Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you all would stand as we hear, as we pray a prayer of elimination together and hear the reading of God's word.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Join with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God of peace, sanctify us in the gospel of grace through the preaching of your word, that by your spirit we might be kept blameless on the day of Christ Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Amen.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Our scripture reading this morning comes from Psalm 127.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is a song of a sense.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a Psalm of Solomon.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hear now the word of the Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For he gives to his beloved sleep.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is God's word.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Thanks be to God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You may be seated.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Good, okay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There are no gains without pains.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or my personal least favorite: God helps those who help themselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Many Americans, even American Christians, believe that all three of those statements can be found in the Bible somewhere, maybe in the book of Proverbs or Second Hesitations or something like that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But the reality is that the phrases actually come from poor Richard's almanac, which was written by the most famous American of his time, Benjamin Franklin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, a few weeks ago, the United States just celebrated turning 250 years old.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And as a result of that, or because of that, I gave myself to studying this revolutionary summer and some of its founding fathers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Franklin really was and is the model American, the self-made man, if you will.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Benjamin Franklin kind of towers over American culture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His phrases have become famous because they are American culture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God helps those who help themselves, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, Americans have this tendency to tell ourselves a story, and the story goes like this: anyone can achieve upward mobility, freedom, and success if they just work hard enough.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is commonly called the American dream.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it's true-ish.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And because of it, as a result of this, Americans are defined more by their work than any other Western nation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Many cultures, when they introduce themselves or meet somebody for the first time, they might ask a question like this Hey, where is your family from?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What do we ask?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hey, what do you do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And there's nothing wrong with that question, but it's a question that shows what is valued in American culture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It was an American psychologist named Wayne Oates in 1971 who coined the term workaholism.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He describes it like this workaholic is someone with an uncontrollable need to work incessantly.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And as a result of our kind of origin story as a country, some of our culture, workaholism is the most rewarded addiction in America.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me say that differently.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you drink too much, you might get fired.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you work too much, you might get honored in our cultural moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so workaholics are characterized by three things having an inner compulsive drive to work hard, thinking about work constantly, and feeling guilty and restless when they're not working.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, when was the last time you took a vacation and by day three you started feeling low because you weren't doing anything?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For me, it was 19 days ago.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: My wife's here to keep me honest, okay?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is a real thing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is part of the American story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the culture that you live and breathe and have your being in.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Crush it at work until work crushes you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, I think we need a better story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so today we actually finish our eight-week sermon series in the book of Psalms called Subversive Spirituality.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We've been taking modern cultural maladies and showing how the Psalms actually have ancient antidotes for them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so today we're going to take up Psalm 127.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you have a Bible or device, go ahead and get that in front of you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I want to look at how the story of Scripture, the four-chapter story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration actually tells a better story about our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So look with me at creation, how we work with God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 1 of Psalm 127.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That is mind-bending.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: C.S.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lewis said it like this: God seems to do nothing by himself which he could possibly delegate to his creatures.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what he could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What kind of God is this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, God promises seed time and harvest, but we must sow and reap.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God provides wisdom, but he never writes truth in the sky.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Instead, the laws of science have always been there, but it requires us to think and experiment and think again to use those laws of nature for our good and God's glory.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God fills the hills with marbles, but he's never built a cathedral.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God has loads of iron ore stored away in the mountains, and yet he's never made a needle or a skyscraper.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, God's work is not by human effort, but nor is it without human effort.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nobody said it better, as is almost always the case, than Augustine of Hippo.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He said it like this without God we cannot, without us, God will not.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you see the beauty of this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That God, the creator of all things out of nothing, has invited us to become in J.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: R.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: L.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Tolkien's words, sub-creators with him?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What a beautiful story we have.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But but listen, what kind of God is it who punches the clock with you or with me as a coworker?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That has to it has to shape our view of creation and our creator.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And yet, Psalm 127 is actually about defining the limits of human effort.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at it again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why would the Bible need to define the limits of your effort in your work?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why would Psalm 127 need to do this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because of our temptation to anxious toil.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The second point I want to look at is the fall.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The fall has caused us to work without God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 2 in our text, it says this it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: My mama used to call this burning the candle at both ends.