Thinking Biblically about Work | Psalm 127:1-2
Brian Hedges | September 3, 2023
Good morning! It’s so good to see all of you this morning and to be back after several months away. Three months of sabbatical is a long time, and a lot of life happened during that time, but it was greatly refreshing and enjoyable. Lots of golf. I counted up yesterday, because I keep scores on my app, and I played 902 holes of golf this summer. There were some good rounds and some bad rounds, but I have to say that any possible dream I ever had of joining the tour is shattered. After 902 holes, I’m still not that good! But it was sure a lot of fun.
So I want to say at the outset this morning, thank you, Redeemer Church, for providing that for me and my family, and thank you especially to Brad and Andy, who filled the pulpit as you studied through Colossians this summer; and to all the staff and the elders and leaders and lay leaders who just kept things running. One of the great blessings for me throughout the summer was to occasionally get little updates—see pictures of VBS or the Neighborhood Fun Night or things that were operating really well that I had no involvement in whatsoever. That’s a wonderful place for a pastor to be in, to know that the church is functioning well. So thank you for the time. It’s wonderful to be back.
This morning I’m going to kick off a new series that’s going to take us through the next few weeks, called “Thinking Biblically.” Today we’re going to talk about work, thinking biblically about work. I originally thought I would do this because it is Labor Day weekend, and work is a huge part of all of our lives, and yet it’s not something that we spend a lot of time talking about on Sunday mornings.
We have 168 hours a week, and most of us are spending 40 or more of those in some kind of work. Now, some of you, I know, are retired, so that’s something in your past. Maybe you’re using your time now to work in other ways—you’re volunteering or you’re serving in a number of other ways, or maybe you’re working another job even in retirement. But most of us are still juggling the workload and the work life that comes with that.
I think one of the most pressing questions for a Christian to answer is, “How do I think biblically about work?”
In this series, when talking about thinking biblically, I want us to really define that in about three different ways. I want us to think about what the Bible teaches about each one of these topics we’re going to look at over the next five weeks. What does the Bible teach? I want us to ask how we think about this part of our lives within the framework of a Christian worldview, and I want us to situate these themes within the broader story of the gospel, God’s plan of redemption—creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. We believe that history began, it was God’s idea, that God created the world, but evil has invaded the world, so we live in a fallen world. But God, through his Son, Jesus Christ, and his death and resurrection and through the regenerating, renewing, transforming work of the Holy Spirit, is making all things new. We are headed to something. We are headed to a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness will dwell, where God’s glory will once again be supreme over all the earth. That affects every aspect of our lives.
So as we think about things like work, we need to think about it within that framework. Work this week, then we’re going to talk about identity, politics (deep breath, everybody), family, and church. Those are the five themes over these next five weeks. Let’s pray that God will speak to us through his word.
This morning we’re talking about work, and I want to begin by reading two verses from Psalm 127. This sermon is not strictly an exposition of this psalm; I’m just going to read two verses from this psalm, but we’re going to look at a number of different verses as we go. But I’ll begin here in Psalm 127:1-2. The passage says,
“Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain. [Underscore that word ‘labor.’]
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.”
This is God’s word.
I want to do three things this morning. Again, we’re kind of following the storyline of redemption. I want us to think about:
1. The Value of Work in the Created Order
2. Problems with Work in a Fallen World
3. How to Engage in Restful Work
I’ll explain what I mean by that when we get to that point.
1. The Value of Work in the Created Order
First of all, and briefly, the value of work in the created order. In this passage we just looked at, work is assumed in the passage. There’s building, there’s watching, there’s laboring. Work is just assumed in the passage, but the passage is really about the vanity and the futility of labor when it is not done in dependence on the Lord. But work is assumed.
From the beginning of the Bible, from the very first chapters of the Bible, work is a part of human life, even before the fall into sin. Let’s look at two passages from Genesis 1-2.
Genesis 1:27-28 are familiar words to you. You know this teaching of Scripture, about God creating man in his image. Listen to what it says.
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
“And God blessed them. And God said to them [note this—these are the first command of God to the human race], ‘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.’”
This is what we sometimes call the creation mandate or the cultural mandate. It’s God’s command to fill the earth and to subdue the earth.
You see, when God created the world, he created the world with a garden, the center of the world, but the rest of the world is not a garden. It’s the job of the man and the woman to multiply, to reproduce, and to tame this creation, to bring order into this world that God has created. They are to work.
