Why Work Matters
Notes
Transcript
NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
Engagement
Everyone here is probably familiar with the acronym “TGIF” which stands for…[wait for answers]
Thank God It’s Friday
That’s a pretty common sentiment in our culture - in some cases even for those of you who are no longer in the work force. In our culture, we have largely developed this mindset that work or school or other obligations we have are something to be endured so that we can make it to the weekend, and then we can really live.
Tension
On average, Americans spend 90,000 hours working over their lifetime. And as we’re going to discover over the next four weeks, God does not want us to view something that is such a significant part of our lives as something to just be endured so that we can get on with the rest of our lives. The series that we’ll begin this morning is titled “Thank God It’s Monday” and my goal over the next four weeks is to help all of us understand our work from God’s perspective because that is the only way that we can honestly say those words.
One of the dangers of this topic is that some of you who might not currently be working in a paying job is that you’ll be tempted to tune me out for the next four weeks. But as we’ll see this morning and throughout this series, the Biblical definition of work is much broader than that.
So if you’re a student, this series applies to you because God considers what you do in school to be your work.
If you’re a stay at home mom, this applies because raising your children definitely fits within the Biblical definition of work.
Even if you’re retired, your volunteer work or your hobbies or even the time you spend investing in the lives of your grandchildren and great grandchildren is included in the scope of Biblical work.
So this series is going to be very relevant to all of us, regardless of what our work might look like.
A few years ago Business News Daily published a list of “Ten Dream Jobs You Won’t Believe Actually Exist”. Among the jobs included on their list were:
Lego professor at the University of Cambridge
Water slide tester. I’m sorry, but as soon as I can find one of those jobs you will have to look for a new pastor.
An ice cream flavor guru at Ben and Jerry’s. That is also a job that I would jump at.
Chocolate taster. That would be the perfect job for my wife.
Fortune cookie writer. Seems to me that it would be pretty hard not to excel at that job given what I’ve seen pass for fortunes when we’ve gone out for Chinese food recently.
My guess is that right now some of you are thinking that if you just had one of those jobs you could honestly say “Thank God It’s Monday” every Monday morning. But what I’m hoping to do over the next four weeks is to help you genuinely have that mindset even if you job isn’t quite that dreamy.
This morning we’re going to go all the way back to the very beginning of work in the Bible, which is found, not surprisingly, in the first two chapters of Genesis. So this morning you’ll want to have your Bibles open to the first two chapters of Genesis since I am going to kind of skip around a little.
Let me say right up front that today’s message is going to focus a lot on developing a proper mindset about work, so it may seem more theoretical than practical. But I’m convinced that without having the proper mindset about our work, nothing else we’ll learn over the next four weeks is really going to help you be satisfied and successful in your work.
Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of Christians who don’t honestly feel like their work matters to God - that it’s just “secular” and not “spiritual”. As we’ve talked about before, there are many Christians who view their life here on earth to be nothing more than a time to be endured while they await “going to heaven”. But did you realize that all of us who are disciples of Jesus will actually be working for eternity?
The Bible begins with an account of the creation of this physical world that we live in. And it ends with a description of how this world is going to be remade into a physical place where we will spend eternity. And there is some pretty good evidence that during that existence, we will all have some kind of work to do in that eternal kingdom. So if the Bible begins and ends with a physical world in which God works and He calls us to work alongside Him, then our work must matter to God.
As you may be aware, there are some people who claim that there are contradictions between chapter 1 and chapter 2 of Genesis and therefore the entire Bible is unreliable. Obviously we don’t have time to address that issue in any kind of detail this morning, but what I will say is that those two chapters are approaching creation from two different perspectives. Chapter 1 gives us an overview of the creation process and then in chapter 2 we have a “flashback” where we are give some more details about certain aspects of that creation process. We’ll certainly see that this morning as we see how work is addressed from a different perspective in each of those chapters:
“Work” in Genesis 1 and 2:
Genesis 1 - God’s “work” as the model for man’s work
I don’t think any of us would argue that creating a world is work. For God it was not difficult at all - He merely spoke the world into being. But it was nonetheless work. That is confirmed at the beginning of chapter 2:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Notice that three times in these three verses that the Bible claims that what God did in creating this world was work. And we’ll see that even more clearly when we come back to chapter 2 again in a bit and see God sculpting human bodies and planting a garden and an orchard. So we see right away that work has value because God is a worker. And we see in the rest of the Bible that God did not cease to be a worker once the creation was finished. God didn’t just wind up the world and leave it to run on it’s own. God continues to work by being actively involved in the operation of His creation on a daily basis.
