Our summer Talkback series begins with Dr. Mark Devine, Professor of Divinity at Beeson. Mark speaks about the important topic of Faith and Work. The format of our Talkbacks is simple – one hour of talk and one hour of talkback (Q&A).
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Welcome to our 1st theological talkback of 2017. We are glad that you are here with us tonight. The format for the talkbacks, it's a it's a pretty simple structure. We have an hour of talk, where there's a a talk, a lecture given, and then we take a little break, and then we come back together for a time of q and a. And, the time of q and a is always my favorite part.
Jeffrey Heine:That's where we get to have some more interaction on the topic. And so I would encourage you that, throughout the talk, take notes, write down questions, text them to yourself, those kinds of things. So you remember what you wanna ask when it comes time when we, run the microphone around here and and get to, interact on the topic. Tonight, our speaker is doctor Mark Devine. He's a professor of history and doctrine at Beeson Divinity School.
Jeffrey Heine:He's been there since 2008, And, he also oversees the faith and work initiative at Beeson Divinity School. And in 2008, my last semester in seminary, his 1st semester teaching there, I got to, be in his seminar class on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And it was by far one of my favorite classes that I took. And then when I went back for for round 2, I got to spend some more time, with doctor Devine. And so I'm I'm so thrilled that he can be here with us tonight to talk about how our faith, what we believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ connects with what we do, where we spend most of our time during the week at our jobs.
Jeffrey Heine:And so if you would join me in welcoming doctor Mark Devine.
Speaker 2:Thank you. It's great to be here. I am Mark Devine. All of my lectures are divine and my wife's, maiden name is more so she's more divine than I am, but I made her that way. When I found her, she was just more.
Speaker 2:It was kind of an embarrassment that I rescued her from. And also, my wife, Jackie Moore Devine used to date George Clooney. The George Clooney. I'm not kidding. She's from the greater Cincinnati area.
Speaker 2:You're not old enough to know his aunt Rosemary Clooney, who was a huge international star. And so that means I beat Batman. And I'm gonna tell you how I did it. I gave her what he couldn't, poverty. He just couldn't step up and, and deliver.
Speaker 2:It's so great to be here. People who know me at Beeson know that I have like, I don't know, an infatuation with this church and churches like it. Now I've hardly ever been to the church and I want that's why I'm able to think so high. If I was, you know, familiarity breeds contempt. But I'm actually receiving money now to do research on churches like this.
Speaker 2:You're my guinea pigs, you're my laboratory rats. And so it's really, really fun. But I've had a great time, getting to know your pastor a little bit and also, the students that are here that are on staff and others. I feel very much at home here. I admire what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Tonight we're gonna talk a little bit about work. I'll have to say some things about creation and some other things in order to put work in a context. God cares much about work. It's a big deal to him, but like anything else in the universe except God. Work, has really no value on its own.
Speaker 2:In a certain way, nothing has intrinsic value inherent value outside of God. Value comes from the relationship that what God has made, that God put into it. It has value in relation to him. And so I wanna start by reading some passages of scripture. A few passages from around, the old testament and the new testament.
Speaker 2:And what I'm going to read is better than anything else I'll say. So pay attention to it. It's the word of God. What I do will just be, divine in its own way. So Genesis chapter 1, and I I hope you'll I hope these passages will strike you as extraordinary, and we use the word awesome so often that it, you know, it's been it's been bastardized.
Speaker 2:It's been hackneyed, But these are awesome, wondrous passages, especially when we consider that they're they're true. So Genesis chapter 1. When I read a book, I like to start at the beginning. Why not? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Speaker 2:The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And then in this same chapter verse 31, We read this now between verse 2 in Genesis and verse 31. God creates various components of the world that he wills to make And so he'll create the the sea and the sky and the earth and the birds and the the creatures of the sea. And after he creates each component, he, gives himself a grade. He assesses what he's done.
Speaker 2:And after each one of these he says, and it was good. I made this and it was good. I made the sky and it was good. Then when He makes human beings, He doesn't say anything. He does not say it was good.
Speaker 2:And I agree with him. I mean, how many people say, I just love everybody. My next question is, well, how many people have you met? He didn't say anything. But when he created human beings and put them into what he had made, Then he said for the first time he looked at all that he had made and he said it's very good, very good.
Speaker 2:So that's what we read here in verse 31. And it was so and God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good. Then in Jeremiah chapter 29, Jeremiah is writing to the people of Israel who have been taken captive to Babylon, present day Iraq. And they're having a rough time there, not least because they believe they really can't fully worship God unless they're in Zion, unless they're in Palestine, unless they're in Jerusalem for some of them. And they find themselves unable to sing the religious songs that meant so much to them before they were taken into exile.
Speaker 2:And they were even mocked by their captors who said to them, you can read this in Psalm 137. Oh, sing to us, strike up one of those songs, that used to sing back in Zion, and they couldn't do it. And Jeremiah writes to them in Babylon, and this is what he says to them. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This is the word of the lord to them.
Speaker 2:Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there.
Speaker 2:Do not decrease, but seek the welfare. This is an important word for what I'm going to say tonight. It's the word shalom. How many of you ever heard the word shalom before? Probably many of you have.
Speaker 2:It doesn't occur very often in the bible with some frequency, but it's an important word. And in some translations, this word and sometimes it's translated harmony. And sometimes, it's translated harmony. And there that's all correct. That's alright.
Speaker 2:It's a very rich word. It's an important word. And he says, the Lord says to these exiles in Babylon, seek the welfare of and now this is something that's catching on with churches like yours. I'm studying churches like yours, And I'm about to have some words here that you can you can study church history, which I do. I forgotten most of it.
Speaker 2:But you study church history, and you've got all you've got long traditions and times when people were able to have church and they didn't have to always say these words. They didn't say these words. It wasn't important enough to go on the website. But here they are in the bible. It must be how you justify it.
Speaker 2:But seek the welfare of the city. We're for the city. That's what you all say. Are you or did somebody else tell you you were and you said, yeah, me too. I'm for the city too.
Speaker 2:Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf for its Shalom. In its Shalom, you will find your Shalom. That's a great passage. Now, Zechariah, Zechariah chapter 8. One of the things that our God does, this is a pattern, and whenever we can discover patterns of God's dealings with his people.
Speaker 2:We want to, note them and and get used to them, because God deals with his people according to certain patterns that we discern throughout scripture. And if we're going to get along with God, you know, you can belong to him. You can come to him in faith and repentance, and you can be an heir of eternal life, born again, but not get along with the one that you love and the one who loves you. How many of you are married? Have you discovered that?
Speaker 2:How easy it is not to get along with the people that you love and that love you? Same thing with God. And, you know, I've learned that if I'll just study the patterns of my wife's way of being that I'll get along with her better. It's the same with God. Here's a pattern.
Speaker 2:God tells us not everything. That's important. God doesn't want you to know everything. You can't know everything. You couldn't bear it.
Speaker 2:It's not for you to know everything. It's like when you have a 4 year old, you can't tell the 4 year old everything. They can't bear it. But God tells us some things. He tells us what we need to know.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that we need to know is not everything about the future and not everything about the next world, but some things we are to know. Why does He tell us these things? Because they are necessary for us to know, believe, enjoy, and anticipate in order to live as his children now. We worship a promising God. He loves this.
Speaker 2:He loves to make promises, and then you don't get what's promised. Time passes. And then in his timing according to his wisdom, various of his promises are fulfilled. And now they're not just promises anymore, they're fulfilled promises. We're living in the reality that he said would come to pass.
