What God Has Joined Together, Let Not Man Separate--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Today, in our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we’re going to read about Jesus touching ever-so-briefly on the subject of divorce. I’m sure the epidemic of divorce in our country is well-known to you, but I think we can take an interesting look at its history by looking at the history of the TV show Divorce Court. That show first came on the air in 1957. Now, I think the fact that a producer thought people would even watch such a show reminds us that divorce was such a novelty at that time. A show about divorce proceedings would tap into people’s curiosity about something that wasn’t very familiar to them.

            But as divorce became more common in our country, Divorce Court’s ratings fell. It survived until 1969, but was cancelled through all of the 1970’s. It was revived in 1985, but was cancelled again through most of the 1990’s. It was revived again in 1999 and has managed to stay on the air from that time until today, but there’s no telling how many people we would have to ask before we found someone who deliberately chooses to watch that show. People don’t need to watch a TV show about divorce proceedings today because sadly, too many people have lived through a divorce themselves.

            Jesus’ words in this section are words that our culture today desperately needs to hear. Later, in Matthew 19, Jesus would be asked specifically about divorce by the Pharisees, and He made a statement in that passage that is an excellent summary of God’s perspective on this subject: “What God has joined together, let not man separate.” That is God’s desire, and it should be our goal.

            As we study verses 31-32 today, we’ll focus first on the emphasis of Jesus’ teaching, then we’ll look at the exception to His teaching that He Himself mentions in v. 32.

1. The emphasis of Jesus’ teaching—Divorce followed by remarriage is adultery

            Let’s begin to read through these verses. The introductory statement that Jesus uses, especially when you read it in Greek, makes it clear that He is continuing the same train of thought from the previous verses. In those verses he told us that lust in the heart is the same as adultery in God’s eyes. Now, if I may paraphrase, its like Jesus is saying, “While I’m on the subject of adultery, let me mention something else that God considers to be adultery,” and He goes on here to mention divorce and re-marriage.

            In v. 31, He says, “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’” That statement of the Pharisees’ teaching is based on Deuteronomy 24:1-4, but it is actually a misrepresentation of that passage. Moses had prohibited a situation in which a divorced and remarried woman might return to her first husband if she was divorced again or if her second husband died, but the religious leaders had become more interested in the procedure of divorce that Moses mentioned there. Moses really had not intended to discuss when divorce might be permissible, but that’s what the debate became among the religious leaders.

            In Jesus’ day, the situation regarding divorce was much like it is in our own culture today—divorce was increasingly common, and divorces were granted for very trivial reasons. The religious leaders’ concern was simply to make sure that divorce proceedings were carried out properly, but Jesus reminds us that God’s concern was much different. So He says in v. 32, “But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

            Jesus took a wide-angle look at his culture and announced that people were committing adultery all over the place, because they had been taught to simply make sure that the paperwork for divorce was filed properly. The marriage bond had become something that could be dissolved almost on a whim, but Jesus announced that those who treated their marriage in such a way, leaving one and entering another in such a casual way, were actually committing adultery in God’s eyes.

            What a lesson that we need to learn today! When marriages end because of “irreconcilable differences” or because “things just didn’t work out,” we need a clear reminder of God’s opinion on the subject. To treat marriage in such a casual way is an offense to the God who designed it, and we actually commit adultery when we use our own rationale for dissolving our marriage bonds and entering a new relationship. When we use a rationale for divorce and remarriage that God does not permit, we can call ourselves ex-husbands and ex-wives, but to God, we are adulterers and adulteresses.

            Now Jesus language in v. 32 seems a bit strange. Why does He say, “everyone who divorces his wife…makes her commit adultery?” Jesus was assuming that the woman would enter a new relationship, which was the most typical result of divorce at that time. In the Jewish culture, only a husband could initiate a divorce, and the prospects for a divorced woman were very bleak. Remember, this was not a time when a woman could really get a job on her own outside the home to support herself. She could try to return to her parents’ home, but there was no guarantee that they would receive her back. She could beg, but of course, that is very unpredictable. She could try to earn her own income, but you can imagine what kind of profession that might require.       Most of the time, a divorced woman would enter a relationship with another man, and Jesus said that in that situation, both the woman and the other man would be committing adultery.

