Heaven At Work: Restoring Heaven On Earth
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Heaven at Work
Restoring Heaven at Work
Genesis 1:1—2:3
INTRODUCTION
In the movie, Taxi Driver, actor Peter Boyle makes this profound statement about work: Wizard: Look at it this way. A man takes a job, you know? And that job - That becomes what he is. You know - You do a thing and that's what you are. Like I've been a cabbie for thirteen years. I still don't own my own cab. You know why? Because I don't want to. That must be what I want. To be on the night shift drivin' somebody else's cab. You understand? I mean, You get a job, you become the job.
From his perspective, this is depressing. I think we all feel this way, don’t we? The work that we do day in and day out has a profound shaping influence on us. We become what we do. If we don’t like what we do, that’s frustrating.
But we’ve been looking at work differently this month. We’ve been seeing how our work actually imitates God, it images God. This makes our work an amazing opportunity: what if your job enabled you to participate in God’s work? What if the job that you have, the job that you become was a job God does? What if you became more like God because of the work that you do?
THAT’S THE OPPORTUNITY THAT THIS SERIES PROVIDES FOR YOU.
This is our final week of our Heaven at Work series. How have you been doing? How has this series changed you? Your approach to work?
We’ve seen that work, and companies image God in his work. God’s work is in categories: Creator, maintainer, and restorer. As creator, God makes things that are very good. As maintainer, God keeps things running right. Today, we’re going to see how work images God as restorer. As restorer, God fixes the things in life that are broken.
Our text shows us Jesus restoring someone with amazing effects.
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- Frustration with work leads you to seek satisfaction elsewhere
- Our search for satisfaction brings us face to face with Jesus
- Jesus’ work brings restoration and so does ours
If you’re unemployed, or retired, or an unpaid volunteer, please realize that work is any effort to shape and influence the world around us, including other people. So don’t tune out.
- Frustration with work leads you to seek satisfaction elsewhere
The setting speaks volumes. There’s Bad Work—Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector (v2). This was bad news. Back then, to be a tax collector, you had to purchase this as a franchise—you’d buy the right to do this from Rome. So you were a traitor to Israel from the outset. You had to pay a certain amount to Rome, but whatever else you could get, you could keep. There was no limit. There was lots of temptation in his work.
And he was a Bad man—He was rich. It’s not that being rich means you’re bad. Rather this shows that he was corrupt. He had given in to the temptations of his profession. But Zacchaeus wasn’t just a tax collector, he was a chief tax collector. Jericho was one of 3 regional tax centers in Israel at that time, so Zacchaeus had other collectors collecting for him. He was at the top of the pyramid. They were fleecing the people. He was rich and powerful.
But he wasn’t happy. He was searching for something more. Why? Well, for all his money and power, he had no one to share it with. Tax collectors were hated in Jesus’ day. He was a social outcast, couldn’t go to synagogue, he knew something was missing in his life. He’s not happy. He’s not satisfied. Maybe he thought the money would make him happy. It didn’t. Now he’s wondering if Jesus can help him.
But there’s a problem: Zacchaeus shows up and finds that he can’t even get close to Jesus. The crowds are too thick, and poor Zacchaeus is too short. Last year at the Buick Open at Torrey Pines. I went and me and 25,000 other people spent 5 hours following Tiger Woods around the golf course. I was looking forward to seeing him up close, but there was no way. EVERYWHERE you went, the crowd was ridiculous. There was no way to get even close. At one point, on the 18th hole, I actually stood on a golf cart to try to get an unblocked look at him. But there were 13 other people standing on the same golf cart. It was crazy.
But Zacchaeus was determined. He couldn’t see through the crowd or over the crowd, so he ran ahead of the crowd and found a tree to climb. This was embarrassing in that culture. But he didn’t care. He was seeking Jesus. So there he was, up above in a tree, hoping to see Jesus. Is that your hope today? Are you here hoping to see Jesus? How much do you want to see him?
