Man Is Made For Work

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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All right, good morning. We're continuing our study on basic truths in Genesis, and today the basic truth that we are going to be discussing is the truth man is made for work.

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So if you do have a Bible, turn to Genesis 2 .15, and we will be reading

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Genesis 2 .15. Please stand whenever you have

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Scripture for the reading of God's word. Genesis 2 .15.

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The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.

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This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Let's pray.

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Lord, we do thank you for the opportunity that we have to think about these great truths that are foundational to our life and the

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Scriptures. Pray that you bless our time here today and help us to learn great things from your word. In your son's name

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I pray, amen. Growing up,

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I grew up in public school, and so much of public school was devoted to teaching me to have a certain perspective of work, which in many ways is very contrary to the perspective of work that the

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Bible would have us to have. Growing up, I was told that work was basically a means to an end.

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So I was taught to think about work in that way, that it was a means to an end. It's kind of a necessary evil.

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The goal of life is to find a good job. So that was the goal, and education in the sense of a college degree was going to play a significant factor in me getting a good job.

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And then I was told as a young man that in order to have a fulfilling and a satisfying life, that basically what

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I should be trying to do would be to try to find a job that I would love to do so that I wouldn't have to ever have to work, essentially.

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So work was treated in my mind as kind of a necessary evil, a means to an end. You work in order to provide for the bills.

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In an ideal world, if you can find something you love to do, then you wouldn't have to ever really suffer through the routine of going to work every day.

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You could actually enjoy what you're doing. And then work was kind of a means to get you to the weekend to where you can enjoy your life.

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So work was kind of a barrier that was put in your path for enjoyment. In the best case scenario, you find something that you like to do.

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But then as I think about the way that I thought about work and the way that I was trained to think about work, there were many assumptions that were put into that kind of package, meaning there were certain kind of jobs that I should be pursuing, not just me, that everyone should be pursuing.

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So there were jobs that, like most of those jobs that most people were being taught to pursue were the kind of jobs that are white -collar jobs that didn't require you to get your hands dirty, so to speak.

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So the goal of life is to kind of get into some kind of nice, easy, financially secure, stable job that you had a passionate enjoyment for so that you wouldn't have to psychologically experience work in the way that the vast majority of individuals through human history have.

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But as I said, I mean, there are many lies that I was being taught to believe about the nature of work, and I didn't have a biblical perspective of work.

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And I certainly hadn't come to the Scripture trying to think about what does the Bible say about this topic in general?

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How does God want us to think about this topic? Why did He make work? What is work here for?

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How should we think about it? How should we think about finding work? Certainly I wasn't going to the

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Scripture to try to answer all of these questions. And so for me, work was something that I was taught to do.

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So I did have a father who taught me how to work hard, and I saw work somewhat as a necessary evil that I had to perform in order to get to the stuff that really mattered.

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And I would say that growing up, I was very much played with the questions, what do

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I love to do? And as a young man without much experience in the world, I'm certain that many people can relate to the experience of trying to think about how to answer that kind of question.

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You know, what do I love to do? It's like, I don't really even know how to answer that question, considering the fact that I haven't done anything serious with my life in general.

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I don't know what I would love to do, and that question seemed to be a taskmaster that hung over my head and condemned me in many ways.

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And so these were questions I had growing up that I didn't really have wonderful answers to, and I hope that we can today talk about God's perspective of work and how

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God wants us to think about work, why He made work, what is it for, and how do we glorify

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God in the midst of this work? One of the basic truths that we have today, as I've said, is the truth that man is made for work.

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And so we would do well to think about some foundational truths related to work, particularly those foundational truths that we're gonna find in the opening chapters of Genesis.

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And one of the things you'll realize is that the opening chapters of Genesis do provide the foundation for all of the

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Bible's teaching on work, so much so that when you look to other passages in the Scripture about work in general, what you'll find in case after case after case is that these other passages are pointing back to these foundational truths in the opening chapters of the

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Bible. They're giving you an explanation for why what the

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Bible says in the opening chapter is there. And so, as I said, we should turn our attention at the start to some foundational truths about work.

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And one of those foundational truths, the first one, is to say that man's work is based on God's work.

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So Genesis 2, two, says this. On the seventh day, God finished

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His work that He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done.

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So God blessed the seventh day and He made it holy because on it, God rested from all the work that He had done in creation.

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So creation itself is described as a work that God completed. So God, as a pattern for humanity, created the world in six days.

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So you see in the opening chapters of Genesis this record of God's creation, that God finished this work of creation on the sixth day and God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because God rested from all the work that He had done in creation.

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God could have been the type of God who made the world instantaneously in an instance.

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I mean, He could have made it in a variety of ways and we've talked about some of these things in our study of creation in general. And God could have made the world with a finger snap if He wanted to.

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He could have brought the world into existence just like that. He could have made everything fully formed, organized, designed, everything instantaneously appearing at once, but He chose the means of creation intentionally in order to provide certain truths about the nature of who

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He is and how we are to follow His example. But as I said, one of these foundational truths about work is that man's work is based on God's work.

