Second Sunday in Epiphany. We continue to focus on the shining of the saints. with the reflection of the great light that arose and entered into humanity 2000 years ago, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Today, we'll be talking about work in the gospel of John. So what I'll be doing is just going through some verses in John's gospel, which has an emphasis on the work of Jesus and talking about those verses, some of them. with particular application to our vocations, our callings, our work, whether it's in the home or in the workplace. And we will begin with John 4.34, but I'll actually read through verse 38. My apologies to Tyler. I said the text would be verse 34, but that is the take-off point. But I'm going to read through verse 38 at the beginning here. So please stand for the reading of God's Word. John 4.34-38. And our first four or five points will be taken from this text, and then we'll get into other texts from the Gospel of John. John 4. Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say there are still four months and then comes the harvest? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest and He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true. One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored. Others have labored and you have entered into their labors. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the words of our Savior. We thank You for the shining revelation of Your story about who we are and what creation is and what Jesus came to accomplish that shines forth so brightly in these Gospel narratives that are interpreted by the epistles and foreshadowed by the Old Testament. Bless us, Lord God, as we consider now this bright light of our Savior's words. And as we try to think about the application of his work to ours in Jesus name, we pray. Amen. Please be seated. So this is really a part two sort of of last week's sermon, which was a rise and shine. We looked at the covenant at the end of the Isaiah 59, following up the simple description of ultimately all people that takes up the bulk of 59. And then we saw that the two commands coming out of the declaration of that merciful covenant that God himself keeps for us, the two commands are to arise and shine, to move from death to life. And then to live in that life, not just to arise, but to arise and shine. We had a wonderful song this morning in the processional, again, drawing our thoughts back to the manifestation of the light of the Gentiles, the coming of the wise men. And remember last week, one of the illustrations I gave was that for a period of time in Europe, there were these Christmas cards. And the first card you got that pictured the wise men would be nailed on the door of your house as a reminder that your house was to be a place that light shines out from so that people can find Jesus there and His light there. And what we said last week was that custom would be a good one at least mentally to think about when we walk into the door of our workplaces. We go into our office, into our business, into that structure. That's what we want to have happen there too. We want to shine in the workplace. And today we're going to talk about some specifics taken from John's Gospel about how that can be accomplished and what it looks like. So, we're going to begin with this particular set of verses we just read. And you've heard me talk about these verses a number of times. And we want to go a little bit more meditative about what's being said in them to get the implications of what's happening. So, first of all, we shine by yielding our will to another. So we shine by yielding our will to another. Our Savior says, in terms of how He shines with His work, He's the light that comes to shine into the world. And how does He do it? He says that His food, which is connected to His work that He's going to be finishing, is to do the will, not His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him. Now, all these points may seem like little things to draw from the text, but they're all very significant. This is most significant. We live in a day and age when we think that at the workplace we're serving ourselves ultimately. Right. Or maybe we're serving a boss. But what this text reminds us of is that and we know it as Christians, but we make it pulls it center front and center to us. is that work is about serving someone else. Ultimately, your work has to be seen in relationship to the Heavenly Father. Your shining is not your own light. It's the light of Christ. And the command to shine comes from the Father, that His character reflected in Christ and then in your work and His plan for the world and His bringing the world to maturation and beauty and justice and all that stuff, that that might happen. So, you know, it sounds simple, but it's a big deal. When you go to school tomorrow or you stay at home and do your lessons or you go to work or you do chores, whatever it is, Jesus is the model for us, right? We're Christians. We're little anointed ones. Christ is the anointed one. We're little anointed ones. We're to see our life in him. And he teaches us here that he came, even he came, the second person of the Trinity. you know, not to be served, but to serve others. And specifically, he tells us that the overarching mission for all of his work that he does is to do the will of someone else, his father. Now, that has tremendous significance. That means that in our workplaces, We ultimately want to connect it up with the will of our Father. So what does He want you doing at work? What's His will for your work? Well, there's a lot of things. We'll talk about some of them today. But understand that it begins with a submissive attitude to lay aside what you would like to do and to turn yourself to what the Father's will is for you. Now, that sets up a pattern of service in your workplace, in your callings, that should then, you know, kind of bubble down into your further relationships. That means that ultimately, and we see this quite clearly in the epistles, that God's