Work Matters

1. Why do you think most people separate their work lives from their spiritual lives?
2. God created work: Genesis 2:15 says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” How does this verse reflect God’s original design for work? In what ways do you see work as a part of God’s plan for humanity? Read Ephesians 2:8-10: In what way does this passage support the verse above from Genesis?
3. Work as Worship: Colossians 3:23-24, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” How can we view our daily work as an act of worship to God? What are some practical ways we can integrate our faith into our work?
4. Work and service: Ephesians 4:28 says, “Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.” How does this verse connect work with serving others? How can our work contribute to the well-being of our community and the world at large?
5. Integrity in our work: Proverbs 11:1 states, “The Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him.” What is a situation in your current job or a future career scenario where demonstrating love, integrity, and service would be particularly challenging and how would you handle it?

Prayer + Practice:

Reflect this week on how all of your work is sacred and meant to be done for the Lord. What aspects of your work have you maybe never considered letting God into? How should being a follower of Jesus inform the way you go about the specifics of your work? Do your coworkers know you're a Christian? How have you shared the gospel through both word and action with those in your sphere of influence?

Take inventory this week and ask God how this sermon should specificay affect your work. Start your day asking him to be honored in your work, schedule a reminder mid-day to reset your heart and mind on him, and have a conversation with God at the end of the day to reflect on what he wants you to do for the next day.

Transcript

Well, good morning, everybody. Is that loud enough or too loud? That's even loud for me.

Well, I always enjoy the opportunity to share from God's word. And today I thought we would cover a topic that is kind of near and dear to my heart. It's that work matters. How many of you all have jobs here? Raise your hand if you have a job. Oh, my gosh. We're in good company. We're in good company.

You know, I was going through some statistics on the US workforce and I thought I'd go through a couple of those real quickly. Millennials are the largest generation in the US labor force, and we're going to have a prayer meeting for them after the service so we can lift them up.

Over 70% of all Americans work in the service center service sector. Excuse me. About 16 million Americans are self employed. The average American spends more than half of their day sitting. A third of the employees report going to work stressed.

Nearly 80% of workers say they don't have any work life balance. 60% of Americans would leave their jobs if they could. And business loses between 450 and 500 billion with a b dollars each year due to low employee engagement. And that really staggers me when you put that in perspective. The term that they like to use and that many of the HR personnel will use is called quiet quitting.

Another way is to say is soft quitting. And these are folks that show up and just do what is minimally required to get done. But what a grind that must be to be in that situation as they go forward. What I'd like to do is I'm going to kind of switch my message around and I want to set this up and talk about my background, because I think the biggest struggle that we have in Christendom today is the tension between spiritual or sacred and secular. We struggle with that.

Many of us have been working our jobs and we're grateful and thankful to God, but we still tend to think that, boy, on the hierarchy of things, it's just a job. And we bifurcate the fact that maybe this job is more secular driven and really doesn't have a spiritual component, but in fact it does. So what I want to do, if I can, is this. This is your world, this nice big circle. And what happens so very often is that we want to bifurcate that world.

So we put a line right down the middle. On one side of our world, we have the secular, the jobs that we're in, the things that we do on a regular basis. On the other side, of course, is going to be the sacred. Those are going to be the spiritual, the things that we deem very, very important with regards to the secular. This is that world of the public matters, right? The public engagement, the interaction. We deal with science, we deal with our world systems. When you have the sacred world, these are your private, personal matters. We should hold those in. We shouldn't live those out.

We want to keep quiet with relation to those. And if you think of it this way, as the second or the public matter is all driven by science and information and facts and figures, but it's secular. It really doesn't want to entertain the idea of who God is and how he plays a role in our world and in our part. If we're on the sacred side, hey, everything's about the heart, right? It's how I feel, the emotions that I can bring and provide, and it's all about my religious views and my orientation.

And I'm using religion in terms of the faith component, not in terms of me trying to please God on my own standards. But what happens is, over time, is that the secular view keeps pushing what the sacred view over. And at some point, we live in a world that, for the most part, is pretty secular. Would you agree? Do I get an amen to that?