- Our search for satisfaction brings us face to face with Jesus
Into the worst city, into the worst industry, into the worst job, to the worst person, Jesus comes seeking. Zacchaeus goes to all this effort seeking Jesus. It turns out that Jesus was seeking him. This is good news—if you are seeking Jesus, he is also seeking you.
v5— Jesus was looking for him. V10—Jesus is the one who seeks and saves the LOST. He’s looking for you. You are here seeking him. Jesus wants to spend time with us. V5-not just to beat us up for our sins, but to be with us. —no matter who we are, or what we’ve been doing. If we’re seeking answers, he’s seeking us to provide them.
Jesus goes to his home. And this gets everyone upset. V7—he’s gone into the house of a “sinner.” This isn’t just a report on Zacchaeus’s moral condition. To be a “sinner” in the first century meant that you were religiously unclean. It meant that anyone who touched you also became unclean. If you were unclean, to stay in your house would make a visitor unclean. Yet, Jesus didn’t seem to mind. In fact, Jesus made it clear that it this was his purpose. V5—“I must stay at your house today.” Zacchaeus’s house was defiled, but Jesus goes anyway.
Here we see the good news. Jesus—the one who is clean and undefiled. He enters into the defilement of Zacchaeus. He goes into Zacchaeus’s house—his place of uncleanness. Two things happen: (1) Zacchaeus comes out transformed. We’ll see this in the next point. (2) Jesus comes out committing to paying the price for Zacchaeus’s corruption.
We talk about wanting to see restoration, we want to see the city restored, but we often forget there’s a price to be paid. We seek Jesus because we want hope, happiness, restoration. Jesus does offer these things, at the ultimate cost to himself. He takes on our sins, our uncleanness. The things that ostracize us from others. He takes the brokenness of our work and our workplace and he dies for them. That’s how he brings freedom.
- Jesus’ work brings restoration and so does ours
Zacchaeus receives Jesus joyfully (v6) and makes this radical declaration: v8—I give half my goods to the poor, and if I’ve defrauded anyone of anything, I pay it back 4 fold. Zacchaeus feels two things: conviction and freedom.
Conviction—he feels guilty over the ways he has cheated and stolen from people and he wants to do all that he can to make things right.
Freedom—he is no longer dependent on money or control or power to be happy. He has found true joy and freedom in knowing Jesus—in being forgiven and being at peace with God, so he doesn’t need the money any more. Radical generosity from freedom.
This four-fold payback is interesting. Lev 6 says that sometimes restitution for theft should be 120%. Ex 22 says that sometimes restitution for theft should be 200%. And other times it should be 400%. So what is Zacchaeus doing? He is saying that he wants to pay back the maximum amount prescribed by the law. He doesn’t ask, “How much do I have to give back?” Now that Jesus is his Lord, he commits himself to maximum obedience, to the greatest extent of restitution… and this on top of him giving ½ of his goods to the poor!
So Jesus’ work restores Zacchaeus. It fixes what is broken in him.
LEVEL 4: This is imaged in our work. Many companies and jobs image God the Restorer—because they fix things that are broken. This is the 4th Level of Integrating Faith and Work: Work is a way that we Image God. Companies that fix things that are broken: Doctors, Lawyers, Auto Insurance, Recycling, Mechanics, Social workers, any product or service that fixes something that is broken in the world reflects God as restorer.
Jobs that fix things that are broken: Customer service, technical support, Maintenance, Mediators, when you bring reconciliation, when you fix a problem in your company, you image God as restorer.
One of the things that struck me was how this gives opportunities to Non-Christians to image God—even if they don’t believe in him. There are people who have experienced restoration without believing in God. At first, this gave me pause. I think that this bothers some Christians. But here’s what I’ve concluded about this. This shows the incredible kindness of God. God allows people in the world to use his medicine even without giving him the credit. He lets people use his car, experience his restoration without loving him back.
