Week 2: Wisdom with Work

Word To The Wise

Week 2: Wisdom with Work

Big Idea: Ever since the creation of human beings in Genesis, God has invited us into work. We all have different, specific giftings and abilities that we put forth while doing our work. Proverbs gives us wise principles to be applied to our work, regardless of what we find ourselves doing.

Prayer: “I admit Lord that I don’t always want to work and often I don’t look forward to it. Please help me to see work as the gift that you have given and empower me when I need it to do the job you have called me to do.”

Scripture: Proverbs 12:24; Genesis 2:1-15

(All scripture quoted comes from the NIV unless otherwise noted)

Introduction

Good morning church! Welcome back to another week as we continue our series on gaining wisdom. Last week, we began by discussing the “fear of the Lord”. We unpacked this concept and made it clear that God’s intention is not that we would be afraid of Him. Rather, that we would have reverence for Him, understanding His magnificent and awesome power as the creator of the universe.

This week, as we move along in our series, we’ll be talking about a part of our lives that applies to everyone in this room…work. Whether you have a full time job, part time job, side hustle, volunteer program, backyard garden, kids, or almost anything else that requires your energy and attention… Then you know what it is to work.

Interestingly, work has been with us from the very beginning. If you have a Bible, please turn with me to Genesis 2.

One Summer While I Was In Church Camp I Had A...

Contributed by Sermon Central on Jan 28, 2009 (message contributor)

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Tags: Laziness

One summer while I was in church camp I had a preacher friend ask me, "Do you work 40 hours a week? There are many preachers out there who don’t."

And what if a preacher or anyone else, for that matter, were hired to work 40 hours a week and they didn’t work 40 hours a week? That would be stealing.

Idleness is stealing time from an employer. Idleness is not working hard. And it could be not working at all!

It was said of preacher John Wesley that he traveled over 250,000 miles on horseback over a period of 40 years preaching the Gospel. He preached 40,000 sermons. He wrote 400 books and knew 10 languages. At 83, he was annoyed that he couldn’t write more than 15 hours a day without hurting his eyes. At 86, he was ashamed because he couldn’t preach more than twice a day. He complained in his diary that there was an increasing tendency to lie in bed until 5:30 in the morning. (In other words, he thought he was getting lazy)

John Wesley was a hard worker. Few people today work as hard

Read Genesis 2:1-15

Genesis 2:1–15 NLT

So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation. This is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth. When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land. Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person. Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground—trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed from the land of Eden, watering the garden and then dividing into four branches. The first branch, called the Pishon, flowed around the entire land of Havilah, where gold is found. The gold of that land is exceptionally pure; aromatic resin and onyx stone are also found there. The second branch, called the Gihon, flowed around the entire land of Cush. The third branch, called the Tigris, flowed east of the land of Asshur. The fourth branch is called the Euphrates. The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.

Within this story, we see several examples of work being done. And one thing we can’t move past is this… Work has been with us since the very beginning.

Main Teaching

Beginning our time today at the very beginning of scripture is important so that we understand just how fundamental work is to our existence. Work was present before the garden of Eden, in the garden of Eden, and it continued on after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. After Adam was created he was given a job (to name all the animals), and after Eve joined Adam the two of them were tasked with cultivating and keeping the garden. With all that in mind, you could say that work is fundamental.

1. Work is fundamental

If you are somewhat familiar with the Creation story in Genesis 1-2, you know that God created the entire earth in 6 days. And so, we see that before human beings even enter the equation, God is already hard at work. He even gives us a blueprint to follow for structuring our work week; Six days on and one day off for a time of Sabbath rest. In theory, this is the same rhythm that Adam and Eve kept while living in Eden.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, Adam and Eve were eventually expelled from the garden and it was through this process that working changed for the worse.

Read Genesis 3:17(b)-19;

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“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.”

This is the work that we now know. It can be difficult, it can be a grind, and there are times for all of us that we just don’t want to do it. You may remember this classic song lyric, “I don’t wanna work, I wanna bang on these drums all day!” That pretty well sums up how many of us feel about working. We’d rather do most anything else than work.

And this is where the difficulty lies… Work is a fundamental part of our existence and yet, it’s also a difficult part of our existence. Thankfully, the book of Proverbs says a lot about work, how to do it and how not to do it. And most of the instruction revolves around the idea of being diligent.

2. Diligence

Diligence is defined as, “careful or persistent work or effort.” Diligence is a way of working which means that laziness, idleness, and apathy are opposite ways of working with diligence.

Here are just a few verses from Proverbs where diligence is mentioned;

Read Proverbs 10:4, 12:24, 12:27, and 13:4

Proverbs 10:4

New International Version

4 Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.

