In the spring of 1897, Thomas Hanna, a 25 year old Baptist
pastor fell out of his carriage and landed on his head. When he woke
up he was in a state of total amnesia. Dr. Boris Sidis and his
assistant Dr. Goodhert had to teach him to talk, to eat, and to go to
the bathroom as if he were a child. They took him to the theater, to
the zoo, and to dinner with his family. For two months they labored
to jog his memory by recreating scenes from his pre-accident life.
One day Hanna experienced a moment of crisis, and the past and the
present came together, and his memory was restored. He recovered
completely and Dr. Sidis became quit famous for his success with this
patient.
The element of surprise in this true story is that Dr. Sidis was one
of the most famous atheists of his day. He was a genius who qualified
to get into Harvard at age 9. I have read his biography, and can testify
that he had one of the most amazing brains in American
history. He wasted most of it, but the point is, as an atheist he did
good for a Christian pastor, and on a mental level he saved his life,
and he made it possible for him to go on to save lives for eternity.
God can use some of the most unlikely instruments for good in this
world. In Paul's life there were Roman soldiers that God used to do
good for Him. These pagans help Paul accomplish his ministry for
God. Atheists do good; pagans do good, and anybody can be an
instrument for doing good in this world. It is not limited to
Christians, for they do not have a monopoly on doing good. Doing
good is universally accepted and encouraged. The result is that the
Christian often feels that doing good is such an anemic idea.
Anybody can do good, and even non-Christians can get so good at it
that they get labeled do-gooders. So with this negative label plus the
universal possibility of doing good, the Christian tends to write it off
as superficial and inconsequential.
The result is that Christians often miss the chance to communicate
with the world on that level where all people understand the
language of doing good. The Christian often gets deceived into
thinking that the Christian approach to people has to be more name
brand, and not so generic. We have to do the spectacular and
unusual. We are like the sports team that thinks that the only way to
win is to be clever and tricky. But the fact is, no team ever becomes
great without getting back to the basics. What Paul is saying in our
text is that doing good is the ABC foundation for living the successful
Christian life.
Paul says there are two kinds of seeds we sow in life. There are
the seeds of self-indulgence which please the sinful nature, and there
are the seeds of doing good to others which please the Spirit. Doing
good then is not a mere side-line in the Christian life. It is a basic
principle of Christian living. That is why Paul is stressing that Christians
must not get weary in well doing. It is the only hope for a
harvest, and so he urges them to do good to all men whenever they
have opportunity, and especially to a family of believers. The only
way you can please God is by doing good, and the only way you can
please anyone else is by doing good. All relationships in life revolve
around doing good for one another. If you are not doing good, you
are not building any relationship you have.
When we say that you have to work at marriage, it simply means
that you have to work at doing good for one another. The same is
true for friendships, and working relationships. All relationships are
dependent upon a mutual doing good for one another. A
relationship where no good is being done is a decaying an dying
relationship. Show me a person for whom you do no good, and I'll
show you a person you do not love very much, for love on any level
can only exist when doing good is part of the relationship. God so
loved the world that He gave His Son. Had God not done good for
the world it would be hard to define, or even to detect His love. Love
is only real when it is exhibited in the doing of good.
Love is not just something you feel. Love is something you do. If
you do not do some good for another, it is not possible to give any
meaning to the statement that you love them. Love has no content
without doing good. Loving relationships are only kept alive by
doing good. If you do not maintain a relationship by the doing of
good, it will soon look like your yard if you never mow it, or your
hair if you never comb it. You cannot just have good feelings about
your yard or hair to keep them looking nice. You have to do
something, and so it is with relationships. They only remain
beautiful to the degree that you do some good.
You can get a battery that is maintenance free, at least for some
time, but there is no such thing as a maintenance free relationship.
The idea of a maintenance free battery is so you don't have to relate
to it at all. You can neglect it, and forget it, and not have to bother
with it. Maintenance free means a non-relationship. A relationship
is not an event, it is a work of art that calls for continuous creation
by adding to it the new life that comes by doing good. This principle
applies to all relationships, and so this text could take us in all kinds
of directions, but our focus for this message is on our relationships in
the work place.