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So God worked six days, He rested on the seventh. That's meant for us to be a pattern that we should work for six days and rest one day.

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God creates man in His own image. The fact that man is created as an image bearer of God has ramifications for the nature of what we are designed to do.

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So because God is a God who is a creator God who worked, we are also creatures who are being designed by God to follow in God's pattern and example in the sense that we are also designed for work.

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So Genesis 126, we've spent some time talking about these things, but Genesis 126, then

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God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea. So think about that language for a second in relation to the topic of work.

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God's created man, He's given him responsibilities to exercise dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven, and over the livestock and over all of the earth and over every living thing that creeps on the earth.

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So God made man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female,

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He created them. So God creates man in His own image. We are God's vice regents on the earth.

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We're going to follow into the same pattern and example that He has given us in His work of creation.

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We're going to carry that out in perpetuity forever throughout our time here today.

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All of these things just come straight from the opening chapters of Genesis. God has created man for work.

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Man's work is based on God's work. And we know this about Christ, that Christ has come with a great work to accomplish, didn't

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He, brothers and sisters? So John 6, 38 says about Jesus, it says, for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.

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When you think about the life of Christ, Jesus had a work to do. He had a mission to do on this earth.

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And at the end of His life, John 17, 4, Jesus says, I glorified you on the earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

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So Jesus came to earth as a man, not just as a aimless man with nothing to do, who devoted his life to pursuing his own interests, to pursuing entertainment, trying to keep himself occupied, sitting in a house, staring at walls with nothing to do, twiddling his thumb.

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Jesus had a work to do. And every element of His life was focused on carrying out the work that God had prepared for the foundation of the world for Him to follow.

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So as He says in John 6, 38, I've come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.

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So man's work is based on God's work. Man's work is based on the work of Christ. Christ, as the perfect man, has come to show us what it means to be a perfect human being.

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And He certainly had a task to accomplish on the earth, and He set Himself up to do that, making the best use of the time because the days were evil.

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So man's work is based on God's work. Second, work was assigned to man pre -fall.

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Now I know that this is just a basic observation, but then it really is a very profound kind of observation, particularly for the kind of person who, like myself, saw work as a necessary evil.

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So notice what the text says, Genesis 2, 15. God makes man, and this is pre -fall.

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The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work and to keep it.

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So as I said, this is a very profound truth that work was assigned to man pre -fall, and that says something about the nature of why you're here.

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So you're living in a world, obviously, that is trying in every way that you can possibly imagine to tell you that work is bad.

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It's a necessary evil. You work to get to the weekends, right? Like you work to get to the weekends. The real purpose of your life is going to be entertainment, pursuing your own interest, having time to relax, but this is just that thing that you have to do in order to get to the stuff that you really want to do, and that's the way

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I viewed work growing up. I viewed work very much like that, like work was a task that I had to do, a task that it was understandable to hate.

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So that's the way I viewed work. It was a task understandable to hate. I mean, because after all, who likes to work, right?

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Who likes to work, who enjoys working? That's the way I grew up thinking about work, but the problem is that work was assigned to man pre -fall, and what that tells you is that work is not just a consequence of life in a fallen world.

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Work is a good in and of itself. The fact that God made you and he gave you something to do is a good thing, and boredom is a bad thing, okay?

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As you read through the scriptures, having no productive work to do in many ways robs a person of their dignity.

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They have nothing productive to do. God has given us something to do. If you wanna read the best book on the

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Bible on the topic of work and better understand what

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I'm talking about here today, the best book in the Bible that you can read on this topic is the book of Ecclesiastes, and you'll see that the book of Ecclesiastes is a book devoted to this topic of work, and really in many ways, it's an explanation of everything that you're gonna find about work in the opening chapters of Genesis, but here's the point.

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Work was assigned to man pre -fall. Work is a good. You know that when you get to heaven after you die, after Jesus Christ returns, when we're living in the new heaven, new earth, do you understand that you're gonna have work to do then?

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Work is not just like a feature of life in a fallen world. Work is a good that God has given to man, and there's a variety of biblical passages which point to this fact.

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So third, work becomes toil after the fall. So work was assigned to man pre -fall as a good, but work becomes toil after the fall.

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So what did the fall do? Well, the fall makes work harder. It doesn't make work necessary.

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So the fall makes work harder. So notice in Genesis 3, 17, after the fall, we see this,

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Genesis 3, 17. And to Adam he said, because you've listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which

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I have commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you.

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In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

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By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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So notice what's being said here. Work is made more difficult as a consequence of the fall. As a consequence of the fall, man is going to obtain his food.

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By the sweat of his brow is going to be a painful process. It's going to have trials that are introduced into it.

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So the fact that work is hard at times and difficult at times and has challenges at times, those are all natural consequences of the fall.

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But as I said, I mean, that doesn't mean that work itself is bad. Work itself is not bad.

