Biblical Foundations for Engaging the World Marketplace Christian Network.

Biblical Foundations for Engaging the World

Marketplace Christian Network


MIND THE GAP

Why Work?

Marketplace Christian NetworkA Ministry of the Graduates’ Christian Fellowship

Work in a Fallen World?

What is Work?

Meaningful Work Now?

Why Work?



• God works.• Work is a Blessing • Work was wholesome and enjoyable• Reflect God’s creative nature through our work• Commissioned to have dominion over creation

Foundations of Genesis 1


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.

• To work – cultivate (work in any sense) and ‘to serve’ by implication and to worship.

• Take care – guard, to attend to

• Humankind was to serve and protect created order and not to exploit it for our own pleasure.

• Same words used for worshipping and keeping God’s command

Why Work?


What is Work?


Work Becomes Worship

Authentic worship can only be in Christ. It is not driven by a liturgy or a call to worship, a change in style or a methodology. Redemption does not signal the beginning of worship. Instead it marks its once-for-all cleansing. It is washed in the blood of the Lamb and turned into a following after of the example of Christ and into continued deliverance from the intrusion of fallen worship. Our redemption and our worship is henceforth one with the other. Our entirety, not just a narrowed spiritual corridor or mere churchgoing and ministry, is swept up in newly complete living. Work becomes worship, just as worship becomes duty and delight. Eden is no just restored; it is surpassed, for in his redemptive outpouring, God gave us the supreme gift of Christ-in-us-in-Christ.

Unceasing Worship – Harold M. Best


All Legitimate Work is

Sacred Work

Rom 12: 1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your

spiritual[1] act of worship.

Why Work?



What is Work?

The Curses & Consequences


"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

GE 3:18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

GE 3:19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

Ground was cursed

Work was made more difficult

It was no longer a pleasure

The Terrible Thing CalledSin


It has corrupted us.

It has corrupted the family

It has corrupted the people we work with.

It has corrupted the environment we work and live in.

Paul Addresses the Greek Dualism


Hierarchy of Vocations – A

Christian Caste System


Foreign Missionaries

Pastors

Church workers or staff in parachurch

Social Workers, Doctors, Teachers

Tradesmen

Salespersons, Lawyers, Traders, Businesspersons

The idea that the service to God should have only to do with a church altar, singing, reading,

sacrifice, and the like is without doubt but the worst trick of the

devil. How could the devil have led us more effectively astray than by the narrow conception that service to God takes place only in church and by works done therein… The whole world could abound with

services to the Lord – not only in churches but also in the home,

kitchen, workshop, field. (Martin Luther quoted in Feuchts, p. 80)

http://www.reformation.org/page2.html

Why Work?



What is Work?

Meaningful Work Now?


1. A Renewed understanding of Salvation2. A Renewed understanding of Mission3. A Renewed understanding of Calling

Meaningful Work begin with


For God so loved the ‘kosmos’

John 3:16, the kosmos, refers to all of Created Order

Revelation speaks of ‘New Heaven and New Earth’

Col 1:19 – ‘through him to reconcile all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven’

Heb 2:8 – ‘in putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him.’

Redemption of Christ


Is for the ENTIRE World,

the COSMOS

the Universe

Redemption of Christ is not just…


1) Bringing the Gospel to the ends of the earth2) Involving Social Action

It is also the

Reconciliation & Redemption of ALL of God’s Created Order to HIS Purposes.

Redemption of Christ also includes the redemption of the


Arts and Culture

Education

Business

Science and Engineering

Families

Media

Work & Labor

Public Square

Legal

Finance

Healthcare

Mission of God


Abrahamic Covenant Gen 22:17:

17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."

Mission of God


Abrahamic Covenant in New Testament Gal 3:6

GAL 3:6 Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." 7 Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. 8 The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you." 9 So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Mission of God by Christopher Wright


Read Bible in the light of : • God’s purpose for his whole creation, including the

redemption of humanity, and the creation of the new heavens and new earth.

• God’s purpose for human life in general on the planet and of all the Bible teaches about human culture, relationships, ethics and behavior.

• God’s historical election of Israel, their identity and role in relation to the nations, and the demands he made on their worship, social ethics, and total value system.

Mission of God by Christopher Wright


• the centrality of Jesus of Nazareth, his messianic identity and mission in relation to Israel and the nations, his cross and resurrection.

• God’s calling of the church, the community of believing Jews and Gentiles who constitute the extended people of the Abraham covenant, to be the agent of God’s blessing to the nations in the name and for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

"In nothing has the church so lost Her hold on reality as in Her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has

allowed work and religion to become separate departments, and is astonished to find that , as a result, the secular work of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and

that the greater part of the world’s intelligent workers have become irreligious, or at least, uninterested in religion. But is it astonishing? How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life? The church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually

confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays.

Today

What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes on him is to make good tables.... No piety in the worker will

compensate for work that is not true to itself; for any work that is untrue to its own technique is a living lie.... She has forgotten that the secular vocation is

sacred. Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a

painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work must be good work before

it can call itself God’s work."

By: Dorothy SayersSource: Creed or Chaos, Sophia Press, 1949, 1974, pg 77-8

Cape Town CommitmentLausanne Committee for World Evangelization


The whole Bible reveals the mission of God to bring all things in heaven and earth into unity under Christ, reconciling them through the blood of his cross. In fulfilling his mission, God will transform the creation broken by sin and evil into the new creation in which there is no more sin or curse. God will fulfil his promise to Abraham to bless all nations on the earth, through the gospel of Jesus, the Messiah, the seed of Abraham.

How do I now FIT in God’s plan?


Life Experiences

Gifts & Talents

PersonalityPassion

History

Environment


Focus

It is about finding God’s call in our life for ministry and missions rather than finding

personal fulfillment (or self-actualization)


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Biblical Foundations for Engaging the World Marketplace Christian Network.

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