Letters to Me - 3

Letters To Me - 3

Introduction

In a September 2017 article, National Geographic showcased the photography of Pablo Maurer, who had spent the previous three years traveling between the Poconos in Pennsylvania and the Catskills in New York. He spent time at once-thriving 1950’s elite vacation destinations that have fallen on some hard times.

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The people who designed and built these once-magnificent places did great work. For many of them it took years and years to finish. For others, the project was the crown jewel of their career. This represented the best they had to offer. And for a season, it was great. People have fond memories of summer vacations, winter getaways, engagements, marriages, and honeymoons. But now they are abandoned. Condemned. A shell of what they once were. The work did not last, all their effort faded into nothingness.

We’ve been in this series called “Letters to Me” walking through the OT book of Ecclesiastes in order to gain the wisdom it offers. Our premise is this - if you could write a letter to the 18-year old version of yourself, what would you say? If you wrote out a full letter, you would undoubtedly include something about your job.

For some at age 18, you made the decision not to go to college. Maybe you’d tell yourself to change that. It limited your options. For others, you went to college and you might tell yourself not to bother because you ended up hating your job. Others would say to change your degree for one that would land you in a different field. If you had a chance to change your life, you’d talk about what you do for a living.

At 18, we were on the cusp of deciding what we’d do for our career. But it turns out maybe we weren’t ready to make that decision. In a poll of college students, they chose their future job based on two factors: 1) salary and 2) “cool” factor.

If you are beyond that now, you look back and see those are terrible reasons to choose a specific job. The average American worker will spend roughly 100,000 hours on the job. With that much time involved, there are limits to what you can endure for even the biggest of paychecks. And nothing is still cool after 100,000 hours.

As a result, we have created a work environment in America where work is an annoyance. Frustrating. Don’t find any sort of fulfillment. According to a recent survey, 87% of workers are disengaged at work. 60% of online shopping is done during the hours of 9am and 5pm. This sort of disengagement costs the US economy around $550 billion a year.

This frustration with work is nothing new. It’s been going on for generations. In fact, King Solomon himself dealt with it. In the midst of his search for meaning, he finds none in his work.

- 18 I came to hate all my hard work here on earth, for I must leave to others everything I have earned. 19 And who can tell whether my successors will be wise or foolish? Yet they will control everything I have gained by my skill and hard work under the sun. How meaningless! 20 So I gave up in despair, questioning the value of all my hard work in this world.

21 Some people work wisely with knowledge and skill, then must leave the fruit of their efforts to someone who hasn’t worked for it. This, too, is meaningless, a great tragedy. 22 So what do people get in this life for all their hard work and anxiety? 23 Their days of labor are filled with pain and grief; even at night their minds cannot rest. It is all meaningless.

Solomon is clear about his displeasure with work. Now, before we dismiss him, let’s remember that Solomon has the best job ever. He’s the King! You don’t get more money or a higher “cool factor” than that. And history tells us that he doesn’t just hold this royal position, he was good at it. He was the most powerful man in the world during his life. He has more wealth than anyone who has ever lived. More power than we could ever imagine. As we saw last week earlier in chapter 2, he had more and had accomplished more than we could in 100 lifetimes. Yet that is what he said about work.

Solomon’s concern about work is similar to his concern with pleasure and wealth. You build it up but it doesn’t last. You accumulate, but then you die and it all goes to someone else. His great concern for his work is that you do all this stuff over a lifetime and then leave it behind for someone else. What if they’re an idiot? What if your heir can undo in a few minutes what it took you a lifetime to build?

Or what if, as he laments in chapter 1, the world simply goes on without you and eventually destroys all you built. Solomon built multiple homes, but no one is living in them today. Just a little of what Solomon built has been excavated, and the rest is rotting under the ground. The world has moved on.

When I was a kid our family bought (at an exorbitant rate) a set of Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedias. They were revolutionary. I cannot imagine how much time it took for them to research, compile, and write those books that were the repository of information in their day. Anyone using those anymore? Of course not! We call it Google.

