Dennis Tuuri

If you’re counting, today’s sermon is our 16th on the topic of work, reconstructing work, reframing work according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And today’s talk will be on work and grace. And I’ve chosen two scripture texts, one from Isaiah 28, the other from Romans 1. I should say a word about Isaiah 28. The text I’m going to be reading is verses 23-29. And I was going to say this later, but I’ll say it now because of what we just recited and sang.

The major point of what we’re going to read here is comfort to people in affliction. Isaiah 28’s about captivity of the north, sins of the southern tribes go into captivity. And this last third section of Isaiah 28 is really a statement that God will not overly thresh his people. He will not overly chastise us. And so it comports well with Psalm 6. And don’t miss that as we go through here. The great assurances that God will not cause you to have more grief, more difficulties, if you’re going through some now, then will be useful for your well-being and for your ultimate joy.

We’re going to be talking about this text and its implications for work and grace, but that’s a secondary aspect we can draw from the text and the first is this comfort. So please receive that as you hear the reading of God’s word first from Isaiah 28. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Isaiah 28 verse 23-29 and then we’ll read Romans 1:17-19. Give ear and hear my voice. Listen and hear my speech.

Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow? Does he keep turning his soil and break the clouds. When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow the black cumin and scatter the cumin, plant the wheat in rows, the barley in the appointed place, and the spelt in its place? For he instructs him in right judgment, his God teaches him. For the black cumin is not threshed with a threshing sledge, nor is the cartwheel rolled over the cumin.

But the black cumin is beaten out with a stick and the cumin with a rod. Bread flour must be ground. Therefore, he does not thresh it forever, break it with the cartwheel, or crush it with his horsemen. This also comes from the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance. And now Romans 1:17-19 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Because what may be known of God is manifest in them. For God has shown it to them. Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for these texts. Help us, Lord God, to understand the significance of them for our workplace. Help us, Father, help me to speak clearly, carefully. I pray you’d give the congregation ears to hear what your word tells us here. Keep us focused, Lord God. It’s kind of a tough topic, but we pray that by your spirit, you would help us get through it.

And that the end result of understanding these things from your word would be our joy and the well-being of your world. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

So I haven’t mentioned this I don’t think but in the foyer there’s this “What to Expect in our CRC Church” on the table out front. I know it’s typically reform sort of stuff. Many words it’s long but if you read this sometime it will help you to understand lots of other things but one thing it’ll help you to understand is kind of the flow of the worship service that most CRC churches use the liturgy and so it would help you to understand our worship service.

So I would encourage all of you to pick up a copy. We have lots of them and to read that and particularly people that are new to our worship. This will help you. And our worship basically moves through a series of phases. Assurance of our forgiveness and then The word of God is the center focus of the middle in which he brings us a heavenly perspective on things. Worship basically is us going into the heavenly house of God.

And he has us wipe off our feet as we come through the door, confess our sins, and acknowledge we’re sinful, but he’s going to treat us graciously. And then we’re going to have a meal here. That’s kind of why you go to Sunday dinner at somebody’s house. But between the confession of sin and the meal, God takes us into the living room, so to speak, and he has a talk with us and he helps us to understand our world from a heavenly perspective from God’s perspective.

And so that’s what this middle section the sermon is all about. Now I bring that up to introduce the topic today. What we want to do is have a heavenly perspective on how non-Christians work helps the world and how we can interact with non-Christians in the workplace. This is always the case will be until the gospel is preached over all the earth and disciples all the nations. But it’s always the case that our work takes place in a mixed environment with both believers and non-believers working together in some way, shape, or form.

And this presents difficulties to us in our work. And I’m sure as I’ve gone through these 15 sermons on work, at some point you’re sort of thinking, well, how does it how does all this work out in the context of a workplace that’s predominantly non-believers? How do I interact with them? How come sometimes they seem so much better at work than I am. And I’m a Christian. I’m supposed to be dialed into the God who knows everything and they’re not.

They’re in rebellion against God. So, how is it that they’re doing such good things at work? Or how can they be so moral, you know, outwardly moral as well? Tim Keller as he begins a chapter on common grace and work talks about how Jewish people have been so foundational in building a lot of American culture both through movies, finance, etc. And so they’ve had a tremendous impact on the culture even though they’re not obedient to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And then the second example he uses which I’m sure causes some Jewish people consternation is the homosexual community and how if you go to a city like New York City or even in Portland where there’s a lot of renewal of city neighborhoods going on, sometimes one of the strongest forces accomplishing that is the homosexual community. We’ve had people here that have, you know, people who have homosexual clients and they’ll say they’re some of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet and they’re really good at their work, etc.

