“Your Labor in the Lord Is Not in Vain”
1 Corinthians 15:58

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany—February 3, 2019

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Our text is the last verses of today’s Epistle Reading from 1st Corinthians chapter 15.  St. Paul writes, “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

In the realm of physics, the ultimate goal of physicists is to discover the “grand unification theory.”  This hypothetical theory is supposed to bring together and explain in one mathematical formula all the different aspects of physics.

In the realm of religion, the closest thing we have to a “grand unification theory,” one doctrine which best explains what’s wrong with our world, and how to make it right again, is the Biblical doctrine of VOCATION. 

Vocation is a word we don’t use too much anymore.  It’s from the Latin “vocare,” which means, “to call,” from which we also get “vocal” and “voice.”  Vocation literally means the “calling” that you have in your life.  We have not only forgotten the word vocation, we have also largely forgotten the concept of a “calling” for your life.

When we hear “vocation,” we think almost exclusively of a career, the job that a person does.  But, the Biblical concept of vocation means much more than just your occupation.  Hopefully, your job is not your whole life, but just one aspect of your life.  In the same way, your job is just one aspect of your vocation, your “calling” in life. 

Each of us actually has many different vocations, many different callings in life. Within our families, we are called to the vocations of husband and wife, mother and father, parent and child, grandfather and grandmother.  Within our communities, we have the vocation of citizen, which we fulfill in a variety of civic duties, such as voting, paying taxes, obeying the law and submitting to the authorities, and by our participation in civic and community activities and organizations.  And, of course, each of us has our vocation according to the definition we normally think of, our occupation by which we earn a living.

However, the overarching, fundamental vocation that all of us humans have is to be a creature of the Almighty, our calling to worship and serve our Creator.  As Psalm 95 says, “O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our maker.”  Sin can be defined as our failure to fulfill this fundamental human vocation.  St. Paul puts it this way in Romans, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” 

Like an employee who gets fired for not doing his job, we all deserve the eternal fire of hell, for failing in our fundamental vocation to worship and serve our Creator.  All other sins stem from this original sin, and can also be interpreted as failures in vocation, failures to fulfill our various other callings in life. 

At the end of the Small Catechism, Martin Luther includes a “Table of Duties,” giving Scripture verses which show what God expects of us in our various vocations in life, as fathers, mothers, parents, children, servants, masters, our duty as citizens, and as pastors and members of the church.  In the section on Confession in the Small Catechism, Luther says, “Consider your station and examine yourself in the light of the Ten Commandments, whether as father or mother, son or daughter, master or servant, you have been disobedient, unfaithful, slothful, ill-tempered, unchaste, or quarrelsome; whether you have grieved anyone by word or deed; whether you have stolen, neglected or wasted anything, or done any other evil or injury.”

There is an old confession of sins which puts it this way: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not.”   “But thanks be to God!” St. Paul says in our text, “He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

God forgives all your failures and sins because his own Son lived a perfect life in your place and died a sacrificial death to atone, to make full payment, for all your sins.   St. John writes, “This is how God showed his love for us: He sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we would live through him. . .  he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. . .  This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”

Hebrews says that, when Jesus came into this world, “In all things he became like his brothers in every way.”  Because he came into this world as a man, to live as one of us, Jesus of Nazareth humbly fulfilled many of the same earthly vocations that we do. 

The Gospel of Luke tells us, “He went down to Nazareth with [Joseph and Mary] and was obedient to them.”   Jesus perfectly fulfilled the earthly vocation of son, by humbly submitting to his stepfather Joseph and his mother Mary.  Apparently, Joseph died at some point, and, as the eldest son, Jesus was responsible to care for his mother. Even as he hung from the cross he fulfilled this familial responsibility by committing her to the care of his closest friend, the Apostle John.  “He said to his mother, ‘Dear woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.”

The very place and circumstances of Jesus’ birth were dictated by the fact that even before he was born he was humbly fulfilling his vocation as citizen, heeding Caesar’s decree that everyone must go to their ancestral city for a census and to pay a tax.  You may recall another time when Jesus had the Apostle Peter catch a fish with a coin in its mouth, so that they could pay a tax.

Perhaps the most astounding thing is that our Lord, who could turn water into wine and feed 5,000 with just a few loaves and fish, actually did have a normal, earthly occupation for almost all of his earthly life.  St. Mark reports that, when Jesus first preached in his hometown synagogue at Nazareth, “Many who heard him were astonished and said, ‘Where did this man get these things?  What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles!  Isn’t this the carpenter?’”  And St. Matthew adds that they asked, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?”

St. Luke says, “Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry.”  That means, assuming he began as an apprentice in his stepfather Joseph’s carpentry shop at a young age, for over 20 years Jesus of Nazareth was not a rabbi or scholar, but a carpenter. 

Carpenters in that culture didn’t construct buildings, since in those desert regions wood was in short supply and too valuable to use for buildings.  So, buildings were mostly made of the more abundant stone or mud bricks.  As carpenters, Joseph and Jesus were actually what we would call cabinetmakers, in their shop at Nazareth manufacturing furniture, and also early church tradition says they specialized in making wooden plows, oxen yokes, and other agricultural implements. It’s quite amazing that the early church historian Justin Martyr, who grew up not far from Nazareth, reports that in about 100 A.D. many farmers in the area were still using plows that had made in the carpentry shop of Joseph and his stepson Jesus.