will is manifested through human authorities frequently. And we're to treat those authorities as if they're standing in the place of God. So the service to the Father, wanting to serve Him, to shine means also that we want to serve the people around us in our workplaces. We want to serve our boss. We want to put ourselves in a submissive servant relationship. And, you know, all the caveats to that. Not if he's going to have you do something sinful, but God has a structure and an order. So if you want to shine in the workplace, don't be a Lone Ranger. Don't just do whatever you think is best without listening to the boss. Don't see your job somehow isolated from the great plan of God for all creation. It's an integral part of it. Your work is to be like Jesus's work. And his work begins with an acknowledgement that he serves someone else. He's not there to please himself. He's there to serve God. And when we serve God, being made for that purpose, we will have great joy. It's not as if God isn't going to give us pleasure and joy in our work, but it comes through turning over our will to another. Jesus says in John chapter 10, verses 37 and 38, if I do not do the works of my father, do not believe me. But if I do, though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in him." This happens throughout John, really, these kind of verses. He's always pointing to the Father. And so he tells them that his food, his work that he'll complete is to do the will of the father in heaven. And he tells us that what he does is not of his own. It's a representation of the father. This is so important. It has more general implications for the church today in America as well. A church that seems focused almost exclusively on Jesus and doesn't go past Jesus to the father. But for your work, understand how significant that is. You're here to serve. You're to do the will of God. And that will of God is normally mediated through the authorities that he's placed in your life. Your parents, your bosses, your co-workers are part of that process as well. So one, you can shine by yielding your will to another. Secondly, we shine by being finishers. I've talked a lot about this over the years. There's a couple of sermons online you can listen to. But what he does here in identifying what his work is, is to say that he's going to finish his work. This is the great message in the Gospel of John. At the end of the narrative account on his crucifixion, what does he say? He says it is finished. The whole thing here, beginning to end, is Him trying to finish the work that He's been given to do. Now, I know there's big, you know, that's the meta-narrative of Christ doing His work to save us and all that, but don't miss the simple application. It was the character of Jesus Christ to finish A long, involved, difficult, painful task. That's what he was. And interestingly, when Jesus says on the cross, it is finished. And then it says he delivered over the spirit. Some people say, well, he gave up the ghost. A euphemism for death. But really, if you look carefully at the language there, it seems like there's something else going on. He's delivering his spirit over to those who are there surrounding him. Now, whether you like that imagery or not, we know the truth of this. We know that the Savior ascends to the right hand of the father and sends his spirit to indwell his people. Right. And that spirit is not autonomous from Jesus. He's doing the will of the father and of the son. He comes to minister Jesus to us. And so the spirit that is allowing you or motivating you to do what you do in your work, the spirit is the spirit of Jesus. Jesus is a finisher. The point is God has given you a finishing spirit, a spirit who motivates you and encourages you and prepares you and equips you to finish tasks. And when we don't finish tasks, when we just sort of leave them half done all the time, that's really an offense against the Holy Spirit. He's a finishing Spirit because He brings Jesus to us and Jesus is a finisher. So when we finish things, this is part of what the Gospels tell us it means to shine. Now, young people, your training in this begins at the earliest parts of your life. You know, if your folks tell you to do the dishes, do your homework, clean your room, cut the grass, whatever it might be, they give you a task, and you, sometimes self-consciously, but always in terms of who you are as a Christian, as an image-bearer of Jesus, should know that you can shine by submitting to that will of someone who represents the Father to you, and then finishing the job they give you to do. Finish it. You will not get to the workplace and be a good finisher that people can trust to work tasks and projects to completion. You will not be given that responsibility if you're not faithful in the small things that you either finished or didn't finish. God himself says that, you know, it's required of a steward to be found faithful. And if you're responsible in small things, he'll make you responsible in larger things. You know, Tim Murray going off and getting a larger responsibility and speaking before other kings or rulers in the company, going up the chain, a lot of that had to do with him finishing the task that he was given at his workplace here in Oregon. And if people know you're not a finisher, you know, just from the world's eyes, let alone what God is doing in your life, you know, you're just not going to cut it. Conversely, we live in a day and age and this is too bad, but there's an advantage in it. We live in a day and age where people have moved away from these Christian values. So if you become a finisher, an obvious finisher, if you finish tasks, you're going to have a great leg up in the workplace. Now, there's other factors going on, but understand that that alone will make you shine. An employer who has employees underneath him and some of them actually finish the task and they do well and don't grumble about it, that employee is shining and the employer can see that and typically that leads to reward. So, finishing. Jesus