powers, things that are properly gods in a representative sense from God himself. So if you go to a judge, he’s a representation of God to us. And we read in the Psalms that the judges are gods, and your parents to kids when they’re younger are a representation of God to you.

So he’s not saying don’t have any other sources of authority other than me. He’s not saying that because God is pleased to mediate his power and his control and his direction in our lives through authorities. And they’re all properly little g gods. The commandment says don’t take any of those little g gods and serve them above me, right? Have no other gods before me, above me, in first place. Put me in second place.

Now, this is significant to us as Christians. Nobody here is going to say, “I serve a false god and get rid of Jesus.” But frequently, what this commandment should be used to help us think through, and we’re going to try to do that today, is in what ways have some of the other proper good things in our lives—rulers, parents, forces in the world, right? Sex is a god. It’s a powerful force and it is a gift from God. But when any of these are used sinfully and replace God, then they become a false god to us. Okay?

And so what this text reminds us of is it’s very easy to serve Jesus and yet have gods that we place authorities and powers above Jesus. And that’s what he’s telling us not to do. And in fact, as soon as I say Jesus, we’re already kind of falling into a little problem here because Jesus came to reveal the Father. We can be idolatrous with Jesus. Okay? We can be when we think that he’s the end and sole source of everything and he’s the one that he’s the deal. And we forget that he said that he came that he might have us worship the Father, that he might be a mediator between us and the Father, that he might bring us to the Father, that the Father might receive the glory. Okay? And he gives it back to the Son. But don’t forget the Father.

So you can take the best of things—the second person of the Trinity—and make him into a false god if you place him above the Father instead of the triune God at the top. Okay.

The second commandment is similar to this. You know, it says don’t make an idol. So why is the idol distinguished here from other things? And here it’s rather obvious what he’s talking about. He doesn’t want us to bow down or serve them. An idol is a representation of mediation between us and God. Okay? That’s what it is. So you make something with your hand. It’s a graven image. And it to worship God, you worship that thing. You know, Advent candles can become idolatrous, right? We create these things. And then we worship them as if they’re God. And this is what we tend to do because we don’t want, you know, to ultimately see things that control that call us to ethical obedience. We want to have things that we control represent God. And so we think we’re okay.

Now, the one mediator between God and man is the man, Christ Jesus. We used to read these Ten Commandments responsibly, and there were some that we would have with New Testament responses. And to the second word, that’s the verse we would use: that Jesus is the mediator. He’s the only mediator between us and the Father. Okay? Us and the triune God. And to replace Jesus with something else mediating for us, giving us an access point—this is idolatry.

Now, it’s very interesting here that the word carved or graven image that’s prohibited right in this second commandment—”you shall not make for yourself a carved image”—what’s interesting about this word carved is that this is the same word that God commanded Moses to do with the two tablets. He commanded Moses to carve out these tablets and then he inscribed his law upon those tablets. So if we know that then we don’t have just some kind of vague big mediation of Jesus as our representation of who brings us access to the Father now. We’ve got a very concrete Jesus who speaks and identifies himself with his word, with his inscribed word. And of course, that’s exactly what he does. Right? He is the Word of God.

And when we look at the scriptures, we see a graven image that is proper as mediation. That’s what mediates you. This is how Jesus comes to us is through the word and the Spirit. And so the second commandment, you know, warns us not to seek mediation through another system, another philosophy or, you know, physical things to set those things up. But you know, usually we don’t do that. But we are tempted to think of other ways other than the Word of God to achieve salvation, to achieve pleasure, to achieve efficiency in our lives and in our work.

So, so you know, no other gods points us to the Father, no idols points us to Jesus. And then this third commandment will point us to the Holy Spirit. We’ll talk about that more in a couple of minutes, but for now, do you see where really this idea of gods and idols are kind of used? There’s a distinction to be made here, but it’s frequent in the scriptures that distinction is sort of becomes blurry because ultimately what we’re doing—whether it’s false god that we place above the Father or if it’s a false mediator we place replacing Jesus—either way we’re placing something other than the triune God as the means by which we attain salvation, well-being, contentment, peace, whatever it is.