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It's just made more difficult now. Now we have to deal with the weather. Now you have to deal with sunburns.

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Now you have to deal with long hours that are hard. Instead of just having all the energy that a person could possibly have as Adam and Eve did in the garden.

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I mean, imagine what that's like for them working in the garden prior to the fall.

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They're not worn out with exhaustion, sore, tempted with sickness, getting sunburns, having to worry about changes in weather and temperature.

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They're not struggling to fight the ground in order to get the produce. So the issue is that work after the fall becomes toil.

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And that's just natural challenges that come with work today a lot of which many of us are sheltered from due to the nature of the kind of jobs that we perform.

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But there's also challenges that are introduced into work that come from working with other people to, so most of the difficulties that I've had in jobs that I've worked at were not related to so much the task.

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Well, it depends on the job, I suppose. I mean, I've had some very physically demanding jobs myself.

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But most of the challenges came from working with other sinful human beings who had unrealistic expectations about at times who were prone to think the worst of other people who were eager to tear down others with their words.

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You know, at times who refused to do their jobs like they should, refused to show up like they should, causing other people to have to bear more burdens than they should.

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But here's the point. The point is that work becomes more difficult after the fall. So man's work is based on God's work.

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Work was assigned to man pre -fall. Work becomes more difficult after the fall. But even this work, this work becoming toil after the fall, toil is still described, brothers and sisters, as God's gift to man.

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You understand? Like this is a gift, like work is a gift. So Ecclesiastes 5 .19 says, "'Everyone also to whom

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God has given wealth and possessions "'and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot "'and rejoice in his toil, for this is the gift of God.'"

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So certainly work becomes toil after the fall, but toil is still God's gift to man.

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So let me read that again. And to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil, for this is the gift of God to man.

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It's difficult to understate the importance of having something productive to do in life.

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When you look around the world, you see that you're living in a world that is subsidizing, subsidizing laziness in many ways.

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The people who are most tempted towards depression in life are individuals who have nothing productive to do, have nothing honorable to do.

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You're living in a society right now that gives money to people to incentivize them to not have to work.

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And when you incentivize people to not have to work, there are temptations that they open themselves up to to engage in all kinds of wickedness.

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You take away their dignity, you subsidize laziness, you open them up to temptations.

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And really, a lot of the reasons why antidepressant use is so widespread today is the fact that people, really, there's a lot of people who have way too much time on their hands and they don't have anything good to do with their time.

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And when you sit around having nothing productive to do with your time, you're gonna be weighed down by guilt and shame and condemnation that you cannot escape because God has made work.

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As a created good, man is made for work. And when you reject that, in general, if you're a man who rejects that, you're gonna find ways to blow up the world, blow up relationships.

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If you're a woman who rejects the work that God has made you to do, you're gonna find your own unique ways to mess things up and break things.

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But the point here is just to say that when you reject that gift of God, what you find is many people give themselves over to anxiety, to worry, to depression.

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Because even though work has been made more difficult and now is experienced as a form of toil at times, it's still

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God's gift given to man. There's something about working a long and hard day and getting to the end of it.

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Even if it's something that you didn't enjoy the whole time and looking at the fruit of your labor, there's a sense of accomplishment that God has made you to feel in light of working hard that it's really difficult to describe.

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But I'm sure that you all understand and know exactly what I'm talking about with that.

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So as I said, some foundational truths about work. Man's work is based on God's work. Work was assigned to man pre -fall.

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Work becomes toil after the fall, but toil is still God's gift to man. Fifth, work is gendered.

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You know, there is a concept, brothers and sisters, of work that's a man's work. There is a concept of work that's a woman's work.

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I know that we try as much as we can to blur all these lines to where we refuse to accept that anything fits into these kind of categories, but the truth is that God made these categories and God knows what he's doing, and you see that work is gendered on the basis of the fall.

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So think about the nature of the curses that are given to man and woman in the garden, and you'll realize that work is gendered.

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It's meant to be gendered. There's some works that are more suitable to men. There are some works that are more suitable to women, and you see this as you read through the curses.

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So Genesis 3, 16 to 19. To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.

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What is he saying there? What is he saying there? He's making her work harder, isn't it?

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To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband.

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He shall rule over you. And to Adam, he said, because you've listened to the voice of your wife and eaten of the tree of which

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I have commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain, you shall eat of it, the days of your life.

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Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. You shall eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken.

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For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. So notice, man's work is made more difficult as a result of the fall.

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His work becomes toil. Woman's work is made more difficult as a result of her fall. Her work becomes toil. There's obviously simple examples of this fact that work is gendered that I could give you.

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Obviously, men are made physically stronger than women who is the weaker vessel. There are certain jobs which are very appropriate to men on the basis of this.

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You think about police officers, you think about men in the military. All this relates to the fact that man is made more strong than woman.

