Audio Transcript

Brantley: Welcome to The Center - Memphis’ podcast. Today, I’m joined by Howard Graham and Ronnie Stevens. Ronnie has pastored churches in Memphis, Moscow, Budapest, and elsewhere. He and his wife are back in Memphis spending time with their family.

Today, Ronnie taught us at The Center about what the bible says about work. He did a great job of explaining what Jesus said about work. He also did a good job explaining how, why, and when that happens throughout scripture, and why money is a useful servant but a terrible master.

Howard: Yes, this week we had the opportunity to have Ronnie share God’s word with us. He’s taught and preached God’s word in over 20 countries. He’s pastored churches in Memphis, Munich, Moscow, and Budapest.

This week, we had the pleasure of Ronnie telling us how we can know God better through our work and what it means to do that. In our first session, one of our people at The Center asked about our work and its relationship to our money. He said, “People say work is about serving customers through relationships, but they act as if revenue is ultimate. Ronnie, what would you say to that?”

So Ronnie starts there and tells us about why we should work, the greatest figures of the bible who worked, and our relationship to money.

This whole podcast is Ronnie’s answer to this question.

Ronnie: So, anyway, we are back in Memphis and studying the bible with you this morning. My topic that was assigned to me by Howard is knowing God through our work. One thing that rearranged how I’m going to teach today is a question I was asked this morning by someone who works in the financial services industry. He said, “Publicly, we are taught that it’s all about personal relationships and meeting the needs of our clients, but really it’s about producing revenue. Everyone knows it’s really about producing revenue. How do you balance that out with all these spiritual principles?”

2 Examples: Joseph and Daniel

I gave him sort of a halfway answer. I was thinking about how in my opinion the 2 greatest men in the Old Testament, and arriving at the conclusion of who the 2 greatest men are in the Old Testament is no easy task. You could say it was Noah because Noah saved the whole world. You could say Abel because he is the first person to give up his life because he is a true worshiper. In the first generation there was a murder. The first man whose name we know killed the second man whose name we know. Cain and Abel were the first 2 people who were born. Adam and Eve weren't born, they were created. So Cain and Abel are the first generation. Or you could certainly say Abraham. You could say Moses. You could say David.

Well, I think the 2 greatest men in the Old Testament, when it comes to spiritual grandeur, are Joseph and Daniel. One reason is we don’t know anything bad about them. We know some bad things about Abraham, and we certainly know some bad things about David. We also know some bad things about Noah.

Both Joseph and Daniel were managers of someone else’s property. Joseph was managing the property of someone who made him a slave. Daniel was an administrator in an empire that made him a eunuch. When the Babylonians sacked the city as they sacked Jerusalem in 586 B.C. they typically killed the people they didn’t enslave. It’s very likely that Daniel witnessed the murder of his parents. It’s likely he witnessed the murder of his brothers and sisters. We don’t know whether he had brothers or sisters, or if he was an orphan from the beginning. However, it’s very likely those things happened. They usually cut off the generation behind them. And, they literally cut off his lineage because they made him a eunuch.

Yet, both Joseph and Daniel were brilliant in the discharge of their duties, and they were promoted because of this. So, it’s possible, not only in the most secular environments but also in an environment that has victimized you, to do God’s work and ministry and excel at it. They already knew God, but they showed God through their work.

This morning, I’m going to show you something that, frankly, overwhelms me. Joseph is a prisoner until he is 40. Here’s the thing, chastity is its own reward. Chastity is the queen of the virtues. What greater gift could you give to the person you marry than being able to tell your husband or wife that they were the first. There is a shockingly low number of Christians who can give that gift to the people they marry — especially Christian men. It’s truly a reward for godly people. But, what if, while you remain chaste and pure you gain the reputation of being a rapist. It’s one thing to give up the hormonal experience and biological expression of sex. His hormones were raging and he told the woman no. This powerful woman who held his future in her hands, he was able to say no to repeatedly. For doing this, he gets the reputation of being a rapist. I don’t think Potiphar believed his wife. If he really believed his wife, he would have killed Joseph. It says Potiphar was angry, but not what Potiphar was angry about.

Either way, Joseph ends up in prison as a rapist for doing the right thing. So, what happens then? He rises to the top, just like he did in Potiphar’s house. He diligently did his job and he rose to the top, he was put in charge of the other prisoners. It says the cup-bearer and baker of the king were thrown in prison, and they had a dream. Now, look at verse 6. Verse 6 and 7 are two of the most important verses in the Old Testament.

