What's the Point of Work?
Nathan Adams · Tidal Church Moncton · January 8, 2023 · What's the Point? series
Nathan Adams traces work through Scripture, from Genesis 2 and 3 to Jesus' own labour, showing that we are made in God's image to work. He offers questions to help our work become a blessing to others and a way of serving Christ.
More from Nathan Adams · The What's the Point? series
Topics: Purpose, Work, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:01] Would you close your eyes for a moment? And just picture that you're in paradise. I don't know about you, but I hear waves lapping on a white sand seashore. I'm thinking a posh cabana to nap in by the beach, butler service, palm trees everywhere. I'm doing nothing. You're doing nothing. All workers groom the beach and the ground. But in God's paradise, we are the workers. You can open your eyes. Genesis 2:15 says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden in paradise to work it and to take care of it.
[0:48] You see, when humanity was at its happiest, before sin entered the world, we worked. Surprising, but not surprising. Because if God made us in His image to be a little bit like Him and He is the great worker, then we were also created to work. Genesis chapter 1 contains the great sequence of God working over six primeval days to create the world and all the creatures in it. Beginning with a habitable world full of light, oceans, and atmosphere and land. Filling the sea with fish, the sky with birds, the land with plants, and finally animals in ever-increasing complexity until coming to the completion of His creation: the creation of man and woman.
[1:38] In Genesis chapter 2 verse 2 it says, by the seventh day God had finished the work He'd been doing. So on the seventh day He rested from all His work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done. Unless we think that God's work ceased that day. The Bible tells us throughout that God has never stopped caring for creation and sustaining it. Your very breath that you breathe right now is 100% dependent on the continuing sustaining of God. He gives us the breath of life. And Jesus would later say, My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I too am working, in John 5:17. But I don't want to get ahead of ourselves in this story of work.
[2:32] The man is in the garden in Eden working before he even has a wife. A partner, and not just love but also work. He has work. He's working with nature, tilling soil, tending plants, participating in the miracle of life's growth and abundance. He's partnering with the Creator by caring for creation. And if you think this vision of paradise is ridiculous, you haven't watched kids or young adults play Minecraft. You will see that being part of a world that you create and nurture is something that resonates deeply in the human soul. We don't know how long Adam and Eve worked in the garden with God, but we do know there came a time when they were tempted to be more than just a reflection of God and seize control of their lives and world, in effect becoming their own gods.
[3:30] God had included humanity in His work of ruling the world. He gave them a small share of that. So now He partially withdraws His Spirit and presence from the world, so that humanity can see just how poorly things go when we are in control rather than God. Can I get an amen? All of the blessings of life are now intertwined with a curse. And joy is interwoven with pain, including work. Genesis 3:17 and following is all about work. Think, as I read, of any of the work that you've done that has been unpleasant. Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return. Now this reminds me of some jobs I've done: roofing, sweat, delivering papers and minus 25 degrees as a kid, pain in my fingers.
[4:42] Is it reminding you of some hard work that you've done? The futility, and sometimes feeling like, in the end, what am I doing? It will all be dust. You see, there's been an accident at work in this world, and rehabilitation is needed. God begins this rehabilitation by making friends with a shepherd named Abraham, and a funny thing happens. Abraham's sheep started having lots of lambs. Before you know it, Abraham has an abundance. His family also grows. He has a miracle child named Isaac, and his grandson Jacob has 12 sons that would grow to become the modern nation of Israel.
[5:29] You see, when we worship God in a way so close that He is our friend, God begins to bless our work. But then a famine strikes that part of the world, but God prepared a way for this family to go to Egypt, where food had already been stored up by His planning. There the family of Jacob prospers and grows, becoming so numerous that again they become that nation of Israel. We worship a God who is so close and is our friend that He even feeds us in times of scarcity. That's something you need to hear right now. But the blessing of God does not mean that we don't live in a world and are affected by our world.
