Work (2)

Gospel Shaped Life  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  35:15
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We’ve been away.
Worshiped with beleivers in Sth East Qld and central NSW, but glad to be back at our home church with our brothers & sisters.
Ready to Serve Jesus alongside one another in this new year!
<Pray>

Intro

Proverbs 6:6 ESV
Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.
Last night was the nuptual flight for many of the ants at my place.
Alongside my driveway there is some spots with the perfect soiltype for ants to build nests in and so there is a whole bunch of them, I counted at least 10! Either there are several small colonies or there’s one really massive one.
Most ants are infertile female woker ants, however a number of winged male drones and female queens are matured to go out into the world and start new colonies.
When conditions are just right all the winged ants come to the surface and along with a whole bunch of worker ants in what can only be described as a farewell ceremony. All the ants assemble and the males and the queens take off in their nuptual flight hoping to find mates.
The mated queens then found a new colony. She has gone out into the world to establish a new home and she will now apply the rest of her life to the labour of sustaining her colony.
She may spend up to 30 years laying eggs to sustain the colony.
She doesn’t need a boss, whe doen’t need an instruction manual, she doesn’t need special training. She goes to her work and labours, labouring her whole life, to create and support her colony.
She is an example to us of diligent work. Good work, faithful work, and an example of living out God’s design for her to glorify God.
We’re often trained to think of work as a bad thing. It’s the annoying bit we “endure” so that we can rest and recreate.
Work is hard, and it has been cursed to be especially hard due to sin and the corruption of creation.
Yet work is not a curse itself, labour is good and part of God’s good design for us. We’re going to talk more about this in a moment.
Usually at church we work our way through the Bible one passage at a time exegetically. That is our usual pattern and we are conviced that this is the best way to be working our way, peice by peice, through the Bible getting the whole counsel of God.
However, while this is our normal opperating procedure, it’s also approriate for us to dive into particular topics every so often, and here we traditionally start the year with a topical series to help us with some big picture thinking from God’s word to set us up for the year.
This week, and for the next few weeks we will be looking at The Gospel Shaped Life. We’re going to be thinking about what it looks like to serve God in the body this year, and every year after that. We’ll be thinking about topics like work, rest, worship and church life.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not some ethereal idea that you mentally tick-off in your mind and then carry on about your business with a ticket to heaven.
The Gospel of Jesus trully apprehended by faith will transform our lives. Faith is the avenue by which the Holy Spirit will reform and sanctify your life in ever growing faithfulness and holiness.
True faith in Jesus flows our your fingertips. We never can earn our salvation, we receive it by grace through faith, but James reminds us that
James 2:18 (ESV)
... I will show you my faith by my works.
True faith has evidence. The tree bears fruit in keeping with what kind of tree it is.
Faith in Jesus is worked out in our lives.
Faith leads to faithfulness in our lives before the Lord.
Lets turn now to think about work from the Scriptures. I have 4 key points that I want you to grasp as you live out your Gospel Shaped Life

1. God is the First Worker

This is relatively unsurprising to learn, but we must learn it nonetheless!
The Bible is a big book, and it being the new year I’m sure some of you are once again comitting to read the whole lot this year.
Yet even if you have struggled to read the whole Bible, I can almost garuntee that you have made it trhough the first few pages of Genesis.
There we see that God is the creator of the world. He begins history with a grand creative work! And how do we know this is work? Because after he is finished, he “rested from his work”!
Genesis 2:2 ESV
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.
Now in english there are different words used for work and related concepts. We can talk about labour, we can talk about employment, vocation, a job, working etc. Each term has sightly different connotations.
Same goes for Hebrew and Greek, the two primary languages the Bible was written in. There are different aspects to the word that is translated as “work”. Now I’m not doing to get into the weeds of all the different aspects of the terminology of work in the Bible, but I did want to bring to your attention that here the “work” that God has completed is his occupation. God is Creator, in some sense that is a job title, It’s who he is but it is also what he does. And the world is brought into being in the first place through God’s occupation as creator.
God’s work was not a “one and done” though, he is still working, infact he is even still working as a creator, because he is going to re-creat this world. He is going to make a new heavens and a new earth that is free from the stain of sin!
God was the first worker, and his work continues in the world to bring about his designs and purposes for his own glory. Jesus says as much when he was facing off against bad Jewish doctrine:
John 5:17 ESV
But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
God is the first worker, and his work continues now.