Speaker 2:This is how God deals with us. And in that time between the promise that he's made, we're to believe it by faith. And when we believe these promises by faith, we we believe them because we trust him. And if you trust him to keep promises, you end up, creating a history of him making promises and then keeping them. And you learn to trust him for the things that that haven't come about yet.
Speaker 2:And what happens is is that the thing promised it's not yours yet, but the promise reaches back proleptic. This is how I became a professor. It's words like that. It reaches back proleptic. I don't know what the word means, but I'm not going to stop using it.
Speaker 2:It may come to mean something and Webster will have to record it. So let's all agree to use the word proletically. It reaches back from the future into our lives so that now our lives are changed now because we believe the promise. Same thing happens when couples get pregnant. Now I'm old enough to remember when only women got pregnant, and I I really miss those days because 2 of the things I'm most grateful for for God is that he created women and didn't make me one.
Speaker 2:I just love both of those things. But anyway, my wife and I, we became pregnant, you know, and I went into the room, you see, because I was born at the wrong time to go to war and become a man that way. And so this is how I became a man. I was in the room and I cut the cord and it is you have to it's a kind of a sawing actually. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I've said this before and then people afterward took me aside and said, no, too much too much information. But anyway, I don't really work here. So when we're told we're pregnant, well, that doesn't affect our lives at all. Even though we don't know for sure, we can't see to it when we're told we're pregnant. We can't see to it that the baby will even come to term, or that it would be born healthy, can we?
Speaker 2:And yet our whole lives are changed when we are given the promise. And the difference between the promise of the pregnancy and the promises that God give us is that they always come true perfectly. And so we can never go wrong by setting our hearts fully upon them. Well, here's a promise. Thus says the Lord of hosts, I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I'm jealous for her with great wrath.
Speaker 2:That's that he'll punish people who are bad to his children. Thus says the Lord, I have returned to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the faithful as occurrences of this favorite word of redeemer or 3rd favorite. I don't know. Your favorite word is Jesus, I guess. Okay.
Speaker 2:Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city. And the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the holy mountain, thus says the Lord of hosts. Here's what's gonna happen. Here's what's gonna happen. Hadn't happened yet.
Speaker 2:Here's what's gonna happen. Old men and old women shall sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of great age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets. Thus says the Lord of host, it is marvelous in the sight of the remnant of this people in those days. Should it also be marvelous in my sight declares the Lord of hosts.
Speaker 2:Thus says the Lord of hosts. Behold, I will save my people from the east country and from the west country, and I will bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. And they shall be my people and I will be their God. The old covenant in faithfulness and in righteousness. And then in verse 12 of this same chapter 8 of Zechariah, it says this, for there shall be a sowing of Shalom, says peace.
Speaker 2:There's gonna be a sowing of Shalom, a scattering of Shalom. The vine shall give its fruit. The ground shall give its produce and the heaven shall give their due, and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things. Then John 14. John 14 begins a section of 2 and a half chapters that are called the long last discourse of Jesus.
Speaker 2:And Jesus spoke this to His followers to prepare them for what was about to happen. He was about to be separated from them bodily, 2 times. 1st, when he would go into the place of the dead, If you read about that about Jesus, because when he goes into a place of the dead, that's when you have the thriller passage in Matthew. Have you all read the thriller passage? Do you all know what thriller is?
Speaker 2:What's thriller? Michael Jackson. What's he doing? Dancing with? Ah, yes.
Speaker 2:When Jesus goes to the place of the dead, this is in Matthew's gospel. It's only in there once. Some people don't believe things if they're just in the Bible once. Okay. Fine.
Speaker 2:When he gets down there, you know what he's got when he gets down there. He's got the keys. He's got the keys. And some of the saints of old get up and they're seen walking around Jerusalem. He's not this is not the final resurrection, but he's showing what's coming.
Speaker 2:A little taste of what's coming. Beautiful thing. In Eastern Orthodox, they love that passage. They love the transfiguration. They love the thriller passage.
Speaker 2:And so you see many icons written that were painted in the east. And you'll see at the bottom of the cross, you'll see people getting up out of the ground. Sometimes it'll just be a skull and bones. Sometimes it'll be a partially in flesh person coming out. Jesus knew he was gonna be separated from them in bodily form and that would disturb them that would shock them.
Speaker 2:They would be afraid. When you fool with Jesus, you're gonna be afraid a lot. That's why he's always having to say be not afraid. Because he does things that are gonna make you afraid. And he has to be not afraid, be not anxious.
Speaker 2:And then he's gonna be separated from them when he ascends to the father, separated in bodily form, just like he's been from us the whole time. That was a special time when he was here flesh and bone. Says here, he's preparing them. Here's what he tells them before he goes. Let not your hearts be troubled.
Speaker 2:Because there gonna be a lot of reasons for it to be troubled. He knows that. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house, it's a strange word. My father-in-law who's also a preacher didn't like it when he he didn't like this when it says, in my father's house are many rooms.
Speaker 2:He said, really is is like, is that the promise? It's like a motel. Some read mansions. I used to go to a church where every other the other song they sung was about mansion, but they cut they called it a mansion. About mansions.
Speaker 2:There was there were we were all poor people. We never had anything. We we hadn't been taught to disdain material things yet because we didn't have any. Most people that disdain them usually have a lot. But if it were not so, I would have told you.
Speaker 2:I go to prepare a place for you, a place. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself bodily form. That where I am you may be also in bodily form. And then finally, in Revelation, the book of Revelation. I've covered the whole Bible here.
Speaker 2:Does your pastor ever do that? See, teach over at the seminary there. Okay. The whole Bible. This is, of course, the apocalypse of John.
Speaker 2:This vision that given to him by the Lord when he was in exile on the Isle of Patmos Says then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. We talk about heaven is the place we're going. And thus, every now and then you see that in scripture, but you know what you see most often? Not we're going to heaven, but that a new heaven and a new earth is coming at us. We're moving towards a new heaven and a new earth, and a new heaven and a new earth is coming at us.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be a collision. It's gonna be a great collision for some people. I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth has passed away. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. The Bible opens with God as a worker.
Speaker 2:God introduces himself to us as one who works. He creates and that's something only God does. You don't create. I don't create. We'll talk about what we can do.
Speaker 2:We can use the word creative for what we do, but we don't create he makes from nothing that which is And that means that his claim is upon everything that's been made. He owns it. He's its maker, its caretaker and its judge. He introduces himself to us in scripture as a worker. And he doesn't work haphazardly.
Speaker 2:He's not working just to dazzle. Now what he makes is dazzling, and it is supposed to dazzle, but he's not just making something to He's making a home. He's making a home. He's a homemaker. Isn't it interesting?
Speaker 2:We we're we're supposed to be the apex of the creation. We really are because we're made in the image of God, which means we are made so that we're capable uniquely. We're not the only thing in creation that can do this, but we're made capable of uniquely reflecting who God is in his glory. And by glory, I mean, his worthiness for praise. We're able to reflect uniquely why God is worthy of of praise.
Speaker 2:So we're the apex of the creation. There's no doubt about that And and the creation, the rest of the creation is made for us. It's our home. We're not made first. Listen for that reason.
Speaker 2:For that reason, God has never been interested in having and he's never had and never will have disembodied soul disembodied souls that he satisfied with. He always intended to have and He does have and He's going to have physical and spiritual, material and non material, creation and human beings. And so we were made last because it We cannot be what we were made to be. You can't be what you were made to be unless you're in a home. And that's what he was doing.