They aren't inclined to think that way or the way that we would want to think. Oswald Chambers said, the spiritual manifests itself in a life that knows no division into sacred and secular. And even Ch. Spurgeon said many years ago, the man who lives under God, nothing is secular. Everything is what sacred.

He puts on his workday garment, and it is a vestment to him. He sits down to his meal, and it is a sacrament. He goes forth to his labor and therein exercises the office of the priesthood. His breath is incense and the life of a sacrifice. He sleeps in the bosom of God, lives and moves in the divine presence to draw a hard, fast line and say, this is sacred and this is secular, is, to my mind, diametrically opposed to the teaching of Christ and the spirit of the gospel.

How many of you have heard that for the first time ever, raise your hand? Is that not a powerful statement? He's demonstrating very, very clearly that that is not the case. I know that job satisfaction for so many of us isn't necessarily found in a. Necessarily in a specific kind of work.

In fact, the only way to find job satisfaction, in my view, is to connect to God's work in the world with our work in the world. And that's a powerful thing that we can bring to the table. And it took me quite a while to learn that exactly. My wife and I, Carolyn, we moved from California back in September of 1977. We got to Texas as quickly as we could, and after I graduated from USC, I went to Dallas Theological Seminary, where I thought my vocation, my calling, was going to be in a vocational ministry.

So I studied hard. I had to learn my Greek and Hebrew. I still can't spell them, but I went through all the processes, and then I graduated, only to find myself driving to East Texas in a Chevy nova, working for Procter and gamble, selling soap in gun Barrel City, Texas.

What the heck happened to my world?

And I had many times on those roads where my eyes were moist, wondering, lord, why am I driving to East Texas selling soap? Is there some correlation between the cleanliness of soap and the cleanliness of the gospel? I don't think so, but it was a struggle for me. But then I began to realize, and again, I got smarter as I was able to look backwards, right, because we always don't see the providential things that God's doing in terms of aligning what our jobs and what our futures will be. I could see exactly what God wanted me to do.

We don't need necessarily more people in full time vocational ministry unless God is explicitly and specifically calling people to do that. We need more people living the life as a believer of Christ in the marketplace. Amen. Because if we don't affect others with the gospel, what happens? So I want to challenge us to think in terms of that as we have this message today.

You see, our work matters to God. Our work matters to God because it reflects his character and God's image. As humans, we were created in his image, and our work is an extension of that image. The Bible says in Genesis one and two that humans were created to reflect God's character and our work as a way to do that. And God is a creator, a worker.

I mean, the very first book in the Bible says, and God, what created the heavens and the earth? He's a worker. And guess what God did? He created coworkers, Adam and Eve to carry on that legacy. So God's a creator.

He creates coworkers. I think I get the general idea of what he wants us to do. Moreover, God himself works. He has given us the gift of work as a way to serve him and others. Our work is not just meant to an end, but an end to itself.

It is a way to bring glory to God and to serve others. As the Bible says, we bring glory to God by working industriously, demonstrating what he is like, serving others by cooperating with him to meet the needs of those we work with, because our work matters to God. When I think of the gospel, I think of two things. God's asking me to do two things. And, boy, this makes my world and life so much easier.

Love him and love others. That is the essence of the gospel. Love him and love others.

Furthermore, our work matters to God because it's the way we serve others. As the Bible says, God has chosen to create men and women in his image to, among other things, work and tend to his created order for his glory. And our work is not just our own personal fulfillment, but it's really about serving others and making a positive impact. Finally, our work matters to God because it's a way to bring joy and satisfaction to him. I love this verse.

Psalm 9017 says, God takes pleasure in the work of our hands. Isn't that a great verse? So if you happen to be any particular job, if you're a schoolteacher, if you're a businessman, if you're a salesman, whatever the role you have, God takes pleasure in the work of your hands. And in summary, again, work matters to God because it reflects his character. It's a way to serve him and others.

Now, what I wanted to do was give us kind of a general biblical theology of work, because I find that for me to understand what it is that God wants, I need to go to the scriptures to take some time to do that. And this is the text that God has given us right to find his truth. We get to learn from him very specifically. So, first of all, when we think of biblical theology, number one, God created human beings to work. Again.

