Genesis 2:1-3, 15 The Good of Work

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. Pastor Don Filsak is preaching through a sermon series called

The Rest of the Week, Loving God from Monday to Saturday. Let's listen in.

I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I just want to start off by saying thanks for coming out on this wonderful, summery

Sunday morning. Glad that you're here. Be sure to fill out the connection card you received when you walked in, and you can turn that in the black box out on the welcome table.

Out in the hallway, how many of you noticed that the welcome table moved? A handful of you noticed that.

Ah, change, right? But yeah, it's changed. So all the stuff that you need is out there.

If it's your first time with us, we'd also ask that you do us a favor and take a free coffee mug out there, just our way of saying thanks.

We're glad that you're here, and so you can take that. That's just our gift. We recognize that it can be kind of scary checking out a new church for the first time, so just make yourself at home.

There's coffee, there's juice, there's donuts, all that's free, and it's there for you. Then an offering envelope has been provided for everybody.

That offering, if you choose to give this morning, goes in that same black box back there. We don't pass an offering plate here.

We don't want anybody to feel awkward about that, but there is an envelope there if you'd choose to give. The ministry here at Recast continues to go forward on the basis of people's generous donations, and we're just very grateful for the way that that's continued on.

July marks the start of a new fiscal year. You can actually see our budget that is there. I'm just praising

God for the way that year over year, just since we started, he has always continued to help us to bring in more than what we had actually thought we were going to bring in and what we budgeted to spend, and so we usually budget to spend here, end up spending here, think that we're going to take in here, and end up taking in here.

So year over year, there's always been a balance there, and we are saving towards a down payment to eventually build a building, and so anything that is marked expansion fund as a donation, whether that's on the envelope or on the check, is going to go to a specific fund set aside to eventually build a building.

This morning, we're going to hear a testimony from Bruce French, who is our second candidate for eldership. Last week, we heard from Mark Downing, who is in that same position, and I want to be clear that when

I say candidate for eldership, this is not going to be a popularity vote or a popularity contest. They are both being put forward.

They would both be joining the board with an affirmation from the congregation. These are people that the current eldership of the church have put forward as people that we would like to appoint, but by our bylaws, we desire for your input and for you to let us know what you see in their lives.

Let them know what you see in their lives as well. And so I'm going to ask at this time for Bruce, who has expressed interest in opening himself up to being a leader in the church, to come on up and just share your testimony.

There's a microphone for you here. There you go. Thank you. I thought that was a good idea to not do this right off the bat because half the people aren't here yet, so I wouldn't be quite as nervous.

But if you'll forgive me, I will read this. That will help me stay on my train of thoughts, and then

I will add a few things along the way. The one thing I do want from you is you'll find a reoccurring theme through here, and I want to, you know, it's three simple words.

God is faithful. And so when I get to that point, I'm going to kind of point to you, and I will say,

God is faithful. Okay. It's early. Okay. Let's try that again. God is faithful.

Well done. Well done. Okay. And once again, this is just a snippet of my story.

There's obviously more to 56 years than what I'm going to read here in a minute or two. And so feel free to come talk to me if you have questions.

And I am looking forward to information, affirmation, and encouragement, maybe even discouragement, you know, iron sharpening iron on those forms.

I was saved. I came to Jesus. Jesus found me, however you want to say that at a young age.

I received Bible training and information all through childhood in my teen years.

This is good. Okay. But it wasn't until my mid -twenties, or I want to say my late twenties, that I started my own studies of Bible and discipline.

With that came better application, okay, and the desire to serve, discover my spiritual gifts.

Okay. Back to my early twenties, I walked away from God. But interestingly, he did not let go of me.

God is faithful, okay. One of the things I discovered about myself is that I love children.

This created a desire in me to be married, have children of my own. Being a hunter,

I began to seek and look and pray. Once again, God was faithful.

He showed me a treasure. With a little convincing on my part, and probably a lot on God's part,

Cheryl agreed to marry me. At the time, Cheryl had a little boy named Jeremy, he was four years old.

He needed a daddy, and I wanted a son. God is faithful.

We wanted more children and prayed for a girl, but God gave us two boys. God is faithful, okay.

Now we have been married 25 years, we have three grown sons, three lovely daughter -in -laws, one amazing grandson, one coming in December.

God is faithful. Let me return to my ministry experience.

Children's work quite varied over the years, home group, small group leader, a deacon, an elder.

I would say that serving as an elder is not, it's not in the center of my giftedness.

Nevertheless, the need here at Recast right now is real. I will pledge to serve faithfully because God is faithful.

So I stand before you, appointed by the Board of Elders, to become one of them, seeking your prayers, your feedback, and your approval.

Thank you. Thanks a lot,

Bruce, appreciate it. Thanks a lot to Bruce for that, I appreciate his testimony, and that God is indeed faithful and has shown himself faithful.

I think all of us in this room have various ways that God has worked in our lives that we could testify that he is indeed faithful, and so I'm thankful for that.

Ballots are available. You need to take one for each of these men, fill it out individually, and the ballots are available out on that table out there.

If you can't find them, if you're kind of rummaging around that table and you don't know where they are, you can ask Haley, who's going to be standing out there at the end of the service.

Those ballots need to be turned in by next Sunday. We have to have two weeks to allow for you to kind of get to know them, and that we've actually allowed it three because it's the summer, and we recognize that not everybody's been around, and so, but they are due next week,

Sunday morning. You can turn those in in the acrylic holder that's out there on the table. You can hand them to Haley, you can hand them to me, or you can take them to by the office at any time during office hours, nine to one,

Tuesday through Thursday, and you can drop those off there. We do need an 85 % affirmation from the voting membership of the church.

