Preoccupied with Occupation – Sometimes the Clothes
Do Not Make the Man – Purity 595
Purity 595 12/07/2021 Purity 595 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of the silhouette of a group of fishermen in the waning
hours of daylight under an October sky comes to us from a friend’s vacation to
the Florida Keys from a couple of months ago.
The people in the photo could
just be pleasure cruisers on vacation like my friend but I declare them to be “fishermen”
to highlight our minds’ tendency to label and identify our experience and to
open the door to examine how we identify ourselves by the things we do.
When I saw this photo originally, I immediately thought of the old
nursery rhyme “Rub-A-Dub-Dub” which says:
“Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,
And all of them out to sea.”
Ironically, I didn’t remember that last line about them being out to sea,
which actually makes my thinking of this nursery rhyme even more appropriate. But yeah, it’s funny how the mind makes
associations to things and the nursery rhyme points to our penchant for
classifying people by their occupations.
A “full time employee” spends 40 hours a week doing their job so its
only natural to identify people by their occupations. It’s one of the first
things we go to when we introduce ourselves or when we meet someone new.
“Drone”, “Bumbling fool”, “Corporate sellout”, or “Master of my own
Domain” are fun ways to answer the question of what your occupation is but if
you are coy or vague when questioned about your “career”, inquirers may even be
bold enough to say, “What exactly is it that you do?”
We love to label people and put them in a box. Our occupations indicate the type of people
we are, the amount of money we make, and what our skills are.
Some people are very proud of their accomplishments and rightfully
so. Our occupations may have required
years of study, training, and hard work to arrive at and people deserve a
measure of respect for choosing the hard path that led them where they are. Our
jobs are serious business after all.
Even the Bible identifies people by their occupations. David was a shepherd,
Luke was a doctor, Matthew was a tax collector, and Peter was a fishermen. What we do while we are on the earth defines
us to some extent but what God says about us will ultimately be the most
important thing.
God wants us to be more than our jobs. As Christians, He calls us to do
our jobs to the best of our abilities and with integrity and even though we may
have an occupation before we come to Christ, the new life He gives us tends to
change things.
David went from a lowly shepherd to the anointed King of Israel.
Peter went from a fisherman to a Fisher of Men, as he led thousands to
come to faith in Jesus on the Day of Pentecost.
Matthew went from someone who kept “account of the books” to write a
book of the account of Jesus’ earthly ministry, death, and resurrection.
Luke went from a physician to men’s bodies to write a book that would
give mankind the answers to give them the healing of eternal life.
When we come into relationship with the Lord by putting our faith in
Jesus, He gives us a purpose beyond our occupations. We become light bearers and
carry the hope for everlasting life. The
quality of our lives takes on greater purpose and meaning when we follow the Lord’s
call to represent Him wherever we are.
Paradoxically, if we only worry about our careers and what we can accomplish
for ourselves and how we can accumulate wealth, we will find ourselves
spiritually destitute. The wealth,
prestige, and accolades of the world will mean nothing if we don’t have peace
with God and if Jesus doesn’t know us on judgement day.
Christ came to set us free from the “works of the devil” and to make us
new creations.
When I thought about these concepts of work, identity and how Christ
makes us new, I thought of the old George Michael song, NO not LAST CHRISTMAS,
which is quite popular this time of year… No I was thinking of Freedom! ’90,
yeah I’m old, and that line that says: “Sometimes the clothes do not make the
man” It’s really a great song about
reinventing or being true to yourself but let’s find and live out our “Freedom!
2021” in Christ.
Our relationship with God forever changes our identity. We are more than our jobs. When we place our faith in Christ, we are
adopted into God’s royal family, and we become ambassadors to His kingdom. Now that’s a job that we can be
simultaneously proud of and be humbled by.
Because we were sinners saved by grace who are now saints who sin, we
may not feel we are qualified for our new positions, but God knew us before we
were born and chose us to be His. He knew what our skills were going to be and
what our limitations are, but He chose us anyway. He knows us personally and even though we may
feel we are not worthy of it, He has a new life of purpose and meaning for us
to walk into.
Unlike George Michael’s song that spoke about somehow living up to the
image of himself that “rock and roll TV” created and his desire to “take these
lies and make them true somehow”, we as
Christians are called to align ourselves with God’s word, our identity in Christ,
and His purpose for His kingdom. We are
to take these TRUTHS of what God says about us as His redeemed and adopted children
and make them REAL in our lives!
Somehow? It’s a not as mysterious as all that. We are to be true to who
we are in Christ and walk in the Spirit to receive God’s guidance and direction
for where we should go and what we should do.
Our Biblical examples of David, Peter, Matthew, and Luke don’t speak of
instant attainment of their purpose for God’s kingdom. None of their journeys were a quantum leap to
victory, nor were their paths suffering free, but all of them knew that God was
real and that He was faithful to His promises and even though their lives of
faith weren’t perfect, they knew that they could be used for God’s glory and lived
their lives with that higher occupation in mind.
So, whether you’re a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker, know that
in Christ you are more than what your earthly occupation is. Your job isn’t a mistake. God has put you
there to represent Him. So do your job to the best of your ability and with the
integrity that would show those around you that you have been set apart by God
to give Him glory.
We are more than our jobs. We are ambassadors for God’s kingdom, and we
are to listen for His call on how we should represent Him and be open to new assignments
if He should call us out of our “lowly” positions to ones that will allow us to
rise to the heights that He has called us to fulfill for His honor and
glory.