You know why? Well, first, it’s the birth of prison ministry. Second, it’s probably the birth of pastoral ministry. Third, it may be the birth of missions. Joseph is a foreigner in a foreign land, witnessing pagans. Listen to what it says, “When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw they were troubled. So he asked Pharaoh’s who were with him in custody of the master's house, ‘Why are your faces cast down?’” They told Joseph they had dreams that trouble them; so Joseph says to them, “Don’t interpretations belong to God? Tell me about it, let’s talk about it.”

Joseph reads the sadness in their faces and he begins his pastoral work. He begins to tell them about God. You know, God can solve all your problems. Do you see the moral and spiritual grandeur of Joseph? This is overwhelming, and think of the context you can minister anywhere. You can minister anywhere, he is in prison and he’s ministering. We could stay on these verses for a long time. This is the model of a man who has a secular job, who’s suffered immensely because he was innocent. And, what’s he doing? He’s ministering in the job he has. He’s the greatest man in the world, maybe his father is the greatest man in the world.

Vocation

So we can minister anywhere, and here’s the thing about work. The latin word for vocation is ‘vocatio’. ‘Voca’ means ‘I call’; it’s a calling.

And, there are 3-4 things we have to ascertain as believers. First, what do I do? Second, where do I do it? Third, how do I do it? Fourth, when do I do it?

The Heart

The when is important because one of the controversies that helped get Jesus killed were the sabbath controversies. The religious leadership of Israel were monumentally legalistic. They were concerned with the externals. Jesus’ focus was on the internal. Jesus was always focused on our internal spiritual  realities in relationship to God. This is why he told them they were dead on the inside. The Jewish leaders were terrified because Jesus saw the inside of their heart. Jesus begins his ministry this way when he looks into Nathanial's heart in John 1 when he says, “Behold an Israelite in whom there is no deception.” He ends his ministry in the upper room while looking into Judas’ heart. Jesus sees gile and deception in Judas’ heart.

This searcher of hearts, named Jesus of Nazareth, terrified the religious hypocrites who were trying to hide what was in their hearts. This is why Jesus denounced hypocrisy so consistently. In Greek, hypocrisy literally means ‘to wear the mask’. Jesus took their mask off, and they hated him for it.

But the sabbath controversy had to do with when you could work. That’s why at the end. The sabbath law was the darling of the religious leaders because it was quantifiable. They figured out how many kilos you could lift, how many meters you could walk, etc. Jesus violated all that. He didn’t violate the sabbath, but he violated their extrapolations of the sabbath. They said Jesus couldn't be from God because he violated their rules. He violated their rules about what kind and how much work you could do on the sabbath.

When we think of a call, there is a vocational call — that’s what we do. There’s also a locational call — that’s where we do it. I’ve never had any doubt in my life of a vocational call for lots of reasons, partly because I don’t know how to do anything else. Some of you can make a living doing many things. Maybe I could have been a football coach, that’s it. For me, the choice was to preach or starve. So you might have a bigger struggle, especially if you are transitioning between jobs.

The question of where I do work has always been huge, difficult, and agonizing. I will tell you this. I’m not a presbyterian, but in presbyterian polity you have teaching elders and ruling elders. There is a difference in gifting between them, but not in Godliness. No matter who you are, people tend to make the decision of where they work based on the amount of money and benefits they will receive. I was on the phone with my college roommate today and he moved from Atlanta because he was with a company where he was managing a billion dollars of assets and he wanted to manage 6 billion dollars of assets. There was a 6 figure increase in salary. He’s a presbyterian elder by the way.

Now, if I moved to Memphis in 1994 and I leave in 2003 and I say, “Well, I’m going to leave and go to a bigger church because they will pay me more money.” If I say this, what will my people think of me? They will lose all respect for me.

Money makes a very useful servant, but money makes a very wretched master. Money is a witch goddess, and you don’t want to serve a witch goddess, but a lot of people do.  