If you're not a member here yet, don't worry, you can still take one of those ballots. We still want your feedback.

Don't be intimidated by that form. There's a lot of content there, and you might not be able to answer every single line for both of these guys, but take one, and what you do know of them, be honest and frank and authentic in your feedback, and we will benefit from that.

So, look forward to the way that the Lord is leading there to expand our board of elders here.

All right, we're gonna be jumping into a new series called The Rest of the Week. This is the kickoff for that.

The title of my message this morning is The Good of Work, and kind of introduce that to us this morning, and I just want you to think about what occupies the majority of your week.

What occupies the majority of your week? Now, for a variety of us, we might point to a bunch of different things, and I would guarantee that it's different for each one of us, but it might also have a common theme.

For most of us, there's an activity that we engage in that accounts for more time than we spend sleeping, more time than we spend in prayer, more time than we even spend in leisure, more time than we spend, for many of us, even with our families, and yet I would suggest to you that this activity is quite likely one of the least likely that we connect as an activity to our relationship with God, one that we rarely think of in terms of our relationship with God.

You know what it is yet? It's work. It's our work. Now, right from the beginning,

I want to be sure that we define work, work not just strictly as employment, so that we're sure that we're talking about apples to apples, because some of you are in here going, okay, this is a throwaway series for me.

I don't have employment. I would be declared, in the eyes of the government, as unemployed or without work, and no one,

I would suggest to you, is without work, so it's important that we get that definition down. Work is so much more than an income.

It's so much more than a paycheck or some kind of a formal economic arrangement. Work is more than the physics definition.

How many of you, if you're honest, your mind goes to physics or something like that when I say work.

Work, according to physics, is force times distance. It's a mathematical formula. Dave was thinking that,

I mean, yeah, for sure. That's not the definition we're going to be working with throughout this series.

One book that I'm currently reading, one among many books that I'm reading on the topic of work right now, defines work as, and I like this definition, it's kind of a common theme throughout all of these books, but this one, the way that he worded it is very concise.

Work is the form in which we make ourselves useful to others.

Work is the form in which we make ourselves useful to others.

I love that definition because latent in that definition is that each one of you has the ability to be, what, useful.

Every single one of us has a form, a set of patterns in our lives, whether that's gifts or talents or abilities or knowledge or whatever it might be, the ability and skill to work with our hands, but each one of us has latent within us the ability to be useful to others in our community, in our family, in our culture, in our church.

We all have God -given abilities to be useful to others. In this definition, the other thing that I love is what's absent from it.

There's nothing in this definition that has anything to do with the exchange of money. Did you notice that?

Absent from the definition of work is the exchange of money. For some of us in this room, as I've already said, you don't have employment, but work is not synonymous with employment.

Now, let me be clear. If you're employed, you should be working, right?

If you're employed, tell me you're getting that. If you're not employed, you should be working, right?

As we're going to see through a very inexhaustive exploration of the concept of work through the

Bible in just a short time together this morning, we're going to see the good of work. The good of work.

Some of us, maybe depending on how you were raised, depending on what your job looks like now, depending on your employment or your non -employed work, some of you are kind of at the end of yourself and you're going, work, good?

Are you kidding me? I live for the weekends, man. We're going to talk about that, but we're going to see throughout the flow of Scripture that work is a good thing.

Work in the end, by the way, is more than just serving others if it's done right, but at the end of the day, it is not just being useful to others, but ultimately for the follower of Jesus Christ, work is for the benefit and for the good of God, being useful to Him as well.

At the end of the day, our work should be more about honoring God through contributing to civilization by the use of our unique God -given abilities.

So let's start off by opening to Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3. I'm also going to be reading verse 15 along the way, and this is not going to be the only text that we're in this morning, but it's central enough that I wanted to just start us off here.

So if you don't have a Bible, could you do me a favor and just raise your hand? I know that's awkward, but somebody will bring you a Bible, that's the reason to raise your hand, and they'll just get one into your hand so that everybody has a copy of God's Word on their lap so that they can actually follow along and see the things that I'm saying are coming from there.

And so Genesis 2, 1 through 3, and then verse 15, and if you borrowed one of those

Bibles, take it home with you. We want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God. You can take that as a gift from us.

Follow along. Recast, this is God's very Word. This is inspired by Him. This is what He wants for us to hear together this morning.

Genesis 2, 1 through 3, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done. And He rested on the seventh day from all

His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it

God rested from all His work that He had done in creation.

Go over to verse 15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Let's pray as the band comes to perform the work of leading us in worship.

Father, I thank you for the way that you have orchestrated things that we can look in Scripture and see the origin of a whole host of things that impact our daily lives, including this concept of work that we are not left on our own to try to contemplate and consider and figure out what work really is.

Father, there's all kinds of broken notions in each one of us about what it means to work, whether we're a workaholic or we're lazy, whether we're full of sloth or we are a go -getter.

Father, whatever it might be, whether we even have a broken notion that our work doesn't matter because we stay at home or whatever it might be,

Father, I pray that you would cut through and slice through the errors in our thinking. Father, help us to think biblically about these things as we have an opportunity in your presence to go through these texts together and see a flow from your

Scripture about the value of work. Father, I thank you for the work of many volunteers who have helped make this

Sunday morning flow together. Father, for this praise team that is even up here ready to serve you and us, making themselves useful with their skills and gifts,

Father, I pray that our voices would be raised to you in worship this morning in sheer delight that we have a

Redeemer. Even as Bruce testified that you are faithful, that you called him from an early age, we can reflect on our callings the way that you've worked in our lives, and I pray that that would overflow in an abundance through our voices to praise and worship to you this morning.

