The Doctrine of Work

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

The Doctrine of Work Before and After the Fall

Mike Abendroth here. Just got a good letter from someone down in West Virginia asking me a question about oneness Pentecostals and the church government there, so that was interesting. Got an email from somebody in Norway, and that was interesting to hear his testimony and his desire to learn and to grow and to talk about preselection, that is predestination.

And today I'd like to teach you about the topic of work, labor, employment, the doctrine of work. We could call this workology, if you'd like to pick a topic name. It's an important topic because everyone works, everyone should work, everyone has worked, everyone will work, you have retired from work, you are looking for work.

Husbands often go out to work, wives wake up at work, and they have their kids there and their family. There can be full-time workers, part-time workers. You could be an owner of a company, you could be an indentured servant, you could be blue-collar, white-collar, ring around the collar.

You might get dirty, you might type on a keyboard, but you probably work. I did find it interesting that the average number of jobs an American worker has held by the age of 48, eight different jobs. Long gone are the days where you would work for a company for 30 years and retire, like my father or like a grandfather or something like that.

I don't know if you've ever felt overworked, maybe over-regulated, under-leisured, under-benefited. This note was found in the ruins of London in the office buildings that were ruined there, and it was dated 1852.

So these were work conditions in 1852. So you just feel better about yourself because after all, we want you to feel good. And that's why you turn into No Compromise Radio because you'd like to be soothed.

You'd like to feel good. You'd like to get a verbal massage or a verbal back rub. That's what you're doing here, right? This firm has reduced the hours of work and the clerical staff will now only have to be present between the hours of 7 a .m. and 6 p .m.

Two, clothing must be of a sober nature. The clerical staff will not disport themselves in raiment of bright colors, nor will they wear hoes unless in good repair. Did they have unions back then? Three, overshoes and topcoats may not be worn in the office, but neck scarves and headwear may be worn in inclement weather.

Four, a stove is provided for the benefit of the clerical staff. Coal and wood must be kept in the locker. It is recommended that each member of the clerical staff bring four pounds of coal each day during cold weather.

Oh, honey, come back in. You forgot your lunchbox and your bag of coal. Five, no member of the clerical staff may leave the room without permission from the supervisor. Six, no talking is allowed during business hours.

Seven, the craving for, this is a good one, the craving for tobacco, wine, or spirits is a human weakness, and such is forbidden to all members of the clerical staff. Six, and number eight, now that the hours of business have been dramatically reduced, the partaking of food is allowed between 1130 and noon, but work will not, on any account, cease.

So it's a working lunch. Number 10, two more to go. Number 10, this is from the list of 1852, clerical workers. Number 10, the supervisor will nominate a senior clerk to be responsible for the cleanliness of the main office and the private office.

All boys and juniors will report to him 40 minutes before prayers, and will remain after closing hours for similar work. Brushes, brooms, scrubber, and soap are provided for by the owners. And number 11, finally, 11 out of 11, the owners recognize the generosity of the new labor laws, but will expect a great rise in output of work to compensate for those utopian conditions.

Well, aren't you glad you didn't work for somebody back then in 1852 in London? Today, we wanna discuss the topic of work, and I want you, whether you eat, or whether you drink, or whether you work, that you do it for the glory of God.

I wanna stress that you should not have this secular, sacred job description where you say this is not worship. And so we wanna discuss that a little bit today on the radio station. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

I know there are people listening today that find work, that find their jobs, men or women, young or old, unsatisfying and unfulfilling. I believe this show will do your soul some good. It might be convicting, but people who have soft hearts like hard words, don't they?

And people that have a hard heart and wanna keep it hard don't want hard words, they want soft, soothing words. From the pulpit, or from the radio. One researcher estimated that 50 to 80 of working Americans are in a job that does not match their abilities and is therefore unfulfilling.

So do you have a fulfilled work life? Do you love going to work? Can you wait until Monday while it's the weekend so you can get back to work? Let me say this at the beginning. There was work before the fall.

People think work is wrong, work is bad, work is difficult, et cetera, but there was work before the fall. Genesis 2, then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.

And so we have to remember, you have to remember that work is not, work was in the perfect garden. Work is, there's nothing wrong with work. There are lots of good reasons for work and we'll talk about that in a little bit, but I wanted to give you an interesting fact and that is there was work before the fall.

