I’m in Southeast Asia this week, training church planters and pastors. I heard about Steve Jobs’ death yesterday in an email from a friend. I was reading it on a MacBook Pro, sitting in a house-church in a foreign city that I had navigated to using my iPhone.

I’ve been using Macs since they were first introduced in 1984, when I was 11 years old. Needless to say, my life has been influenced by Steve Jobs (and so has yours, even if you have a Windows PC and an Android phone). I was sad to hear the news of his death, knowing we wouldn’t have his God-given gifts around anymore.

I was even more sad as I contemplated where he is right now. The Zen simplicity that guided his vision for technology also seemed to prevent him from embracing anything as scandalous and nonsensical as the cross.

Or did it? I was reminded of the sovereignty of God over every human heart by this thoughtful post by Lutheran scholar Paul McCain:

Unlike some of my fellow Lutherans and other fellow Christians, who felt a need at Jobs’ passing to begin making pronouncements about his eternal destiny, I am not rushing to judgment. I can’t help but recall Abraham Lincoln’s quip, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open your mouth and remove all doubt.” Can we learn from Steve Jobs’ errors and mistakes in life? Of course, and we should. Every bit as much as we must learn from our own. But must we, on the news of his passing, be so quick to condemn him and focus only on his faults and failings? No.

One more thing . . .

Steve Jobs was baptized and instructed in the Christian faith, so we can do a bit more than talk about “common grace,” we can also hope that God, in His own ways, at times and places of His choosing, may have worked in Steve’s life, at the last, a remembrance of the gifts from Christ He had received in His life. Unless you have been with a person in their last days, you have no idea what goes on in a person’s heart and mind in the closing days and moments of life. Let us pray God brought back to Steve the remembrance of what he had been taught as a young man in a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod confirmation class, taught by my friend Rev. Dr. Martin Taddey, now deceased.

So, let’s leave the judgment to God, and leave the judgmentalism to those who have no hope. We who have hope in Christ know that for all mankind the One who suffered, died and rose again as the victor over our greatest enemies: sin, death and the devil, has called us to be His very own. We hold out hope that, in His mercy, He once more reached into Steve Jobs’ heart and mind at the end. And that is the “one more thing” that would be better than anything Steve ever announced and told us about.

Amen.

Many of us, like the rebellious prodigal son, have been rescued from ourselves by our gracious and compassionate heavenly father. We’ve seen the depth of our sin and the consequences of our sin, and we’ve accepted God’s grace poured out through his son Jesus on the cross. But still, when we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we still have tendencies one way or the other.

Maybe you’re still an outward rebel, and you still try to avoid God by ignoring all the rules. You don’t really take God very seriously.

Or maybe you’re still a self-righteous rebel, and you still try to avoid God by FOLLOWING all the rules.  You take yourself way too seriously. Or maybe you’re both, depending on the situation.

Here’s the thing: God didn’t rescue us just to let us keep living our lives the same way we always have, secure in the knowledge that we have a ticket into heaven. He rescued us so he could change everything about our lives right now.

The father in this story didn’t waste a single second planning the feast for his rescued son. He said, “Get the fattened calf now!  It’s time to start our new life together right now!”

Being rescued means everything in life changes. Everything! It means you see God differently. You see yourself differently. You see life differently.  And through that, God gives you the power to overcome the rebel inside, or the self-righteous person inside.

When you come to church…  The rebel inside will try to make you casual and flippant in your worship, since God isn’t too far above you anyway. Or the self-righteous person inside will try to make you deadly serious in your worship, to make sure you worship our holy God in complete holiness, and earn his favor. But if you know you’ve been rescued, you’ll know exactly how sinful you are, and how holy God is, and you’ll worship out of sheer joy for the grace he’s lavished on you.

When you’re going through a really tough time in life… The rebel inside will try to tell you that it’s OK to do whatever it takes to get out of the tough time: lie, cheat, steal, whatever. God won’t mind. Or the self-righteous person inside will try to tell you that you don’t deserve this suffering because you’ve been faithful to God, so you end up mad at God. But if you’re one of the rescued, you’ll see God’s glory and you’ll see your sin, and you’ll see how God is using the tough time to make you more like him.

When you’re dealing with conflict in your family…  The rebel inside will make you want to look out for your own interests above all else.  You’ll only love your wife, husband, brother or sister as long as they’re meeting your needs.Or the self-righteous person inside will convince you that it’s all the other person’s fault.  You’ll keep blaming them for everything that’s wrong in the relationship. But if you know you’re rescued, you can love someone whether or not they meet your needs, because you know God has already met all your needs! You can confront other people out of love and a desire to see them become more like Jesus, not out of blame and anger and frustration.

