Systematic Theology – Work

Faith and Work

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 19 of 19

Track: #19

Year:

Dictation Name: 19 Faith and Work.

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer.

All glory be to Thee oh God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We thank Thee our Father that our times are in Thy hands who doest all things well. We thank Thee that Thou art He who is shaking the nations and will shake the things that are until only the things which are unshakable shall remain. Grant, oh Lord, that in the day of testing we stand fast, that we proclaim Thy judgment and Thy salvation, and that we become more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. In His name we pray, amen.

Our subject this morning is “Faith and Work” work in the singular, and our scripture is Ecclesiastes 11:4-6, Ecclesiastes 11:4-6. We conclude our studies in the theology of work and next week we’ll begin on the doctrine of authority. Ecclesiastes 11 verses 4-6.

“4 He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.

5 As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.

6 In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.”

The relationship of faith and works has long been discussed and argued in the history of the church. It is the soteriological concern - that is it has to do with the doctrine of salvation. But there has been too little discussion with the relationship of faith and work, work as our calling, our vocation. Both subjects of faith and works, and faith and work, belong properly to the sphere of sanctification. Our scripture Ecclesiastes 11:4-6, is from a book that many people regard as pessimistic, but it is rather a realistic look at life with the eyes of faith. What Ecclesiastes tells us is that the world is not a picnic, it is not the Garden of Eden, there are problems in this world, but if that we do our duty to God we shall be blessed.

So Ecclesiastes is not pleasing to a Humanistic temperament because it does not encourage us to have rosy glasses, rose-tinted glasses as we look at the world around us, but it does tell us that ll things do serve God’s purpose.

Our particular text tells us that the weather does not depend on our knowledge of it. We may know quite a bit about the weather, we may know what the forecast is, and weather forecasters may try to predict it but the weather does not depend upon what man says or thinks. The wind blows irrespective of whether we approve of it or not. As Leopold says “so the trends and currents of events go their way and are well directed by the higher power in spite of our ignorance.” The world is ruled by God, the affairs of men and the affairs of the natural world are ruled by God; this is what Ecclesiastes tells us. We are told also that a child grows in its Mother’s womb whether or not the mother and father know all about the processes that are involved in birth. Our life does not depend on our knowledge of the life processes, but on our faith and upon the trustworthiness of God and His creation. We know that the wages of sin are death. We know that God has created a trustworthy world, the sun rises and sets, the seasons come and go with a dependability, things grow in terms of God-ordained processes. So that God brings things to pass in spite of, and as well as with our human efforts. A child is born, a seed flourishes, and the world continues not because we understand it, but because God so ordains it. We must thus work with faith.

Our scripture is skeptical about man’s trust in himself and his trust in his reasoning, but not about God. Rather we are told “fear God and keep His commandments, this is the conclusion of the matter” and it is, Ecclesiastes tells us, “the whole duty of man.” If we judge events by our expectations we are always going to be discouraged, but we are told not to rest in our hopes or our knowledge, or what we think is possible in a situation. Rather we are told to withhold not our hand, but to work unceasingly in the Lord. We are to work in the confidence that God will order all things in terms of His wisdom. Thus in his own was Ecclesiastes is telling us what Paul sums up in Romans 8:28, “For we know that all things work together for good, to them that are the called according to His purpose.” So, Ecclesiastes as it surveys the world realistically, and echoes the cry of man without faith; “Vanity of vanities” or “futility of futilities, all is futility”, says also while things are futile while man attempts to take charge, if we do our duty under God then we see things happen as God’s ordains them, and find our strength and peace in what God orders.

Thus work must be grounded in faith, this is the point of Ecclesiastes.

Moreover, we must remember that prayer too is an act of faith, and prayer must be linked to work. If there is no faith, there is no prayer, just the empty form of it. Now prayer involves praise, it involves thanksgiving, the confession of sins, and much, much more. But prayer also involves asking. If we ask nothing, or too little, we have no faith and we work, we go through the motions without any confidence in what God has ahead of us, and our prayers become nominal, they become what I call two cent prayers.