In Genesis 2:15 we read that “the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
This is what God created us to do. God created us to be doers, he created us to have a vocation, he created us to do work. It’s right at the center of what it means to be a human being.
This is also encapsulated in the Ten Commandments, in the very law of God. When God gave his law to the children of Israel on Mount Sinai, the fourth commandment, you may remember, is a commandment about the Sabbath. But inherent within the Sabbath principle is also the command to work. Listen to Exodus 20:8-10. It says,
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor [there’s the command to work], and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.”
So, God intends for us to work. Work is God’s idea. Work is a good thing, and we need to understand the value of work in the created order.
This, of course, follows the pattern that is true of God himself, because God himself is the greatest worker. Jesus said, “My Father is working, and I am working.” The Father who worked to create the world and then rested on the seventh day continues to work in the work of providence and preserving the world and upholding it by the word of his power. Of course, work for God is not the expenditure of effort, as if he wears himself out, but it is the ongoing sustenance of the whole created order by his will and by his word. Our God is a worker, and it’s assumed here in this passage. “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” The Lord is the great builder. We have to depend on the Lord as the builder, and then we follow him as we build as well.
Work begins with God. Work is God’s idea. He is the master workman.
One author notes that “the God of the Bible is preeminently a worker,” and then another author explores some of the specific images of God that are used in the Bible to describe the work of God. God in the Bible is seen as a composer, a performer, a metalworker, a potter, a garment-maker, a gardener, a farmer, a shepherd, a tentmaker, a builder, a physician, and so much more. In fact, almost every vocation that we could think of, even if it includes things like knowledge work—I mean, God is the supreme knowledge worker! Every vocation we can think of patterns itself in some way after God if it is a good and a just and a wholesome vocation. As image-bearers of God, we are created to imitate him by doing meaningful work.
Now, one of the things this means—here’s the first application point I want you to get—is that we should not think that there is any real sacred/secular divide in the Christian life. It’s not that there is one part of your life and of your week that is sacred and holy (namely, Sundays), while Monday through Saturday you’re involved in the so-called secular world. Even if you have a job that has nothing to do with direct ministry, the reality is that all of our work as believers in Jesus Christ is sacred. All of our work is holy to the Lord, or should be. We should think of all of our work as being a part of our service to God.
Martin Luther, in his small catechism, made vocation—that is, our calling to work in various ways—he made that central in the table of duties, and he called vocation a mask of God. That’s a curious phrase. Our vocation, our job, is a “mask of God,” along with family and church and various things in the world. What does he mean by that? He means that God hides himself and yet works in and through these different aspects of our lives. God is at work in the family, God is at work in the workplace, God is at work in the world in which we live. These are masks of God. And part of our duty as Christians is to discern how God is working and how God wants to work and how he wants to use us.
Skye Jethani, in a wonderful book called Discipleship with Monday in Mind, puts it very well. He says, “All work matters to God. Collecting trash matters to God. Preparing lattes matters to God. Changing dirty diapers matters to God. Cooking a meal matters to God. Developing an Excel spreadsheet matters to God. As someone once said, ‘If it is not sinful work, it is sacred work.’”
The value of work in the created order. The first thing I want you to know is that, brother and sister, what you are doing Monday through Saturday matters. God has a purpose for that. God has providentially put you where you are in life and in work and in vocation, and there is a mission, there is a vocation, there is a sacred calling, and part of what I want you to grasp this morning is that it matters to the Lord and should be a crucial part of your discipleship and of your worship of God when you’re following Jesus Christ. The way you engage in the work that God has called you to do, whether that’s in a ministry such as I’m engaged in or whether that’s in a workplace that’s very, very different, or whether you’re working in the home—whatever it is, your work matters to God. The value of work in the created order.
2. Problems with Work in a Fallen World
Here is the problem—we all know this, right—that the fall of mankind into sin there in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 brought a curse, and it brought a curse on the very thing that God had created us and called us to do. He cursed the ground, and that introduced sweat and toil into our labor.
We could say that this, then, is the reality: work is good, but the curse has made work hard. “By the sweat of your face you will earn your living,” the Lord says to Adam.
That means that sometimes—in fact, oftentimes—work feels futile. That’s what you see here in this passage in Psalm 127. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.”
Vanity! The Hebrew word here carries the idea—it’s the word ashav—of that which is empty and worthless and has no value. It’s not the same word that’s used in Ecclesiastes, but it carries a similar sense. The word there is the word hevel, and that word carries the idea of air, emptiness, wind. “What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.” It’s futile. It’s empty.