The first thing we need to do is to honestly recognize that it can be
a complex matter to figure out what doing good to all men means.
Doing good to a fellow employee by covering for them may be good
for them, but bad for the company. Doing good for one may lead to
envy and jealously in another. It is not always easy to know what
doing good means. The best choice for doing good is not always
evident. For example, here is the dilemma of one worker: "Suppose
your company needs parts, and you are responsible for placing the
order by Thursday of this week. They can be purchased from a local
firm, or for 38% less from a Latin American supplier. Buying Latin
American would mean better profits for your stockholders and lower
expenses for the firm. However, the local company may be facing
layoffs and need the work. But the Latin American might need
work, too, and while laid-off American workers get unemployment
checks, unemployed Latin Americans are often reduced to levels of
extreme poverty. The decision is troublesome and the answers aren't
clear cut."
The complexities are endless. Do you hire the person is less
qualified, but who is most in need of a job? Do you work harder to
make up for a lazy employee, so they don't lose their job? There are
no end to questionable matters about what doing good means, and
how can we know the results of doing good? A psychiatrist helped a
man get over his inferiority complex, and the next day he was fired
for arguing with a cop. We can get so confused by a thousand and
one questions about doing good that we experience the paralysis of
analysis, and just decide to forget it.
This is the very thing Paul is warning us not to do. Do not get
weary in well doing. It can be tiring, and the pay off is not always
evident, and so we tend to give up and try another approach, like
waiting to see what will happen if we do nothing. Paul says don't do
this, and don't give up. You cannot fail in doing good, for regardless
of the results you are doing what pleases God, and this will always
lead to a harvest of reward for you. Did Jesus fail when people
walked away from Him? Did He fail when He healed 10 lepers and
only one came back to thank Him? That is not much of a statistic to
brag about-a 10% response for doing good.
It can be discouraging if you measure life by statistics. That is the
popular formula for success. It is all a mathematical calculation. If a
man hits 320, he is more successful than the man who hits only 228.
If you get down the slope at the Olympics a hundredth of a second
faster than anyone else, you are more successful than they are. If you
type 110 words a minute, you are more successful than one who only
types 90. If you sell a million dollars worth of insurance, you are
more successful than the one who sells only 500,000. Life is so simple
when you measure by the mathematical formula for success. But this
whole scheme come apart at the seams when you begin to ask
questions that are not measurable by math.
What is the man who sells 500,000 of insurance is a better father,
husband, friend, and citizen, then the one who sells the million? This
really throws a monkey wrench into the machinery. There is no way
to calculate the value of love, joy, peace, and any of the fruits of the
spirit. Paul says that these are the elements of true success in life,
and they are the elements of true success in the work place. Jesus did
good to all men, but not all men responded positively. Some even
sought to kill Him, and eventually they succeeded. "For which of my
good works do you stone me?" Jesus said on one occasion. Doing
good does not always succeed, but it never fails. It always pleases
God, and it always makes you a success in His sight, even if it does
not always get a positive response from people.
Paul got into much trouble by trying to do good to all men. The
Jews hated him for doing good to the Gentiles, and the Gentiles hated
him for trying to please the Jews by conforming to some of the
Jewish traditions. Paul had an awful time in doing good to all men.
He knows how wearisome it can be, and how tempting it is to throw
in the towel. But this man, who suffered so much for doing good,
urges on us this principle of Christian living-do good to all men. It is
the key to your success in the Christian life. It is your key to being a
successful Christian in the workplace.
Paul says, as we have opportunity let us do good to all men. We
do not have opportunity to do good to most of the human race, but
we work with people 8 hours a day, and there is nobody in our life
who provides more opportunity for doing good than those with
whom we work. The possibilities for applying this biblical principle
are endless. Like the Good Samaritan, we have opportunity from
time to time to do good to total strangers, but everyday we have a
chance to do good to people at work.
