By TC Lo 盧天賜 on May 1, 2011 at The House of Christ's Love
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Theme Scripture 經文 Lk 17:7 "Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, `Come along now and sit down to eat'? Lk 17:8 Would he not rather say, `Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Lk 17:9 Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? Lk 17:10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, `We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' " Christian’s View on Job職業觀
Christ Centered Christian Living 以基督為中心的生活
Serving with Sense of Unworthiness不配感
Closing Words
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Lk 17:7 "Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, `Come along now and sit down to eat'?
Lk 17:8 Would he not rather say, `Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'?
Lk 17:9 Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do?
Lk 17:10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, `We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' "
Christianity is a faith of compassion and love. When the Tsunami hit the eastern Indian Ocean in 2004, hundreds of thousands of Muslims’s lives were lost. United States and many western nations came to help. Countless Christians and Christian organizations over the world got involved in the relief efforts. It was surprised to learn that very little relief attempt came from Islamic nations. The Bible teaches us that Christians should help those who are poor and are in need. Note the following two familiar verses:
Ro 15:1 We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.
Gal 6:2 Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
But this “helping-others” precept is not without boundaries. I love the Bible because its teachings are always balanced; it always gives us a doable perspective. There are always some lazybones around us who may rely on other people’s help and take advantage of people’s kindness. To them, the Bible warns:
Gal 6:5 for each one should carry his own load.
Here we see two kinds of loads or burdens:
1. The first kind could be a heavy one, the kind that we alone might not be able to bear, we need help from others, and we need someone to bear the failing of our weaknesses. For example, if we lost our love one, the grief may sometimes be too heavy to bear. A loving friend would surely helpful to get us through this difficult moment.
2. Yet, there is the second kind which I call it “responsibility”. It is our duty; it is your job; yet it is our load. Job is an important part of our lives so I use it as a starting point to talk about Christ-Centered Life. No one should do your job except yourself. This is our obligations. Plowing and looking after the sheep (v.7a) were the responsibilities of the servants in ancient times. Today, our responsibilities are more sophisticated.
Many of us misunderstood “job” as a cursing imposed upon the sinful humanity. It should not be that way if our lives are Christ-centered. One must note that even before Adam and Eve’s fall, God had already assigned them with responsibilities:
Ge 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
So the extension is that taking good care of the Mother Earth is human’s responsibility. Having given him the instruction not to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree, God gave Adam certain specific assignments:
Ge 2:19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
Can you give names to thousands of creatures of different kinds without a computer and an Excel program---and remember them?
Ge 2:20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
Adam did it alone---without help! Today, we, too, have works to do and we must do them diligently. A clear instruction from the Bible:
Laziness is one of them on the short list. But God promises us that He will help us labor and give us strength to do our job.
I always have a hunch that God was guiding me even before I became a Christian. I believe many of you share my feeling too.
When I was a high school student, I loved to build electronic things such as AM/FM radios, Hi-Fi systems with vacuum tubes. I loved physics because I found it beautiful in explaining the nature. When time came to apply for college admission, my first preference was Physics; my second preference was Physics; and my third preference was physics. But to my great disappointment, I didn’t get accepted to the Department of Physics, but to the Department of Electrical Engineering. Once I became an EE student, I found out I didn’t miss much because EE department had many physics-related courses to offer. I took Solid State Physics, Semiconductor Devices, and Quantum Theory. I studied Einstein’s Relativity on my own. My eyes opened when I learned that the speed of light was constant and I didn’t understand it then and even now. I exclaimed with excitements about God’s marvelous wisdom. After I graduated, I discovered I was so fortunate that I was an EE engineer rather than a physicist because EE graduates in those days had no problem finding jobs. After my retirement, I love to read books on cosmology which helps me to explain God to my atheistic friends with enthusiasm. I see no conflict between science and Christianity. As I looked back, I realized God had His wonderful way to guide me even things did not go the way I originally wished and He guided me before I knew Him.
I did not know then but I know now that my job is really God’s calling. If job is a divine calling, I think we ought to respond to it by doing our job well and not just thinking as a means of livelihood. We must express God’s glory through our professions. Being call to certain jobs does not mean everything will go smooth sailing; time and time again, frustrations crept up and we should consider them as opportunities for us to humbly rely upon God. I painfully knew this well.