Speaker 2:He was making a home, and then he put us into it. And he said when it's all there, he stepped back and he said, it's very good. It's very good. Now what is this home like? I wanna say 2 things about it.
Speaker 2:First, what we see in Genesis is that the home we were made is characterized by shalom. It's characterized characterized by harmony, by which I mean not just absence of conflict. I really don't mean that especially at all. I mean that it's the home was harmonious in that all the component pieces of creation are working in the way they were meant to, that kind of harmony. Everything's in its place.
Speaker 2:It's a place of, of prosperity. They're not poor. All the trees you can have it all. That's just a way of saying, look at what I've given you. This universe that is mine, it's yours too.
Speaker 2:It's the home. I didn't need it. It's the home I made for you. The Shalom that we see in Genesis is made up of 3 dimensions of relationship that make the the peace, the harmony, the prosperity. It's first of all the relationship between us and God, our creator.
Speaker 2:That is right in in Genesis before the fall. And then it's our relationship with each other before our creator. And then there's a third dimension, and this is the one that's been neglected. It's been neglected because of a terrible heretic named Marcion and others. And I heard Ginnilette talked about Marcion.
Speaker 2:Don't just forget what he said about Marcion. He does Marcion's my homeboy. He's my favorite heretic. I love the great heretics. The great heretics, What makes them great?
Speaker 2:They're great because they're wrong about something really important, and they're great because their lies about something really important keep popping up like those crocodiles at the kiosk at the at the carnival, and you'd have to keep smacking them down with the mallet. They're just gonna keep coming up. And that's why we neglect this 3rd dimension of relationship. It's the relationship between us and others before God in the place where he put us, in the place where he put us. Then there's something else that characterizes the home.
Speaker 2:It's a divinely created pattern of human activity that characterizes the abundant life for which all of us were made that God wants us to have. He insists that we have it. The whole creation is his gift to us, and this is part of it. It's a pattern between Sabbath and not Sabbath and another sabbath. Sabbath First of all, our first day was a sabbath, which highlights something I want you to never forget.
Speaker 2:A lot of what I wanna do here is just cause trouble with your bible reading. I wanna infect you and poison you. And then, because I'm not sure anything I'm saying is really true, but I want you to test it. You'll all test it for the rest of your lives, And you'll see if what I've seen in this divine apocalypse I had, you'll see if it's true. When we think Sabbath, here's what we think.
Speaker 2:Rest. God knew he was gonna make us to work, and then we'd get tired, and we'd rest, and we'd be restored. Okay. Fine. Can you forget about that for a second?
Speaker 2:The essential meaning of Sabbath is not rest, it's cessation. God worked for 6 days. Not us. We weren't working. He was working, and then the bible says, he stopped.
Speaker 2:Why did he stop? Because he was finished. It couldn't be made better. It was perfect. And he stopped and when he stopped that's the word.
Speaker 2:He Sabbath. He stopped create. He wasn't tired. He's God. He's not tired.
Speaker 2:And then our 1st day is a Sabbath. Well, we've just been made. We're not tired either. K? We're not tired, but it's not time for us to work.
Speaker 2:Our first day is a Sabbath. What's going on here? I want somebody to finish this. I hope a lot of you finish what I'm about to say. You you say I wanna say the first part, you say the second part.
Speaker 2:To God be the glory.
Speaker 3:Praise be, pastor.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, my chin is a quiver. Can we stop now? To God be the see, every now and I hear worship leaders and you the worship leaders here probably do it. I've probably done it, and it's wrong no matter who does it. But anyway, I get the sentiment.
Speaker 2:Today, we're not gonna ask God for anything. Well, aren't we righteous and holy? Even though the Lord's prayer, it's all petitions. When Jesus taught us to pray, it's always asking him for something. Then we pride.
Speaker 2:We're we're not gonna ask God for anything today. What are we gonna do? We're just gonna worship him for who he is. And then we sing a bunch of songs that don't have any content that just lift him real high. It's like he's a maybe he's a hot air balloon.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Just lift him high, high, high, just as a whale up there. No, no, farther up there lift him real high. I just wanna praise him. I can't see him anymore, but just lift him up.
Speaker 2:Our God insists on being praised for what he's done. He's proud of it. What's happening on this Sabbath? We're basking in the wonder of what he's made, including us. We're made.
Speaker 2:God's not. We'll never be like God in that way. There are ways in which we're not supposed to be like God. We won't be either. Another way is trying to know everything God does.
Speaker 2:Remember what the sin was? It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Isn't that strange? Shouldn't we wanna know the knowledge of good and evil? I mean, if righteousness is facing good and evil, choosing the good and spurring the evil, wouldn't we wanna get that?
Speaker 2:And yet that was what the devil wanted us to have. Friends, it doesn't take knowing evil to be pleasing to God. In the new heaven and new earth, we're not gonna be facing good and evil, choosing the good spurn in the evil. Evil's going to be gone. They shouldn't have wanted to know evil.
Speaker 2:Our first day was a Sabbath to bask in what God had made. And to reflect what he said about it. It's very good. And then we're launched into the other 6 days where we do our work. We don't create, but we keep and tend and develop and make use of what God has made in a way that it it it performs the same way God's original creation does.
Speaker 2:It serves as a blessing and a help to other people. That's what we do when we work. That's what God made work for. See, this is before works not a not a punishment for sin. We were made to do that.
Speaker 2:We were made to be used to help and serve other people. And we'll never be satisfied. We'll never be what God made us to do to be unless we do that. And when we're launched into that other 6 days, we're already headed for the next Sabbath. This is not cyclical, it's linear.
Speaker 2:The Sabbath are these way stations where we stop doing what we're doing and give exclusive attention again to what he's done. And then we're launched into our work again. Not long ago, I learned through deep research. I googled this thing. So let's back off if you wanna challenge it, but
Jeffrey Heine:the
Speaker 2:number one phobia used to always be doing what I'm doing. Speaking in front of people. So I am as courageous as I can possibly be on this earth. And I am afraid to do this. People say, oh, you seem so natural at it.
Speaker 2:But inside, I'm all torn up. It's like a roller coaster. I wanna do it, but I'm also afraid of it. But you know what? It's been edged out.
Speaker 2:The great fear we're told now, and even it's not true. I don't care because it fits what I wanna say tonight. I'm a Baptist preacher is the way we do it. Okay. The fear now is being alone, being alone.
Speaker 2:And it's a valid fear, isn't it? Because increasingly, we are alone and people are left alone. I used to be an intravenous drug user. Took a lot of blotter acid. There was a lot of there was a lot of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin involved in it.
Speaker 2:And I just danced with the devil for a while, and I loved it. My testimony didn't work right because I so enjoyed being a sinner, just just just plunged deep. I felt sorry for brick Nixon and Brezhnev. I thought if they would just smoke some good weed, you know, peace would break out Because alcohol makes you wreck your cars and get in fist fights. But what I was doing, you slow down.
Speaker 2:It's John Lennon, it's, you know. Anyway, what was I talking about? This happens in class all the time. I really don't know what I was talking about. Does anybody remember?
Speaker 2:Being alone, yes. I felt alone for a minute there. Now, so so I had a Damascus road turn around, you know, and that means like I'm more saved than other people and stuff. Really, and, you know, it's just that I'm impatient with people who aren't saved like this. Anyway, so I went back to my old church, You know, my hair was down to here.