In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Amen. Yeah, you can be seated, and big thanks to Dave for leading in worship this morning.

Just grateful for his filling in there and even just for Josh to be able to just get a week off and sit in and take it in, so I'm grateful for that.

I encourage you to get comfortable. I know that those are not the most comfortable seats ever known to mankind, and so if you need to get up and stretch out in the back or whatever during the message, it's not going to be a distraction to me.

There's more coffee and juice and donuts. Restrooms are out the hall to the end. Women's downstairs.

Men's upstairs. We ask for you to use the restrooms on that end. The restrooms that are down here are for the children's ministry, so use those down there if you need to, but otherwise, have your

Bibles open to Genesis chapter 2 to begin with. We're going to be moving through a couple of different texts this morning as we go along, but we'll start there, so if you lost your place, open back up to there.

Remembering that Genesis is a book about beginnings, right? That's the whole point. The title is Genesis.

It's about origins, and I know we covered the whole book a couple of years ago, so when I asked you guys earlier to turn to Genesis, some of you were like, this again?

Are we going, are we starting this over again, like clear back at the beginning? But I just want to point out that any time that you are tracing the history of a theme throughout

Scripture, you're probably going to begin in what book? Genesis. That's probably where you're going to start, because it's the book of beginnings, and so we're going to start off there looking at the concept of work, and so we come across this text in Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3, and it may surprise many of us that the word work occurs so prominently right from the beginning of the pages of Scripture.

Like think about it, I mean all the different themes, all the different grand scheme of all that transpired through creation and through the origin of the world and all of those types of things, and the word work takes up a significant chunk of this chapter, the concept of work.

The text says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and three different times at the start of the second chapter, talking about creation, talking about origin, the creative act of God is called work.

That's the word that is used for it, and so that leads me to our first point. The first point of the message this morning is that God is a

God who works. That's point one. If you're taking notes, you can jot that down. God is a God who works, okay?

That's something that is true of Him. Once again, we ought to review our definition of work because some of us immediately turn to the concept of laborer and toil, like that's part and parcel for what it means to work on a fallen planet, so we've already jumped past the third point for me this morning.

If we're talking about sweat and toil and hard labor, like he asked the question, okay, God worked and creation is called work, so did

He sweat? Was it hard for Him? Was it tough? Did He spend a lot of the stores of His power?

Was He depleted by the end of creation? Was He just like, oh, that exhausted me, man, I gotta take a break, man, this is tough.

I would suggest to you, yeah, did He take a break? You're gonna go, in your mind, yeah, I think He did, like that rest on the seventh day, and I would suggest to you that throughout the pages of Scripture, that's demonstrated as a model and a pattern for us.

I don't believe God in the least was depleted in the act of creating the world. But remember that in our definition, work is contributing to the good of others through action.

How many of you think creation was for the good of others? Yeah. How many of you have ever benefited from God's creative act?

Yeah, your existence is dependent on it. So it was by nature, the very first thing that is called work was of ultimate benefit to others, it was actually the creation of others, right?

That was the very origin, the very beginning, and it is indeed called work. And so God started all of this through the very first acts of work, that original creative act.

So we see clearly from the start that the King over this entire universe demonstrated work for us in this very first recorded act.

And all work, I would suggest to you, is in some sense vitally connected back to that original act of work.

I would suggest to you even that all of our work is lesser in that it's just a reshaping, in some sense, of the stuff that God originally made.

We do not, like God, create out of nothing with our words. If you can do that, come and see me.

I'd like to talk with you. I've got a couple jobs I'd like to have you do around my house. You know what I'm saying?

I mean, if you're able to just speak and stuff comes into existence, that would be really awesome, right?

But we do not make the stuff that we make the stuff out of. So in one sense, when we talk about our work or our creative acts, they are definitely clearly obviously subservient and lesser too, and very tied to that first act of God.

Every manufacturing process extends backwards to the God who made the stuff that we use to make stuff.

God, in this sense, is the first manufacturer. In this sense, we find that work has dignity.

In just this very first simple point that our God is a God who works, God is not ashamed to identify himself as a worker.

He's not ashamed to use the word work to apply to his own actions. And if this was all that we had in scripture, if this is all that we had revealed about the concept of work, we would be left to conclude that work is indeed a noble thing, right?

It's a noble thing because God participates in it. God is not above applying the word work to his own things.

Down through the ages, by the way, the word work has not always been considered noble, right? And there are still,

I think in many cultures, and even in our own culture, there is work that's beneath some people, do you know what I'm talking about?

Some of us in the room might have, honestly, if we're just, if we really probe deep into our hearts, maybe you don't have to go too deep to figure out that there are things that you're just kind of like, somebody else can do that,

I don't do that. But there have been whole societies and cultures based on the premise that the Roman culture for example was one where they actually had a very strict hierarchy of different things that people did.

In the Middle Ages, there were things that peasants did that the nobility didn't. And there was a very strict hierarchy and class system.

But what's interesting is I think there's somewhat of a classism in America here as well. I actually just saw an article this morning in USA Today about this classism between blue collar and white collar and how there is a growing divide in America over this classism.