says, I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do. allow us, when we go to our beds at night, to lay down our heads easy and to rest, if we can say with the Savior, today I finished the work You gave me to do today. Oh, there's long-term tasks. You only finished a part of it. But every day should be days in which our lives are shining by being days in which we finish the tasks that God has given to us for that particular day. Now, being a finisher doesn't just relate to the workplace, obviously. You're going to be a finisher with your family. You're going to be a finisher with your home, with your physical structure of your home or where you live, right? And if there's long-term tasks that go on for months and months and months, pray about it and ask God to make you a better finisher. Sometimes other priorities come up. I understand that. But be a finisher. Okay. Three, shine by properly prioritizing our work. So what does Jesus say? My food is to do the will of my father in heaven, the one who sent me. So he submits his will to another and he says to finish his work. So he's a finisher. But notice, too, that this answer is to a question in context about food. Right. So it also says in this verse that my food is to do the will of my father in heaven. Now, Jesus properly prioritized the work that he was doing in relationship to the specifics of this text, to food and eating. The disciples say, well, you haven't eaten for a while. Let's go get something to eat. He's working. And he properly prioritizes where that work is at that moment, his evangelistic work with the woman at the well and then with the village. He says, look, my big deal, I don't work to eat. I eat to work, right? I'm prioritizing the work that I've been given to do. Jesus knew how to eat. He knew how to eat well. He was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. Nobody's putting down work here or eating rather. But what we're saying is that work has to be properly prioritized over things that are more consumptive oriented. OK. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. The seventh is the day you rest. OK. There's a picture. There's a model set up. And if all we do is work as little as we can so that we can feed ourselves and have a good time most of the time, we're not shining. Our light is going down, down, down, right? But if we properly prioritize the tasks that God has given us to do and put them at times above our food, you see, that's what God wants us to do. You know, you have this story of Jonathan in the Old Testament and his son, or the son rather, of wicked King Saul. And they're off battling God's enemies and Saul had put them under an oath not to eat. And of course, that's a perversion of this third point, that we're to prioritize work properly and at times above eating and feasting. And Jonathan's running along and he sees some honey, right? And he dips his staff in it while he's running, tastes it, and the text says his eyes brighten, right? And so now does he just sit? Does he stop then and eat a lot of honey because it tastes so good and forget his work? No, he does that. His eyes brighten so that he can go off and be more victorious against the enemies of God. His work is to press the claims of God against those who would fight against and try to wipe out God's people. His work is to defeat them militarily. And his food, while important, is subjugated to that work. It's enough food so that he can get up and get going again and do what God wants him to do. So Jesus, I know it's a small point here, but this is what he's saying. You know, food is less important to me, he says, than doing the work that God wants me to do. Now food's connected to that in Jonathan's case and in Jesus's case as well, but don't miss the emphasis here. The truth is, he's telling us that in order to shine, we have to have a proper sense of priority about consumption, about enjoyment of things, versus being productive and properly shining in the context of our work. So that's number three. We shine by properly prioritizing our work. Four, we shine by working with the sense of time and seasons. So what do I mean? This is why I went on to read the next few verses. He talks then about the agricultural situation and he says, you know, you say that you work this amount of time and then comes the harvest. But I tell you right now, the harvest is here. The fields are white for harvest. Now, you can just see that as a kind of a throwaway metaphor that we got a lot of people we should be ministering to right now and that the kingdom is going to be built. But you can see it not just as an empty illustration, but a pointer to the fact that God gives us seasons. He gives us time cycles. There's a time for this, a time for this, a time for this. And when we work, we have to recognize in the labors we do that there's seasonality to it. There are times to make plans. There are times to implement plans. There are times to reap the rewards from those plans. There's times to be very patient as you're developing a tactic or a technique that will further the work that God has called you to do. There's times when you've got to be active. The fields are white for harvest. So I think that shining in our work means developing over our lives a sense of seasonality. You know, youth always want to get everything done right now. But the Bible says, you know, that there are seasons and times and this text tells us it was a particular season. to get at the work of reaping. This same truth is alluded to in Mark 4.28. The earth yields crops by itself, first the blade, then the head, and after that the full grain in the head. Grain growth. Well, there's a little thing that comes up first, the blade, and then there's a head on the grain, and then a head on the stalk, rather, and then the full grain happens in that head. There's progression and development. We're being taught that whenever we walk in the created order, we see progression and development. We see the need for patience. We see the need for gradualism