So they can be used interchangeably. In fact, in Ezekiel 14, at the river Chebar, when they’re in exile some elders come to Ezekiel looking for a word from God. And God tells Ezekiel, he says, “Well, you tell him, you’ve got idols in your heart. Why do you think I should give you a word?” So what that tells us is in Ezekiel 14 is that idolatry isn’t restricted to physical things outside of ourselves. Ultimately, those things are expressions of idols that we’ve taken into our hearts. Okay? It’s a way to control God through our hearts, finding expression then in the work of our hands. Okay.

So idols and gods kind of the same thing. They can be distinguished, but they’re today we’re going to use them pretty much interchangeably. And idols of course have to do with everything in our lives. And certainly it impacts our work. And when we say that idols are revealed by our work, it doesn’t just mean what we do at work. Our idols can be revealed by the sort of work we search for. Okay?

So if you got a guy who doesn’t want to—if the only job available is flipping burgers someplace and he thinks that would be below his dignity or he would lose respect from other people or whatever it is. And so he’d rather just stay idle and live off somebody else’s efforts. You know, that’s a form of idolatry or it can be frequently is. He’s got his sense of you know perspective or perception by other people, his own sense of what’s a good job and a bad job, and he’s placing that above the circumstances that God has brought into his life where the only job he’s got is below his dignity supposedly.

So the sort of work we seek can also reveal idols to us—idols that get in the way of obedience when God tells us work six days a week, for instance. So the jobs we seek, how we go about doing those jobs once we get them, right.

So if your idol is identity through work, which we’ve talked about a couple of times in this series, then you’re going to, you know, ignore other aspects, godly things that you’re supposed to be doing with your life—church, family, whatever it is—and you’re going to do everything for work. And that’s because work has become an idol. Or if you think that the goal of life is to get to that fourth commandment, to get to Sabbath rest, which is what sort of moves along the progression here, then you’re going to try to, you know, goof off. You’re going to try to work as little as possible.

If you make an idol of rest or work, either way, the way you go about your work reveals to you what your idol is. Okay? And it doesn’t—when you read the fourth commandment, you’re not supposed to work seven days a week or six days, ignoring all your other responsibilities. And you’re not supposed to rest seven days a week. You’re supposed to work. So it tells us that the way we go about our work can be idolatrous, revealing revelatory of our idols as well.

So the kind of jobs we seek, the kind of work that we engage in, just the level of work and then also the how we react to the settings of our work can tempt us to idolatry or bring out the idols that are already there. So if you work in a workplace that has particular temptations to sexual sin or temptations to, you know, misconduct in a different direction or temptations to lie a lot or to tell big stories about yourself—a work environment itself can reveal or tempt you to idolatry.

So when we say that work reveals idols it’s sort of comprehensive. The sort of work we go to do, the way we perform at work. And then third, the way we interact in the culture of our work—all can be related back to idols and the temptation that they bring us in that idolatry.

Now when Keller talks about this in his book, most of this chapter on work revealing idols actually has to do with corporate or cultural idols as opposed to personal ones, which I’m going to focus on here in a couple of minutes. And what he does is he gives kind of an overview of history. It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it, that as imagebbearers of God, we can look back over, you know, a couple of millennia and think about progressions of history and stuff. It’s amazing the self-consciousness we have about our place in history.

But anyway, he does that. And so what he talks about is in the last couple of thousand years, there’s been three movements. The first culture was a traditional culture. And it used to be that the powers, your ancestors, whatever it is were the cultural idols of that particular kind of being. And then the second—when we replaced that, we replaced it with modernism where science and rationality became idols.

Now, all these things you know, idolatry is taking a good thing and making it an ultimate thing. So every one of these things that we’re tempted to idolatry with are good and proper in their place under the authority of the Father through the mediation of the word in terms of how we go about these things. So you know, authority is good, traditions are good, but if that becomes ultimate that kind of culture is idolatrous in that direction.

Science is good, rationality, knowing the world—that happened postreformation, the Enlightenment—that’s good stuff, it’s produced great blessings. But when that becomes ultimate you get the sort of ridiculous culture we’re in now where you can’t hardly hear a news story without getting statistics thrown into the news story as if that somehow determines truth or reality. And of course, everybody catches on to the game that science is the god now. So whatever truth claim we’re going to make, it has to be ultimately submissive to science and rationality.