When you meet a homeless guy on the street…  The self-righteous person inside will try to tell you that he’s getting what he deserves, since he obviously hasn’t been as faithful, and responsible, and hard-working as you have. Or the rebel inside will try to tell you that he’s a victim of society, and he just needs a handout. He doesn’t need religion pushed on him. But if know you’ve been rescued, you’ll know you’re just as spiritually poor as he is. You’re both in need of God’s grace, so you won’t have any problem giving him what he needs, physically and spiritually.

That’s one of the biggest things about being rescued: you start developing a strong passion to see other people rescued too. Once you understand just what God has saved you from, you just want to see other people experience the same thing.

Being rescued changes everything!

In the story of the prodigal son, Jesus describes three types of people: the rebels, the self-righteous, and the rescued. Here’s the story of a woman who was rescued by God, and now seeks to rescue victims of the sex-trafficking industry in Waikiki.

In our Rebel-Righteous-Rescued series, we’re discovering that the parable of the prodigal son isn’t a story about a good son and a bad son. It’s a story about two bad sons - an obvious rebel who comes to realize he needs his father’s grace, and a self-righteous rebel who doesn’t. An outward rebel who learns to enjoy his dad more than his dad’s stuff, and an inward rebel who doesn’t.

It turns out that your faith is not measured by what you do in life as much as it is by your enjoyment of the life God’s given you. That’s exactly what Jon Bloom says:

No one puts it as bluntly as Blaise Pascal in his Pensées:

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

There you are. Warrior, pacifist, suicide, sluggard, workaholic; if you’re a human, you’re a hedonist. You can try to deny it, but you can’t change it.

If you want to try your hand at stoicism, forget the Bible. It has little for you. Scripture does not support the idea that our motives are more pure the less we are pursuing our own joy. Nope. In fact, according to the Bible, unless we are pursuing our happiness we cannot even come to God: “for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).

God blatantly entices us to seek happiness, joy, pleasure (whatever you want to call it) in him with verses like this: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4), and “in his presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). We’re supposed to want pleasure.

Why does God want us to want pleasure? Because it is a crucial indicator. Pleasure is the meter in your heart that measures how valuable, how precious someone or something is to you. Pleasure is the measure of your treasure.

In the story of the prodigal son (which also features a bitter older brother and a gracious father), Jesus describes three types of people: the rebels, the self-righteous, and the rescued. Here’s the story of a hard-working firefighter and entrepreneur in Kailua who discovered self-righteousness in himself, and allowed God to change him.

Thanks to Aaron for sharing, and to Rob for another excellent short film.

In his book Letters to Malcolm, C.S. Lewis says this:

Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility. . . . But aren’t there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them “bad pleasures” I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean “pleasures snatched by unlawful acts.” It is the stealing of the apples that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory.

I have tried since to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different . . . Gratitude exclaims, very properly, “How good of God to give me this.” Adoration says, “What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!”

One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.

To understand what he’s saying, we have to remember that he was writing in England, where a beam of sunlight is almost as rare as a snowflake in Makaha. After a month of damp and dreary days, a single break in the clouds allowing a few seconds of sunshine to fall on your face would be a breathtaking experience. You would close your eyes, lift your face up to the sky, and bask in the warmth.

But according to Lewis, it would be a mistake to keep your eyes closed for long. We need to look up and trace that sunbeam back to its source. That’s how rebels like us can learn to appreciate the giver more than his gifts.

• Did God give you an unexpected raise or promotion? What does that say about his provision?
• Did he let you dodge the bullet after you made a big mistake? What does that say about his mercy?
• Did he give you a friend who supported you through a crisis? What does that say about his love?

If we’re focused on the gifts, we’ll always be tempted to seek them apart from the giver. That’s what the prodigal son did. He wanted to have his own home, his own money, and his own friends. He ended up homeless, penniless, and friendless.

Instead, here’s what rebels like us should be praying every day: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” (Psalm 90:24)

In Jesus’ story of the prodigal son, the younger brother’s rebellion against his dad is rooted in his desire to get his dad’s stuff without having his dad attached to the stuff. He asks for his share of his father’s “property” (Luke 15:11-12) rather than asking for his share of the “inheritance,”  which would include the assumption that he would stick around and responsibly manage the estate along with his father.

That’s where rebellion against our heavenly father always starts: wanting our father’s stuff more than we want the father himself.

1600 years ago, the theologian Augustine discovered the same thing. Before he met Jesus, he lived like a lead singer in an 80′s hair band. Wine, women, and song. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. When he looked back on that life, he said this in his book Confessions:

There is a comeliness in all beautiful bodies, and in gold and silver and all things. The sense of touch has its own power to please and the other senses find their proper object in physical sensation. Worldly honor also has its own glory. The bond of human friendship has a sweetness of its own, binding many souls together as one.

In other words, God made women, wine, and song. Along with money, honor, and friendship. There’s nothing inherently wrong about them.

