The Fourth Commandment - Part III

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 20:8-11

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Well, this morning we're going to press on with a third part on the Fourth Commandment.
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So we've had quite the hiatus from Watson these past several weeks, but we do want to take the opportunity to consider the other side of the
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Fourth Commandment, which is not about rest from work, but rather how we are to work. So the last two weeks we considered what the
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Sabbath is and why we are to keep it holy. Last week we considered how practically we are to keep it holy.
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We had some of that overlap into discussion on Sunday night. We look forward this evening to another opportunity to do just that.
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But this morning we want to consider, really, verse 9 from Exodus 20.
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Six days you shall labor and do all your work. The Fourth Commandment has as much to say about work and the character of work as it does about rest and the sanctification of the
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Sabbath. In fact, they both belong together. It's hard to understand one without the other.
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Last week I read this from Peter Lightheart, which I think is a tremendous analogy for how we should think of the relationship of work and the
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Lord's Day. Lightheart writes, the old covenant moves toward rest, while the new begins from rest.
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Creation week moved toward that seventh day on which God rested, so we began with labor toward rest.
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That was what Israel was commanded to keep. But in the new, as our confession teaches, we begin from rest.
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Now the first day of the week is what we work from toward that greater rest yet to come.
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Israel's Sabbath was the seventh day, but the Lord's Day is the first. In the new covenant, the
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Lord's Day sets the pattern for our week of labor, or at least it ought to.
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Does it? Do you work from a foundation of confidence in the gifts of God, or do you work as if it all depends on you and you'll never catch up?
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Do you go from the rest of the Lord's Day to resume a frantic pace? Do your labor -saving devices make you busier?
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The world around us is a busy place, and the Lord's Day is a busy place, and the Lord's day around us is chaos and cacophony, but we are called to better things.
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The Christian's week is a melody. When your work sings songs of Sabbath, you become a witness to the gift of rest that is in Jesus.
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So that's the analogy that I think is just a gem. The Christian's week is a melody.
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The world is chaos and cacophony, disharmony, discord, everything rushing and grinding, rushing forward in this frantic frenzy, but the
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Christian's week has a certain rhythm to it, a melody, and our work is meant to sing the songs of this rhythm that is established by the
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Lord's Day. So our work is meant to sing the songs of Sabbath, and insofar as we do that, our week has a harmony, our week has a melody, our week has a certain rhythm and pace and beauty, and so that's how
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I want to approach our consideration of work this morning. Three parts. First, the songs of Sabbath, the songs of Sabbath, and there we're going to explore how our work must be grounded in creation, much like the
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Sabbath is grounded in creation. Secondly, drowning false anthems, drowning the noises in the songs that compete with the songs of Sabbath, and then lastly, tuning our days, tuning our days, in other words, making our work melodious.
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So songs of Sabbath, drowning false anthems, and tuning our days. Well, the songs of Sabbath, to begin, were first sung at creation.
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We established two weeks ago that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance. This is why it's embedded in the
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Ten Commandments as moral law. This is something established at creation. As Walter Kaiser, in his book
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Toward Old Testament Ethics, writes, creation ordinances are ethical norms based upon the work of God in creation.
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They depict for us the constitution of things as they were intended to be from the hand of the
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Creator. So we're talking about creation irrespective of the fall, irrespective of sin spoiling and deforming what
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God had made. We have an ethical norm of what God's intention for the world and for humanity in the world to be.
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This covers and regulates every aspect of human life. We consider what it means to be man and woman, what it means to enjoy marriage as a gift from God for purposes of procreation and dominion, but it also includes the way that we were created to work, the fulfillment we were meant to find in being workers, and also what it means to rest and commune in worship with God.
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As creation, as creatures, our relationship to God must reflect
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His kingship. As we've said, and the Scriptures make this clear, it's the ruler that appoints the days, the times to be kept in the way that they are to be kept.