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Bible calls it vanity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This kind of work, this anxious toil, three times in our text it says, is in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So how does labor become anxious toil?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What does that take?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, it takes us simply doing our work apart from God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Labor becomes anxious toil when we work by ourselves with our own energy towards our own ends.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What that means is that the real enemy in your life isn't work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Said differently, the opposite of meaningful work isn't leisure.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If I just had more leisure time, everything would be good.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's not the opposite of meaningful work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The opposite of meaningful work is lonely striving in your own strength for your own success.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what Psalm 127 is trying to set you free from.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because the reality is that when we believe everything depends on us, we turn God's good gift of work into anxious toil.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that's where we live this side of Eden.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, let me see if this quote provokes you as much as it provoked me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If it wasn't from somebody I really respect, named Alice Willard, I don't know if I would have taken it so seriously.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is what he says God never gives us too much to do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Is that true?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, do you do you believe that?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What do you what do you think of that?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What do you make of that?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God never gives us too much to do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of us are going, uh maybe everybody else, but that's not my case.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: My to-do list is just never-ending.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I had to declare bankruptcy on digital to-do lists because I would just stack it up with things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So now I use pen and paper like old-fashioned, because I can't constantly add to-dos to that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Willard and Psalm 127, they're warning us not to create impossible workloads by trying to carry responsibilities that rightly belong to God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me say it differently.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God never asked you to carry what he alone can carry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look again with me at verse one.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless, unless the Lord builds the house.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of y'all are builders in here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain, unless the Lord watches over the city.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of you are involved with the justice work in our city.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord closes the sale, salespeople sell in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord heals the patient, nurses, doctors, and counselors heal in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord creates beauty, artists create in vain, unless the Lord writes the code, programmers, well, chat GPT is doing most of that now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord raises the children, parents nurture in vain, unless the Lord builds the business, entrepreneurs build in vain, unless the Lord grants understanding, students study in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the emphasis in Psalm 127 is not on our work, our work is assumed.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The emphasis is on God's work in our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That requires a kind of worldview.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it can't be a deistic worldview where God is distant and absent.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It has to be a God that is deeply involved in the warp and woof of putting brick, mortar, and brick building the house.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So Psalm 127 isn't offering us a time management technique, it's it's calling us to turn from our functional self-sufficiency.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's calling us to repent of the illusion that everything depends on me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because what we've done is that God has given us work as a gift, and self-reliance has turned it into slavery.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So when we assume everything depends on us, what happens is our work becomes anxious toil instead of joyful cooperation with the God of the universe.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But our anxiety tells us something.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Anxiety is like any other emotion, it's like a dashboard light on your car.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's indicating something else is going on beneath the hood.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so when we pay attention to our anxiety with our anxious toil, we can learn something.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's an article in the New York Times called The Busy Trap.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this is what it says busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Obviously, your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, we overload our days with toil and our nights with worry because we need it to justify our existence.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But Psalm 127 just simply says it is in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For me, insomnia is a canary in the coal mine that I'm taking on too much.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When we can't sleep because we secretly believe that we're indispensable.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When when builders think if I stop, everything falls apart, or the watchman goes, if I stop, everybody's at risk.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you feel the anxiousness that comes from that belief.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But this psalm has one word, one word I want to zero in on that I think is meant to set us free.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a hint at the redemption of our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look it with me at verse 2.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The redemption of our work hinges on that word, beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why don't you need to labor in vain or rise early or stay up late or toil anxiously?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Linger over these six words.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For he gives to his beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what the text is saying here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, if you think I'm making a big deal out of nothing, bear with me for a moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me just show you two things out of the title of the text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The title of this text is A Song of Ascents of Solomon.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now listen, first, Psalm 127 is the central psalm in a collection of Psalms called the Song of Ascents.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's 15 of them, seven before Psalm 127 and seven after 127.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It is the center.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And at the center of the central psalm is a Hebrew word, beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So why?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is an important thing with reading scripture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You don't know what a text says until you know how it says.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: These literary devices are not incidental, they're integral to the message that the author, both divine and human, want to communicate to you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why write this collection of psalms with the word beloved as the hub around which all of the rest of them spin?