So everybody’s using statistics and statistics don’t mean anything anymore because we all know when we hear it on the radio or television that people are using particular statistics to buttress their own idolatry in terms of what they want to have happen. So modern cultures tend to stress efficiency and rationality and man goes from being just a member of a tribe or family or state or country in traditional cultures to then now being kind of a cog in the wheel of a scientifically ordered workplace. Okay. And so some of that’s good and some of that’s bad. That can be demeaning to man.

And ultimately what the modern culture did was it created a situation where we were freed from traditional restraints, constraints people were, and now we could make choices. So now individual choice began to come to the ascendancy as the idol of the culture. The most important thing is freedom and individuality. Now it still held to certain transcendent values, right? Tradition supported transcendent values, whether they were godly ones or not—transcendent values.

Modernity, the modern world, still had some transcendent values, but they really had washed out by washing out tradition. They’d washed out any sense of why those values should be maintained, but they were still there. So people’s individual choice was related to the values still that were transcendent in modernism.

And in postmodernism, people said, “Well, hey, those values don’t work. All you’re trying to do is control me when you talk about values.” So now individual choice became totally devoid of any kind of transcendent cultural values. And now the idea is that personal passion, desire to find one’s fulfillment—everybody’s their own god, and you sort of just engage in whatever you think is good and no judgments. So that’s the movement.

And each one of these cultures has particular idols that’ll be reflected in the workplace. You know, the example everybody uses—including Keller—for the traditional culture relating to work is Japan and how even into the first part of this century Japanese businesses felt like they should never lay anybody off, and people that worked for a Japanese business were supposed to be at that work all of their lives. Europe was similar to this with family businesses. By last names became vocations because you wouldn’t change vocations, right? You wouldn’t change your family name or identity. So your identity is totally subsumed in your work, which is idolatrous.

But in any event, economically, that was not good. It was self-destructive economically and in terms of people. It sounds good. We’re never going to lay anybody off. Well, if as a result of never laying anybody off, your business goes bankrupt and you go out of business, now you laid everybody off. And so the idol of tradition is judged by God in history. But that’s an example of that kind of idolatry reflected in the workplace, right?

In modernism, you could think of, for instance, the workplace with scientific methods. Man becomes—I feel like I’m a cog, right? Something turning. Man now feels like he’s a cog in a machine. He does one repetitive task in a factory over and over again. It’s completely dehumanizing. And so, you know, to engage to have a business like that is really making an idol out of efficiency, marketplace efficiencies, and a particular view of people that doesn’t relate them ultimately to God, but to some kind of transcendent value, which is profit.

And then in the postmodern sense, you know, businesses now—if you work for a company in an ad agency, for instance—you know, frequently you’re going to be asked to sell sex because everything else has been stripped away and we’re left to just whatever passions we have, and that’s a pretty strong god—little g, proper in its place—but which can be appealed to. Or you’re going to sell identity—your identity is determined by what you buy for Christmas this year, right? You go to the mall and you buy identity, you buy salvation by a product that brings you prestige, sense of respect, etc.

So each of these things tempt us in particular directions with the corporate idols that the cultures manifest themselves in.

But I want to—I want to talk primarily about personal idolatry for the rest of our time and help us to think through that as it relates to the workplace. And really we sort of started with this last week, right? So last week we looked, you know, at situations where selfishness was in, for instance, the building of the economic system at Babel, and that selfishness seeking to make yourself a name. When God’s advent comes, he judges you, right? Or selfishness with Shebna, right? The Hezekiah’s head of the house, head of the finances and stuff. And he was feathering his own nest, his own tomb, his own chariots, whatever it was. And so selfishness is essentially this idol again. And so we sort of started last week with some of this.

And when God comes, he comes in Advent to bring judgment upon those idols and to destroy them. Now to those that are his people, that’s his grace to us, right? I mean, we shouldn’t feel bad when God comes and makes our lives very uncomfortable by destroying our idols. We should throw up our hands and say, “Alleluia.” I mean, ultimately, that’s what he’s doing.

So when we read Psalm 96 and sang about it, you know, you have this in these series of 96, 97, 98—”Joy to the World the Coming of the Lord”—in the person of Jesus 2,000 years ago is to bring judgment. But we say great, praise God, because that also means deliverance from our own sins, our own idols. So God comes to judge our selfishness at particular times and places, but he wants us, you know, to apply the spirit and turn from those idols ourselves. So we started talking about that last week.

