Can I Accept a Job That Requires Me to Miss Some Sundays?

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the work of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

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We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age -old question, can you accept a job that requires you to miss some

02:01

Sundays? Now Tim, as we kick this episode off, what Bible verse do you have related to taking jobs and attendance on Sunday for church?

02:12

Okay, so Hebrews 10, 24 through 25 says, And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

02:27

All right, so tell us how that, I don't see how that relates at all to the conversation, so you'll have to connect the dots for me a little bit there.

02:36

It's a deep mystery. Yeah, no relevance.

02:43

I think for some strange reason, I was thinking that that applied to going to church. When it, let me get, you know,

02:52

I guess when it says not forsaking our own, well, my verse, I'm reading out of LSB, it says not forsaking our own assembly together.

02:59

I guess some might conclude that that might be talking about church, right?

03:05

I would think so, yeah. Yeah, it seems pretty clear. It seems pretty clear overall.

03:12

Yeah, so the word there for not neglecting is, you know, the word episynagogue essentially, but that's just your standard word for meeting together.

03:27

And Hebrew certainly does talk about, you know, the idea of neglecting the assembly, neglecting to meet together in the formal sense of church service.

03:36

So yeah, let us consider how to serve one another for love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, so not neglecting to assemble together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

03:48

So certainly, yeah, this is about as direct of a command as you can get that Christians are responsible to go to church on Sunday.

04:00

But I mean, there's a big case to be made related to a wide variety of passages related to this topic as well.

04:07

Sure, yeah, and especially when you think about even just the nature of the New Testament itself, right?

04:13

What are, I mean, half of the books in the New Testament are written to local churches, and there's not much point in a local church if they're not gathering regularly, right?

04:23

Yeah, so yeah, there's a variety of arguments that you could put forward related to this topic, one of those being that the local church exists.

04:33

So if you were to establish that point that there is such a thing as a local church, there's not just a universal church, that really doesn't go without saying, because for many people, they really only acknowledge some kind of universal

04:46

Bride of Christ and not this concept of the local church. But yeah, all of the letters are written to churches for the most part.

04:56

You have a couple that are written to individuals like the pastoral epistles and John's letter to the elect lady, but for the most part, these are telling you that they are written to churches.

05:11

Jesus writes a series of letters in the book of Revelation to seven churches which are in Asia Minor.

05:17

So there does seem to be some concept of a church which meets at a particular location.

05:24

When you read through 1 Corinthians, you'll find that there's this whole church language that's applied to a church. So when the whole church comes together, and some of you are speaking in tongues, you have passages like which indicate that the church is a whole, which doesn't make any sense if you're just thinking about the church as a universal body.

05:45

So certainly, there's that whole church language in 1 Corinthians as well. In 1 Corinthians, you have like insider -outsider language.

05:53

So that insider -outsider language does also indicate that there is such a thing as a whole like church that has people inside of it, right?

06:05

So if an outsider, Paul says, or an unbeliever enter into your assembly and you're all speaking in tongues, will he not conclude that you're out of your mind, right?

06:15

So you have two categories there, right? The outsider and the unbeliever, meaning

06:21

I don't know how to read outsider language if not in the language of church membership.

06:29

Because if you're just talking about the universal church, the outsider would be the unbeliever by definition.

06:36

Does that make sense? Pete Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jared But you have several different categories. You have the category of the outsider, meaning the person who's not a member, and the category or an unbeliever.

06:45

So you have both of those. So you have the inside -outside language. You have churches that are meeting at particular places.

06:51

So the church that meets at their house or at seaport. There's a seaport that church meets at one passage in scripture.

07:01

So then letters are written to distinct bodies. Those bodies have leaders who are definable.

07:08

Then church members are told to obey their leaders and submit to them for they keep watch over their souls as those who are given account.

07:14

I don't know how you can submit to every church leader who just claims to be a leader without there being some concept of a particular leader you're supposed to submit to.

07:22

So there's that. There's the idea of church discipline. Church discipline does not make sense at a universal level.

07:29

So you're supposed to–local churches are called to not even eat with such people.