2. God made us to Work

When we talk about God we divide his attributes into two different camps: Communicable and Incommunicable attributes. Parko touched on some of these attributes the other week.
Icommunicable attributes that things that are special about God and cannot be passed on to God’s creatures. For instance, God is all-knowing, omnicient. Yet only God can be “all knowing” - we can only every have limited knowledge. So omnicience is an “incommunicable” attribute, it can’t be “communicated” to us.
But there are other aspects of God that are commincated to us, famously God is Love, and we can love too. We can never love as well as God can, but we can mirror this attribute of God.
For our topic here, we can say that God is a worker, and we too can be workers like God. Not in the sense that we can do it as well as he can, but we can work like God works.
He is a creator, and we can create like he does. He is a Shepherd, and we can shepherd. He is a Gardener and we can be gardeners.
But here’s the thing, God did not just give us the option of copying this attribute if we wanted, but he made us to work, to labour. It is built in to the fabric of the world and into the facbric of our very being that we are workers...

a. God’s Creation Design

When you pick up a random object it may look weird.
Can any child tell me what this is?
When you look at it by itself it may look strange and absurd. But, when you know what the purpose of the object is, it makes perfect sense!
Why? Because this has been created with a job to do!
I could use this to hold peices of paper together, or use the pointy end to poke holes in carboard, and I could get away with doing that, but that’s not what the tool is made for. It was made with a specific job in mind and so it is the best tool when I’m using it to cut copper pipe and ream out the ends.
We are made by God to be workers. We are designed a particular way. We are at our best when we are fulfilling God’s creation design to be faithful workers who are carying out His mission that he has given us.
Lets look at how he created us:
Genesis 1:26 ESV
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.”
Created in God’s image with a purpose
Regents over the World - Dominion.
God gives instructions:
Genesis 1:28 ESV
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.”
Humanity has work to do
be fruitful
Multiply
Fill the earth
Subdue, dominion.
We are at our best when we are doing what God made us for, and what he told us to do.
Our work should fit under this heading in some way or rather.
Not just about your 9-5 job, your life goal, your mission should be to work in God’s world to this end.
Sometimes there is a 1-1 corelation between your profession and God’s creation mandate - you might be a mother giving birth to children and raising them, you might be a farmer bringing forth a multiplication of crops from the ground.
Sometimes your day to day work is more abstracted from this creation mandate, but what I would caution you against is thininking that your 9-5 has to be obviosly connected - data entry for instance is not obviously “multiplying & subduing” (more on this shortly. But it should be the overall scheme of your life to fulfille creation mandate.
As Christians, we have aditional marching orders that fit in with this, we have been given the work of disicple making:
Matthew 28:19–20 (ESV)
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
We are new creations in Christ with work to do. We are comissioned for this work.
We are disciple makers
So even if you cannot be multiply in the sense that you can have Children, you can certainly engage in raising spiritual children, new disciples of Jesus.

b. We work to Love God

As we work, our work is part of fulfilling the first and greatest commandment:
Matthew 22:37–38 ESV
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
Love is a lived out reality, not a mere feeling.
Our love is demonstrated in following God’s commandments,
and so wehn we do what he calls us to do in the Creation mandate and the great comission, we are living out a love for God.

c. We Work to Love our Neigbour

second greatest commandment.
Matthew 22:39 ESV
And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
We love our nighbour with our work.
It’s not only our profession, its our way of life.

3. The work of Christ accomplishes Salvation

We failed in our designated work.
The Lord desires to redeems fallen and lost workers and reshape them to refelct His own image.
He sent Jesus into the world to restore sinful mankind. He is redeeming out of the world a people for himself.
It is not a new thing, it was part of the plan from before the foundation of the world to accomplish this work:
Psalm 74:12 ESV
Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
Christ came into the world to bring salvation. He served God perfectly as a man, and died an atoning sacrifice to save us, to bring glory to God. Even as he face down his own suffering and death, Christ acknowledges he came for this purpose:
John 12:27–28 ESV
“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

4. Wisdom in Work

Work is in the world, a complex world. We need wisdom to work well.
You can go to the wisdom literature, like Proverbs to get heavenly wisdom on how you should work. But let me bring two particular elements to the fore:

a. Work ought to be… Rewarded

God made a fruitful world where work ought to be rewarded. What you sow you shall reap.
It is a good and right to expect a reward.
Leviticus 19:13 ESV
“You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.
Employers should pay their people fairly.
It is ok to work for increase - whether that be monetarily, or in a type of fruitfulness.
The ideal wife is one who thoughtfully brings increase, return on investment:
Proverbs 31:16 ESV
She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
Reward or fruit is in part to Prepare for the future
Eternal rewards.

b. Work ought to be… Rigourous

Work hard, work in whatever floats your boat.
Ecclesiastes 9:10 ESV
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
Work in whatever you like, as long as it is pleasing to God and enables you to fulfill your other obligations.
Go to the ant! She is a worthy model.
As though we are servants who only did our duty.
Don’t be lazy
Proverbs 20:4 ESV
The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing.
The faithful wife is diligent:
Proverbs 31:27 ESV
She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Don’t even associate with lazy people!
2 Thessalonians 3:6 ESV
Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.

How does the Gospel shape our Work?

We are working For our father in his mission in the world, we are reflecting his character as a worker.
We have a creation mandate and a great commission to complete
Our work is meaningful because it it how we love GOd and love our neighbour.
We are working for creational reward, but more than that we are working for eternity.
Jesus rewards those who labour for him!
Revelation 2:10 ESV
Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.
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