Take This Job And...Love It, Why Work Is Important

The book of Genesis this morning, it is Communion Sunday, and we want to allow ample time to not rush through Communion today, so I'm going to go right into the message this morning. By the way, the messages on the weekend, the Saturday evening message will be the same, basically the same as Sunday morning, and the service begins at 6 p.m., if I didn't mention that for you. Genesis chapter 1, let's begin there. Verse 26, then, God said, Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. And then skip over, down to verse, actually it's in some Bibles, it's not even marked, but it's actually the first verse of chapter 2. By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work, and God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. And then one final verse, chapter 2, verse 15, the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. This past Monday on Labor Day, in the closing hours of a beautiful three-day weekend, a local TV weatherman addressed the prevailing attitude toward work among most of us when he said this. He said, Here's the five-day. Let's look ahead to next weekend so you can plan your next outing appropriately. I thought, That's it. That's the American dream. Eliminate the week and just live on the weekends. No more work, no more hassles, no more schedules. Life would be an endless series of getaways and weekend retreats and outings and just laying around the house and playing with the kids. During Lotto fever here a few months ago, you remember when the lottery got up to $125 million? People were asked, What would you do if you won the lottery? What do you think they all said, just about? I'd stay at my job another hour, just long enough to tell my boss what I thought of him, and then I'd walk out the door. And I'd go find a beach somewhere and buy a condo and set up shop. And you know, you think about that, that sounds wonderful. Spend the rest of my life doing absolutely nothing but laying on the beach. What is work all about? What really is work about? Is it a necessary evil that we've got to endure because we're here on the earth and we've got to eat so we've got to work? Why is it that so many people spend so much of their lives figuring out ways to get out of it or to climb into an early retirement or some way to shorten the misery? Is work really just something that God gave as a curse upon mankind, a result of sin and rebellion, something he gave because man defaulted his way into it? You know, did God look over creation one day and see what man was doing and say, Well, you miserable, lousy sinner. I know what I'm going to do with you. I'm going to consign you to the rock pile of human labor for the next 45 or 50 years of your life. And you're going to sweat and you're going to toil and you're going to work and work and work. Maybe that's where the term hard labor was coined in prison. Reinforcing this idea is the fact that many, many people are not happy in their jobs. Many people feel like it's a big mistake and somewhere along the line they got on the wrong track and they're spending the rest of their lives being miserable in something. Most of you know that during the summer when I was away, I asked for a number of prayer requests and I got nearly 700 of these. Second only to concern for family members was the concern for the situations that people were in in their workplace. I got a multitude of these, probably 70 or 80 of them. People who said things like, Pray for direction in my life that I could find a job where I can please God. There's another one that says, Pray for me for my job just does not satisfy me. Another one said, My job is very demanding at this time. Just pray that God would give me strength and wisdom and courage to see the project that I'm working on through to the end. It involves 80 or 90 people. Another one said, I need to find a full-time job. All I can find is temporary and part-time work. God lead me to the right job. And over and over and over again, people saying, I feel like I'm in the wrong place. I'm not happy. Apparently, just because a person may know Christ does not guarantee, does it, that their job, their workplace, will be a place of satisfaction and fulfillment. In fact, many believers have an added ingredient that they're always dealing with when it comes to work. And that's this. Many believers are taught from day one that the only real work is the work of the church. Did you grow up learning that? I mean, the only place where things really count is if you're doing church work. I mean, you know, there's something about that that sounds holy. But folks, as we're going to see, that's not necessarily true. In fact, God has a different plan altogether. I don't know about you, but I grew up in the church and I went off to seminary and all those kinds of things. I never heard a sermon about work. How about you? What do you spend your time doing more of than anything else? Let's all say it. Work. Say it like you mean it. Work. Okay? Yeah. How many of you work more than you sleep? Oh, can I talk to the rest of you then? I mean, what are the rest of you doing? How do you get away with that? Yeah, I mean, we work more than anything