ASI Southern Union 2015: Prepared to Stand

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ASI Southern Union

Business Managers: Stand Up in the Great Controversy!

Michael Cafferky

Business Managers: Stand Up in the Great Controversy!- Part 1

This topic today is 1 of a series of themes of scripture that I've been studying over the years and bringing to my students and exploring what's the scriptural foundation for business in terms of these grand themes of Scripture?

What are the business principles that emerge from these themes?

And since the theme of our gathering here this weekend is standing I want to read for you, I don't have it on a slide here, but let me read for you Ephesians chapter 6.

You know the Apostle Paul is talking to the church at Ephesus and he's now at the end of his letter, bringing his letter to a conclusion.

And he's now going to challenge them to put on God's armor, right?

And notice what he says here, Therefore, verse 13, Ephesians 6, 13, Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand.

And this is the theme of this seminar this morning.

Business managers stand up in the great controversy.

I don't know if you've ever thought about is it, does the great controversy have anything to do with business?

Or is that just something that happens in my private life, my secret private life that Satan is after me like a roaring lion, you know, coming to seek to devour.

Is that only in my private life or is that in business?

Is the marketplace 1 of the contexts for this cosmic conflict, this great controversy?

I was in South Africa waiting my turn to give a presentation to about a thousand educators from the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Africa Indian Ocean Division, way up top in the auditorium waiting my turn.

And it was at that moment, as I was thinking about my presentation to come in a few minutes where the great aha moment happened for me and all of these themes rushed into my brain and my heart and I realized, wow, each 1 of these themes of scripture that I had been studying kind of separately, each 1 is tied to Jesus Christ.

Each theme is 1 element in the character of God.

And each theme is tied to direct guidance from scripture for us in our conduct.

And it was at that aha moment I said, They're related to business.

We cannot separate our church life and our private family life from the rest of our life.

We are who we are wherever we are, right?

And God's world, God is not just Lord of the Sabbath on Church, which He is, yes He is Lord of the Sabbath, but not only on Sabbath day, how about Sunday through Friday?

And I have a feeling that Satan doesn't take 6 days off.

1 Corinthians 16 takes this same theme of our weekend of standing.

Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.

I'm going to connect to, hopefully will connect with you or for you this theme of standing with also the theme of imitating God.

I'm going to share with you in just a moment my thesis.

For some of you this might go a little deeper than you might be used to thinking about business.

Alright, so I'm going to warn you, get a long snorkel.

We're going to use the imagery of snorkeling.

I have been told by others, I didn't think it was so deep, but I have been told by others that is pretty deep.

It says in Genesis 1, verses 26-28 that God created us in His image.

And all of this is very familiar territory in terms of Adventist theology and understanding.

We know that when sin came through the actions of Adam and Eve, what happened to the image of God?

It was not completely defaced, but it was marred.

And now this presents 1 of the biggest challenges in the universe, to restore that perfect image of God.

The image of God established at creation has been marred and God's plan of redemption includes that restoration.

If we're going to think about anything about business, we've got to start with this, creation, what happened at sin and God's great plan of redemption.

If you're thinking, well, church and evangelism and redemption, all of that is territory over here, but then on Sunday or Monday morning, business is over here and on Friday night I am going to start moving back towards redemption thinking, oh my what is going on in our life when we fragment that kind of thing?

God's plan of redemption includes the restoration of His image and the restoration process involves the imitation of the character of God.

I'm going to explore with you in just a few minutes the various ways that the scripture talks about that imitation restoration process.

The character of God is expressed in several ways, 1 of which is these grand themes of Scripture.

We'll explore 2 other ways that His character is expressed also.

I'm going to assert to you today that business is a setting, not just the church, I'm going to put the church over here, yes, the church is the setting in which God's Holy Spirit, the power of His Holy Spirit is at work restoring his image.

When we're sitting in the church pew, when we're in the Sabbath school class, right, and other church related activities, in the fellowship hall for potluck dinner, God is at work restoring His image in us, right?

Or Thursday afternoon when you come back from lunch at work?

