Sermon Notes: Graduate Sunday 2025

It is an accomplishment to run the gauntlet of education. Well done!

Your preparation has a divine, holy, eternal, and fulfilling purpose.

God created us to work, and he calls us to work.

The word “vocation” is defined as “a strong suitability for a career”. The etymology of “vocation” identifies the word as Latin and coming from the Latin root “vocare” (vo-car-ee) and “vocatio” (vo-cat-eeo) which means “to call”. In other words, the modern definition of “vocation” being a “strong suitability to a career” is defined further with its root meaning of “calling”.

Our calling is our suitability to a particular kind of work. Vocation, calling, is not ministry.

Hang with me. Vocation is deeper and more precious than that. There’s nothing wrong with “ministry”, there is a biblical place for full-time ministry, but we don’t have to call our vocations “ministry” to somehow redeem what we do well to earn income. Vocation is already holy. Vocation is holy because it is truly a “calling”. The question for the world that does not bow the knee in faith to Jesus is, who do you think called you to your skill set? Of course, they might answer that question by saying it has evolved, or the universe set that up.

We know better. We know who the Creator is. Vocations belong to Jesus, and they are his natural framework of creation that make up the domains of ordered society and are the rails on which global evangelization run.

But we’ve somehow divorced creation and its vocations from the church and somehow tagged work as “secular” and opposite of church work which we think of as “sacred”. That whole line of thinking is a subtle dark teaching from the elemental spirits that have influenced Christian tradition that is empty and deceptive and not according to Christ.

The only “ministry” is the local church, and it is not a “calling”. 1 Timothy 3:1-7 defines the role of elder as a noble desire, and sometimes the elder with a noble desire may be required to give full-time commitment to the ministry as they exit their vocation to do that work. There is Levitical and New Testament precedent for that. That is what I did in 2016. 2001-2016 was vocation plus ministry. 2016, with the leading of our elders, was a transition from vocation to full-time ministry.

“Calling”, vocations, are what God gives a person when he knits that human together in womb to be part of his glorious work of maximizing creation. How much more when those humans receive the good news and are transformed and connected to the local church in subduing and maximizing creation as they make disciples?

What you have done in getting through the education process has prepared you for your calling.

Let’s read about the end result of the church engaging their diverse vocational callings in the domains of creation as the means of seeing his kingdom come. Revelation 21:22-27, let’s stand and read it together.

Revelation 20 and 21 captures the Lord’s judgment of the Serpent Dragon, the wild final phase of the transformation of creation in the removal of the separation between the seen and unseen, and the judgment of all those who delighted in the reign of the Serpent Dragon as they are cast into the lake of fire forever.

John gets to see and capture what is going to happen when the unseen becomes the seen. When faith becomes sight.

Revelation 21 also captures in a future glimpse the redemption of the nations in the eternal kingdom as they bring their production of the renewed creation into the capital city to worship the Lord.

The fact that the nations are still distinct and producing is beautiful. It indicates to us that what we are doing now in our vocations is not a wasted work, but a foretaste of what is coming when the hindrances of vocation are removed. Remember, the work of subduing and maximizing creation was a pre-fall glory of our co-regency with God. Why would it be taken away in the restoration of all things?

Revelation 21 is where we are going as the church. God started this in Eden. It was broken and hindered in the rebellion. God set about restoring it. Isaiah prophesied about its fulfillment. Jesus purchased its fulfillment. Jesus saved us for seizing it by preaching the gospel and making disciples and redeeming every domain of creation. Jesus has empowered us to work toward it with the help of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has promised to return and bring it to completion with us and for us.

It’s going to happen, and we get to participate vocationally in it.

Let’s go back to the beginning in Genesis and see it.

God has no deficiency in himself that he has to create heavenly beings and human image-bearers to do something he can’t do. He has no need of a council of heavenly beings to carry out his will, but he chooses to use such a council (1 Kings 22; Job 1).

God has no need of humans to be co-regents of his creation, yet he delights in creating us to represent him and get after the work in all of creation’s domains to maximize the good and untamed earth’s potential in everything from the matter of the universe itself to the creatures that inhabit it.

This is important, so hang with me. Eden was not the whole earth. Eden was a garden specifically planted by God on earth.

Genesis 1 and 2 are not intended to be chronological. Genesis 2:8-15, where Eve does not yet exist, comes after the creation mandate of Genesis 1:26-28 that was given to Adam and Eve together. So, it should be obvious Moses’ intent is not chronology.

In Genesis 2 we learn Eden was located on earth in the east in the geographical location of 4 specific rivers, and Adam was put in it to maintain God’s garden and discover he needs a helper fit for him. Genesis 2 is home base and discovery.

In Genesis 1, God gives the creation mandate to Adam and Eve. Genesis 1 is mission and mandate for the family.

So, God’s perfect garden was a created place on the earth, and from there Adam and Eve were to have a home and discover all the good they need to get after the mission together. “What they (Genesis 1 and 2)[1] reveal is that man’s original task was to care for the garden where he lived (Gen. 2). After he gets a partner (Gen. 1), God says to both of them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over its creatures.”[2]

Therefore, we can safely say that Eden is the garden planted by God and home for Adam, and soon, Eve and their children. The rest of the earth is good and suitable for living, but it is not Eden. It needs to be tamed and maximized. The rest of creation is alive and wild and needs God’s care, so he created Adam and Eve specifically for this work of cultivating all of creation as his co-regents as they learn from and venture out of Eden.