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: My second point from the title of the text is that this psalm was written by Solomon.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Solomon is the son of David and Bathsheba, and in 2 Samuel 12, the Lord, David gives him the name Solomon, and then the Lord sends a prophet.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is crazy to me, sends a prophet to David and goes, Hey, by the way, that son that was just born is my beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so David gives him a second name.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Solomon is name number one, Jedediah, beloved of the Lord, is name number two.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so Solomon, Solomon, the wisest man of his age, this paragon of wisdom in the scriptures, he knew that being the beloved of the Lord is the key to life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of y'all picked up on the Ecclesiastes-like hint of using the word vanity or vain in this text, is because Solomon wrote both.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so as Solomon is unpacking this, he's trying to help us understand that being the beloved is the key.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, let me just misquote the New York Times real quick here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That article I read before.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Instead of busyness, I'm inserting the word belovedness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen, belovedness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Obviously, your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: See the difference that makes?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so I want you to know that there's something greater than Solomon here, though.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the greater son of David is not Solomon, but Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And if you know the story of Jesus, you know that really early on in his ministry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, the beginning of his ministry, he comes up out of the waters of baptism, and God the Father speaks over him and says, This is my beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, it's important, even if you don't know the Bible or you're not a Christian, many people know that Jesus was a carpenter.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They know that's just kind of this one of these facts that emerges.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, we know that because of Matthew 13, 55, where people ask from his hometown of Nazareth, they go, Isn't this the carpenter's son?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But in Mark 6, 3, people ask and they say, Is not this the carpenter?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How do we make sense of that discrepancy?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, in that cultural moment, a son apprenticed his father to learn the trade.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You know when Jesus calls James and John, the sons of Zebedee, what are they doing?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're fishing in the boat with their daddy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's where you learn how to do your work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You apprentice yourself to your father.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Whatever the father was, you were.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's how that cultural moment worked.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so for 30 years, in almost complete obscurity, Jesus was learning the trade of his father, that is, a craftsman, a trade worker.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like if the Son of God takes on human flesh and works a trade with his hands, does that not dignify manual labor?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so as we look at the text here, it's important, Jesus spent 30 years in manual labor doing the work of his earthly father Joseph, and then three years doing a different type of work, apprenticing to his heavenly father.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what I want you to see.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what is the Father's work?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Redeeming everything that was lost in the fall.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Thomas Howard has one of my favorite quotes on the Incarnation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, This the incarnation, that is how God became man in Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus did not come to thin out human life, he came to set it free.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: All the dancing and feasting and processing and singing and building and sculpting and baking and merrymaking that belong to us and that were stolen away into the service of false gods, Jesus returns to us in the gospel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the redemption of our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, in our scripture reading together called Seeing Jesus Together, we're reading through the Gospel of John right now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in the Gospel of John, Jesus is identified as a worker 27 times.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a key theme of the Gospel of John.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And maybe the greatest texts on this are in John 5.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In John 5, 17, Jesus says, My Father is always at his work to this very day.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Pause for a moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God the Father is always at his work to this very day.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The scriptures make it clear that God neither slumbers nor sleeps.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He enjoys working.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what the Father is doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But then Jesus goes on, he says, And I too am working, like a son going to apprentice his father at the workshop.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus goes on in John 5.19 and says, The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For the Father loves the Son, aka Beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What would a father who loves his son do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He'd say, Son, come with me to work and let me show you how it's done.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the story of God the Father and God the Son in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a father showing his son how to do the work of redeeming all of creation back to himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is a beautiful picture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you see the apprenticeship language in Jesus' mouth?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Alan Fadling has a book called The Unhurried Life, and he says, This whatever Jesus did was something he had seen his father working at.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I fear, therefore, that my own overwork is a failure of discernment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Am I following Jesus in my own way of working?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Is all the work I'm doing aligned with what the Father is doing and how he's doing it?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do I know what the Father is doing in the lives of people around me who are affected by my work?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Am I working in concert with the Father or perhaps in conflict with him?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Might I myself over be overdoing something that God may later have to undo?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: End quote.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Genesis 2, verse 19, it says, Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And whatever the man called, every living creature, that was its name.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God has no pride of authorship.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like the father's delight in inviting Adam to name the creatures.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God's like, get that bird over here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What's it called?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Parrot.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How about that weird pig thing in the river, hippopotamus, river horse?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is an incredible thing for a father with Adam to be doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this is what we were made for.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We were made for co-working with God in creation, and it was all lost in the fall.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But God's trying to give it back to us in redemption.