07:37

Take the Lord's Supper with them. They're supposed to consider them Gentiles or tax collector. Church discipline doesn't make any sense at the universal level.

07:45

There has to be some kind of local church that governs that. But yeah, there's a variety of arguments along those lines that you can put forward to define the necessity of a local church.

07:56

But then when you get to this passage, yeah, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to epi -synagogue, to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

08:12

Certainly, worshiping God on the Lord's Day is a command. It's something that God expects, the creative universe is defined when

08:22

He desires to be worshiped, when He commands people to worship. And it seems very odd to treat this as some kind of suggestion that He creates on a curve or something like that.

08:34

BD Right. Yeah. So it seems pretty easy to establish precedence for the fact that there is a local church and that local church does need to meet regularly.

08:51

Even in a passage like this, though, a lot of people are going to look at that and say, sure, yes, you should be a part of a local church.

08:59

Yes, you should be there regularly. However, it doesn't tell us how often we should be there.

09:08

So I think that's kind of where, I mean, unfortunately, there are a lot of people that you lose before you get to this step of the conversation in terms of how often.

09:20

There are plenty of people who take great issue with the fact that you have to be in church regularly at all.

09:28

Just being in church more often than you're not in church, and you certainly lose a lot of people there.

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But then, even if you can get them past that, if you can get them to agree, yes, you've got to be in church.

09:47

No, you can't just go to church on Easter and Christmas. You've got to go more than that.

09:52

You do start to lose them when you start to talk about, okay, well, what does that look like year over year, month over month, week over week?

10:02

How do we define that? Because they're going to look at you as you read

10:07

Hebrews chapter 10, and they're going to say, I don't see a number in there. What does that mean, not forsaking the assembly?

10:17

If I'm missing two weeks out of the month, I wouldn't consider that not forsaking.

10:24

I consider not forsaking to be this or that instead. So it feels like a lot of times you're kind of getting into the weeds a little bit more when you're talking about frequency and how often should you be attending church.

10:42

That's definitely a crucial point when you're trying to figure out, well, can I take a job that requires me to miss

10:51

Sundays some of the time, whether that be irregularly or on a fixed schedule?

10:59

And so what would your response be to that kind of pushback? Yeah, there's a variety of responses that a person can make at that point.

11:11

Some of them are difficult to know how to make because people could be approaching this in a wide variety of different postures when they're making these kinds of arguments, but then the kind of argument that you're making is the argument that, yeah, okay, so you're not to forsake the assembly of the saints or not to neglect to meet together as a habit of some.

11:37

They're particularly singling in on the idea of not forsaking the assembly of the saints, and then they're treating that as some kind of final abandonment of church.

11:50

So then basically the logic goes that as long as you show up on a regular basis, whatever that means, then you're doing okay, right?

12:00

Right, right. Just so long as you don't completely and totally utterly forsake the assembly of the saints.

12:07

Yeah, as long as they still remember your name and when you come back, then this type of person might think, hey,

12:14

I'm good then. Yeah, and obviously when you think about that expectation to gather together with the saints on the

12:23

Lord's Day in order to worship him, then kind of reduces to a weird kind of pragmatic consideration to where,

12:31

I mean, in the minds of many people, in the minds of the kind of person who's making that kind of argument, there is no sense of duty to church attendance and God's worship.

12:42

It really is kind of reduced to not like a moral imperative, it's kind of reduced to a suggestion of sorts.

12:53

And God is viewed as the understanding Father in the sky who doesn't want to make unreasonable expectations of people.

13:03

So what ends up happening when people go this direction is they try to argue from extreme scenarios to make laws, so like hard situations don't make good laws, but what they end up doing is they try to argue from difficult cases.

13:25

So let's say you have the flu. Does God want you to go to church if you have the flu? Well, presumably no,

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God doesn't want you to go to church if you have the flu because then you get other people sick. Well, therefore, if there is one conceivable situation where it would be okay to not go to church, then the logic goes

13:44

God isn't therefore commanding you to go at all, like every week, right?

13:51

So that's the way people think about it, which is a very bizarre way to think about it. So it's a very bizarre way to think about it to say, well, if there's some situation that you can come up with where God would be okay with you not going, that therefore means he's not expecting you to go every week, then it just reduces to in their mind just trying to come as much as you feel led to come.

