Hi, good morning. It's good to see you guys.
I'm Cole. If we haven't met, I'm one of
the lead pastors here at Frontier Church.
Carlos already kind of spilled the beans on this one, but this
is our last sermon in our brief sermon series on faith and
vocation that we're calling. Thank God it's Monday.
Next week we start a really, really, really short two week
sermon series about the Holy Spirit for the Pentecost season.
And I felt very original and creative with the title of that
sermon series. So we're calling it the Holy
Spirit. You're welcome.
Short and to the point. But that's not this morning.
This morning. We've got one more weekend.
Thank God it's Monday. I was so I was lucky enough I
went to you and I at University of Northern Iowa.
Go Panthers. Oh, we have some Panthers in the
room. And I was, I was lucky enough to
wind up directly after college, right down the road at a, at a
dream job of mine at Cedar Falls High School, teaching secondary
English to sophomores through seniors in high school.
It felt like a dream job to me. It's what I felt like my entire
life was leading to. And the first week of being a
full time high school English teacher.
Yes, I repeat, I repeat, my first week of being a high
school English teacher. That Friday I found myself in
the principal's office in trouble as a teacher.
First week, first week, there I was.
I was like, I've been here before, never as a teacher, but
I've been here before. My principal, he was right.
I was wrong. I had some learning to do.
I had some figuring out to do. But he said to me, and this is
the entire conversation. He said to me, Cole, this is a
public school. You can't just write Bible
verses on the whiteboard. And I was like, huh?
So this is it. Huh.
This is it. Can't just write Bible verses on
the whiteboard. So we had a conversation about
him and I said, OK, yeah, no, that totally makes sense.
Probably shouldn't lead that way on like the first day of school
kid, right? I put up I think one of the
proverbs a kid took a picture of it sending to the principal and
end up getting. Luckily, I actually still work
for that principal. He's now the Superintendent at
the place that I coach wrestling.
So we've actually got a great friendship and and he's been an
awesome role model and mentor to me.
But the conversation went this way.
I said, OK, so I I can't lead that way.
I can't initiate it. I can't, I can't talk about it
from the front of the that makes total sense to me.
What if, listen to me? What if they ask me about it
after class or in the hallways? And then he said, absolutely,
then you can talk about it. And so I began to strategize a
little bit. I said, OK, so I can't just
teach the Bible at a public school.
That makes sense. And so I started to develop
privately what I called gospel hooks, ways of teaching English
literature, poetry, short stories and novels by asking
questions centered around life that made the kids and provoked
the kids to wrestle with big worldview questions in the hopes
that they would ask me Dyke, what do you think?
I called them gospel hooks. And so no, I couldn't say, Hey,
you were born sinful and you need to be saved by Jesus
Christ. Repent of your sins.
I can't do that in a in a high school English classroom in a
public school system. Here's what I could do.
Hey, class. So if you look at William
Golding in Lord of the Flies, did you guys learn Lord of the
Flies in high school? Good English teacher.
I could say William Golding in The Lord of the Flies right
here. What he's clearly implying is
that when you strip away civilization from human nature,
what you have is depraved human nature.
I'm just curious, class, do you think that's true?
Do you think human beings are good or bad by nature?
And if they're bad, what is our hope as a human species?
I could say that, but here's what I learned.
If there was no relational trust between me and the students,
they enjoyed answering those questions and wrestling with
those questions, but they didn't give a RIP about what I thought,
and so they wouldn't ask me the question.
And so I developed the gospel hooks.
But then I noticed if I want to have these types of
conversations with high school English students, then I've also
got to develop relational trust. And so I went all in on, OK, how
can I get better at developing relational trust?
How can I encourage them in the most precise vocal and verbal
ways? How can I show interest in their
lives outside of school? And so I began to develop
relationships with the students in that way.
And then every once in a while, when the relational trust was
there and when the question was good and when the conversation
was compelling, every once in a while I would say something
like, hey, in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, he's clearly
implying that when you strip away civilization, human nature
is bad. Do you think that's true or
false? And if it's true, what do you
think our hope is? And sometimes I would have a
student who would come up to me afterwards or in the hall and
say, Daiki, what do you think? And in those moments, I could
talk to them and I could share with them my faith and the
gospel of Jesus. And it was really sweet.
