Tim Keller | Redefining Work | TGC13

we're in a this is actually a pretty laid-back conference and in some ways different than the earlier ones we're not doing expositions of Scripture in some ways what we're doing is trying to apply the theology we believe the subject of work and vocation we're gonna do that in a number of different ways you're gonna hear a couple of talks you're going to certainly hear a number of panel discussions in which your which we're trying to assemble people with very different backgrounds all Christians of course people from the work world the business world people who like myself who have a pastor or theologian we're trying to bring people together to talk about what it means to bring our faith to bear on our work and some of you know if your pastors that this is an area that nobody trained you to do you know nobody trained you in seminary to do this that is to disciple people for their public life many of you met perhaps have heard me use the story I mean it really came home to me when a an actor who had become a Christian at Redeemer television actor came to me and said now that I'm a Christian I need help I would you like it would you disciple me and I said sure I know how to do that how to lead a Bible study how to share your faith how to lead a small group and said no no I what roles can I take now that I'm a Christian I know I don't only have to take roles and stories that are Christian stories but in television on in movies in theater what what are good stories for for people how does my Christian faith guide me to know what kind of roles I should take and I suddenly realized I don't think I missed I must have missed that lecture at seminary this is a huge area and even people who are afraid of the cultural engagement issue there are many people who don't or get nervous when we talk about cultural engagement they say isn't the job of the church to simply preach the word and bring people to in Christ and just just do that that's it that's it when it comes to cultural engagement that's not our job our job is just to bring people to faith in Christ okay what does that mean well you evangelize and disciple them okay what do you mean disciple them will you teach them to obey Christ in every area of their life okay that means what about people who are working that and they're working out in the public spheres and the spheres of culture what does it mean for them to be disciples of Christ out there and won't that actually engage culture and the answer is yes so what I want to do is talk to you about four or five ways but I think your faith can influence and shape your work I start with a with a story a classic illustration from Alistair McIntyre in after virtue a very important book to read there's a very funny illustration in the book he asked you to imagine that you're standing at a bus stop when a young man you do not know never met before comes up to you and says the name of the common wild duck is history and octavo histrionic as' histrionic as' histrionic as' now even though you understand the sentence you know what he said his action makes no sense to you because you you don't know what it means and as soon as you try to figure out why he said it and what he meant and what the whole thing means the only way to make sense of it is to try to put it into a story so for example you say maybe this person is mentally ill that would explain why a man who you never met comes up to you and tells you the Latin name for the common wild duck maybe it's mentally ill that's a story and that makes sense of what happened the other possibility is you say this is from the book what if yesterday someone of your age height and general appearance had approached the young man in a library asking him the Latin word for the wild duck and today he has mistaken you for that person sees you at the bus stop and comes up and says oh yeah the name of the common well duck is history histrionic is histrionic it says Jonica that would explain it here's another possibility it's possible that the young man is a foreign spy waiting at a pre-arranged rendezvous and uttering the ill-chosen code sentence which will identify him to his contact now depending on what that would make sense to of it right so there's a three different stories and they all make sense of what just happened and what you're gonna do now depends on which story you put that event into right so one of the things you could do is you could try to kill him hey you know he's a foreign spy probably here to assassinate somebody if he's mentally ill that would be really a shame on the other hand you might call the police or you might you might try to engage them in a conversation no birds no matter what you do it'll be on the basis of your understanding of what happened your understanding will be based on the story in which you put the event your work will make no sense to you unless you put it into some kind of story I do think there's a lot of Christians the story is this that in church I'm doing God's work out here I'm just trying to make a living so that I can do God's work at church so I can give money to the missionaries who are doing God's work that is one story and as a result I would say if that's the story first of all you'll make no effort to actually shape your work by your faith you'll seal your your faith away from your work I have to say it is the way of least resistance because what you'll do is just blend in with the way work is done in the field you won't ask well is this a is this a you know does this reflect Christian values you won't have to do any of that hard work that story is the story that actually makes a fair amount of you know makes sense I don't think it's what the Bible says because Jesus is a king and these are King therefore very area of your life you can't you can't do that the story that we have to put work into so it makes sense is creation fall Redemption restoration in a book that I wrote along with Katherine Larry all Stouffer's gonna be up here every good endeavor but we tried to lay out in the book was that very idea unless you understand God is the creation the creator of all things and that everything he created was good unless you understand that we're falling very fallen in such a way not that we're as bad as we could be but what I learned in seminary about total depravity total depravity is not that you're as bad as you could be but if sin was blue you'd be blue all over meaning that every part of your life you know your