Do you ever feel like that with your work? “What’s the use?” You clear your inbox and then a hundred emails arrive that day. What’s the use of even trying? Or you mow your yard, but as soon as you get it mowed it seems like the grass is up again. Whatever it is that you’re engaging in—you’re teaching students, and you think you’ve finally landed the lesson and the students are grasping it, they’re getting it; but next week it seems like they’ve forgotten everything that you’ve said.
Work feels futile to us. The Scriptures use this language of vanity, futility, vexation, eating the bread of anxious toil. This is the problem of work in a fallen world. We are working now against the grain. It’s not as easy, it’s not as simple, it’s not as fulfilling as it would have been had there been no sin in the world. But because there is sin in the world, work is difficult.
That’s true even in ministry, right? I love the work that I do, but even in ministry the work is difficult work. It’s not easy.
I want us to think for just a minute about the ways in which sin corrupts work, not just in the sense of raising up for us obstacles that make work hard, but the way that sin corrupts work in our own hearts and lives. I think we can summarize this in two ways, two ways that we distort work. We can (number one) undervalue work or (number two) we can overvalue work. Both of those are problems.
(1) First of all, we undervalue work. I was on the golf course about a week ago—in fact, it was the day before I came back to work. This was last Monday. I think that’s right. Anyway, I was on the golf course and I was talking to a guy I’ve gotten to know out there, and he was inviting me to play with another group of guys that play regularly. I said, “Well, I’ve been on a sabbatical, but I’m about to go back to work,” and he said, “Yeah, work! That’s a four-letter word.” A lot of people would say golf is a four-letter word, but anyway, “Work is a four-letter word.”
That’s the mentality. “Work is a drudgery. Work is a necessary evil. Work is a four-letter word. It’s just a job.”
This is the mentality of those who view work negatively primarily. All they see is the curse, all they see is the vanity, all they see is the futility. They don’t see the inherent dignity and value of work as image-bearers who are created in the image of God.
This can lead to all kinds of problems in our lives. It can lead, of course, to murmuring and complaining. It may be the case that some of us just have a bad attitude at work, and rather than being grateful that we have a job, grateful that we have a means of providing for our families; rather than being grateful that we have opportunities to engage with non-Christians and unbelievers and to build friendships and conversations with them, and grateful that we can use our minds and our bodies to do something that somehow contributes to the wellbeing of society—rather than thinking any of those things, we just dread the moment when we punch in and we can’t wait for the moment when we punch out, and we’re living for the weekend, we’re living for the vacation, and we hate our jobs.
That’s a problem. That means that we are not valuing work in the way that God wants us to value work.
This can also manifest in things like laziness or sloth or idleness. There are some strong warnings about that in Scripture. Read the book of Proverbs and all of the warnings to the sluggard. Or just read this passage from 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12. This is one of the strongest—I mean, this is significant, right? This is seven verses in 2 Thessalonians 3 that Paul devotes to tackling this one problem of idleness! This is really significant.
Paul says,
“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. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.”
That’s a very strong statement. Just a caveat there; that is, of course, not talking about people who cannot work because of some disability. But listen, if you’re young and of sound mind and body and you’re not going to school and you’re not working, this text means that you need to get off the couch, quit playing video games and watching TV all day, and get a job. Don’t be a moocher. Don’t be idle. Work. That’s what we’re called to do.
Here’s another way this can manifest: undervaluing work is what we might call a sin of presumption, presuming on God. This can take a really spiritual twist. Someone says, “You know what? I believe that God provides for my needs, and therefore I’m not going to work hard, I may not even work at all. I believe that God is going to provide for my needs.” It’s presumption.
This is a person who is not building the house at all. They’re just saying, “The Lord’s going to build the house!” They’re not laying any bricks down; they’re not trying to build at all. It’s the sin of presumption.
I love what Martin Luther said about this. He said, “God does not want to have success come without work, and yet I am not to achieve it by my work. He does not want me to sit at home, to loaf, to commit matters to God, and wait until a fried chicken flies into my mouth.” That’s not the way God works!
I said that to my kids, and they said, “They had fried chicken back then?” I guess they did.
That would be tempting God, Luther says. It’s the sin of presumption. That’s undervaluing work.
So check yourself here, if you’re undervaluing work by having the wrong attitude or by being lazy, by not doing your best, by being idle, by being content with unemployment, by presuming on God. Any of those things would be wrong, and if that’s where you are this morning then this is the call to repent of a wrong attitude towards work.