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Over and over again as you read through the Bible, you'll realize that men have been given a protector role in society. And you can think about the nature of all of the armies that you will find throughout the whole

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Bible. All the armies are always filled by men. The Bible says that it's an abomination for a woman to wear a man's garment.

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There's some discussion to be had about whether or not kelly there, that word, is being used in the sense of a military implement of a man.

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Leaving that all aside, it's just to say that there's obviously work that are more suitable to men and there's work that's more suitable to woman.

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And I'm not gonna go into great lengths today to describe this other than just to say that work is gendered.

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So we see this in the nature of the fall itself. There are unique curses that are given on the basis of different roles that men and women are designed to play.

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Then finally, we see that work should be done within divinely prescribed boundaries.

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So Genesis 2 .2, on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all of his work that he had done.

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So God blessed the seventh day and he made it holy because on it, God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

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So man is obviously made for work, but he's not made to work only.

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So he is made to worship his maker. God has assigned boundaries for man's work.

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There is a pattern that's fixed into creation where man should work for six days and he should rest on one.

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This one in seven pattern, there's no indication that God has ever overturned this pattern itself.

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But the point here is just to say that work should be done within divinely prescribed boundaries. And there are temptations that we face.

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Some people face the temptation to never turn off work. Other people face the temptation to never start working, right?

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For most of us, we think that work is only something that happens at a place of employment and then when you come home, you're tempted to think that from the time you get home to the time you go to sleep, that's when the recreation is happening, right?

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So most homes today are basically resorts that are free from productive work.

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If you think that that's hyperbole or an overstatement, then just, I would encourage you to look up statistics about phone usage today and screen time today and I think that you will see that I'm not saying anything that shocking there.

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But most of us, we put work in a certain box that we go to and then our homes are very unproductive.

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So as I said, I mean, there's some people who can't turn work off. There's some people who can't turn work on.

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And then we have a temptation to compartmentalize work and then we have a temptation to violate the divinely prescribed boundaries of work.

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But it is interesting to see that God worked six days and rest on the seventh and we should follow that pattern.

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And I think that there's a lot more productivity that we can make at times than what we do and most of us are probably tempted to devote most of our time outside of formal work to the task of entertainment, which certainly has its place, but probably not the place that we prescribe it today.

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Let's talk about some lies about work. I've given you a basic foundation for work that I think is coming straight out of the opening chapters of the

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Bible. Let's talk about some lies about work. Here's perhaps the biggest lie that I was told growing up and I talked about that at the very beginning is the lie, do what you love so that you never have to work.

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What's the problem with that? Think about that for a second because I know that many of you are probably tempted to think about that too.

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So do what you love so you never have to work. What's the problem? What's the problem there? Didn't that seem intuitive and obvious and normal?

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I was probably told that hundreds and hundreds of times growing up in school. I was brainwashed into thinking this way.

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What's the problem with this? Well, Ecclesiastes 2 .24 says, there is nothing better for a person that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

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Wait a minute, what does that say? Do what you love so you never have to work.

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Is that what Ecclesiastes said? I found there's nothing better for a person that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

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That seems different. When I started reading the

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Bible in a serious way and I was reading through Ecclesiastes, one of the things that stood out to me about that, a person, there's nothing better that a person should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

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What that communicated to me was that my perspective of work was entirely backwards.

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I was trying to find some work that I enjoyed to do, but the

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Bible was telling me to learn to enjoy working. Do you see how that's the opposite?

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Why should I enjoy working? Well, let's keep on reading a few more passages about Ecclesiastes, and you think about the opening chapters of Genesis.

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It's God made man. He put him in the garden to work and keep it. Well, first, do you think that Adam was thinking that way?

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Do what you love so you never have to work? He wasn't thinking that way. He was thinking there's something good to do.

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Who enjoys gardening? I don't know who enjoys gardening. Maybe some people enjoy gardening, but a lot of what we're trained to think is that's kind of a mundane work, right?

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It's mundane work. So if he wants to do something really important with his life, he probably doesn't wanna do a job that requires him to get his hand dirty.

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He probably doesn't wanna do something that's back -breaking labor, right? Probably wants to do something where he's sheltered from the elements outside and all that.

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But what does Ecclesiastes say? It says, I found there's nothing better for a person than he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

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This also I saw as from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment.

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Ecclesiastes 3 .12, I perceive there's nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live and also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all of his toil.

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Take pleasure in all of his toil. Does that mean figure out what kind of toil is easy to find pleasure in?

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Or does it mean take pleasure in all of his toil? You know that the reason why you're here today is because you have some basic needs for food and clothing and shelter.

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You know that a lot of these things are difficult to do. I don't know how many of you have devoted yourself to building houses, but I mean, that's hard work.

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I've had the advantage of being a pastor who coming out of seminary, I've done a lot of blue collar jobs that are very hard, hard physical labor.

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I mean, I worked at UPS for a while when I was in seminary, and I don't know if you know, if you knew what happened at UPS, you would never send a package.