mind wheel your emotions public private it's not like in the church everything is sacred and out here everything is profane sin is distorting every part of your life thoroughly Redemption which is that it's not just that your sins are forgiven but into your life has come the Holy Spirit and you are now a new creation and the new creation means all things are made new and that has to do that can't just say oh my family life gets renewed that my work life does not and restoration which means God's we've talked about earlier today and maybe you were at that other conference you probably were we talked about the fact that the resurrection means that God is not simply taking us into a spiritual netherworld but he's restoring this world this material creation which shows you the goodness of work and the future of work and so on now one of the things you could do and probably would be a little more of a high theological lecture is to go through creation fall Redemption restoration and say how does every one of these things affect how we think of work but I would like to get a little more practical than that in my last 15 minutes here and I'd like to give you those four or five fairly practical ways that the theology of the Bible shapes the way you do your work here they go number one faith gives you an inner ballast now we're going to get real practical and personal right away faith gives you an inner ballast without which work could destroy you dr. Martin Martyn lloyd-jones was a physician who became a pastor and preachers some of you know that he was very aware that some professions in particularly he thought medicine was one of them but honestly it's true of an awful lot of professions now it's probably true the business world surely and others too he says he thought that there's an awful lot of medical men he knew and it's back when all the medic all the doctors were men but Lloyd Jones said that most of the medical men he knew when they died you probably could just stick a on their gravestone you could put this born a man died a doctor and what he meant is that it becomes your identity you can't imagine yourself not being a doctor and therefore your whole identity is based on you being a doctor not being a Christian your self-worth your self-importance your sense of you know competence is wrapped up in your work now I could make if I had the time I could make a case that in in more traditional cultures if you come from a traditional culture say you come from Asia in the past which is a traditional culture the way in which you got yourself worth was by fulfilling the role in the family that you that we were signed so for example it was being a good father or a good mother a good son a good daughter that's if you were good at that role then you could look yourself in the mirror and say I'm a good person so where does work fit in that view of the world work as a means to an end the reason I want to be successful is for my family and as long as I'm have a good family and I'm being good to my family then I I'm you know I'm a good person so work as a means to an end now there's problems with that culture too but I want to talk about Western culture and Western culture work as an end in itself because we're an individualistic culture and that means we're told in a hung million different ways the time we're little you can be anything you want to be you have to decide who you want to be and then be it and so we we get our self-worth through our work it's our work its I'm successful at this I'm an artist I'm a business person I make money I'm a I'm a I've written a great American novel that becomes our identity and as a result you really get enslaved success in work if work is your identity if you're successful it goes to your head if you are a failure it goes to your heart if you're a sick if you if work is your identity and you and you get successful it destroys you because it makes you full of yourself it makes you thinking you know what it's just true if you're a good doctor and you're very successful with that or you're good business woman or businessman you make a lot of money because of the self-justifying nature of the human heart you think because I'm good in one thing I'm smart about everything and you think you're smart about who to choose to marry and you're not you're stupid as everybody else you you you think well because I did really good in this business deal I'm the kind of person that has enough insight I'll be great at the next business deal and you won't be you'll be overconfident if if work is the meaning if work is your identity if you're soft worth is based on your identity then even if you're successful it destroys you by puffing you up but if you're not successful it destroys you by this it goes to your heart you know I there was I was reading about a man he's not a Christian but he was in the New York Times some not too long ago he read an wrote an article about how bad it is if you're a writer he's a writer and he says he says I realized that being a good writer was everything to me that's who I was my whole worth was bound up in my writing and he said I began to realize that I had lost all perspective I couldn't look at something I had written and really look at it honestly because I needed it for it to be great so your whole life gets distorted you have to have a deep identity a deep certainty of your worth you have to have a sense of your value grounded in something not your performance and not in your work it's got to be in Christ and so that whole area to see to me the whole area of redemption what it means to be redeemed in Christ has profound impact on how you do your work secondly let me just keep running through here faith also gives you a concept of the dignity and worth of all work even simple work without which work could bore you remember but the first point was first when his faith gives you an inner balance without which work could could destroy you but secondly faith gives you a concept of the dignity and worth of all work even simple work without which work could bore you now listen carefully Martin Luther is the one who helps us the most here very helpful Martin Luther looks at a lot of places in the Bible that says God feeds every living thing God loves everything he's made he feeds every living thing there's other places in the Bible where it says it is God who strengthens the bars of your gates which of course is a way of saying who keeps your city your society strong and secure and then he