What does it mean for the believer to serve God in the world. What about serving God in the workplace wherever and whatever that may be? How we interact with the world and how we see the nature and purpose of our work are serious issues that often go unaddressed in the church.

God tells us in His Word that we are to be in the world, not of it. He calls the believer to serve Him out there - in His world yet to serve Him without compromising one's faith or being dragged down by the world. Like salt, the Christian is to bring flavor and to be a preservative to a self-absorbed, self-centered world. That means those who are in Christ are to live their ordinary daily lives not in some Christian subculture but to live out there beyond the barricades where the battle is being waged for the hearts and minds of our neighbors. The great Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple once said that the Church of Jesus Christ is the only cooperative society that exists for the benefit of its non-members. Christ commands us to take His church outside the walls of our sanctuaries for the glory of God and to the benefit of the world.

An obvious risk of being in the midst of an unregenerate, hostile world is that believers are vulnerable to becoming like the world; that is buying into its counterfeit value system and compromising their distinctiveness as disciples of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we need to have a critical spirituality that allows us to live in and value the world because it bears the unmistakable stamp of God's authorship, while at the same time remembering in its fallenness, creation is capable of dragging us down. This constant tension between the City of God and the City of Man must be recognized and dealt with each day until the Lord comes again in final victory. In this life then our task in many ways is to be God's agents to penetrate the world and to call it back to what He intended it to be before His creatures abused their freedom and rebelled against His authority.

The community of faith - the Body of Christ, His church - is to provide support mechanisms that enable believers to go out into the world and live there and work there as alien residents. The local church is like an oasis that nourishes the believer so he or she can go out into the desert of the world and bring spiritual moisture to its arid. However, like the parched desert, the world can also suck you dry. That is why we must be able to come back to the community of faith for refreshment, revitalization and encouragement. The local church is tactically situated to make such provisions available to God's people. The only way to carry the Good News to the world is for the local church to give sustenance to those who are sharing and living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are to go into the world giving it all we have and then coming back out of the world to the community of faith to have our spiritual batteries recharged and to be reminded of our distinctiveness by God's sovereign grace so that we can go back out again to challenge the world over and over. We need to constantly hear who God is and who we are and to meet Him in corporate worship.

We affirm the world in the sense its God's creation and He is redeeming it according to His sovereign plan. And He is using His people - you and me - to do it. We are no good out there, however, if we compromise our distinctiveness; if the salt loses its saltiness it too is worthless for its purpose. The church, therefore, is to encourage us, renew us, refresh us and revitalize us to keep going and to keep us Christian in an unchristian world.

Regrettably, one thing the Church has badly neglected is the doctrine of work whereby God calls us to serve Him in some capacity out there in the world. Each of us has a God given work assignment that includes the task (job, career, vocation), the ability (gifts and talents) and a place to serve (workplace). It is by working and serving God in His world in all kinds of ways that (1) we worship and glorify Him; (2) we do something useful for others; and (3) we are able to bear witness to the presence and power of God in the world.

The Protestant Reformers often wrote about how God's people are to mirror His character in their daily lives so that others can see something of what He is like. John Calvin likened this to making the invisible Kingdom visible. In this sense, no matter where we are or what we are doing we are able to give glory to God as an expression of what is truly the desires and affections of our hearts. Scripture puts it this way:

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (1 Cor 10:31)

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." (Col 3:17)

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." (Col 3:23-24)

Martin Luthur saw giving glory to God even in menial tasks and household chores. He argued there is no secular/sacred division in work, for all honest work done for the Lord and in His presence is sacred. There is no first class and second class Christians based on their jobs. All work is sacramental in nature, whether it is bagging groceries at the supermarket, selling stocks and bonds, painting trim, or cleaning chimneys. All work is God honoring, if that is, its done with a heart whose affections are for God and the things of God (soli Deo gloria). Gerard Manley Hopkins once observed, "To lift up the hands of prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand or a woman with a slop pail gives him glory, too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should." The question then about work is a matter of the heart - when we work what is our heart set upon? What are the intentions or motivations behind our job or career? Do we labor Godward or inward? To whom and for whom do we perform our work? Who do you love? Who gets the glory?

The way in which we work also reflects the image of God to others. By working well and working so as to love God, we are not only worshiping Him and glorifying Him but we are also posing a challenge to our non-Christian friends and neighbors as they see a distinct caliber and quality to our work. It should cause them to take notice because it's different from what's expected and makes them ask questions about what motivates us. We need to remember that our neighbor or our work colleague judges Jesus Christ by what he or she sees in us. Work that is Christian is work that is well done because it reflects our desire to please the One we love, in whom is our wholeness and satisfaction. As John Piper rightly states, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." Wholeness and satisfaction in work and in all of life are deep yearnings in all of us.

Jesus blessed our nature by becoming one of us. He pitched His tent among us, experiencing the ebb and flow of human life. By accepting for Himself a job in this life as a carpenter, He thereby blessed all occupations thus endowing all legitimate work with dignity and significance. Regrettably we also seem to have lost sight of our work in the world as an act of praise and worship. Work too often is seen as something we do Monday through Friday (or Saturday) and then on Sunday is when we really praise and worship God. Yet work is to be an act of worship throughout the week. Even something small or trivial by the world's standards can be glorious if you're doing it for the Someone who is infinitely precious and valuable. Work is something we do in the world to reflect the new birth - the new nature God has created in us.

We also tend to think of Christian work as being confined in some kind of full time ministry. But its really when we are in a secular environment that people can notice that there is really something different about us, our work and our attitude toward it. People see in us God's power lived as a new order and see His values in sharp contrast to the way of the world. Our act of work then becomes an act of witness that the Holy Spirit may use to bring someone to saving faith in Jesus Christ. So Christians shouldn't be seen as interlopers who come into the world from some outside perch to drop off the gospel and scurry back to their enclave. We are to be people already out there in the trenches giving daily expression to our faith in every kind of legitimate workplace.

Theologian Alister McGrath observes that if God chose to come down from heaven to earth to be with us, to come along side us as one of us, then that sets a model for us. Similarly, when God chose to speak to us He spoke in words we can understand; the infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, Creator God condescended to us in "baby talk", as Calvin described it. He used analogies that would drive the message home to us. Likewise we have to learn the language of the world in order to communicate with it in terms it can understand something about God's truth and eternal promises. The world is where Christians are meant to be. It is a dangerous place that can drain you or drag you down. But each of us is called to develop resources for faith, like a camel's hump, that will keep us going in periods of spiritual drought. Such capacities enable us to live in the world and stay there doing good. Then we return to the oasis of the church to receive refreshment, renewal and encouragement before going back into the world.

God's love begins by drawing us out of the world and ends by sending us back into it as bearers of the Good News. If we don't go into the world then others are denied hearing and seeing God's gracious offer of joy, peace and love through the shed blood of His Son. We are meant to be in the world bringing a new caliber and quality to work and bringing the aroma of Christ to the workplace; by doing our jobs well we are worshiping God and serving others, not impressing others or pleasing ourselves. We also need to make sure our churches are providing the spiritual resources that enable God's people to go out there into the world and keep going, being salt and light, and placarding the One who is the way, the truth and the life - Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.