Speaker 2:I was like a, I mean, I was a hippie, but not, and there was no politics involved. It was just the drugs. And so my hair was very clean. I use Wellabossum for the split ends. But I knew if I went back to my old church, this Southern Baptist Church, that they wouldn't want me to come in there like Greg Allman, you know, or the ZZ Top.
Speaker 2:And so I tied it, I tied it back because it taken so long to grow it. There's a lot of work, I mean, I did just whack it off, But all I cared about was the gospel and Jesus. I've got over that now, but for a few years, man, I was right there. And so when I get there, this woman who runs the missionary agency there, the women's missionary union, and it was a big scary woman that knew my family and probably had changed my diapers when I was a child. She got got a hold of me and sent me to the nursing home to do ministry.
Speaker 2:So I was doing ministry at 17. See it is baptist, we just get right to it. We throw the books in later if we think about it. You know, just if you're if you're a Christian, then go do ministry. Went down to the nursing home.
Speaker 2:People alone. People alone. People afraid to be alone. People feel alone, most alone, perhaps, when they become convinced that they have nothing to offer to anybody else. I meet people who say, if I died tonight, nobody would care and many of them are right.
Speaker 2:Nothing would change. Nobody would know. Nobody would care. What drives people to such depression? What drives people to wanna take their lives?
Speaker 2:Here's one of the big ones. They're sure they have nothing to offer of any value to anybody else. How do we how do we make a contribution? Here's the big way that God has given us. Not the only way, but it's a big way.
Speaker 2:It's very important. It's built right into the creation. We work whether for pay or not. We do things that help other people. If you wanna save somebody's life without even realizing it sometimes, you walk around and you study to see what people are doing that is valuable, that would be missed if they were gone and you find a time and you get the right words, the words matter now.
Speaker 2:This can't be I just love you. Okay. Alright. I won't kill myself tonight. You go tell them specifically.
Speaker 2:Be as specific as you can. You say, you know, I've noticed what you do in this place. And no one no one can do it the way you do. You know, the Bible tells us this is true. So if we hadn't found it out, we know we can find it out.
Speaker 2:Right? We read 1st Corinthians 12. We're put together like piece like members of a body. We're mutually interdependent. That's a fact.
Speaker 2:And so we have every incentive to search out how are we put together that way so that we're mutually interdependent, and then say so to the person and draw them back from the abyss. It's not a weakness in us that we want to know or at least be able to believe that we're helping somebody. I always tell people that I'm white trash, which is really not true. Although the dean the dean at Beeson, Timothy George, he really is white trash. He helped me see that I wasn't white trash because I was so far down, but he's so much farther down.
Speaker 2:And I think that incentivized him to work harder than I have and just shoot way above me like the Baptist did to the methodist, just go way, way on up there. It's just like we were kind of right here, and then he just womb up there. He's really white trash. I'm blue collar upwardly mobile. I remember not having air conditioning and then having air conditioning, not having the dental plan and then having the dental plan.
Speaker 2:Well, I used to work. I used to do blue collar jobs. I mean, I've just done every kind of job. You know, and I've raised 2 boys who are not good for anything. They can't do anything.
Speaker 2:I don't even try to get them to do it because they'll just make a mess of it, that then I have to go redo it all. And it takes twice the time. I did a lot of jobs that were monotonous. One of the jobs in a cotton mill and I knew that all of that cloth went to make work gloves work gloves. And in that cotton mill, I worked in the weave room.
Speaker 2:That's where the really does. That's the best room. Right? That's where that's Norma Rae. That's Sally Field and Norma Rae, the the weave room.
Speaker 2:Watch it tonight. Go to Netflix. These other rooms in the cotton mill, and that's AA ball weave room. Now when I was in the weave room, I worked
Jeffrey Heine:as hard as I could
Speaker 2:to get my job done so I could go back into another room where they weren't that didn't run on the 2nd shift so I could smoke pot. I was always a hard worker. Most of the people I was, I mean, some of my friends like stole broken houses, but I worked to get my drugs. So anyway, So anybody who's worked a blue collar job knows what the topic is when you're on break. What do you talk about when you're on break?
Speaker 2:It's the r word. You are You elite. Oh, I bet you hate the prosperity gospel. I do too, but not not the way you do. You feel so good about hating it.
Speaker 2:Here's what they talk about. Or you're in here, but you're ashamed, you don't wanna, you don't wanna be outed as one of me. They talk about retirement. They talk about retirement all the time. There were 2 women in the weave room who didn't talk about retirement, And they were they were on fire for God followers of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:Their faces glow. After I had my Damascus road turnaround, I went back and talked to those ladies. I went to the mill, went there at break time and I talked to them. You know what they said to me? They said, we're making these gloves that people need.
Speaker 2:They saw that they were serving. They were so glad that their life counted for something that when you need those work gloves, a sermon against the prosperity gospel won't do. You gotta have the gloves. You gotta have the gloves. We need to help people see that what they're doing, is if it is, is serving people.
Speaker 2:Our friends, this situation that God made for us, where work has plays this incredible role, it's gone sour because we rebelled against God. And when we rebelled, every dimension of Shalom I've mentioned, was distorted. Our relationship with him is not what it ought to be. They immediately felt like they were they were naked and they and they wanted to hide from him when he came. And then our relationship with each other wouldn't belong to the children of Adam and Eve.
Speaker 2:Cain would kill Abel. They couldn't make cities anymore. When they made a city, it was an it was an idol to them. So be careful about being for the city. Don't encourage them to make an idol out of it.
Speaker 2:That's what they did in Babel. God had to destroy that city. And work was messed up. That was one of the curses. One of the curses was you were supposed to, listen, make your living out of out of working the soil, but now the soil is gonna make it hard.
Speaker 2:Everything's messed up. Everything's messed up. Our bodies are breaking down, but here's what we do when we listen to the heretic Marcion and some of the gnostic heresies and the mannequees, I made that up too. I'm just walking around bristling with all this knowledge of heresy, so I can avoid it. Here's what we do as Gnostics.
Speaker 2:What was Marcion's heresy? Here's what his heresy was. He looked at the world God made, and you can turn on debates with atheists and all this kind of thing that tell you the same thing. This is what Marcion said. He said, have you seen what's going on in this world?
Speaker 2:Whoever made this world is not a God I'll worship. That's what he said. A world with Isis and Auschwitz, tsunamis, birth defects whoever made this world needs to get these to get our middle finger And so Marcion said the creator of this world is not the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is coming down here to rescue us. There's a lot of Platonism in this too.
Speaker 2:Plato, he gonna come here. He's gonna get this part of us that's really counts, and that's the non material part, and he's gonna rescue that out. It's not biblical. Remember when Jesus got he got up from the grave. He made an he made a point of it.
Speaker 2:They thought he was a ghost, and he said, come here and touch me. And then he said, let's whip up some barbecue. Let's eat. I got a body, Rose from the dead. We're gonna come forth from the grave.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna play I'm gonna play full court basketball. And I tell you this, the older I get, the better athlete I used to be. Better believe it. Work messed up too. And in this time between the times, between now and the new heaven and the new earth, none of these relationships will ever be what they ought to be fully.
Speaker 2:None of them. Our relationship with God won't be what it ought to be fully until then. Our relationships with each other, they won't be what they ought to be fully until then. And how we relate to the world, the the world itself is kind of against us now. We have earthquakes, We have tsunamis, and sometimes we work very hard and we make no money.