            I think it is very important that we allow this emphasis of Jesus to sink in lest we move too quickly into a discussion about the exception that He mentions here. As soon as we start to talk about an exception, our sinful hearts will try to find ways to make the exception bigger and bigger. That’s exactly what the religious leaders in Jesus’ day had done. The Old Testament mentioned a divorce procedure as a detail of a larger scenario, but the people took that detail and ran with it.

            The possibility that we might commit adultery through divorce and remarriage should provide a strong push away from divorce in any situation. That is the real emphasis in Jesus’ teaching. We should not search for exceptions; instead, we should allow these words to push us away from divorce in the same way that the previous passage pushed us away from lust, since the outcome for both can be exactly the same—adultery.

With that being said, Jesus does mention an exception to his teaching in v. 32—a situation in which divorce and remarriage would not be condemned as an instance of adultery. Those words are just as authoritative as everything else that Jesus said and everything else the Bible says, so we can safely act upon them. We could state the exception like this…

2. The exception to Jesus’ teaching—Divorce followed by remarriage is not adultery when adultery led to the divorce

            Remember again that in that culture at the time, only a husband was allowed to initiate a divorce. What Jesus is saying is that if a woman was put away by a husband who was engaging in adultery, God did not consider the innocent woman to be an adulteress if she got remarried. This exception makes sense in light of Israel’s laws and history.

            In the laws that God had given to the people of Israel through Moses, adultery was supposed to be punished by execution. For example, Leviticus 20:10 says, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” This law is repeated in Deuteronomy 22:22—“If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.”

            If the people had obediently carried out that command, it would have clearly put an end to the innocent spouse’s marriage because his or her spouse would be dead. The innocent spouse would thus become a widow or a widower, and such people had always been allowed to remarry under God’s laws. So in that situation, there would have been no confusion—the innocent spouse’s marriage would have ended with the death of their spouse, and thus he or she would have been free to remarry.

            But the people of Israel had never consistently carried out the death penalty for adultery, which resulted in confusion—as sin always does. What was the innocent spouse supposed to do now? They were now divorced, but their spouse was still alive. Would they be committing adultery if they got remarried? I believe the exception that Jesus mentions here was meant to cut through that confusion and tell us that the innocent spouse was free to remarry after the divorce had taken place.

            Now, we as a community of Christians can also create confusion about divorce and remarriage if we fail to follow God’s commands. We don’t live under the laws of the Old Testament today, so we are not to enforce a death penalty for adultery, but God has given us clear instructions on how to deal with a person in our church who might commit that sin. Matthew 18:15-20 outlines a process of loving confrontation that we are to follow in an effort to lead that person to repentance. But if that person will not repent, Matthew 18:17 says, “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector”—in other words, someone who is outside the family of God. We’re not supposed to hate that person, but to bring clarity to the decisions that we need to make as a church, we are supposed to consider that person to be an unbeliever.

            At that point, the Bible’s teaching on marriage in 1 Corinthians 7 becomes applicable. Let’s turn there together so we can read vv. 12-16. This letter was written by the Apostle Paul, and he begins this section by saying, “To the rest I say (I, not the Lord).” All that Paul means by that statement is that he’s about to touch on a scenario that Jesus had not specifically talked about during His ministry on Earth. Let’s read his words [READ vv. 12-13].

            Now when Paul writes that the unbelieving spouse is willing to live with the believing spouse, surely he means more than “inhabit the same house.” I believe he’s saying that if you are married to an unbeliever, if your spouse is willing to honor his or her marriage vows to you, you should be willing to honor your marriage vows to your spouse. But then beginning in v. 15, Paul discusses the scenario in which the unbelieving spouse is not willing to honor his or her marriage vows [READ vv. 15-16].

            So, if someone in our church is abandoned by their spouse, whether that spouse is pursuing adultery or has some other motivation, I believe the innocent spouse is free to be divorced and to remarry if they desire to do so. To bring this back into the context of adultery, if someone in our church commits adultery, we are to lovingly confront that person to help them come to repentance. But if that person refuses to repent and persists in adultery, we are to consider that person to be an unbeliever. Then, on the basis of this passage in 1 Corinthians 7, we should allow the innocent spouse to get a divorce and to remarry if they desire to do so.