We’re going to talk about Philippians 2 today. The work that Jesus calls us to and the way we know God through our work is the cross. The place we see God most clearly is in the cross because that’s the place we see God’s love and justice, His love and righteousness at the same time. What Jesus teaches us is that we know God when we come close to Christ because He revealed who God is. We cannot know God without knowing Jesus. There’s one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus. We cannot become like God without becoming like Jesus. We cannot know Jesus without becoming like Him. We cannot become like Him without increasing our heart-knowledge. Now, knowledge is useful, but it’s not the only thing. Knowledge is only useful if it’s transformative. If the knowledge is merely informative, it becomes a liability. If you know more, but you do not conform yourself to that knowledge, then knowing more is of no advantage. It increases your judgment.

Jesus’ Teaching Is Counter-Intuitive

We’re going to see what Jesus teaches about work and money in Matthew chapter 6, but you have to understand this, almost everything Jesus said and almost everything Jesus taught was counter-intuitive. It’s counter to what we would have done on our own. It’s opposite to the conclusion we would have come to, the philosophy we would have believed, and the life we would have lived. But we don’t notice how counter-intuitive it is. That’s because we know the stories, we grew up with them. Someone already has told us these things, but think about the people who were watching him for the first time. Think of the people who were listening.

Let me explain what I mean by counter-intuitive. In John 9, Jesus encounters a man who is blind from birth, and he restores his sight. He spits on the ground, makes mud, and rubs it in his eyes. To have him see, he puts mud in his eyes. Would you do that? It’s counter-intuitive. It’s the exact opposite. What Jesus does is counter-intuitive because His father is counter-intuitive. In Isaiah 55 we learn that God’s ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. He’s not like us. When God does things to us we don’t like, we have to remember that God is not like us, and we are lower than Him. God is not a carbon-based life form. God is life. God is counter-intuitive.

What does God tell Gideon? God tells him he can’t win the battle because he had too many soldiers. How many generals would obey that military counsel? None, that was unprecedented. Totally counter-intuitive. You cannot possibly win the battle because you have too many soldiers.

In 1 Kings 18 when Elijah prepared the altar for combustion, what did he do to prepare the altar to be set on fire? He flooded it with water. Isn’t that what you do? No, it’s counter-intuitive. There are certain theological formula going from right to left, but not left to right. What do I mean? God is love. Is that true? Love is God. Is that true? No, that’s not true. We are all made in God’s image but God is not like us. We have to stick to the biblical formulas, the more we freelance, the more we get into heresy.

There is no more concentrated deposit of Jesus’ counter-intuitive teaching than the sermon on the mount. In this sermon we find the command to love your enemies. There’s nothing more counter-intuitive than that! We have a hard enough time loving our friends and family, let alone our enemies. The number one reason missionaries leave the field is because of conflict with colleagues. We have enough problems loving our husbands and wives. Loving our enemies? Who even wants to do that? Do you see how counterintuitive Jesus is?

Now, we come to chapter 6 in the middle of the sermon. The sermon on the mount is about the kingdom of God, it’s the charter of the kingdom of God. What is the kingdom of God? Well, you need 3 things to make a kingdom. First, you need a king, that’s Jesus. Second, you need subjects, that’s us. Third, you need a rule of law, a constitution, that’s the New Testament. This is why the sermon on the mount was mind blowing for Jews. They thought the messiah would come and kick Rome off the neck of the Jews, but Jesus let them know they were wrong and they tried to kill him. All he did was tell them the truth.

So, Jesus’ kingdom is the opposite of what they expected. Jesus wanted them to love the Romans, that’s the difference between Christianity and Islam. Islam kills the infidel if he doesn't convert, or they enslave them and tax them. The Christian is willing to sacrifice their life for their enemy so they will have a chance to see them again in heaven. It’s totally opposite and counter-intuitive. This is one reason Islam is so popular, it’s very intuitive. I won’t go into that further.

We come to the sermon on the mount which has a now and not yet dynamic. The now dynamic is the kingdom of God. This is where the king, Jesus, rules. So if the king rules over your heart, the kingdom of God is within you. You take the kingdom to work with you. In that sense, the kingdom is now. But there is also a not yet aspect because the world is not aware that Jesus is the king. One day, he will appear in glory and the kingdom will begin in earnest. Christians disagree about how that will happen and we don’t need to get into that.

I want to obliterate the distinctions between the secular and the sacred in terms of your work. In the middle of the sermon on the mount, Jesus begins to talk about 3 purely spiritual works. He talks about almsgiving in chapter 6 verse 2. He talks about prayer in verse 7, he said, “When you pray, do it like this. Don’t be like the gentiles.” Then he gives them the Lord’s prayer. He also talks about fasting in verses 16-18. These 3 things — almsgiving, prayer, and fasting — are purely spiritual works. In this context, this is what Godly people do. What is Jesus teaching? He’s saying not to do these things publicly so we will be seen by others. Rather, we should do them in private to show our love for the father.