We can all admit this is true. No matter your field, no matter your industry, no matter your position, you work will not last forever. The world will go on. If I die this week, guess what will happen next Sunday? You’ll have church! I mean, it won’t be near as good, nor will there be this much rugged handsomeness on stage, but it’ll happen.

We can relate to Solomon’s cynicism here, can’t we? And for Solomon, what he writes here in chapter 2 turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Within just a handful of years after Solomon’s death, his son Rehoboam lost 80% of Solomon’s kingdom and wealth.

So it can be easy for us to build up this cynicism towards work and think it doesn’t matter. We read and exclaim, “This is my life!” But the Bible does not share our cynicism. God doesn’t view work the way we do. Let’s spend the next few minutes building a theology of work. Center around three core, biblical truths about work:

WORK IS A BLESSING

The Bible opens with God working.

- 2 On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work.

The Hebrew word used for God’s work is the same the Bible uses for our work. God works and includes us in his work.

;  Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground”…15 The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.

God calls us to fill the earth, to form it, to tend it, work in it. God created everything but left things undone for us to do. God created the animals but had Adam name them. We are invited to participate in God’s work of making the world.

- 4 This is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth. When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 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.

All that is inherently necessary to make the world what God wants it to be was placed here by him at creation. But he set it up to need the work of humanity to get it done. The history of humanity is a story of the achievements of our work made with the raw materials God gave. The world will be what God intended it to be when God does his work and we do our’s.

And what is important to note here about all the Bible says about work here in is that it all comes before . This is all before sin enters the world. Work is not the consequence of the Fall, but is a good thing given as a gift from God to help make the world a better place. Even though our work is messed up by sin (talk about that in a minute), we continue the same work as Adam had in the Garden of Eden.

God said to form the earth and fill it. We fill it with human ingenuity and create culture. We form it by organizing it with infrastructure and government. The work God intends for us to do brings order to chaos, helps people live better lives, and be better stewards of the world he gave.

Tim Keller, Every Good Endeavor - “[Work is] rearranging the raw material of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish. This pattern is found in all kinds of work. Farming takes the physical material of soil and seed and produces food. Music takes the physics of sound and rearranges it into something beautiful and thrilling that brings meaning to life. When we take fabric and make a piece of clothing, when we push a broom and clean up a room, when we use technology to harness the forces of electricity, when we take an unformed, naive human mind and teach it a subject, when we teach a couple how to resolve their relational disputes, when we take simple materials and turn them into a poignant work of art—we are continuing God’s work of forming, filling, and subduing. Whenever we bring order out of chaos, whenever we draw out creative potential, whenever we elaborate and “unfold” creation beyond where it was when we found it, we are following God’s pattern of creative cultural development.”

2. WORK BRINGS FULFILLMENT

Since work existed before the Fall in , it means we were created to do it. It is part of our makeup as people made in God’s image. Work is supposed to be a gift from God to enjoy. And we aren’t just wired to work, we are commanded to work.

- 8 “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.

As much as we’d like to rest for 6 and work for 1, God’s design is to work 6 and rest 1. God obviously values work! The command to Sabbath was to keep us from being dominated by work. We are so inclined to work that it will steal all of our days if we let it.

So there is a form of satisfaction and delight that can be found in work. Not an ultimate satisfaction, but a joy that we find when we do what we were made to do.

3. WORK IS A GIFT

While we often think that work is a gift to us in the form of a paycheck, some benefits, and a livelihood, work is a much greater gift than that. If our work fills and forms creation, then it is an act of service to those around us.

Think about your work for a minute. Most people think in terms of production…I design logos, I pave roads, I manage accounts at a bank, I make clothes, I repair toilets, I raise kids and organize a home. But what if we viewed our work through the lens of how it served other people? That you do what you do to help people live a better life?

You repair toilets to help people live better! You design logos to help companies be successful and provide better service to their customers and better care to their employees. You pave roads so families can travel safely. You do laundry and get groceries to provide peace for your family. And on it goes. You can move from thinking about work as something you produce to something that is a means to loving your neighbor and making the world a better place to live.