How do we work this out? How does that happen? What’s the basis for this? How do I interact with non-Christians in the workplace? How do I think about them? This sermon is a little bit about kind of the psychology of how we go about answering those sorts of questions and how we approach work as Christians in an environment that is largely or at least partially non-Christian. Can we partake of what the non-Christians offer or not?

This is another question, not so much for this church, but a lot of churches. They want to hold back from non-Christian production of music, art, etc. because they know that it’s coming from someone in rebellion to God. Is that our position? And obviously, it isn’t in this church. Why isn’t it? And so, some of these questions I think can be answered by what the three texts we’re going to look at today. The first text is Isaiah 28.

And we see there as you noticed if you were listening that God counsels the ungodly. Farmers who use farming techniques are being counseled by God. And then secondly in Romans 1, we read that all men know the truth. They hold the truth. They have truth but they suppress it in unrighteousness. So there’s this bilateral thing going on. There’s this two-edged thing happening with the non-Christian in God.

He knows certain things and yet he suppresses those things by not being thankful for what he knows. And then third, we’ll look at Genesis 4 and what James B. Jordan refers to as the Enoch factor. Not the Enoch you normally think of, but Cain’s first son who was Enoch who built a city. And we’ll see that the ungodly line produces a lot of culture. And what does that tell us about how we interact in a in a world today and in a country in a state and a Pacific Northwest where there’s a lot of non-Christians doing a lot of work and a lot of them are people that we work with ourselves.

Hopefully at the end of this may increase a little bit your sense of evangelism both your appreciation for your non-Christian co-workers as well as being able to kind of provoke them to give thanks for the gifts that God has showered upon them. So it may give a little bit different twist to your evangelism. Hopefully, it’ll create a great deal of thanksgiving in your heart for what God is doing in the world in spite of the fallenness of man.

And hopefully, it’ll bring you some degree of rest answering these questions in terms of your work with non-Christians. Now, I wanted to read one quote that I didn’t read last week. And last week, we talked about the image bearing capacity of all men, that all men are created in the image of God. And our point in that, which is also quite germane to today’s topic is that the purpose of work is the enhancement of love.

You know, humans are made in the image of God. God is triune. What’s the big deal with him being three in one? Well, that means he exists in community. It means that God is not selfish. The three persons of the Trinity are constantly giving to one another. They’re not assuming glory to themselves or demanding it. And so, in the nature of God is love. That’s why the Bible tells us God is love. And so the end result of whatever is happening in the world through God’s image bearers, we’re not just imaging him in being having God’s image and therefore having dignity as an individual.

That’s true. I should have mentioned the Martin Luther King holiday last Monday. In spite of, you know, race, all men are made in the image of God. All men and women. And so they have dignity. But being made in the image of God means that we’re made for relationship. And ultimately our work enhances those relationships. what we can call love in the context of the human community on earth. That’s the goal of it, right?

God is doing all of this and gives us gifts and calls us to work efficiently, competently, all the things we’ve talked about so that human relationships are enhanced in the world. And to accomplish that, it’s important to see man’s being made in the image of God. So, I wanted to read this quote from John Calvin on man in the image of God. Calvin says this. He says, “The great part of men are most unworthy if they be judged by their own merit.

That would include all of us, of course. But anyway, he’s talking about non-Christians, right? But here, scripture helps in the best way when it teaches that we are not to consider that men merit of themselves. What men merit of themselves, but to look upon the image of God in all men, to which we owe all honor and love. We owe all honor and love to men as image bearers of God. God made them. They reflect his image.

To some degree you will say he has deserved something far different of me than this honor and love. Calvin’s answer is yet what has the Lord deserved? Remember not to consider men’s evil intentions but look upon the image of God in them which with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them. So that’s Calvin. We’re not talking about gushy liberal theologians. in terms of the image bearing capacity of God and our response to all men to not forgetting their evil intentions as Calvin talks about.

We’ll talk about that in a little bit too. But to esteem all men highly and to love them for them being image bearers of God. And now the image-bearing capacity of men made in God’s image relates directly to these three texts we just talked about. And so let’s turn to these three texts. First Isaiah 28, then Romans 1, and then finally Genesis 4.

So, as I said, in its proper context, the immediate meaning of this, the point God’s making in Isaiah 28 is that the northern tribes were bad. Ephraim was filled with pride. The southern tribes made alliances with Egypt and alliance with death. That both north and south have forgotten God. The north is going into captivity. The south will follow it sometime later. And so, the first two sections are that of Isaiah 28. It’s about judgment coming because they’ve rejected the cornerstone or the capstone. This is where Jesus as the chief cornerstone cited in the New Testament.