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But I stood in a truck, and there was a assembly line of boxes coming towards me, and you had to take those boxes and stack them one after another, and it was a race against the clock to keep them from piling up because there's so many.

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And I would say that there's nothing about that work that is uniquely satisfying.

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I mean, it is like going to war. You have to get your mind right to where you understand that these boxes are trying to conquer you, and you have to refuse to let yourself be conquered by these boxes because they're gonna keep on coming, and if they pile up, it's gonna be a catastrophe.

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It's gonna be a mess. And I would say that there's nothing that is uniquely compelling about that.

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But it's a work that needs to be done because people ship things. So if you have the mindset that you're trying to look for something that you uniquely enjoy, well, there would be no shipping, right?

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So the point here is just to say that most of the jobs I've worked at, they weren't the kind of jobs that are intrinsically enjoyable.

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It's not like you feel like you're being entertained by going to these jobs. They're just jobs that needed to be done.

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And I know that there was a fundamental shift in my mindset at a certain point in my life where I read the

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Bible. I encountered what God said here. I realized that work itself was a gift of God.

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And instead of going to work and counting down the hours until I get out of work because I hate work so much,

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I realized that I'm actually called to love this. And you know what? You can love it.

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It's really not that hard to love work if you understand

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God's purposes in work for you, if you understand why God made work, and you understand that work itself is a gift that he's given to you, you could learn to love the kind of stuff that you probably would think that you would never learn to love.

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Like I said, I delivered appliances. That's hard physical labor.

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You can learn to love delivering appliances. I worked as a janitor while I was in Bible college. You can learn to love being a janitor.

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Why shouldn't you love being a janitor? Bathrooms need to be cleaned, don't they? Do you know what happens when no one cleans them?

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That's not good. The point is just to say that, yeah, what does the Bible teach about work? Bible teaches that work is good.

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It's not do what you love so you never have to work. It's learn to love work because God's given you something productive to do where you can contribute to society and make the world a better place and honor

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God with your time. All this is put in the larger framework of exercising dominion over the creation.

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You know that this is something the Protestants recovered. What is the reality?

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Like the goodness of vocation. It's not just that some jobs are good.

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So the Catholic distortion is like only ministry jobs are the good jobs and then all the other stuff is just like a necessary evil.

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The Protestant doctrine of vocation recovered the goodness of all work.

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This quote is attributed to Martin Luther and I couldn't find it yet but I suspect it probably is from him.

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But someone asked Martin Luther what would he do if he knew that Jesus was coming back today and his response to that would be that he would go home and cut his grass essentially.

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That's what he'd do because he understood the lawfulness of vocation. So point here is to say the

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Bible's teaching on work is not do what you love so you never have to work. It's learn to love work and you can love any number of things.

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Secondly, another lie about work. You shouldn't work a job below your dignity. Growing up in the education system, the education system treats everyone as if they're brains.

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Don't they? They treat everyone as if they're brains. We tell everyone that everyone deserves a college education despite the fact that not everyone has the brain power for a college education.

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And then what do you do in order to make sure that everyone gets that college education? You lower the standards because you're trying to make everyone feel included and then when you lower the standards, what happens?

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You make the thing worthless, don't you? You make a college education worthless because it doesn't mean anything anymore.

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So what does the education system train people in? It doesn't train people to think what are you designed to do and what good works are there to do and how can we equip you to do those works.

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The education system as it currently exists treats everyone as if they're brains and then funnels everyone into paths towards jobs that are largely to be fulfilled by people who have higher brain capacity than other people.

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And then the corresponding part of that is if you don't get funneled into one of those paths designed for someone with a brain, somehow you've failed at life.

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That's kind of the pressure that current education system is putting on people because it has a myopic understanding of work.

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And then part of that means that, as I've described the kind of jobs that I've worked at, there is a kind of pressure that the education system puts on people to view certain jobs as below your dignity.

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But part of the problem is that, obviously if no one took away the trash, then we'd all have trash piled up.

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No one willing to be a janitor, we'd all have dirty places that we're living in.

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No one willing to deliver the appliances, you're not gonna have them in your house. If no one's willing to build your homes, you're not gonna have a house to live in.

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I had a guy at my previous church who would see me sitting at my desk doing sermon prep and he would come in and he would say, doesn't this make you go crazy?

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Sitting at a desk all day long, he was a big guy. Like he was a big ex -football player kind of guy.

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He's like, does this make you crazy? So he had absorbed all this stuff that I'm talking about and funneled himself into a white collar job and he was like, he was miserable.

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He was miserable doing this white collar job. He felt like he was stir crazy. He's like,

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I just wanna get out there and do something with my hands and work. So he wanted to use the muscles

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God had given him to do something with. He felt like he was going crazy sitting at a desk all day long.

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And he was asking me, don't you, doesn't it make you wanna go crazy? I was like, no, I'm good. It's fine.

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I've done all those other things. This is fine too. I enjoy using my brain, but it's good. It's good,

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I'm okay with it. I'm fine. But no, for him, he quit his blue collar job and started building tiny houses.