And additionally, on the flip side, on the converse side, symmetrically, there's work in heaven, Revelation 22. And there shall no longer be any curse and the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it and his bondservants shall serve him.

They shall see his face and his name shall be on their foreheads. There's service, there's work. Excuse me. But the fall made all the difference in the world. The fall caused the toil, the sweat, the hardship.

Listen to what God said to Adam, Genesis 3, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I have commanded you saying, you shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you.

In toil, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles, it shall grow for you. Can you imagine pre-fall? No thorns, no thistles, no oil on the poison ivy. Maybe no poison ivy, who knows?

And you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face. By the sweat of your brow, we remember. I think the older translation says, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground because from it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return.

And so we realize that work is something that God designed. It's good, but the fall has tweaked it. One farmer said the hardest thing about milking cows is that they never stay milked. And you have to go back to work the next day and back to work the next day.

And we are influenced by the world and the bumper sticker philosophy that the world purports. I owe, I owe, so off to work I go. That seems to be the reason people work today. I've got to pay bills. I've got to earn money.

Now that's a good reason, but I don't think that's the only reason. You're myopic if you begin to think, I only go to work to get money for the bills. Then you end up having the philosophy of the band, the old rock band in the 80s or 90s, Loverboy.

Everybody's working for the weekend. And I would rather have you instill in your mind good reasons to work because I think it will make you more fulfilled. I think it'll make you a better worker. And if you're a Christian, you ought to be the best worker, the hardest worker, the most conscientious worker.

I have talked to business owners and they have told me their stories about Christians that they have hired to try to do something good in the church and hire some Christian man or woman to work for them.

And they, the Christian man or woman, tends to work less than the pagan. Excuse me. Andrew Carnegie has an interesting story regarding the U .S. Steel Corporation in 1901. Charles Schwab, then the unheard of man, maybe he was heard of, but he paid the unheard of sum of $1 million.

I can't even read my own writing, can I? Forget the Schwab thing. We can talk about that later. I don't even have enough time. How about that's for editing on the go. Let me give you some reasons to work.

Reasons to Work: Eating, Discipline, and Obedience

One, because everyone likes to eat. One, because everyone likes to eat. You want their U .S. Steel thing? Okay. When the company founded by Andrew Carnegie was taken over by the U .S. Steel Corporation in 1901, it acquired as one of its obligations a contract to pay the top Carnegie executive, Charles Schwab, the then unheard of minimum sum of $1 million.

J .P. Morgan of U .S. Steel was in a quandary about it. The highest salary on record was $100 ,000. He met with Schwab, showed him the contract, and hesitatingly asked what could be done about it. This said Schwab as he took the contract and tore it up.

That contract had paid Schwab $1 ,300 ,000 the year before. I didn't care what the salary was they paid me, Schwab later told Forbes. I was not animated by money motives. I believed in what I was trying to do and wanted to see it brought about.

I canceled that contract without a moment's hesitation. Why do I work? I work just for the pleasure I find in work. The satisfaction there is in developing things, in creating. Also the association's business begets.

The person who does not work for the love of work, but only for money is not likely to make money nor to find much fun in life. There, how about that? I made it through without hitting the edit button.

After all, we were nine minutes in. I don't want to have to redo the nine minutes. Why should you work? Seven reasons. One, because everyone likes to eat. Second Thessalonians three, for even when we were with you, we used to give you this order.

If anyone will not work, neither let him what? Eat. We are not talking about those who are unable to work because their bodies have given out, that they're an older widow, that they are a special needs person.

I am not saying that about anything. I am not saying that about them at all, rather. I am saying this. If you're a man and you're able-bodied, you ought to work. And if you don't work, you ought not to eat.

That's pretty good motivation. Those hunger pangs come along pretty fast. God gives birds their food, that is the seeds and all that stuff and the worms, but they've got to go get them. He doesn't just throw it into their nests.

God feeds the birds. And so God's ordained mean, for the end of you, that is the end of eating, then it means you must work. Second reason you ought to work is to keep from being undisciplined and to keep you from being a busy body.

You ought to be a busy worker, not a busy body. You ought not to run around sponging off of people and talking and then making them work less because you want to talk and just being nosy. The Bible says in 2 Thessalonians 3, for we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busy bodies.