says okay God God's taking credit for that God saying I feed you I keep your city safe but he says actually think about it how is God doing that how is god feeding you he's feeding you through the farmers he's feeding you through the simplest farm girl who milks the cow he's feeding you through the humblest truck driver who drives the you know the milk to the dairy and then to the store he says in other words the people who do the simplest kinds of work are actually the fingers of God Luther says or the masks of God God is loving you and doing things to you and he has chosen to do it through the work of other people and therefore all work all work is actually God's work it's God's way of caring for his creation now unless you have the theology it helps you see that especially in our particular culture in our culture we value if you go to college you value work that saves people's lives you know I want I want to do technology which makes people's lives better I want to give a lot of money away so I help the starving in Africa I want to have status I want to be the best at what I want to do but you when you look at somebody who's just doorman or a janitor you say oh my goodness but if your biblical theology should show you that all work is good work all work that's done well that helps somebody else is good work it's God's work of course obviously not producing pornography you understand what I'm talking about but all work and I I do see especially reformed type Christians who tend to be white collar people not all but they tend to be white collar people participating in the sneering attitude that the culture now has the people who do this you know they live in they work in a service industry they don't make a lot of money they push a broom you realize unless somebody cleans your house you're gonna die you realize that that's that sweeping your house and cleaning off the tabletops is your very life you're gonna die if you don't do it or somebody does it you call that simple work but it's it's God's Way of making some strengthening the bars of your gates and unless you see this this is one aspect oh I get to another aspect that Reform people like to talk about what Luther was willing to bring out was what that means is the way to do work as a Christian is to do it well because see over is if if God is feeding the world through you as a farmer then what does it mean to be a Christian farmer hmm what does it mean to be a Christian farmer it means to produce great food for a great price or you know to put more a fine point on it if you are a Christian airline pilot what does it mean to be a truly Christian airline pilot land the plane smoothly your passengers don't need you know if you can talk to your passengers about Jesus when you're up there that's great that's fine but that is kind of icing on the cake you need to land the plane and and Lutheran listen Luther there's a man named William deal who's a Lutheran layperson he was an executive Bethlehem Steel for years who wrote a lot of book on the integration of faith and work and because he was Lutheran because he had this understanding which is right absolutely right it's the good it's work as God's Way of caring for his creation so that all work all legitimate work even as simplest kind of work as God's work so that no matter even if you don't have a job that's really exciting it's even though if you might tend to be bored with it you've got the right theology and you know what I'm doing matters and when you see other people you don't look down at anybody's work well William deal actually developed something he called the ministry of competence and he pointed out that a lot of Christians kind of overthink what does it mean to be a Christian this or a Christian that in my work and he says the Ministry of competence is be the best be the best of what you do that's one way to be a Christian in your work so faith gives you the ballast without which work can enter balance without which work can kill you and destroy you faith gives you a concept of the dignity and worth of even simple work without which work could bore you thirdly faith gives you a moral compass without which work could corrupt you there is a lot of pressure there is no doubt about it because of the because of the global economy there there is so much pressure for profitability there are so many companies that years over the years just just need to make enough profit to you know pay keep the lights on and pay your employees and give your investors a bit of a return and now there's so much need for squeezing every bit of profitability out of it and there's a tremendous amount of a tremendous a trennis amount of a pressure to cut corners and to do whatever it takes to turn the profit and one of the things that's so awful right now in this world is in when you go to college you're going to be told that morality is relative it's relative that it's it's person specific and it's culturally relative and nobody's to say what is right or wrong and then you get out into the world and you're gonna have all kinds of temptations to cut corners and do things that are that are dishonest lack integrity don't really not lack of transparency and then if you get caught you're going to be they're going to slam you they're going to take you to the cleaners they're gonna put they're gonna they're gonna take you to the newspapers and you're gonna say how I was told everything is relative but then it's just because I did this and this and that that's where we are today unless you've got a strong inner moral compass that comes from being a Christian you're gonna have a lot of trouble you gonna have a lot of trouble saying no I'm not going to do that I'm not I'm going to tell the investors what it's really worth I'm I'm I'm not going to judge I'm not I'm not gonna sin by omission just leave that out I'm gonna be more transparent with my customers I'm gonna do it and you might lose your job but in the long run it's a whole lot better to have that moral compass I know a man who is at the top of one of the a big bank in Britain who told he's a Christian and he told me recently whether the bank has been the news like so many of the banks for all sorts of moral issues and you know scandal etc and he said there was a kind of off-the-record little clandestine meeting of the top of the top of the top and they said what are we gonna do to put a we got to get values back in this organization years ago even 20 years ago this is Britain now they said there's