They go back to this citation from Isaiah 28 which is pertinent to our work because it means that Jesus is the cornerstone and the capstone. He’s the alpha and the omega of everything we do. Jesus and the gospel of Jesus reframes everything we do. And that has to relate to our work. So our work begins and ends. A proper reconstruction of it, a proper understanding of it begins and ends with the gospel. So that’s what’s going on in Isaiah 28.

And then the third part, as I said earlier, he assures them this won’t go on forever. The exile, God’s judgments are corrective. He says, you know, if you took cumin and you use a sledge on it or something, it’s not going to produce its wonderful fragrance and its usefulness. There’s a particular thing that farmers use for beating the cumin out from thing that holds it, the cumin seed, and that’s a rod.

And farmers know this. And they’re not going to overly beat cumin because that would destroy the cumin. And he says, “Bread has to be ground and made into flour, but you have to get it away from the chaff. But you’re not going to thresh over it over and over and over and over and over until it’s just a big mess of chaff and wheat all together because then you can’t make it into bread. You’re going to thresh it enough to separate the wheat from the chaff.

And then you use that wheat to make good bread with. And farmers know this. He said farmers know when to plow, when to plant, and then they know how to harvest what they planted and the particular kind of thing that they have, whether it’s cumin or wheat, and how to harvest it differently and how to thresh it differently. And the point he’s making is they don’t overthresh things. And there’s after plowing there’s growth.

And so he’s telling them and he tells us today that the gospel is that God is in control. It’s the ascension of the savior king to the right hand of God and he’s ruling all things and in his rule for you, he’s not going to overly thresh you. It may feel like that. It does feel like that. It’s felt to me like that at times. I’ve had situations in my life that went on for literally tens of years, 10, 15 years before the resolution and vindication finally came.

Sometimes it happens after a year or two. Sometimes it happens right away. But there’s suffering, real suffering that goes on in the people of God. But God is assuring us with the central meaning of Isaiah 28 that he knows what he’s doing. And even the farmers, you know, the farmer out there who doesn’t acknowledge God knows what he’s doing. And God is not going to overly thrash you. He’s not going to plow your back all the time.

He’s going to cause you to grow up. He’s going to plant as well. He’s going to bring you to fruit out. And all this happens because of the cornerstone. So that’s the main meaning of Isaiah 28. It’s a message of great hope and when we’re in difficult times, it’s a good text to read to remind ourselves that God knows what he’s doing. So that’s that’s the first implication, but we can draw out of it as Paul uses Old Testament texts to talk about aspects of them that are true but not focused on at the time.

And we can do that to focus here. And that’s what I want to do. God, he Isaiah tells us twice here that what’s happening in Isaiah 28 is not some sort of natural deal where men just sort of figure things out because men are so smart and they can work out what happens in the world around them. That’s not how come they know when to plow, when to plant, and how to thresh or how to reap particular kinds of crops.

What he tells us in verse 26 is that he, that’s God, for he instructs him, that’s the farmer, in right judgment, knowing when to plow, when to plant, how to beat out the cumin and differently from other crops his God teaches him so we don’t miss the point you might say well Dennis I’m not sure who the him is he instructs him in right judgment well he goes on to make it very explicit with the second statement of it his God teaches him now this is a rather astonishing thing that’s happening here let me just jump down to verse 29 and he talks about the threshing then and he says this also comes from the Lord of hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance.

God is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance and he gives the gifts of the knowledge of the created order to all men. He’s not talking just about Christian farmers. He’s not talking about just Jewish farmers who acknowledge God or not. He’s saying if you look around the world all kinds of people do all kinds of farming. That was the main activity and they know what they’re doing. They don’t know what they’re doing because they’re so smart.

They know what they’re doing because the God of heaven has opened the storehouse of heaven, his knowledge. He’s wonderful in counsel, right? He’s an excellent instructor. He knows how things work and he tells people how they work, right? He tells everybody this. So, when we see the unbeliever, the non-believer, the man who hates God, right? And yet doing things that are a result of seemingly ingenuity, great works of technology or art or whatever it is.

What are we supposed to respond to that with? Praise to God. Because God is instructing all men with guidance and counsel. He’s opened his storehouse of heaven to all men. There is a gracious aspect that we’re to recognize in the work of the non-believers in the cubicle next to us. And we’re not to credit to them ultimately, right? The word to credit it ultimately is this text says to God. Remember this is written in an agrarian economy.