            This exception mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 5 is divinely authoritative; thus, it gives us a basis as a church to act with clarity in situations of adultery. But we should never forget that God’s basic assessment concerning marriage is this: what God has joined together, let not man separate. As Christian spouses, we should realize that there is no scenario in which we could get a divorce that would not be the result of one of us directly disobeying God. If husband and wife are both obeying God, there is no scenario for divorce—but happily, there doesn’t need to be one in that situation! God does deal graciously with an innocent spouse who is abandoned by a sinning spouse, and we need to acknowledge that so that we don’t put the innocent spouse in a bind, but may God help us all so that there would never be another divorce among Christians. Rather, may our marriages be what God wants them to be—a beautiful picture of the love and respect that exists between Jesus and His bride, the Church.

"We're Going to Have to Operate"--Sermon on the Mount Series

[NOTE: There is a long illustration in this sermon that I read from The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis. Due to the length of the section, I did not type it out in this post. Thus, it would be best to listen to this sermon rather than read it. To hear the audio of this sermon, go to http://morningsidecommunitychurch.weebly.com/sermons.html, and scroll to the bottom of the page.]

            They’re the words that everyone dreads when they go to the doctor: “We’re going to have to operate.” We hear those words when all other options have been exhausted, and extreme measures have to be taken. The Lord has graciously allowed us to understand His world enough to make many operations safe and routine, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still extreme measures.

            In our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we come today to Jesus’ discussion of lust, and His treatment plan for battling this temptation is quite simple: we’re going to have to operate. We must take extreme measures against this temptation, especially when we realize that Jesus simply will not allow us to downplay the severity of the sin of lust.

            Let’s work our way through Jesus’ diagnosis of this sin, then we’ll focus on His prescription for it.

The Diagnosis: Lust is Serious Enough to Make Us Deserving of Hell

            As we read these words, please remember that Jesus is not critiquing the Old Testament in His teaching. He is critiquing the interpretations of the Old Testament that the people had heard from their religious leaders. That’s why Jesus uses the introductory phrase that He does rather than a statement like, “It is written.” So, in v. 27, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’” That command, of course, is fine as far as it goes; it’s an accurate statement of command number seven of The Ten Commandments.

            But as they had done with murder, the Pharisees—who were the religious leaders of the people—had begun to measure obedience to that command by their actions. As a result, the attitudes of the heart were downplayed, but as Jesus shows us, we cannot minimize the importance of our heart attitudes.

            In v. 28, the Lord states, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Since God knows what is going on inside our hearts, He condemns the whole process that leads up to an act of sin. He knows when a thought is conceived in my mind, and He knows what I do to either put that thought out of my mind or nurse it along and feed it. Its kind of like the way that we look at weeds. We don’t just hate the leaves and the seeds that they produce—we don’t even want the roots around. In a similar way, God condemns the very roots of sin, which are found in our hearts.

            Now, its important to specify what Jesus means when he speaks of “looking at a woman with lustful intent.” To put it simply, its not the first noticing of another person that Jesus condemns—it’s the second glance, the look that is made with the intention of fanning the flames of lust in your heart.

            King David was not guilty when he noticed Bathsheba from the roof of his palace. As far as we are told, that was just an accident, and as the saying goes, “accidents happen.” No, King David’s sin came when he used that accidental noticing to feed a lustful desire in his heart. He had sinned long before he followed up on that desire because he had already committed adultery in his heart.

            So Jesus has backed us into a corner as far as our lust is concerned. He has cut off our retreat into the easy justifications that we want to use to tell ourselves that a “little look” is no big deal. To God, the very attitude is every bit as serious as any act that it may produce, so he gives it the same condemnation.

Now, in vv. 29-30, Jesus gives us his prescription for dealing with lust, and as I said before, it is simply this:

The Prescription: We’re Going to Have to Operate

            Less invasive procedures will not do; extreme measures must be taken. Let’s read the Lord’s words in these verses [READ vv. 29-30]. We have good reason to think that Jesus was speaking figuratively in these verses because He just told us that lust is a problem of the heart, and simply doing things to the outside of my body will not cure a problem of the heart. So He is not telling us the means through which to deal with lust, but the manner in which we must deal with lust. In other words, He’s not telling us the precise actions to take (“Just start cutting off body parts”), He’s telling us the attitude with which to fight against lust.

            The final outcome of lust is so bad that we should be willing and eager to get rid of anything that becomes like bait in a trap to us. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “If your right eye causes you to sin.” If something has become alluring to you, if it is enticing you to walk down the road of lust, you must put it away. None of this talk of “maybe just a little” or “just a quick glance—no! We’re going to have to operate; it has to go, or otherwise WE have to go out of the situation.