Now to pray for two cents is a ridiculous thing. If you can’t borrow two cents from somebody you’re in trouble. You can even borrow two cents or get two cents from somebody very often if you have no change, and I’ve seen people stop when they see someone frustrated because they don’t have the change and they say “here do you need a couple pennies?” and put them in the parking meter. A two cent prayer is ridiculous, but so often our prayers are two cents prayers; maybe because we have a two cent God. Praying, besides being talking with God, is also asking for miracles. Now we can’t demand them, but if we believe that God is, we ask for miracles; and if we believe God is, we work expecting miracles, because we know that in our work at all times there is something greater than ourselves. Paul says that when we work in the Lord we know that our labor is never in vain, it will accomplish what God ordains. So that when we work we don’t work in terms of our capacity, we put all that we have into the work, but we know that there is someone greater than ourselves involved in the work, and that’s why to the outsider the Christian and what he does is so baffling.

Ecclesiastes says “he that observes the wind shall not sow” Now that does not mean that we sow seed into a hurricane, it does mean that when the governing premise of our work is the faithfulness of God, a belief in His providential order, we work intelligently and with faith do that which we know God can and will bless. Ecclesiastes by the way is identified as being the book written by the preacher who is the son of David. We don’t know who he is, he identifies himself also as king in Jerusalem, it could be Solomon, but since our Lord Himself is called a son of David, and anyone who is a descendent of Him was called a son of David, it could have been any one of the subsequent Davidic kings, we don’t know. But preacher in Hebrew means “assembler” and the author calls himself the assembler who brings people together to be instructed, and it is Godly knowledge that is praised by this book, as in Ecclesiastes 12:9, and it is a knowledge that seeks to command reality apart from God that is declared to be futility.

The preacher aims against inactivity and passivity. Despair flourishes where faith wanes and it is a product of unbelief, not of adversity. Very often the ages of despair are among the most prosperous in history because despair is born of faithlessness, a lack of faith. Our Lord refers to these words of the preacher when He says in John 3:8 “8 the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

Now this analogy of the wind is often misunderstood and people say “the Holy Spirit is like the wind, we cannot see what it is doing.” But it is not the Holy Spirit that is compared to the wind here, but everyone that is born of the Spirit. The man born of the Spirit has the winds mysterious character. We cannot see the wind, we can only see the effect. But every one of us who are born of the Spirit therefore represents something supernatural in the world, a force, a movement, a direction, that those outside cannot understand because we are governed by something above and beyond us, a power greater than ourselves. Our lives are then providential and supernatural and others may think we’ve become a fanatic, a religious fanatic, or a religious nut because we’re now governed by something that doesn’t make sense to them that is not of this world; and so we are impractical and unwise from their perspective. But we represent a force in this world which is not of this world when we work in the Lord.

What is the preacher telling us? “He that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.” If you look at things Humanistically you will ultimately be paralyzed, and this is why men and nations, cultures which view the world Humanistically are overcome by paralysis, they are incapable of decisive action because they are looking at reality not with the eyes of faith but in terms of human conditions and all they see progressively are the problems, not what under God can be done. The result is a growing, a creeping paralysis, and we see it all around us today, and so men flee from the world of work into the world of leisure, the world of escapism because they cannot face up to the fact that their knowledge cannot command reality, their plans political and personal will not govern this world. Their plans collapse, and they collapse. “But everyone who is born of the Spirit is like the wind which bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.” This is our life and our work, it is governed by something greater than ourselves, and we cannot see five minutes into the future, we don’t know what lies ahead of us in time, but we know from whence our days and our years do come, from God almighty.

“We are” says the preacher “ignorant of how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the work of God who maketh all.” Pregnancy is a time of joy for normal people, people who are not troubled by either an unhappy situation, or bad health, it’s a time of great joy; and so, the preacher says, should be our time in the Lord, we’re waiting for the future to be born, it comes from God. Just as we look forward to the birth of a child, we should look forward to our future in the Lord. To work in the Lord is to step into a world of unseen determination and government. It means working in terms of a purpose and of consequences that far transcend us, but also include us because then we are in the world of God’s providential government which includes purpose, and we as a part of it. So we are not inconsequential, and God is never mindless of us, but always mindful. We work and we pray for miracles remember that first of all our life is a miracle of grace, and that we are surrounded by the miracles of providential grace and government. And so we need to work. As Hengstenberg said almost two centuries ago with regard to these verses, and I quote: “under all circumstances we should do our duty and let God care for us; sowing and reaping are employed here after the example of the Psalms to designate activity to the wind which may easily blow away the seed into the clouds which threaten to injure the harvest, correspond the unfavorable circumstances of the time.” And we are not to look to the times, but to God and to the fact that our lives began with a miracle.