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The one who has authority has authority to appoint times to say, this time you shall work or this time you shall have festivity.
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So as creatures, our relationship to God reflects His kingship in this very way, but not only do we reflect
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Him as our ruler, as our heavenly Father and Creator, we also understand that as our
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Creator, He is faithfully working, He has never, as it were, rested in pure inactivity, but as Jesus testified, my
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Father is always working. When we consider God as King, God as Creator appointing our times and our seasons, we cannot do so apart from considering His providential governance of all things.
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Though He had finished His work of creation, He had not completed His work in creation, the work of governing, guiding, providing, sustaining.
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That is a work that has always continued and in the way that we inhabit the world, we're meant to understand and reflect
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God's providential governance in our relationship with Him. So this is just many examples.
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The Psalms are replete with this kind of theme, but Psalm 104 puts it so beautifully and I'm not going to dance across several parts of Psalm 104, but it begins with this great call to worship.
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Bless the Lord, O my soul, O Lord my God, You are very great. Let me count the ways, the psalmist is going to say.
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Let's begin with who God is. You are clothed with honor and majesty.
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You who cover yourself with light as with a garment, who stretch out the heavens like a curtain.
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So we go from who God is in the array of His glory to now what God has done. He stretched out the farthest reaches of the heavens like a curtain.
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How many of you woke up this morning and you went over to your window and you just stretched out the curtain, something almost effortless, and that's
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God stretching out the borders unending of the cosmos, like throwing apart a curtain.
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You, verse five, who laid the foundations of the earth so that they could not be moved forever, you covered it with the deep like a garment, waters that stood above the mountains.
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And at your rebuke, they fled. At the voice of your thunder, they hastened away.
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We love going to Falmouth every fall. You can go stand on the shore, you can go yell all you want.
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You're not going to stop the waves from coming. You're not going to move the tide. The most you can do if you scream at your loudest across the surface tension of the water is see a slight ripple.
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God speaks and the mountains flee like a scared animal. Verse 10, he sends the springs into the valleys.
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So we have the farthest reaches, right? We have the cosmos spread like a curtain. We have the foundation of the earth fixed.
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None can move it. We have the depths of the earth, the seas thrown about like a towel, like a covering.
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But then look at this providential care. Verse 10, he sends the springs into the valleys. They flow among the hills.
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This is all activity on the part of God. He is sending, he is covering, he is spreading.
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He sends the springs into the valleys. They flow among the hills. What's the result of this? They give drink to every beast of the field.
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Wild donkeys quench their thirst. By them, the birds of the heavens have their home. They sing among the branches.
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He waters the hills from his upper chambers, the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your works.
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Do you see how God's activity is framed by creation? The earth is satisfied.
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The birds are singing, as it were, the songs of Sabbath, singing the care of the creator.
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He causes grass to grow for the cattle, vegetation for the service of man, that he may bring forth food from the earth, wine that makes glad the heart of man.
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So here we have the raw material of creation. But according to God's good design, these things can be harnessed by man with the ingenuity that God has imbued in man such that he can provide for mankind.
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Turn the vegetation into wine, into merriment, into joy. And this makes glad the heart of man, oil to make his face shine.
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These things are beyond utilitarian, pragmatic, evolutionary use. This is now for countenance, for aesthetic reasons.
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Bread, which strengthens man's heart. Verse 19, he appointed the moon for seasons. The sun knows it's going down.
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You make darkness and it's night in which all the beasts of the forest creep about. Young lions roar after their prey, seeking their food from God.
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Verse 23, man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening. Oh, Lord, how manifold are your works?
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So he's encompassing all of creation, this meditation sort of comes to this pinnacle in verse 23.
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In light of all of this, man goes forth to his labor until the evening. Because you are active, because the earth is satisfied with your work, we work.
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Because you are in the world working, we will go out to work in the world. That's what the psalmist is saying.
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Oh, Lord, how manifold are your works? In wisdom, you have made them all.