(2) But here’s the more common problem: it’s the problem of overvaluing work. This is the opposite problem. This would be work to the neglect of God. This would be trying to build the house without trusting in the Lord to be the builder. This would be trying to earn a living with no reference to God, without trusting in God, working independently of the Lord. This is “eating the bread of anxious toil,” as Psalm 127:2 says.
In this case, work is not a drudgery, work is a idol. Work becomes too important to us. This also manifests in a number of ways, as we overwork, but we overwork and overvalue work for a number of different reasons. See if any of these things fit you.
You can overwork out of avoidance and escapism, because it’s easier to go to work than it is to face problems at home. It’s easier to go to work than it is to deal with problems in your marriage or with your children. There are a lot of men who do this. They escape into work, and they’d rather work than actually be responsible and engaged husbands and dads. There are women who do this as well.
In this case, it’s maybe not the work itself that’s the idol, it’s personal comfort. It’s just easier to work. It’s just easier not to come home. It’s just easier to work a 60-hour week, six days a week. It’s just easier.
Here’s another reason we may overwork: out of anxiety and fretting. This is overworking because we’re seeking security—getting paid overtime, the money is really good, and you’re just scared to death of having to depend directly on the Lord to meet needs. Out of that sense of anxiety and always trying to get more, always trying to get more, it drives you to work more than you need to work.
Here would be another reason we overwork: the fear of what people think. You may find it difficult to say no. You can’t say no to a boss because you cannot bear conflict or disapproval or disappointment.
This is a temptation in ministry. It’s a real temptation in ministry; it’s just the temptation to always want to say yes because you don’t want to disappoint people.
I faced that about a week ago, and it took me a while to kind of work through it and realize what I was going through again, this temptation to say yes when maybe I needed to say no. When I recognized it I realized, okay, I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to say yes for the wrong reasons.
Here’s another reason we can overwork: pride. Sheer ambition, trying to rise to the top, always jockeying for position, for influence, for esteem, always having to be the best.
All of these are motivations that can lead us to be workaholics, that can lead us to overwork, to work more than we should, more than we need, to make an idol out of work or to make an idol out of something else for which work is a means to achieve that idolatrous end.
These are two distortions of work, two problems: undervalue work, overvalue work. We could multiply the examples of the ways that this manifests in our lives.
3. How to Engage in Restful Work
Here’s what we need, folks: what we need is what I want to call restful work. Proverbs 10:22 says, “The blessing of the Lord brings wealth without painful toil for it.”
You remember how the Lord had said to Eve in Genesis 3:16, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing, and in pain you shall bring forth your children.” That’s the word: pain. Painful toil. It’s a word that’s used six times in Scripture.
It’s used again here in our main text, in Psalm 127, when the psalmist talks about “eating the bread of anxious toil.” But notice what he says after that. He says it’s vain for you to do this, to rise up early, go to rest late, eating the bread of anxious toil, “for God gives to his beloved sleep.” God gives his people rest.
Now, I think in Psalm 127 that probably literally means rest. It literally means sleep. There’s a whole sermon to be preached on that. But I think it also points to a different kind of rest, a rest that we get by a deep trust in God, where instead of laboring in vain without trusting in God we’re trusting in him. “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.” So we’re trusting in the Lord to be the builder; even as we build, we’re trusting in him. That gives us rest.
Really, at the heart of it, it’s the same kind of trust in God that we need as Christians trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ, so that instead of trying to secure our salvation and secure our future and our wellbeing through our own efforts, through our own works and our own ambitions, we are trusting in what our good God has done for us.
Too often, we’re the opposite. We are addicted to work because we’re trying to prove something, we’re trying to secure something, we’re trying in essence to saving ourselves.
There’s a great illustration; some of you have heard me use this before, but I know you’ll give me a break, because it’s the first day back, right? So I can reuse illustrations.
One of my favorite films of all time is Chariots of Fire, about the 1924 Olympic games. The movie focuses on these two different men, Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams. There’s a scene with Harold Abrahams, who’s a very driven, ambitious man played brilliantly by the actor Ben Cross. There’s a scene where he’s talking to his girlfriend about the upcoming race, and he says these words:
“Contentment. I’m 24, and I’ve never known it. I’m forever in pursuit, and I don’t even know what it is I’m chasing. I’ll raise my eyes and look down that four-foot wide corridor with ten lonely seconds to justify my existence. But will I?”