in what we do at work. You can have goals, of course, you should have goals. But, you know, a lot of goals take a long time to develop. And we don't want to grow weary in well-doing. We want to recognize that the Spirit of God works typically, doesn't have to, and it's not always the case, but typically work changes gradually. You got to be faithful for several years to attain particular kinds of blessings and responsibility and work. And if you're a guy that wants everything right now or a woman that wants everything today, you know, you're out of sync with how light shines in the Bible. You know, we're impatient all too often. This is another big issue in our particular day and age. One of the ways that people get goofed up in their work is they want everything done right now. They see something, they see a problem, they see a potential solution, they want to implement it immediately. Where in reality, God's way is gradual. Our ways, the fallen man, tends to be revolutionary. We want to throw things over right now, fix everything. But God writes the wrongs, but he does it over a long period of time, and he builds a culture. He builds delivery systems for feeding and taking care of people, and he builds a culture with societal maturation and development. He does it through this system of gradualism and seasonality. Now, I wanted to mention here, so time is a big deal. One of the ways we shine is by understanding God's time. Time from God's perspective. There is, in this text, a direct connection between work and time. Now, let me mention something else about time. You know, something as mundane as getting to work on time. If we're to have a proper sense of seasonality in God's time in our work, one of the ways that begins, children, is to be timely in doing what your parents want you to do, in being where they want you to be. If they want you dressed by 9 o'clock Sunday morning, be timely about it. You know, as your kids grow up, you're learning to use alarm clocks. That's a good thing. And here that alarm clock is a call by God to conform to His will and to enter into His time, His seasonality. If you are perpetually late to things, if you find yourself over and over being late to events, what is that teaching your children? That God's time and seasonality isn't really all that important, right? I mean, it's a big deal, and it's a big deal in our day and age because so many people have a difficult time even showing up to work on time. Now, here's where it starts in the church, right? And I think that we've got great observance of the time of the starting of the worship service. That's good. Now, let this model be taken into the rest of your week and understand that to shine in our work means having a sense of seasonality of God's perspective on time, which means gradualism, but it also means being faithful not to steal time from your employer, not to be unfaithful when you say you're going to be someplace at some time. Emergencies come up. But if you're perpetually characterized by not meeting the time commitments the Lord has for you, you're not shining now. And that'll affect your shining or not for God. So that was number four, time. And it's right here in this text. Number five, shine by anticipating or expecting positive results. Let me throw in another thing here before we get to five. So I'm going to mess up the order now, but I was thinking about this on the way here, that Jesus, when he addresses his disciples here and he tells them the fields are white to harvest, then he also says somebody else planted and you're going to reap. So an important part of work is understanding our connection to a community of people, a team of people. Again, that means we're not lone rangers. And it means more than that. It means we have to find ways of cooperating with other people in the workplace, many of whom will be non-Christians. But you see, if Jesus puts his discussion of work in this agricultural metaphor, which we know in the Old Testament is a metaphor for culture building, OK, this isn't just talking about, you know, people becoming Christians being arising. It's about how they shine and they shine by culture building. They shine through this. And what Jesus tells us here is then that that that farming, And as a metaphor for culture building, both of them are furthered by cooperation of image bearers of Christ. So people work together to get things done. Somebody plants, another one waters, another one reaps. And so he's teaching us here that a very significant element, as we go into this new year, and we make some kind of commitment to shine for Jesus having arisen into salvation, then that commitment should be an attempt to improve in the way we work with groups of people. How do we work with groups of people? Particularly by way of application in this series in the workplace. You have to figure out how to work with other people. And there's a lot of resources we've talked about here that can help you in that. And if you're interested, talk to some others in your community group. There's all kinds of resources to help this, but it's a central task, right? In this discussion of work, Jesus puts that work in the context of both the disciples as a team, but then also working in conjunction with those who have gone before and those that will come after, right? So Jesus puts our work in the context of community, which means that personal relationships in work are vital. They're very important. They're difficult, but they're very important. OK, number five, as I said, we're to shine by expecting positive results. And this may seem a little funky to you, but look what Jesus tells them. He says, look, the fields are white for harvest. He gives them a positive view of how history now has moved with his coming. And the disciples now are to positively anticipate that their work in discipling the world will be effective. The fields are white for harvest. I was listening to the radio yesterday, yesterday afternoon, and there was a show on, I think it's called This American Life, and they