else we do. We work. And so I would think, wouldn't you, that God would recognize that this is an incredibly important part of our lives and that His Word would have something significant to say about it. The Bible clearly affirms that work, that human labor, was by God's design, not by default, and that it was given for man's prosperity, not his punishment. See, immediately after assigning dominion, as we read in Genesis chapter 1, look at it again just so you know I'm not adding to the text. Genesis 2, 15, this is before the fall. God puts man in the garden. What does it say? To play there and sleep? No, what? To work it and take care of it. And so before man ever fell, before sin ever entered the picture, work was given by design as a blessing for the good of mankind. God saw that man needed a purposeful pursuit, and so He gave man work through an open hand, not through a clenched fist. This is very, very important. You see, if you start out thinking that work is a consigned punishment, then you're going to be in trouble. Now, it's true that later on we read, in fact, let's flip over to Genesis 3. Man did sin, Adam did fall. Verse 17, God said this, Adam, because you did these things, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field, and by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food. And so there was a tainting of the divine design through man's sin. However, let's remember, dear ones, that God redeems everything through Christ, even the dignity of work. God wants you to see your work as a place of receiving reward beyond the monetary where you can grow in some sense of purposefulness as to the rewards that He has destined for you in the workplace. You see, work for us is like work was for God. Did you catch what I read about God working? How do we know God didn't have to work? Isn't it interesting that He calls creation work? He worked to create. He worked to get things in order. And work is an expression of our personhood. It's an expression of our being. What does creation tell you about God? What does it tell you? He's orderly. What else? He's majestic. He's powerful. He's diverse. You see, His work, the work of creation, tells us all these things about God. What does your work tell us about you? Have you ever watched a craftsman work? I had someone that blessed our family with a gift here just recently. It's a beautiful, like a plaque, but it's a piece of art really more than a plaque. And this brother took the verse of scripture in number 626, the Aaronic Blessing, and put it and cut one piece of wood. I know what kind of saw he used, but it's one piece of wood all the way through so that in this very beautiful script kind of writing, he wrote the whole verse, you know, May the Lord lift up His countenance and bless Him, all this, in this one beautiful plaque. And I mean, I looked at it and I said, there's just no way I could ever do that. But boy, did it tell me something about Him, about His ability, about His heart, about His skills. It was an expression. And I want to share with you for just a few minutes today, because I want to allow ample time for communion. I want to share with you three specific rewards that you can expect because you work. And I hope that when you leave here today, that when you get up tomorrow, you're going to look at work through a little different eye than maybe you left it on Friday. Number one, the first reward that we can expect is that of increased confidence. Our work plays a major part in the development of our confidence. You know, as a Christian, Jesus gives us worth. How many of you know that our worth is determined not by what we do, but by who we know, which is Jesus Christ. But dear ones, confidence comes as we attempt things and perform them. We grow in confidence when we stretch ourselves a bit and accomplish the task. You know, in our society, there are so many people who are destroyed in their confidence because their families fragment, they get out there, they don't know what to do to make it in the marketplace and they fail. Well, you see, God gave human labor not to be a put down, but to be something that builds us up, something that gives us a sense of confidence. Last week, Carol and I went out for a big lunch at Roy Rogers. And we stepped up to the countertop there. And it was one of those days, you know, there was a new gal behind the counter. Have you ever had that happen to you? You know, and she's like nervous already and, you know, I'm just, I'm looking at the thing and she says, can I have your order? And, you know, we just ordered the basic things and she's looking at the things and she's, well, and she didn't know what to say when I said, well, gee, would you not put this on it? And then, you know, she's talking, turning around and talking to the manager through the little opening. And she said, this is my first day, this is my first day. I said, I know, I know. And I said, you know, I'm looking at this other line just going right down and I'm saying, why am I here, God? But you know, we've all had that kind of thing. Now, if I would go back to that same gal in a couple of weeks, what do you think she'd be doing? You know, she'd be punching that in and say, hey, bring