[6:15] Our blessing is intertwined with curse. For Israel, it meant that eventually their nation was enslaved by the much larger host nation of Egyptians, and the Pharaohs put them to work as slaves. Their work was futile, sweaty, with vicious overseers, and you may find that at times in your life work becomes almost like slavery. Good news: when God is your friend and is close to you, He liberates you from slavery. God sent Moses to perform many mighty miracles before Pharaoh, bringing that massive empire, the greatest of its time, to its knees when Pharaoh finally had to respond to God's command to let My people go.
[7:04] And once free from Egypt, on the way back to the Promised Land of Israel, God rehabilitated work further by giving the Ten Commandments. The fourth of those 10 is all about work. Six days you shall labor and do all your works as God. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work. Now, when we look at this commandment, at least me, I always think about the commandment on the seventh day not to do any work, to instead rest and worship God, and there's a fundamental insight into human nature here, that we need rest. Try it, see if your overall productivity goes up or down by taking one 24-hour period out of your work week and don't do any work.
[7:54] However, there's a flip side to this. It says six days you shall work. Isn't that funny how we almost skipped that? It's a commandment: get to work. And it's reinforcing that fundamental conviction that God is a worker, and if we're in His image, we are workers, hard workers, creative workers, and a worker who will balance work with rest and worship. And as we look at the rest of the Old Testament in this story of the rehabilitation of work, we see all kinds of interesting things that we wouldn't expect about work. One is the spiritual gift of artisanry, of being a craftsman. You find it in Exodus 31, where God gives the plan to create a tabernacle so that nation of Israel can worship Him there, and He says, "See, I've chosen Bezalel, son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge, and with all kinds of skills, so he could be a pastor," right? No.
[8:56] "To make artistic designs for working gold, silver, and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, to engage in all kinds of crafts." Isn't that interesting? God can gift you for things like that. I look at David. His work primarily was to be a soldier, a leader of a nation that was at war, and being besieged by all of its neighbors. And he says to God, "With Your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall." David was going to work with God. Imagine that, starting each day saying, "God, what are we going to do today?" And that's what David did.
[9:43] There's all kinds of great advice too in the book of Proverbs about work. I've worked jobs for over a decade where my income was dependent on whether or not I was able to sell what I had to sell. And so these were very motivational for me. Proverbs 14:23: "All hard work brings a profit." That was good to know when I felt like I was banging my head against a wall. And this one was helpful too: "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man." Amen. Proverbs 6:10. Underline in your Bible. But the full rehabilitation of work happened when God became human.
[10:29] And the sound of a hammer and a saw came out of Nazareth, as God the Son worked a trade with His hands, and only after He had done that, taking care of people's regular, ordinary earthly needs for a decade or two, was He ready to begin His spiritual ministry. And in that ministry He worked for three and a half years. He cast out demons. He healed the sick. He taught. He debated. He mentored the people around Him. He prayed day and night. Working. His greatest task, of course, was to rework us and to succeed in all the places where we had failed: succeed with love instead of hate, succeed with trust in the Father instead of seizing control. And He did that ultimately on the cross, where He died for our sins and rose again to give us new life.
[11:34] And this new life is not just a return to the Garden of Eden, paradise, which was a beginning. It is the ticket to God's full design for humanity, for human nature, for the whole story that we find ourselves in. And when we have that, Jesus in our lives, everything about our lives gets wrapped into that story. It all begins to mean so much more. Now, in a lifetime of work, you might have somewhere around 90,000 hours to invest. You could choose to watch that great series on work called The Office, all nine seasons, and you can watch it 1,216 times.
[12:25] And that would be the great accomplishment for your life of work. You'd be funny. But you wouldn't have accomplished much. But God wants to bless your work. He said to Abraham, "Raid out the star. I'll make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing." At the end of the 90,000-odd hours of work, will it all have piled up to a blessing for anyone else? And to make sure it is a blessing, let me put forward a few questions for us all to consider. They come somewhere from my own background, where I have worked with my hands. I worked in business, and I worked in the church. And so there's a few different angles here, and some of them might be a little sharp, but they come from a place of knowing because I've actually faced these myself.