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And he was happy as anyone could be doing a job, different kind of job.

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So here's the point. It's a lie to think you shouldn't work a job below your dignity. Oh, work is good.

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I'm not saying every single job that you could think to do is good. I'm just trying to say that in general, work is a good gift to be given because God has given us work to do.

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We should learn to love the work that we're doing. And we shouldn't just be thinking about jobs in terms of certain classes and then trying to funnel every single person into the same kind of classes of work.

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Third lie, work hard so that you can retire from work. This is another lie that the educational system kind of puts in your brain.

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Where you view work as a means to an end. This is similar to what we're talking about in general where work is viewed as a bad thing.

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And so you work really hard so you can get away from the bad thing and devote yourself to the real aspects of life. You know, retirement in the biblical, retirement in the modern sense is really not a biblical concept, the way we think about this.

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Now I know I said that, I'm gonna qualify what I said. So there's a lot about the nature of what we think about retirement that is very sub -biblical.

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Ecclesiastes 3 .22, I saw there's nothing better than a man should rejoice in his work for that is his lot.

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God put man in a garden to work and to keep it. I've seen there's nothing better that man should rejoice in his work for that is his lot.

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Read through the whole book of Ecclesiastes, you'll see over and over again that work is man's task given to him under the sun.

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The point of Ecclesiastes is you, the preacher says vanity of vanities, all is vanity, what profit is there for all the labor that man does under the sun?

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He's not saying it's purposeless, he's not saying it's meaningless, he's saying that you can't take it with you. It's temporary, that's what he's saying.

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You can't take it with you. You have a task that you're given for life.

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So the idea that you just spend part of your life working in order to devote yourself to enjoyment and to vacations and to frivolous pursuits and hedonistic pleasure, that's a very sub -biblical way of understanding the nature of work in the

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Bible. That's not to say that if you can work for a time and then become financially independent and freed up to serve the

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Lord and do other profitable works, that's not a good thing. I'm just trying to say that the point of life is not to work so that you can free yourself up all day long for entertainment.

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Entertainment, trips, vacations, wasting all your kid's inheritance that you're supposed to be giving, that really isn't a biblical view of work.

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In fact, as I've observed when people, I've seen many examples of older men who retire from their work and have nothing left to live for and the decline starts happening pretty rapidly at that point because they haven't put any thought into the work that they're gonna do when their employment ends.

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You know, we have a responsibility to other generations. Older women are supposed to teach younger women to love their husbands and children, be pure, kind workers at home.

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I think our understanding of retirement as you cease from your labors and then you travel around and pursue hedonistic pleasures has led to a generation of ladies who don't know where to look to find training in loving their husbands and children, being pure, kind workers at home.

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Submissive to their own husbands. There are other works to devote ourself to besides the work of putting bread on the table.

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So lies about work. Do what you love so you never have to work. You shouldn't work a job below your dignity. Work hard so that you can retire from work.

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For God has one secret job for you to discover but won't reveal it. You know what, there's a lot of freedom, brothers and sisters, in the work that you perform.

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God doesn't have one secret job for you that he's holding you accountable to discover. Notice what happens in the opening chapter of the

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Bible. The Lord God took man, put him in the garden of Eden to work and to keep it. He gave him something to do. He gave him a task.

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Man is given dominion over the whole earth. We're supposed to have dominion over the whole earth. There's a lot that goes into having dominion over the whole earth and subduing, doing it.

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There's a lot of good and lawful works that we should engage ourself in that can bring glory to God, could benefit those around us, that could be a means of helping us to be faithful in the world.

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There is no one secret job that you're supposed to discover. Ecclesiastes 9 .10, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might for there's no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom and shale to which you are going.

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So like the issue is, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. There's not just, hey, figure it out.

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And if you get the wrong answer, God's gonna stand there mad at you because you didn't figure out the right job. And you know what? Maybe every job that you engaged in is temporary for a time and it fits the moment and there's something better.

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I've worked plenty of jobs. If I would have thought there's one secret job that God has for me that I'm supposed to do and that was a prerequisite for me ever starting, then

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I guess I would be a janitor forever. Or my first job was at Cracker Barrel. I guess I should still be at Cracker Barrel because taking that job as a host at Cracker Barrel was it, right?

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That was the one secret job that God had for me. But that isn't really the way it works. God's given you a lot of freedom to pick a job that you want to do.

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And we know that behind the scenes, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works is prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

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We know that everything that we do is, every decision we make is somehow a part of God's plan.

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There is no plan B in your life. God is sovereign over everything. But at the same time, the secret things, they belong to the

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Lord, our God. Things that are revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may do the works of this law.

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God certainly has a plan before the foundation of the world that includes every single job that you're ever going to do.

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He has that plan. There is certainly that kind of plan, but you know what?

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There's no book in here that you can turn to that you can say, hey, 3 Timothy 3 says this is the next job you need to take.

