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I Want to Be a Worker

From the shade with a cold drink in one hand and a fan in the other, many who were once workers for the Lord now watch the dwindling few still sweating in the harvest field.  We come up with a variety of excuses as to why we’re on our extended break: we’re too … old, tired, busy, or sore!  Or, the work is too difficult or dangerous … people just aren’t receptive enough anymore to the gospel … or the world doesn’t allow us to reach out like we did years ago.

I. Luke 10:1.  To be  a worker for the Lord, you must want to love and trust His holy Word, just as the song says:

I want to be a worker for the Lord; I want to love and trust His holy word; I want to sing and pray, and be busy ev’ry day, In the vineyard of the Lord.

Just before Jesus sends out 72 disciples ahead of Him, He tells several that following Him requires diligent and often difficult hard work (Luke 9:57-62).  The well-known servant to the poor, Mother Teresa, died at 87 still working with her last strength.  can we argue that love and trust for Jesus’ Word isn’t connected to faithful action (James 1:22) when His Word tells us that if we love Him, we will obey His commands (John 14:15)?  Are we not told to serve one another through love (Galatians 5:13)?  And to love and forgive one another as Jesus did (John 15:13; Colossians 3:13)?

II. Luke 10:2-3a.  To be a worker for the Lord, you must want to lead the erring in the way, again as the song says:

I want to be a worker every day; I want to lead the erring in the way That leads to heav’n above, where all is peace and love, In the kingdom of the Lord.

Because we’ve used Luke 10:2 to promote the need for evangelism but disconnected it from our personal responsibility, we pray often that God will send workers to His harvest field.  If He hasn’t and the attendance in our assemblies shrinks, we shrug because God is in charge of the increase after all (1 Corinthians 3:6).  Peering into the brightness at the shady edge of the harvest field, we lament how few are laboring in the hot sun to fill the Master’s barn with sheaves.  Yet, just as the 72 were sent, so are we (Matthew 28:18-20) and also to our erring, fellow workers (Galatians 6:1-2; Matthew 18:15-17).

III. Luke 10:3.  To be a worker for the Lord, you must want to trust in Jesus’ power to save, as the song tells us:

I want to be a worker strong and brave; I want to trust in Jesus’ pow’r to save; All who will truly come shall find a happy home, In the kingdom of the Lord.

He sent them out like lambs among wolves!  Why would Jesus do that? It’s because we partaking in our own adventure is that important to Him.  God is wild at heart and wants those made in His image to step out of our comfort zones to do the work He’s prepared for us.  Out of fear we make excuses and justify why we can’t do that work, placing our limitations on the God for whom nothing is impossible.  But, obedience is required from faith (Romans 1:4-5; James 2:14-17), and God, who promises to be with us, lets us wield His divine power to demolish strongholds (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

Wanting to be a worker for the Lord begins with obedience to the gospel.  You’ve got to don our work clothes (Galatians 3:26-27) and then head out into the field.  If the song has changed for you, a longtime resident of the shade, to “I want to sit in pews for the Lord …” then perhaps it’s time to step out onto the soil and become a worker once more.  Do you want to be a worker for the Lord?

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Behold, The New Has Come

For me to get to acceptance in the grieving process after my wife of almost three decades passed last year, I had to keep a forward focus or risk getting mired in memories.  Any move from an old life to a new one is like that.  If we are focused too much on what we have lost, we will miss what we have gained.  Becoming a new creation in baptism is like that as well. If we do not die to sin and work through the transformation process, then we can never embrace the new and abundant (John 10:10) that God has called us to live.

I.  2 Corinthians 5:17-18.  If in Christ, you are a new creation, but how do you life differently if all you know is your old life with its old habits and sinful way of living? Sadly, many people obey the gospel but then only live differently in degree, not in character, than those in the world. Paul spoke of this spiritual war that raged within him (Romans 7:21-23) that was still a transformative process that began at his baptism when he rose out of the water to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-5). But, he was working hard to become like Jesus in His death, so He might attain to Jesus’ resurrection in His new life (Philippians 3:10-12).

II.  Romans 12:1-2.  As a new creation, the old has passed away … but has it?  We are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, not being conformed to the world but transformed by the renewing of our minds.  Then when the old has truly been put to death, then we can test what is a good way of living this new life in Christ.  We must die to sin first (Romans 6:6-8). The problem with being a living sacrifice is that the offering keeps crawling off the altar. To do this we must forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead. By keeping this forward focus, Paul says, is how he presses on to the goal of heaven (Philippians 3:13-16).

III.  2 Corinthians 5:19-20.  Without Jesus’ reconciling work at the cross and at the grave, we could not have new life, and with this new life comes new work that we also aren’t familiar with.  We are to be “ministers of reconciliation” or “ambassadors for Christ” who speak on behalf of God about this new life–even though we have just taken hold of it ourselves. Just as Jesus died to sin and rose to life, we must press on to take hold of this new life that has now come to us (Romans 6:9-11). Instead of looking back at our old life and regressing into those old habits and behaviors, we must hold true to what we have already attained.

Rather than focusing on what I have lost when my old life died with my wife, I am riveted on taking hold of what God has given me as a widower for His Kingdom in this new life. We must all do the same thing with the new life He has given us in Jesus.