One thing I didn’t mention in terms of the Esther narrative—you know, if you have a position of authority in the palace, and the palace can be a governmental office like with Esther, or it can be in the boardroom of a business, or it can be as a decision maker in a particular workplace. If you’ve got a position in the palace, your job—and I mentioned this last week, of course—is to do everything for Jesus. But what does that mean? And Esther’s story shows us that the power, the influence we have in our workplaces are to be used for the good of those outside of power structures, outside of corporate boardrooms, outside of political processes, outside of whatever influence we have. We’re to think of other people and serve them.

So our workplace activities, our vocation is to be used to help those outside of the palace who may be threatened. And that’s what Esther did. If we don’t do that, and if in our selfishness we just use the blessings of our particular vocation for ourselves and our own life or maybe our own little group, a church perhaps, maybe somewhat—well, the palace really is more of a prison than it is a palace because you get entombed by that selfishness.

And the way to bust through that, you know, inward focus and inward idolatry is to serve other people outside of your sphere. So that’s what we talked about last week was selfishness essentially as idolatry, and so that really began today’s sermon.

One other thing I want to say before we start talking about and evaluating our own idols, and that is was true last week, but I want to drive this home—and that is that idolatry brings God’s judgment. So you know, I’m not trying to give you a better life. Well, I am. But, you know, when I tell you and I tell me that we need to remove idolatry from our lives relative to our work, but everything else as well, you know, if we don’t do that, then we can sit here in anticipation of the corrective judgment of God, which is going to hurt. Because that’s what God does. He comes, his advent is to judge idolatry. He is, as we just read in the text of Exodus 20, a jealous God. And he will judge our idols. And judgment will be part of what that’s all about.

At our Oregon City Pastors meeting this Wednesday, there were a couple of young women there who have created a DVD on the Missoula flood. Took them four years to come up with this movie, this one-hour movie. It’s excellent. And what they basically are doing is really attacking an idol of geology and an idol of science.

So what they’re doing is they’re showing how the Missoula flood when it happened created what we now know as the Columbia River—although something was there before—the Wampt Valley, all kinds of geological features of Oregon and Washington. It was a very fast event. So the Missoula flood demonstrates fast events, catastrophic events as opposed to the accepted up until the last 50 years geological theory of gradualism—that what happened was drip by drip, piece of sand by sea, piece of sand, uniformitarianism. And at the beginning and end of the movie they talk about Second Peter, and in Second Peter we’re told that people will come along to deny the judgments of God: “Where is the promise of his coming and judgment?”—in other words, is the idea. And in Second Peter reminds them of the judgment of God in the flood and he reminds them of the judgment of God on Sodom and Gomorrah in other places.

So the point is that we have a geological idol that was formed 150 years ago that was, by the way, very influential on Darwin in producing biological idolatry—a very slow change—and that the world has always been what it’s been now and the same processes—as opposed to the flood story, the flood narrative. So the point of the DVD is to kind of attack that idol and to show it’s really ridiculous from a geological perspective, and more and more geologists are starting to understand that. And so catastrophism is growing.

But the point is this: the flood narrative and the significance of affirming the Genesis account of the flood is not only a matter of exegesis and the veracity of God’s word. That’s what we normally think of it as, right? You know, it’s the word of God. So we got to defend the word of God, and so we got to prove the flood story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But that’s only one part of the message here, because in Peter when he talks about the flood narrative and people that deny it, he ties it directly to what the flood was for.

The flood was for judgment on idolators—those who had rejected God the Father and the Son and the Spirit and instead had other gods, other mediators, other systems that buttressed their lives. And so the point is, if you get rid of the flood, not only do you get rid of the veracity of what you’re reading in your Bible and make you challenge what you’re reading and reinterpret it, but you’re getting rid of the judgment of God on us when we sin and in our idolatry.

So I think it’s a very significant thing that these young women have done. We’re going to try to promote it here somehow. But the point here is that as we get to talking about personal idols revealed in our work or in our lives, understand that you should want to know what they are. You should want to drive them out of your life. I should want that because if I don’t, then what’s going to happen is God is going to come in judgment upon me. And when that happens, it’s particularly uncomfortable.

So God judges idolatry. Okay? And I’m going to talk about idols in a broader sense, but also in relationship to our work.