were quoting from another show. Anyway, whatever show it was, one of these interesting NPR shows, and they were talking about, and you might have heard about this, there was an experiment done with lab rats, and so they were given two sets of lab rats, and they were told, these group of lab rats are really smart, these ones are dumb, and now we want you to test them to see how fast they can run the maze. So they gave expectations of better maize running to these researchers working with these rats and less expectation of these ones. And the end result of the study was the rat – now, they were identical, but the rats that were told the researchers were smarter ran the maize quicker. consistent and the ones that were said were dumber didn't. Now, it's interesting. Why does that happen? Well, you can think about public schools or maybe even your school or whatever, and if you get a vision of a student that he's not so bright and another student that they are bright, you know it's going to happen. You know that unless you really work hard at it, your expectations of those students is going to affect how you interact with them. And the way you interact with them, will likely have a big effect on their performance. So the smart rats, you know, they're probably really liked by the researchers. We like smart rats and maybe handled a little more gently and stuff. You know, there's probably an ambiance going on there that makes them feel pretty good. They run real quick. These guys are probably handled a little roughly. No expectations. The expectations aren't magical, but they result in a change in how we work with people with lowered expectations. That's the point. Does that make sense? If you just think about that in your life, whether it's with kids or people or whatever it is, you know the truth of it, that how you anticipate a thing will succeed or not succeed has a lot to do with what effort you put into it. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, or it can be. And the point here is, is that a positive view of history is really quite important, I think our Savior is telling us, for shining in our workplace. He says, have a view that history is going to be great. The fields are white to harvest. The world is going to be brought into the fold. And he says this kind of stuff over and over again. Now, he tells them as well, hard times are coming. Some people, the world's going to hate you the way it hated me. So it's not, you know, unrealistic optimism, but it's having a sense of what we will accomplish in our work that is positive that will, I think, to some degree affect how well we shine and do things. You know, one of the problems with evangelism is we tend to go into it pretty pessimistically because the results have always been so bad. It made me think, and it's been a long time since I read it, but I think when Peter Lightheart talked about the taming of the shrew, I think other people here could talk about this with knowledge. I really can't. But I think that part of the point that Lightheart said happens in the play is the guy, instead of calling her Kate calls her Catherine. Is that right? Kate and Catherine? Anybody know that play? Anybody awake? Taming of the Shrew. Surely you've read it. No? Well, let's just say there was this book. And in the book, the guy loves this gal, but she's like the shrew, right? She's kind of rebellious and she's not doing well. And one of the ways that's significant in the way he wins her is he gives her or he goes back to her given name. He calls her a name that is consistent with how he wants her to be. And by calling her that name, it's significant in changing how she acts. She wants to have kind of a rough name. He just calls her by her given name and that changes her. Well, that's the same thing here. You see, you have a Christian name and as God calls you by that name, it sort of forms who you are. And so when we work, And we have anticipation of the people we work with, whether it's evangelistic expectations, business expectations, employee expectations, whatever it is. I think if we approach things with a generally positive attitude towards someone, it will make that person better and it will make the work better. I think that's what happens. And this is not just, well, that's cool, so let's do it. No, this is truth. What happened 2,000 years ago was the light came and the world will never be the same again. We have positive expectations of the future because that's reality. That's why Jesus came was to save the world, to take away the sins of the world. So we should have these positive expectations, and I believe those positive expectations, portrayed in the text as saying the fields are white for harvest, will affect us and increase the amount of luminosity to our shining in our workplace, in our evangelism, in our families, right? Think about it the other way around. What are we tempted to do? We're tempted to call people bad names. Does that help? I've raised kids a long time and I've sinned a lot and I've done some things right. But calling kids bad names when they misbehave or when they don't get things right, no, that almost never helps. Occasionally, but almost never. It's interesting, Rushton, he says that nicknames were names given to ex-communicants. So when a person was finally booted out of the body of Christ because of their rebellion, then they'd be given a new name, a nickname. Nick was Satan. Right. So so but up until that point. Right. Expectations are positive. And even there with the excommunicate, we're still kind of positive. We expect that treating them differently will bring them to repentance. So we we should think positively about one another. And covenantally, we can think positively about the world because Jesus is saving the world. So positive expectations. Six. We can shine by being above board and honest. Now, this doesn't come from this text directly, but here's the text I want to read. John 3, verses 19 to 21. This is the condemnation that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds, their