            I’d like to read for you several pages from a story by C. S. Lewis entitled, The Great Divorce. This is a passage that wonderfully describes the way that we must deal with lust and the way that we often try to minimize the need to take such drastic measures. This is a lengthy section, but I want to read it to you to feed your imagination some healthy food.

            You see, the war against lust is fought inside the imagination. This temptation often pits our desires or feelings against our intellect; our intellect knows better, but our desires are so enflamed that it is difficult to resist. In this stalemate between our intellect and our desires, the deciding vote, if you will, is cast by our imagination. Whichever force can captivate your imagination in that moment will almost always come out on top.

            That’s why we must feed our imagination healthy food. That’s why, when God wanted to teach us about the beauty of marital love and romance, He gave us a book of word pictures—a book of poetry in The Song of Solomon. So even though this passage I’m about to read is lengthy, I think it is well worth our time.

            In this book, Lewis writes of a group of people from Hell who are allowed to take a bus ride to the outskirts of Heaven. Keep in mind that he’s not writing to make definite claims about theology; he is simply writing a story. In the story, the people from Hell are referred to as ghosts, and on one occasion, Lewis gives us a very vivid description of the way in which lust must be handled.

[READ from The Great Divorce, p. 106-114. The final line, “Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”]

            That is what we must remember if we are to gain victory over lust. It is a poor, unsatisfying substitute for true, godly romance—which possesses true beauty and power and satisfaction. It will be tremendous reminder for us if we fill our imagination with captivating pictures of godly romance. It will also be a helpful reminder if we remember the end game of lust as Jesus tells us here.

            The final end of lust for those who never repent and accept Christ as their Savior is Hell. That attitude in our hearts, which we so easily and so often tell ourselves is no big deal, in God’s eyes is deserving of Hell. My friends, if you have never humbly acknowledged that God’s verdict about you is true—that you are a sinner, worthy of punishment from God—I urge you to do so today, because there is hope for you! God loves you and does not want you to receive His punishment, so He carried out against His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, on the cross so that the penalty for your sins could be paid. And after Jesus died, God raised Him from the dead, brought Him back to life to show that all that He has promised is true, and we can receive forgiveness by placing our faith in Jesus as our Savior.

            But even after we make that choice, lust still produces devastating effects. How many people have we known or heard of who have walked down the path of lust and destroyed their lives through an addiction to ungodly material or a sinful encounter with another person? We can not only ruin our lives on that path today, but we may also forfeit rewards from God in the next life. If that doesn’t sound like a serious thing, we need to think again. God’s desire for you as His child is to join Jesus in ruling over the New Heaven and New Earth, just as Adam and Eve were created to rule over this Earth. You may lose the honor of a special role of service to God if you persist in a sinful lifestyle, so it is of the utmost importance that you take a serious stand against lust as Jesus commands us today. Lesser measures will not do; living with the pain, so to speak, will not suffice. You’re going to have to operate, so what is it in your life that has become like bait in a trap to you? It will have to go, but in the long run, you will never regret for a moment that it did.

Working to Live or Living to Work? Work and Labor in the Book of Ecclesiastes

            Tomorrow, as you know, is Labor Day, the day when we celebrate the contributions of workers to our country. I think I can safely say that the vast majority of people have kind of a love/hate relationship with their job. Some people have managed to get into a career that they absolutely love, but for most people, their job is just a way to pay the bills. This is really kind of sad when you think about it, because as adults, where do we spend a large portion of our waking hours? At work! This means that many, many people spend the bulk of their lives doing something that for them is little more than a necessary evil.

            I hope I didn’t just describe you, but if I did, I think I have some good news for you. It may surprise you to learn that the book of Ecclesiastes actually has some encouraging news about our work and labor. Now you might naturally think, “I don’t even want to hear what Ecclesiastes has to say about my job! That’s the really pessimistic book! Whatever it has to say will probably make me feel worse than before!”

            Well, let’s give this book the benefit of the doubt, because I think you might be pleasantly surprised to hear what Ecclesiastes has to say about the subject of work. As we look at this theme today, I think we will see that Ecclesiastes teaches us this:

Our work in this world is supposed to enhance our lives, not hinder them.

I. Excessive devotion to work or profit is a futile thing (2:18–23; 5:10–17)

            Ecclesiastes first of all gives us a helpful corrective to the obsession with work that may plague our lives. Solomon points out two observations that lead him to this conclusion.