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Yeah, there is nothing like that. Secret things belong to the Lord. He hasn't revealed that secret plan before the foundation of the world.

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He's given you freedom to pick a job that's going to glorify him. So, these are some lies about work.

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Here's a few questions you should ask, okay? Brothers and sisters, questions you should ask about work to help us navigate the freedom

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God has given us. Will this job allow me to be faithful to God's purposes for humanity?

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What have we been saying over the course of our study? Genesis 128, God bless them. God said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, or subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

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Will this job allow me to be faithful for God's purposes for humanity? God has made me for a purpose.

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Talk about some of those purposes centering on marriage and children in the opening chapters of the

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Bible. They also center on the advancement of God's kingdom throughout all the world.

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God's given man two basic commissions. One is this creation mandate in Genesis 128 to fill the world up full of people.

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He's given us another great commission, which is to fill this world up full of disciples. Will this job allow me to be faithful to God's purposes for humanity?

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You don't have to take those two purposes and make them opposites that are fighting against one another.

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In general, will this job allow me to be faithful for God's purposes for humanity? Is this job appropriate for my gender?

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Talked about there are some jobs that are better suited for others.

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We've seen the nature of the fall, how it affects different kinds of work. The woman's work is made more difficult in childbearing.

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The man's work is made more difficult on the basis of the trials of the natural world.

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Is this job appropriate for my gender? I could give you pretty extreme examples of things that are obviously not true related to this topic, but we've talked about some of these things to great length, and so I'll leave it at that.

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Will this job allow me to be faithful for God's purpose for humanity? Is it appropriate for my gender?

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Will this job cause me to commit sins of omission or commission? I think with this one, we need to remember that admonition of the

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Proverbs, trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not lean on your own understanding and all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths.

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The issue is, I think we can identify at times related to sins of commission that maybe a job will require you to commit sins of commission.

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Although, as Christians, we can have a great capacity to excuse even that. You know, if a job requires you to steal and to lie and to manipulate, you shouldn't take it.

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When I was at Master's College in Santa Clarita, I was looking for work.

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I just moved to the L .A. area, and I was looking for work, and there was, there were these places called

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Blockbuster Video Stores. Lo, so long ago, back in the days, before Netflix and Redbox and all that,

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I had put out resume after resume after resume and I was getting nothing. I mean,

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I just, I would walk to random stores and just say, do you have a job? I'll do anything. Just give me a job, a job to do.

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So, I went into Blockbuster Video and I, the manager person, they loved me.

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The pay was great. The hours were great. It was all wonderful. And then it kind of dawned on me what this job was going to entail.

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It dawned on me that I was gonna have to look at inappropriately dressed people on the covers of these movies all day long.

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And I thought, can I take this job? I don't think

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I could take this job. This job's perfect, you know, but it's gonna require me to have to compromise in certain ways.

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So, I didn't take it. Yeah, I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a plan to pay for my stuff. I was rapidly running out of money.

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But I thought, well, I can't take a job that's going to serve as an enticement for sin all day long.

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I got to open up another job that was better than that shortly, but I didn't have any knowledge that he would and there's no telling.

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I mean, he could have given me a job that paid less than that one and all that. I mean, there's no telling. There's no confidence that just because you make the right decision,

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God's going to give you something better. There is a category for suffering for him, but as I said,

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I think we have a category at times for thinking about sins of commission, but then there's also will this job cause me to commit sins of omission that I don't think we think about like we should.

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Like meaning God holds us, like sin can come in two forms. Like sin can come in the form of actual acts of sin, but sin can also come in the forms of omission, meaning there are plenty of jobs that might require you to be unfaithful to the things that God calls you to do and that's a real category too.

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I mean, because I'm involved in counseling, I've seen many, many cases of military people, for example, who will get married knowing that they have active deployment that is going to take them away from their wife for years at a time and I've watched the end result of that.

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Like you get married and you abandon your family for years and years and years and then you get a divorce and you say, hey, military is good.

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It's okay to serve in the military, right? Military is a lawful job. Marriage is good, but the problem is that your mouth was writing checks that your body couldn't cash and there are jobs.

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When you're living in a society that really doesn't put any thought into how to honor the Lord, there could be plenty of jobs that require you to be fundamentally unfaithful in life.

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I know that we don't think about those things at times the way that we should, but I mean, the

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Bible, like you read through the law and you'll see that, you know what? If a man is gonna go out for public service, he needs to have a year that he devotes to his life for public military service.

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That's very different than the way that our current laws allow. And you know what?

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Military service in Israel didn't require extended year -long campaigns where they're away from all their family and all their responsibilities.

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So the thing is, I'm just trying to say that there could be plenty of jobs like that that just fundamentally take you away from family.

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That cause you to commit sins of omission. Do you understand? So there's plenty of, you should not just be thinking, is this job going to cause me to commit a sin of commission?

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I mean, there's some jobs that require you to be so busy to the point where you can't devote yourself to anything other than this all -consuming, life -dominating job that has enslaved you to its time, okay?