Is the Holy Spirit taking the week off in terms of restoring God's image, waiting for Friday afternoon to come back around to start the restoration process again, it can't be true.

It's got to be a 7 day a week, 24 hours a day proposition.

And business must be, I reason business must be 1 of those settings where God is restoring His image.

To advance this 1 or 2 steps farther the grand themes of Scripture I believe are the fundamental principles of business.

The very character elements of God, or the elements of his character, become the principles of business.

This, His character is how he manages the universe when there are rebellious creatures.

So I relate to this the final step in my thesis thinking here.

I've got to think about the purpose of business in these terms.

No, There's something much bigger at stake here going on, some bigger processes.

I'm not just in business to earn money so that a portion of that money can be given to the church.

As good as that is, that is very important.

But the purpose of the business is much bigger than that.

I'm not in business just so I can take 10% of my earnings, the retained earnings and donate those for the tithe.

That is 1 of the constraints on our spending.

But there are some very important constraints on the earning, the 6 days of the week also.

Now the purpose of business has got to have a grander perspective than just Earning money, having a job and giving money to somebody.

There's bigger things at stake here as important as all of those things are.

Ellen White says in Christ's Object Lessons, this is a, For years this statement haunted me in a way that I just kind of, what is she saying?

Religion and business are not 2 separate things.

I believe it is in understanding these grand themes that we finally understand what she means.

She was a student of the themes of scripture, as we know.

As far as we know, she wasn't a business expert.

But boy, she understood some really deep connecting principles between the Bible and business.

Well the elements of God's character are revealed in 3 things.

We've got the grand themes of scripture which I'm going to share what those are in just a moment.

They're also revealed in the succinct conceptual description of God's character, namely the 10 Commandments.

And finally, the most visible description is in the life and work of Jesus Christ.

We might also extend this thinking to the work of the Holy Spirit in doing an additional study of these themes.

Business Managers: Stand Up in the Great Controversy!- Part 2

Earlier today, I gave a presentation on the purpose of business as seen through the lens of the great controversy theme.

And instead of repeating that today, this afternoon, I thought I would go on and since there were some here who were here this morning, I would give a second presentation titled 10 Principles for a Flourishing Marketplace.

10 Principles for a Flourishing Marketplace.

Eternal Father, this afternoon as we take a look at your scripture and what it has to say about you, open our hearts and our minds to receive you that what we do in the coming days will better reflect who you are.

Notice what Psalm 119, 165, 1 of my favorite verses, Great peace have those who love thy law, nothing can make them stumble.

You know the distinguishing characteristic of Psalm 119, you know what that is?

It has a whole bunch, a lot of verses, it's all about the law.

Every, every verse mentions the law either explicitly or indirectly using 1 or more of the terms, synonyms, every verse, yeah.

And this is such an interesting 1 from verse 165.

Now that word peace in the Hebrew is really the word shalom.

Yeah, in ancient times, when in the Hebrew community, when people in that community would pass each other or they would see each other for the first time in the morning, they're going out to the market, they would greet each other with this word, Shalom.

And then on Sabbath or maybe Friday evening as the Sabbath hours are coming they would greet each other on their way home and they would say Shabbat, Shalom.

It's translated into English the word peace.

Unfortunately, I must say, because that word peace narrows the concept.

It narrows it down to interpersonal harmony, social harmony, right?

Actually this word shalom means a lot of things and we're going to explore some of that right now.

Proverbs 3 verse 2, Proverbs is an interesting collection of wise sayings and Some of these sayings seem to be just kind of popped in at random and they cover a wide variety of life issues.

But notice what it says in Proverbs 3, 2, 2.

Let your heart keep my commandments for length of days and years of life, and abundant welfare will they give you." Here is another passage that connects the idea of the 10 Commandments and Shalom and this idea of abundant welfare.

William Barclay in 1 of his commentaries said that the Hebrew law is the foundation of not only Jewish ethics but also Christian ethics.

I found it interesting when a couple of years ago when I was reading up on ethics and what scholars say are the foundation principles for the free market economy, I began to notice something.