Yet, in seeking these pleasures, we must not depart from you, O Lord. … Sin is committed, because we have an inordinate preference for these goods of a lower order and neglect the better and the higher good – neglecting you, O our Lord God.

In other words, rebellion starts to take root when we start to love God’s gifts more than we love God himself. When God becomes a means to our own ends.

For these inferior values have their delights, but not at all equal to my God, who has made them all. He is the sweetness of those who are upright in heart.

That’s how rebels are redeemed. When we allow our heavenly father to be our ultimate source of satisfaction. When we love him more than his stuff. As Augustine says:

How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose . . .  You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy.

You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light, yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honor, though not in the eyes of men who see all honor in themselves. . . . O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.

In the story of the prodigal son (which also features a bitter older brother and a gracious father), Jesus describes three types of people: the rebels, the self-righteous, and the rescued. Here’s the story of a prodigal son living on the North Shore who returned to his heavenly father.

Thanks to Rob and Dustin for putting this excellent short film together!

This Sunday we’re starting a 3-week teaching series based on Jesus’ story in Luke 15 about a father and his two sons, often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger brother couldn’t stand his father and wanted to get as far away from him as he could. The older brother couldn’t stand his father either but continued serving him anyway, just to get the inheritance when dad died.

Over the years, I’ve discovered I have similar feelings toward my heavenly father:

• I don’t like his expectations. He says I’m supposed to love my wife “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). That means I need to do lots of dishes, change lots of dirty diapers, and offer lots of foot-rubs. I don’t like that.
• I don’t like his definition of “good.”  He says he’s working “all things together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). If that’s true, then his idea of “good” includes cranky two-year-olds who wake me up all night screaming every half hour. It includes colds, stomach flu’s, and dislocated ribs that always hit me at exactly the wrong time. I don’t like that.
• I don’t like his unresponsiveness. Here’s how one guy said it: “Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever! Why do you hide your face?” (Psalm 44:23-24). Exactly how I feel sometimes. When I’m praying desperately at 3am for the cranky two-year-old to go to sleep, it seems like God is sleeping just fine, because he sure doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything. I don’t like that.
• I don’t like his blessings. At least not when they go to people who don’t deserve them. He “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). Don’t I deserve a little more sun and a little more rain than other people? After all, I’m serving him 50 or 60 hours a week. God says no, and I don’t like that.

I’m a younger brother and an older brother all rolled into one. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you” (Luke 15:21).

Praise God for the undeserved grace he’s poured out on me anyway: “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:22-24).

Jesus calls himself the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8), which means that the Sabbath was instituted in order to point to him as the ultimate Sabbath rest.

He’s saying that you’ll only find true rest in him. In the forgiveness he gives when you repent of your sin. In the acceptance he gives, no matter what you accomplish and achieve. In the wisdom and guidance he gives through the Holy Spirit.

And the Sabbath helps you remember that, and declare it to the world. Jesus says in Mark 2, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath!” It was made for man to help us remember that God is in charge, and that his provision is perfect.

And even though we’re not under the Sabbath law anymore, it’s still a principle you can put into practice to keep reminding yourself of God’s power and provision. Tim Keller offers some practical suggestions for your Sabbath:

1. Take some time for sheer inactivity.

Most people need some time every week that is unplanned and unstructured, in which you can do whatever you feel like doing. If your Sabbath time is very busy and filled with scheduled activities of “recreation” and ministry, it will not suffice. There must be some cessation from activity or exertion. This pause in the work cycle is analogous to Israel’s practice of letting a field lie fallow every seventh year to produce whatever happened to grow (Leviticus 25:1–7). The soil rested so over-farming would not deplete its nutrients and destroy its ability to keep producing. Whatever came up in the soil came up. You need some unscheduled time like that every week to let come up—out of the heart and mind—whatever will.

2. Take some time for avocational activity.

An avocation is something that is sheer pleasure to you, but that does require some intentionality and gives some structure to your Sabbath rest. In many cases an avocation is something that others do for ”work,” which is analogous to occasionally planting a different crop in a field to replenish the nutrients and make the soil more fertile for its normal crop. Include these elements:

• You need some contemplative rest. Prayer and worship are a critical part of Sabbath rest, from any perspective. Regular time for devotion, reading the Scripture, and listening to God forms the basis for inner rest and provides time away from the more exhausting exertions of life.
• You need some recreational rest. The Puritans and others were rightly skeptical of recreations that required spending a great deal of money and time and exertion, because those types of recreations exhaust people. Be careful that recreation really refreshes.
• You need to include aesthetic rest. Expose yourself to works of God’s creation that refresh and energize you, and that you find beautiful. This may mean outdoor things. It may mean art—music, drama, and visual art. God looked around at the world he made and said it was good, so aesthetic rest is necessary for participating in God’s Sabbath fully.

