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2: Good News · Finding God at Work

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  (Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, I'm Chris.
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  This is Finding God at Work.
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  Our current series is Gentle Witnesses, sharing the good news at work in a way that actually
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  makes sense.
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  When I was a kid, I went to a lot of weddings.
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  Part of this was because I'm on the younger side of my extended family, so my cousins were
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  getting married, sometimes there would be other family friends that my parents wanted to drag
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  me along to the wedding.
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  I also went to a church where there were a lot of young families, and so sometimes students
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  would be graduating from school and getting married, or getting married later on, and it
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  was a small enough church at the time that people would just, like the whole church would
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  sell up for the wedding, basically.
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  So I was at wedding receptions all the time, and the great thing about wedding receptions
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  is all the adults are having a good time, they're maybe drinking a little bit, they're
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  in party mode, and so you can kind of like be a squirrely kid and run around and nobody
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  cares.
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  But the wedding itself is a different matter.
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  The wedding itself, you're not supposed to be running around or squirrely at all.
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  You're supposed to stay really still in your seat and watch what's happening.
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  Now that can be hard when you're a little kid, but there is this exciting moment when
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  everybody cheers, and what is that moment?
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  It is the kiss!
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  It's when the preacher says, now you may kiss your bride, and there's a big smooch
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  and everybody hollers, and there's great rejoicing, and they trot down the island to
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  their new married life together.
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  The kiss!
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  The kiss is the exciting moment, even as a kid, before puberty, before I knew why kisses
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  were exciting.
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  I was like, man, that seems cool, I'm down for that.
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  That smooch seems like a good one.
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  So what does this have to do with sharing the good news at work?
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  At a wedding, if things are healthy, if things are good, the groom and the bride,
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  they don't need a second reminder to kiss.
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  They just need permission, and in a conservative Christian subculture, maybe they really do
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  need permission.
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  But the preacher says, now you may kiss your bride, and they kiss, and it's like, oh, they
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  are eager to kiss.
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  They want to embrace each other.
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  There's no hesitance, there's no sense of like, oh, well, I've got other things
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  I could do besides kissing this woman, is that really what I have to do right now?
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  No, there's an intrinsic motivation, there's a deep eagerness.
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  There's a consummation of love that's occurring here in the sacramental act of
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  marriage. It's an amazing thing.
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  OK, so when we think about what it means to be saved, what it means to become like
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  Jesus, what it means to enter into life in the kingdom of God, what it means to put
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  your faith in the good news, it's a lot more like a wedding than like a business
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  transaction.
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  It's a lot more like the exciting, eager embrace, the kiss of the bride and groom
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  than it is like signing a contract or negotiating some sort of compromise.
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  And this is significant because so often the good news has been presented as
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  though it is primarily a transactional reality, as though it is primarily about
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  God making some sort of ledger adjustment in the heavenlies that has an impact on
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  something that happens when you die.
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  Now, obviously, all of us are going to die unless the Lord returns quite soon.
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  And so being ready and prepared for your death is actually a very important
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  psychological, spiritual, practical thing.
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  But having a spirituality that's all about a transaction that only has
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  relevance to you after you die is a pretty thin and feeble approach to life.
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  And it's not very much like what we see in the pages of Scripture.
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  It's not what we see in the ministry of Jesus.
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  It's actually a watered down flattened two dimensional version of Christianity.
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  We don't have time to get in all the history of why sometimes Christianity is
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  presented that way.
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  But I do want to get some help from one of my favorite thinkers, Dallas Willard,
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  who kind of critiques this this flat way of thinking about Christianity.
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  So this is from his book, The Divine Conspiricites, kind of his magnum opus.
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  And I read this book for the first time when I was 17 years old.
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  I was a precocious reader and I've never forgotten this metaphor.
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  He calls it barcode faith.
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  This is a longer passage, but it's just worth reading.
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  It'll transform.
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  Well, I can't promise it's going to transform the way you think about
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  evangelism, but it transformed the way I thought about evangelism for sure.
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  That's true.
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  Some machine real Chris, it blew his mind.
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  So barcode faith.
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  Think of the barcodes now used on goods in most stores.
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  The scanner responds only to the barcode.
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  It makes no difference what is in the bottle or a package that bears it, or
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  whether the sticker is on the right one or not.
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  The calculator responds through its electronic eye to the barcode and
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  totally disregards everything else.
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  If the ice cream sticker is on the dog food, the dog food is ice cream.
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  So far as the scanner knows or cares on a recent radio program, a prominent
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  minister spent 15 minutes enforcing the point that justification, the
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  forgiveness of sins involves no change at all in the heart or
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  personality of the one forgiven.