But agriculture according to the opening chapters of Genesis, it becomes an analogy for all culture building. Right? All of our work can be talked about in terms of agriculture. So this isn’t limited to farming. This says that in whatever intellectual vocational endeavor men and women engage in. God is gifting them graciously in spite of their rebellion to him. He’s giving them guidance and counsel because that’s his nature.

Right? We saw this in James 1. Good gifts come down from their father in heaven. Right? James 1 says, you know, God is this gracious giver of all kinds of gifts. That is the nature of God. Okay? And he does it apart from the merits of the people that he’s expressing it to. What seems to be a discovery by people is instead the gracious gifting of God of knowledge and counsel for vocational tasks, read culture building tasks to all men.

That’s what I want us to see from Isaiah 28. It is astonishing. One commentator put it this way, commenting on Isaiah 28. What appears as a discovery. The proper seasons and conditions for sewing, farm management, rotation of crops, etc. is actually the creator opening his book of creation and revealing his truth. It’s the gracious gift of God because that is his nature. Remember James 1, I mentioned it earlier.

He says that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights, the father of heavenly lights. Every good gift, the gift that the non-Christian has in the cubicle next to you, his knowledge of what he can do to make a better cell phone or to make a better power plant or solar cell, whatever it is. You see, this is coming down as a gift from God to that person. Whether or not they admit it and they won’t, but that’s what it is.

That’s what the Bible says it is. It’s a reflection of the character of God. Now, that should cause our hearts, you know, to really praise him a little louder after the sermon than before the sermon. Now, maybe you’d already thought about all this stuff, but to me this is really quite something because it shows us that over the face of the world, God is showering gifts on literally billions of people to make the world a better place.

That’s I mean, if you think of that and I remember once I was in a hospital once I was I don’t remember what maybe it was a CPAP. I don’t remember why I was in there. I was up on the I don’t know upper floors at St. Vincent Hospital. I looked out and I saw darkness with a few lights from houses around and I thought, you know, wouldn’t it be great if every light represented people thanking and praising God and if the whole valley would just shine with these lights of people being thankful to God, right?

And the fact is they’re not. Most of these billions of people, many of them are not thankful for the gift of God. But kind of flip the script, right? And wouldn’t it be great to look around in a darkened place, see all the workplaces out there and see little pieces of light. Wherever God is giving men gifts of knowledge and understanding and counsel so that they can make the world a better place, the world would be a big flame of light.

You see, I think that’s what this text is telling us, a big flame of light. These are gifts from God. They’re pictures of his goodness, his grace. his basic nature which is a giving, a blessing, empowering God who loves to give men counsel and knowledge even men and women who are in opposition to him and actively suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. We’ll turn to that text in just a minute. So, so this means that you know when you go to the grocery store and there’s probably a lot more Christians out there than we realize, but if you go to a grocery store or the cubicle next to you or the gas station and you’ve got non-Christians doing all these things, right?

Producing the sort of things that we buy, actually engaging in the commerce of it, etc. You know, this should be a delight to us because it’s all representations of the grace and goodness of God to mankind. He’s giving us blessings. God is doing this. Now, now remember that there are that there are a couple of different ways that the Reformation talked about work, right? So there’s the Calvinist way and this was that God wants societal progression.

He wants worldview sort of stuff. We’re into transforming the culture and the best culture will be when it’s Christian, right? And so there’s this worldview kind of approach to vocation that produces says, well, as we’re Christians cooperating with God and the spirit of God, we should be able to build better things long term. Okay, so there’s that view and that’s a good view. God has put us on the earth to mature it, to take the garden into all the world.

The other perspective that you can kind of put in conjunction with this is Luther. And Luther’s big deal with work was that work is the hands and fingers of God providentially caring for the world, right? And so if you keep that one in mind, it really kind of connects up with what we just said. Why is God doing this? Well, well, one thing is it’s his nature to be a giver. But secondly, God is providentially caring for all the world through giving gifts to non-Christians graciously, not you know killing them immediately, them and us, but giving gifts to them of knowledge of the created order they can employ in the workplace.

And the end result of that is that the gardener and the farmer and the guy that builds and designs the milking machines for all these people Christian and non-Christian are the fingers of God providentially caring for the world. Okay. So God employs non-Christians in spite of their rebellion to him. And when we see that going on we can see it if we keep in mind this providential view of work that work is from the Lutheran perspective God caring for the world.

And God cares for the world through the work of non-Christians. So this means that all work is being done under the provision and oversight of God and is part of this providential feeding and caring for the world that God is accomplishing through all men. Men are made in the image of God, right? We just talked about that. And in that image of God, they can’t avoid certain truths about the world and themselves.