I really enjoyed those two years as a high school English
teacher. But now looking back at it nine
years later, 10 years later, I, I had some fun times with my
classroom. I had some students reach out
and say, Daiki, I'm becoming a teacher because of you.
I had some students say, Daiki, you were the best teacher I ever
had. But what I never saw was a
student cross the faith line. Never saw a student who said,
Daiki, you help me cross the line from non believer to
Christian. Never had a student who said to
me, Daiki, can you baptize me? And so I look back at those two
years and sometimes I wonder, did I waste those two years?
Were those two years insignificant for eternity?
Do you ever wonder that when you think about your job, your
vocation, being a stay at home mother, being retired and
investing a little bit more in relationships and hobbies and
serving the church, do you ever wonder?
Man, it just feels like the work that I do doesn't have any real
spiritual significance. Because if you're like me, you
do ask that question. And so here's where we're going
this morning. So far in the six week sermon
series, we've talked about faith and vocation.
We have, we have we've we've talked about work as worship.
We've talked about work as mission.
We've talked about work and idolatry.
We've talked about work and laziness.
And look, these six weeks, I've had a good time.
I've had some fun. I think you've had some fun.
You've laughed a few times along the way.
I hope you've learned a little bit more about Jesus.
I've learned a little bit more about Jesus.
But as we bring this thing to a close, here's where we're going.
Jesus and Jesus alone. And I don't care what your
vocation is. I don't care if you are a stay
at home homemaker. I don't care if you're a career
enthusiast. I don't care if you're retired.
Jesus and Jesus alone is the only antidote to vocational
insignificance. That feeling of man.
All these hours I'm spending on this thing, I just feel like
it's insignificant. Jesus and Jesus alone is the
antidote. I want you to see this in the
word of God if you're able. Let's stand for the reading.
This is this is the apostle Paul.
He's in First Corinthians chapter 3, verses 10 through 15.
If you've got a phone, I would love for you to turn to to that
Bible verse. If you've got a Bible, I'd love
for you to flip there. What what I'm going to teach you
on this morning. It is it's so challenging to
believe that if you don't see it in the scriptures, you'll almost
believe that it's not true. So let me start with this.
Paul says according to the grace of God-given to me, like a
skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is
building upon it. Let each one take care how he
builds upon that foundation. For one, no one can lay a
foundation other than that which is laid, which is everybody say
Jesus. So the foundation is not some
abstract idea. The foundation is Jesus Christ.
And then Paul goes on to say, now if anyone builds on the
foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or
straw, so there's different materials with which a person
can build the Kingdom of God. If anybody builds on this
foundation with gold, silver's, precious stone, wood, hay or
straw, each one's work, everybody say work, each one's
work will become manifest for the day, will disclose it
because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test
what sort of everybody say work, what sort of work each one has
done. If the work that anyone has
built on the foundation survives, he'll receive a
reward. But if anyone's work is burned
up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved by
grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ, but only as
through fire. Heavenly Father, help our church
be the kind of church that does the work that survives, work
that survives, work that builds the future city of God in the
heavenly realm, work that has eternal significance.
And the claim in this text is almost it.
Lord, it's just so unbelievable that we need you to speak to us
this morning. So Lord, encourage us, perhaps
even perhaps even rebuke us, empower us, give us a vision for
our work, give us a vision for our work that has eternal
significance. And a Lord ask for the things
I'm going to say this morning. I just want to be helpful.
And so I open my hands. I open my hands to you and I say
whatever you want to do with the sermon is OK.
If it's just background music for somebody to pray about
something that's on their heart, fine.
If it's going to radically change somebody's trajectory at
work, great, but I just give it to you.
Ioffer it to you, Lord, and whatever you want to do with it
I'm OK with. But please speak to us, talk to
us, change us in Jesus name. All God's people prayed, Amen.
You can have a seat. 1st Corinthians 3 verse 10 is it's
fascinating. These 5 verses are fascinating
to me. What Paul's doing is little bit
of Bible study here. What Paul is doing is he's
writing a group of Christians in Corinth and you can read the
rest of Corinthians. I recommend that you do.