3. Consider whether you are an introvert or an extrovert.

When planning your Sabbath rest, ask yourself what really “recharges” you. This self-assessment can help you determine how relational your Sabbath time should be. Introverts tend to spend their energy when out with people and recharge their batteries by being alone. Extroverts tend to spend energy in personal work and recharge their batteries by getting out with people. If you are a real introvert, be careful about trying to maintain all of your community-building relationships during your Sabbath time. That would be too draining. On the other hand, relationship-building could be one of the greatest things a true extrovert could possibly do. Don’t try to imitate an introvert’s Sabbath rhythms if you are an extrovert or vice versa! Recognize that some avocational activities take you into solitude, while some take you out into society.

4. Don’t necessarily count family time as Sabbath time.

Do a realistic self-assessment of “family time” and how it affects you. Family time is important, but parents need to be very careful that they don’t let all of their regular Sabbath time be taken up with parental responsibilities. (Introverts especially will need time away from the kids!) Keeping all of these things in good balance may be virtually impossible when your children are very young, but this too will pass.

5. Honor both micro- and macro-rhythms in your seasons of rest.

Israel’s Sabbath cycles of rest-and-work included not only Sabbath days but also Sabbath years and even a Year of Jubilee every forty-nine years (Leviticus 25:8–11). This is a crucial insight for workers in today’s world. It is possible to voluntarily take on a season of work that requires high energy, long hours, and insufficient weekly- Sabbath time. A new physician has to work long hours in a residency program, for example, and many other careers (such as finance, government, and law) similarly demand some sort of initial period of heavy, intense work. Starting your own business or pursuing a major project like making a movie will require something similar. In these situations you have to watch that you don’t justify too little Sabbath by saying you’re “going through a season”—when in actual fact that season never ends.

If you must enter a season like this, it should not last longer than two or three years at the most. Be accountable to someone for this, or you will get locked into an “under-Sabbathed” life-style, and you will burn out. And during this “under-Sabbathed” time, do not let the rhythms of prayer, Bible study, and worship die. Be creative, but get it in.

I heard a thought-provoking line this week: “If you wouldn’t do your job for free, then quit.”

You have to assume those words came out of the mouth of some upper-middle-class American or European who is well-educated, well-connected, and has many careers and jobs to choose from. Try telling that to a farmer’s kid in rural China who couldn’t afford schooling beyond the 10th grade, and now has two choices: working for his dad on the farm or moving thousands of miles to work in a factory, making the velcro that goes on the fly of your board shorts. Since the recession, many people I know here in Hawaii have found themselves in a similar situation, with depressingly few job opportunities to choose from.

But whether we feel blessed by our job or trapped in our job, we need to ask ourselves a fundamental question: “Why do I do what I do?”

Many of us work simply to put food on the table. There’s nothing wrong with that goal – Paul said, “We did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you … If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thess. 3:8-10).

We might try to elevate our motives, and work so we can be generous with the money we earn. That’s how the Macedonians lived: “They gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord” (2 Cor. 8:3).

We might even get radical and start viewing our workplaces as mission fields, as Paul the tentmaker did selling tents in Athens: “He reasoned in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there” (Acts 17:17).

All of those are good, biblical, commendable motivations to work. But what about the work itself? What does God think about the shovel you wield, or the computer keyboard you pound, or the racks of clothes you organize?

I’m grateful for a group of scholars from Talbot School of Theology and Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary who are starting to study those questions seriously. Called the Theology of Work Project, they are combing the pages of Scripture, looking for God’s perspective on the thing many of us spend more time doing than any other thing in life (even sleep!)

They’ve broken their research down by biblical book. So if you happen to be studying a particular book in your personal devotional time, you can check out what that book says about your work, and what God values and expects in it:

Theology of Work Project Knowledge Base

Dane Ortlund says there are four kinds of men:

1. Soft exterior, soft interior. Effeminate inside and out, top to bottom. Yuck.
2. Hard exterior, soft interior. Posers. Macho. Insecure, covering it with how much they can bench.
3. Hard exterior, hard interior. Genuinely strong, willing to lay down their life for Jesus and family, but earnest to make sure everyone knows that about them. Not only wants to be strong in actuality but needs to be strong in image. Stiff not only in conviction but in demeanor.
4. Soft exterior, hard interior. Rock solid, responsible, risk-taking, calls heresy heresy, calls error error, willing to take shots for the good of the team … but all soaked in a gentle demeanor, seasoned with grace, someone the guy struggling with homosexuality would confide in.

According to Ortlund, only the fourth reflects biblical manhood:

Paul said, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men” (1 Cor 16:13), and he said repeatedly to do all things with gentleness (Gal 5:23; Eph 4:2; 2 Tim 2:25). A mature oak tree is immovable when the storms rage against it, but it’s also beautiful, and invites shelter to others. Isn’t that what gospel men should be?