Although God guides us before we come to know Him, it is far better if we, especially the young people, know His calling early in our lives. The other term for “job” is “vocation.” This is perhaps a better term because “vocation” carries the notion of “Calling.” How can we rely on others to carry out the calling which God called us to do? In the ancient times, a servant or slave was called to do plowing and looking after the sheep (Lk.17:7a). Today, we are called to do many varieties of jobs. We have many disciplines which were never heard of in ancient times. There are many new courses offered in the universities which I had not even heard of during my time as student. But God calls us to do these jobs. How do I know which job God wants me to do? I heard people said, “If you are a Jew, you can only be Lawyer, Doctor, or Loser.” Maybe Chinese think the same way, I don’t know. Should we force our own child to be either a doctor or a lawyer and ignore the fact that God may call them to do something else?
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Folk wisdom suggests that while a child is still a toddler, the parent should place a table, within the child’s reach a bottle of wine, some money, and a Bible.
The story is told of a new father, eager to plan for his son’s future, who administered the test. He carefully positioned the three objects on the coffee table, watching eagerly what the little boy would do with them. The little guy walked up to the table, surveyed everything, and slowly reached out his hand for the Bible. Then he paused and picked up the money as well, placing it in the Bible. Finally he tucked the Bible under one arm, took the bottle of wine in the other hand, and toddled off with all three, struggling to maintain his balance. The little boy’s grandfather stood over to the side, silently watching the whole scene unfold. When he saw the dismay on his own son’s face, he said, “This is bad news. He’s going to become a politician.” |
Is this the way to find out God’s calling?
We oftentimes think that good job translates to happiness in life. Not so. Accomplishment and dream careers (doctor or lawyer) do not necessarily lead to happiness. The goal, then, is to seek the threads God have in place for you and to follow His plan of weaving you to complete His design. (While vacationing in Turkey, I observed the “cocoons to silk to thread to carpet” weaving process which were amazing!) A call may not necessarily feel attractive to you, but it will tug on your soul in an inescapable way, no matter how high the cost of following it may be. Finding one’s calling is one of the greatest challenges in life, especially you young people who have many gifts and therefore you have many choices. Which one? Having burden on certain things may be a sign of God’s message. A calling is simply God’s shaping of your burden and signaling you to your service to him in the place and pursuit of His choosing. It gives you that hand-in-glove sensation and provides the security of knowing that you are utilizing your gifts and your will to God’s ends first, not for yours. When your will becomes aligned with God’s will, his calling upon you has found its home.
We always thought that working outside the church is a secular thing. It is true that God demands man to bear the financial responsibility for his family. This is a very practical matter; the head of the household’s based responsibility is to feed many mouths at home. But if a job is God’s calling, making money is same as serving God, and God will make sure you and your family won’t go hungry. Do you have such confidence when you got laid off?
We must serve God according to His pleasure. God wired us differently. Although our DNA’s are 99.99% similar, that tiny differences are insignificant quantitatively but very significant QUALITATIVELY. (By the way, human being and monkey are only 2% different.) We must BE OURSELVES in serving God. We should learn from other’s strong points but we should not imitate or copy others---or wishing I am Billy Graham---because God makes us differently. When we serve God according to His design, we serve Him to His pleasure and not to our own pleasure, and in effect, we response to His calling particularly designed for you. This is I think, what people call, “Gift-Based Serving” because gifts are from God. Supposing you want to show appreciations to your mother and you know she likes beef noodle; on Mothers’ Day, you want to prepare a lunch for her, don’t you think you should cook for her a steamy beef noodle in stead of shark fin soup? Doing what God calls you to do will please Him because you are using the gifts He bestows on you.
Christians know the obvious answer: God is my boss.
Eph 6:6 Obey them (earthly bosses) not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.
Eph 6:7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men.
While “God is my boss” is theologically correct but only to the half of the Truth. The Bible also teaches us the other half of the Truth: You ought not to become arrogant to despise our earthly boss because your earthly boss is the representation of God as far as authority is concerned.
1Pe 2:18 Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.