When God created Adam and Eve, he has placed them in the garden to what? Tend and take care of it. God gave first instructions to Adam and Eve to take care of that garden in Genesis 215. But unfortunately, over the centuries, the term work has gained some very negative connotations, hasn't it? We often view work as difficult or unpleasant activity that we are forced to perform.

However, work is simply engaging in physical or mental activity in order to achieve a result. In western culture, the word work is most commonly associated with one's profession and means of livelihood. We say things like, well, he's going to work today, meaning that he's employed in a job and will spend that day accomplishing his assigned duties. But work was given before sin entered the world, and therefore it was part of God's perfect creation. There were two areas that God ordained before the fall first was work.

And what was the other? Marriage.

Right. He told Adam to take care of the garden. But he also realized, Adam, you need what? A helpmate. So two things that God instituted before the fall of man were work and relationship and marriage.

And work was not the result of the fall. The fall only made work more difficult. Remember, work was ordained before the fall. God's view of work hasn't changed, but the effect on work the toil has. Tending Eden was designed to be a pleasant, rewarding occupation for Adam.

He would have loved caring for that garden, and I think he would have found it fulfilling and purposeful. And that's what God did. He created man to enjoy work so that he could enjoy God watching his creation, doing their work, just like a parent would enjoy watching their children achieve a new skill or even create a project. You see, I think work helps fulfill man's need for purpose. Next, work also is the way we provide for our basic needs and help others who are unable to work.

Interestingly, the scripture talks about those that are lazy, which is the habitual avoidance of work, and that's condemned in scripture. We are to embrace work as God has given it to us, and be thankful to him that we have the ability to provide for ourselves and for our families. Colossians 323 says, whatever you do, do your work heartily as for the Lord rather than for men. And even God instituted. I thought about this this week more and more.

God institutes the tithe in the Old Testament as a reminder to the people that it was God who was blessing the work of their hands. And he wanted people to use the tithe to take care of those that would be in need. Think about that.

You see, Jesus worked. It would have been understandable if the son had spent all his time in the temple discussing scripture, but he didn't do that the first 30 years of his life. What was Jesus doing? He was a worker. Some say he was the carpenter.

Some say he was working with stone. The point was, he was working. And if you think about that, Jesus spent 30 years of his life in preparation for ministry. But most of that time he was working up until the final three years of his life that he again came out and shared what God had called him to do.

You know, in the greek world, it was interesting. Work was considered a curse, and the Greeks believed that society was organized so that a few could enjoy the blessing of leisure while work was done by those on a lower economic level. Everyday work was demeaning to the Greeks and something one should try to avoid and there was certainly nothing spiritually meaningful about it. But the Jews valued contemplation. Yet the Old Testament played a high value on work for them.

The Jews saw work as a part of God's purpose in creation. Theological reflection was employed by people who were engaged in every day in the world. But unlike the Greeks of their day, the jewish teachers were not expected to live off the contributions of their students. No, they were expected to have a trade through which they could support themselves. Who did we see that did that in the New Testament?

The apostle Paul. And we called Paul. What a tent maker. Interesting. He ministered, but he still had a specific task that he did.

By the end of the. As time went on, though, by the end of the third century, the church fathers began to be influenced by greek thought, and the positive view of working, of all working being God's work, began to slowly change when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the distinction between clergy and commoners was fairly well established, and this is where things started to part, and we've never come back since.

The distinction between clergy and commoners was fairly well established, with the latter relegated to second class status in the church. The division of calling into sacred and secular categories marginalized the New Testament of the priesthood of believers in a point that was not lost on Martin Luther. Through Martin Luther's work in the 16th century, the reformers began to recover the biblical doctrine of work. They acknowledged that all of life, including daily work, could be understood as a calling from God. According to Luther, we respond to the call to love our neighbor by fulfilling the duties associated with our everyday work.

This work includes domestic and civic duties, right, as well as our employment. In fact, Luther even said that we can truly serve God in the midst of everyday circumstances and all attempts to elevate the significance of the contemplative life or false. Martin Luther recognized that ministry was not only of the world, of those who serve within the holy office of the church, but that everyday work is filled with spiritual significance. What Luther realized, and part of his thesis on that Wittenberg door of the things that he put up there, was that whole idea related to laity and clergy, because there was a separation saying that the people that were doing spiritual things in the church were more better than those that were not. And Luther said, that is just not even biblical.