14:17

It's really bizarre. And I mean, that kind of person, basically church attendance at that point becomes a thing for them where they can justify basically any reason for missing.

14:34

So they don't view it as if there's some real expectation to go at all.

14:41

It's more just they'll go if they don't have something better to do. And I mean, that's obviously a very horrible posture to have that you're just going to go to church if you don't have anything else to do.

14:52

And I mean, as a pastor, I mean, those things, it's like if you don't show up, then you don't have the luxury of thinking about it that way.

15:03

You can't just miss every time you have something better to do. You can't miss every time there's a holiday. You can't miss every time that you just want to go on vacation or something.

15:12

You have to carefully plan things like that. So yeah, I think that this is obviously a very bad way to view the proposition.

15:22

So difficult cases don't overturn rules. Sure. And if we're going to talk about the sick scenario and what's happening when you're so sick to the point where you can't get out of bed, what's happening in a scenario like that is not that you are being given permission to violate

15:44

God's standards. You're just too weak to obey God's standards. That's a very different thing, right?

15:51

So it's not like God's saying, well, I'm going to give you a pass because you're sick, right? You got a doctor's excuse, something like that.

15:58

No, I mean, you're just in a situation where you're physically unable to do what God says. And God obviously understands if you're physically unable to do what he says at that point, then that's different than just intentionally not doing what he says.

16:14

Does that make sense? Yeah. It seems, I mean, it's kind of similar to think in my mind, at least to thinking about when you have to call out from work because you're too sick to work, right?

16:25

So, I mean, there's plenty of commands throughout the Bible that tell us we have to work, right?

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Anyone who doesn't work, do not let them eat, work as if unto the

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Lord, those types of things, let your yes BS and your no be no. Meaning, hey, when you took that job, you essentially sold your time to your employer and you entered into that agreement.

16:53

And now from this time to this time, these days of the week, you're going to work for them.

16:58

You're going to give them your time and then they're going to pay you for your time. But everyone knows that,

17:05

I mean, you can't, I mean, you're going to get sick at times. You're going to have funerals or weddings.

17:11

Just all sorts of life circumstance that's going to come up that means there'll be certain times out of the year that you've got to miss for whatever reason that is.

17:21

And I'm not necessarily saying all of the same things that might lead you to miss work for a day or a couple of days or whatever are the same exact reasons you should miss church.

17:34

But it's just to say, we kind of already have this built into our minds and it makes sense, right? You work the majority of the time and there are those exceptions when you can't work for whatever reason.

17:46

And typically, you're going to have sick days built into that understanding that we're all human and we're all going to deal with those.

17:55

And that's just sort of the agreement. But no one ever, when you call out from work, no one ever thinks, hey, this person's choosing not to work.

18:04

We ought not let them eat. Right? Hey, this person's not letting their yes

18:09

BS and their no be no. They're violating God's law right now. We don't think about it that way.

18:17

But then for some reason, it seems like we do think about it when it comes to visiting or not visiting, but attending church regularly.

18:31

Well, it seems like we don't necessarily think about it the same way. It seems like we try to make the argument that, hey,

18:39

I can miss for whatever reason, because I'm still coming sometimes.

18:46

I mean, if you try that with your boss, that's, hey, you've been gone for three weeks in a row, you're going to lose your job.

18:53

Right? And so, it seems like all that to say, seems like we have this sort of mentality built in already for most reasonable people that you're just going to miss sometimes.

19:04

And as long as you're making a reasonable effort to go to your job on a regular basis, as much as you're able to, then no one thinks you're violating any sort of command to work.

19:17

But then it seems like people do try to build in all these excuses that you're talking about, not to express that, yes, there's going to be times where you miss church due to unforeseen circumstances outside of your control, but rather to justify essentially having no expectation when it comes to church attendance.

19:43

Do you agree with that or what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think that we have categories for understanding this kind of dynamic and work would be a good category for understanding this dynamic.

19:57

I don't think work is an exact parallel, but then it at least gives us some kind of category to work with.