Eph 6:5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
Respecting our earthly bosses is a testimony with redemptive significance.
This reminds me of a cartoon printed by Campus crusade (I recall, but not 100% sure). The picture consists of a big circle with a chair in the middle. There are many dots within the big circle. Inside the big circle, there is a capital letter “I” and a symbol of a “Cross”. Here are their meanings:
The picture has two versions:
One day, a young man spoke to Winston Churchill: “I want you to know, sir, that I am a self-made (自我奮鬥, 白手起家) man.” Churchill replied, “Young man, you have just relieved God of a solemn responsibility.”
Suppose you were waiting to check in for a flight to a particular destination and had your suitcase beside you. If you were to step away for a few minutes, leaving your luggage unguarded, what recourse would you have should that bag be stolen? You certainly couldn't go to the airline counter and demand it back, because it was in your care when you lose it. You were in control, no one else. But if it was lost after you had already checked it in, it’s the responsibility of the airline to find it for you. You had committed it to their care. They must find it for you.
In Buddhism, everything is in your care. All losses are yours. There is no “other” to whom you can go. But the message of Jesus Christ is a very different story for “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day” (2 Timothy 1:12).
It has been a heated controversy since the Eighties on what should be the priority order. My early Christian life was in the swirl of such controversy that I heard from sermons:
The pendulum sways from one end to another many times throughout the decades until people finally have become exhausted and gave up arguing. Few years ago, I brought up the subject with my son for his opinions. Tim said, “There is no need to argue in this way.” And he continued:
I am satisfied with his answer. I don’t know where he got such idea. If Christ rules supreme in all aspects of my life, my heart will rest peacefully in Him. When my children were in college, I have to admit that I did worry in my heart about losing my job during the turbulent times that IBM went through. But in my head, I somehow have this conviction:
With this thought, I had peace in mind and joy in heart and as a result, I could work more joyfully and efficiently and fruitfully.
Verses 9 and 10:
These verses reinforce one point: We are unworthy servants. We should not boast anything we do to our Lord. To serve Him is a privilege. To serve Him is our duty. To be able to serve Him is His grace shown to us. We should thank God for giving us the opportunity to serve Him and to wait on Him. This is servanthood. This is what Grace all about in terms of serving Christ—at church and outside the church.
One guest speaker (pastor Zhong) recently gave the House of Christ’s Love some advices and encouragements which I think very inspiring. He said, as a small start-up church, every one is a VISITOR because all of us are newcomers. But we should not remain visitors forever, we must quickly become HOSTS. As a host, we must show hospitality to others in order to open the door for evangelism. But we should not remain HOSTS forever, we must quickly become humble and undeserved SERVANTS. There is a lot of truth in what this said. His point was that becoming a servant-oriented church should be our ultimate goal. Being a servant carries a sense of unworthiness. Would it be clearer if I say in this way?
In Acts 11:26, we learned that “Saul (Paul) and Barnabas spent a whole year in Antioch (a Gentile church) and taught great number of peoples.” This is just the background.
Paul was called to be the Apostle of the Gentiles. In all his letters written to the Early Churches throughout Asia Minor, we see his thoughts were revolving around the theme of Christ. As a result of Paul’s teaching, these people in Antioch:
Lift up Christ. Serve Christ. Proclaim Christ. Obey Christ. Worship Christ. Praise Christ. Love Christ. Trust Christ. Imitate Christ.
When the unbeliever Gentiles saw what had happened to the converts, they said, “Since these people’s lives are Christ-centered, and they live out Christ’s teaching, why not we just simply call then little Christ?” “Little Christ” means Christian. So, verse 26 continues, “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.”
One of our core values (see HoCL.org) is:
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To Focus on God’s Kingdom |
Aim to glorify God. Serve God’s people, serve God’s house, and serve God’s Kingdom wholeheartedly. Aspire to expand the Kingdom. Build missional partnerships with other churches. Change lives to be missional. |
凡以神國為念 一切以榮耀主名為首。傾心服事神的子民、神的家、神的國度。放眼擴展神國，樂與各基督教會一同傳揚基督福音。以宣教為常態。
This is a good summary of Christ-Centered culture we intend to foster in our church---the House of Christ’s Love.