And even the marketplace itself disciplines men to be caring about serving others. Now, they can resist that, right? But the non-Christian knows that it’s beneficial in the workplace to serve other people, to provide for them, and so they’re going to get along with that task more often than not. And God’s grace then is being used to providentially care for the whole world through that system. So, you know, first of all, it seems like it’s very important for us to keep in mind this providential view of what God has accomplished.

in the world. Isaiah 28 says that God’s character is to gift people and that gifting of people is tied to his providential care for the world. And so the guy next to you in the cubicle, thank God for what he’s doing. Thank God for his work. And thank God that when he does great things in his workplace, that’s because the Lord God has graciously empowered him with particular intellect, skills, abilities, and gifted him with knowledge of that cell phone or whatever it is he’s engaged in the production of.

So that’s one reason why, you know, people next to us, non-Christians, do the sort of work that they do. Now, there’s another text that touches on this, and that’s Romans 1:17-19. And there’s a little fuller context about this, but what we wanted to see here in Romans 1, and it’s a text that we’re quite familiar with. It says that we read that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness because what may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them.

They hold the truth in unrighteousness and the word hold there can be translated suppress but it also implies a knowledge of God. In order to suppress something you have to have the something right. So what it tells us is that all men again have a particular knowledge about the created order and about God himself. And the text actually goes on to tell us that God has shown this to them. He says since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and godhead so that all men are without excuse because although they knew God they didn’t glorify and honor him as God.

Now this is a two-edged sword. This is a two-edged reality. And while we normally think about this in terms of the rebellion of fallen man against God, add the other dimension to it, which is they can’t suppress what they don’t have. So what the text is telling us is the same thing really that Isaiah 28 says, and that is that all men know what it’s about. All men are gifted by God with a knowledge of them and particular understanding of who he is, his attributes, his invisible nature.

They have knowledge of the world and of the God who created the world. If they didn’t have the knowledge, they couldn’t suppress it. They couldn’t hold it down. They hold this knowledge. They have this knowledge, but they hold it in unrighteousness. So, it affects what they do, but it doesn’t affect whether or not they actually have it. Romans 2 tells us the same thing that the unbelievers have a knowledge of God.

In Romans 2:14-15 we read that when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do the things that in the law these although not having the law are a law to themselves who show the work of the law written in their hearts their conscience also bearing witness and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them. All right lots of stuff there but for our purposes today men have a conscience They have an awareness of God.

Now the conscience can be seared. The conscience can become insensitive. But all men, Paul is saying the Gentiles as well as the Jews, all men have an awareness of God and of the rightness of things. They know, everybody knows, as Leonard Cohen says, they know there’s God. They know what’s right, but they suppress the truth. But as I said, the important thing here is that at some deep level, men have a knowledge of who God is.

They have that truth. God has gifted all men with that knowledge and they know that they’re his creatures. Right? What’s being what we read in Romans 1 is that since the creation of God is a known fact to all men and that people should serve him, they’re held accountable for the fact that they don’t thank him and serve him. Right? So everybody knows that’s what they’re supposed to be doing.

All men have a common knowledge of certain truths about God, about themselves, and about what they should be doing. Okay? So again, the implication of this is that the guy next to you in the cubicle in his work, yeah, he’s got an aspect of suppression of the truth, but he holds certain truths as well. And he can use those truths that God has revealed to him even about the creation and who God is, etc., and his need to serve God.

He can use those truths and the truths that God reveals and gifts him with in terms of his work to serve God in some way that isn’t conscious but nonetheless is involved in work that is effective. So Romans 1 also tells us that all men have a knowledge of God. God reveals things to them. and so it’s important to recognize that’s what they should be doing. Now I think that yeah Calvin another quote from Calvin on Romans 1.

He says, “Let that admirable light of truth shining in them, that is in the unbeliever, teach us that the mind of men, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. If we regard the spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself nor despise it where it shall appear unless we wish to dishonor the spirit of God.

So he’s saying if God has given these gifts of knowledge to men, it’s by the spirit of God that he gives these gifts. And if we reject the gifts of people, the farmer who brings us the crop that God has revealed to him how he should grow, the cell phone programmer who God has revealed to him how to program logically, that’s a gift. gift of God administered by the spirit to this man, the fallen man. If we reject that, Calvin says, we’re rejecting the spirit of God.

If we just want to hole up in a Christian enclave and all we want to do is buy products from Christians and all we want to do is, you know, work with Christians and just get completely away from the world into a little monastic community. Calvin would say that is, you know, anti-Christian. That’s a rejection of the spirit of God giving people the knowledge of God that’s clearly attested to in Romans 1 and in Isaiah 28.