You see what he’s doing? He’s put all of his hopes, all of his wellbeing, all of his identity, all of his security, all of his significance—he’s put it all into this one thing: will I win the race? He’s overvalued work, and he’s become an addict. Work has become a means of self-salvation to justify his existence.
Brothers and sisters, what we need and what we get in the gospel is something entirely different. We get rest in Christ, where we trust in his finished work in our behalf, and we trust right along with that that our God is a good and a gracious God who builds the house, who provides for us, who works through our labors, who sanctifies those labors, who uses them, and we can trust him, and we can rest in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I love these words of Dorothy Sayers. She said, “The first Adam was cursed with labor and suffering. The redemption of labor and suffering is the triumph of the second Adam, the carpenter, nailed to the cross.”
He took our curse! A crown of thorns, the very thorns that were a curse on the ground of this sinful, fallen world, Jesus took that curse, and bore it in our place.
It leads us into a life of new creation, which we already enjoy in part now even as we wait for the fullness of redemption. I want to end by taking the next eight or nine minutes or so to just talk about how, then, do we engage in restful work as believers?
Here’s the practical, positive, hopefully it will be hopeful application for you this morning. What should work look like for us as we live in service to and imitation of Christ, our crucified, resurrected King? What does work look like if we have found our rest in Jesus? I want to give you three things. These are three exhortations.
(1) Number one, serve the work. That’s kind of an unusual way to put it, perhaps. I’ll explain what I mean.
Proverbs 22:29 says, “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.”
Just underscore those two words, skillful and work. Those words are combined together over forty times in the Old Testament: skillful work. It carries the idea of craft, skill in one’s craft. Skillful work.
This is something that you have to give yourself to. You have to develop this and cultivate this, skillful work. This is what Dorothy Sayers called serving the work. She wrote an essay in 1942 called “Why Work?” These are some of the wisest things that I’ve read about work. This is the long quote in the sermon; let me read this to you. You can follow along on the screen. Dorothy Sayers, 1942, “Why Work?” She says,
“How can any one remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life? [That’s why we’re doing this sermon, because the Bible and Christianity does have concern with our work.] The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.
“Church by all means, and decent forms of amusement, certainly—but what use is all that if in the very center of his life and occupation he is insulting God with bad carpentry? No crooked table legs or ill-fitting drawers ever, I dare swear, came out of the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth. Nor, if they did, could anyone believe that they were made by the same hand that made Heaven and earth. . . . If work is to find its right place in the world, it is the duty of the Church to see to it that the work serves God, and that the worker serves the work.”
You know what that means? That means, whatever your vocation, whatever your calling, whatever your job, whatever your occupation, master your craft. “Do you see a man who is skillful in his work?” Proverbs says. “He will stand before kings.” Master your craft. Get better at what you do. Learn new skills. If you’re a carpenter, make good tables. Frame those doors straight. If you’re a cook, be the best cook you can be. If you’re a teacher, teach with creativity and skill. Engage the interest of those students. If you’re a coach, play to win and develop good sportsmanship. If you’re a programmer, then develop in your skills so that you can clear out the bugs and you can create the best-working, best-operating programs possible. If you’re a truck driver, drive safely and arrive on time. Master your craft. Be good at what you do.
Listen, if you feel stuck in a job that you don’t particularly love—that could be many of you right now—maybe you feel stuck. You’re in a job and you don’t really like the job. It’s not necessarily a bad job, but you don’t like the environment, you don’t like the people, you don’t like the work that you’re doing every day. Here’s something you can do: you start right here. You learn more skills. You hone your craft. You get better at what you do. You bring those skills to the workplace. You take on more, within limits—I’m not talking about overworking, but you take on more responsibility, you show more initiative. Engage that job as if that job is the place that God has called you to be, and engage it to the best of your abilities. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.” At the same time, you can look for opportunities for a better job. But don’t waste the job you have. Instead, give yourself to mastering it.
So, serve the work. That’s first.
(2) Number two, witness through the work. I mean a couple of different things by this. Of course I mean witness at work. Sometimes I think it’s helpful for us to be reminded that if you have a secular job, if you have a job that’s not directly in ministry, you are on the front lines. You’re on the mission field. You’re seeing more unbelievers than I do in a day. Listen, it was much easier for me to share the gospel and to do evangelism when I was not working for a church. I’ve had a couple of seasons like that in my life, and I had lots of gospel conversations. It was much easier to do then than it is now. But that’s your job. Your job is to have these gospel conversations as they are appropriate and as the Lord leads, of course with sensitivity to the workplace environment. So, of course, witness at work.