They are a hot mess. OK, just a cursory glance of
what in the world is going on in Corinth.
It's not good. If you visited this church, it
would be your last time visiting that church.
You're not. You're not like, man, this
church is healthy. This is the kind of church I
want to be a part of. It was a hot mess.
Just for a quick glance. They are participating in public
orgies on Saturday nights and going to church on Sunday
mornings, and they don't see a problem with that.
They have members in their church who are sleeping with
other people in their family. They're going to church and
they're getting drunk off the communion wine.
That's a real thing, Paul, to say.
Like imagine if you were visiting Frontier and this
morning I had to say, hey, guys, let's not, let's not get drunk
off the line this morning. You would wonder, I wonder why
he had to say that thing. And the reason why I would have
to say that thing is because it's happened.
And so that's what's going on in the Church of Corinth right now.
And it's not just because they're rowdy.
It's not just because they're a hot mess.
It's because underneath all of this behavior is an actual
worldview. And this actual worldview which
is antithetical to Christianity, this worldview, like all
worldviews, has real life implications.
The worldview that the Corinthians would have believed
in before coming to Jesus and having their minds renewed is
the worldview that's called NASA, or some people just refer
to it as dualism. Here's what the Greeks by and
large believed in a dualistic worldview.
It is exactly what it sounds like.
It means that they saw the physical realm and the spiritual
realm AS2 separate realities. We do spiritual stuff sometimes
and then we do physical stuff over here.
And the impact that would have had on you as a 1st century
believer is you would have said, OK, then there are spiritual
things that are obviously important, and then there are
these physical things that are not important.
So for a person who believes in dualism, they would maybe order
their life this way. I do some important spiritual
stuff, like what's going on in my spirit that's important.
What I think about that's important, my soul that's
important, my religion, that's important, prayer, that's
important. But then there are these
unimportant things that just kind of happen in the realm of
the physical domain, like my body, not that important.
It's not a spiritual thing or manual labor or sexuality or my
job or ordinary life. And as a result of this
worldview, you have a bunch of Christians who think that it's
OK to do with their bodies whatever they feel like doing as
long as their spirit is in the right place, because they're
different realms. So as long as my spirit is in
the right place, bro, who cares if I go to the public orgy on
Saturday night before church? My spirit's in the right place.
Don't judge me. That's the Corinthian church.
And Paul comes in and he says wrong, dead, wrong.
What the gospel does is it up ends this dualistic worldview.
In fact, that's the message of the gospel.
The gospel is the good news that the creator of the physical
realm, took on a body in the physical realm, came to the
physical realm, died in the physical realm, not just to save
our souls, though that's true, Amen, but to also make us new
creations and resurrect our bodies.
So the Christian worldview is not some things are spiritual
and other things are not. The Christian worldview has no
line in the middle of it. There's no line in the middle of
it. The spiritual and physical realm
are intertwined and of equal worth and value.
And that means that activities like spirituality and diet and
sexuality and church and manual labor and everyday life and work
and prayer and your thought life are all spiritual.
Amen. So Paul's got to get in there
and do this work and say no, no, no, no, no, life is not like
that. You don't sever this aspect from
that aspect. Both theology and physical
exercise, prayer and our jobs matter to God.
And that's the main thrust of First Corinthians.
And So what Paul's doing is he's talking to everyday ordinary
Christian Christians in Corinth and he tells us that what what
we're doing with our bodies in this world is that we are
building the Kingdom of God on earth.
But the interesting thing is that he says there are different
materials with which you can build the Kingdom of God.
Did you notice that? Look at your Bible really
quickly, verse 12 you could, you could build verse 12 with gold,
silver, precious stones, solid. What else is in verse 12 you
could build with wood, hay, straw, vapid, frail, temporal.
OK OK, so there's different materials with which you could
build the Kingdom of God. Here's the $1,000,000 question.
How do I know which one I'm building with?
Well, luckily for you, there's verse 13.
Look at that one, Verse 13. Paul goes on to say each one's
work. Everybody say work.