Calvin went on to say that these men whom scripture calls natural men, and now he’s talking about 1 Corinthians 2, these men who scripture calls natural men were indeed sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us accordingly learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good. Now he says inferior things and what he’s saying is you know there’s a you can think of it as a spectrum right so when we’re talking about technique technologies figuring out how to mine coal that sort of stuff God seems to give them gifts if we get down here and talk about anthropology right psychology and stuff probably we become more suspect of this stuff so Calvin’s referring to inferior things as things that are more technological in nature., and what he’s saying is, you know, God has obviously gifted a fallen man in spite of his fallenness with these things.

So, natural men can have knowledge. Not only can, but God does give them grace. Now, Calvin just prior to this comment of his, says this, in man’s perverted and degenerate nature, some sparks still gleam. The light is nonetheless choked. with dense ignorance so that it cannot come forth effectively. His mind because of its dullness betrays how incapable it is of seeking and finding truth. So Calvin says well so he says both things right he says people have these gifts it would be a rejection of the spirit of God to reject the gifts that God has given to them this knowledge.

On the other hand He says fallen man is so dense his mind his light has been so densely covered with darkness that he really can’t find out a lot by himself. He can find out nothing. Now so Romans 1 tells us two things about men. It affirms what Isaiah 28 says. Men have knowledge. They have knowledge of God and the created order because God has given that to them, not because they’re so smart. But secondly, Romans 1 tells us that they suppress that truth in unrighteousness.

They pervert it. Now, that’s the two things that we’ve got to keep in mind as we look at the work of the non-Christian in the workplace. On one hand, we admire those gifts that God has given to them. We thank God for them. And by the way, in our evangelism, we try to encourage them to be thankful to God for revealing to them how to program or how to farm or how to, you know, distribute bread in a timely fashion.

We part of evangelism is reminding him, look, you know what you are? You’re the hands and fingers of God feeding the world. You should thank him for giving you that kind of stature and for giving you these gifts. But Isaiah 28 tells us it’s his gift to you. He’s great in counsel. So, so it affects our evangelism, right? So, so on one hand, we’re supposed to admire those things, take use of those things, enjoy those things as gifts from God.

On the other hand, we’re to be careful because the work of this guy over here is going to be twisted as well and there’ll be aspects of it that are given to unrighteousness. And so both those truths of Romans 1 has to affect our interaction with non-Christians and particularly receiving their technologies artifacts from art, the culture, etc. So Eric Lutz’s class, right? I would imagine that’s what’s going on in the class.

I haven’t been to it, but when you watch a can you watch a movie by a non-Christian? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, I don’t know who made American Sniper. Interesting movie. You can Well, Clint Eastwood directed it, but I don’t know who wrote the screenplay. I don’t know. There’s faith commitment. I don’t think Eastwood is necessarily a Christian. There’s all kinds of movies that have tremendous truth in them and yet are made by non-Christians.

That’s completely consistent with Isaiah 28 and Romans 1. So, we don’t separate ourselves from cultural involvement. On the other hand, we also don’t just suck it all. up. Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. Okay. So, while we’re watching these movies, we have to at the same time, we’ve got to remember Romans 1. They have truth, but they suppress it. Okay? So, we’re going to see things that are reflections of the gifts of God by the Holy Spirit for the well-being of the world.

And we’re going to see things that are perversions of truth and that try to, you know, twist that image bearing capacity of the person making it and so our involvement is kind of a dialogue right with the culture in which we accept certain truths certain gifts from the non-Christian and we reject others. Okay. So Romans 1 tells us that those two things are what is going on in the context of the world.

And by the way when it says that men suppress the truth and unrighteousness it’s a present tense and that God is showing them later in Romans 1 He’s showing them things. These are all present tenses. So, it’s not a one off. It means that our lives are filled. The work of the Holy Spirit in the world is God showing people gifts perpetually. And men either responding to them as God shows him a gift or knowledge with thanksgiving for that gift or not thanksgiving for that gift.

And it kind of broadens out our understanding. with us a little bit to all of us, right? To all of us because that’s what God’s doing with you, too. He’s revealing his truths to you. And the sinful nature of man in perverting this stuff is complicated and deep. It doesn’t just mean, you know, don’t have wrong sex or don’t steal from people. Our sin nature is can be said to be a tendency to create idols out of every good gift that God gives us.

So no matter what good gift God gives us, our sinful tendency that we all have, even though we’ve been saved from our sin, but we all have that old man, that sinful tendency is to make idols out of the good gifts that God gives us. And so, you know, we can make idols out of our work. We can make idols out of our program. We can make idols out of our morality, right? We can think ourselves so good and what we do that we’re avoiding all these bad things that we have some sort of spiritual pride going on and there’s sin again.