And I happened to run across that article, I wasn't even, it's not like I was looking for it, for this message, but it was right there and I had to read it,

I was like, wow, that's my sermon, that's the tying into it, the idea that we have a classism here is for real.

That there's dignity in work because God himself is indeed a worker.

My second point, the text goes on in verse 5, we see this clue towards our second point and that is that humanity was created to work.

Look at verse 5 with me of Genesis 2 real quick, when no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up for the

Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground. There's an impression that's given from the verse there, even in the

Hebrew language, it's like it's not complete yet, it's not fulfilled yet, it's not completely done yet. Why? There's no man there to work it yet, there's no humankind to work the ground.

There was an intention for us, verse 5 tells us that the earth was incomplete before the creation of mankind.

But if you go over to verse 15, you get my second point clearly, the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.

Mankind was created to work, all of us. Before sin entered the world, before we broke the world through sin, there was work.

Now for many of us, we've already jumped ahead to my third point, but we need to sit here for just a moment and consider the goodness of work as God created us, the essential component of work and what it means to be human.

We live in a broken world, that's for sure, where all kinds of sin corrupt us and corrode our daily work and it's hard and it's toilsome, but let's not let that get in the way of our understanding that work existed before sin.

And there is every indication that work will exist after sin is finally done away with and God rolls this up and provides for us a new heavens and a new earth.

But the word for work in this text covers a broad spectrum of human activity, the word that's used in Hebrew here in verse 15 for the work that we were supposed to do in the garden, it is used of cultivating and gardening right here in our text.

It is used for metal and woodworking and the making of the tabernacle, it's the same Hebrew word that's used there for the creation of these implements, for the craftsmanship that went into the structuring of that tent dedicated to God.

It's also used, as I alluded to earlier, it's used literally, that word work is used for those leading in worship at the dedication of the temple.

So it covers a broad spectrum of activities, those who were standing up and singing and leading with instruments at the dedication of the temple were said to be working.

Now some of you might be, that's entertaining, isn't it? Isn't that fun? Isn't that their hobby? Isn't that something that they do on the side, you know, we had a band come up here and play their musical instruments and lead for us, weren't they just kind of having fun?

According to the text, and Pete says, yeah, it was fun, but it's work. It's declared in the text that that kind of behavior is within the classification of human work.

So everything from bending metal in a machine shop, to growing tomatoes, to leading out with musical instruments is covered under the word work.

And you go into the text and further in verse 15, the injunction on us is to keep, on humanity, to keep the garden, that was one of maintenance and protection.

And so if you consider all the various human activities that are involved, how many human activities are involved in maintaining and protecting this planet, we suddenly realize that everything from raising kids to becoming a responsible

God, for them to become God honoring citizens, to being responsible with what we throw away, to caring for pets and animals, to a whole host of industries that fall into these original marching orders, are all within the realm of work, and they are all part of the call on the human race.

Despite what we may think at first blush, the wild and natural order of things is not the best.

It is not the final plan of God. Some people have this mindset that we're heading back to a garden with all the busyness and the technology and all the advancement, man, wouldn't it be nice to just go live in the bush, act by yourself for a while, or, you know, there's this idea that we're moving, the best place for us is to move back to that which is completely natural, right?

But that is not the arc of the story of the history of God, from the creation act to the fall of mankind to the majority of his redemptive work in our lives, to an ultimate place of consummation where it's going to be all finished in the end, and when it's finished, do you know what it is?

When it started, it was a what? A garden. When it finishes, what comes down out of heaven?

A city. The New Jerusalem, with culture, with expansion, with all different kinds of things for us to participate in, with art, and with all the advancements of that.

But I'm convinced that we'll still have a lot to explore, we'll still have a lot to cultivate. We'll have plenty of work to joyfully keep us occupied for eternity.

Mankind was designed and imbued with the image of God for this very creative act of work, that we would reflect his creative glory in the world that is busting at the seams with opportunities to express our

God -given form of usefulness to others. Each one of us is full of opportunities to serve others as an agent of God in this world for change, for good, for blessing, for benefit.

Think about it this way. From the very first rudimentary tools of humanity to the iPhone, our human advancement is not so much a testimony to our glory, to our grandeur, as much as it points to the glory of the

God whose image we bear. We are looking like God when we create. We are participating in the advancements that he desires for us as a civilization.

Civilization is advanced because he has placed within our hearts to cultivate, to create, to explore, and to work.

Now certainly I wouldn't suggest to you that every single technological advancement is always great and peachy, and we know that ethics get involved in that and all of that, but I think we'd all be far from saying that the iPhone is evil.

How many of you know that its application can be evil? The way that we use it can be evil, right? But the technology in and of itself is not evil.

Some of you might be, you might want to talk to me afterwards, right? I'll argue my point on that. The first point, remember the first point,

God is a God who works. The second is that God made mankind, God made humankind to work. And the third point now, if you turn over to Genesis 3,

I don't know if you have to turn in your Bibles or not, Genesis 3, 17 through 19 say this,

Genesis 3, 17 through 19, and to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which

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

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.

Many of us in the room understand the context of what's going on in that passage. Adam and Eve have sinned, they've rebelled against God and he's given them an explicit command, don't eat from this tree.

They ate it and in so doing rebelled against their creator. And so now they're standing before God after hiding from him, how many of you know that's never a good idea, hide from God for real?

But they tried to hide from him, he of course uncovers them quickly, finds them and begins to dole out consequences for of the effects of sin, the effects of their rebellion against him and the consequences affect this subject of work.