all sorts of things it wasn't illegal but you just didn't treat customers like that you just didn't take that much money out for yourself you just didn't do these things it just wasn't done it wasn't the decent thing to do in the last 15 20 years all that's going away and we do everything that's legal and then some and he said what are we gonna do they said one person said what we're gonna do get values back in the company and what everybody else said to them whose values how do you define morality we don't know how to define morality anymore you can't get the genie back in the bottle culturally right now but if you're a Christian you have that moral compass otherwise you could really get corrupted lastly briefly the Christian faith does give you a world in my view that shapes the character of your work without which work could master and use you what I mean by that is now this is what you were more probably expecting me to say earlier if you're a reformed type and you get around one of these kinds of conversations it is true that what does it mean to be a good airline a Christian airline pilot land the plane what does it mean to be a Christian ditch digger dig the ditch what does it mean to be a Christian elementary school teacher what does it mean to be a Christian playwright see that depends on what youth to be a Christian elementary school teacher really depends on what you think a human being should be and what you think will lead to human flourishing and what you what what are you trying to produce you're trying to produce a particular kind of human being while you suddenly you realize without your under without a worldview you're going to not really know what a human being should be if you're a playwright you have to ask yourself questions of what is right and wrong and you know what is it where we should be going as a society what kind of story so I want to tell and so the fact is when it gets right down to it you do need a world in life view you do need to take your Christian values and ask yourself questions about what kind of plays should I write because we're kind of what kind of things that people need what kind of stories do people need so a Christian must think out how his or her faith will distinctively shape their work notice I'm kind of creating a I'm walking a line between the approach that says all work is God's work and all work if you do it well is work for God that usually goes along with the Luther's with Luther's view I also want to say but frankly there aren't especially certain kinds of jobs in which you have to actually think out what are the implications of Christian values and biblical teaching for the way in which I do my work out here in the world you know even among among people whether they're believers or not so I think that's all very important here's one last thing in the book every good endeavor there's a great story that we it's a it's a story by JRR tolkien which I we tell and it's a it's a it's a short story about a painter who has this vision of a tree that he's been trying to paint and his whole life he can never get much of it done in fact just before he dies he the hit the great painting he was working on all he ever did was get out of leaf one leaf but then he goes he dies and he gets on a train he's going to the afterlife and when he gets to heaven as it were there's his tree and he realized he sensed the tree as an artist and he realized that everybody someday would see the tree and one of the things that here's the last thing that your Christian faith can give you is hope because if you go into law you want to do justice if you go into city planning you want to build great cities if you go into art you want to show people beauty and when you actually get into those places you're gonna find because of the fall because thorns and thistles come up and from the ground very often you you can work for years and years and years and only ever get one leaf out but Christianity gives you hope and says the that the passions we have to see the human race be all that God made it to be and we're trying to realize for our work even if in this life because of the frustrated nature of the world now this fallen world we often are going to be very very frustrated we may only get a leaf out there's hope there is a tree as it were the the the if you're a city planner there is a New Jerusalem if you're a lawyer there will be a time of perfect righteousness and justice he comes to judge the earth and so the hope that helps us through frustrating times the inner ballast and sense of who we are in Christ that keeps us from being you know whipped back and forth because of success and failure the vision of God just caring for creation through his work so that all work is good work and God's work all these things are absolutely crucial for us to be disciples not just on the weekend when we're at church but out in the world truly doing everything God Jesus Christ obeying everything Jesus Christ told us to do now what we're going to do at this point is we're going to move into a time of panel I'm going to pray panels gonna get ready to come on up here and then we're gonna move into the next part of our conference so would you pray with me dear father we thank you for even the snatches of of insight from your word about what it means to let our faith shape our work we not only want that to happen with our work but we want to be disciples of people and we have people coming and asking us questions about what does it mean to be a Christian in every area of life and we don't know how to do it we pray that you would equip us better as disciple makers because we've spent these couple of hours together here this afternoon we thank you Lord that that you're a worker that you created the world in joy that you got your hands dirty you put yourself your hands right into the dust and made us and we pray that you would show us how to be workers made in the image of God and following in your footsteps we pray this in Jesus name Amen

Channel: The Gospel Coalition

Views: 114,163

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Keywords: minister, the gospel coalition, God, teaching, Christian, coalition, Holy Spirit, church, pastors, biblical, spirit, Christianity, preacher, Jesus, pastor, evangelical, bible, preaching, churches, spiritual, Christ, ministry, gospel, faith, reformed, reformation, work, vocation

Id: fGH5bhUwMB4

Length: 27min 42sec (1662 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 23 2014