When we think about that, here's what Luther said. He goes, the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whip in the sight of God from the works of a rustic laborer in the field or a woman going about her household task. All works are measured before God by faith alone. 30 years later, John Calvin refined this idea even more so by teaching theology that offered a framework for engaging with public life. He said, according to the scriptural perspective, work becomes a waystation of spiritual witness and service.

Think about that. It becomes a waystation again of both spiritual witness and service, a daily traveled bridge between theology and social ethics. Isn't that wonderful? That means that the jobs that we have becomes that bridge that we get to cross, where, yes, I know we get influenced by the people we're around, but what God wants us to do is dynamically influence others for the kingdom. And it becomes that bridge that we get to go back and forth on, that we get to express and serve well.

We get to perform well in our jobs and be excellent in all that we do. I had a seminary professor that reminded us our first year we were there. He said, gentlemen, autograph your work with excellence. And I think as a testament and testimony to the kingdom of God, that's an important element. Again, a daily travel bridge between theology and social ethics.

In other words, work for the believer is a sacred stewardship, and in fulfilling our job, we will either accredit or violate our christian witness. So the reform kind of brought back to say that the jobs we have are connected to our relationship with Christ and the kingdom, work that he wants us to do.

And others have thought at that point. With that view, the platform of business then becomes a primary place where faith can become action. Each time we perform a task, we make a decision. It's an opportunity to show our employers, our partners, our peers of something different. We can model the love of Christ through the sacrifice of self in the service of another.

We can show a tangible way that we care more about people than we do about profit. Our faith should inform the quality of products or service we provide, how we deal with customers, the price we charge, how we grow employees, how we handle conflict, and every other aspect of our business. We want to make it subject to our relationship to Christ.

And again, this theology of work, though, fell on hard times, as I shared on that diagram. In the postmodern world, the church has allowed work and religion to become separate departments, and then is astonished to find that as a result, the marketplace has turned to purely selfish and destructive ends. And most of the world's intelligent workers have become uninterested in religion or taught discussions of faith. I mean, how can anyone remain interested in religion or faith that seems to have no concern with the majority of their lives have. We become so busy in our jobs that we have forgotten to look up and look out at the people that we're interacting with, and we have forgotten that our call is to serve God well so that we can connect with others and use that to be that bridge where we connect within the gospel.

The Bible really does have much to say about work, which is in different forms, is mentioned over 800 times more than all of the words used to express worship, music, praise, and singing combined. That's amazing. Eugene Peterson explains, the Bible begins with the announcement. In the beginning, God created not that he sat majestic in the heavens. He created.

He did something. He made something. He fashioned heaven and earth. The week of creation was a week of work. From the very beginning, the scriptures were faced with the inescapable conclusion that God himself is a worker.

It is part of his character and nature. And the opening two chapters of Genesis provide that foundation of God's view of work, culture, and then making coworkers Adam and Eve. In Genesis 215, we read, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Man was created by God to work, to cultivate it, to keep God's creation, to prepare and protect it. We were created to be stewards of that creation through our work.

And again, God assigned Adam and Eve important work prior to the fall. Think of it this way. Paradise wasn't vacation. It was a vocation.

Work is a gift from God, and by it we employ skills to glorify God, to love our neighbors. The fall didn't create work, but it did make it inevitable that work would sometimes be frustrating and meaningless.

So let's kind of bring this all together, and then we'll wrap this up. The work of believers holds a significance far beyond tangible results of that work. The significance to God comes from the person working as much as the results work. There is no distinction between spiritual and temporal, sacred and secular. All work, however lowly, is capable of glorifying God.

Work is quite simply an act of praise, and a potentially productive act of praise it is. The Hebrews had a deep understanding of how faith and work came together in their lives. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that they use the same word for work and worship. That word is avodah. It jointly means worship, work, service.

Various usages of the hebrew word showed us that God's original design and desire is that our work and our worship should be a seamless way of living.

In some verses, the word avada means work, meaning performing labor in the field. In other verses, it means worshiping the most high God. Avodah is a picture of an integrated faith, a life where work and worship come from the same root, from the same foundation. You see, our work, your work, matters profoundly to God. Through the faithful development of God given talents, we mature as christians and become more useful to the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man.