I'm having you say that because Paul's actually not writing
about souls. Yes, we all know and believe
that souls are eternal. Believe the gospel eternity with
God, reject the gospel, eternity away from God.
We all know that Paul's not talking about souls.
What's he talking about? Work.
He says each one's work will become manifest for the day that
Jesus returns. We'll disclose it because it
will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of
work each one has done. Now pause a few thoughts about
the word fire right here. The word fire here, it's used
twice. It's actually not a reference to
the flames of hell. Yes, biblical Christianity does
teach a literal hell. That's a teaching in the Bible,
and it's important to Christian theology.
That's just not the fire on judgment Day that Paul's writing
about right here. What Paul is writing about is
the fire of purification. Upon judgment day, when Jesus
returns, there will be a purifying fire that has an
immediate effect that for those of us who have lots of
imperfections and lots of sins that need to be burned away, it
will purify us so that we can walk into and come into the
perfect presence of God. So this is not the fire of
torment, though that's that's real.
It's a purifying fire that burns us clean and helps bring about
the new creation. But here's the emphasis that I
want you guys nerding out about this morning.
Emphasis of the sermon. This purifying fire is going to
test what what sort of work each one has done.
The fire will burn up some work, wood, hay, straw, but
interestingly enough, it won't burn up.
Other works, though, is made of gold, silver and stone.
And so this is the $1,000,000 observation here.
I don't care. Again, I don't care if you're a
career enthusiast, if, if you own your own business, if you're
retired and serving the church, if you're a teacher, if you're a
mechanic, I don't care. The $1,000,000 observation here
is that it seems like or it could be the case or it's almost
as if Paul. Is going to say that not just
souls are eternal, but that the work we do has the capacity to
be eternal. Is that what he says?
Doesn't seem like he's saying that.
Look at this verse 14. Who goes on to say if as in it's
possible, if the work that anyone has built on the
foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
Paul is saying, and this is the extraordinary truth of the Bible
that nobody is talking about. Now, this used to be more common
in theology a couple, 100 years ago, but it seems like nobody's
talking about this, that even the works, even the works of the
faithful Christians done in faith will be eternal and have a
place in the new creation. What's what's the one condition
for which? What's the one condition that
determines whether the work is going to be burnt up and
temporal or eternal? And Paul makes this clear.
What's the one condition? It's in the text.
He says it has to be built. Quote on the foundation.
Paul already told you what the foundation was.
What's the foundation? Verse 11 for no one can lay a
foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Here's the point. I'm dragging you around through
this text right now, but I really want your eyeballs to, I
want your cartoon style. I want your eyeballs popping out
of your sockets as you see this in the text.
OK, what Paul is saying is that if you do your work and it's
built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, then the things that
you're doing in this world, the way that you spend your time at
your job, your work will be eternal.
It sounds like a fringe position, right?
It's not. This is the dominant biblical
historic position on the eternality of works within the
Christian life. If you don't believe me, here's
NT Wright. NT Wright says this is so good.
He says what you do in the present by painting, preaching,
singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals,
digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring
for the needy, loving your neighbors, yourself.
It will all last into God's future you.
Or if you don't like NT Rad, I get it.
How about the Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bovink, who
literally wrote the book on Reformed dogmatics?
You going to disagree with him? Here's Jay Won't.
Gosh bro, I just described you in a nutshell right there.
Bovink says all that is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely
and gracious. If there is any excellence,
anything worthy of praise, it will enter into the city of God.
The new creation will not annihilate the works of culture,
but purify and glorify them. Whoa.
I don't know. So I don't know what I don't
know what you think when you, when you read that, I'll tell
you what I think when I read that stuff, when I think about
that stuff, you know what I think?
I think, OK, I want to do the work that endures.
That's what I think. I think I want to do the work
that survives. I think I want to do the work
that builds the future city of God and has eternal
significance, man. That's what I think.
And so I'm going to preach on that for the rest of this this
morning. I'm just going to be honest with
you. I'm going to preach really
personally this morning and I pray that maybe somebody will
see yourself in my story. I'm not being biographical this
morning for the sake of being biographical.
I'm being biographical because when I look back at my own
vocational history, I think, you know, that's probably mostly
everybody's vocational history. And so I'm just going to be
totally personal. Is that OK with you guys?