And the scripture regularly talks about this kind of teaching, don't do this, do this instead. So instead of lying, then now we give you the positive, tell the truth. So instead of being a busy body, work.

The devil will find work for idle hands to do. That is exactly right. You will not help yourself in godliness and in godly living if you don't work. If you get handed $10 million today from your rich uncle that you didn't know about and he died, you still need to work.

Why should you work? Everybody likes to eat. So not live an undisciplined life. And number three, because God commands it. 2 Thessalonians 3 again. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ, not just Jesus, but the Lord Jesus, to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread.

This is a formal command from God, the master, Jesus Christ. Don't forget that this is an act of obedience. Number four. Number four, why should you work? Because disobedience in this area is costly. Do you know you can get kicked out of a local church if you're able to work, but you just simply will not work?

2 Thessalonians 3, verse 14. And if anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, Paul says, take special note of that man and do not associate with him so that he may be put to shame. It's shameful not to work.

It's shameful to say, do you know what? I lost my job and I'm on unemployment and I'll just stay on unemployment. I'm not gonna go try to find another job when I can get the dole from the government and I'm gonna do the minimum amount.

I'm gonna just lie on my little form so I can get as much income as I can from the government. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. That is sinful and you ought to stop it. And I know so many people who will say, well, you know, I'm on disability.

And if the disability is you've got your leg blown off in Afghanistan, then I think the government should pay you money so you can help provide for your family. Now, you can still get jobs. One-legged people, I'm sure, can still get a job.

But my point is this. If you say, well, I'm depressed and I'm anxious and I've got ADHD and I've got some kind of compulsive disorder and I'm on disability, you are only compounding your problems. You are to be working and you are able to work.

You just have a hard time working. You don't have the job that you like and you stay home and are on the dole from the U .S. government. You ought to be confronted by your pastors, rebuked by your elders, and walked through the process of why it is important for you to work.

You need to work. The Bible just assumes that. The Bible commands that. You need to get busy and to work. Otherwise, you should be church-disciplined. People should take special note of you, mark it down, put it in their iPhone, put it in their calendar, and say, we've gotta note you.

Of course, we wanna be kind to you, but kindness does this. 2 Thessalonians 3, and yet do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. There's a way to go about church discipline, kind way.

There's a Galatians 6 way that says, you know, if it wasn't for the grace of God, we'd be doing the same thing. But people that don't work need to be motivated. By the way, if you're unemployed now and you want to work and you're doing what you can and you're busy interviewing, sending out resumes, you will sleep better if you spend 40 hours a week looking for work.

Your job now is looking for work. And if you can't find a job because you're looking for 40 hours a week, just keep doing that. You will find a job. I'm convinced that if you have a desire to work and honor the Lord, you will get a job.

It's just a matter of time. That might not come in the perfect job that you think in your mind. It might not be with the exact money that you want. But if you spend your days looking for a job, you can say, I've done what I needed to do.

I spent all day today looking for a job, hustling, trying to find a job. I've gone out and I'm gonna do Home Depot at night while I'm looking during the day for a corporate America job. Whatever it is, you will sleep well.

Work as Christian Obedience, Witness, and Provision

Number five, why should you work? Because it is high on the list for Christians to do. Now the context here is for widows, but the principle is true. Verse eight of 1 Timothy 5. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

And this is at the top of the list. This is at the top of the list for Christians to do. We, as Christians, need to be working. You can even look at Jesus's life. You can look at Christ's life and see what he was like and how busy he was.

I'm gonna keep going here. Number six, why should you work? Number six, so you do not put a burden on unbelievers. Listen to 1 Thessalonians 4. And to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we have commanded you, so that you may behave properly towards outsiders and not be in any need.

You're gonna say, I'm a Christian and I'm not gonna work, and then you're gonna have the pagans take care of you? I think it should be the other way around, so much so that I am now on to number seven.

Why should you work? So you can have enough to give other people some of the extra that you have. Ephesians 4, let him who steals, steal no longer, but rather let him labor, performing with his own hands what is good.

And here's the reason, here's a purpose clause for you Greek students, here's a hymn. In order that he may have something to share with him who has need. Why should you work? Well, God commands it, you get fulfillment because disobedience is costly, you can get church discipline, the list goes on and on and on.