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The earth is full of your possessions. Verse 27, you see this picture of absolute dependence upon the work of God.
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These all wait for you. He's just described the teeming sea. These all wait for you.
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The beasts of the earth, the birds of the air, that which is with open mouth in the sea.
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These all wait for you that you may give them their food in due season. What you give them, they gather in.
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You open your hand. They're filled with good. You hide your face in their trouble. You take away their breath.
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They die, return to dust. You send forth your spirit. They are created. You renew the face of the earth.
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May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works.
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So notice what the psalmist is doing. First of all, notice the vivid and particular language he's choosing.
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This is part of the beauty of the psalm. Almost every line is sort of a synecdoche.
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It's just an example that could be spread of the whole. You know, the cedars of Lebanon are full of sap.
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Extrapolate that information to the sheer diversity of arboreal life.
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Consider all the works of God's hands. Just consider one variety of tree in all of its particular dimensions.
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And you have, of course, God's ongoing interaction with what he has made. He's meant to be satisfied in this work.
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Let it give him a cause to rejoice. Let him find great joy in his work of maintaining, sustaining and guiding the work of his hands.
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We, too, as his image bearers, and we go into the world in this very way, seeking to rejoice in the work of our hands, seeking to be satisfied with what he has made for the strength of our hearts and the countenance of our face.
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The whole scope of creation is imbued with the active work and care of God.
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So our relationship to God must reflect his kingship in this way.
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We are made as his image bearers, and for this reason, we cannot not work.
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We must work. It's inherent within us. It's what it means, in part, to be an image bearer.
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What's the significance theologically of being made in God's image? If God is the worker par excellence,
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God is the perfect worker, the one who completes and is satisfied and rejoices and the work causes all others to rejoice in him, to proclaim his prowess in his skill.
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Well, in working as image bearers in this way, we come to a right understanding of ourselves, a right understanding of our relationship to God and a right understanding of our relationship to the world.
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If we do not work, then we will fail to understand ourselves, fail to understand the
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God who made us and fail to understand the world around us properly. Alexandra Kozhev is a philosopher not worth reading, but at least on this point.
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And sometimes the Marxists have some peculiar insight into the nature of labor and man's relationship to labor in terms of the earth.
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And I think he rightly says the man who works recognizes his own productivity in the world.
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And in so doing, he actually is transformed by working. He recognizes himself in his work.
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He sees his own human reality in it. He discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity, of what might otherwise be abstract or purely subjective.
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But now it's made concrete in the world. This is a result of working, bringing dominion to the raw resources of creation.
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We begin to recognize something of our existence in the work of our hands, something of our relationship to the world and to the
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God who made us and the world. This is what it means to be an image bearer. So we are the image of God, especially.
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In the process of procreation. And I use that term broadly,
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I'm not just speaking about children, I'm speaking about any act of productive labor, that's procreation, the creation that comes after creation, continuing creation, procreation.
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But notice that as image bearers who reflect the kingship of God and bring dominion upon the raw resources of creation as his image bearers, that procreation, creativity and labor are the things most affected by the fall.
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These are the things directly affected by the fall. Now thorns choke what ought to be fruitful.
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Now, lethargy spoils inspiration. Now, envy fuels idolatry.
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What we were meant to be as workers reflecting the image of the God who works has now been stained by sinful human nature, which now poisons and toxifies all of our activity under the sun, rendering it vain, vanity of vanities, the preacher says.
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And of course, this sinful human stain doesn't just poison our activity in the world, it poisons our relationship with God and with neighbor.
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This is what the law testifies to. Work was before the fall, but work was affected by the fall.
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Now work continues through redemption and it will continue in the new heavens and the new earth because we were created to work in this way.
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We reflect the kingship of God. But the glory of redemption is we begin to understand and even experience what work can be like when it's unencumbered by the effect of the fall imperfectly, but genuinely.
