Sermon Tone Analysis

Big Idea: I want to allow the Bible to realign our vision of work.

All work matters!

Work is God’s idea from the beginning and will continue on into the New Creation.

All work has dignity and whether you are a CEO or a street sweeper, God is honored through our work.

Typically, work is only talked about when it concerns how we evangelize through our work and so we are going to get that out of the way up front because the theology of work is so much grander than that.

In his book Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, Timothy Keller gives us a grand view of our work and the four basic pillars that should shape the way we see our work.

Welcome everyone to our new series entitled “A Theology of Work.”

Make sure to remind everyone of the fact that our expedition groups are starting up this week and that it’s not too late to get involved in one if you aren’t already.

Chicken wing story from deployment...

And you have all had the chicken wing moment at work haven’t you?…explain (bad bosses, terrible co-workers, not enough pay, even homemakers)

And so what happens, is our view of work becomes more defined by our circumstances than anything objective.

And so our satisfaction is defined by how favorable our circumstances are…explain -

Let’s say you believe you aren’t being paid enough for the work you are doing and so it causes you to pursue greater salary opportunities.

For some of you who have attained that, you have realized that actually, you can be miserable at any income level and dissatisfied

Perhaps your job is a homemaker raising a few children…something you love dearly.

Do kids puking in line at Mcdonalds with one screaming in the car seat on your way to go get them their shots bit…

I love my job 1000 times more than anything I have ever done and yet there are days when the weight of leadership and personal things I deal with leave me wishing I were like digging ditches for a living…

It’s bad bosses, slimy coworkers, work that is boring or not challenging, work that doesn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of things.

And so what happens is sometimes the chicken wing incidents turn into weeks that turn into season and all of a sudden, our work become defined more by our circumstances than by the objective reality of work that God’s Word gives us.

When our view of work is defined by circumstances, we are doomed to dissatisfaction and a constant pursuit of what we perceive to be “better.”

Did you know the median job length today is 4.1 years.

That is down from almost 20 years being the median as late as the year 2000.

And it isn’t getting any better either.

If you narrow the demographic down to just people between the ages of 25-34 (of which the majority of people in this church fit into), the average tenure is only 2.8 years.

Just a little objective data to drive that point home.

There has to be something more.

I speak with a large number of you on any given week.

Over the course of a month, I probably talk to around 50% of you and work almost always comes up.

What I know from those conversations is that our relationship with work is a HUGE issue that we need to spend some time on.

Now, over these next few weeks as we talk about this subject there are going to be millions of potential applications that can be made from this theology of work.

Each one of you has a unique calling to work.

You have unique skill sets, different job situations, different relationships to your bosses, different levels of job satisfaction, and all of that is going to result in different applications of the biblical truths about work we are going to talk about.

BUT!!!! Before we launch into all of that...

We need a view of work that is based on God’s design for our work.

We are going to begin today by looking at three pillars of the theology of work .

We are going to look at the objective reality of work as defined by God.

These pillars are meant to shape the way we see our work over and above any possible circumstances that are currently defining the way we see and interact with our work.

In the first pillar, we see that we are…

Pillar 1: Designed FOR Work

And again in Genesis 2:5-15

This is known as the creation mandate and describes the work God intends for mankind to participate in.

From this, we should understand that:

Work was God’s plan for mankind from the very beginning and existed even when the world was perfect and without sin.

Check this out though:

Explain that we have broken the creation and yet, look at what God re-emphasizes to mankind as He is kicking them out of paradise:

Although the nature of our work changed after the fall (something we are going to talk about at length next week), did you notice that the creation mandate still exists?

We are still meant to cultivate and work.

So that is our past and present reality concerning work…but what about our future reality?

Well, for anyone who pictures a heaven where we are sitting around on couches eating grapes and plucking harps, check out this vision of the new creation that we get from the prophet Isaiah in Isa 2:4

The thirty thousand foot view of this passage is that there is coming a day when the tools we use and the work we put our hand to won’t be in competition or struggle with others but will once again be fruitful labor.