God made Adam and Eve directly, but after that He never made
another living person without the help of man. Not even His own
Son was made without a woman. God's plan is that He will use
people to accomplish His purpose in history. In His providence He
opens doors of opportunity for His people to do good, and the degree
to which they enter these doors is the degree to which they succeed in
being fellow workers with God to change lives and history. It does
not make any difference if you work with Jews or Arabs, Blacks or
Asians, Catholics or Unitarians, for you are to do good to all men.
Do not use the excuse that your job is different, and that the people
you work with are different. They are people, and so they fit Paul's
category of doing good to all people.
Jesus did good to the thief on the cross, and promised him that he
would be with Him in paradise. You do not have to find people who
are worthy of your efforts at being good. You do not have to check
their credentials to see if they qualify, for there are not requirements
to qualify. If they are people, they qualify, and you are authorized to
do good to them.
This does not mean there is no need for discernment as to what
form of good you will do. There is cooperation that is unwise. Like
Michael Devlin who was attacked by two thuds. He fought like a
tiger, but they beat him up, broke his glasses and his nose, and tore
his wallet out of his pocket. It contained only three dollars, and they
were angry. One of them said, "Are you crazy? You put up a fight
like that for three lousy bucks?" Devlin said, "I'm sorry, I thought
you were after the two hundred in my socks." There is such a thing
as too much cooperation. Doing good does not mean to cooperate
with those doing evil. We are to overcome evil with good, but we are
not to cooperate with evil thinking that is good.
This is not to say that you do not do good to the godless and
worldly people in your environment. Christians often feel they
should not do anything to encourage the people who are godless in
their lifestyle. This is to miss the whole point of doing good to all
men. Jesus said that it is the sick who need the doctor, and that is
why He did good to people who are out of God's will. They were
worldly and unethical, but Jesus did good to them because He loved
them.
In Graham Green's novel The Heart Of The Matter, a British
government worker was stationed in a hot dirty town on the West
coast of Africa. Someone asked him why he did not request a transfer
to get out of such a place, and he responded, "Here you can love
people nearly the way God loves them, knowing the worst about
them." That fits the workplace better than it does the church. We
see people at their worst at work. They show their value system, and
the godless aspects of their life. That is where we can love people like
God loves them. It was while we were yet sinners that Christ died
for us. He did good for us while we were godless and unworthy, and
that is when we need to do good to all men. It is when they do not
deserve it, and when our only motive could be to please God.
Doing good means meeting needs of people. Everybody needs
help and encouragement, and the Christian is to strive to be that
kind of resource, even for the non-Christian. Why should you be this
to the non-Christian? Because it is a language they can understand,
and it is the only good reason they will see for wondering whether the
Christian life is for them. The best witness any Christian can be to a
non-Christian is by doing them some good. If this basic biblical truth
is going to transform our daily work, we need to focus on two key
words that convey the essence of this text. The two words are
priority and persistence. In other words, we need to make the doing
of good to all men our short range priority, and our long range goal
that we persist toward no matter how hard the struggle. Let's
consider first-
I. OUR PRIORITY.
The number one objective of our daily work is that in the doing of
it we do good to all who are involved in the workplace with us. This
is the language of love that is universal, and which is the cement that
holds any relationship together. A day at work in which you have
done nobody any good is a day lost for pleasing God. We need to
face our daily work with this goal in mind as a priority. We must
find a way to serve God in our work. There has to be a way we can
be a blessing to others. One of the key ingredients the Christian is to
strive to add to the workplace is meaning. A lot of jobs can be boring
and routine. They seem to have little significance in the total scheme
of things. The Christian priority is to do all men good in that setting
by seeking ways to tie it in to the greater picture of life.
Dostoyevski, the great Russian novelist, said that the irrational
character of work was the great curse of man, and if you wanted to
utterly crush a man just give him meaningless work. Hitler proved
this true. His Jewish prisoners were able to survive disease infected
barracks with little food and back breaking work. Daily he marched
them to a large factory where tons of human waste and garbage were
distilled into alcohol. It was a nauseating atmosphere, and on top of
it, they were helping Hitler fuel his cruel war machine.