work is the word there. Ergon, the same word that's work in all these other texts. Their works, their deeds were evil for everyone Practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light. Less the his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be clearly seen that they may be done if they had been done rather. in God. You know, we read these texts and we always think of religious deeds, good works or something. There's no reason to do that. This is this generalized term. All of what Jesus came to do is his work. This is talking about the works of men. And what it tells us is in our fallen state, we hide our works because they're evil. So we don't want to come into light, transparency. We don't want to let people know what we're doing. We're like the squid. We always want a cloud of ink around us or just enough ink to where people can't quite see, you know, the stuff that we're doing that's wrong. And in contrast to that, Jesus says with us, we're to embrace light. We want that kind of transparency even when we sin. We're overt about that. We confess it. Anybody who knows that it happened, We're to come into the light, because generally speaking, our deeds are proper. We don't have fear of the light. The light is God's way of helping us become better light bearers, right? By getting rid of the stuff, the sins that so easily beset us. So the point is that in your workplace, you should be known as a person who is transparent about what you do. who doesn't have to hide files, who doesn't have to, you know, make secret telephone calls that you hope nobody will find out about, that aren't doing weird things on your phone, that don't have shady business practices that you want to cover up somehow, right? You know the gig. If you've worked in the workplace, you know what I'm talking about here. There's all kinds of things that are papered over, covered over, deceit is used in reference to. That's not us. That's men acting like that because their deeds, their work, their callings, their vocation, what they do in the workplace is evil. And they don't want people to see it. Now, that really relates to everything that they do, not just the obvious sins, because all their, even their good things that they do, and they do do many good things, are motivated by selfishness and rebellion against God if they're not Christians. But the point here is, is that we're not like that. We're children of light. And that light means we should want to live in transparency before one another, okay? Not hiding, not deceiving, not making pretend about who we are and who we aren't. We trust the light and we want to bear more light. And one of the ways we succeed in the workplace is to have our actions done in such a way as we're not going to be tempted. to cover them up, to lie about them, or to deceive other people about them. So I think that's very important. So that's six or seven. Shine by being above board, honest, maybe transparent would be another way to put it. So how do we shine? Well, that's another way we shine, by being open and transparent. Seven, shine by having the right goal in mind. John 6.27. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set his seal on him. So what's he saying here? Well, it's a pretty simple statement. You know, he's got people that want more food. He had just fed, you know, the people with miraculously with some bread and fishes and they want more food. And he says, look, the important thing, eat the food. Glad to give you the food. I know you're hungry. But look, what you want to do is place a priority not on the food that perishes, but on the food that represents eternal life to you. OK, so what he tells them here is that he tells us that in order to shine, we have to have the proper sense of priorities and specifically the right goal in mind. What is the goal? The goal are these eternal truths of God's word. What we're trying to do is manifest righteousness, justice, love, mercy and compassion in the world. That's the goal. The goal isn't money. The goal isn't that people would like you or that you'd like others. The goal is this eternal blessing that God gives to the world as it becomes right in the personal work of Jesus Christ. Everlasting life is the goal. And that life isn't just being alive, it's living in the context of that goal. So another thing you have to do at work is categorize what you do, prioritize it, all under the heading of these eternal principles of God's word. You know, again, our great temptation in work and in all of our lives is idolatry. And idolatry is taking a good thing and making it the ultimate thing. And our Savior is reminding us here of the ultimate things, right? The kingdom of God, life in Him. That's the goal. That's where we're headed. If we keep that in mind, then the specific steps we take in our workplace will come along with that goal. Eight. shine by mastering our story of the world. And I kind of alluded to this last week. But here in John 6, again in John 6, he says to them, he says, Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of God will give you. So he's telling us there that ultimately that we're going to shine as we understand the story of the world. What do I mean by that? Well, we've talked about this last week. Isaiah 59. The humanity that God created fell into sin. It became altogether bad. Every one of them. End of Isaiah 59. The story is that God graciously kept covenant for us through the Savior who had come, Jesus Christ, and gave us graciously this covenant that brought us His Spirit and Word to give us new life. And then Isaiah 60, on the basis of that, on the basis of understanding that our sin killed us, I mean, it's dead men walking, zombies. And then on the basis of knowing that God has graciously called us to life in Christ, now we're supposed to arise and shine and live life differently because of that. And that's the story. Now, why is that story important? Because it helps us to interpret events that happen in our workplace correctly. Maybe one way to think about this