20:04

So, I mean, if you were to say, hey, should a Christian go to work every day?

20:10

I would think they should say yes. With no qualification to it, they would just say, yeah, they should.

20:18

Yeah, you should go to work every day. Now, I mean, there's a kind of person who can't handle saying something like that as a generality because what about six days, vacation days, whatever else kind of thing.

20:30

But as a generality, you should be able to say, yeah, obviously, like a Christian should go to work every day.

20:36

That's kind of how it works. Like you're committing to a job, your job requires you to go every day. And that means weekdays and whatever else.

20:45

But I mean, you should understand that concept. But then that concept is built on the principle that work is a real obligation.

20:54

Work is a real obligation. It's not that you have taken upon yourself.

21:01

And so, yes, as a general rule, you can. Now, there are times when you're going to be unable to go to work.

21:07

No one's going to fault you for that. Typically, you have a doctor's excuse. No one's going to fault you for not,

21:13

I mean, unless you're just constantly using that doctor's excuse. I mean, yeah.

21:20

Or you don't have a doctor's excuse. You're just saying you're sick. At a certain point, someone's going to question it. But like if you're legitimately sick, you're legitimately sick.

21:27

At that point, it's not that you're giving yourself permission to not go to work.

21:33

It's just you're looking at someone saying, hey, I'm not able to go, right? I'm not able to go. That's different. In the same way that, yeah,

21:41

I mean, that's what the whole concept of disability means. You are unable to do something. So we have categories of disability.

21:48

Now at work, I mean, everyone has vacation days that you're allowed to take off. And that would add to this conversation.

21:54

Is the church parallel to work in that way? Are vacation days from God's worship allowed?

22:03

And I would say, well, no. CURRY I would say that you may,

22:11

I don't see a biblical category for vacation days from God's worship.

22:17

Now you may, yeah. Let me take a vacation. I need a break, God. I'm a little bit,

22:25

I'm burnt out. I think going to church every week, you say, hey, what are

22:32

Christians actually sacrificing for the sake of? But when the Bible says no one can be my disciple unless they deny themselves, take up their crawls and follow me.

22:41

Going to church every week is the bare minimum of Christian faithfulness. It's an act of allegiance to God.

22:50

It's basically saying, God, you're the most important person in the world to me. And this is the Lord's day. I'm going to go and worship you on the

22:56

Lord's day, as you've commanded me to go worship you. This is me saying you are God and I am not.

23:01

And this is just a small way of me acknowledging your Lordship over my life.

23:07

I mean, I can't imagine the high priest on his day once a year sacrificing for the people saying, well, why don't we just skip it here?

23:18

I'm sure we'll be all right. Need a break. So God's worship.

23:23

Mental health day. My mental health day from this. I'm tired of putting the bells on and going inside and wondering if I'm going to die and the rope, putting the rope around my leg.

23:35

You're asking a lot, God. Surely, surely. Seven out of eight years is okay, right?

23:43

I mean, that's not how it works. God has destroyed people in the

23:48

Old Testament for messing up his worship. He is making a claim that he is the most important reality in the world.

23:56

Even if a person is going to go on a vacation, I think they should go to church somewhere. So I mean,

24:03

I have a category for maybe going on a trip, for an extended trip, but there's nothing to stop you.

24:10

You should be looking at researching churches that you could go to that you could faithfully gather with the saints to worship

24:16

God with. So yeah, I mean, I think that's where the comparison maybe breaks down.

24:22

I don't know that you have vacation days. I don't know that people should think about it that way.

24:28

And I mean, as a pastor, I haven't had the luxury of being able to think about it that way.

24:33

Right. Right. Because if I'm out there, then everything falls apart.

24:39

So. Well, and it seems like part of the issue with this is you're essentially asking the wrong question when it comes to, hey, how often do

24:49

I have to be in attendance at a local church?

24:56

It seems like the better question would be something along the lines of how do

25:03

I make sure I'm there as much as possible, right? Because I think when you look at most

25:11

Christians, at least across the United States, church attendance is kind of almost viewed as a favor that you're doing for the church.