Here's my greatest fear. My greatest fear is not that you
won't like me. My greatest fear is not that
life will be hard. My greatest fear, the thing that
I, I struggle with is that I'll be insignificant.
That's my, that's my, that's my bugaboo.
That's my thing I struggle with, that I'll be insignificant.
That my life won't make a difference, that I will push
against the world and it won't even make a dent.
That's what I struggle with. I've always struggled with it
when I was really little. Leadership lab people, you've
you've heard this. Just be a good sport, OK?
When I was really little, I remember seeing my dad coach and
teach. And I remember being on the
football field watching him coach and in his classroom
watching him teach. And he was not going to surprise
you. He was always the overly
enthusiastic teacher, but everybody thought he was the
best teacher ever. And so that just amazed me when
I was a little kid, I remember being in his classroom watching
him teach and watching the high school and middle school
students around me, watching their jaws drop, watching their
eyes get wide, watching the light bulbs go off above their
head and actually enjoying school.
And so ever since I was little, at the very inner core of who
cold Nike is, the main thing I felt was, oh, if you can use
words to make people feel joy, that must be why I exist.
That must be it, man. So you know what I did?
I chased that. I chased that for all of my
life. Growing up, I was always
obsessed with ideas and language and words and what happens if
you communicate it this way and what can I twist it this way and
get a laugh? Can I twist it this way and get
a light bulb moment? What would be the best way to
articulate this inner experience?
And I chased that. So I chased it all the way until
I wound up being a high school English teacher at Cedar Falls
High School. And wouldn't you know it, my
first week at Cedar Falls High School, I find myself in the
principal's office in trouble as a teacher.
He says, Cole Lip, love you, bro, Love you.
Glad I hired you. This is a public school.
You can't just write Bible verses on the white board.
And I remember walking away from that conversation thinking.
Huh. So this is it.
This is it. So I started to pine for church
planting deep inside of me. I I remember there were days,
guys, there were days where I locked my classroom door during
my prep hour and I just prayed and thought about church
planting until there were tears in my eyes.
Tears in my eyes. I was so excited about it.
Eventually my lead pastor said, yeah, man, I think you've got
the calling to go plant a church.
But look, I'm not going to share the pulpit with you very much.
If you're a preacher, you're going to preach whether
someone's listening or not. And so I said, OK, that's fine.
And so I started preaching in the attic to nobody.
I, I remember I would set my alarm for an hour on most days
and I'd spend 30 minutes just writing a sermon about whatever
Bible verse. Then I'd go up in my attic and
for 30 minutes I would preach it to nobody.
And by the way, you guys are a better crowd.
I remember, I remember, I remember being the attic,
though. I remember being surrounded by
bat droppings, you know, I remember the sweat dropping off
my nose because it was an attic preaching to nobody.
But gosh darn it, if I could just become a church planter,
then, then I would be significant.
And you know what happened? I I planted a church and you
know how I felt. You can ask Andrew about about
it. Like he planted this church with
us. I remember planting this church
and kind of thinking like so. This is it.
I just thought I would be more significant.
No, no, no, that can't be the case.
It it must be once our church hits 100 people, then I'll feel
significant. And you know what happened?
We hit 100 people. And you know what?
I thought so. This is it.
And so I thought, no, no, that must not be the case.
As soon as I get published, as soon as I get published by Ford,
the church, you're desiring God. If John Piper reads my article
and publishes it, then I'll make it.
And I got published by desiring God.
And you know what I felt? So this is it.
And I thought, no, no, no, no, no.
As soon as our church buys a building, then I'll feel
significant. And our church bought a building
and you know what? I felt?
So this is it. Now I'm trying to scare you.
I think we all feel that way. I think if you're honest, you
probably see a shadow of yourself in my story.
I think all of us, all of our vocational histories follows a
similar trajectory, follows a similar pathway.
We imagine that as soon as we take this step or as soon as we
hit that thing, then we'll finally feel significant and do
significant work. And what you discover in life is
that whatever step you take, if you land the dream job, if you
don't land the dream job, if you have the exact amount of kids
that you think will happy or if you don't, whatever step you
take, you kind of arrive there and you're filled with gratitude
and there's lots of love about it, but you're just kind of
like. So this is it.