Out of all of the different consequences that he could spell out in this text, he talks about its impact on our work, a subject that I said takes up the majority of our time and of course he addresses this and he says the ground is now being cursed, it brings forth thorns and thistles according to the text and pain we eat from the ground and it will be by the sweat of our faces and hard work that we eat.

Just like I don't think God was picking on two specific plants, thorns and thistles, he's picking on the rosebush and the thistle plant, right?

That's the only effects of the fall regarding the ground, no I think he's being very general, I don't think he was merely speaking of curses on agriculture, it's not like, well fortunately

I'm not a farmer so the effects of the fall on work don't affect me because I'm not in agriculture so, whew, dodge that.

Rather instead, I believe it is a curse on all those who need to eat. If you need to eat, you've fallen under this curse.

How many of you would testify that you need to eat from time to time? Maybe even some of us like that, right? But yeah, if you need to eat, then you're affected by this curse to some degree.

And remember that Genesis 3 is not the start of work, this is important for us to grasp, Genesis 3 is not the start of work, but it is the start of toil.

It's the start of labor. Hard work with limited production began at the fall.

Not that hard work started, but hard work with limited production began at the fall. Drought, blight, weeds, all kinds of physical destructive forces began to interfere with human productivity at this point.

But for many of us it isn't blight or weeds that interfere, but sin has definitely brought upon us a brokenness to all aspects of our work.

How many of you can testify that there's some broken aspects to your relationship with work? Anybody? Four, five, ten, there's about ten of us that would agree with that.

I think all of us, some of your hands weren't working but you knew that you were raising your hand and your heart, right, you knew that.

I remember about three years ago, three years ago I was busy typing my sermon. I usually go to a coffee shop a little bit, a little bit ways away and work on my sermon and I, and I manuscript it usually on Wednesday mornings.

Then I work on it throughout the week but I usually get my study, the bulk of my study done on Mondays and Tuesdays to save the rest of the week for meetings and things like that and so I really try to, try to get a concerted effort early in the week.

So I was sitting there and I was writing at the coffee shop over in Paw Paw, hammering on my sermon, get to the end, hit save, locked up, like three thousand word sermon, locked up, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, hard start, hard reset, lost it all.

Rough moment in my work history, right, how many of you have ever had an experience like that?

You're, you're chugging out that report, you're doing all the paperwork and it doesn't save, it doesn't do anything. The irony is,

I wrote this sermon on Wednesday, then I went to blog this past Thursday and I lost my entire blog.

I was like, hey, I didn't have to go three years ago, I could have just gone to this week. Now that doesn't happen very often so maybe that was ugh. Or another, another illustration that just was wonderful this weekend, my, my lawnmower broke down, one of the linkages to the, to the steering column snapped so I had to go get the part and I'm there and my son

Adam is helping me and he's holding one wrench and I'm holding the other and can you see, I'm, I'm putting my back into this,

I've got my feet braced against the tire, pulling on this wrench, anybody know what's going to happen next? Snap, that wrench decided to just kind of give way at the wrong moment and right here is a box shaped exhaust pipe.

So I've got a nice gash in my thumb, my, my thumb doesn't want to move right this morning and fortunately my, my son can testify that I, I spoke like a preacher at that point.

God could testify that he was hearing what was going on in the mind and I confess that before you that not everything that always comes out of the mouth is, is whole,

I mean what comes out of the mouth isn't always what's going on in the mind so, but yeah, I'm, I'm glad my son was there to witness that, that was glorious.

And we did get, we did get, we did get the, we did get it fixed so I was, I was grateful for that. But yeah, so you know the effects of the, you know the effects of the fall in your work and I've noticed

I'm using an illustration that's not my employment, that fixing that, that lawnmower had nothing to do with my employment, it's a work, it's a job that I was doing to make myself useful for my family, right?

How many of you would acknowledge that there are things that you do in your household to make yourself useful, it's work to your family?

There are things that you should be doing that are making yourself useful to your church, to the body of believers, not to me,

I'm not asking for you to serve me, I'm asking you for, for you to serve each other, in the categories that, the forms that God has given you of usefulness to this body, spiritual gifts, there are things that you have to contribute here that others can't, but it's your form, it's the way that God has created you to be useful and then certainly, obviously, it's a no -brainer,

I hope it's a no -brainer that in your employment, where you have a formal relationship of usefulness, how many of you know that that's what that, that's what that hiring contract looks like, it's saying,

I will be useful to you, that's what you're saying when you agree to work for employment for somebody, so in your employment, are you thinking about that in terms of usefulness to your employer, usefulness to God, usefulness to your civilization, to the culture around you?

You know, Genesis 3 is not the start of work, but it was the start of hard toil and there is indeed an aspect of our, of our employment, of our work life, of our working within the church, of our volunteering, that definitely looks broken to, to various degrees, like an iPad locked up or a wrench that slips, we know that there's fallenness, there's brokenness.

Now, the fact of the matter is, though, very few of us work in that realm of drought and blight and even physical brokenness, but we can think in terms of other things, right?

For the majority of us, because we are such a service -oriented culture, a lot of us, it's relational brokenness, isn't it?

And relational brokenness is a completely other component in the fall here, but we know that there was a sundering in the relationship between the man and the woman, and certainly within all human relationships, there is now a brokenness that's borne out because of that, and that's significant in our workplaces, right?

Some of you deal with an arrogant or even hostile leader in your workplace. Some of you work with a tendency in your own heart to be a hostile, dominant leader in your workplace.

You are that person. Some of you work in a competitive environment that sees your family as an impediment to your productivity.