up two more of these and throw on some more of those. He doesn't want this and, you know, sir, thank you very much and she'd give me the right change and things like that. But you see, your confidence grows as you accomplish things. And the blessing of that is that you begin to feel better about yourself. When we were in Chicago this summer passing through and our van blew up, the radiator blew up. We were in a town I didn't know anybody, you know, I didn't know a soul. I could have gotten ripped off royally. And I stopped in three different places. I walked, well, I stopped in one and I had to walk to the other because the van wouldn't move. And all three people said, go to Al's Radiator Shop. Wow, Al sounds like, so, you know, we let the van sit, put water in overnight. I drove it to Al's the next morning and Al came out and Al was a guy in probably his mid-sixties. I mean, he was an older gentleman and he came out and, you know, he looked at the thing and I said, you know, we're willing to get on our vacation and keep going. And I said, Al, do you think you can fix it? He looked at me, said, son, I was fixing these before you were born. You know, I felt real good about Al. I felt real good about getting back in the road. And I mean, it was super. And that's where did that come from? That came from 40 years of diligent labor. I mean, he just knew what he was doing. You see, that's the blessing of keeping at something and learning how to do it well. The best Bible illustration I can think of is King David. In 2 Samuel 17, you can read about it. David began life as a shepherd boy. He was told, your job, David, your first job is to tend these sheep. Well, that was a pretty easy job, it sounded like, until one day, guess what? Out of the hills came a bear to prey upon the flock. We don't know how he did it, but the Bible says that David killed that bear. Then, a little later on, a lion came out. David fought the lion and even says he grabbed him by the hair. I mean, this could have been pretty, and killed the lion. And all we know is that David was growing in confidence until one day when he was taking some food to his brothers on the front lines of the battle with the Philistines. Guess who came down out of the hills to confront the children of Israel? It was Goliath. And what did David have ringing in the back of his mind? I killed the lion. I killed the bear. I killed the lion, and the same God that enabled me to do that is going to help me to kill this giant. And that's exactly what he did. You see, dear ones, confidence comes because we have learned it through diligent labor. I want to tell you, I believe David went on to be one of the greatest kings, the greatest warrior for sure in all the Scripture, because he learned it in his first job. I feel really strongly about this. You see, when you take a job and you really start doing it well, you grow in a sense of value that spills over into everything else. It gives you a sense of worth and a sense of being important. If you don't know what you're doing and you don't know how to accomplish anything, you don't know if you matter or not. And that's one of the saddest things that I ever see is people who don't know if they're really worth anything in the eyes of anyone else. It's wonderful to be able to say, hey, I may not be the president. I may not be the top dog, but I'm making a contribution. I'm making a difference. I matter. And I believe everyone needs to know that kind of a thing. Children need to hear those words. You know that? A reason to develop in our household is a paper route that Carol has. And David's name's on the line, but Carol has the paper route. But it's really something to see the difference that it's making in their lives. I mean, particularly his. Suddenly, he's responsible for something and, you know, he feels good about coming back with this newsprint all over his face and hot and sweaty, and I did it, you know. I just delivered those papers again and got some new customers and all those kinds of things. I don't believe there's much of a substitute for that. Accomplishment, confidence that you can make a difference, you can do something well. Number two, diligent labor. The blessing of diligent labor leads to purified character. You see, those values and convictions that you live by when no one is watching, that's character. One person wrote in a book title, character is what you are when no one's watching. Character is that mysterious thing that everyone says you must have to succeed, but no one knows how to get there. Strange enough, people think that character comes because you come to church and you listen to messages. I want you to know something, I don't think character really happens in here, not character building anyhow. Now, it may start in the parking lot, but the best place that I know for character to be shaped is in the office place, out on the job, in the work site, in the neighborhood, in the homes where you're working away at the things that are before you to do, eight to five. You see, that's when character really gets shaped. Many of you have read the book, This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti. Now, what you wouldn't know, because it's