Am I the only one who wrestles with feeling insignificant?
Every step of my life I felt. So this is it.
And my question for you is, where the heck?
Where the heck? Where do I find significance in
this life? I can't seem to get it from a
job description. Where do you find it?
I'm telling you, the only antidote for feeling
insignificant is in your Bible. First Corinthians chapter 3,
verses 10 through 15. Just notice this one observation
about those 5 verses. We could say a million things
about it, but just notice this. What determines whether or not
your work is significant? I'll give you a hint.
It's not the size of your work. It's not the scope of your work.
It's not how visible your work is.
It's not whether or not it's public to a lot of people and
you get praised for it, or if it's private and nobody ever
really sees it or appreciates it.
What Paul breaks down for us is that it's not the scope of your
work that will fill you with significance.
So what is it? It's not the size, it's not the
scope, It's the substance of it, whether or not it's built on the
foundation of who? Who?
Jesus, Mother Teresa, she said it this way.
We can do no great works. We can only do small works with
great love. That's worth thinking about.
That gives your work significance.
Not the size, but the substance, or in Paul's language, doing
work that builds on the foundation of Jesus.
I'll give you 3 characteristic of work that builds on the
foundation of Jesus. None of it's going to blow your
mind. Number one work that is
eternally significant is work that is done like Jesus.
You look at your job description and you say, I wonder how Jesus
would do that. And then you try to do it that
way. Secondly, that you do it with
Jesus, which is to say that you don't rely on your own power to
do the work, but you rely on the power of the Holy Spirit.
Do it like Jesus, you do it with Jesus.
And 3rd and finally, you do it for Jesus.
Meaning it doesn't mean if a million people see it or nobody
sees it, you work for Jesus. And so everything you do when
you work like Jesus, with Jesus and for Jesus, everything you
do, I don't care if you're cleaning a toilet or if you're
preaching A sermon, If you do it like with and for Jesus, it will
be eternally significant. I don't know how it works.
Like, I don't know exactly how Jesus takes your little Jay.
What do you like? Spreadsheets.
I don't know how he does it.
I don't know how he takes your spreadsheet and if you have done
it like with and for Jesus takes it and somehow transforms it
into gold, silver or stone. There's some gospel alchemy.
I thought about it a lot this week.
You know what I here's where I can when, when, when Paul talks
about work that's done on the foundation of Jesus.
Other theologians in the Bible call it works done in faith.
And so I'm thinking, how does Jesus do that?
How does he take our mundane stuff and transform it into
stuff with eternal significance and value?
It made me think. It made me think that faith,
faith is kind of like Chick-fil-A sauce.
Hear me out. Hear me out that I lost some of
you, didn't I? Yeah. yo-yo, you.
What I'm talking about. Sorry.
It's like, it's like Chick-fil-A sauce.
Look, my family has a Chick-fil-A sauce problem.
We do. I know that's pretty typical as
a pastor. I'm not trying to say I'm not
making this sound like we're bought and paid for by
Chick-fil-A sauce. I'm just saying that like in our
refrigerator and in our cupboards and like in our car,
we have, like, extra Chick-fil-A sauces just like everywhere.
It's a problem, actually, what we do when we go through the
driveway. Just humor me, OK?
I see you pushing away. When we go through the driveway,
they're like, how many Chick-fil-A sauces do you want?
What we say as a family is as many as you'll give us, which
usually works. I think they're starting to
recognize us because a couple a couple weeks ago, Chloe's
father-in-law said as many as you'll give us.
And they pressed him. They were like, give us a
number, Sir, because it's embarrassing to say like 16.
So he, like Chloe, was emptying her purse.
Her purse is what you put money in and three Chick-fil-A sauces
fell out. And faith is like a Chick-fil-A
sauce. Because here's what I figured
out. I don't like broccoli.
Sorry. I know your whole sermon was
about cultivating a taste for broccoli last week, and you were
right. You were right.
I just don't like it. But I, I figured out a couple
weeks ago, my family was, was out of town and so it was sparse
around the kitchen and we had some broccoli and I was like,
gosh, I hate broccoli. It's so boring.