You know, I was thinking about it this week. I was at a prayer meeting, and you know, I was thinking about how Jesus goes into the city the last week, right? We’re at Advent now. We’re headed toward Easter now. And the last week of his of his life prior to the resurrection, he goes each day to work. He goes to the city and he prepares for his great work at the end of that week dying on the cross for us. But he’s going to work every day. And as he drives in or walks in or rides in on a donkey, whatever it is, where does he come from? How does Jesus prepare to go to work?

Well, if you’ve heard me talk about this, you’ll know that Jesus stayed at the Mount of Olives. That’s where he spent the night. What’s the Mount of Olives? Well, in Zechariah, you know, “not by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord God. And the vision is the temple with the lights that are in the temple, the almond tree, the lampstand, and there’s perpetual olive oil feeding those lights in Zechariah’s vision of the temple. And so the Spirit of God is the power of God to transform our lives. And Jesus stays in the context of the Spirit of God on the Mount of Olives. Okay? That’s where he—that’s his context. That’s where he spends his evenings as he prepares for his work. Okay?

Now, I know Jesus didn’t have to be there to be filled with the Spirit. He obviously was filled with the Spirit. But my point is, the imagery that God sets up for us is significant, right? If you want to go to work tomorrow morning and avoid idolatry at work and understand what idols you’re being tempted with at work, the way to prepare for that is tonight. And the way to prepare for Tuesday is Monday night. And what it calls us to is a life of personal holiness, a contemplation of the Holy Spirit, being filled with the Spirit by avoiding sin and embracing righteousness in our homes, in our families, in our recreations, in what we put in front of our eyes and in what we jam into our ears through headphones or whatever it is.

You know, we’re going to avoid—if we’re going to go about our work successfully Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whether it’s at home or in a workplace. And I think a big part of that is the preparation we do. Just like our Savior before he went to work every day, he stayed in environment self-consciously surrounded by the Holy Spirit, the olive oil that would flame him.

So I guess what I’m saying is, you know, holiness is important, and it’s important to drive out idolatry in our work, but it’s also important to drive out idolatry in our homes because that’s the preparation place for our work.

Now, the Ten Commandments set us up with some big sins, okay? Some big sins here that are common to our lives. So as I said, it begins with, you know, the Father, and then the mediation of the Son. And the third commandment we read was not to have an empty witness—not take the Lord’s name in vain. Swearing, no, that too. Yeah. But what it means is not to have an empty witness. To take our Lord’s name as Christians and go about our work in an empty fashion.

So if you go to work tomorrow and you don’t somehow do what you’re doing self-consciously as a Christian in your identity, you’re violating the third commandment. You’re sinning against the Holy Spirit. The Spirit empowers you for your work, and you’re to go there as a Christian, and you’re not to take that name Christian in vanity, in emptiness. That’s what the word means—emptiness. So it’s not enough to avoid things.

The third commandment says you got to put on a witness to Christ and how you do your work and what you do at work. In that context, remember, we don’t want to be conformed to the world. We want to be transformed and then become transformative agents in our workplaces. Okay? And we do that by not having an empty witness.

Now, if we go about doing that work successfully—Father, Son, Holy Spirit, correctly related—then we enter into working six days well and entering into then the rest of the Sabbath day or the Lord’s day. This side of the cross and the transition. So there’s it—it’s a unit here, okay? And it’s a unit that points to the Trinity, but very specifically to proper authorities, proper mediation, and proper witness in the world, being carrying God’s name upon us, not in emptiness. And as we go about doing those things, then we enter into six days of correct Christian labor. And that’s what leads us to rest. That’s what leads us to rest.

Now, that fourth commandment says, as I said earlier, two sins right away—two idols—too much work, too much rest. Both are wrong. The proportion is supposed to be given to us here. And so that right away tells us things.

Now, how do we know if we’re sinning against the Father, the Son, and the Spirit? Well, we get two more sets of three commandments, right? We’re told to honor our parents, and we’re told not to murder our brothers, and we’re told not to commit adultery. Now listen, those right there will give you enough to do this week in terms of evaluating the idolatry that you’re tempted to in the workplace.

You are tempted to dishonor the authority in the workplace. Now you can honor the authority too much. I get that, right? But you know, that fifth commandment says you sin against the Father when you don’t have proper respect for the authorities that have been placed over you in the workplace. When you grumble and dispute about them or come home and—you know, I know it’s not a blind obedience. This is not a traditional culture where your employer is God. But your employer represents the authority of God. So right away the Ten Commandments tell us very practically how idolatry can be revealed in our work by not respecting and honoring the authorities that God places there.