We also see in Genesis 1 that God’s work is to be the model for man’s work:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
While all of God’s creation manifests God’s glory and power, only humans are created in His image. Obviously that does not mean that we are exactly like God, but we are created to work in the material world in a manner that is consistent with the way that God works. That means that our work also has intrinsic value because we are to work in the same manner that God works.
Genesis 2 - God equips Adam and Eve for work
In chapter 2 we learn how God equips Adam and Eve to work as they begin their life in the garden. What we learn there puts some meat on the skeleton that we find in chapter 1. In chapter 2 we will find the same elements of human work that we find in chapter 1, but with some more practical instruction.
Although they don’t necessarily appear in the same order in each chapter, both chapter 1 and chapter 2 contain the same...
FIVE ELEMENTS OF BIBLICAL WORK
FIVE ELEMENTS OF BIBLICAL WORK
Relationship
Relationship
Let’s go back to verse 26 of chapter 1 again:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
We see here that God is inherently relational. The noun translated “God” is a plural noun and you’ll also notice the plural pronouns “us” and “our”. This is the first place in the Bible where we see the concept of the Trinity revealed - the idea of a God who is one, but who exists in three separate and unique persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - who exist in a perfect relationship.
And since we are made in God’s image, we are relational as well. That is clearly implied in verse 27 where we learn that God created man “male and female”. We were created to be in relationship with our Creator and with our fellow creatures.
We see the practical consequences of that idea in chapter 2:
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Up until now, God has pronounced His creation “good” or “very good”. But it was “not good” for the man to be alone. So God creates a “helper” from Adam’s flesh and bone. When God calls Eve a “helper” He is not in any way implying that she is inferior to Adam in any way or that her work is less important than his. In fact, elsewhere in the Old Testament God is described as being our “helper” using that that same Hebrew word. Eve was created by God to be Adam’s partner and co-worker in tending the garden.
This means that relationships are an integral part of our work. God has placed us into work situations where we have opportunities to develop relationships with our bosses, our co-workers, our suppliers, and our customers in which we can love them with the love of Jesus. As we saw in Philippians, we do that by considering their needs ahead of our own.
Dominion
Dominion
We’ve already seen this word in verse 26 and it appears again in verse 28 where God blessed Adam and Eve and gave them a command to subdue and have dominion over His creation:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Another way to describe this aspect of work would be to say that God desires for us to be good stewards of His creation. Everything in this world belongs to God because He created it. But He has given us the responsibility of subduing and having dominion over that creation in a manner that will accomplish His purposes. As we’ll see in a moment, that creation is intended to meet our needs, but our stewardship of the creation is not to be primarily for my personal benefit.
Dominion does not mean that we have a license to abuse the creation that God has entrusted to our care. We need to view God’s creation with the same love and affection that God has for it and that means that while we harvest and use the resources that God has provided, we also do that in a manner that preserves and protects the creation. No doubt, there are those in our culture who have taken that idea to such an extreme that they essentially worship the creation rather than the Creator, and I am certainly not advocating that here. But that does not mean we should go to the other extreme and abuse the dominion that we have been given by God.
For Adam, that dominion began with his working and keeping the garden:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
As Adam and Eve worked in the garden, that was intended by God to give joy and fulfilment to them as they worked side by side with each other and with God to bring even more fruitfulness to that which God had created. Unfortunately, sin messed that up, but it does not mean that God doesn’t still want us to exercise our dominion in a way that enhances His creation rather than destroy it.
Fruitfulness
Fruitfulness
We’ve already seen the command to “be fruitful”:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Again we see that God, who could have created everything imaginable, chose instead to create humans to work alongside Him to continue the creative process. There are two kinds of creative work that are carried out here in Genesis:
There is physical work, like gardening
There is intellectual work, like naming the animals
Both are fruitful. or creative, processes that are carried out by man in order to continue the work of creation as God’s co-workers. That fruitful work gives rise to physical products like this stool I’m sitting on, and it also creates beautiful works of music and art and services that benefit others.