Your work is not only a gift to others, but also a gift to God. God created work and created you to work (both inside and outside the home). Therefore, any work you do is an act of worship to him, as you fulfill his design and will for you. The bible says that whatever you do, do for God’s glory. That includes work.

TS - This is how God views work. It’s supposed to be a blessing. Supposed to bring a measure of fulfillment. Supposed to be a gift, whereby we serve God and the world. Why doesn’t that seem true in our experience? Why do Solomon’s words resonate with us and seem to contradict the broader picture given in the Bible? Actually, he doesn’t contradict God at all. He eventually falls in line with what the rest of the Bible teaches:

- 24 So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God. 25 For who can eat or enjoy anything apart from him?

He will say the same thing in chapter 3 and again at the end of chapter 5. What our Teacher was talking about before was the futility of work, its meaninglessness, apart from God. Just like pleasure, wealth, education, everything else he addresses in this letter, when we separate work from faith, it doesn’t work. The God of Sunday is the God of Monday through Friday.

TS - let’s take a look for a couple minutes at what happens when we separate faith and work:

THE BLESSING BECOMES A BURDEN

When we take God out of the work, we begin to see work as a necessary evil. As something we have to endure so that we can get to the weekend and live our real lives. We have to work to do what we want to do later.

Viewing work like that makes it something to be endured, not enjoyed. But work is not supposed to be your enemy. Work doesn’t feel like a blessing because of sin. Sin warped the meaning and purpose of our work.

- 17 And to the man he said,

“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree

    whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,

the ground is cursed because of you.

    All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.

18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you,

    though you will eat of its grains.

19 By the sweat of your brow

    will you have food to eat

until you return to the ground

    from which you were made.

For you were made from dust,

    and to dust you will return.”

Work is not the curse from sin. Burdensome work is.

2. THE FULFILLMENT BECOMES FRUSTRATING

Apart from God, work is frustrating because we try to find meaning in it. But that doesn’t work.

- 22 So what do people get in this life for all their hard work and anxiety? 23 Their days of labor are filled with pain and grief; even at night their minds cannot rest. It is all meaningless.

Listen, there is meaning to be found in your work, but when work IS your meaning, work becomes meaningless. When we make work to be too much, retirement becomes the end of life as we know it. Losing your job would be losing your life.

Some of you are frustrated at work because you are working for a paycheck to fund your real life or maybe to impress someone (father). You never gave any thought to where God would have you. Not saying to go into work tomorrow and quit! But if you are frustrated, you need to ask yourself why that is.

3. THE GIFT BECOMES A GOD

If you don’t see your work as a gift from God, you run the risk of your work itself becoming your god. Work can overwhelm your life and become a taskmaster, the driver of your existence.

We looked at last week at the description of a person who is spiraling away from God. They worship the things God created instead of God himself. That can happen with work as easy as any other part of creation. It is a subtle, yet profound shift. It is easier than we think to find yourself looking to your job as your Provider. It can become a functional savior that promises you money, meaning, hope, and security. Only God can give those things. Work is simply one of the ways he does that.

Conclusion

How do we keep work from becoming all that, and being all that it is supposed to be? Hear our Teacher’s wisdom…work is a gift from God to be enjoyed. It is not God. Work is a means of loving God and loving the world, but it is not the meaning of your life. Listen to how the NT picks up on this:

- 23 Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. 24 Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ.

Here are a few diagnostic questions for us to ask:

—How can I work with Christian distinctiveness at work?

—What are the opportunities in my profession to:

- serve individuals?

- serve society at large?

- model competence and excellence?

- witness for Christ?

Like the rest of our lives, our work is to be all about Jesus. It causes all sorts of problems when it’s about anything else. Know that God values your work. We know this because of . We know this because of Jesus himself. God didn’t come into the world as a philosopher, a warrior, or a king. He came as a carpenter. A worker.

COMMUNION

At communion, we pause to remember the work of Jesus. Not his carpentry skills, but his work on the cross. His work gives meaning to our work.