They would just assume you not have a family. You know what I'm talking about? There are employers out there who see your family as in the way.

How many of you recognize that's unhealthy? Some of you find an inherent brokenness within your own hearts regarding work that leads you to one end of a spectrum, one or the other, both sides being equally broken.

Workaholism. I worship work. I worship my usefulness. As a matter of fact,

I primarily see my usefulness as the most important thing in the world, and nobody could survive without my usefulness.

Workaholism. Pouring all of your, sowing all of your time, all of your energy into your employer to such a degree that you neglect the other work that God has for you, the other forms of worship that God has for you in being useful to your family and being useful to your church and being useful to others.

When all of these things, we've got to take into account the whole host of forms that God has created us for, and how are we balancing those things and using those things?

The other end of the spectrum, obviously, workaholism, just laziness and sloth. One of the deadly sins that the early church recognized was sloth.

We don't think about it very often anymore, but we could easily in our culture skate by living for the weekend, playing

Farmville on our computers until our boss walks in and quick shut it off or surf the web or do our grocery shopping on our work computer or whatever it might be, and you might actually be feeling a little tinge of conviction right now.

I hope that's not coming from me. I hope if there's conviction in your heart that that's coming from the Holy Spirit and that you might actually deal with that something this week.

That means removing some time wasters from your computer at work to be more efficient and more useful for your employer.

That would be a good application. That would be great. If you did that, that would be a benefit and a blessing.

That we as a church would be out blessing your employer through your usefulness to them.

Getting what I'm saying in that? That would be good. Some of us, if we're just honest, if we're flat out honest, you were disappointed by point number two, that mankind was created for work, that work was there before the fall, that work's going to be there after the fall, and you're like, bummer!

I thought we were going to go to heaven and just finally sleep, finally rest. One big eternal nap, right?

It's going to be awesome. Well, I think there's going to be some rest there. I think there's going to be rest from sin, rest from brokenness, rest from pain, rest from the ineffective work that we are so prone to.

Those two things, by the way, are so tied together in this third point that our work is broken now, that it's very hard for us to even conceive of work outside of this broken framework.

Are you getting what I'm saying in that? So it can be really hard for us to think, what does work look like in a perfect place?

What does work look like without sin? I can tell you for one thing, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

I'm looking forward to being involved in that kind of work. It'll be a glorious thing.

But some of us, like I said, we're disappointed to hear that there's going to be work, and that's primarily because we have a broken view of work.

It's primarily because it's just testifying to point number three, we have a broken relationship with work.

So we do not always consider the primary reason for our existence is to serve

God and others with our abilities, but instead, why do we work for the most part?

For a paycheck. Kind of chintzy and cheap if you start to think about what you're designed for, what work is created for.

What you were created for was to work and be useful, and instead, what we often think of as work is a tool and implement to get our paycheck.

Now, let me back up and say, your family needs food. You need to provide for them, but I would suggest to you that there's a way of working that sees that as a byproduct, it's not the end in itself.

There's something else that you're serving. The greater good of society around us is not a bad thing to serve, by the way.

I want to be clear about that. Sometimes we think the only reason my work has value is if I pray a lot while I'm working.

If I'm praying a lot, or if I'm sharing my face with people, then I'm being productive and useful in God's eyes.

But he says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Do you think of your work, whether that's at home, or whether that's in an employer, or whether that's in the church, do you think of your work as loving your neighbor as yourself?

Think about that. How do you tie what you do for employment, think in terms of employment for just a second, how do you tie that into the good of humanity?

And I would guarantee that that's a good exercise for you to take part in this week. What you do helps our culture.

What you do helps our society. I would suggest to you that many of us haven't done that exercise.

We haven't been challenged to think in terms of what we do day in and day out with our employer in terms of the good of society or civilization, or without an employer at home.

For those of you that are stay -at -home moms, I want you to think in terms of that. How is that for the betterment of society and civilization?

You might not initially make that connection until you think a little bit deeper. Might take some getting the wheels spinning in your mind, and then it'll snap into focus.

I'm going to give you an exercise here in a moment to help us think through that, because I believe it's so important.

Whether you're a stay -at -home mom, or an owner of a company, or a garbage collector, or a police officer, or whatever it is that you do, consider what would happen if nobody did what you do anymore.

If you're a stay -at -home mom, you take care of kids, right? A lot of it is shuttle service, mending boo -boos, doing all different kinds of stuff to educate and to help your kids to be raised up.

What if nobody did that? What if nobody did that anymore? Or you're a design engineer for a corporation, but what if there were no more design engineers anywhere?

What if your position just, boop, just off the map? Nobody did what you do anymore. Now do you think our culture and our society could limp along without your position?

Probably. How many of you think that there would be a hole there, though? There'd be something missing? Imagine if all the garbage collectors just, there were no more.

How many of you think you'd get sick of your house within a week? A couple weeks. Where are you going to put that stuff?

You're going to have to find some place. You're getting what I'm saying in this? What if it all disappeared?

And now, now take that a step further and consider, imagine that everybody in the world, tomorrow,

Monday morning, they walked into work and they submitted their resignation and they quit on the spot.

Everyone. How long would it take for our world, our society, our country to devolve into uncivilized society?

Days. Days before there's looting. Maybe hours before there's looting and there's brokenness and there's people being murdered and there's death and there's all kinds of destruction.

Just from people quitting their jobs, right? But you can imagine that, right? You think I'm over, do you think I'm overstating that or does that sound accurate to you?