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Eugene Peterson said most of what Jesus said and did took place in a secular workplace, a farmer's field, a fishing boat, a courtroom.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In the Gospels, Jesus occasionally shows up in a synagogue or temple, but for the most part, he spends his time in the workplace.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think that's still true to this day, by the way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Work doesn't take us away from God, it continues the work of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God comes into view on the first page of our scriptures as a worker.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Once we identify God in his workplace working, it isn't long before we find ourselves in our workplaces working in the name of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, our work is set free and returned to us in the life of Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus came to restore all that Adam had lost in the fall, including collaboration with our Maker.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But it's not enough to have Jesus as a living example.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That doesn't suffice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the reason why is because the fall brought a curse on our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Doesn't matter how much of a model Jesus is, of apprenticing to his Father, it's insufficient to lift the curse.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen to the language in Genesis 3.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Cursed is the ground because of you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The curse won't be lifted until the thorns, the pain, the sweat, and even death is dealt with.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now do you see why Jesus died with a crown of thorns on his head?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you see why Jesus sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you see why Jesus was returned to the ground in burial?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus came to reverse the curse because our work was cursed.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The only way he could set us free was by dying that death.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in on the cross hanging there, Jesus with his last gasp of breath cries out, It is finished.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he bows his head and he gives up the ghost, as it used to say.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What's happening in that moment?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus' finished work enables you to finish your work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, I've told the story before a handful of years ago, I was about to have our firstborn kid, and I met with one of our elders because I was working a lot, and we whiteboarded out my schedule, weekly schedule.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he looked at me after we got it up there, it was about 60 plus hours of work in a week, two jobs, school, and he looked at me and he very kindly said, Hey, you're the counselor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't really know like if this is daddy wound or like what's going on for you here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But if you don't make some significant changes in how you work, you're gonna fail as a husband and a father.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That was the gift of exhortation in that moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I needed that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And and what was he saying?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He was basically saying, Listen, work doesn't have to be a self-salvation project.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus finished his work so that you can finish yours.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the word of the cross when Jesus cries out, it is finished.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so this is what I want you to think.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This time tomorrow, consider this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus died so I don't have to fill in the blank.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is it for your work?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus died so I don't have to toil anxiously.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus died so I don't have to hold the world together.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus died so I don't have to feel like it's all on me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus died so I don't have to work alone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, we got to ask the question: how does Jesus' death make a real practical difference this time tomorrow morning?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Henry Nowin's a great Christian psychologist, and he identified three, there's five of them, but three I'm gonna share with you, lies at the core of our false identities.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here's the first three.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I am what I have, I am what I do, I am what other people say or think of me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You can see how our how each of those lies would shape up how we engage with our work as anxious toil.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But he believed that the cure to all three of those lies is receiving from and responding to the true identity as God's beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the only way that you're set free.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so Jesus died so that we can be, quote, accepted in the beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what Ephesians 1 says in the King James beautiful way of that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I love that phrase.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We are accepted in the beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Capital B.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus is the beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We can be accepted in him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so we know that God gives to his beloved because he gave his beloved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the promise of the gospel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And yet, still some of us find it within ourselves to this unceasing kind of low-grade impulse to strengthen Jesus' finished work with our own contribution.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We feel that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So how do we have reassurance that we are the beloved of God in the beloved Jesus Christ?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Through a naked reliance on the work of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: His work, not your work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A simple confidence that he has done enough.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now and goes on, he says this long before your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, your teachers, your church, or any people had touched you in a loving way or in a wounding way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Long before you were rejected by some person or praised by somebody else, that voice has been there always, speaking, I have loved you with an everlasting love.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That love is there before you were born and will be there after you die.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I love this sentence.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A life of 50, 60, 70, or a hundred years is just a little moment in which you can say, Yes, I love you too.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What a different motive to be about our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not anxious toil, it's loving service.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That whole shift can only happen if it's true that in the resurrection, the ground brought forth the fruit of new creation as the Spirit of God raised the Son of God from the dead to restore us to our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that's what I want to see as we close here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want to draw out a truth from this text as we see the restoration, how we work with the Spirit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, in order to do that, I'm gonna amend the text slightly.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't encourage that ever.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm gonna do it real quick here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Psalm 127, verse 1.