            A. Whatever you earn, you can’t take it with you! (2:18–23)

            In light of our mortality, excessive work trying to earn a profit is futile because we have to give it all up when we die, and everything that we earned might be frittered away by someone else. [READ 2:18–23]

            Solomon was greatly troubled here by the thought of leaving everything that he had worked so hard for to someone who hadn’t worked for it at all. There was no telling what the next man would do with all of his stuff, but like it or not, Solomon had to give it up. Solomon understood that timeless principle that money that is easy to come by is easily frittered away.

            I remember when I got my first summer job in high school how I felt like I was living the high life. It was a pretty cushy job and at the time, I had no major expenses in my life. I was still living at home and basically had no bills, so my paycheck was easy come, easy go. I threw away money on a leather jacket and movies—all kinds of teenage stuff.

            And the worst part of it all is that sometimes I feel like I still haven’t learned my lesson. To this day when I receive an unexpected gift of money, its still much harder to put that money to good use than it is to put my paycheck to good use.

            Money that is easy to come by is easily frittered away. This observation is important for us think about. If we are hoping to leave our kids a large inheritance, we may not necessarily be doing them a favor. Now in 7:11 Solomon says that if we pass along wisdom with an inheritance, that can be a good thing, but an inheritance alone may not be a good gift.

Second observation about excessive devotion to work or profit…

            B. Profits will not bring the satisfaction that they promise (5:10–17)

            If we wear ourselves out at work trying to accumulate wealth and possessions, we’re going to be disappointed when we get them, because we’ll discover that they don’t bring the satisfaction that they promise [READ 5:10–11] I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories of lottery winners who suddenly discover that their family is a lot bigger than it was before! Let’s keep reading [READ 5:12–17]

            Notice how Solomon highlights the emotional grief that we experience when we hoard our profits and the fruit of our labor—our sleep is disturbed; our daily routine symbolized by eating in v. 17 becomes shot through with grief and sickness and anger. That excessive devotion to working and profiting and holding onto what we earn brings all kinds of grief with it.

So rather than devote ourselves excessively to work and building up a profit, we need to learn that…

II. Work should be done in the right way for the right reasons (4:4–8; 10:10; 11:6)

Solomon makes three observations along these lines…

            A. We should not work in order to “one-up” our neighbor (4:4)

            If our primary goal in our work is to “keep up with the Joneses” or if we are working out of a spirit of jealousy, we’ve got the wrong motive. [READ 4:4] Notice how Solomon is really condemning envy and not hard work per se. Business has a natural element of competition to it—businesses are always competing with one another with their goods and services, and that can be okay if a person conducts his work with godly attitudes and motivations. But if we are motivated in our work by jealousy of someone else, work practically ceases to be work and becomes some kind of vendetta. So jealousy or envy is not a proper motivation for work.

            B. We should work diligently, but not at the expense of rest (4:5–6)

            Ecclesiastes presents us with a wonderfully balanced view of labor and rest [READ 4:5–6] Notice the two extremes that we have here: first we have the fool who folds his hands. The picture is of someone reclining with their hands across their chest. Solomon says all kinds of negative things about the sluggard or the lazy man in the book of Proverbs. The other extreme is the man who goes after labor with both hands, and what Solomon commends is a balance—one hand full of rest, with the idea being of course that the other hand is at work.

            This is such an important lesson for us to take to heart, because I fear it is so easy for us to buy into the idea that time spent resting is simply wasted time. And sometimes in church we sanctify that idea because we say, “Well the Bible says to redeem the time for the days are evil, so there’s no time to just sit around.” Friends, what did God do on the seventh day of creation? He rested! We don’t really think He needed to rest, do we? No—He was setting an example for us!

            So we should understand that rest is not a bad thing. It is a hard thing to get, however, because there’s always something else that we could be doing. And you know what—that will always be the case! So perhaps what we need to do is make time to rest, and not feel guilty about it, but understand that its okay.

            C. We should work smarter, not harder (10:10)

            [READ 10:10] If we don’t employ wisdom in our work, we will only make things harder on ourselves. Imagine if no one had ever invented the wheelbarrow. I don’t know who invented the wheelbarrow, but imagine if that person had said, “I can’t waste my time with all of this silly daydreaming about a basket with a wheel—there are rocks to be moved! What I really need to do is just put in a few more hours moving the rocks—that’s the answer!”

            Now that sounds pretty silly, but its no sillier than what we often do! Its so easy to think that answer to every problem at work is a few more hours. How many times have you thought, “If I only had a few more hours?” Well usually at the end of those hours, we’re still thinking the same thing!