[13:18] What am I producing is the first question. When I stand before the judgment seat of God someday, what will my life have amounted to? 2 Corinthians 5:10 says, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due to us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." What am I producing? If I'm in the medical field, did my life produce life or death? Will I stand before God to display all the cosmetic surgeries I did for great profit, or will it rather be the life-saving surgeries I did for less profit?
[14:05] If I'm in the entertaining business or gaming or gaming business, will my life have reduced happiness and promoted good things, or will I have produced compulsion, addiction, and focus on greed? If I am in an online business or a virtual reality business, in these many emerging fields that many young people look at today, you will stand before God and be asked if you made a positive difference in the real world, or if you simply encouraged people to check out of it and isolate themselves in an artificial one. What am I producing? My grandmother worked all her career in Truro at the Stanfield's underwear plant.
[14:50] You can still get Stanfields at Costco. And you know what? They're good underwear. That's something, actually. There's nothing wrong with that, unless they're done poorly. And then, yeah, maybe God will judge you for, I don't know. But it's not so much that you have to do something absolutely amazing with your life. It's that you have to do something that benefited the world in some way rather than took away from it. The second question I have is: is this a mutual blessing or just blessing me? Anytime you are part of setting the price on something, whether you're offering a service to customer or your Whether you're offering a service to customer or your contractor, you have to ask yourself, will this benefit them or just me?
[15:45] Right now, if you're a contractor, your time has finally come. You are being rewarded. Congratulations. However, will you use that power to benefit just yourself, or will you actually sometimes be good to the people you're working with? As God leads you, and make sure it's a blessing to them as well. And I say that with no. My father was a carpenter and an unpaid, underpaid carpenter. But yet when we go to do these things, we have to ask ourselves. What? Am I doing this for... is it just for me, or am I really seeking to bless people in my work? Number three: Who or what motivates your work? Is it money? Success? Is it necessity?
[16:32] But what if it's done for Jesus? The worst work that the world has ever known in history is that of slavery. And as we already heard, the Bible is a story of liberation from slavery. And in fact, the fact that there is no slavery in the world today is not due to some other world religion or the atheistic humanism. It is due to Christians, the first religion and group in the world to say, enough of this. And even though there were Christians that resisted it, the story is a Christian story. And it comes from being liberated. But when Jesus shared the gospel and His apostles went out, the first thing they did was not act like they were in charge of the world, because they were not. They were a very small minority. They showed people how to be liberated in the circumstances they found themselves in.
[17:24] And so this advice was given by Paul to slaves: Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, put yourself into it, doing it like you're doing it for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You serve the Lord Christ. Wow, that is elevating it. Look at your boss right now in your mind and say, I'm not serving you, I'm serving Christ. And two things will happen: you will be better to that boss, and you will also be free from that boss.
[18:13] Because your motivation has become higher, you are serving the Lord, and even the most mundane task can become significant when it's done for Jesus, and when the manner in which you do it brings honor to Him in every hour you clock of your day. Number four: Are you looking for identity in your work or character formation? Identity and work is a paralyzing concept. As a young adult you say, What will I be? As a middle-aged adult you go, What have I been? But work is not primarily for identity. It is primarily for our character formation. In Romans 5:3-4, Paul said, we don't just glory in the good things. We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character, hope, and hope does not disappoint.
[19:11] And so any job that you do can be part of God's plan to develop your character. After Christ, with perseverance, gentleness, understanding, integrity, truthfulness. It does not matter what your job is. It can be part of the transformation plan that God has for your life. Number five, and there's only eight, and then we're done: If I can't work, am I working at all the things I can? You see, there are people that really can't work. If you are really elderly, there comes a point where it's not going to happen. And that's okay. There are people that are on disability, and they really can't do a full-time job. But my question is, if I can't work, am I working at all the things I can?
