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No Sweat!

Ezekiel 44: 9 – 26

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 10 Apr, 2005

TODAY WE move on from looking at Mission and attending to Easter, and consider basic principles of Christian living. I want to start by telling you that Christians shouldn’t sweat.

  I haven’t taken up a job selling underarm deodorant.

  But there is a “no sweat” principle for Christians.

  I will talk about the priests and Levites in the ancient Jewish temple, and maybe you won’t immediately see the connexion.

  I’ll tell you a story.

  When I was 17, just out of school, God confronted me. I didn’t want to hear what he said. He wanted me in full time service. I think he knew that that would be a good place for me to grow and change, because that seems to have been the main result.

  But it took nearly 20 years to get me there.

  For years before I went to College, I felt God was still pushing me to go. While there were people who discouraged my obedience, I admit that, in the end, the decision to delay doing God’s will was my own.

  I was very depressed. I was a competent Town Planner; but I could never fully love Town Planning when my calling was to ministry. I felt trapped where I was. Here I was, 36, and still not obedient to the heavenly vision from 19 years before.

  One day I was returning miserably to my office after lunch. I thought about my position. I was in charge of the Development Control section of the Council. I had four staff, plus one I shared with Forward Planning.

  Four were active Christians — two Baptists, one Church of Christ, one Catholic. The other had heard the gospel through Sunday School.

  As I thought about them and about my feeling of being trapped and shut out of what I was called to do, I talked to God:

“Lord, if these people are the only church I will ever be pastor of, I am willing to be it here.”

  A few days later, everything began changing for me. Paths closed for years opened up. I was able to enter Theological College and train for what I was called to be.

  I have preached sermons about God’s calling to the pastoral ministry. But I want to encourage you all today to realise and to understand that you already have a calling and a ministry. You might not feel called to minister in a church. If you have decided to follow Jesus, that is a calling in itself. If we follow, we follow so that we can minister.

  So your family is a place of ministry, your workplace is a place of ministry, your church is a place of ministry. Above all else, you are called to minister God’s love to the people around you.

  In Paul’s day, there were no chapels, no big brick barns to hold Christians. There was no ordination; no priests, no Popes, no Presidents or anything else. Christians were just Christians who used their gifts among their brothers and sisters and wherever else they could.

  So, when the Bible says that you should have a no sweat ministry, it means that your ministry in your family or your workplace should be no sweat too.

  What am I talking about? What is this “no sweat ministry”? but the Old Testament is clear. The priests and the Levites are an example of what Christian ministry is like.

  We just read about how the priests had to stand before the Lord. They had to wear special linen clothes when they performed their ministries. The reason given is,

They must not wear anything that makes them perspire

  As I said, our ministries should be “no sweat” ministries. Standing doesn’t make you sweat: but running back and forth does. And wearing cool linen doesn’t make you sweat, but wearing wool does.

  If what we do makes us sweat, it is not the kind of ministry that God wants; it is not the service that Jesus came to initiate among us.

  When I first began working, I knew very clearly what I was supposed to do. I was called to be a missionary to my workplace. I was to be a witness wherever I was.

  I tried so hard that I probably turned everyone off.

  I tried to evangelise. I have never been much of an evangelist. I love to see people born again. I get thrilled to see people pouring out the front of a service to declare their faith in Jesus. But I am woeful at making it happen. And my efforts probably did very little for the people I worked with.

  Also, I knew I must be a good example of a Christian. I tried very hard. No gambling, no drinking, no swearing. I kept away from the people I worked with, because I didn’t want to drink and smoke and swear like they did.

  I was a judging little Pharisee, and they knew it, and they mocked me. And I deserved it. But all my efforts were just that: they were efforts. I was working hard at being a good little Christian and all it produced was sweat.

  But isn’t that what we have all been taught?

  If you go right back to Genesis, we read that part of God’s curse on Adam was that he would eat his bread by the sweat of his brow.

  God’s curse was that our survival would require hard work and great discomfort.

  God’s blessing is that we can rest.

  One of the big questions facing younger Christians is how to be Christians in their family, and that is often a sweaty matter, too.

  It’s the same kind of issue.

  We have our plans. You’ve seen the picture. Dad in his slippers, leading the family around the dining table, ready to say grace. Ever–smiling mum, size 12, flowing, honey–blonde hair, wearing her apron from a hard afternoon in the kitchen, holding a steaming apple pie as she waits for the right time to put it on the table. There are the two children, Jane, aged 9, and Dick, aged 7, holding hands. And the cocker spaniel dog.

  Everything is beautiful... Most of us want something like that.

  Pastors see reality. You see the grocery boxes on the dining table and the take–away Pizza menu by the phone. If ever family life was like that ideal picture, it isn’t now.

  It takes a lot of sweat to have a family like that. Yes, we need to guide and encourage our kids, and care for our spouse, but that ministry has to be a no sweat ministry.

  And even in our “in the church” ministries, it should be no sweat, either.

  When I attended a healing conference at Randwick Baptist Church, I met a delightful Singaporean Chinese girl at the bookstall.

  She was one of the most at-ease-with-herself people I have met.