When the allies bombed that factory, the next day the prisoners
were ordered to shovel sand into carts at one end of the destroyed
building and carry it to the other end and dumb it. The next day
they had to move the pile back to the other end. Day after day they
took the pile back and forth. One by one they began to break. They
would cry uncontrollably, and some who survived three years in the
camp ran toward the electrified fence and were electrocuted. Dozens
went mad and were shot by the guards. Charles Colson, who
describes this in detail in his book Kingdoms In Conflict says, the
lesson is clear. Men will cling to life with dogged resolve as long as
their work is meaningful. Even if their work supports their hated
captors. But purposeless labor soon snaps the mind. He learned this
in prison, and one of the reasons he devotes so much of his life to
minister to people in prison is because he had made it a priority of
his life to do good to these people by helping them see that their lives
can still be meaningful in prison. He has done good to masses by
adding meaning to their existence.
This is a challenge for all of us in the workplace. How can we
help people feel good about their place in life, and their job? Our
own spirit about our job can make a great difference in how we
encourage others. You might still question if this is really a Christian
priority in life, but let me show you again from the Word. Jesus said,
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." The
kingdom of God is the rule or reign of God in your life. If God rules
in your life, you will be doing what pleases Him, and Paul's whole
point here is that what pleases God is doing good unto all men. This
means the doing good to all men is seeking first the kingdom of God.
This means the helping of people feel good about their life and work
is seeking the kingdom of God in the workplace. It all ties together,
and makes doing good to your fellow employee a priority in the
Christian life.
The idea that we seek first the kingdom of God only at church,
and on Sunday, is to make the kingdom of God irrelevant to most of
life. Keep religion in its place is what many like to say, but they
forget that if God is real He is Lord of every place, and there is no
place where He is not, and where He does not want to rule. Wyn
Sutphia in his book Thine The Glory writes,
"So many men employ the witchery of words in order to
confuse.
They draw up a dividing line between the sacred and the
secular
and call them different.
"Don't dirty faith," they say,
"By rubbing it in life.
No, keep it to the incensed altar and the lilied bower
lest it smell of man's mortality."
It is a subtle trickery.
You see: the sacred-and-profane,
The spiritual-and-the worldly,
The religious-and-material.
Life splits into, and God
Becomes a half-a-God who only
Rules the half of life!
Religion is confined to church and cloister:
When "the worship's over,
God returns to Heaven,
and stays there until next Sunday
at eleven."
We need to reject this nonsense, not only in thought, but by action,
and see that our doing good to all in the workplace is seeking first the
kingdom of God. It is a false dichotomy to think God is more pleased
with our worship than our work. Paul says that if we are doing good
we are pleasing the Spirit. There is more evidence to suggest the idea
that God is more delighted with you when you encourage a fellow
worker than He is when you sing a hymn. The song is more for your
benefit, but the doing of good is for God, for others, and for you. The
point is not to put down worship, but to exalt work, and all its
possibilities, as a place for pleasing God, and doing His will in the
world. It needs to be a priority in our lives if we are going to be
successful Christians.\
Sometimes life brings marvelous opportunities to do good to
others. Paul Wittgenstein was a concert pianist, and the worse thing
that can happen did happen to him. He lost his right arm in World
War I. But in 1931 Ravel's Concerto in D for the left hand was
written, and other composers followed with music for the left hand.
This made it possible for Paul to have a repertoire for his concerts
throughout Europe. What an amazing encouragement. They
couldn't give him a hand, but they gave him what he needed to use
his one hand for employment of his gift. We can't expect to be a part
of wonderful things like this everyday, but everybody needs a hand
or encouragement, and this we can do everyday as we seek to let
Christ transform our daily work by doing good to all men.
We don't have time to pursue the word persistent. All we need to
say is what Paul says here-don't get weary. This doing of good is not
merely an event. It is a lifestyle you persist in regardless of the
response, because you do it to please God. Jesus is our example. He
set His face steadfastly to go to the cross. Nothing could stop Him
from doing good to all men by dying for the sins of the world. We
also are to let nothing stop us from making it a part of our lifestyle of
doing good to all men.