            I think the application to rest comes into play here once again, because when our bodies and our minds are properly rested we can use them to the best of their ability. We can think more clearly about our work when we’re rested, and that will allow us a better opportunity to see how wisdom can help us improve our work.

I think one way that we can apply wisdom to our work is by taking to heart our third lesson…

III. Finding the good that our work accomplishes is a gift from God (2:24; 5:18–20)

            A. We should look for the good that our work produces (2:24)

            Now I have said “look for the good” for a reason, because it is so easy to start feeling like your work is pointless and meaningless. If we embrace that attitude, then work will be drudgery for the rest of our lives, but if we can focus on the good that our work produces, we can find satisfaction in it.

            [READ 2:24] Notice that the verse says we are to “find enjoyment” in our toil. Now this doesn’t mean that we have to deceive ourselves or anything like that. A slightly more literal translation from Hebrew here would read “cause your soul to see good in your labor.” Solomon is talking about a choice—the attitude that we choose to have about our work. If we choose to think that our job is just pointless drudgery, that’s exactly what it will feel like. But if we choose to see the good that our work accomplishes, we can find satisfaction.

            But how do we choose to see the good, especially when work often has so many hassles and frustrations? I think the answer is to focus on the way in which your job allows you to serve other people. I briefly worked at a bank at one point during seminary. That really wasn’t a bad job—I had a good work environment and a very good boss, but nevertheless, that was not what I wanted to do with my life at that time. I didn’t wake up every day with a burning passion to be a bank teller, and there were days when it was very easy for me to have a bad attitude as I went off to work. But I started to become convicted about my attitude, and I decided that God had me there for a reason, so I decided to focus on the good that our bank accomplished. I started to focus on the small businesses that relied on our loans to get by, and the homeowner’s who had taken out a mortgage with us so they could buy a home. I started to focus on the financial planning that we offered to help people take control of their spending, and I started to see that our bank really did accomplish good in this community. We were providing a service that allowed our community to improve, and when I thought about my work like that, I was able to find satisfaction in it.

            So what about you? How does your work allow you to serve people and improve their lives? That’s what you need to focus on, because serving people is always a satisfying thing, and you can serve people in any profession (provided of course that profession is within God’s moral standards).

            B. We should enjoy the profit that comes from our work (5:18–20)

            We saw earlier that Solomon instructs not to devote ourselves excessively to the profit that we can make in our work, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not supposed to get any enjoyment from our profit at all! [READ 5:18–20] Notice the benefit that we get from enjoying our profits in v. 20 [READ v. 20]. Enjoying our profits takes some of the sting out of life.

            I think we all know that it can be very, very easy to become overwhelmed with all of the problems that we encounter in this world. If we focus on our own problems and the problems in our government and the problems in our world long enough, it is easy to be overcome with despair. But what Solomon is telling us is that the profits we receive are a gift from God that he allows us to enjoy to lift up our spirits as we deal with life in a fallen world. What a beautiful perspective on the fruits of our labor! I think this tells us that we don’t need to feel guilty if God allows us to be successful in business; we don’t need to feel guilty about enjoying some of the fruits of our labor.

            Now this is to be balanced of course by Solomon’s warning about devoting ourselves excessively to money and profits. And you know, as we look through Scripture, the Bible doesn’t give us a clear-cut guideline about how much is too much. The New Testament treats us like people who are supposed to be mature in Christ, and mature people are supposed to be able to achieve a balance in the various areas of their lives. So as we seek to mature in Christ, that’s a question we should wrestle with—“How am I handling the profits of my labor? Am I being too selfish with them? Am I enjoying them appropriately?” We may not always have an easy answer, but we need to wrestle with the question.

            I hope we have seen today the appropriate way to deal with work and labor, something that consumes a large portion of our lives. Friends, I hope we have seen that God does not consider your job to be an unimportant thing. It is not a waste of your time, it is not less important than a “spiritual” job like being a pastor, it is not even a necessary evil—it is a gift from God to you to give you an outlet for serving other people, to provide for your family, to be generous to others, and to get some enjoyment out of what your labor produces. I hope that you will buy into this perspective, because I believe it will make your days at work much more pleasant, and it will allow you to find satisfaction in what you’re doing. So, enjoy your day off tomorrow, and I hope you can return to work on Tuesday with a new appreciation for the gift of labor.