We don’t hammer swords and spears into farming tools so that we can decorate with them.

A little further on in Isaiah’s book, he explains this imagery a little further.

Check this out:

Here is what John the Revelator saw:

Our future still includes work!

Now, we will get into the theology of why work is currently broken and how it will one day be made right again next week but for now what I want us to take away from these passages is that:

Work was part of God’s original plan for humanity, it is our present reality, and part of His plan for our eternal future.

What happens when we miss this truth though?

John Piper seashells bit.

(Ruby Aliason nurse & Laura Edwards Dr. killed in Cameroon as their breaks give out and they go over a cliff and die instantly).

Title of the article “Start now retire early” Bob and Penny took early retirement, 30’ fishing trawler, collecting sea-shells… that’s a tragedy.

Work isn’t some necessary evil that we must endure for 30-50 years just so we can spend our final years sipping cocktails and collecting seashells and skin cancer.

Work is God’s glorious purpose for all mankind and is fundamental to our identity.

Pillar 2: Dignified THROUGH Work

To understand what this statement means, we have to go back to our creation mandate.

Here are the two verses that directly precede the creation mandate:

This is nothing new.

We have talked about this plenty of times before.

Pretend you are reading the first chapter of Genesis for the first time.

You see God as the workman who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them.

Then this workman turns to create the pinnacle of His creation in His own image.

Since we have not received any physical information about this creator up to this point, our image must mainly derive from what He does.

We see God primarily working in two ways…as creator and provider.

We are meant to display God’s image in the world as we participate in the work He created us to do.

Now, we have just looked at God’s work as creator, so let’s turn and see what we mean by God as provider.

I challenge you to read all of Psalm 104 on your own as an act of worship but I have selected a little snippet from the chapter just to show what I mean by God being a provider.

Check this out:

Listen to this quote by Timothy Keller in his book Every Good Deed: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work:

“The creation narrative in the book of Genesis is unique among ancient accounts of origins.

Many cultures had stories that depicted the beginning of the world and human history as the result of a struggle between warring cosmic forces.

In the Babylonian creation story the Enuma Elish, the god Marduk overcomes the goddess Tiamat and forges the world out of her remains.

In this and similar accounts, the visible universe was an uneasy balance of powers in tension with one another.

In the Bible, however, creation is not the result of a conflict, for God has no rivals.

Indeed, all the powers and beings of heaven and earth are created by him and dependent on him.

Creation then is not the aftermath of a battle but the plan of a craftsman.”

Check out this final sentence of the quote:

“God made the world not as a warrior digs a trench but as an artist makes a masterpiece.”

It is this masterpiece that we, as God’s image bearers, are meant to participate in through our work of creation and provision.

Just as the multifaceted nature of God’s work is made evident by the diversity of all He created, so too, we image our creator best through the variety of vocations God has called us to and equipped us for.

I want you to read that statement again as I read it aloud.

Here is the bottom line:

The dignity of our work isn’t based on what we do but on the Creator who’s image we display through our work.

What happens when we miss this truth though?

When we fail to understand that all good work (give caveat about Christian mercenaries or abortion doctors) has dignity and value, we inevitably develop a hierarchy of work in what is known as the Sacred vs. Secular debate.

Talk about Sacred vs. Secular and the Catholic church and the faulty thinking that Doctors are better than the person sweeping streets and pastors being at the top of that hierarchy because their work directly correlates to God’s work...

I think it is a bit of comedic irony that when God comes to earth, his chosen profession wasn’t a Rabbi.

Jesus was our High Priest but that was not his trade.

Jesus was a carpenter.

Jesus’ first disciples were fishermen, tax collectors, political activists, and tradesmen.

The Apostle Paul who wrote like half the New Testament…he was a leather craftsman and a tent maker.