Sermon Tone Analysis

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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Scripture: None

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

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