Proverbs 12:24

New International Version

24 Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in forced labor.

Proverbs 12:27

New International Version

27 The lazy do not roast[a] any game,but the diligent feed on the riches of the hunt.

Proverbs 13:4

New International Version

4 A sluggard’s appetite is never filled, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.

There seem to be some overarching themes here from the writer of Proverbs

a. Diligence is contrasted with laziness.

b. Satisfaction is contrasted with want.

c. The writer of Proverbs would probably say, “it is wise to work diligently, and foolish to be lazy.”

For many of us in the room, we understand this reality all too well. It’s impossible to accomplish your goals apart from hard work. Things like integrity, honesty, and righteousness require effort and intentionality.

Phoenix Suns head coach Monty

Williams tells his players, “Everything you want is on the other side of hard.”

Dave Ramsey says, “If you will live like no one else now, you can live like no one else later.”

What both these men are saying is that the wisdom found in Proverbs about work is true. Even more so, what God told Adam and Eve in the garden is also true… “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground…” Work is both a fundamental part of our lives, but it’s also a difficult part of our lives. And the truth is, we won’t always like it.

3. Persistence

Persistence is defined as, “firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.” Along with diligence comes this other word, persistence. For many of us, we need persistence to help us through the difficult and dry seasons of life.

Story: Share about a time you persisted through a dry and difficult season of life. What was it, what happened, and how did it resolve?

Is work always easy, fun, and enjoyable? No! But that doesn’t make it wrong that work is such an integral piece of our lives. What if God knew that we needed work? What if He knew that without it we’d become lazy, idle, and distracted? Those things don’t lead people to an enjoyable and fulfilling end. But satisfaction in a job well done is a real thing, and I imagine that God knew these truths well before He wove work into the very fabric of our existence.

4. Omniscience

Okay, one more definition for you today; Omniscience is defined as “the state of knowing everything.” So yes, work is hard and yes it’s not always enjoyable. But as believers, we trust by faith that God knew what He was doing when He created the universe. It’s hard to imagine what life would look like without work, but regardless of how we feel about it, it’s an integral part of life as a human. And learning to trust God goes back to what we learned last week.

We stand in awe and reverence of our divine creator. Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge…” He’s the architect of the universe, not you and not me. As Proverbs 1:7 goes on to say, “...but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” It’s foolish to despise the wisdom of God, as many of us have learned the hard way.

It doesn’t always have to be learned the hard way. Work can be difficult, and there are definitely seasons where it just feels like a monotonously slow death. For those times in life, our good and gracious God gave us another gift. One that the writer of Proverbs didn’t know about yet. That gift is the Holy Spirit… and He was sent to comfort, guide, and empower us through life, among other things.

5. Empowerment

When I think about difficult seasons of life or I consider times that have felt especially dry I realize in hindsight that God was giving me all the strength I needed to persist in diligence and integrity. He did that through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and guess what? He does that for you too.

Let’s talk briefly about one of the hardest working, persistent, and focused characters of the New Testament, Paul the apostle. Even Paul grew tired, even He need the Holy Spirit to help him through the work that God had called him to. It was Paul who wrote these words to the Philippian church;

Read Philippians 4:13

Philippians 4:13

New International Version

13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Just as God supplies seed for the Sower, food for the sparrow, and sunshine for the flowers He will also supply all that you and I need to accomplish the work that He has called us to. Any good father knows you can’t ask your kids to wash the car and then withhold the tools they need to accomplish the task. God is the best Father, and believe me when I say that He knows exactly what you need to accomplish all that He’s called you to.

Conclusion

As we wrap up today, I want to reiterate something I’ve already stated a couple of times. Work is both a fundamental and a difficult part of our lives. With that in mind, there is incredible wisdom about work found in the book of Proverbs. It’s there we learn about diligence, persistence, and the long term effects that laziness can have on your life. While work isn’t always fun, we know that it's something God has given to us. In His omniscience, He knew that for one reason, or another work was a benefit to humanity.

My challenge for you this week is to try and see your work with fresh eyes. Try to see it as a gift that God has given instead of a curse that you just have to gut out five to six days a week. You might even try, as the book of Colossians says, in “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters…”

Consider what it would be like to work for Jesus this week. What if He were your boss, how would your work change and/or improve? What if His opinion were the only one that mattered?

And with that in mind, “One of the wisest decisions we can make as it relates to work is to work…” Work has been with us from the very beginning and it’s not going away any time soon. Let’s enter into work with diligence, persistence and empowerment as we trust that God knows what He’s doing.

Let’s pray together.