Everybody quits their jobs. Civilization is built on this notion of we're created to work, we're created to organize, we're created to structure things.

One of the quotes from one of the books that I read this week said, if you sow seeds in a field, you expect to harvest whatever you sowed.

If you sow work into a culture, you reap a civilization. The seeds of work sown into a culture reap civilization.

And so, even in this broken, fallen world, is there benefit to our work? Oh yeah.

Significant. In serving others, loving others, loving your neighbor as yourself and also serving

God through that. The reality is, work is essential and it still possesses a healthy dose of its original goodness.

Even in a fallen world where it feels so much like toil, our relationship to work is actually broken.

But it is still a core purpose for humanity on this earth. And it is God's common grace to all of us that civilization has continued to advance despite the brokenness of sin.

That's God's common grace to us. And that leads to my final observation about work. My last point, number four.

Jesus gave dignity to work in a sin -cursed world. Jesus gives dignity to work.

Turn over with me quite a ways in the Bible, past the halfway point into the

New Testament to Mark chapter six. Mark chapter six, verses one through three. Give you a second to get there.

Mark six, one through three, talking about the life of Jesus. Mark, an author who knew

Christ and actually knew Paul, the apostle, and wrote this account, his own personal account of Jesus Christ.

And he says this. Biography of Jesus, he, Jesus, went away from there and came to his hometown.

And his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath, he began to teach in the synagogue. And many who heard him were astonished, saying, where did this man get these things?

What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?

Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, and Joseph, and Judas, and Simon?

Are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him.

Okay. So your attention might be drawn to verse two, right? You see the word that I'm talking about here in the text, right?

The word works. And so you might, you might naturally think that that's where we're going. And that's talking about Jesus is credited with such mighty works that were done by his hand.

But this is just simply a figure of speech for his miracles. It is interesting that the word works is applied to his miracles, but that's not where I'm going with this.

It's actually the start of verse three that really grabs my attention in regards to work. Is not this the what?

Carpenter. Isn't this the carpenter? The context here is significant.

The context is super important. Jesus goes back to his hometown for the first time.

Now how many of you remember to some degree going back home after your college days or something like that? Or you, you left home and then you went back.

Some of you maybe haven't even been back to your hometown where you graduated from, but there's something about going back there.

Kind of your mind shift. Your mind is shifted, especially if you've gone off to college or you've gone off to work someplace else.

And then you come back and it's kind of like some, some of you may have a delight and a joy of remembrances. Some of you are like,

I don't know why I came back here. I just need to get back out again. But it's a, there's a, there's a variety of feelings about this, but that's what

Jesus is doing here. His first time back in his hometown. These people knew him. He was raised there. He went from zero to basically give or take a couple of years, but he went basically from two or three all the way up to 30 in this town.

How many of you think that that town, that little town, that little rural 2000, uh, you know, a population of 2000 people, uh, town knew

Jesus fairly well? They knew him. Okay. And he goes back there and he's already started his ministry.

He's now a rabbi. He's a teacher. He's traveling. He's got a following. His disciples are with him. And Jesus stands up at the church that he used to go to.

It's not a church. It's a synagogue. But imagine that he's, he's like, yeah, I'm back in town. Can I preach this week? And they're like, yeah, sure.

I mean, yeah. You're the traveling, you're a traveling guy. Yeah, of course you can. So he stands up to, to teach in the synagogue.

And those he grew up with are not having any of this rabbi business. They're not having any of it.

They're like, no, you're a teacher? Who appointed you teacher? They're astonished at his teaching. They wonder where his teaching is coming from.

And they doubt him and are offended by him. Because to them, he was just the carpenter, the son of Mary.

They know his siblings. He's familiar to them. And they were offended by his attempts to teach them.

But what I want to zero in on is the significance to this title, the carpenter. Nazareth was not a big town.

It's likely that Joseph and his son, some, some church tradition believes that Joseph actually died in Jesus' early, early life.

And the fact that he's called the carpenter leads you to kind of curiosity about that. Like maybe Joseph is no longer the carpenter in town.

For whatever reason, Jesus was known as the carpenter. But in this tiny town, it's quite likely that he was, he and his father were at some point the only carpenters in the entire town.

And those who had known Jesus for 30 years and had watched him grow did not say this.

I saw this coming. He was always out in the hills daydreaming. He was always out there meditating.

He was just a, a mystic and always out working to teach others wisdom from on high.

Is that what the people who knew him best said of him? That he's the carpenter.

Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? He's going to get up and teach us? He's the carpenter. Nobody stepped forward and said, is this not

Jesus, the miracle kid who made tables and chairs by the word of his mouth? I said, this is the carpenter.

Are you serious? You're going to get up and teach us? You're going to act like you're spiritually knowledgeable? You're going to act like you're a rabbi?

For real? And the people in his own hometown rejected him because of their familiarity with him, but also because of knowing him and they were like, yeah, he made good tables.

But for real? Jesus, get, get your minds around this for just a second.

Jesus came on a rescue mission from heaven to earth and spent 30 years where? A carpenter shop.

Really? How many of you think that that might suddenly snap into focus the dignity of what you do

Monday through Saturday? Does that give some dignity to what you do? I hope it does.

I hope you can recognize that the son of God came and worked with his hands. He came and blessed his society and his community through producing with his hands, through being useful to others.

It's a glorious reality if we can get our minds around this. He labored. He let the sweat drip off his nose in the heat while he planed and shaped and fashioned wood and brick and various other things that a tecton did.

The word carpenter is a tricky word in, in Greek and it doesn't always necessarily mean that he works just with wood.