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  It is, he insisted, something entirely external to you, located
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  wholly in God himself.
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  His intent was to emphasize the familiar Protestant point that
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  salvation is by God's grace only, and is totally independent of what we may do.
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  But what he in fact said was that being a Christian has nothing to do
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  with the kind of person you are.
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  The implications of this teaching are stunning.
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  The theology of Christian trinkets says that there is something about the
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  Christian that works like the barcode, some ritual, some belief, or some
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  association with a group affects God, the way the barcode affects the scanner.
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  Perhaps there has occurred a moment of mental assent to a creed or an
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  association entered into with a church.
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  God scans it and forgiveness floods forth.
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  An appropriate amount of righteousness is shifted from Christ's account to
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  our account in the bank of heaven, and all our debts are paid.
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  We are accordingly saved.
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  Our guilt is erased.
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  How could we not be Christians?
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  Now, my hope is that as you hear that critique of barcode faith, it is
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  unfamiliar to you that whatever your experience of Christian community
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  and faith in Jesus has been, it doesn't sound anything like that.
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  But I have a hunch for some of you who are listening, and certainly
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  for me, there have been moments when Christianity has been presented
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  just like that, as though it's just a transactional arrangement, a barcode
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  that you got to go through the right ritual or pray the right prayer to
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  somehow experience not a change now, but a change in destination for later.
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  But that is not the good news that we find on the pages of scripture.
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  What we find on the pages of scripture is much richer.
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  There are sometimes transactional metaphors that are used, but it's a
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  deeply relational reality and a reality that changes our life starting now.
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  It's the most engaging, exciting, dynamic, possible thing that there is.
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  Definitely not a dry business transaction.
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  But, but what is it?
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  What is the good news?
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  Well, I think it'd be helpful to just go to the good news
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  that Jesus himself proclaimed.
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  And it's going to be kind of funny to read what Jesus says because he
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  references the good news himself with that phrase, good news, but then
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  he doesn't say what it is either.
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  So this is in the gospel of Mark, the first of the gospels to be
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  written and the shortest, a kind of a terse, compact description of the
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  life and ministry of Jesus.
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  And it's at the very beginning of his ministry.
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  And this is what he says.
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  Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came in the Galilee proclaiming
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  the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom
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  of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel.
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  So again, there's that funny moment.
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  Jesus is proclaiming the gospel, but in the gospel, he's also saying
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  repent and believe in the gospel.
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  So it's almost self referential.
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  And this is a key feature of Jesus ministry that he kind of unpacks
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  things over time.
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  He uses different metaphors to describe what he calls the kingdom of God.
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  And that's the key phrase in this announcement.
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  He says the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.
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  Repent and believe in the gospel.
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  So for Jesus, the primary metaphor for understanding the good news, the
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  proclamation of what God is doing in the world, the main proclamation of
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  his ministry is the metaphor of the kingdom.
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  And so that connects also to the language of being saved, being
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  forgiven, being included.
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  All of those different phrases and metaphors connect to this central
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  metaphor of the kingdom.
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  The verb that Jesus most often uses to describe the kingdom in various
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  passages is enter.
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  The question is, are you entering the kingdom of God?
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  Are you getting inside of it?
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  So that's a central metaphor, a central way of understanding what the
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  good news is and what it means to be saved.
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  Okay.
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  But before we unpack that further, I want to, I want to zoom forward to
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  the apostle Paul and how he describes the good news.
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  So this is in his letter to the Corinthians.
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  He gives it in the context of a discussion about the last supper.
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  But it's also a great little compact summary of what Paul thinks is the
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  most important thing to know.
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  And so Paul, Paul lays it out that way.
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  He says, this is what's of first importance and it is the good news.
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  And so he's, he's going to talk about it that way.
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  So this is what Paul says, for I deliver to you as a first importance,
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  what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with
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  the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third
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  day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas,
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  then to the 12th, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one
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  time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
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  Then he appeared to James and then to all the apostles.
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  Last of all, as to when untimely born, he appeared also to me.
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  Okay.
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  So the word appear is used again and again and again.
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  Paul's using this list of all the people that the risen Jesus appeared to.
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  But what does he say is of first importance before he names all those
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  appearances, he says that Christ died for our sins in accordance with
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  the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in
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  accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared.
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  Okay.
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  So where did the kingdom go?
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  Paul's not using the kingdom metaphor.
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  This is the central metaphor that Jesus gives us to talk about the good news.
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  But then when Paul says, this is what's of first importance, he says, well,
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  Christ died according to scriptures and he was buried and he was raised
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  on the third day according to scriptures.