In the same way that God gives us spiritual gifts so that we can minister to the body of Christ, I think God gives us skill sets as well to work in our everyday jobs. 09:00 to 05:00 so that we can honor him, bless him, and bring attention to the fact that we see life differently, and we want to share that with them. The reformers clearly understood this result, and the protestant church during the Reformation enjoyed its greatest cultural influence. If you look back at that time in art, in literature, in music, as well as in social institutions of their day, recovering this doctrine may well open the way for contemporary christians to influence their culture once again. At that point in the 15 hundreds, when Martin Luther, again on a variety of topics, theologically tried to address what was happening in the Catholic Church at that time, when we, or when he introduced that idea of the value and worth of work, it dynamically changed the culture.

And I think God is telling us that it can continue to change the culture. Finally, we must realize that through the christian doctrine of work, God will change culture. Christians can't simply rest satisfied with individual conversions. We are called to be holy and set apart, but we're also called to be actively engaged in all aspects of our society as agents of ever experienced, expanding kingdom. That's why, again, I love what our admonition is.

Love God and love others, and the jobs we have become that bridge that we get to interact with those, that we're trying to share his truth. So, Jeff, you're saying, what does all of this mean? And I'm looking at the clock, and I'm going to try to get through it real quickly. I think, number one, when you think of your work, let me just give you a few points that might be helpful to wrap this all together. First of all, remember, work is, is a divine calling.

Work is a divine calling. Vocation and calling. Remember, it is a legitimate calling from God. This means that every profession, not just ministry roles, can be seen as a way to serve God and fulfill his purposes. Second, work reflects the image of God.

We were made and created in the image of God, Genesis 126 27. It includes the capacity for creativity, for productivity, for stewardship, and again, through work as individuals, we get to reflect God's creative and sustaining nature. Second or third, work as worship, worship in everyday life. I think that the scriptures is very clear. Colossians 323 and four is often cited to support this passage, emphasizing that whatever you do, you should do that work.

Hardly. As for the Lord, I think that work mattering to God means that it provides us some ethics and excellence. We have some moral integrity. I think we see that christians are called to be honest and fair and just put in a full day's labor for a full days wage and do it honorably.

I think it demonstrates that we need to be in service to others. It's a primary way to interact with others and fulfill the commandment to love our neighbor as ourself mark 1231. We can provide good services, care. We do work that meets the needs of the community, the community, and then contributes to the common good. Work matters because it's also a stewardship responsibility.

Right. We're called to be good stewards of the resources that God has blessed us with. It also means that we need to rest. God worked how many days? Let's go back to a six day workweek.

He worked six days and he rested the 7th. I think if we ever get in a discussion about a four day workweek, I can have a biblical discussion. It might be quite interesting. But he wants us to rest. Even God rested and he looked back and saw that what he did was good.

And we also get to witness their work. Right? It's our testimony in the workplace that provides that unique context for christians to witness their faith. A friend of mine, Tommy Maxwell, started a ministry about 20 plus years ago called coaches outreach. How many of you are familiar with coaches outreach?

I see those hands, and Tommy and I have had many discussions over it. But the general idea is this. It's an idea. They're doing Bible studies with the coaches because, number one, they want to help the coaches have transformation in their marriages. It's a tough job being a coach and a teacher in high school and take care of your family at the same time.

Amen. I get the stress. I was just with them on a Bible study that I'm doing at Timber Creek High School with some of the coaches there. But Tommy recognized the fact that on average, a schoolteacher coach who has maybe a career of 20 to 25 years in communities like ours is going to interact with between 20 to 25,000 students over the lifetime of their career. Is that not amazing?

20 to 25,000 students over the lifetime of a career if we were passionate to understand the effect that we could have. Because remember those 20 to 25,000 students, they may not have had them in their class, but, boy, those coaches were being what? Looked at, talked about, discussed, interacted with. But that is a powerful testimony to that. And the whole point of coach's outreach was, change a coach's heart, you'll change his marriage, change his world, you'll change his coach's world, you change the coaches world, you can change the athletes world, you change the athletes world, you can change the school world, you can change your community, you can change the world.