The distinction between Eden and the rest of the earth prepares us to understand the mission of vocations in the domains of creation, introduces us to the kingdom of God epitomized in Eden, and the distinction prepares us for the prayer Jesus teaches us to pray to make his kingdom come and will be done on earth as in heaven.

Before the rebellion it was “on earth as in Eden”.  

Adam and Eve’s task is to make the rest of creation after the blueprint of Eden. The rest of the earth like in Eden.

Can you see what the Lord is doing with Moses? On earth as on the mountain. God is working to restore a replica of Eden in the tabernacle where his will is done to teach them how to replicate his will in the Promised Land and then the rest of creation. God is doing through Moses what he was doing with Adam and Eve in Eden.

So, when Jesus comes and saves sinners, sends the Spirit and tabernacles among us in the creation of the church. The church is Eden restored, the kingdom of God as first-fruits, the kingdom of heaven, and what we are to replicate is the reign and rule of Jesus in the rest of the creation just like in the church.

So, Jesus taught us to pray, “on earth as in heaven.”

The church does this by engaging the vocational domains of society, making disciples, baptizing, teaching, and multiplying churches in every domain in creation among all nations.

I don’t know how to make it any clearer than that. We attempt to summarize all of that in a vision statement, a strategic initiative, and a spiritual DNA to fuel it:

For the glory of God disciple the nations by being and producing radical followers of Jesus Christ. Radical life is Up/In/Out in all domains of society. The DNA that fuels that vision and strategy is KDSC.

What are we going to do with this truth and our educations brought in line with this truth?

Application

TRC, commit to training our children and students to think about vocational domains and their vocational calling from God for those domains.

Let’s train our children with the good news and a vision for the good news redeeming all of creation through God’s integrated framework of vocational domains.

This is how we multiply the Great Commission work force. This is how we answer the question: What if the whole church were the missionary?

We must start when our children are small noticing what they are naturally drawn to that is holy and good, and we set about encouraging the growth of that skill. Do this at home, in RK, in Student Ministry, in RL Groups, and in other times you are investing in each other’s lives in church membership.

We seriously have to think deeply about education and how we prepare our students for the mission of “on earth as in heaven”.

Speak words of life by acknowledging the good vocational skills we see in our littles.

Don’t demean any good and holy discipline.

This practice is rooted in Psalm 139 and the belief that every child is skillfully put together by the All-Wise Creator Jesus for his mission in creation.

Let’s discover that and name it together.

We’ve been given the holy work of subduing creation, and part of that is discovering and naming, like Adam. So, when we discover good vocation in our kids, call it out. Affirm it.

Don’t leave your vocation for “ministry”.

There is a place for you to leave your vocation for eldership in a local church that requires full-time dedication if you meet the criteria the Bible gives. That’s biblical.

But don’t believe the false argument that your vocation is secular, and church work is sacred.

God uniquely wired you for vocation. Thus, he told Jeremiah that before he was formed in his mother’s womb the Lord knew him and appointed him to a task. Your vocation is your calling, and it’s holy because it is God who put you together for that.

It becomes a travesty when we replace discovery of our vocational skill set for blindly going to college to rack up debt for a degree that is worthless.

We have to fight as the kingdom of God in the local church to get ourselves to a place where vocations are rightly understood as holy and God’s means of completing the Great Commission.

Don’t give up on innovating that into an actual tactical work in local and global engagement. We are actually working on that.

What if the whole church were the missionary? Right!

In our vocational engagement, don’t hurt when you help.

When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert is a foundational resource for the Christian as we engage the world through our vocational domains. It addresses poverty and our engagement with it specifically, and it’s a good framework for helping to engage other issues as well and how to disrupt broken and dark systems.

(1) Understand What the Issue Is.

In the case of poverty, it is not just a lack of material goods. Poverty is rooted in broken relationships: Broken relationship with God. Broken relationship with self. Broken relationship with others. Broken relationship with creation.

We often define poverty materially, but the poor often describe it as shame, inferiority, and powerlessness.

(2) Recognize that Helping Can Hurt.

Well-intentioned aid, especially material handouts, can reinforce a cycle of dependency, damage a human being’s dignity, and disempower folks.

“Doing for” instead of “doing with” undermines people’s God-given capacity to steward their own resources and decisions.

(3) Differentiate Between the Types of Help.

Relief: Immediate aid in crisis (food, shelter). We should use relief sparingly and appropriately.

Rehabilitation: Working with people to restore them to pre-crisis conditions. Rehabilitation restores mankind to their image-bearing dignity as workers, creators.

Development: This is ongoing transformation that moves people or communities to greater flourishing. Flourishing as God created us to flourish through dignified creation should be the long-term goal.

(4) Focus on Participation, Not Prescription.

We should not assume to know what people need.

Engage people and communities as active participants, not passive recipients.

(5) Realize We Are All Broken and in the Process of Being Restored.

We need to recognize both parties, the helper and the one being assisted, need healing and transformation.

Recognize mutual brokenness promotes humility, not superiority.

(6) Build Systems That Empower.

Good intentions aren’t enough. We have to build systems that foster dignity, responsibility, and capacity.

Support microfinance, job training, education, local business, and community development.

(7) Recognize that Engaging the World for Gospel Transformation is a Long-Term Commitment.

Effective domain engagement is slow, relational, and costly personally and eventually financially.

Walk with people over time rather than trying to implement quick fixes.

[1] Parenthesis mine.

[2] Michael Heiser, “The Unseen Realm”, p. 50.