Like Jesus, my Dad also apprenticed for his father in the family business, “Vogts Earthmoving.”  Because of the Great Depression, he actually started when he was 12 years old, building township roads by himself with a horse-drawn grader. And for a few months every year Dad was a mechanic, because in those days they used to shut down during the winter and do maintenance on the big machines.  I remember being fascinated as a boy by the enormous sockets and wrenches in their shop. 

One thing I remember about my father was his big, rough, scared hands.  Jesus didn’t have hands like me, the soft hands of an office worker.  The carpenter from Nazareth had hands like his stepdad, and like my Dad, the rough hands of a man working long, hard hours.  Why did Jesus do that?  Why did he work with his hands, when instead he could have just snapped his fingers?

St. Paul says in Philippians, “He made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself.”  Laboring as a carpenter for over 20 years was part of Jesus humbling himself for our salvation.  The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who, as St. Peter says, has “angels, authorities and powers in submission to him,” set aside his divine power, privilege, and prerogatives, and lived humbly as a human, so that as a human he could perfectly fulfill God’s law in our place, and as a human he could endure the ultimate humiliation, crucified, dead, and buried, shedding his blood as a sacrifice for our sins.

St. Paul says in Colossians, “By him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,” and Proverbs says that at the creation of all things Christ was the “master craftsman” at his heavenly Father’s side.  Part of his living as a human, part of his humbling himself for our salvation, was that, although he was the Creator of the whole universe, he humbly devoted himself for over 20 years to the creation of tables and benches and plows in a carpentry shop at Nazareth.

But, there is another significance to our Savior and Lord laboring all those years in a very human occupation.  By his own example, Jesus shows us the dignity and value of human work, of serving God and our fellow man in the vocation of our earthly occupation.  St. Paul puts it this way in Philippians: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others above yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.”

The unique aspect of the Christian doctrine of vocation, which we sometimes fail to grasp, is that it is not at all limited to what we might think of as “church work.”  In our text, St. Paul says, “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”  What exactly is “the work of the Lord” to which you are to give yourself fully, and “your labor in the Lord” which is not in vain?

During the Dark Ages, because most people were illiterate and the Scriptures were only in ancient languages which the common people and even many ministers couldn’t understand, the true Biblical doctrine of vocation was lost.  By the time of the Reformation, it was thought that if you truly wanted to serve the Lord with your life, there were only two options:  If you were a man, you must become a priest or monk; if you were a woman, you must become a nun.  Other occupations and roles in life were looked down on and scorned as unworthy and not pleasing to God. 

That is why, when lightning struck one day near a law student named Martin Luther, he cried out, “Help me, St. Anne, and I will become a monk.”  In his mind, at that time, Luther felt that by becoming a monk for the first time in his life he was truly serving the Lord with his life.

We often speak of the three jewels of the Reformation that Martin Luther recovered, the doctrines known in Latin as Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura; Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Scripture Alone.  But, there is a fourth jewel of the Reformation, another lost doctrine which Luther recovered for the world, the Biblical doctrine of vocation.

Studying Scripture in his vocation as a professor of theology, Luther found that in the New Testament ALL earthly work, in all our various vocations in life, is considered equally to be the “Lord’s work.”  St. Peter writes, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.”   St. Paul puts it this way in Colossians: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men. . . It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

If you give a master clockmaker a box with thousands of gears, but all exactly the same, he cannot use them to build a working clock. The differences and variety in types and sizes of gears are essential to make it work.

In the same way, in order for THE master Maker of all things to make our world work, he needs people with all sorts of different gifts and abilities, he needs people in all sorts of different occupations and roles in life.  As St. Paul says in 1st Corinthians, “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”  In this world, God needs farmers to raise our food, doctors to heal us, teachers to instruct us, police to protect us, mothers and fathers to raise us, and those are just a few examples. 

In the New Testament, there really is no such thing as a “secular” occupation.  For, the New Testament doctrine of vocation teaches that ALL honest work is holy work, pleasing to God.  Martin Luther put it this way: “The maid sweeping down the stairs is doing a holy work, just as much as the preacher in the pulpit.”  THAT is what St. Paul means when he says, “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”  You ARE serving God by serving your fellow man in your vocation, your occupation, and the other callings and roles in life God has given you.

Now, of course Jesus did call the first Apostles to full-time ministry, to leave behind their former earthly occupation of fishermen.  Is that what God requires of you?  Perhaps, for God does still call some to serve him in full-time ministry, as St. Paul says in Ephesians, “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.”  But, the key word in that verse is “some.”  “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.” 

In addition to the gifts and calling he gives to “some” for full-time ministry in his Church, he also gives gifts and callings to many others for a wide variety of other vocations.  Using the illustration of a human body, St. Paul puts it this way in 1st Corinthians: “If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.”

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”  For, ALL honest work is truly holy work, pleasing to God.  “It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

“Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”