One of the puritan poets in speaking about what Christ did for us, how He gave His only, God gave His only begotten Son for us and how Jesus Christ, God’s Son, died upon the cross for us, compared it to what we are asking and hoping from God now, and how great what He has already done is by comparison to what we want. And he concluded by saying “he that so much has done for you, will do yet more and care for you.” Thus we have to see ourselves, Ecclesiastes tells us, as a part of the unseen power which governs history, as His creatures, and as comprehended in His eternal purpose. Hence our labor is never in vain in the Lord. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God give us grace to work in Thee, to pray for miracles and to know that our lives began with miracles, and Thou hast begun a good work in us, and will bring it to Thine intended purpose. We thank Thee that our times are in Thy hands, we thank Thee our Father that our labor is never in vain in Thee. Make us ever joyful our Father in the miracle which our lives our. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] When we pray for miracles in that context, what are miracles?

[Rushdoony] Miracles are the workings of God in a special and supernatural way in our lives. They begin with the miracle of regeneration whereby we become a new creation in Jesus Christ, now that’s a miracle. So the age of miracles is not over, every Christian represents a miracle.

[Same audience member] Well then we don’t just pray for miracles however.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Same audience member] Because if we’re praying for God’s judgment upon a wicked judge or something of this nature, when his judgment does come upon him would we consider that a miracle?

[Rushdoony] Well, we have to consider it God’s providence and blessing to us. [Laughter.]

Any other questions or comments?

[Audience member] It seems almost as if, you know the malaise that you talk about and the apathy and everything else, it seems like for every law of Humanism that’s been made a fact of legislation in government in the last, at least in my lifetime, it seems like every single one of those has brought its own special brand of malaise and apathy and futility. It seems like each of those laws, though it may pertain to a different subject, nevertheless produces its own kind of apathy, its own unique market.

[Rushdoony] Very good point. All we have to do to is to think back, those of you who are old enough to, to the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson and how they were ushering in Utopia as it were, and the confidence of their addresses, to see the consequences of it. They created the kind of disillusionment and apathy that we’ve seen since then, not a brave new world.

Any other comments?

Yes?

[Audience member] When you’re dealing with other supposed Christians, like in our friend’s case, and they say “oh well you shouldn’t bear any vengeance our hatred in your heart” should you try to reason with them or just forget it because they seem to come from a completely different perspective on how Christians should react.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We are told not to harbor hatred on personal things, but where God’s work is concerned it’s a different matter, and the Psalmist says “do I not hate them that hate Thee? Yea I hate I them with a perfect hatred.” Are we to love injustice? Are we to love murderers and killers who wantonly trample underfoot God’s people? There’s a difference. We are to have a righteous indignation where the work of God is concerned, and to be active.

[Audience member] When they keep arguing though, that that isn’t correct, is it better just to drop it?

[Rushdoony] Drop it, they’re not worth it. [slight ripples of amusement in audience.] Because some of these people talk about love and tolerance, but I find that usually these love and tolerance people are the first one to object and get very nasty if they hear one word in your talk or conversation or a lecture, that they don’t like. They’ll disrupt an entire meeting because they object to one statement, they’ll be seething with rage while they proclaim the necessity for love on your part.

Yes?

[Audience member] Well I remember what a colleague said about Oliver Goldsmith he said there was something wrong with Goldsmith because he didn’t resent insults, and he said a man who doesn’t resent an injury to himself can have no proper sense of justice, because how could you want justice for others if you don’t want justice for yourself?

[Rushdoony] Very good point, very good point. It’s no wonder they called Oliver Goldsmith “poor Noll”, that was a common term of reference to him.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Glory be to Thee oh God who of Thy grace and mercy has showered Thy mercy upon us, Thy grace, and has made us miracles of salvation. Make us ever mindful how rich we are in Jesus Christ, so that we may keep our eyes fixed not on the uncertainties of this world, but on the certainties of Thy grace and government, in Jesus name, amen.