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  And then he appeared to people.
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  So for Paul, the central thing, the commanding thing, the first
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  importance thing is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ.
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  So, so where did the kingdom go?
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  Well, remember, I just said Jesus, the Christ intentionally, because that
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  kind of reminds us like, oh yeah, Christ isn't exactly a name.
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  It's a title.
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  And what does that title mean?
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  Well, it's a, it's actually a Greek translation of the Hebrew word for
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  Messiah and Messiah literally means anointed one and who was anointed
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  in the ancient world among the people of Israel.
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  Well, several different kinds of people were anointed, but
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  significantly kings were anointed.
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  And so when Paul says now, uh, I delivered to you as of first
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  importance, what I also received that Christ died for our sins.
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  What he's saying is that Messiah died for our sins, that the anointed
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  one died for our sins, that the King died for our sins.
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  So that's where the kingdom is in Paul's metaphor.
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  It's in that title of Christ, Jesus, the Christ, Jesus, Messiah, King Jesus.
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  And of course, Paul is writing on the other side of Jesus, death and resurrection.
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  When Jesus went around announcing the kingdom of God, he hadn't died yet.
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  And so that's probably why Jesus didn't mention his death and resurrection.
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  Um, at the same time, he actually did tell his disciples ahead of time
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  about his death, but when he was proclaiming the good news, he was
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  more focused on the kingdom.
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  So we could summarize this by saying we have to keep the
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  kingdom and the cross together.
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  Uh, the first theologian that put it just like that, that I know
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  is, uh, Tom Wright, N.T Wright.
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  Um, and he said it at an event I attended when I was a college student.
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  And again, it was one of those things that just kind of blew my mind.
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  I was like, oh my goodness kingdom and the cross together.
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  So hopefully that just even by seeing these passages side by side, we can
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  appreciate that there's not just one right set of words to use to describe
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  the good news, there's multiple images, multiple metaphors, multiple angles,
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  the facets and the beauty of the gospel are inexhaustible.
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  And so that's why we need multiple different angles and stories and
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  paradigms and models in order to try and try and get at what it is.
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  But it can be good to summarize.
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  And so I would summarize the good news like this.
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  The good news is that whoever puts their faith in Jesus, the Messiah can
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  be forgiven of their sins and enter into life in the kingdom of God
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  because of his death and resurrection.
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  Well, I was a mouthful trying to combine it all, you know, their
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  advantages to pithier statements.
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  But let me just say that again.
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  The good news is that whoever puts their faith in Jesus as Messiah can
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  be forgiven of their sins and enter into life in the kingdom of God.
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  Because of his death and resurrection.
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  You see how those elements are connected to each other?
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  There's no contradiction between the cross and the kingdom.
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  We enter into life in the kingdom of God.
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  That's what Jesus is always speaking about.
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  But who's the king in the kingdom of God?
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  Well, it's King Jesus.
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  And how is it even possible for us to enter into life in the kingdom of God?
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  It's because of his death and resurrection.
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  And receiving the forgiveness of sins is right there at the beginning.
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  That's part of what it means to be saved is to be forgiven and
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  then enter into a new way of life.
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  Okay, so that's a, that's kind of our, our first draft, first pass at
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  what is the good news, but there's more to it.
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  So we're going to tackle that more in the next episode.
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  For now, I want to just return to the workplace context and help you
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  think about what are the implications of this definition of the good
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  news that brings the cross and the kingdom together for your
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  relationships with people at work.
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  Well, it means when Jesus says, the time is fulfilled.
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  The kingdom of God is at hand.
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  Repent and believe the good news.
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  That's a call that goes out to everyone around you.
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  Everyone around you could potentially enter the kingdom of God.
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  Everyone around you is a potential citizen of God's kingdom, but it
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  doesn't necessarily mean they are yet.
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  And so that's a metaphor that can work on our hearts and remind us,
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  Oh, that's right.
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  I have citizenship in a certain kingdom and I'm a representative
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  of that kingdom here.
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  And I can let people know how the immigration process works or else,
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  how are they going to know about it?
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  That's one lens of how we can look at our coworkers, future
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  citizens of the kingdom of God.
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  King Jesus, we want to live in the kingdom where you are king.
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  We want to live by the power of your death and resurrection.
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  Teach us what it means to be your disciples, what it means to be
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  forgiven, what it means to be saved.
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  What your good news really is meant to bring about in our
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  lives and in your world.
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  Do your work in us as we do our work with you.
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  Thanks for listening.
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  Finding God at Work is a production of Mission Central, a ministry
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  based in Aurora, Illinois, dedicated to forming Christians
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  for mission in everyday life.
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