It also shows that God is after more than our restoration. He wants a relationship with us. He has created a separation between his restoration and a relationship with him so that people would know that they shouldn’t seek him MERELY to get his restoration blessings. He wants us to love him for who he is, not just for what we get out of him.
LEVEL 5: And Jesus doesn’t just restore Zacchaeus’s soul, he also fixes what is broken in Zacchaeus’s work.
The Good of Affluence, John Schneider, p165 “…there is in this story something more—something greater, even—than just the salvation of a wretched man [Zacchaeus]. It is the redemption of the world, the world of culture, including its morally questionable economic forms. If a chief tax collector can become a “son of Abraham,” there is surely hope for all walks of economic life in our time. This is not that a man saved from the economics of the world, but that the world is redeemed in and through the salvation and new economics of the man.”
This commitment will radically change the way he does his business. It has to! He’ll never do his work the same again! It’s no wonder Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house! He is a son of Abraham. A member of God’s family.”
Luke 3:10-14 12 Tax collectors also came [to John the Baptist] to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?" 13 "Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them.
What doesn’t John the Baptist say? He doesn’t say stop being a tax collector. This is so important. He tells him to redeem his work, not leave his work.
You can imagine that tax collectors who followed Jesus would go from being despised to very popular very quickly. At first you’d think they were traitors, but if they didn’t fleece you, weren’t stealing from people, you would soon appreciate it. Like an honest mechanic: You don’t’ want to have to see him, but when you have to, you become so thankful you can trust him.
This is part of what Jesus says he came to do. V10—he came to seek and save the lost. This word lost can also be translated “ruined or destroyed.” This shows us more of the larger purpose of Jesus. It’s not just individual hearts or lives that have been lost, ruined, or destroyed by sin. This destruction affects everything. It had radical effects on Zacchaeus’s work. It displaced the corruption, greed, selfishness, oppression, pride, arrogance in his work.
What needs to be restored in your job? What is broken that needs the power of Jesus, the wisdom of God, the grace and understanding of the gospel so that it would be transformed? This is that 5th Level of Integrating Faith and Work: REDEEMER. Jesus comes to you—he seeks and saves you and the things that are broken in your life. As he blesses you, he then calls you to be a blessing to the city. He enters into your life, restores you, so that you can enter into the city, the workplace, the job and bring his restoration there too.
In John 20:21, Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Jesus went into the worst of the worst of the worst, and calls you now to enter into the worst of the worst of the worst and bring healing.
After years of complaining about the content of movies, Phillip Anschutz told his students, "I decided to stop cursing the darkness … and instead do something about it by getting into the film business." Phillip Anschutz.
How can you Fix and Restore the problems in your job/profession/ company/industry? We’ve got an insert in the bulletin that we’d like you to fill out and turn in today from our Faith and Work ministry along these lines. They’d like to know how they can help you think through how to bring God’s restoration to the workplaces in San Diego.
Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism, Philadelphia, United Church Press, 1845, translated by John Nevin 1964, p173
“Religion is not a single, separate sphere of human life. It takes hold of someone, in the center of his personal being; to carry light into his understanding, holiness into his will, and heaven into his heart and over his whole inward and outward life. No form of existence can withstand the renovating power of God’s Spirit. The whole creation aims toward restoration. Christianity is the redemption and renovation of the world. It must make all things new.”
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It's not.
Dr. Seuss, from The Lorax
These connections between our restoring work and God’s help us see God’s intention for the world. Do you know how the Bible ends? Do you know where all of God’s purposes lead? Revelation 21-22—the end of the Bible the end result of God’s restoring work is a perfectly restored city in a perfectly restored earth.
It’s life fixed in every way.
The past brokenness is gone.
No more pain.
It’s a community without borders.
Real, lasting beauty and pleasure.
Communion with God.
The church, you all—are the trailer for the upcoming movie. You are one of the actors. We are the preview. We want to be recognized as those who will be in the movie in the new earth.
And it’s his power in us, it’s his Spirit living in us. That’s how we can image God and redeem our work and the world.
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