Where Is Your Treasure?

But then he talks about what seems to be almost purely secular. He talks about building an estate. He says not to lay up for ourselves treasures on earth. He’s not teaching us that building up treasure is wrong. He’s teaching us where to store it so we can never lose it and always keep it. Jesus goes on a little discourse in the middle and it’s important to see the context. In verse 22 he says the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, you can see everything. But if you have bad vision, you cannot see anything. What he’s saying is that if money governs everything — if you see everything in terms of money — you are walking in darkness and you are bound to stumble. It’s going to be a bitter harvest.

This is one reason I’m thankful for Hollywood. Hollywood proves to us that the things we think we want can never satisfy us. Why do we go to the office? To hopefully build riches. Why do we go to the gym? Hopefully to achieve beauty. Well, where’s the greatest combination of beauty and riches in America? It’s in Hollywood. Great looking people making tons of money. If they were fulfilled by that, they would never commit adultery. But they always commit adultery. If they were fulfilled, they would never get a divorce. But they are always getting divorces. If they were fulfilled, they would never be depressed. But psychiatrists are most needed in Southern California. They would never commit suicide.

A couple summers ago I was stuck in the U.K. because the Russians wouldn’t give me a visa for 3 weeks. I was hemorrhaging money for those 3 weeks and I discovered who my real friends in the U.K. were so I could stay somewhere instead of a hotel. While I was there, my friends drove me past Elizabeth Hurley’s house. She’s 56 this year, but the consensus has been that she’s the most beautiful woman in the U.K. Elizabeth has had only one child in her life and the father is Steve Bing. He was her lover for a long time, and he inherited 600 million dollars. Last summer, he jumped off his balcony on the 27th floor of a penthouse and killed himself. Why? I don’t know why, but I do know that having the most beautiful woman in the world and all that money didn’t make him happy.

We tend to think that we would act differently if that was us. We want to have the opportunity for wealth and beauty because we think we will use them rightly. And, if you are given those things, I hope you do use them rightly.

You Cannot Serve God And Money

So what does the Lord say? God says that no one can serve two masters, you cannot serve both God and money. Now there are many places in the bible which say that wealth can be a good thing.

I had a professor who was a wealthy man and in 24 years one time I said something to the effect that our funds were low. This was in 2011 and immediately we had a $40,000 influx and $15,000 of that was sent to me by that professor. I felt terrible. I felt so guilty, and then when he died a few years ago his library was put up for auction. He bought all these ancient manuscripts in Greece for pennies. One of these manuscripts sold for $1.2 million. One sold for $600k. And, I thought to myself, “He was holding out on us!” This theologian friend of mine performed my wedding and my dad funded out honeymoon to Europe and I found myself feeling guilty.

So here I am at my wedding reception, about to go on my honeymoon, and I feel guilty. He could tell something was off so he read my 1 Timothy 1:6 which talks about how God’s given us all things to richly enjoy. He was encouraging me.

There are many places in the scriptures that wealth would be ok. Most of the time it isn’t because it defiles and corrupts, but it can be. We had an assignment in South France, it was a tough duty in June and July of 2016. On Sunday mornings I would preach and in the evening I would preach somewhere else. There was a member of the first church named Patrick, he was a dutchman. He was a Dutch colonial with a British wife. Patrick managed the largest the largest yacht servicing company in the Monte Carlo harbor. He told me half his clients are billionaires. I asked him how many of them are good guys, and he said zero. He told me he thought he had found one that was a good guy until something went wrong with his yacht.

Personally, I know 2 billionaires. I’m sure one of them didn’t remember my name a week later. I’m pretty sure the other one, who paid for college for my kids for 2 whole years, I doubt she remembers my name, but they are good people. Really good people. Godly people. They own the Cincinnati Reds. I performed their daughter's wedding. So it’s possible. There are people who have lots and lots of money who are not corrupted by it. They use it for the kingdom. We all want to be one of those people, but we cannot serve money. There can only be one master and it cannot be money.

Remember, money is a very useful servant, but a poor master. Money is a witch goddess. You don’t want to serve money.