But one of the reasons is so you can have money to help other people with. That's why you should work. That is exactly why you should work. So my question is this morning, this afternoon, do you work?

How hard do you work? Maybe one of the things that would be helpful to you is if I ask you, do you see your employment as a mission field? Maybe a sermon title would be how to be a missionary at work.

Some wives have to be missionaries at home because their husbands are unbelieving. But what if you got laid off one job, lost one job to get another job because you needed to meet those people there? I'm quite confident that in heaven you would say, well, I got used of God to preach the gospel to so-and-so who got saved.

And what did it cost me? It cost me a career path, it cost me selling a house at a lower value to have to move to someplace else. I had to move to New England, get this new job. And now looking back at it, I see how I was the right guy in the right time, the right lady to preach the gospel to this person and they're a believer now.

That's all worth it. To try to think providentially, to try to see your employment as something that is good and healthy and an opportunity to witness. Now, you don't get paid to preach the gospel at work unless you're me, unless you're a pastor.

So don't take company time, don't steal company time and be the evangelist. No, don't do that. But you have opportunities to invite people over to dinner. I was just at a barbecue at someone's house and they had church people over and people from work.

There's opportunities there. You can have lunch breaks. Some places have Bible studies during lunch. There's an opportunity, but when you're a clerk, be a good clerk. When you're a sales rep, be a good sales rep and you're not to try to sell and proselytize and do those kinds of things.

You should say to yourself, I have the opportunity to glorify God today at work. Help me to be a good worker and a good witness today. For those of you that are retired, what a perfect opportunity for you to still work in ministry.

My grandparents basically sat throughout their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and watched the TV all day, all day, every day. We need saints like you who are 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and yay, even a hundred to minister to the young ladies and the young men at the churches, at the local churches.

Titus chapter two, for men discipling younger men and for women discipling younger women. We need you. You should be working. If you're unemployed, spend 40 hours a week searching for a job. If you're retired, find ministry.

It doesn't mean full time means you get paid for it, but it means a lot of hours per day and make yourself busy with the work of God. If you say, well, I've got a job and I spend all my time just worrying if I'm gonna keep my job.

You know, it's like the sales manager and the sales rep who stood looking at the map that had colored pins. And this is, you know, your accounts and this is who you are. And the guy said, I'm not gonna fire you Wilson, but I'm loosening your pin a bit just to emphasize the insecurity of your situation.

Kind of a funny story and I've been in sales so I know how that goes. But in the day of downsizing territories, increasing quotas, all these kinds of regulations of the government, having to pay for healthcare, it is a sin to worry about your job.

It's a sin to worry about keeping your job. It's a sin to worry about getting a job because you're unemployed. Because the opposite of anxiousness is trust. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight. You say, well, I've got a really bad boss, horrible boss. Whatever you do, Colossians 3, do your work heartily as for the Lord, rather than for men.

Knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the reward of inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve for he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done and that without partiality.

You work for the Lord. I'm going to work and I want Jesus to be pleased with my work. I want him to see and if you've got a mean boss, well, your ultimate boss is Christ Jesus and God's given you a mean boss for a reason.

God could take away that mean boss, could kill that mean boss, could transfer that mean boss, could double the mean boss's meanness. You don't know what the Lord will do but you are there for a reason and the reason is to work.

If you're a Christian, you need to work and sometimes you could be tired of the work. There's a little saying in evangelicalism, we're weary in the work but not weary of it. We get tired, we need assistance, we need encouragement, we need motivation, that's all true but we ought to be workers.

I wonder if people look at you at the local church and say, he's a hard worker. He works hard at work and when it comes to ministry, he's a hard worker too. Isn't that what you aspire to be? I think for the Lord's sake, you should.

You should say, I'd like to be like Christ who always did the work of his father with joy, with a trust, with an abiding confidence in his heavenly father. If you don't have a job, get to work. Today's the day.

Get up off the couch and go find yourself a job and I drive by places all the time that says help wanted. Maybe it's time to lower your pride a little bit and say, it's below me but in fact, it's not below me at all.

It's important to work. Mike Abendroth here, No Compromise Radio Ministry. Email me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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