Secondly, killing your fellow worker. Well, I don’t—I’ve never killed anybody at work, Pastor Jerry. Well, you have. Well, many of you have. How have you done it? You’ve done it with your tongue. You’ve talked to some other worker about your worker. You’ve slandered him behind his back. You’ve talked about him. You’ve created rumors. Or you’ve taken personal information you know about that person that maybe you’re called to minister to him and help him to come to righteousness in. And instead, you’ve talked to other people about it.

You see, slander—slandering our fellow worker. So being correctly related to our employers, our authorities, our bosses, and correctly loving our fellow worker by not slandering them and destroying their reputation. What’s—you know, I mean, our reputation is about all we have. And I know, you know, I know this happens all the time.

And then third, adultery. And this again, it sort of follows Father, Son, Holy Spirit, right? Adultery. And well, maybe you didn’t commit adultery at the workplace, but maybe you’re tempted. I mean, I’ve seen since the advent of more and more women in the workplace, what have we seen? That’s been one—not maybe the most—but it’s been one of the contributing factors to the breakdown of marriages. Because guys who are working all day with girls, you know, they get attracted to them and girls to guys there.

A culture that’s formed there, and it’s not a culture like this one where we all know what the guidelines and rules are in the workplace. There’s none of that. So there’s a lot of temptations to sexual sin in the context of the workplace, and the workplace reveals our idols. It doesn’t create them, but if we have an idol of sexual desire, pleasure, then the workplace is going to reveal that to you. Or if you have a desire to exalt yourself by putting down other people, the workplace will reveal that to you.

And if you’ve got a desire to be your own boss—it’s interesting, isn’t it, how many Christians end up with their own businesses. Praise God for that. But on the other hand, sometimes, you know, I mean, we have to work for somebody. Everybody does. But if we have a desire to be autonomous in our work, right? Then the workplace is going to reveal that idol to us. Okay?

So these Ten Commandments—beginning with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, coming to good work and rest, and then repeating the cycle of authority, mediation, who were on the vertical level, and then the Holy Spirit who brings us proper desires, the Holy Spirit who brings us to our proper marital relationships, etc. Then these things reveal that, and then the next three are the same way, right?

Stealing—how do you dishonor your boss? You steal time, you steal supplies, you steal whatever you’re going to steal from the workplace. And how do you go about killing your brother? You then have false witness, right? You talk about him, which is the ninth commandment. And adultery begins with covetousness, right? Covetousness. And that’s the final prohibition.

So these things work as a cycle of three relative to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And as you go to work this week, if you think about those things—how you’re relating to authority and the workplace, owning what you are and have and do there, your work, your labor, that is. And if you think about the obligations of the Ten Commandments and particularly the two commandments relating to our horizontal level to our employees, you can see idols revealed, idols corrected, and righteousness called for in relationship to your fellow workers.

And then if you think of the witness of the Holy Spirit—the Holy Spirit who gives you proper desire, desires, and the proper way to achieve those desires through the mediation of Christ to the glory of the Father. Then you can both see—you, your work may reveal your idolatry, desiring improper relationships. And then you can turn from those idols and repent of them rather than wait for the judgment of God that’s going to rip your life to shreds.

We know stories like that, right? We all know stories like that of men and women whose lives have been ripped to shreds because of the idolatry that happens in the context of the workplace and has never been resisted enough in the power of the Spirit and never been evaluated, never even been thought of these things.

Let me talk about a few other idols quickly and ask you a few questions. Sometimes a way to think through the idols that are affecting you is to do some questioning about what drives you the most. You know, anger can be a good thing. The Bible tells us that. But frequently anger is sinful anger. And frequently anger reveals idols to us. What are we angry about not getting? Well, probably that thing has become an idol.

Maybe it’s just the control of things that we’re concerned about.

So let me read some questions here that you might want to think about today and maybe this week.

What are you most afraid of? What’s your greatest fear? What do you fear? And what you fear usually is the loss of something that is your idol. If it’s something other than the fear of God, then your fears can help identify your idols to you.