Speaker 2:And in the Bible, it's good to make money. And in the q and a time, if you stir me up on this topic, I'll talk to you about it. Paul usually would write ticked off, but when he writes about people who are idle who ought to be working and making money, he writes as a ticked off guy. He's ticked off about it. He's also ticked off about some people who aid and abet people who are idle and think themselves real compassion.
Speaker 2:He gets ticked off about it. Paul, not me. I'd never think these thoughts. Listen, before we take our break, here's what's in the crosshairs. Okay.
Speaker 2:I get to tap into one of the words you've tried to take, redeemer. Now I'm gonna get on some ground here that's bad. Why don't people wanna be called Baptist? Because Baptist have been so awful. And so that name has been tainted, right?
Speaker 2:I've met these people, had these bad experiences in Baptist churches. Why do they have such bad experiences in baptist churches? Because the baptist churches have got people in it. And so the name has been tainted. So here's what I wanna say to you all.
Speaker 2:Y'all try to be good a long time. Are you gonna taint the word redeemer? Then what will you do? What are you gonna do then? You won't have Mosaic, so that's been messed up too.
Speaker 2:And of course, Christ, they're screwing that up. Christ, remember those Christ people? They started out so good. It's good, it's like when you first start dating. Yeah, y'all are just fascinating and wonderful.
Speaker 2:And that is the way I feel about you all. But I know what's coming. I feel it. You're all eat up with sin. Okay.
Speaker 2:I don't want it to happen. I know it'll happen though. The crosshairs the crosshairs of redemption is everything he made including work. And so periodically what God will do is he'll make the land yield up its He'll make it yield more and they'll become prosperous just like I read in Zechariah. How come Jesus, why didn't he just come down here?
Speaker 2:I bet y'all are all over the cross and I'm into it too. Go cross. No cross, no forgiveness, no cross, no redemption. No. Okay.
Speaker 2:So I'm not taking a backseat to anybody on the cross. So why didn't Jesus just come down here and get on it? Did you notice? And what's he dillydallying for? He insists on being born of a virgin?
Speaker 2:Why? And then we gotta watch him grow up, get on with the cross. He spends 30 years ish being me. He was blue collar up We know now he was blue collar upwardly mobile. We know that now he was not poor.
Speaker 2:There was a big building time. Listen, we know what the poor were like in the first thing, they were beggars on the street. Jesus was not he made himself poor later and lived off other people. Man, he was a tech non, he was a carpenter, There's big building projects going on. Why?
Speaker 2:What was he doing? He's redeeming the whole of life that God made, including work. Listen. Everything Jesus did listen. Everything he did before he went to that cross was necessary for the cross to have the redeeming consequences that it had.
Speaker 2:That's why he did all those things. He redeemed work. Without work, we can't reflect whose we are, who made us, and we can't fully enjoy the abundant life we were made to have. I look forward to your questions. We're gonna take a little break.
Speaker 2:Feel free to go over there and get what is it you have donuts or something or bananas, or I was told some there was some food thing that is over there somewhere. So go over there and then we'll come back and we'll do the q and a. Alright.
Jeffrey Heine:If you want to go ahead and start making your way back to your seat, we're going to start up the q and a. This is always my favorite part of the talk back because we get to talk back. It's kind of why we call this a talk back. So if you want to start making your way. One quick announcement, if you signed up for the 30 days to understanding the bible, reading group, the books are available at this back corner over there.
Jeffrey Heine:So, make sure you, pick yours up. The reading plan starts tomorrow. So, if you have, signed up for that class and you've registered, and your book is over there. Alright. So we're gonna start with a q and a.
Jeffrey Heine:Hopefully, you've got some, questions that have been, formulating over the last hour. I would like to begin, with the first question I will be asking us a question that I heard during the break. And, and so we'll begin with that. And, and we'll start from there. But the first question is this.
Jeffrey Heine:What if you don't like your job? And I heard this from someone else. This is not my question. Right? But what if you don't like your job?
Jeffrey Heine:What what if what if it's hard for you to see, the significance and the value in it? What what what would you encourage someone to do?
Speaker 2:The damage that has been done, that we've done to ourselves and our rebellion against God reaches to every part of what God made good. And so it is going to be the case and has been the case, I think, in history that most people never really experienced much of what I would call taste and glimpses of what work was meant to be and what was lost, in the fall. The most we can hope for, I think, are temporary and, partial reversals of the fall. And so I do think it is it is the and we know we can just read history and see that it is the norm that people are are not, happy in their work. People are not happy in their marriages.
Speaker 2:They're not happy in their relationship with God. I mean, this is this is more the norm than than not. And so to some extent I think a certain amount of acceptance is probably is probably appropriate. Jesus said in that same long last discourse that I referenced earlier where he said, I'm going to make a place for you and that when I come, I'll take you to myself so that you can be with me. In that same long last discourse, Jesus says to his followers in this world you will have trouble, and boy hasn't that turned out to be the case.
Speaker 2:And so we've been warned. That is often led people to treat especially the material dimensions of of creation as something that we only bear up under. So we bear up and we wait for these things to be changed. I'm saying we should push back. And so if a person doesn't like their job, I'd like to hear more.
Speaker 2:I mean, the problem could be with them. But let's say, it's it's a it's a it's a job that just is a horrible job. It just it just, you know, crushes the spirit of almost any person. Then I think what we should do as believers is we should try to help that person move to a better job that that would be better for them. And we should also support public policies that we believe will help people to have jobs that will not crush them, but will allow them to flourish, as human beings.
Speaker 2:But there's not going to be a permanent fix to this and, but in the meantime, we do push back just like Jesus didn't heal everybody when he was on this Earth, but he healed some people and then he said that, you know, I'll say I never knew you, when I come in to the time of judgment and you'll say, how did you not know us and he'll say you didn't give me anything to drink. You didn't visit me when I was in prison. You didn't visit me when I was sick. You didn't do these things. So we're to push back against the distortion that's been brought into the workplace.
Speaker 2:Knowing that in the end, that is going to win. And so I'm going to do what I can to see people physically healthy, even though I know they're eventually gonna get sick and die. I also know that eventually if they belong to Jesus, they're gonna be raised and have a new body or not. Although it just seems like that was the right answer. I feel it.
Speaker 2:I knew it was clear and exhaustive what I said. Wait, C SPAN's here, so you have to speak into the microphone.
Speaker 3:I think this is kind of a follow-up a little bit to that, so I'll ask it now. You talked, at the beginning a little bit about us kind of being image bearers in our work or we're created by by god, so we're image and we're made in his image, so we're image bearers of him. And then you gave the example a little bit or kind of alluded to the women, in the factory who recognized that they were image bearers. Do you have some, I don't know if it's practical, I don't know if of things that can help us see how we are image bearers in our own you know, I mean, I I realize we all work in very different context, but just some basic kind of things that we can filter to help us see how we bear Christ image in our work?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, note how how much time I spent talking before I ever mentioned work. Part of that was to establish the theological basis of work. Work is not a marginal issue. It's a it's a God thing.
Speaker 2:God works. And so any image bearing we do, it's image bearing in so far as it reflects who God is, which is displayed in what he does. And when God worked, note what he did. He didn't just make a church or a place for people to gather and worship. He didn't make spiritual retreats and quiet times.
Speaker 2:He made the whole stinking universe. And he's it was it's dazzling. And then he set it up so that most of our time, 6 7ths of our time is really spent dedicated to doing things other than gathering together to worship him. Now that came first and that's necessary to launch us properly into this 6 7ths of our lives. When we're launched into it, we should understand that now we're to reflect what he did in his work.