In Genesis 2, we see how God further equips Adam to be fruitful.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Adam is placed by God into the garden so that his work will bear fruit. The verb “work” in this verse is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to describe the worship of God. The verb “keep” is used frequently throughout the Old Testament in connection with obeying God’s commandments. So we learn here that our work, when it produces fruit that is consistent with God’s purposes, is actually worship.
Provision
Provision
Unlike us, God has no needs. But we do. And we see here in Genesis that God has made provision for those needs in His creation:
And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.
Notice the phrase “I have given you...” God provided everything that Adam and Eve needed to live - sunlight, oxygen, water, and the plants and trees that provided food for them. And just like Adam and Eve, we, too. are dependent on God to meet our needs. And the more we acknowledge that, the more likely our work will be done in a way that brings glory to God.
In Genesis 2, we get some more detail on how God provides for us:
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
When God created the earth, He supplied it with resources that are designed to meet our needs. He prepared the earth to be productive when we work. He is the one who originally planted the garden. He created the water and the nutrients that are needed to make the plants grow and produce fruit and reproduce. And then God placed Adam in the middle of that creation to utilize those resources in a way that they would supply his needs.
If you think about it, everything on this earth that we use to meet our needs was put there by God. Even when a pharmaceutical company puts together different elements to create a new drug, they are working with the same matter and energy that existed when God created the world.
Limits
Limits
Once the work of creation was done, God voluntarily placed a limit on His work as an example for us:
And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Obviously God did not need to rest because He was tired. He did that as a model for us, because we do need the rest. But even beyond our need for physical rest, when we take one day off out of seven to rest from our work, we acknowledge that our life is not defined by our work and we demonstrate our faith in God’s ability and willingness to provide for our needs. Although we don’t have time to dig into this idea deeper today, it is so important that I devoted two messages to it earlier this year in our “Rhythms of Grace” sermon series. If this is an area where you struggle or you’d just like to learn more, I encourage you to go back and listen to or watch those messages.
In the garden, God placed some further limitations on Adam and Eve’s work:
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
There is a lot of speculation about why God would put a tree in the garden that wasn’t available to Adam and Eve. But in relation to our work, I think the one idea we can take away is that not everything that can be done should be done. Admittedly, in real life, it is often difficult to know where those lines are. Some things are pretty black and white. There is no doubt that it would be wrong to work in a job where you were required to perform abortions or to sell illegal drugs or to be a hit man for the mob. But there are a lot of gray areas where we need to use our God-given discernment to know where we can bring glory to God by observing the kind of limits that are observable in God’s creation.
Application
So with those five elements of Biblical work in mind, we are now ready to summarize why our work is so important and why it matters to God and it ought to matter to us:
My work matters to God because God works and He has called me to be His co-worker in the process of bringing His creation to fulfillment
My work matters to God because God works and He has called me to be His co-worker in the process of bringing His creation to fulfillment
Until you understand that truth, you will never be able to honestly say, “Thank God It’s Monday”.
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of what we’ve learned so far this morning is pretty theoretical. So in order to make this more practical I’ve developed a series of questions we all need to ask ourselves in order to evaluate how consistent our view of our work is with the Biblical model of work and to help us identify areas where we might need to change how we view that work. Again, these are questions that we all need to ask. So whether you’re a student, or a banker, or a teacher, or a stay at home mom, or a bookkeeper, or even if you’re retired, these questions are appropriate for you.
Action
QUESTIONS TO ASK
QUESTIONS TO ASK
What intentional steps am I taking to love and develop God-honoring relationships with others I encounter in my work?
How can I better use God given resources in a way that they serve God’s purposes? Do I properly balance the harvesting and protection of those resources?
What fruit am I producing in my work? How do the products and/or services I produce serve God and others?
What are some things I could do to better acknowledge that my work is a gift from God that He uses to meet my needs and the needs of my family?
Do I limit my work by ceasing from all income producing work one day out of every seven? Are there other limits to my work that I need to consider?
Inspiration
The real test of the effectiveness of this message is going to come when you wake up tomorrow morning, and every Monday morning from now on. I am convinced that if you begin to understand that your work matters to God because He is a worker and that He has created you to be His co-worker, then you’ll have no problem saying, “Thank God It’s Monday”.