25:24

There's not any sort of obligation to it. It's just like, hey, you're lucky I'm even here right now.

25:30

Even when you read, I mean, the verse you just read, and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembly together.

25:42

When I read that, oh, but it keeps going on as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

25:51

I mean, there's a commandment there, number one, to say like, hey, part of why you're coming is because you have an obligation to the other people that are a part of your local church.

26:04

But then on the flip side of it, they have an obligation to you as well. And if you're asking, hey, how many times can

26:11

I miss and still be faithful to this? It seems like you just don't even have the right attitude towards the purpose behind the, well, at least part of the purpose behind this command.

26:24

Is that right? Yeah. I mean, the whole argument of book of Hebrews is because we have a great high priest who's unable to sympathize with our weakness and who has ascended down from heaven, let us hold fast to our confession.

26:40

All this is put in the context of a warning passage. And it's pretty remarkable when you think about the warning passage itself.

26:47

So Hebrews 10 24, it says, let us consider how to stir up one another for love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

26:57

Then verse 26, for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and the fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

27:09

You know, anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the

27:19

Son of God who refrained the blood of the covenant by which it was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace?

27:25

So I mean, I think these are passages that are strong warning passages that are given. And certainly, yeah, you have obligation first and foremost to God.

27:36

He commands everyone everywhere to worship him. Man is condemned because he says not glorify

27:42

God or give thanks. Then you have secondary responsibilities to one another. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.

27:49

So whatever these are, these are not suggestions, but then you're right. In church upper culture, most people think they're doing

27:55

God a favor. They think they're doing the pastor a favor by coming. They think they're doing fellow church members a favor.

28:01

And mostly what they're looking for is like, what is the church going to do for me? So they're not really approaching this question in any kind of way of integrity at all.

28:11

This just kind of reduces to a suggestion and God's just understanding. He understands people need a break sometimes, that kind of thing.

28:19

And I think there's some, this is put pretty strong warning passage.

28:26

I don't know that I want to go there with it myself, but yeah. So I think in general, related to the topic question, is it okay to take a job that's going to require you to miss some

28:42

Sundays? I would say no, no. I don't think it's okay to intentionally do that.

28:49

So as a generality, yeah, I would say no, no. And I've never been willing to do that myself.

28:57

I've turned down jobs because they require me to work on Sunday. And I've gone into interviews with jobs basically saying, if you're going to make me work this day, then

29:07

I don't want the job, but I'm happy to take the job and I'll be the best employee you'll ever get.

29:16

I've been in those interviews where I said, Hey, I'm not going to work Sunday and I'm not going to work Wednesday. Because we have services on those days.

29:25

So I'm not working Wednesday night or Sunday, but I'll work the other days. So if you want me to have this job, then those are my terms.

29:35

And it's funny. I was in an interview one time with that. There was a guy trying to recruit me for a job and I told him that.

29:41

And he's like, I think we could make that work most of the time.

29:47

But sometimes people call in, so we may have to have you come in occasionally. And I basically kind of looked at him.

29:54

I said, no, you don't understand. I'm not going to come in. If you call me,

29:59

I won't answer the phone. I'm telling you that I will be the best worker you'll ever have on the other days, but I'm not going to work on these days.

30:07

So if you want to hire me, then hire me, but know that I won't answer the phone on those days.

30:15

I'm not saying I'm willing to come in occasionally as long as you make it most of the time.

30:24

And I'm telling you, I'm not going to come in at all, but I still got the job. It was funny. I still got the job even with making my demands.

30:32

So, I mean, there's times where I got the job and times I haven't, where I just said, no, thanks. So I'm not saying anything that I haven't done.

30:40

I have skin in the game, so to speak, but no, I mean, I believe that it's just basic Christian faithfulness, like bare minimum

30:51

Christian faithfulness is that you go to church. Because there's so many commands. You mentioned the responsibilities you have to one another, to serve one another, up to love and good deeds.

31:02

There's 38 one another commandments. You're told to obey your leaders and submit to them for their keeping watch over your souls as those who give an account.

31:09

I don't know how you do that if you don't place yourself under their teaching and basically pick when you're going to come.

