Your Job Is Not Your Savior
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00:00:02.000 | Every good thing becomes a bad thing when it becomes the ultimate thing in our lives.
00:00:10.440 | That is true of anything we use to replace God as our supreme treasure.
00:00:15.360 | And so for many our job becomes that. It becomes the ultimate thing.
00:00:20.000 | Careers where so many in this world will turn to to find their ultimate identity.
00:00:25.720 | We are back one more time with Bruce Hindmarsh, a historian and the James M. Houston professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver.
00:00:33.640 | So talk to us about battling this tendency.
00:00:36.400 | Work requires much of our lives and it can claim all of our lives unless we set boundaries. So we have Sabbath.
00:00:44.900 | One day of rest each week. It's built into the created order and it helps keep labor in its place.
00:00:51.960 | Now in a recent interview you said something that caught my attention. You said quote,
00:00:55.880 | "Sabbath is not pixie dust you sprinkle over six days of workaholism."
00:01:01.680 | End quote. So explain this Bruce. How does one day of rest influence how we work Monday to Friday?
00:01:09.680 | Oh, that's great. I think Sabbath is a reminder that we receive our work as a gift.
00:01:17.640 | It's not, we tend to tend to see the world as it's so constituted.
00:01:23.760 | It's, we're motivated by, you know, either fear or greed, but it's a sense of scarcity.
00:01:28.760 | It's a sense of scarcity and a sense of anxiety that pervades people's work.
00:01:33.000 | And there's all sorts of things written about the movement towards total work and
00:01:37.040 | an environment of total work. And Sabbath recalls us not that now that we've done enough work,
00:01:44.000 | we're entitled to rest. It reminds us that we actually begin with rest.
00:01:50.000 | We begin with what God has done and it both looks back to God's,
00:01:56.000 | the creation as a good gift of a good God in which it's been given and God has rested in what He has made.
00:02:03.400 | And we receive our very life again as a gift.
00:02:06.800 | We didn't have to be here. God made the world for us. God made us for the world.
00:02:11.800 | We receive that as a gift and work itself. We receive that as a gift.
00:02:16.200 | Work is a response to vocation, to calling. It's a gift.
00:02:22.000 | And then we, it's an anticipation of our heavenly rest.
00:02:26.400 | It's a reminder that God is at work. God is bringing shalom.
00:02:30.000 | And we remember that there remains a rest for the people of God.
00:02:34.600 | God's salvation is already broken and God is redeeming the broken world.
00:02:39.400 | And so we can go into our week with a sense of, without the same sense of work as a matter of anxiety.
00:02:47.600 | We can receive our work as actually a gift, a chance to offer up the work of our hands to a good God
00:02:55.000 | who's already done everything and gives us the opportunity then to share with Him
00:02:58.800 | in the work of preserving, sustaining, and redeeming the world He's made.
00:03:06.600 | Very good. Of course, that reference to total work is from Joseph Piper's book, Leisure.
00:03:10.400 | And so essentially, Bruce, if I understand you, what you're saying is,
00:03:14.400 | is one day of rest does not sanctify a week of unhealthy work habits.
00:03:19.800 | Yeah, absolutely. It's, Sabbath is not magic. Sabbath is, Sabbath does not sanctify workaholism.
00:03:31.400 | And so I think there's a, you know, there's a difference between seeking work,
00:03:36.400 | feasting and fasting, and indulgence and remorse.
00:03:40.400 | It's not a matter that I live really, really badly, and then I try to do something that makes up for it.
00:03:47.200 | We, Sabbath is, Sabbath is where we live. That's where we live out of.
00:03:52.600 | That's our identity. And actually, it should chasten us so that there's a little bit of Sabbath in every day.
00:03:59.200 | There's a sense that every day we're able to work out of a different kind of center.
00:04:05.000 | So, busyness is moral laziness, frankly. It's a kind of laziness.
00:04:10.200 | And we decided many, many years ago, my wife and I, that we would never, ever say to anybody
00:04:16.200 | that I'm busy or that I'm too busy or I can't do that because I'm busy.
00:04:21.200 | That was simply morally lazy and inattentive to people.
00:04:26.000 | And it just makes, it's just often a statement of self-importance.
00:04:29.800 | You know, I'm so important. I'm so busy.
00:04:32.200 | But God has given us just enough time to do what we need to do moment by moment to respond to him.
00:04:37.000 | And his grace is there, is eternally present.
00:04:40.800 | Every moment is a sacrament where time touches eternity.
00:04:44.200 | And there is exactly enough time to do what God has called us to do.
00:04:49.800 | Yes, that is wise, sobering, and humbling. Thank you, Bruce.
00:04:54.200 | This has been Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh, a historian and the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver.
00:05:02.000 | Bruce has joined us for the past three days helping to cover as John Piper's writing leave comes to an end.
00:05:06.800 | Pastor John returns this week and he's been working on his next major book project.
00:05:12.400 | And I'm sure that prompts a lot of curiosity.
00:05:14.800 | In any case, I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and I'll see you tomorrow.
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