Like I want to fall asleep when
I'm eating broccoli. And I thought, what would happen
if I douse this thing and Chick-fil-A sauce.
And I did, You can't drizzle it. You have to douse it.
And you know what happens? It takes this boring, mundane
thing and it makes it delicious. You're welcome.
That's your one practical application for this morning.
Douse stuff and Chick-fil-A sauce and see what happens.
Look, here's what I'm saying. That's what faith is like.
You. You take the most mundane thing
you do in your job, the most ordinate.
You take broccoli. What's the broccoli version of
your position description? And you douse it in faith and
you think, man, how can I do this thing like Jesus with Jesus
and for Jesus. And all of a sudden it, it
becomes not just bearable, but it becomes enjoyable.
I'm serious, try me on this. Let's do it.
Let's workshop here since I'm just ranting.
This is workshop. Take for just a moment, identify
the piece of your vocation that is the most mundane and boring
thing about your position. Identify that in your
imagination for a second. You got it, I'll start.
Sometimes I have to send emails that I feel like nobody will
read. Sometimes I have to make
decisions that I feel like nobody will notice.
Sometimes I have to write policies that only .5% of our
people will ever see. Sometimes I send out bulletins
on a weekly basis on Mondays, and I think nobody's going to
even read this. What's the point?
Do you ever feel like that you're at work and you do
something? You think nobody's ever going to
see this, What's the point? And do you know who has
permission to say that? Atheists.
Because from an atheistic worldview, perhaps there are
things that we do that nobody in the organization sees.
Things that we do that our bosses do not praise us for.
Things that we do, that maybe our spouses will never even
encourage us for doing. And if the atheistic worldview
is true, then it is all for nothing.
And maybe we should just do those things sloppily.
Or maybe we just shouldn't do them at all.
But do you know who should never, ever, ever say nobody's
going to ever see this? What's the point?
A Christian. I was like, maybe I am going to
do some stuff that you'll never even notice.
Maybe you don't even read the bulletin.
Do you know who does read the bulletin?
Jesus. Jesus does.
Jesus reads the bulletin. And so if you take that
seriously, you actually have to reckon with the fact of do I
really believe that he is my capital B boss and that I'm
ultimately working for him? Or is that all just a bunch of
crap I put on paper to impress my religious friends?
Because if he really is my capital B boss, and if he really
does read those bulletins, then they are infused with integrity
and dignity and value and significance whether or not
anybody else reads them. And so I know it's a Sunday
school answer, but do you know what gives your work value and
dignity and significance? It's not the scope, it's not the
size, it's not the visibility. It's not if people praise you
for it. It truly is the substance.
Jesus is really who and what gives your work significance no
matter what you're doing. Amen.
So I do have one piece of actual application, though.
I think you should do the Chick-fil-A sauce thing.
That's between you and your family.
What I want you to do is in your Thank God It's Monday workbooks
if you have one. If you don't have 1A journal
page will do. Any blank sheet of paper will
do. The back of your hand will do.
As far as I'm concerned, the final piece, the final page in
that Thank God it's Monday workbook is just mostly a blank
sheet of paper that says this. How would Jesus, if he had your
exact same position description, do your job differently?
And what I want you to do is I want you to, I want you to
reckon with that and I want you to wrestle with that.
And I want you to answer that. And I want you to answer it
prayerfully and thoughtfully to the best of your ability before
you leave church this morning. You can do it during communion
time. You can do it right after church
if you want. But I want you to finish that
before you leave church. And then I want you to find
somebody you trust, somebody you love, somebody in this church,
somebody who's maybe a part of your community group, somebody
who you friends with. And I want you to say, will you
read this? And then will you pray for me?
And I want us to pray for each other that we would do our
positions, that we would do our jobs like with and for Jesus.
And then maybe you want to RIP that thing out and put it
somewhere that you're going to see it on a daily basis.
But it's really true. It really is true that if you if
you build on the foundation of Jesus.
Your work will be eternally significant and in some way,
shape or form, God will use it to build his everlasting Kingdom
in heaven on earth. Like that's true.