And I'm challenging you to think in terms of marketplace, and I'll leave you with this last one speaker time is there. I've been in the healthcare field for about almost 40 years. I started when I was two, and I wish. But about a year ago, the company I was working with and I had been with for about 15 years decided to shut down our division. I was not anticipating not having employment.

I don't like not having employment, but that's just me. But what the Lord did through that whole thing was. And I'm thinking back at my days going through seminary, then working with Procter and Gamble, an opportunity made itself available. Where I am now working part time with a ministry called Marketplace Chaplains. And marketplace chaplains is a ministry that is geared toward going into companies that would like to have chaplains to come in or care partners.

If they don't like the religious connotation, that's okay. We'll call them care partners. But we'll come in and we'll work with these folks. Because life is messy, isn't it? And when people go to work, they take their messes with them.

And those messes can mess up work. Can it? But many of these people don't have any religious affiliations or orientation. Some of them are suffering from drug addiction. If not them, maybe a family member.

Some of them are suffering through a potential divorce they're about to go through. Some of them have some children that may not be the ones that are doing the best things right now, and it's really changing their world. They might have family members that have gone to jail or even to prison. You see where this is going. And these people come to work with all that stuff in their mind, but they need an opportunity for us to be in the workplace.

I want to challenge you for those that are in the workplace. Just like the coaches realize that their world is affecting not only their family's world, their coaches world, the community of the school and the students they have. But I want to challenge you, and I'm sure each of you has. I'd like you to pause, and I'm going to say a prayer for you. Because when we have people that we commission in ministry or do things, what do we do?

We pray for them, don't we?

But I want to pray for you and your jobs. I want to pray for you and the world that you're in, because I know that most of us have not been prayed for from the pulpits, that when we get up on Monday morning and we have to drive off, we don't necessarily have the perspective of how God wants us to view work. But I want you to be challenged to understand that that's that bridge that God has created. That is that place where God wants you to be. Providentially, it is no different than what Esther went through in the Old Testament when her father had passed and she was with her uncle Mordecai.

And then, because of a secular king that was more of a party guy than anything else, ends up getting rid of his wife, Vashti, and then decides to have a beauty pageant for the prettiest bride in Persia. And Esther gets there. And because of Esther's faithfulness, God used her and saved the jews from annihilation. When I was in seminary, Esther was one of the books I jumped over. Oh, that's an interesting book, Esther.

Boy, I feel so bad. I've got to go back now and catch up, because what Esther has taught me as I've gone through it again, is reminding me that even though God may be silent sometimes, he is still sovereign. Even though God is sovereign, he is providential and will redirect things to happen according to his will. What he's asking us to do in his sovereignty and providence is to trust him. And I'm asking you, in God's sovereignty and providence, to trust him in the places that he has placed you so that you can be a witness and remember two things, love him and love others.

Let me pray for you. Father God. We're grateful and thankful for your grace. We're grateful and thankful that you created work. So when we get upset, we have to go back to the author and perfecter of it, and that's you.

But, Lord, we come before you. I look in this audience right now, the different jobs that people have. Some jobs are, again, the blue collar workers that do their work and energy with due diligence. You have some white collar folks. You have people that are on their own.

They're independent workers, people that have their own companies. But, Father, you want them to do their work. As unto you, Father, you're a worker. In the beginning, God created and then you made coworkers. That's us in this audience.

And Father, I pray for everyone that is working right now that, Lord, if there's issues where they have to realign themselves with you to get a perspective back that they've lost, I pray, Father, your holy spirit will influence, influence them. I pray, Father, that your word of God will move in their hearts in a way that they'll have clarity of mind. And Father, I pray that you will remind us daily that we can make a difference in the lives of others in the places that you have placed us. Father, we don't need to create a fort to hide christians within. We need to open the doors to get christians out so that the gospel and the transforming truth of that gospel can be shared.

But, Lord God, you've got workers that need strength. We've got workers that need encouragement. We've got workers that need grace. And I pray, God, that for each one here and the jobs that they have and the roles that they play, irrespective of that, from digging a ditch to building magnificent buildings, Lord, there is value in that work. There is honor before you, and there is opportunity for others to share the good news of Christ.

Father, bless all who are in this auditorium this morning. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.