He probably worked with stone. He might have been a mason to some degree and all that goes into crafting things in that time and era and wood was not the only material used.

He was the carpenter. Even in the silent decades of Jesus's life, we can learn from this one verse that Jesus worked in this broken and fallen world and he didn't say,

I'm too important to get splinters. He didn't take 30 years off in preparation for his big three, the big three years where I'm going to do,

I'm going to do full time ministry. So man, I just got to take the time off to prepare and get my game.

Jesus was a worker like his earthly father, a worker like his heavenly father.

He was a craftsman showing us what a perfect human looks like and a perfect human works.

Perfect human works. Whether we're employed or not, whether we draw a paycheck or not, whether society registers us as unemployed or not, we are created to work and in this short and not exhaustive biblical history of work,

I hope that you come to grips with the good, the good of work. God dignified the word by applying it to his own initial act of creation.

He then crafted humanity to work and to keep the earth. Our purpose through the fall, our relationship with work has been broken.

But even in our broken state, work is still a means of common grace by which we as individuals have the ability to serve civilization for the greater good of humanity.

But I won't, I don't want to end on a tone of common grace. Common grace is very important to bring into this situation because work is to the benefit of our society regardless of who's doing it.

What I want to point out is that a Christian garbage collector collects, generally speaking, the same amount of refuse that a non -Christian garbage collector does.

Is that the same benefit to society? Yeah. Right? So what's the difference?

Like what's going on there? But there's a common grace that's involved in our work where we can bless others even if it's not our intention.

There are corporations out there that their intention has not been to bless your life, but they have. Do you think

Bill Gates or Steve Jobs in the creation of all of his products, do you think his goal was to love you?

Do you think that's why he was doing all of it? Because he just loved you personally and he wanted you to have a device that would do super cool stuff.

Or do you think there might have been other, I mean, just I'm saying, maybe other motivations? I'm not saying that he was completely, you know, a hater or something.

But at the same time, there was motivation there, right? There was a motivation there that wasn't necessarily to love you. But how many of you recognize a common blessing from Steve Jobs?

Have any of your lives been blessed by his work? Five of us. The rest of you? Really?

Samsung? Where are you guys at? I mean. Or are you just like, this thing is a, like it's a lead weight in my pocket, you know?

It's like, oh, this thing just drags me down. I don't know. I find that my ministry is multiplied by his work.

My ability to stand up here with an iPad and preach from it and I have to print and waste the paper and all of that stuff.

There are blessings. Work is a common grace that reflects the image of God in all of us.

And therefore, all humans are capable of blessing civilization through their work. But I'm going to be making a case in the next few weeks as we go through this series that work that goes beyond just serving society is work that is done unto the

Lord. Not that it necessarily has a greater reach, not that it necessarily has a greater impact, but to truly come to the pinnacle of the cause of work is to reattach our work to the way that we reflect

God and that it is ultimately for him. In this way, only the gospel can make our work the blessing it is intended to be for God and for others.

Only as we look more and more like Jesus in our kindness, in our compassion, in our mercy, in our love, in our ethics, by looking more and more like him, our work takes on the shape of his service to the world through us.

My application this morning is for each of us to consider our own relationship to work. I'm a person who has, this is a confession, relatively soft hands.

Books don't build up a lot of calluses, paper cut from time to time. I know, I know it's hard, it's hard, but my hands are relatively soft.

I have produced very few things with my hands, that's just a confession. Very few things that I've produced, you can probably count on both hands the number of products that these hands have made.

At the same time, maybe on one hand the number of things I'm proud of having made, yeah.

And at the same time, God has given each one of us a form, a form in which we are useful to others, and that's significant.

Each of us has a different set of skills that God has given us to, in the service of our family and our society, and consider how your work ties into serving

God and serving others. Lastly, I want to reflect on the cross of Christ. It's through his sacrifice that we can be made whole.

It's through his sacrifice that our life takes on a new trajectory. The greatest commands, according to Jesus, as I alluded to, or mentioned earlier, are to love the

Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And our work is a huge chunk of our week, and for many of us it is an untapped part in the sense of tying our life to those commands.

Loving God, loving others. Do you see your work connected to that? Whatever your work is, whether it's volunteering here at the church, or our work at home serving our families, or our work for our employers, all of this should connect to loving the

Lord and loving neighbor. We cannot truly love God without coming to him through Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross for us.

We cannot truly love others without first being forgiven and made whole through his sacrifice. So as we come to communion this morning,

I want you to think in remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who is making all things new.

He is the one who makes our work more than just a nine -to -five. He makes our work more than just a paycheck.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the work that you have given to us, that you have made us useful.

We don't have to clamor around and try to become useful, but Father, you have made us with a form in which we are able to serve others.

Father, I thank you for the diverse giftings that you have given to the people in this room. What amounts to a culture, what amounts to a civilization, what amounts to even here in this room a church and an opportunity to build and demonstrate love for you and love for others through the form that you have made us.

Father, I pray that we would tap into that Monday through Saturday, Father, that it would not just be a

Sunday morning reality in our minds, but that it would impact the way that we work with our employers and the way that we work with our clients and our customers and for those who are business owners,

Father, that there's just a whole host of different things that come along with recognizing that our work has dignity in you.

Father, I pray that you would transform our thinking. And as we come to the communion tonight, today,

Father, I pray that you would be honored and glorified. Father, we take a piece of cracker to remember your body that was broken for us, the juice that we take that remembers your blood shed for us.