And thank God, because I need it to be true.
I need that to be true. I don't have any other way of
combating the feeling of insignificance.
If you do, let me know. Like only that, that feeling of,
OK, if I do this for Jesus, then he's going to take him and he
could build it into his new Kingdom that fills every
activity, everything that I do with eternal weight and glory
and significance. And that when you start to live
that way, you stop asking questions like, am I significant
or not? Like, here's what I've been
trying to do. I'll last thing and then I'll
get out of the way. I've been trying to imagine
myself. I sound like a crazy person.
I've been trying to imagine myself entering in to the new
creation and seeing the city of God where I'm going to live with
Jesus forever on Judgment Day. And I imagine myself walking
into his everlasting Kingdom, the city of God, and just
admiring all of the wonder and beauty around me and the city
and what it looks like and all of its shapes and sizes and the
tree of life and the beauty of that and the the river that is
sparkling like diamonds and the pathways of gold.
I just imagine myself walking into the city of God and looking
at all of it. And then, and then I imagine
myself, I don't know, like looking at a giant sanctuary in
the middle of the city of God and just being rocked by its
beauty and walking over to it and just admiring this gigantic
sanctuary that forever, forever is going to, is going to house
people, shade people, provide the city with beauty, and just
being amazed at the millions of little stones and gold and
silver that make up the sanctuary.
And then I imagine myself like fixating on one small stone of
the millions of stones. And as I'm looking at that
stone, it's like, it's almost as if there's something in my soul
that recognizes that stone as though I were remembering it
from a dream that I had forgotten or a fuzzy memory.
And as I'm looking at that single stone in that wall of
1,000,000 stones, I imagine a tap on my shoulder and King
Jesus, says Cole. We laid that stone together, of
course, to which I would say when I do as little handiwork as
possible, I don't remember ever doing any Mason work.
And I think I would remember it if I ended up building a
sanctuary like this. When, when in the world did I
build the what? And I imagine Jesus saying, do
you remember that time where you just prayed your butt off and
you fought so hard about one or two little questions about
William Golding's Lord of the Flies that you asked your
students in hopes that it would lead them to me?
Do you remember that question? Here it is.
I just imagine saying thank you. Thank you for using that Jesus.
Do you remember that spreadsheet that you did like with and for
Jesus? Do you remember that couple,
those parents who were having a hard time with their kids and
nobody knew what was going on, but you did.
And after church, even though nobody saw it, you walked over
and you prayed for those parents.
Do you remember that time? Here it is.
I turned that into a stone with which I built this cathedral
that will last eternally. And I imagine that we'll say
thank you. Thank you for using my vocation.
Thank you for using my job. Thank you for turning that into
stone or gold or silver. And if you can get that, if you
can get that, then I think that you'll start to become the type
of person who doesn't experience the Sunday scary's or isn't
floored by the Sunday scary's thinking, oh gosh, I don't want
to go to work. Maybe with the help of the Holy
Spirit, time and maturity, you'll become the type of person
who wakes up on Monday mornings and you think, thank God, it's
Monday, and then you'll do work of eternal significance.
Whether anybody sees it or not, it will survive because maybe
your coworkers won't see it. You know who will though?
God, do you remember that time you were changing your son's
diaper and it was a nasty one and you wanted to curse
underneath your breath? And instead of cursing, you
prayed for his salvation and said, Lord, I just pray that
this young man will grow up to love you someday.
Do you remember that little prayer because nobody else saw
it or heard it, but the angels still talk about it?
Bro, that prayer went viral in heaven.
So let's go viral in heaven. Heavenly Father, I pray that we
would do work of eternal significance and that your Holy
Spirit would help us. Yeah.
Help us be honest about our struggles with feeling
insignificant or doing work that we think nobody else cares
about. And then make us the type of
people who just need you need you, need your power to infuse
our work with value and significance so that we can be
the type of people who change diapers and clean sinks and
teach lessons and write spreadsheets and preach sermons
in such a way that we build with gold, silver and stone.
Oh God, help us be the type of church that builds with the type
of work that survives. It's in Jesus precious name that
all God's people prayed. Amen.
Let's stand and let's worship this God together.