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The Battle Belongs to the Lord

If we are not engaging our whole selves while we sing, then the impact of a song’s words can often escape us.  In “The Battle Belongs to the Lord,” we sing that God will fight for us in our battle, but how much we believe those words and truly trust Him to do so may not be known until we are in the midst of a difficult struggle and choose to rely on Him or on our own limited resources for help.

I.  Psalm 18:1-5.  After witnessing God’s power in the 10 plagues that allowed them to leave Egypt, the Israelites left freed from slavery “equipped for battle” (Exodus 13:18), idealistically ready to walk straight up to the Promised Land.  As they got to the Red Sea, however, they saw Pharaoh’s army marching after them, and “they feared greatly” and “cried to the Lord” Exodus 14:10.  How like them we can be as Christians until we face adversity.  The first verse of the song says it like this:

In heavenly armor we’ll enter the land, The battle belongs to the Lord.  No weapon that’s fashioned against us will stand, The battle belongs to the Lord.

Though we call the Lord our strength, rock, fortress, deliverer, shield, horn of my salvation, and stronghold, it is easier to say the words than to apply them.  The psalmist does have to apply them as he was encompassed, assailed, entangled, and confronted by struggles to the point of death.  Would he choose to have faith or to rely on himself?

II. Psalm 18:6-19.  After God had rescued them with such a mighty hand already, how could the Israelites not trust in God’s power to save?  But they complain and believe that they will die (Exodus 14:11-13), the very opposite of trust.  God would fight their battle, Moses told them, but their responsibility was different than the Lord’s; they had to “fear not,” “stand firm,” and “see” God’s salvation.  In other words faith is a lot of work, harder work than fighting an impossible battle for ourselves and the choice not often made.  Why? Probably because God can’t be made to do anything.  We must submit to His will, not He to ours.  The second verse says:

When the power of darkness comes in like a flood, The battle belongs to the Lord.  He’s raised up a standard, the pow’r of His blood, The battle belongs to the Lord.

We have the cross and often don’t believe in Jesus’ power to save us.  So, does God act on our behalf out of obligation or love?  In the Psalm, the Lord literally overturns heaven and earth because He was angry at the people or circumstances distressing His child.  Then we read that it is because He delights in him. Could He have the same love for us?

III.  Psalm 18:20-30.  How the Israelites took Moses’ words to “fear not,” “stand firm,” “see” God’s salvation, and to “be silent” is not clear (Exodus 14:13-14), but how do we wait in faith for the Lord to act in our lives when we are in distress?  Repeating that God is our refuge and that we should not fear, Psalm 46:10 tells us to “be still and know that I am God.”  While our backs are against the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s army bears down on us in life, choosing faith and letting God fight our battle is the harder but better decision.  As the third stanza says:

When your enemy presses in hard, do not fear, The battle belongs to the Lord.  Take courage, my friend, your redemption is near, The battle belongs to the Lord.

According to the psalm, it is those who choose to have faith and trust in Him, being still in obedience that the Lord rescues.  The one who is “haughty” by trying to fix it himself by his own resources finds God “tortuous.”  It’s about the relationship the child has with his or her heavenly Father.

If God is truly your refuge, then you can truly sing the chorus when we are rescued:

And we sing glory, honor, Power and strength to the Lord.  We sing glory, honor, Power and strength to the Lord.

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Called to Freedom

Floating along with the current of culture, the church fell asleep in its complacency and compromise as the stream changed direction.  Christians began to accept the world’s restrictions on our freedoms to worship and proclaim the gospel, and instead of awakening, we withdrew into the walls of our buildings.

I.  1 Corinthians 10:23-33.  God, of course, puts limits on our freedoms.  We must not sin.  Rather, in obedience to His commands, we must choose to be helpful, build others up, seek the good of others and not ourselves, and glorify God in all that we say or do.  Our humanistic culture we live in, though, seeks to externally regulate us and persecutes us if we do not submit to its dictates.  Now, as Christians, we know we should submit to our governing authorities (Romans 13:1), but Jesus said we should not give to the culture what is God’s (Matthew 22:21).  Our primary allegiance is not, then, to the current that has changed directions, but to where we are citizens (Philippians 3:20).

II.  Romans 12:1-2.  Sadly, many live lives conformed to the world rather than transformed by the gospel.  Asleep while the current of culture sweeps them to their destruction (Matthew 7:13-14), they have accepted the walls the world has erected for us: the gospel is too outdated or can’t compete or is hate speech.  Or perhaps the restrictions are personal: I’m too old or out-of-touch or have circumstances to overcome.  When we use our freedoms for ourselves, we retreat within those walls by dwelling on the past, complaining, or just playing church.  We know that all things are possible with God (Mark 10:27) and declare that if the church is not doing more, then it must be God’s will.  But, God wants us using our freedoms for Him (John 14:12-14), and then He will do more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21).

III.  Galatians 5:13-15.  When we, through love, choose to use our freedom in Christ to serve others instead, we turn our focus outward rather than inward where we will destroy one another.  The very nature of the church is to step outside of the walls where we have been driven by the culture to serve instead in deed and truth (1 John 3:16-18).  Using Jesus as our example, we choose to serve in whatever station in life that God has placed us (Titus 2:1-8) and reaching outside the walls of the world and waging war against it with very different weapons (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

You may be using your freedom in Christ to fight, but what or whom are you fighting?  Where is your focus?  Inward for self or outward to serve?