nowhere in the book, what you wouldn't know is that here was a man who had a full-time job in youth ministry, and he was not getting anywhere in writing this book, and he knew that the Lord had called him, so he quit that job and took a job on an assembly line, where he had steady hours. And he worked, and he had to move his family out of a home into a little trailer where they lived for a period of time while he was writing this book, and all of his friends thought he was crazy. And he went through a long period, 13 publishers turned him down. This book is the number one bestseller in 1988 in Christian circles, and real high up just overall. Thirteen publishers turned him down, and he writes, in a little review that I read, you know, he said, in the middle of all that, my character was greatly developed, and so were the characters that I was writing about. You see, it's in that crucible of the marketplace, working through all the things that are out there that your character gets developed. That's where maturity happens. Do you remember what Ed Cole defined maturity to be? This is worth writing down. This has really helped me. Maturity is taking responsibility for our actions. Now, I know that I learned maturity, responsibility, in two particular areas in my first full-time job. My first full-time job is during summers when I was between terms in college. I had a full-time job in a little zinc mill outside of Beaver, Pennsylvania. I learned two things there that have stuck with me all my life, things that shape my character. Number one, I learned to take responsibility for my schedule. I found that the people there who owned the plant and the foreman and the like, they weren't impressed when I got there at 7.02, when I was supposed to start at 7. They were looking for me to get there. I learned that it's okay to drag in at 6.59 and a half, but not 7.02 or 7.01. I learned they didn't want me walking off the premises until 3.30, not 3.28 or 3.25. I learned that taking responsibility for my schedule was part of what it meant to be mature. Then I learned a big lesson in my life that's really stuck with me. I learned to take responsibility for my performance. It's very easy to blame someone else for what you're doing on your job. You know that? It's very easy to say it's their fault that you're not getting your job done. I couldn't get away with that in this job. My first couple of years I worked there, I had a pretty good job on the paint crew there. One summer, I'll never forget this, the paint crew, which was a pretty steady 7 to 3.30 kind of thing, they had some kind of a disaster in what was called the Sinter plant. This was a place where these huge furnaces would stoke up to hundreds of degrees, and every day, 24 hours a day, they had to be taking hot ashes out of these furnaces and getting rid of them to keep the furnace going. Our paint crew got assigned to this Sinter plant. I remember the first time we walked over there, the hours were from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m., 12-hour shifts. We walked over there at 2.58, we stood outside the main door of this furnace plant, and the guys from the 3 a.m. to the 3 p.m. shift were coming out. They were totally, I mean, you couldn't distinguish their clothes from their face. They were so covered with soot. They were just covered with it. No one was talking. Then the body bags came. No, I'm just kidding. It was intense. And here are all of us from the paint crew, this nice little, we're watching these guys come out. I'll never forget the foreman, he said, just when the last guy came out, our turn to go in, he said, let's do it. All right, well, let's go do it. We get in there, and it was awful. It was 120 degrees, and it was soot like you wouldn't believe, and for weeks and weeks and weeks, we did it. We did it. We did it. I learned something there. Sometimes you just have to do it. Sometimes you just, sometimes you don't like to do it, you don't want to do it, you don't even get acknowledged for doing it, you just do it, and it's something that's just gotten into my heart. It's in my character now. That's why sometimes on Saturday night at 11 o'clock, I don't want to do it anymore. I just wrap up the message and go home, and the voice says, no, you finish it. Keep doing it. You've got work to do, and you see, every one of us can find those places in our jobs where our character can be shaped, where God lets us be in a place where our patience will be expanded. Anyone learning patience at work these days? For people who are just a bit different, how about loyalty? How about honesty or discipline or courage? All these things are learned best in the marketplace. How are you doing in learning those lessons, may I ask today? Or are you finding it easy just to push it off on someone else and say it's their fault or they did it or it's their problem? So you can learn confidence. You can be shaped in character, and very quickly, number three, a third reward of diligent labor is the reward of contentment, continued contentment. You see, I said earlier that our workplace was an expression of who we are, was a means of demonstrating the kinds of things that God had put into us, making a contribution