Speaker 2:And what he did in his work was he blessed us with health and wealth. It sounds like the health and wealth gospel, see, And enjoyment of each other and the things he had made. So when we work, we want to look for the ways in which what we do is some sort of help and service to people. That's what we want to look for. And and to, you know, take that with great seriousness and and this and I think especially of calling that out in the lives of others, showing them how what they're doing is is of help and of service to others.
Speaker 2:And when we do that, we're imitating God. Not that we create anything, but we're taking what he made and we're using it to bless and to, you know, and to help others. I picked the example about the, you know the work gloves, because I thought I was kind of reaching low there, and that's from my own experience. But I've heard already that you all have done some things where you bring in people who are, in different sorts of lines of work and let them talk about these things. I think we need to look for what is useful and helpful in the work of others, but we also need to learn from them.
Speaker 2:You know, tell you tell me what is useful about the work that you're doing. How would the world be worse if if that kind of work wasn't, wasn't done.
Speaker 4:Hi. I was wondering what kind of your thoughts were on, going into work with the perspective of being upwardly mobile. Is you know, where do we exist as Christians in working with excellence, and what is upwardly mobile and kind of how do we kind of exist within that realm?
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, you're you're the devil. And you're gonna go to hell, and I'm gonna go with you. And so before I say anything about this, I just want to say I loathe myself. I loathe myself.
Speaker 2:Okay. The prosperity gospel is wrong, but what is it? Let's define it, and then let's hate it. Let's hate it real good. And then let's say if we can say anything else.
Speaker 2:It's a lie that God wants all of his children to be wealthy and healthy all the time. And how do we know that? Well, you know, Jesus Yeah. One one of these, church growth guys, I won't say his name, but, you know, he was talking about how his nephew followed Jesus. And, you know, one of the ways you could see that following of Jesus kind of taking root in his life is that he just he just excelled in the banking world.
Speaker 2:And I just thought that was really different than I know I'm doing what I want because they're crucifying me. Okay? Step off. I am following the strength. Okay.
Speaker 2:And we know that the bible doesn't teach that the the index of how pleased or not God is with us is whether we're healthy and wealthy. That's the prosperity gospel, and that's a lie. And we're saying it so loud. We're we're we're I'm on the gospel coalition website and we're and we're shooting blanks. We're shooting blanks at the prosperity gospel.
Speaker 2:You know why? Because we don't fool with their passages in the bible. Now we got our passages. We got people that are doing right and suffering for it and we just camp out there. Now we're not suffering much, but buddy we got those passages.
Speaker 2:I might not be doing it myself, but I know those passages are there and therefore I hate the gospel prosperity gospel. I'm clinging to the cross. We don't fool with their passage. They don't look at our passages, but they got a lot of passages. I read some of them tonight.
Speaker 2:If you read Deuteronomy, man he talks about building big old houses and see they've got those passages. And nobody's really helping me. All the great gurus of evangelicalism, the anti prosperity evangelist. They're not helping me with those passages. They're just hunkered down with their brows furrowed and their neck veins poked out against the prosperity gospel.
Speaker 2:And all of them are living in the west, and they're all professionals. And they've all got dental plans and retirement plans, and they want their children to have them. And I just have to say, I don't know if they're the best, you know, vehicles for the anti prosperity gospel. I'm just not sure. You have you read this passage in Deuteronomy?
Speaker 2:Have y'all read the bible? It's really good. No. No. You can see why why that stuff made the cut.
Speaker 2:And he tells them Here's what Moses says. He says, when we get to the promised land, you're gonna have these houses, you're gonna have all this stuff and he list the stuff they're going to eat and in that list is pomegranates. I remember when my youngest child got interested in pomegranates, and we had to have a family meeting. And we said, we're not a family that can afford pomegranates the way you're eating them. Now, every time you earn a degree, I'll give you a pomegranate.
Speaker 2:But between now and then, no pomegranates. I don't begrudge the rich people having them, but that, we don't have it. We don't We gotta we gotta learn to deal with their passages. Over and over in the bible, one of the ways God blesses us is by healing people and by making them prosperous. It's throughout the bible.
Speaker 2:So it's not me. It's not me that's saying this. It's in the scriptures. You find it. Well, see, all the people that are into the prosperity gospel, they have those passages.
Speaker 2:And so when we're all round up in our wealth being against it, it's like B. B. Bouncing off an anvil. Because they got their bibles. We need to do a better job at this.
Speaker 2:We're gonna learn we have to learn to say positive things about pursuit of our own physical health and working to take care of ourselves and take care of other people. And we need to do better at If we're gonna have any If we're only doing this to feel good about ourselves, then we're doing fine. But if we want to have an impact on people that have bibles, who believe wrongly in the prosperity gospel, we gotta do better. We gotta do better. Here's one of the ways I think we get this wrong.
Speaker 2:We take the miracles that Jesus performed, you know, like he healed people and he was a partier too. You know, he made the wine and everything. He did that. Partier. He was accused of that.
Speaker 2:You know, he's accused of being a glutton. Did you know that? He was accused of being a glutton and a wine bibber. There's a great story about the bibs. They had to they had to drink so much of that alcohol because it didn't have much much, alcohol in it.
Speaker 2:So they had to drink a lot. They had to plan for it. They had to store it up and they had to drink at night. That's why Paul speaks of them as the people of the night. They'd stay up all night drinking, and they wore bibs for when they would vomit all over themselves.
Speaker 2:That's worse than the umbilical cord thing earlier. Ick. So, he was a partier. Remember, he got his back up one time. You know, John the Baptist comes in here.
Speaker 2:He's an aesthetic. He's in the desert. He's a monk. He just got barely something wrapped around him. He's eating a locust and wild honey.
Speaker 2:You know, he couldn't have eaten and eat one of the cupcakes. He couldn't have done it, but Jesus could have. He was partying, going to people's houses. Martha and Mary, they had a house. Old Theophilus, who subsidized the publishing of the 2 volume work by Luke.
Speaker 2:He had money. Zacchaeus was only told to give away half of what he had. His other half was a lot. Yeah, I don't know if it was Trumpian, but it was a lot. I'm not sure I can answer those questions, but I will say this.
Speaker 2:In Timothy and Thessalonians, 1st Timothy and second Thessalonians. Jesus gets ticked off when people don't provide for themselves. So I want you to be upwardly mobile enough, so that it makes it possible that I don't have to pay your bills, and if you instead do something that kind of ensures you won't be able to do that, then try not to get your backup. If I say, well, maybe don't reach into my pocket, because I do have 2 children here. There's nothing virtuous about kind of glamorizing something that came about because of the fall.
Speaker 2:Poverty came about because of the fall. Let's don't glamorize. God uses suffering for his redeeming purposes, but listen to me when the redemptions done the sufferings gone. Right? Maturity is not who?
Speaker 2:I can't wait for the new heaven and earth. We'll just all be poor and, and and sick, but we won't mind because now we're so spiritually strong. K. God can use suffering. He does use suffering to save us, his own suffering to save us, but he's not suffering now.
Speaker 2:The cross, the cross, the cross. Oh, yeah. The cross. Well, what happened after the cross? He rose.
Speaker 2:He's not on the cross now. Tell you, we need to take these passages away from the prosperity gospel if we wanna have any effect on, because they've wrecked they they've noticed that Jesus got up. He didn't just stay there and say this is it. This is the apex. This is this is what we all want, crucifixion.