is to talk about some other stories. And I talked about this last week during the Q&A time. But very quickly, there was a guy named Plato. And there were people who followed him. And certain people think, as Plato sort of seemed to taught, was the problem is physical bodies. What's the problem? Why are things difficult? What's the problem? What's the ultimate problem in our workplace or in the world that needs fixing? Some people think it's our physical bodies. And so we become more and more people who become idolatrous about ideas. The problem is not our physical bodies. What's the problem? The problem is our ethical rebellion, our sin. If you get the problem wrong, the fix is going to be wrong. The only thing that can take care of our sin is God fulfilling covenant through Jesus dying for our sins and being raised up for our life. That's the story. That's the narrative. That's the only interpretation that makes sense. And if you get the problem wrong, oh no, it's not our sin. It's not my sin. I'm not a rebel. I've got this problem with this body God gave me. You're going to then get the application. How are you going to fix it? You're going to fix it by trying to escape from your body and taking hallucinogenics or whatever else you might do to get away from the body. And we don't succeed as a result of that, right? Marx comes along. What's the problem? The problem isn't bodies. The problem is we have these unjust economic systems. That's the problem in the world. And if you think that's the problem, then the idea is to have revolutionary governments that replace capitalism with communism. The problem is or the problem with this workplace is it's capitalistic, it's bad economic system. If we just change the system somehow, the problem is a system problem. We change the system, we'll come to shine. And we know that's not the case. You're going to be able to avoid false narratives, which include false solutions, when you remember the story that Jesus is articulating in John 6. The problem is our sin. The answer is the covenant by believing in Christ and his word and then living on the basis of that. A third narrative that people would apply is Freud. This world is sort of, you know, a wash in Freudianism. Freud said, well, the problem is you've got these desires to do all kinds of weird, kinky things. And you've got this societal norms, you've got this kind of conscious thing, conscience going on because of the way people look at you. And what do you do about that? Well, probably you just live with it. Freud didn't really advocate doing whatever you wanted to do. His followers did. What we're in now is looking at the same problem, our problem, our repressed desires, and the answer is stop the repression. Don't care what people think. Do it. You're God. Enjoy yourself. That's what we're in now. That's why we have many of the problems next week. Anti-abortion day of the Lord. Why do we have abortions? Because people want to have sex whenever they want to have sex. They don't want any consequences attached to it. They don't want marriage because it's just this innate internal desire they feel to go have sex. And they do it. Freud at least said, well, you know, keep a lid on that thing. Anyway, the point here is, is that it's positing the problem in the wrong place that we have repressed desires rather than in the right place that we have sin, a sin nature. And as a result, the solution is either just lots of therapy because you can't get rid of anything or the solution is, you know, kick out the jams and do whatever you want with whoever you want to. Sartre said there was no objective values. So he thought, kind of post Freud, so to speak, total freedom. Do whatever you want to do because there are no objective truths or values. And if that's the problem, that we're trying to think that there are values, then just forget the idea of values and everything will be great. He thought the problem was that we're completely determined. Raised his daughter, at least for a particular season, in a skinner box, so-called, that would have positive and negative reinforcements. Because his view was, the problem is, we're conditioned by everything that we walk in the context of. So salvation is putting each of us in a box, applying the right stimulus, response, pain, and that'll make us all better. This is what men, who are seen in the world's eyes as great men. This is what they believed. I know I'm speaking it simplistically. And so, but see, that's not the story. That's not the story you should be telling yourself. You know, what's a major story of problems today? I heard about, you know, a woman who got killed here in Portland, 25, 27 years old. And, you know, you never hear about prostitutes. Now you hear about victims of human trafficking. And believe me, I've been to the meetings, the pimps. weren't the bad guys for very long. The pimps are now also victims of their particular environment. We've moved toward a victim mentality, try to get rid of the idea of sin at all, and people just, it's almost Skinnerian, it's almost like, well, what could she do? And well, what could that poor pimp do, being raised the way he was by those terrible parents? I guess parents still are the boogeyman today, but you see, that's an interpretation, it's a story, that people put to the data that surround us in the world. And those stories, if you apply them in your workplace just by osmosis or whatever, it's going to reduce your shining. It's going to maybe even blacken it totally. Why is the story of the grace of God and the recovery of the world important? Well, it's important for a couple of reasons. One, it helps you from becoming idolatrous about your work. The story is, you sinfully thought you could achieve things without God, and if you don't fight against that story, your idea of self-worth and your identity is going to be tied to how well you do at work. And then you're going to try harder and harder, and then you're going to disappoint, and then you're going to do weird things. You can't see your identity