that really matters. And when you're diligently working in a particular place and fulfilling your role and your call there, let me just give you a couple of specific ways that contentment comes. Number one, it comes because your light is shining. Your light is shining. In other words, I've had people tell me over and over again, you know, I know God just put me on this particular job so I can be a light to all the people that are there. I mean, I don't even particularly know why else I'm there except that I'm making a difference in the lives of those people. And there's a lot of contentment in knowing that God's placed you there. I just met yesterday with one of the members of our congregation who's a professional athlete, and I was saying, well, how is it on the team? And he said, well, you know, in my sport there's a lot of people who are arrogant and prideful. There's a lot of darkness, a lot of hate going on between. He said, but God's put about six or eight of us as speckles of light right here in the midst of this darkness. He said, I'm loving it. And I don't know how the season's going to go, but I know that I'm here because God planted me as a light to this team. Just in the way you work, the way you conduct yourself, the way you do business, you should shine a little brighter. One of the hardest things I hear from businessmen is Christians who don't fulfill commitments. I want to say to you today, if you're an independent Christian businessman and you do a half-hearted job, you do work that's suspect, you compromise, you are not just compromising that little bit of job, you're compromising your testimony. And our light should shine brightly. We're the bearers of the light of the Kingdom of God. Number two, contentment comes because we're seeing the job get done. There's a sense of fulfillment in that. You know, I read here for you that God looked at His work and He said that it was very good. Can't you just see God? I don't know how God kicks back, do you? But I can see Him looking out over the creation and saying, you know, maybe God is a lazy boy or something. And He says, this is very good. I like this. And I believe God wants us all to know the enjoyment of those moments when we can say, I finished the job. I finished it. Those moments when the builder turns over the key to the house and says, it's yours. Those moments when the janitor locks up all the supplies in the brooms and walks out and leaves a spotless building. Those moments when the salesman closes the deal, walks outside the door and says, I got that one in. Those moments when the teacher transfers the mantle onto the next grade of students. Those moments when the mother gently rocks that baby to sleep, puts her down for the night. Those moments when a singer hits the high final note in the song to end the service. Those moments when students finish the last final exam. You see, those are precious moments. Those are moments that get emblazoned upon our conscience. Those are moments that we look back on and say, I did this and no one can ever take it away from me. And I matter and I'm important and listen, dear ones, every one of us need to hear that. We need to know that we matter, that we're cared about, that we're important. You know, Jesus worked for years as a carpenter. We don't know anything about the kind of work that he did. All we know is that he had a reputation because people said, isn't this the carpenter? Mary's son. But we do know this, that he had something of the experience of accomplishment. As we read in John's gospel in chapter 19 and verse 30, Jesus knew that he had come to the earth for a purpose, a mission, and that mission was to die for the sin that you and I and those that have preceded us have all committed. Jesus looked down and knew that we could not help ourselves, that we were desperately in need of a savior, that if left to our sin, we would die and be separated from God forever. And Jesus' mission was clear. At the appointed time, God said, now leave your carpentry business and go out and declare that the kingdom of God is here. And on the final day of his earthly life, Jesus hung on the cross for you and for me. By necessity gave his life for us and uttered the words, it is done. It is finished. I finished the job. I've accomplished my task. I fulfilled my mission. His labor, if you will, his greatest work, if you will, was the work of salvation that he extends to you and to me today. As I conclude this morning, I want to ask you today, have you admitted that you really do need Jesus Christ and the work that he's done for you to give you purpose and meaning in life? Have you come to terms with the fact that you can't put it all together without him? If you receive him today, he'll not only put a sense of worth on the inside, but listen, he'll also give you a sense of direction on the outside. And I pray today that as we, as his children and those who are seeking to know him, as we look to him, we'll realize this thing, that God has destined us in Christ to know fulfillment and purpose, and that work is just one way that God has given for us to be all that he's created us to be. Let's stand for a word of prayer, shall we? Lord, as we stand before you, we