Speaker 2:That really wasn't the answer. I kind of went off there. I better stop. I don't really agree with that stuff I just said. I know it's wrong.
Speaker 2:Okay. You know, I'm struggling with these passages. I'm just trying to understand it. So somebody raised their hand. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you got you catch the c span.
Speaker 4:Okay. You talked about 3 different relationships and the one is, how we relate to God, how we relate to one another, but I don't really understand what the third one is. How we relate to others in our home, it kinda sounds the same.
Speaker 2:In the in the whole created order. We relate to each other before God in the whole created order. We leave that one out and here's how we do it. We as just people I know who think wrong. You're probably not one of them, but one of my favorite theologians John Calvin talked about the created order as a as a dazzling theater and a stage like a stage of a theater on which the drama of redemption occurs.
Speaker 2:But when if when when we think about the drama of redemption, we I'm afraid we tend to narrow it to our being saved. And I'm saying that in holy scripture, the whole creation is gonna be saved. That's what it says in Romans 8. It says the whole creation is groaning together and waiting for the revelation of the sons of God, because it's all gonna be. That's why we're told a new heaven and a new earth is coming.
Speaker 2:We use the word spiritual very often to mean, a non material. I'm afraid. I hope I'm wrong about this. I hope this is really just not an issue and you don't need to hear this with a well well, we know he's working to making money, but let's talk about the spiritual stuff. Everything God has a claim on is spiritual.
Speaker 2:Spiritual means God cares about it. He made it. Here's another thing we do. Because something is not as you think about these three relationships. Well, what's the most important of those?
Speaker 2:It's the first one, isn't it? Our relationship with God. That's the basic foundational. That's the apex. That's the most important.
Speaker 2:Right? So there's a hierarchy here. Then it's our relationship with another person before God. And then another level down, follow me. I'm gonna actually make a point here that I think might be good.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty excited about it. Don't let me forget it by going off on a tangent. Then there's our relationship with each other before God in the place where he's put us. That's a tear down. Here's here's a habit of thinking that we need to be alert against.
Speaker 2:It's when something is less valuable than something else. We find ourselves lapsing into treating that thing that is not as important as almost harmful. Senses But see because something is lower down in the hierarchy of value, this is a thing I was secretly pretty proud of. Doesn't just because it's it's lower down in the hierarchy of value doesn't mean it's non essential. Just because something is not the most important doesn't mean it's not essential.
Speaker 2:Here's another thing we do. We say because we say, well, the the created world is just a mere stage. It's a mere instrument for the really good stuff. Well, just because something's an instrument doesn't mean it's not necessary. We need to get things in their place, And this is why listen, follow me.
Speaker 2:This is what we learn. We we can see this in the pattern of sacrifice in the Bible. I felt like I've neglected these people. Hey. Oh, there.
Speaker 2:They were more needy looking. It is true in the Bible that we're called upon to sacrifice. Sacrifices are called for. Have you noticed that in scripture? Because something is required of God as a sacrifice, doesn't tell us that that thing is not important.
Speaker 2:It tells us that that thing is very important. But less so than God, and therefore, he can require it of us. That's like with the sacrifice of Abraham. Can you believe what God did with Abraham? Abraham was willing to have a child from another wife.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. It's gonna be her, the old woman, Sarah, she's gonna give birth. So then she did. And then he grew up to about 9, 10, or 11, and God said, kill him. This is the kind of God we worship.
Speaker 2:Man, he is so different than the blonde haired blue eyed Jesus of Hollywood fame, who takes mescaline and reads poetry and talks to squirrels. I mean, he said, kill him. Kill him. And then he had to cut the He had to cut, the wood. He had to sharpen the knife.
Speaker 2:He had to look at that mountain for 3 days where he was gonna kill him. And we we go we go right to that where the angel stops the hand from plunging into into Isaac. Think about the 3 days of torture. Here's the pattern. You might have to give up your health because of what Jesus calls you to do.
Speaker 2:Your very life. That's what my grandparents. This is gonna make me look good. It shouldn't. Don't let it, but that's what my the grandparents of my children thought I was doing when I moved to Bangkok, Thailand.
Speaker 2:I was just going over there and committing family suicide. That's the way they thought of it. There were risks. You might have to give up your life. You might have to give up wealth because of what God calls you to do.
Speaker 2:It's true. You might have to give up your very life. Here's the pattern. We give it up and we get it back. Here's something Jesus said that the that the that the, energetic anti prosperity gospel evangelicals don't like.
Speaker 2:They're all into Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Father, how did that get mentioned the holy Jesus.
Speaker 2:Oh, wait. We just love him. Just Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
Speaker 2:Jesus. Here's what Jesus said. You love him so much. Here's what he said Luke. He said, whoever gives up lands, family, houses for me will receive the same back 10, 20, a 100 fold in this life and the one to come.
Speaker 2:That's what Jesus said. I forgot your question, but boy did I enjoy what I said afterwards. But, you know, all of the houses we build, the these things matter. When you say you're for the city, well, what do you mean by that? You mean just the disembodied souls that are congregated?
Speaker 2:No. You mean the city. If a water line breaks, we care. God cares. It's a spiritual matter.
Speaker 2:To you, that city language you have, it's wonderful language. It fits with, this quote that everybody's using now. 15 years ago, nobody quoted this guy, Abraham Kuiper, but I bet you've heard it. There's not one square inch on this in this universe about which Christ does not say mine. He cares about it all.
Speaker 2:He cares about it all. There's no secular sacred divide. It all belongs to him. So that's the 3rd dimension, I guess, somehow. There's a hand.
Speaker 2:I'm doing bad, but these long winded answers, it's not good.
Jeffrey Heine:So my question is, how do I know what I should do for a job?
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, if you're spiritual like me, god will just tell you. I'm kidding. I do believe God, make some things clear to people and they know that God knows that they know that God knows. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I could keep going and it would still be true. But that's not usual. That's not usual. One of the problems we have, one of the difficulties, I I don't wanna say it's this easy, but one of the things we, especially ministers of the word need to work at, all of us do, is noting trying to see discern in scripture what is normative and what's not normative. And just because God made me know I couldn't continue in electrical engineering, I had to stop doing that and run from the money.
Speaker 2:Man, I wish I'd been a prosperity gospel person back then. I probably would have fought with him harder, but to run from the engineering and do this, what was I talking about? What's your question? Oh, yeah. God made me know I had to do that.
Speaker 2:And then later he made me know I had to go to Bangkok, Thailand as a missionary. He made me miserable until I decided to. But a whole bunch of other decisions that I made, I believe I was free. I don't agree with this having to drag God into every decision and say he he told you. Now so having said that, it doesn't mean that there aren't questions we should be asking ourselves.
Speaker 2:And I think we should ask, but, let me say this. These questions I'm gonna give you, this is these are things that are now possible, but I think they're good, but they're possible because we live in the west. We live in the lap of luxury. And one of the ways we try to cleanse ourselves is we're trying to hate it all, but you don't. That's why you're here.
Speaker 2:And, you know, if your tooth hurts, you really want to get it taken care of. Okay. You're not going to a place where okay. Once We should ask ourselves the question, What are my gifts? Not the list that you have.
Speaker 2:These are these are just representative. How can I serve? What can I do that can help? You know, I I think those are good questions to maximize and optimize the ways in which you can can be helpful. The way that plays out in my life is that I've developed a ministerial identity in the sense that I I know better now than I once did my strengths and weaknesses in leading churches.