But I also mean something else. I mean witness through the work, so that the kind of work you do is a witness to the reality of Jesus Christ in your life. Listen to what Paul says in Titus. This is significant. Did you know that almost every letter that Paul writes he says something about work? Almost every one. Here he’s addressing bondservants, or slaves. He says, “Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything. They are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering [or stealing], but showing all good faith, so that—” here’s the reason why he said everything else before “—so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.”
I love that image. Work in a certain kind of way so that you can adorn the doctrine, you can beautify. That’s what it means to adorn. When you adorn something, you’re beautifying something. You’re putting something on it in order to make it look good. You’re bringing out its inherent beauty. Paul says, “I want you to adorn the gospel.” Witness through your work.
That means, brothers and sisters, that we should let our lives be a sermon. The image that we should convey is not a “holier than thou” image, it’s not a self-righteous image at work, as if we think we have all the answers. That’s not it at all. Instead, you should be the most kind, loving, gentle, honest, punctual, hardworking, positive person you can be in your workplace. You’re not the complainer, you’re not the one that’s chronically late, you’re not the one that’s doing shoddy work, you’re not the one that’s wasting time. Instead, you are the problem solver, you’re the positive person, you’re the kind influence, you’re the compassionate, listening ear, you’re the hard worker, because as you do that you are adorning the gospel. You are a witness to the reality of Jesus Christ in your life.
You may be the only Christian that some of your non-Christian friends ever meet. What do they think about Christianity based on what they know of you? It’s a high calling for us. Let’s do it well.
(3) Number three, and finally, worship in the work. Somebody once said that if we’re called to offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, that means that everything else is an altar. When you drive to work on Monday morning, your car is an altar. When you sit at your desk, your desk is an altar. When you come to the lectern to teach, that lectern is an altar. You offer yourself and you offer your work to God.
How about a couple of verses from Colossians? You just went through this wonderful book together. Do you remember what Colossians says about work?
Colossians 3:17: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
Colossians 3:22: “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, no by way of eye service, as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord, not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”
I’ve recently been reading a book about the life and ministry and the teaching of Francis Schaeffer. Many of you, I’m sure, have benefited from Schaeffer’s writings over the years. In his little book Art and the Bible, Schaeffer talks about an art museum in Neuchatel, Switzerland, where there were these three great murals by a painter named Paul Robert. They are these three murals that portray the second coming. The central mural—you can see this on the screen—pictures this staircase winding to heaven, with these beautiful men and women who are walking up the staircase. I know you can’t see it that well, but they’re walking up the staircase to the Lord, and they’re carrying in their hands artifacts, things that they’ve made, works of art, works of architecture, things they’ve made. They’re taking them up to the Lord to offer them to the Lord.
Schaeffer draws out from this picture, and this is his comment. He says,
“Paul Robert [that’s the painter] understood Scripture a lot better than many of us. He saw that at the second coming the lordship of Christ will include everything, including our work. But he also knew that if these things are to be carried up to the praise of God and the lordship of Christ at the second coming, then we should be offering them to God now.”
That’s part of what we do when we work. We take the things we do, the things that God has called us to do, and we offer them to the Lord in worship.
One more illustration. I mentioned Chariots of Fire a while ago and Harold Abrahams, but of course, the other primary figure in that film is Eric Liddell. This is a biopic, of course, and these are based on true stories. We don’t know if Eric Liddell really said exactly this, but there’s a scene in the movie where Eric Liddell, who’s a Christian, is talking with his sister. They’re Scottish Presbyterians, very, very strict Presbyterians, and his sister is concerned about Eric, that he’s losing his passion for God, his sense of calling to ministry. I love the statement, maybe the most famous line from the film, when Eric Liddell looks in his sister’s eyes and says, “God made me fast, and when I run I feel his pleasure.”
You see the motivation? Totally different than Harold Abrahams. He’s not running as an addict, he’s not running to justify his existence, he’s not running to prove his worth, he’s not even running mainly for the goal. He’s running because God made him to run, and because when he runs he feels the pleasure of God.
Brothers and sisters, God made you for something. He has gifted you to do something. He’s gifted your mind or he’s gifted your hands. He’s given you skills, and he wants you to use those skills for his glory, so that you offer those up to him, and when you do in sincere worship you also can feel his pleasure.
This is how we engage in restful work. May God help us as we do that this week and in the weeks to come. Let’s work in a way that shows the world that Jesus Christ is the Lord of all creation.
Brian G. Hedges