So the point is that Romans 1 helps us to understand this dialogue with non-Christians and what they produce in the workplace. But it also is a reminder to us that we also can suppress that truth through a kind of sinfulness that is really best described as idolatry. So Romans 1 knowledge and yet perversion. Two things are going on with God and the non-Christian. There is the gift that God gives to the world through them, but then there’s also a carefulness that we should exhibit to avoid the perverseness that accompanies those gifts all too often.

Let me read a quote from Tim Keller based on this. He says, “So we can see all cultural production and remember everything we do at work is some form of cultural production as a dialogue between our innate affirming response to God’s common grace and the idolatrous rebellious nature rather of our hearts. Therefore, human culture is an extremely complex mixture of brilliant truth, marred half-truths, and overt resistance to the truth.

That’s really good. And so, you know, when you’re engaging the culture which we should do receiving these good gifts from God. That kind of dialogue with a recognition of brilliant truths, half-truths and then just plain perverse lies should be kept in our mind. Okay, let’s look at one more text that is Genesis 4.

One last text and this will be pretty quick. But before we get to Genesis 4, a couple of verses. And this again kind of fleshes out or fills out an understanding of the work of the non-Christian around us. A couple of verses here. Proverbs 13:21-22. Evil pursues sinners, but to the righteous good shall be repaid. A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the wealth of a sinner is stored up for the righteous. Wealth is cultural production and the fruit of it.

And it tells us here that grace of God evident through his gifts to non-Christian and Christian alike is ultimately for the purpose of Jesus. And those who are united to Jesus, they’re the recipients. They’re the eventual owners of all wealth, cultural production, the blessings of God accomplished through non-Christian work. Does that make sense? So, you know, one of we mentioned, you know, that the end result of vocation is love.

And people who reject the love of God in Jesus Christ, right? and who remain in rejection of the love of God, the love of the God who sent his son to die for them. That kind of love these people, you know, ultimately what they accomplish through the gifts of God given to them in vocation is reserved for those who will extend and use technology and the wealth for love and for the well-being of human relationships.

The wealth of the ungodly is stored up for the righteous. Job 27:16-17. Same thing. Though he heaps up silver like dust and piles up clothing like clay. He may pile it up but the just will wear it and the innocent will divide the silver. So ultimately the cultural production of the non-Christian is saved up for Jesus and all those who are united to him and for the human community that will endure in love because of the work of Jesus.

So, there is that. One last text, as I said, Genesis 4. Now, it’s an interesting text. This is right after, you know, Cain kills Abel and all that stuff’s going on. And then God pronounces judgment on Cain. And here’s what the text says next. Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bore Enoch. So, this is a different Enoch, okay, than you’re used to talking about, but this is Cain’s first son. And it says that he built a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch.

So Cain and Enoch have built a city. They subconsciously build a city. Now there’s a big narrative going on here. At the end of this text, God gives Adam another son, Seth. And what you see Genesis 4 doing is showing us two lines of humanity. The godly line, Seth, replacing Abel, and the ungodly line, Cain, who’s a murderer. And it talks about the descendants of both and what they do. And the fascinating thing about what these verses tell us is that the first city is self-consciously built by Enoch and Cain.

Okay? And that and this is like a it isn’t the growth of a city over time of cultural development. It’s building a city. It’s making a city. Okay? So the first city cultural advancement, right? We know we’re going to go from garden to city. City at the end of the Bible. The first cultural advancement we could say comes in the ungodly line. Okay? And then you get Lamech, four generations down from Enoch. And Lamech has two wives, sexual sin, endemic right away to those that built cities.

I mean, it’s we’ll talk about this more in weeks to come when we talk about cities in the season of Lent. But it’s very interesting. And his two wives bear children. One is Jabal. He’s the father, the master of those who dwell in tents and have livestock, so they know agrarian practices. His brother’s name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the harp and the flute. And as for Zilla, she also bore Tubal-Cain an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron.

Okay. And so city cultural advancement, agriculture cultural advancement here, music cultural advancement, metallurgy cultural advancement, And they’re all coming first in the ungodly line. Now, what we just read, of course, will happen. The wealth of the ungodly is saved up for the righteous. And all these things become part of the sacrificial system. You know, the temple and that temple is a representation of Israelite godly culture.

So, the godly assume all of that. But the point being made here is that they get to it first. The ungodly people get to these technologies first. First, it’s interesting because there’s even a contrast in poetry here. After this, then, you know, Lamech says his big deal to his wives that he’ll kill a young man for insulting him, blah blah. He’s, you know, got this hotty, prideful, you know, blustery, macho song that he sings.