In their article that covers this topic, or at least addresses this topic in part, Quinn and Jones said that the fundamental principles followed by business in efficient markets, right, include honoring agreements, telling the truth, respecting the autonomy of others, and avoiding doing harm.

This is the bare minimum you must have in order to have an efficient free market.

It's not to say that everybody tells the truth all the time.

We know that people tell lies, all right?

But in order for the market to work efficiently, this has to be there most of the time.

And we have to have this kind of common understanding that if we're going to do business together in a market, we have to honor our agreements.

If no 1 honored their agreements, what would happen to the market?

And we'd go back to the Stone Age in terms of getting resources we need to have a flourishing life.

If nobody told the truth, end of market, right?

1 day a lawyer came to Jesus and asked Him a question, what is the great commandment in the law?

And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the great and foremost commandment, and the second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these 2 commandments depend the whole law and the prophets." I've always found this last sentence interesting to me.

First of all, because most preachers who mention this verse, they don't talk about this last sentence so much.

You know, it's like, okay, what we're not talking about, that's what I'm interested in.

On these 2 commandments depend the whole law and the prophets.

Okay, so I get the connection between the whole law.

The 10 Commandments being a description of God's character and the first of those commandments talking about our response to God, our response to Him based on His redemptive action for us, and the last commandments talking about our love of our neighbor.

What I didn't get was, why does Jesus mention the prophets?

Well, when you start reading the book of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos and some of these other prophets, oh, then you start to realize, wow, the message of these prophets is really based upon the 10 Commandments and these great commands, our relationship with God and our relationship with each other.

These are the underpinnings or the foundation stones of what the prophets were saying to their people in their day when there were issues going on in their life.

Verse of Deuteronomy 6, a famous statement, Here, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is 1, and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

So Jesus is quoting from Moses in Deuteronomy here.

He also quotes from Leviticus chapter 19, You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Now in the Gospel where it records Jesus' answer to that lawyer's question, all we get is the phrase in red.

We don't know whether Jesus quoted the entire verse or not, but at least the Gospel writer remembers that part and records it for us.

But what I find interesting is the first part of that verse from Leviticus 19, you shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people.

So when someone does something to you as an enemy, you can still love your enemy by not taking vengeance on your enemy.

So 1 of the most difficult things we would ever be faced with, someone doing something very destructive to us and our desire to take vengeance.

Here's the application, you shall love your neighbor.

Just don't do that horrible thing to your neighbor.

By not doing something evil you are loving your neighbor.

I may come to this verse later, but now I'm thinking of it right now, so let me share this with you.

In the book of Deuteronomy and Exodus we find several explanations for how the law of God would be applied into particular situations.

And we know that every family had responsibility for taking care of their own, what we'd say in business terms, their own assets, the things that they own that have potential for building wealth.

It talks about this in Proverbs, chapter 27.

Take careful note of them, because who knows what's going to happen tomorrow in terms of wealth.

So be responsible for your own assets, to speak in just generic business terms.

But our responsibility for our assets doesn't end there, because in a community where we are interdependent with each other, I also need to watch out for the wealth building assets of other people in my community.

Not that I'm fully responsible for making their wealth grow, but when their wealth is at risk, I have responsibility.

It says in Deuteronomy chapter 22 I think it is.

If you see your neighbor's farm animal, ox, donkey, sheep, wandering away, what is your responsibility?

Responsibility is to secure that asset, get it back to its owner.

You can't just take it home and say, honey, We're going to have mutton tonight.

We're going to eat like kings tonight for the next couple of days.

But in Exodus 23 Moses goes even farther.

And here's the point to what Jesus was saying, he goes even farther.

If you see your enemy's ox wandering away, What are you supposed to do about that?

You secure that and you get it back to your enemy.

Can you imagine the transformation power that could have on a community if people follow that love principle?

They did something bad to me and I don't, I'm angry towards them.

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Series

Business Managers: Stand Up in the Great Controversy!

Business Managers: Stand Up in the Great Controversy!- Part 2

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Parts

Business Managers: Stand Up in the Great Controversy!- Part 1

1h 15m

Business Managers: Stand Up in the Great Controversy!- Part 2

1h 5m

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