The Family Business - Philippians 1: 3-6 Series

There's only one story about Jesus when he was a child. He was twelve years old at the time and he got separated from the group. The parents were anxious, the Bible said, and so they go and they find him. And here's what Jesus said. He said to them, “Why are you looking for me? Don't you know that I need to be about my Father's business?” Well that's interesting. Because Jesus had two different roles that He played in, I think like us too. He was a son, but He's also about His Father's business, the family business. He's about the family business and He's a son at the same time. You know, I would suggest that we also have those different kinds of roles in our life. When you introduce yourself to someone, what do you say? I'm an accountant, or I'm a lawyer, or I'm an engineer. I think those are things that we do. We tell people what our occupation is. But we have a vocation that's bigger than that that helps people understand who we are. And if we have opportunity, we would share with them, “Oh my real passion in life is to serve Jesus.” Sometimes we have an opportunity to do that, sometimes not. But the point is, Jesus is saying here, I'm about my Father's business. I have another vocation here that's not just about being a son.

My dad used to enjoy being in conversations with people and try to bring evangelism right into that initial part of the conversation. He would be on an airplane flying or he'd be at a doctor's office waiting and he would say to someone, “What do you do?” They would say, “I'm an accountant or a lawyer, engineer,” and he would say, “Oh, me too.” That's what he always would say. “Me too.” And then he’d think about a way to tie it into the gospel somehow.

Somebody says, “I’m an accountant.”

“Oh,” he says, “Me too.”

“Oh you are?”

“Yes,” he says, “I try to help people see that they can't get out of debt by themselves. They can't balance the books. They need Jesus in their lives.”

Or they'd say, “I’m a lawyer.”

He’d say, “Oh I’m a lawyer too.”

“Oh you are?”

“Yes, I'm on the defense side. I'm always defending the gospel of Jesus Christ, help people understand what that's all about.”

Or they'd say, “I'm an engineer.”

He’d say, “Oh me too.”

“Oh, you are? What kind of an engineer are you?”

“Well engineers fix things. And I know that there's some things in life that can't be fixed except with Jesus Christ. So let me share with you about that.”

He was continually tying this idea of occupation and vocation together. I would suggest that there's a way in which we need to view ourselves primarily in our identity as being part of the Father's business, the family business that God has established.

Jesus, later in His life, gave us His secret to success while He was on earth when they asked Him, “Why are you healing this man on the Sabbath?” and they're accusing Him in John 5. Jesus says, “The Father is working and I only work where I see the Father working.” Oh man, that is the secret to the success. Not just my success, your success. You want to work where the Father is working. That means that Calvary Chapel, I want to see where God is working. Because where God is working, that's where I want to be. You’re just kind of tapping into what God's already doing somewhere. That's where the excitement is, where God is working already. If you're a dad, then you want to be working in the part of your child's life where the Lord is already working. If you're a husband or a wife, you want to participate in your mate’s life in a way that God is working because then you'll have success.

So Jesus uses this idea of business and this idea of work to describe our vocation as well. He says about us – “I want you to believe in the word I sent so that you can do greater works than these.” Works in business. Now those two words we don't usually associate with the Christian life. Because business and work, they tend to be commercialized. Talk about money, you know, trying to sell something to someone. And so there's parts of those words we don't really like, but Jesus used them. I think that the idea here of this understanding our position in God as this being part of the family business is strategic.

I think we take that whole idea and we bring it now into Philippians 1:3-6. So if you have your little workbook that you can take notes in, then you can focus in on those verses. If you don't have one of those workbooks, there are some at the information table there for you to carry back and forth, leave at home and take notes in. This is a great little tool for you.