And this is contrasted with Adam’s song of love for Eve, right? This is now bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. It’s a love song. So, there’s two songs going on in the world, right? But the ungodly line gets there first. That means that your coworker next to you may well figure it out before you do. Now, maybe not in every little instance, of course not. But overall, it seems like it sets up a scenario here, at least, you know, for a big part of history, where your coworker who’s not a Christian will get there before you do.

Why is that? Well,, Jim Jordan in his article called the Enoch Factor cites three things. He says, first of all, while non-Christians are willing to enslave other people to work for them. I mean, Lamech is an enslaving sort of guy. And so, you can get human productivity work in slave cultures. Secondly, he says the non-Christian doesn’t take one day and seven off to rest. He’s going at it full-time. He’s going to get there quicker potentially.

And then third, the non-Christian expends no psychological energy in repentance and striving against sin, doing the positive stuff. in life. He’s just doing one thing, work. And he’s doing work all the time. And he’s focused on it seven days a week and he’s not going to be distracted by some goofy requirements of trying to raise a Christian family, repenting for sin, being part of a community, all that stuff.

And he’s going to try to enslave, you know, two wives to serve him or whatever it is. And so, he’s going to get there first. Okay? Now, whether that’s the result of it or not, or maybe there’s other factors involved, but the point is When we talk about Christians in the workplace with non-Christians, don’t feel bad that non-Christians work better than you do at times, longer than you, more focused than you.

You got other things going on that God says are just as important long-term for cultural development as the technologies being employed by the non-Christian. So, you know, but remember that the answer to all of this is that the wealth of the ungodly are being saved up. All the cultural attainments for the righteous. So God is using even that sin sinlessly to bring about a world of incredibly powerful cell phones that each of us have in our pockets and keep us in communication praying for each other and talking to one another.

So what’s the point of all this? Well, the point is there’s a great deal of freedom if we understand these truths. There’s a freedom in working with non-Christians. If You know, if the evil guy figures out musical instruments first, are you supposed to say, “Well, I’m only going to take music lessons from a Christian.” I don’t think so. throughout these texts, what we learn is it’s the gift of God to the evil to the ungodly line, Cain’s descendants, and God is gifting the world and gifting the righteous through their gifts.

And so, we have freedom to cooperate with, learn from, even be mentored. by non-Christians in particular endeavors of vocation, work, art, culture, etc. Nothing wrong with that. Okay? It would be foolish to not do that knowing that God has set it up where frequently the ungodly will develop cultural advancements first. But of course, that freedom comes with a degree of carefulness. The caveat is remember they’re going to twist it.

Romans 1, there’s a dialogue going on with each of us. Do we’ve got knowledge of God, but we’re also suppressing it through our sin. And so, be careful. But yes, work with non-Christians. be comfortable with non-Christians in the place where you work. Don’t think you’ve got to just have Christians around you all the time. Enjoy the culture that God has gifted the non-Christian to help produce. Enjoy the blessings not of the non-Christian ultimately, but of God working through them.

And in your workplace, recognize when you see non-Christians prosper for a period of time. Don’t begrudge that. Say this is the gift of God to this company. God is gifting this company. God has gifted that guy. And in fact, have it inform your dialogue with that person that ultimately what God is going to judge him for in Romans 1 is with that great knowledge and gift of God that he’s given to them. They didn’t say thank you.

Comes down to that. They just got to say thank you to God and acknowledge him with the gifts that he’s given to them. And then finally, you know, so we have this great freedom. We don’t got to worry about it. We should be appreciative lovingly praising God for the amount of knowledge he’s poured into the world. And we should have great hope for the future, knowing that all these things ultimately are for the well-being of those who live in community, who love with that trinitarian love, united to Jesus Christ.

And then finally, all of these things should remind us of our obligations when God prospers us in our vocation to give God thanks, to give God the glory, and to acknowledge that he indeed is gifting the world through your very work, no matter how small, how great. This is God gifting the world with vocation. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for these wonderful truths. Thank you for your wonderful gifts that are just shed abroad so richly and freely in every direction that we look.

Forgive us, Lord God, for being blind to these things and thinking that man’s hands and ingenuity created these technologies apart from your gifts. Thank you, Lord God, that you are indeed beautiful in wisdom and counsel and you’re a gracious giver to men of tremendous technology and advancement. And we thank you that all of this is being used for the service of the kingdom of the one who loved us so much that he died for us.

In his name we pray. Amen.