31:17

So yeah, I wouldn't take a job if it required me to do that. But a lot of people are, yeah, they really have a hard time with that.

31:24

They almost elevate, and men in particular, because men are made to be providers, that in their mind,

31:31

I think providing becomes way more important than anything else.

31:40

They're willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of a job. And so a lot of Christians, they basically have elevated that command to be more important than basically all the other ones and put them in opposition to each other.

31:54

But it's kind of absurd when you think about it, because everyone knows that, or they should know that girls got to eat is not a good reason to be a prostitute, right?

32:10

So come on. There are jobs you can take that are illicit.

32:17

But I think what happens in their mind is as long as the job itself is not formally illicit, it require you to– if the job itself is neutral, like the work that you perform, then they believe that it's– they put it in like a work of necessity kind of category.

32:40

But the issue is a job can require you to commit sins of commission or sins of omission.

32:46

And so, yeah, your job may be formally okay, but if it's going to require you to commit sins of omission, then it's not okay.

32:54

Get a different job. And you're not in a place right now in history where there's not other jobs you can get.

33:00

So, yeah. I would say as a generality, no. No, you shouldn't take that kind of job.

33:06

Now, what do you do with– okay, so let's run through a scenario. Let's take the really– like you were saying earlier, let's take the really hard example and then try and quote -unquote make a rule out of that,

33:19

I guess, or at least get in front of the argument because we know people are probably going to make it. And there's probably people asking themselves this question, what do

33:29

I do with this situation? What do you do with the people who are working jobs that are essentially necessary jobs?

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So, think about the doctor or the nurse that works in the hospital.

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It's not like all those patients go home on Sunday and then they come back Monday, right?

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Someone's got to take care of them, especially in life -threatening situations.

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So, what do you do with the Christian– the person who they take that job, they spent their whole life preparing for that job, they have it now, then they come to Christ and they're confronted with these passages that we've gone through already about church attendance and everything related to that.

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And they're asking themselves, well, what do I do? Because I've spent presumably hundreds of thousands of dollars or at least tens of thousands of dollars getting the education necessary to do a job like this.

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This is what they expect of everyone who works this type of job typically, but I realize that there is this command here to not neglect the gathering that I have certain responsibilities to the other people in my church.

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What do I do in this scenario? Yeah, I think there are clearly some categories for duties of necessity, duties of mercy.

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So, I think those kinds of categories exist. Healthcare workers probably can be put in those kinds of categories in terms of the necessity of them to preserve life.

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I mean, at the same time, I know people who are involved in those kinds of fields who arrange affairs in such a way that they don't have to make those kinds of commitments as well.

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So, I'm not saying that that's necessarily common, but I think

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I wouldn't just assume that the first job you apply for is the only job.

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Sure, yeah. If that makes sense. So, you may get a lot more freedom if you do the game that I told you to do, and it's not entirely clear to me that every single industry is completely not open to that, because I did that in industries that weren't open to that.

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Sure. I've done this in industries, which basically, this was abnormal, unexpected.

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They didn't make these kinds of allowances for everyone, but they did realize that they were going to get a good worker with me.

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So, there's that. So, yeah, I have a category for healthcare workers doing a work of necessity.

36:25

And I understand that, yeah, I mean, if it's something good that needs to be done, simply allowing unbelievers to do it isn't a wonderful solution or answer.

36:37

At the same time, there are obviously industries like that, like Chick -fil -A is a great example of an industry that you would say, hey, isn't food service a necessity?

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It's like, well, no, it's not. So, you have industries like that where they've determined to not be open, and that was not uncommon.

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So, it used to be, you lived in a society where all the businesses closed. Now they're all open, right?

37:11

They're all open now. So, you can remake what we used to have normal again, if people would just have spines.

37:18

So, what kind of industry is it? Well, most industries that we're in are not like necessity, right?

37:25

Works of necessity, works of mercy. So, most industries aren't like that.

37:33

Fast food service is not a work of necessity, work of mercy. Some people might disagree with you in our modern society.

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I understand that some people don't know how to cook anymore, but they're not going to die if they go one meal without eating.