thank you for the miracle of giving us gifts, of putting us in a place where we can grow in confidence and in character and in contentment with you. And I pray, Lord, that as we listen now to the spirit in our own lives, that we would hear the nudge, Lord, to be willing to change a bit the way we see work, that we'd hear the nudge, Lord, and be willing to say, God, I need you. I need the work that you did for me on Calvary. I need the cross in my life. Thank you that we matter to you, Lord, and that you care about us today. In Jesus' name, amen. It's a beautiful song that Susie's going to sing for us now that speaks of how we matter to God and how his purposes for us are seen differently from heaven's perspective. Let's be seated as she sings. A fervent prayer rose up to heaven, a fragile soul was losing ground, sorting through the earthly babble, heaven heard the sound. This was a life of no distinction, no successes, only tries. Yet gazing down on this unlovely one, there was love in heaven's eyes. In heaven's eyes, there are no losers, in heaven's eyes, no hopeless hearts. Only people like you and feelings like me, amazed by the grace we can find in heaven's eyes. Orphaned child, the wayward father, the homeless traveler in the rain. When life goes by and no one bothers, heaven feels the pain. Looking down, God feels every heartache, knows every sorrow, hears each cry. And looking up, we'll see compassion's fire ablaze in heaven's eyes. In heaven's eyes, there are no losers, in heaven's eyes, no hopeless hearts. Only people like you and feelings like me, amazed by the grace we can find in heaven's eyes. In heaven's eyes, there are no losers, in heaven's eyes, no hopeless hearts. Only people like you and feelings like me, amazed by the grace we can find in heaven's eyes. Lord, as we come to the table that you have set for us, the table of communion, we thank you that you look at us through heaven's eyes and see our failures and our weaknesses and our past problems, Lord. It's very manageable. You just put them under the blood of Jesus Christ. And I pray now, Lord, that every one of us would find grace to help in our time today. Help us to go on in the things of life and be all that you would call us to be. If you'll look up for just a moment, before we serve communion, I want to say two things. Number one, here at North Way, if you're a visitor, we serve what's called an open communion table. In other words, we don't have any restrictions as a church that we put on the bread and the cup. We believe that Jesus set the table, so you're invited to come and participate. Number two, I'd like to say that it is wise of you to understand that communion really is taking into your heart of hearts the Son of God. It is saying by participating that you personally believe that his life was for you. And you know, many of us grew up in churches where we went through a ritual of taking the sacrament or the Lord's table or whatever you want to call it, and we didn't know what it really meant. And here today, perhaps, you need to say something very clearly to God. You need to say, Lord, I really do want to follow you. I want to be a child of yours. Not just a ritual, not just going through a motion of taking some elements, but I want to be yours. I want to know you. And I believe it's right for us just in this moment to pray together. And if you need to say that to God and you need to make a decision today, maybe when you were a kid you went to camp and you prayed a prayer. Maybe at church 25 years ago you said, God, I want to know you. But it hasn't meant anything. And today you're saying, I know I need the Lord. His Word says you can know Him today. He'll honor His Word to you. Let's bow our heads, shall we? Just everyone participate by bowing your head. If today you want to know Christ in a very personal way, you want Him in your life. You want these elements to be real to you. Maybe this is the very first time for you, the very first time in a long, long while that you've taken it seriously. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, I come to you today. I need forgiveness. I need Christ. I want to know you in my heart and in my mind and in all my being. Hear my prayer. Come to me, Jesus. It's in your name I pray. Every head is bowed. I'm going to ask you to do this one last thing all around the room. With every head bowed, please, just to give a quiet moment to everyone here. If you prayed that prayer, today's the day you're saying, I want to get on with God in my life. I need Him. I prayed that with you, Jay. That was the force of what I'm feeling today. Every head is bowed. Let me do this with you. Whoever you are, young person, old person, doesn't matter. I want you to lift your head in a moment and let our eyes meet. In the meeting of our eyes, right where you stand, that'll be your sign. When my eyes meet yours, we'll agree together that today you're making a decision to go on with Christ, to receive His life in you. Every head is bowed. You lift your head right now all throughout the room. Lift your hand, too, so I can see you and I'll agree with you. I see you, ma'am, and I agree in Jesus' name. You in the back, sir. I see you and I agree with you.