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It's going to prevent you from ordering your life in a way that honors the

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Lord because it's just all -consuming, all -committed. So it's not just, will this job cause you to commit sins of commission, but will it cause you to commit sins of omission?

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Is it worth doing? So 1 Corinthians 10, 31, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

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There's any number of ways that you could devote yourself to worthless pursuits for the sake of making money. Is your job worth doing?

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Emmanuel mentioned this in our Sunday school today about streamers who are spending all day long pursuing video games and entertainment and getting paid big money for it.

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Is it worth doing? Is it worth doing? Are you contributing to society in that job? Is it worth doing?

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Is this you exercising dominion over the creation? And is it really worth doing?

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Is it honorable work? Is it worth doing? That's something that you should be thinking about. Is the job worth doing?

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Now there may be jobs that aren't worth doing that you should avoid, but then the thing is there's a lot of jobs that are worth doing that you've ruled out because it's not the kind of job that you see yourself as doing too.

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There's plenty of things that are worth doing that we need people to do. Instead of thinking about trying to find this thing that you love so you don't have to work, think about what is worth doing and what do we need to be done in this world?

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What would be helpful and beneficial in the world? And there may be a lot of things that you're overlooking because you have some standard of job that you think that you deserve when there's plenty of things that are worth doing that you should be doing and there's plenty of things that aren't worth doing that you are doing.

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Finally, am I gifted for this work? Am I gifted for this work? So Exodus 31, two.

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See, I've called by name Basilel, the son of Uri, the son of Herb of the tribe of Judah. I've filled him with the spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, bronze, and cutting stones for setting and carving wood, to work in every craft.

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Behold, I've appointed with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisimic of the tribe of Dan. I've given to all able men ability that he may make all that I've commanded you to make.

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God has specifically gifted you in certain ways and you should think about how has he gifted you.

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Are you like my former church member who is gifted in working with his hands and it may be a better use of his time to devote himself to what he's gifted to than devoting himself to some standard of occupation that doesn't really fit how he's made?

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A relevant question to ask about work is what am I gifted to do? Like am

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I gifted for this? And I don't think you need to overthink this. Compare this with all the other questions.

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Is the job worth doing? Set yourself out to do it. And often as you set yourself out to do certain things, don't just be paralyzed.

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Making this the chief priority that paralyzes you before you do anything, start doing stuff and see what you're gifted to do.

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You can enlist other people's help and say what do you think are my strengths? What do you think are my weaknesses? What do you think

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I should be directing myself towards? What do you think I'm gifted to do? But in the absence of any real clear answer there, do something that's worth doing.

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That's the point. What do we do about these things, brothers and sisters? Here's the point.

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Jesus had a life mission that he engaged upon. Where he had a very clear understanding of the work that God had called him to do.

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Apart from him pursuing that work, we would all be lost. John 9, four,

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Jesus says, "'We must work the works of him who sent me "'while it's day, for night is coming when no one can work.'"

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We've all been given a limited time. Jesus had a timetable that he was operating under.

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He knew the start, he knew the finish. He devoted himself to that task.

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He devoted himself to the task of working. All of our life that we've been given is a stewardship by God given to us.

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We've only been given so much time. I don't know the day or hour of my death, but I know

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I'm slowly marching towards that appointed end. And I know that God didn't just put me on earth just to spend my time pursuing my own personal enjoyment.

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I'm supposed to use my money to make friends who will greet me into my eternal dwelling.

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I'm supposed to lay up for myself treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal.

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God has given us so much time. At the end of Paul's life, he says, "'I've fought the good fight,

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I've finished the race, "'I've kept the faith.'" Paul understood he had time.

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He understood that there was a race that he was running and it was a race to lay hold of his faith and to accomplish all that God, all these works that God had prepared before the foundation of the world for him to walk in.

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We know that at the end of our life, God will give us a commendation. And that commendation is by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ on our behalf.

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But that commendation is going to be a commendation over the way in which we've lived our life on the basis of God's work within us.

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I mean, that's a pretty remarkable thing to think about because none of our works are meritorious, deserving of salvation.

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None of them are autonomous. They're done in our own strength and our own willpower, solely in our own action.

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But at the end of it, Matthew 25, 23, his master said to him, well done, good and faithful servant.

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You've been faithful over little. I'll set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.

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God has given us work to do. Work is a central part of his plan. Jesus devoted himself to this work and we should do the same.

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We need to thank God for the work that Christ has done for us on the cross.

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And we know that that work has implications for how we live our life. We know that he began a good work in us.

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He's gonna be faithful to complete that work. And he's prepared these good works that we should walk in.

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These are not just consequences of the fall. It's part of how we're made.

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Amen? Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for the opportunity we have to think about these great truths.

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We thank you for the words that you've given to us, which are life. Pray that you help us to have a biblical understanding of work in this life, knowing that it is a good that you've given to the sons of man and something we should rejoice in.