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So, yeah, I mean, I have a category for, I mean, there are those kinds of jobs for sure. Every job is not those kinds of jobs.

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And you should think long and hard about, I mean, you have so many options right now. There are very few people who are painted into this corner.

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When you get painted in this corner is because you're willingly painted in this corner. You're not in a place where,

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I mean, the vast majority of people are not in some place where they have a skill that is going to require them to do these things.

38:24

So, yeah. So, my last question is sort of a similar question in some ways.

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How would you counsel the person who they have recently for whatever reason been convicted of this idea that, hey,

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I need to be regularly attending church as much as I possibly can. If my job is preventing me from doing that,

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I need to find a new job that will not prevent me from gathering with my brothers and sisters.

39:00

So, they're in complete agreement with you. However, let's say that's the kind of person who has already taken on a lot of responsibility where switching jobs is not as easy as it would be for like an 18 -year -old with no one to really worry about but themselves.

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I'm specifically thinking of the person who's like, hey, I'm married. I've got a kid or two or three kids or something like that that I've got to take care of at the same time.

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So, what do I do? Do I take the job that pays significantly less and potentially

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I won't be able to really sufficiently provide for my family so that I can obey the commands around church attendance better right now?

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Or would you counsel that person to say, hey, it's okay to start making progress towards a job that is going to enable you to do that.

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But it's okay if that takes a year, two, three years. I'm thinking especially, hey, if I need to go get education for a job that's going to better suit my needs there.

40:16

Maybe I never went and got a degree. And so, I just kind of took the job that I could get and I kind of rose through the ranks that way, not really thinking about Sundays and Wednesday nights necessarily.

40:28

Now that I'm thinking that way, I need to find a better job. I need to go get a degree so that I can have that type of job more readily available to me.

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How would you counsel that kind of person who's thinking, is it better to just find whatever

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I can get now even if I might not be able to really provide the way that I know

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I need to so that we can be with our church regularly? Or is it better to say, hey, we're going to work towards that.

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It's going to take a couple of years to get there, but we're going to, Lord willing, we're going to get there.

41:05

We're going to do the best that we can and do everything in our power to make sure we get there, but it's going to take a couple of years maybe in an extreme scenario,

41:16

I guess. Yeah, it's very hard for me to interact with questions along these lines considering my background.

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Meaning I went to school, I got an undergraduate in Bible, and then

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I got after that undergraduate in Bible, I got an MDiv with biblical counseling emphasis.

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So I have two Bible degrees essentially. And immediately after I got out of seminary, I was a young person looking at,

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I was a fairly young person getting out of seminary still, younger than probably I should be.

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So I was in my late 20s at that point without any kind of career plan.

41:58

And part of that was intentional because I didn't want to have a backup plan. I look back on that, I think that's pretty foolish way to approach going to seminary, but that's what

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I did. I didn't have a backup plan. I didn't have any skills. I got a Bible undergrad, and then

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I went. I didn't have any other skills besides Bible skills. So I got my

42:17

Bible undergrad, and then I did my seminary degree after that. So I had a master's degree and undergraduate degree in Bible.

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And that basically tells everyone that I'm not a serious employee, if that makes sense.

42:36

I'm not going to want to be there long -term. I'm obviously trained to be a pastor. So that put a big red flag on my head, basically saying, don't give this guy this job.

42:46

He's going to leave as soon as a church shop comes open. So I was looking at church jobs at the time, and all the church jobs are kind of the funny, we want a dynamic pastor with 10 years of pastoral experience, with a compelling vision and all that, who is going to bring growth while not changing anything that we're doing.

43:07

So it's like, yeah, I don't understand why you think that you're going to get a pastor who has been at his church for 10 years, and you're going to pay him $30 ,000 a year salary.

43:20

And you want all these things. I mean, the church jobs were kind of funny to me. But what's interesting about that is

43:26

I'm coming from that kind of environment, and it took me a while to find my first pastor job because I was still pretty young.

43:36

I didn't have anything to put on the resume as far as pastoral, very little to put on the resume.

43:42

I had some, but little to put on the resume with pastoral experience. A lot of people wanted pastoral experience at that point.