Speaker 2:I'm a serial interim pastor. I go to churches that are don't have a pastor. They're troubled. I'm in my 14th interim right now. And so I've I've developed knowledge of myself So that I say look this church is probably gonna need these three things and I'm I don't do those things.
Speaker 2:I'm not good at those things. I'll try. But here are the things I do well, but you're gonna need this too and we're gonna need to get someone else to do it. So I think I think looking looking to to yourself and to others to to think about where can I work? Can I serve effectively and where can I help are good things, but what I don't want to do though?
Speaker 2:I don't think any of us can do is say well once we figure out our gifts. Well, then we just beg off everything else that needs doing. So that's a western mindset. Sometimes things just need to be done and you might have to do that. But if you have the luxury, which many people do in the west of of, going down this path instead of that fat path.
Speaker 2:I think, you know, we should think about where we would where we would do well. I don't know.
Speaker 5:To follow-up on what you said about shalom, Jeremiah 29 says, If we seek a welfare of a city, we experience welfare in the city. But in John 15, Jesus said that the world hates us because the world hates Him. I know that when Jesus comes back, we experience it alone. But today, when we work in the real world, even when we seek the welfare of others, we don't necessarily experience harmony. So do you think we can experience shalom today working in the real world?
Speaker 5:If so, how can we experience shalom today? Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay. I'm glad we got this question. One of the ways that people get traction on a kind of sacred secular divide or a kind of basic anti this world posture is from passages like that and my students know I don't like the word balance. Balance is a cop out. Balance doesn't tell you anything.
Speaker 2:We need to know how things relate to each other. There are passages in the Bible that are pro world, aren't they? Like for example, the best known passage in all of the Bible says for God so loved the world same the same book that this passage comes from. Then you have anti world passages. Our citizenship is not of this world.
Speaker 2:This world's gonna pass away. This world's gonna be destroyed. Then you got passage that say this creation itself is gonna be redeemed. Alright. So we're not gonna hear the voice of the bible by hunkering down either in the pro world passages or the anti world passages.
Speaker 2:We're gonna have to work with it some. Well, have I worked with it some beg me to tell you what I think please tell us doctor divine. Okay. It's not very good, but anyway. This world is under the wrath of God, under the curse of God.
Speaker 2:It is marked for destruction. In its rebellion and opposition to its maker and to his son who came to this earth. It's doomed. This world is doomed in its opposition. That's going to be destroyed, but this is also the world that is in the cross hairs of his redeeming work.
Speaker 2:How do we know that's true? Because all throughout the scriptures, we have these temporary, periodic, partial reversals of the fall. So that now the work of our he prospers the work of our hands, Deuteronomy. And then it's proper to pray that that will happen. Psalm 90, prosper the work of our hands.
Speaker 2:And shalom does happen from time to time, partially and temporarily. And these are harbingers of what to come. And then when Jesus gets it on the act 2, people still die, but he for a while, Lazarus come forth. That's my favorite passage against free will. I don't think Lazarus was agonizing.
Speaker 2:He just got up. Okay. So you're not gonna make me be alive again? My free will should violate my psyche. I'll decide.
Speaker 2:God forbid that God would make a decision or 2, you know, to save somebody. But anyway, it's wrong. I loathe myself, but, so and then he heals some people, You know, and the little girl, Talitha, it's reversals of the fall. So yes, we can't have shalom full blown, but Shalom's coming and in the meantime we get taste and glimpse glimpses and we see God and Jesus and those who follow him working for those glimpses and tastes for this world, because that's what's gonna win. It's the not shalom that's doomed, not the shalom.
Speaker 2:Alright. Oh, where's the mic?
Jeffrey Heine:We've got time for one more question.
Speaker 6:Well, I apologize. This is really just would request your commentary on. So Psalm 127 talks about, it is in vain that you rise up early and go to bed late, eating the bread of anxious toil. And then, conversely in Psalm 128, it's 127128, it says, blessed are you who fears the Lord, you'll eat of the fruit of the labor of your hands. So in both of those contexts, there's work, one is anxious and one is not.
Speaker 2:Listen. So glad you asked these questions. They're so great and wonderful. I love that question, because here's what we do. We do baby out with the bathwater.
Speaker 2:See we live in the west, don't we? And if we're wise, we realize that we're just stinking rich compared to most people who've ever lived or who are alive on this earth now. That's true about us, comparatively. Okay? Comparatively.
Speaker 2:And here's what, if we're wise, we also know about ourselves. Wow. If this is all there is, we see better than a person who's always been poor How little it brings us, don't we? We feel like we have credibility then when we trash money, because we've had money or we've known people with money, and we've seen how little it can do. And then we just all the passages that warn about money.
Speaker 2:Money gets a bad name in the Bible. It's the root of all kinds of evil. And we we yes. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 2:Then we ignore these other paths. Here's what we do. See, we we will mess up anything because we're sinners. Show me a person who decides to sell everything and go poor and I'll show you a person. I'll show you people.
Speaker 2:You can read them in history who've taken the vows of poverty, of chastity, of obedience, and then they end up eat up with sin. That's how we have the protestant reformation. Luther was a monk. He'd taken all the vows. He said, if anybody ever saved by their monkery, it was I.
Speaker 2:Didn't work. So we can mess up poverty. Poverty won't save you. We'll mess up money. Give me some money.
Speaker 2:I'll mess it up, but it's not just that we can mess up the ministry. They're the worst people. They're the worst people. Ministers of the word, they're the worst. We mess it all up and so because something can be can be distorted and made wrong use with use of we run from that thing and therefore won't let ourselves be taught about the right use.
Speaker 2:And I think that's kind of where we are right now with the prosperity gospel. We've developed all this language and upset and self righteous outrage, but we really haven't delved into their passages yet. And so we don't have a vocabulary to talk about it. And we're not around people who challenge us to do that. We're just around people who applaud us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We can make make an idol out of money. And I think it's a special evil too. Let me say this. Money's a special kind of threat because it seems to be able to promise so many things that God says he is the ultimate source of.
Speaker 2:See, it just seems to be able to get us the security for the future. All these things is a special thing. So the threat is very, very great and we'll mess it up. We're gonna send with respect to it. But you live in the west and you're at your many of you are very educated and you many of you are professionals and you're that's you're gonna probably have that life unless a bomb drops today that could end tomorrow, but you're probably gonna be in that world, and you need to learn how to do it the right way.
Speaker 2:And to do that, you're gonna have to move beyond identifying the harm money can do And and try to learn the good that that that can come, but yes, we can make it an idol and that's bad. Alright.
Jeffrey Heine:Join me in thanking March Vine for being with us tonight. I'd like to, to let you know about the next time we're gonna be gathering here is June 7th. We're going to be here with Nancy Guthrie and her husband, to talk about, grief and God's sovereignty. Nancy Guthrie is an author. She's written a number of books, and I, I tried to pick like just one to to talk about, but there there are so many books that she has written.
Jeffrey Heine:Bible studies. She's a fantastic, writer and speaker, Bible teacher. And so it's gonna be a great time gathering, with Nancy and her husband, talking about grief in particular, some of their own experiences. They they have lost 2 children and they have wrestled through what, what that loss and a belief in, in Jesus walking with them through that. And so we'll be gathering here the same kind of setup on, on June 7th, 7 to 9 pm.
Jeffrey Heine:We'd love for you to be here and bring some friends. Thank you for coming and we'll hopefully see you