Today’s Bible verse is
drawn from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
2 Peter 1:4 (NLT2)
4 And because of his glory
and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the
promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s
corruption caused by human desires.
Today’s verse reminds us that in Christ we have been given
great and precious promises and that one of the purposes of receiving those
promises is to share them.
In Christ, we receive eternal life. In Christ we are set
free from sin and death. Those and the many others that are detailed in
scripture are great promises. When we
come to faith in Christ we are given the riches of His grace. We go from
spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
Individually, these are awesome. All our fears should
rightfully fade into obscurity as we realize that we are accepted and secure in
our new relationship with God because of Christ.
But we are also significant. We are not just given “presents”.
We are given an identity and a purpose, and we are called to live out our lives
in God’s presence.
Today’s verse shares two aspects of our purpose.
The first aspect of our purpose is to share His divine
nature.
We can share God’s divine nature in two ways.
1. We
can be conformed to the image of Christ and share His nature by being joyous,
peaceful, good, patient, self-controlled, kind, faithful, gentle, and loving to
others around us.
2. We
can also share in His divine nature by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ to
welcome others into His kingdom.
The second aspect of our purpose is our sanctification, that
process of repenting of our sin and progressively living according to God’s way
instead of our former ways. We can “escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires” by living according to who we are in Christ rather than who we used to be.
So, enjoy the precious promises that God has given to us because of
our faith in Jesus Christ. Our journey
of faith isn’t just enjoying the presents that we have been given by
ourselves. Like most good gifts, we will
enjoy the promises of God even more when we share them with others.
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org
where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors
to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from A.W. Tozer’s Advent
Devotional – From Heaven, for Day 11, as
this current resource series will lead us to Christmas Eve.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase A.W. Tozer’s books for your own private study and
to support his work.
DAY 11
THE LOGIC OF THE INCARNATION
Beyond all question, the mystery
from which true godliness springs is great: He appeared in the flesh.
1 TIMOTHY 3:16
Probably no other doctrine in the
entire Word of God carries in it greater difficulties than the doctrine of the
incarnation. Paul called it the “mystery of godliness,” and later writers
either passed over its difficulties without trying to explain them or else
involved the whole thing in a maze of explanations that offered little real
help to an understanding of it. And we can easily see why this is so.
The incarnation brings to us the
essential mystery of being. It touches almost every phase of human thought and
makes demands upon philosophy and metaphysics, as well as upon theology. The
great doctors have felt this deep mystery whenever they have come to the
consideration of the subject and have tiptoed along the borders of it with
deepest reverence. That is proper and right; such an attitude well becomes us
who are but dust and ashes.
At the risk of being charged with
inexcusable boldness, we venture the assertion that while the incarnation is
mysterious, it is not illogical or contrary to reason. We would not presume to
settle with a pen stroke those profound and awful mysteries that have stilled
the voices of the ages and brought men and angels to their knees in worship;
but we would dare to say that in our opinion the act of becoming man was
altogether reasonable from God’s standpoint. It placed no strain upon the
divine nature and admitted into the scheme of God nothing unnatural or
inconsistent. The reasons for so believing are these:
Man was originally made in the image
of God. “God created man; in the likeness of God made he him.” This is a
cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith. It is not necessary to understand all
that is included in this doctrine, for even here we run into some real
theological problems. But faith can soar where reason can never climb, and it
is only necessary that we believe the truth. Its power over us depends upon our
believing it, not upon our understanding it. The fact is all that matters: man
was made in the image of God.
Now, if man was made in the image of
God, then God must certainly carry something of the image of man. (That sin has
marred the image and introduced a foreign and destructive element into human
nature does not detract from the force of the argument.) If a boy looks like
his father, it must surely follow that the father must look like the boy.
Somewhere within man’s nature, twisted and deformed as it may be, there is
godlikeness. This will not be seriously questioned by anyone who knows his
Bible. No student of Christian theology would deny this as a fact, though he
might reject the conclusions we draw from the fact.
If in the infinite condescension of
God, mankind was made with a nature somewhat like its Creator, then is it not
reasonable that God could clothe Himself with human nature in the mystery of
incarnation, and all within the framework of easy possibility without the
embarrassment of uniting things unlike each other?
When the ancient Word stood up in
human flesh, He felt at home. He was not out of His element, for had He not
heard the Father say, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”? There
was no jar, no wrench caused by the forced union of dissimilar natures.
It is our humble opinion that the
“exile” element in the earthly experience of our Lord has been greatly
overplayed. That He was sad and lonely and far from home, a stranger in a
strange land, is an idea that has grown up around the beautiful and simple fact,
but it is not necessarily a part of the fact. So far as we can recall there is
nothing in the record to give the impression that His presence in human flesh
was an unnatural or painful experience. He happily called Himself “the Son of
Man,” not an exile among men.
All this is not to attempt to take
away from the valid mystery that surrounds the incarnation or to lessen the awe
with which we contemplate the wonder of the Word becoming flesh to dwell among
us. It is rather to clear away unauthorized notions and give the beauty of the
incarnation a chance to make its own impression upon us. That impression will
be deep enough without our adding anything to it.
Tozer, A. W. (2016). From heaven: a
28-day advent devotional. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
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