as being somebody who needs to work, and if you work, now you're a good person. The Gospel says the only way you're a good person is through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the narrative is absolutely critical for giving you the spiritual batteries by which to shine. There's no shining if all you're trying to do is establish yourself and your identity through work apart from Christ. Secondly, it's important because if you are saved by grace, what do you save to do? Maybe nothing. And if that's what you think, well, you go to work like anybody else and you put in your 40 hours or as much as you got to pay for the food. But if you realize that the story doesn't end with salvation and the gospel with the rising, the narrative continues to shine. And then we get into Isaiah 61 and Jesus is talking about changing the world, right? bringing people grace and deliverance and opening the eyes of the blind and letting the prisoner go free. And in the summary phrase in the Gospels, bringing justice to victory. The story doesn't just end with your salvation. It moves on to your arising. And now your work has to be seen in the context of God feeding the world. God maturing the world, bringing more beauty and maturation to the world and with justice done in a way that will have justice ministered to in the land. That's the narrative. You want to shine bright in your work? Think of that story, you see. Jettison all these false narratives that provide excuses for people, which just allow them to continue to sin. Mastering your story is absolutely critical. to be able to shine the way that God commands us to shine in Isaiah 60 verse 1. Yeah, number nine. These last two quickly. Shine knowing that your shining will be hated. So far, a lot of good news. The bad news is, is that again, in John's gospel, Jesus says, he says he told his brothers wanted him to go up to Jerusalem. And it says in the narrative that, you know, that that they were not believers. And he says, let's see, let's just read this. The brothers tell him, for no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world. For even the brothers did not believe in him. Then Jesus said to them, my time has not yet come. Seasonality. When does he going to do that particular light shining? But your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you. Why can't it hate the brothers? Because they're part of the world. They don't believe in Jesus at this point, right? The world can't hate you. You're with the world. But it hates me. Why? Because I testify of it that its works are evil. Now, when you do work in the workplace, shining in the way we've talked about today, you have to understand there will be resistance. Remember what we said earlier, the people in the darkness whose deeds are evil, they don't want light. And if a light bringer comes in, don't expect everybody to say, oh great, the light's finally arrived, let's all move that way. No, there'll be some degree of resistance. Some people will be brought to the light, both in terms of your business practices and maybe even the gospel, but other people will really hate you. It's okay. It's okay to be hated for doing what God wants you to do. And I didn't, you know, it's not that I thought this would be a great thing to talk about, but I just looked up all the verses about work. And this is one of them. Jesus wants us to know that the world will hate us the way it hated him as we shine light. Because why? They like the darkness because their deeds are evil. So things we do may well have the impact of revealing other people's sins and shortcomings and badness, right? You've got a group of people. Maybe some come late all the time. You start coming right on time, cheerfully. Maybe they feel bad about that. Well, who are you? Self-righteous you. Just an example. So understand, don't be discouraged by opposition to your light shining in the workplace. That discouragement will darken your light. One of the ways you shine is to be ready for opposition. See yourself as being persecuted like Christ. Don't, you know, persecute in response. We've got the whole beatitude thing going on. Bless those that persecute you. Proper response to that kind of opposition. But don't let the opposition dim your light bearing in the context of the workplace. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. And finally, last item. shine knowing that we are the light of Christ to the world and are being used by His grace to save it. John 14, verse 12, Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also. And greater works than these he will do because I go to my Father. What does that mean, greater works than these? Well, greater in number, right? Jesus did this for several years. And then he went to the father and he sent us his spirit so that the light of Christ might shine in our homes and in our workplaces and our churches. And so greater works than these we will do. What's the import of that? The import is that God is in the process of saving the world, putting it to rights. Light is conquering the darkness throughout the period of history. Now, this side of the cross and it conquers darkness through each and every one of us little light bringers so that as we apply ourselves to bring light and to shine light. in all areas of our life, but including our workplace, know, have a deep rooted sense of assurance, even when times get bad or difficult and bad things happen, know that that light bearing is exactly what Christ has called you to do and it will change the world. We're world changers by being light bearers for Christ. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the great high honor that we have. Bless us, Lord God, as we think about these things and try this week to shine in a brighter way than we have in the past. We thank you for your word, Lord God. We thank you for the Gospel of John. We thank you for the work of our Savior and how so much of it has direct implications for us. Bless us in our vocations, particularly this week. In Jesus' name we ask it. Amen.