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Since the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in joy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Since the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in hope.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now bear with me for a moment here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The restoration of our work is from manual labor to immanual labor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm sorry, but it's gonna stick, I promise you, you're not gonna lose it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: From manual labor, which is a good thing, it's working with our hands, that's good, to in immanual labor, which is working as God's hands, that's even better.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the invitation and the restoration of our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And for this, we have to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at Acts 19, 11, it says it like this and God was doing extraordinary miracles.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're like, yeah, that's on brand.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: By the hands of Paul.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Whoa.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Paul knew Emmanuel Labor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He knew what it meant to be the hands of God in the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, some of you are like, Yeah, but that that was an apostle dude.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, okay, fine, maybe.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or maybe, as Isaac Ambrose, a Puritan, not really known for their Pentecostalism, says it, Christians must learn to listen to, quote, the movings, workings, hints, and intimations of that spirit that comes from heaven.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you attend to the spirit at work in your work?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He goes on, he says, we feel the spirit stirrings so that we might cooperate with the spirit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And here's my little index here, so that all of life might be, quote, swallowed up in communion with God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What an invitation to restore work back to us by the giving of the spirit indwelling in us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so listen, what if you just experienced 1% of that tomorrow morning?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's all I'm saying, 1%.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, what if over a lifetime you began to become the kind of person where your work actually eventually felt like Da Vinci was doing hand over hand with you as he painted the Mona Lisa?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Where the Spirit's agency and your agency are cooperative, not competitive, to do the work that he wants to do in the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think that's the invitation of Psalm 127.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't know how else to read it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unless the Lord builds, unless the Lord watches, your building and watching is in vain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But if he does, man, what a gift to co-work with God in the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is why Tim Keller in his book Every Good Endeavor, it's a great book on what I'm talking about, says it like this every Christian should be able to identify with conviction and satisfaction the ways in which his or her work participates with God in his creativity and cultivation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Can you identify that for your work?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In our membership course, we ask four questions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because we're trying to get at what discipleship is for.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Following Jesus is not for when you're in environments like this primarily.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's for when you are not in the church, but as the church in the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so we ask these four questions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Where do you spend most of your waking hours?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What do you do there?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is God doing there?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How can we help?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Those four questions.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Just an invitation to consider what this looks like with the restoration of our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Builders still build, watchmen still watch, but there's a new power available to us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Years ago, I had a pickup truck that the gas gauge was broken.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, needless to say, I would run out of gas a lot.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So I know what it's like to drive a truck without power steering, just coasting, no power.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's hard.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Many of us work day in and day out without power steering.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's how we do our work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But what if the invitation of the Holy Spirit is like power steering?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You've got to turn the wheel, but as you turn the wheel, your weakness is clothed with power from on high.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What if that was a way to experience the Spirit's work in and through our work?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want to close with a story because I can still remember a lecture I heard at RTS Orlando when I was in seminary.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the lecture was on Charles Spurgeon, the 19th century preacher.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in 57 years, Spurgeon basically did three lifetimes worth of work.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen to some of this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Every week he preached four to ten times.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This sermon cost me about eight to ten hours of prep.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Four to ten sermons in a week.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Okay.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Every week he read six books, revised sermons for publication, lectured, and edited a monthly magazine.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In his spare time, he wrote 150 books.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Spurgeon pastored the largest Protestant megachurch in the world, and he knew all 6,000 members by name, to my shame.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He directed a theological college, ran an orphanage, and oversaw 66 Christian charities.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Spurgeon was also a good father and husband.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He never sacrificed his family on the altar of ministry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: David Livingston, the famous missionary to Africa, asked Spurgeon one time, he said, How can you accomplish so much in one day?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Spurgeon replied, You forget there are two of us working.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the invitation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the invitation is to be a co-worker with God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To join him in what he's up to in the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because God the Father has reconciled his created but fallen world through the death of his son, and he is renewing it into a kingdom of God by his spirit.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he's inviting you to sign up and join him in it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let's pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Father God, we pause before you now and we acknowledge you as our creator, our maker, God the Father Almighty.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God, we get tangled up in what is visible and we fail to see what is invisible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Your providential work in our midst.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lord Jesus, you lived and died and rose again in order to send your spirit to empower us to be about work, culture making in our time, in our city.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Would you do that, Holy Spirit?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Come and fill us afresh.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We pray for Jesus' sake.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Amen.