[20:04] You see, the Bible is, on the one hand, the greatest charity manual that there is. All the social systems that we have in our world today are reflections of the Christian value of caring for the needy. But the Bible is also one of the harshest critics of what constitutes need. In the biblical world 2,000 years ago, the most vulnerable people were widows and orphans, because they were not part of a family household. Most businesses were household businesses, or agricultural businesses. And there were some people that they just didn't have the husband. They didn't have the kids anymore, and they were in a sexist society and they were extremely vulnerable as widows.
[20:52] And so when the early church assessed widows, they said, Look, if you're really a widow and you really don't have any other resources, we're going to help you incredibly. We're going to feed you daily. We're going to include you in the family of church. Early church churches, they would list their bishop, their pastor, their deacons, and they list their widows. Was a place of real honor. But yeah, it was very stringent. Are you really a widow? Is there any other option that you could do? And if there is no option, what are you doing? There was actually an expectation that you would be a prayer warrior, that you would devote yourself to all the good works you could do for the church, that you'll be hospitable, you would open your home. And so no matter where you find yourself in your life, while you're not working, I want you to ask, Am I working at the things that I can?
[21:49] For your life is meant to be productive. It is part of your human makeup, as part of the image of God. And oh my goodness, it has to find something to do. Say, God, what can I do? Number six: Am I sharing the rewards of my work with others? This is a great verse in Ephesians 4:28: Thieves must give up stealing. I don't know who I'm talking to today. Rather, let them labor and work honestly with their own hands. Why? So as to have something to share with the needy. That's interesting. See, I would have thought, Stop thieving or you're going to hell. That would be how the line would go. There'll be a punishment. There'll be consequences. It says, stop taking so you can start giving.
[22:39] Isn't that interesting? And Paul again says to the people that have a lot in the world, he says, Command them to do good. This is in 1 Timothy 6, verses 10 through 19. If you're well off, I encourage you to go to that passage, 1 Timothy 6, verses 10 and following. I'm going to just pull out three verses: Command these rich people to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. And in this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. I have met some rich people that don't have a clue what life's about. but I've met some rich people who have become generous, sharing, blessing people, and they are blessed and they are a blessing.
[23:32] Number seven, am I balancing work, rest, and worship according to that Sabbath principle? Because it is in rest that family happens, that connection to God happens, and that happiness occurs. And the last is number eight. And the question is, is it time that I get back to work? You know, you can search long and hard through the Bible for verses about early retirement. You know, Freedom 55 or whatever. And there are no verses on it. Actually, that's not true. There's a whole parable about it. You're not gonna like it. And Jesus said to them, "Take care, be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." And then He told His disciples a parable.
[24:27] The land of a rich man produced abundantly, and he thought to himself, "What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?" And then he said, "I'll do this. I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry.'" But God said to him, "You fool, this very night your life is being demanded of you, and the things you've prepared, whose will they be?" So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich toward God. You know, if you have been blessed with an early retirement right now, I am praying for your next assignment from God.
[25:16] I am praying for something that is not going to be dependent on a great wage, but it's going to be dependent on doing a great thing in your life. I know it might not grind and wear you down as much as before. We do deserve rewards from our hard work. But God did not create you to do nothing for 30 years. He created you to partner with Him in reaching a world for Jesus, in helping in all the ordinary things of life. He has plans for you. And so, to conclude today, I want to leave you with this quote from Tim Keller in his book Every Good Endeavor, a great book about a Christian and work. And he says this as a question for all of us: How, with my existing abilities and opportunities, can I be of the greatest service to other people, knowing what I know of God's will and human need?
[26:17] It's like taking this data point and saying, this is who I am. This is who God is. This is where I see need in the world. And you connect those dots, and there is a job that God is calling you to, whether unpaid, paid, volunteer, or not. Working with your hands, working with your mouth, working explicitly for Jesus, or just doing ordinary tasks with extraordinary grace, God has called you to work. And I pray that today He will begin to answer those questions in your heart.
[27:07] Let's stand as we sing at the end. It is a song about God of creation, the One who made all these things. And may God speak to you about how you would partner with Him in working in this world, and not just in hard ways but in beautiful, creative ways that image the beauty of God.