What Jesus Wants = Your Heart

Jesus demands these internal commandments. He’s concerned about the interior life, the things that happen on the inside. There are internal commands in the Old Testament. Such as, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deuteronomy 6), that’s an internal commandment. You shall love your neighbor as yourself, that’s an internal commandment. The command to repent is an internal responsibility. The command to rejoice is an internal responsibility. The command to believe is an internal reality. So he commands us not to be anxious.

I can tell a godly young man he should marry my daughter, and I can tell my daughter to marry this young man, but I cannot make it happen. Even if it was an arranged marriage I cannot make it happen. This is one of the primary differences between me and Jesus. Jesus can create what he commands.

Augustine said, “God gives what He requires, and He requires what He gives.”

Now, how do we know God in our work? By doing what he says. The more we do what he says, the more we will know him. I could talk about that for a long time. I could talk for a long time about Philippians 2. I could talk for a long time about how we need to divest. Warren Buffett teaches people how to invest, and we are all interested in that. We should be equally interested in learned how to divest, how to give it all away.

Blessed Are Those Who Give

I’ll say this, there’s a verse in the book of Acts where Jesus is quoted and what is quoted is something that Jesus is never quotes on in the gospels. It’s a saying of Jesus not found in the gospels. It occurs in Acts 20 when Jesus is charging the Ephesians elders and saying goodbye to them at the port of Troas. He says it’s more blessed to give than receive. Let me tell you, there is no more easily tested promise than that. That’s the easiest promise to test. All you have to do is give something away sacrificially. You have to give something away that you don’t want to give away.

This is going to sound spiritual, but my wife said to me once, “We need to keep that.” In response I said, “That’s why we need to give it away.” What you give away should be sacrificial because if it’s not sacrificial, you really aren’t giving away anything. I can say I gave up hunting for Jesus, but that doesn’t mean anything because I’ve never hunted anything.

You can and should test it. There are so many things that cannot be tested, but this is something that can be. The problems with Marxism can be tested and objectively debunked almost immediately. Some of our congressmen don’t seem to understand that there was a wall down the middle of the iron curtain, and no one died trying to get from the westside to the eastside. That’s all you need to know, everything else is theory.

You cannot immediately test whether Islam is true or not because you have to die first because it’s a transcendent claim. The only way to find out whether Mohammad was a prophet — I already know and can prove he wasn’t — but to objectively prove it experimentally, you have to die.

Well, you know what, this is a promise we can test. We can test the blessing of giving things away, and that’s the great thing about riches. You have the opportunity to bless someone else. That’s the greatest reason to work! So you can bless someone else!

I didn’t do this for today’s session, but in the previous session I asked them a series of questions. The first one is this. Why do people work? Generally, why do they work? Second, why do you work? Third, why should we work?

Well, the answer I would write down is that we work because we love. Could be something very basic. Maybe you like to eat and you cannot eat if you do not work. It could be a really bad reason, it could be because we love money. It could be a better reason, perhaps to provide for our family.

The Gospel

The most counter-intuitive thing is the gospel itself. Why? I can prove the gospel couldn’t have been made up; it must have a supernatural origin. The gospel doesn’t shock people like us who grew up in the bible belt because we’ve heard it all our lives.

Here’s why it couldn’t have been made up. Israel was occupied by 5 successive empires: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. Let’s imagine one of those emperors, for example Nebuchadnezzar. Let’s say he calls his commanders together and they are sitting around a big table. He tells them they’ve had a rebellion in a distant province in the empire, and the insurgents have murdered our ambassador and fortified their defenses against us. What should we do to bring them back? Then, one of his commanders suggests that we send the king’s only son unarmed across the country into this province, where he will be abused, tortured, and slowly murdered. Then those rebels will know how much we love them.

If that had ever happened, the person who suggested that would die within a matter of minutes for suggesting such a thing. But you know it never happened? How do you know? You know because it’s not a human thought. It’s not a thought that would ever enter a human mind. It’s not a thought that originates on this planet, but it did happen once. But the plan originated in God’s mind, not man’s. That’s the gospel. That God so loved the world that he gave up his son. No one is like that except God. However, the more we become like God, the more we are willing to give up even the most precious things.

We start by giving up our lives. Giving away money is far easier than giving up your life. Jesus doesn’t just want 10%, he wants our lives. When we give our lives to God, the 10% is embedded in the life we’ve given to God.

Money cannot be the most important thing because if money is the most important thing, God is not.