  But this had not been easy to achieve. Her family and culture taught her that performance is the bottom line, that work gains merit. So the idea of grace was foreign to her, despite her Christian family. And that’s the way of our world, sweat produces results.

  But it doesn’t produces results where it really counts, in our reltaionship with God and our service for him.

  And that service, as I have said, is as much in our families or in our workplaces as in our churches.

  Read our passage carefully. Take note of the contrast there, between those who serve outside the holy place, and those who can come into God’s presence. The ordinary Levites can’t come before God because of their sin, the sin of their house. They can labour to help the worshippers, but they can’t minister to the Lord. Theirs is the sweaty work. They are the ones on the move all the time. But the real changes are effected by those who stand before the Lord and minister to him. Standing before God, they represent the people in their need.

  It was a hard lesson to learn, and I am still struggling to discover a no sweat ministry.

  But I see it at work in my workplace.

  I don’t go there with an agenda to convert, but I go there with an agenda to serve God.

  I don’t have to be SuperChristian, dashing ito the cleaners’ room whenever there is an emergency, changing into a black cape and putting Y-fronts on over my trousers. They know me. They know I am a pessimist, that I am easily distracted, that I like to talk, that I came close to spitting the dummy recently.

  But they also know that I take an interest when they are struggling, and that I accept them when they fail.

  And they know that I value them enough to accept care from them when I need it.

  I have heard about marriage breakdowns and new romances, about family achievements and problem children, about past failures and present victories. One girl used to come and visit me every time she did a presentation for a client, just so she could tell someone how she had felt about it.

  I can go to work socials and have a glass of Guinness and mix with them freely. I can say what my boundaries are, and have them respected. No sweat!

  Although I tried with my kids, a lot of my efforts failed and fell by the wayside because of conflicts and my own inabilities. But I know they love me, and, by and large, they are beginning to consult me about spiritual matters. I could have done better, but, in the end, I had to learn to trust God with what I was not capable of. And he honours that trust, no matter how little and ineffective it is.

  I want to enourage you to find that no sweat kind of faith and to live it out in all aspects of your life, in your family, in your workplace, here in the church.

  But here’s a warning. Don’t judge people who cave in under pressure, or face burnout. I have met too many people who do that. They are critical of people who are struggling.

  Today’s passage is about normal ministry. Remember that anyone in any kind of ministry is also in the devil’s firing line, and that he will look for any chink in your armour. That can include unhealed areas in your life.

  Have you played sport wearing shin pads or some other kind of protection, but there is a wound under that padding? You know how the covering protects you, but the pain is still there from the earlier wound.

  That’s how satan works. He looks for the wound, and, even when it is covered byJesus’ blood, he presses until it hurts. He hopes that you will crumple with pain.

  And we all do at some point! No one is immune. There was a time when lions surrounded me, always nipping at the same tender patch until I nearly fainted. I don’t want to go into detail, but I came close to burnout at that time. Everything gets out of its correct proportion, and you don’t know which way to turn. Never blame the wounded for being hurt!

  But our ordinary ministry should be a no sweat ministry. And, if there is a lot of sweat; if you labour too hard for to little result, then the cause is either that you have sin in your life, or that you have never really repented and asked Jesus into your life as Lord and Saviour.

  That is why we should ask ourselves as a church and as individuals why we don’t grow as a church. What sins are we hanging onto? It is why we should ask ourselves about our families, why they are not following Christ; and about our workplaces and our neighbourhoods, why our ministries are ineffective, considering the efforts we put in.

  I’ve told before about how little effect our Beach Mission team had until we truly repented and returned to Christ. And I’ve told you from my own experience how ministry can just take off when God’s people come back to their Lord and Saviour.

  Jesus says.

^{MT 11:27} “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

^{MT 11:28} “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

  The One who makes God known to us is the One who invites all to come to him. He is the One who gives rest and who leads us under his easy yoke. He wants us to return to him and find life.

  God’s relationships are good, without bullying or condemnation. He gives us a no sweat time. His will is

...good, and perfect and acceptable,

• as we read in Romans 12.

  Is there a lot of sweat in your service to God — at home, in the office, when you go down the street, or at church?

  What does Jesus prescribe?

^{MT 11:28} “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

  As he said to the Church in Ephesus,

^{REV 2:4} Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. ⁵ Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

  Whether we need to come for the first time, or need to return after a long absence, the message is the same: the beginning of a no–sweat service to God is to come to Christ, to renew that old relationship, and to start over again.

  And what that means is a decision to put him first. Jesus tells us over and over. if we don’t hate our closest family and love him, we won’t make it in the Kingdom. If we don’t selll everything we have to secure the treasure we have found, we aren’t serious about him. If we don’t take up the cross and deny ourselves and follow Jesus, we haven’t yet begun to follow. It applies wherever we are, in all we do. Jesus first: he is the Lord. Many will say to him, “Lord, Lord!”, but he will say, “Get away from me, you evil–doers: I never knew you!”

  When our priorities are right, when Jesus is truly where he should be in our lives, then things will begin to change in every part of our lives. What we have to push to make work will go through without our help. We won’t sweat over our ministry. It’s a call to change!

Let’s do it! AMEN.

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)