43:49

So I mean, I had to take low -skill, blue -collar jobs that I could have said, hey, these are beneath my dignity to take.

44:02

But I never really thought about that in that way. So I took a job delivering appliances, got up at four in the morning and worked till six or seven at night.

44:14

I did that in order to put food on the table. And I didn't have to work Sunday. I didn't even have to work

44:20

Wednesday night. I found a job that, I mean, there's plenty of jobs out there for people with zero skills.

44:26

So I had zero skills other than exegesis skills, counseling skills that I don't feel good about charging people for.

44:34

So yeah, I took that job and I did that job to the glory of God. I worked at, I did granite countertop templates.

44:41

That's another job that didn't require any kind of education, but would allow me to essentially listen to the

44:49

Bible while I was at my job. I did a lot of different jobs during times like that, times where a church didn't have enough money to pay me that I was hired at.

44:59

So I did that while my wife was a stay -at -home mom, providing the whole income to our family.

45:11

So it's very difficult for me to think about these hypothetical scenarios where people are telling me that this is impossible because they don't have the things that were working against me.

45:26

So there's any number of jobs I could have got at that time. I applied for pest control jobs, things like that.

45:33

And they wouldn't hire me because they saw a Bible degree and they thought this guy doesn't want to be here long -term.

45:40

And they were probably right, but you can make good money doing these kinds of jobs.

45:47

If you don't think that you deserve some kind of white collar job or whatever, you can make decent money.

45:54

There's a career path there. If you're willing to do hard physical labor, for sure.

46:02

So they'll pay people that they think will stick around and be good workers and everything else.

46:09

So yeah, it's hard to imagine these kinds of scenarios where people––this is a decision that people make.

46:16

It's a decision. If you make a decision to say, I'm not going to take this job. I'm going to trust in the

46:21

Lord with all my heart, lean not on my own understanding and all my ways, acknowledge Him, let Him direct my path.

46:27

It's just that simple. It's just that simple. It's just a simple decision you make to say, hey,

46:32

I'm just going to do what God says and let Him worry about it. And it's the most safe place you can be in the world is just to say that, all right,

46:40

God, I look at your priorities. I'm going to obey them. I'm not going to allow people to tempt me into sin.

46:47

I'm just going to obey your priorities and let you worry about––you clothe the grass, the field, you feed the birds, the air, you can feed me.

46:56

And I've found that God has always provided for me in one way or another, for my whole family in one way or another.

47:01

We haven't had as much as other people have had. It's been a struggle in certain ways. But He's always taken care of everything we need, sometimes in remarkable ways.

47:13

But it is what it is. The issue is when

47:19

I've seen people make these kinds of decisions, in case after case after case, in their mind, they know that they'll fold the moment any pressure is put on them.

47:30

And so they're planning to fail in those situations. So they don't go into these situations confidently saying, no,

47:36

I'm just not going to take it. They go into the situation feeling like they must take it or else that could be okay.

47:43

So, yeah, I don't really have a category for the person just spending three years trying to work towards a new skill, disobeying

47:50

God the whole time. I just start obeying Him today. Okay. All right.

47:56

Fair enough. I think that's a good place for us to wrap up the conversation on. So thank you,

48:02

Tim, for answering all my questions related to that and talking us through the biblical perspective on this and what exactly are

48:12

God's priorities. And when we look at the church as a whole, especially the

48:18

American church, you do kind of find yourself wondering, hey, do we actually have the same priorities that God has expressed to us in terms of what

48:29

He has and what we should have as we pursue holiness and obedience towards His command?

48:37

So thank you for walking us through that. We appreciate all you guys who are listening to the episodes who support us week in and week out.

48:45

And our hope is that these are beneficial for you and that we can challenge you in certain ways to pursue faithfulness as much as possible.

48:54

And by answering these questions that a lot of people just don't want to talk about because they're uncomfortable or society at large does not agree with the biblical position in general.

49:08

And so our hope is that these are edifying to you guys and spur you guys on to obedience so that you can glorify

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God in your own life. So we thank all you guys for listening.

49:23

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49:30

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49:36

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49:48

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49:56

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50:19

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50:49

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51:01

Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.