What do you long for most passionately? What do you long for most passionately? What are you most motivated by? See, sometimes that kind of question—ask yourself that right now. What are you most passionate about? What do you long for? You know, what do you think: if only I had that, then life would be fulfilling to me? Or I have this, and my fear is loss of this. And if this was lost to me, my life would be not worth living. See, that’s a way to identify good things that have become ultimate things, that have become idols in our lives, right?

What do you complain about the most? You know, what do you complain? Ask your wife or ask your husband. What do you complain about the most? And frequently what you’re complaining about will reveal an idol to you.

And as I said, what angers you the most? What are you getting angry about all the time? Maybe it’s not a particular thing. Maybe it’s just control in general, right? Angry people usually have some degree of idolatry of control. Want to control the things around us. And of course, you can’t, and it always breaks down. And if you’re getting angry all the time, maybe it isn’t a particular thing you’re getting angry about. Maybe it is. But maybe it’s the idolatry in your heart now that is control. You don’t trust the Father, the Son, and the Spirit enough for your environment. You think you’ve got to control everything. And when the Father, Son, and Spirit interfere with your plans, and you get angry, you see, that may be revelatory to you of this idol of control.

What do you want more than anything else? What should you want more than anything else? Probably things like holiness, goodness, contentment, peace, you know, right relationship, right? But maybe it isn’t that. What do you want most? What do you sacrifice the most for? What are you willing to lay down your life for? Not what you think you might want to lay down your life for, but what are you sacrificing for right now? Is it the cause of Christ? Right. Or not.

If you could change one thing in your life, what would that one thing be? You know, it’s interesting. I think I mentioned this the other day—that my son Ben reposted something that Tim Keller said, that in all the prayers of Paul for other people in the New Testament, Keller says this—I haven’t checked it out—but he said that he never prays for a change of circumstance. Now he does in some other things, but are our prayers mostly trying to change a circumstance in our life, or are they looking to become more characteristic of the character qualities of God through our circumstances?

What do you want? What circumstantial change would really float your boat? And maybe, you know, that’s becoming idolatrous to you, right?

Some people have what some have referred to as approval idolatry. Maybe the one thing you want is approval. I am irritated, disconcerted, discontent, or unsatisfied unless I am loved and respected by—and you fill in the blank. Maybe it’s an approval idolatry. Unless this person respects me, what I’ve done, and approves of me, my wife, my life isn’t worth living. You see, it’s good to want to be respected by people. But anytime these things become ultimate, that’s bad.

A comfort idolatry. I am irritated, discontented, and unsatisfied unless I have this kind of pleasure experience or a particular quality of life. Comfort can be an idol.

If image. I am irritated, discontented, unsatisfied unless I have a particular kind of look and body image. Idolatry. Idolatry that can be rooted out by the power of God.

And as I mentioned, control. I am irritated, discontented, unsatisfied unless I am able to get mastery over my life in a particular area or in general—control.

Helping idolatry. I am irritated, discontented, or unsatisfied unless people are dependent on me and need me. Sounds good, right? You want people to need you. But that can become an idol, right? And you may be completely dissatisfied and discouraged because people feel they don’t need you. Well, hey, that’s idolatry. Okay. We’re to be pleasing God in the power of the Spirit. And yeah, we hope the end result of that is serving other people. We hope that they would acknowledge that. But we don’t need that. What we need is God approving of what we do. Right?

Dependence idolatry. I am irritated, discontented, unsatisfied unless someone is there to protect me and keep me safe.

Or independence. I am irritated, discontented, unsatisfied unless I am completely free from obligations or responsibilities to take care of someone. I feel that way sometimes. I just don’t want to have to do anything. Well, God wants me doing things. So that’s an idol creeping in, and my workplace demonstrates it to me, right? It reveals my idol. I don’t want to have to feel pressured about what I’m going to say Sunday morning. I don’t want that. Well, yeah, God wants you to have that. See, so work reveals our idols, or work itself can be an idol, of course.

Materialism—obvious, particularly this time of year.

Family idol. I am irritated, discontented, or unsatisfied unless my children and or my parents are happy and happy with me. Maybe your parents have been—this kind of a culture at RCC. This can be a frequent idol. Your parents are the most important thing. But see, that’s putting them, a good thing, above God. You’re having a God above God if that’s what—if the only thing that’ll make you happy is your parents being happy with you.

Relationship idolatry. I’m irritated, discontented, and unsatisfied unless Mr. or Mrs. Right is in love with me.

Suffering idolatry. Listen to this one. Now, some people are like this. I know them. I am irritated, discontent, unsatisfied unless I am hurting in a problem. Only then do I feel noble or worthy of love and enable and am able to deal with guilt. Some people need to suffer.

I think that sometimes idolatry for me is adrenaline rushes. I seem to structure my life sometimes and my work so everything’s done last minute. Why is that happening to me? Because I kind of like the rush. It can become idolatrous.

And so our work reveals these idols to us to the end that God would replace them with a proper sense of who the Lord Jesus Christ is.

Work can be our identity. Idolatrous work can be to get approval or power. We can work for the sake of comfort, pleasure, rest. All these things can be idolatry.

And you know, the Bible says idols really are deceitful things. They’re lies. And when Jesus comes, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Idolatry lies. Idolatry always lies.

Martin Luther noticed something in the Bible that I suppose other people have as well. But it’s interesting. Before I say that, let me say this: Ministry can be an idol.

I was at a city impact round table for two days at the beginning of this week, and I thought, you know, it’s really interesting to me that in the Christian church these days, there’s a great emphasis on serving the city, works of benevolence, helping other people, love, love, love. God loves the city. The city can be an idol, right? God loves the city—meaning God wants to bless the city. He wanted to bless Nineveh. That’s why he was going to destroy it. Wanted to bless Babel. That’s why he broke it down. Paul wanted to bless Athens. That’s why he was irritated, angry with all the idols he saw there.

I think it is a misuse of English language to say that God always loves the city because we think what that means is God is always blessing the city. But clearly the Bible tells us the opposite. That frequently cities are places of sin and idolatry. The city of cities that God loved—Jerusalem—became a place that he hated and that he turned over to jackals and you know, cougars, or whatever else we’ve got running around here in Portland.

Christian ministry can produce idols. I thought about this week, right? So the idea—you know, I was at this meeting, and they were saying, well, we can’t get people to volunteer, you know, for our food pantries, for Love Inc. What can we do to get the congregations more involved? And I thought about Mike Meyer, and I thought Mike’s feeding the world. He gets up in the morning. He tries not to do it idolatrously. He prepares in holiness the night before, and he goes out and he feeds people. He gives them bread to eat. Isn’t that the way God feeds people?

Does God heal people by compassion, connect most of the time? No. He heals people by giving a desire to be a doctor and to serve people and giving them wisdom and knowledge. Vocation—as Luther said, remember at the beginning of this series on work, vocation is us being God’s fingers and feet in the world to feed the world.

Now I’m big on mercy ministries. I like food pantries and all that sort of stuff. But let’s not get idolatrous about this stuff to where we’re ignoring 99% of the way the world is fed and made more healthy and societal progress happens—is not through Love Inc, as much as I love the organization, what it’s doing. It’s through tonight preparing properly and in a holy fashion for our work tomorrow and going about it intentional, avoiding idolatry, putting on a right relationship to the Father through the Son and his word in the power of the Holy Spirit, and doing that work well in righteousness and holiness.

The only way to do that is what we celebrate at this time of the year: the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Luther made this observation. In the Old Testament, lots of idols everywhere, right? And there’s still idolatry talked about in the New Testament. We’re going to read something about that as we prepare for the table in a couple minutes. But in the New Testament, you get Jesus, Jesus, justification, salvation, all this stuff. And if you think of those two topics kind of related to one another, what cures idolatry is having Jesus properly relating us to the Father in his word, the Spirit coming to bring us Jesus. That’s what drives out idolatry. That’s what replaces idolatry.

May the Lord God grant us this week to both think about some of these questions I’ve asked and think about it in terms of your work. What are you being tempted to sinfully? What idols are being revealed in your work? Talk to your wife or your husband. Talk to your community group. What idols are being revealed in my work? And how can I be more self-conscious to identify with the Lord Jesus Christ as I go to work and prepare in holiness for that?

That, I think you know, is the way to drive out work becoming fruitless, more often than not pointless, selfish—is to replace our idolatries with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you for the incredible significance of our vocations, and we do pray, Father, that in those callings we would remember that we’re called as your people. And as part of that calling, we’re called to engage in vocation. Help us, Father, this week to identify and repent of idolatry as we see it surfacing in our work or in our families or in our personal time. Bless us, Lord God, that we would be a holy people prepared for you to go into our cities. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.