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And then we can look forward to a new heavens and a new earth, to a glory that will give us work without thorns, without tears, without sorrow.
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And for this reason, we must learn in this life, in this redemption, to learn to sing the songs of Sabbath in our work, to learn to sing the songs of Sabbath.
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The song of Sabbath teaches us about work as much as it teaches us about rest. Well, as we've said, work begins at creation.
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Work is for us as created image bearers. If we get this wrong, if we start somewhere else, we get everything else wrong.
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When you don't understand creation rightly, it's impossible to understand the fall rightly because you don't understand what the fall has affected.
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It would be like, you know, maybe some sort of statue that everyone talks about and you've never seen it.
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But you have a distorted image of it, an image that's stretched and warped and swirled around.
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And that's what you're looking at. And you've never seen the statue before, but you're supposed to understand what it looked like before it was warped and twisted around.
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You can't do it. You need to understand what it looked like before it was warped. Only then can you understand what has to be changed to recover that image.
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So it is with the fall. We don't begin with the fall. That doesn't ground what redemption is moving us toward.
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Creation grounds what redemption is moving us toward. Don't begin with the fall and its effects on our work.
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Begin with what God's good creation intended for our work to be. That is the track that redemption is going to carry us forward on.
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If we get that wrong, we get everything else wrong. If we get that wrong, we begin with the fall and our view of the gospel is truncated.
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It's a privatized, pietistic spirituality. It doesn't actually go into the office or to the factory or to the workplace with us.
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It doesn't actually affect our homes or our society or the world around us. This is not reflecting the cosmic kingship of God aright.
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Brian Dean, in an article in the mid -90s, wrote sort of a hit piece on the
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Puritan work ethic. He said, Puritan belief that suffering is required to redeem already shows his ignorance.
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No Puritan worth their salt as a Puritan would say, our suffering is what redeems us.
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But in this garbled understanding, he says, the Puritan belief that suffering is required to redeem our original sin as human beings became part of their work ethic.
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This is a notion which continues to underlie our own attitude towards work today. Our futurist dream is that technology will eventually free people from the necessity of hard work, alright.
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In other words, what do we see in Genesis 1 through 10? Fallen man's attempts to manage the effects of the fall.
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Here's this curse upon the ground, this curse upon labor. Now you'll need to gather your bread by the sweat of your brow.
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And what do we see the Lammakites doing? What do we find in the shadow of Babel? Let's find ways to get by the curse on our labor.
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To manage and overrule the effects of the fall. We can become masters.
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We can, as it were, purge the fallenness of our nature. And that's what you have with this.
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This futurist dream of eventually technology will replace hard labor. No sweat, no thorns, perfect leisure.
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But, Brian Dean argues, unless we shed this Puritanical work ethic, we'll never get to that futurist dream.
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So he says, the information age is here, but in terms of work patterns, we cling to the attitude of a mechanical industrial culture steeped in this wrong -headed
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Puritan ethic. So what does Brian Dean encourage us to try?
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Here's an interesting exercise. Spend a whole day in bed for no reason.
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Now don't wait until you're ill or exhausted. Don't do anything. Just lie in bed and doze all day without feeling ashamed about being lazy.
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The acceptance of this laziness will actually begin to break the link between Puritan guilt and your work ethic, which is chaining us to a primitive pattern from the past.
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When we get creation wrong, we get everything else wrong. Brian Dean would like us to think that the
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Puritans are to blame for thorns and thistles and sweat on the forehead. And he thinks the solution is to be lazy.
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Don't do anything, as eventually technology will catch up. You don't have to do anything. This fallen earth with limited resources and broken relationships will become
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Eden, a paradise. In other words, there's no need for a gospel. There's no need for a savior.
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We can redeem ourselves from the effects of the curse. Well, what is really the alternative here? I don't trust
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Brian Dean to establish society. I wouldn't want to follow this. Would you want to live in a society where people are following that kind of advice, trusting in technology to do work for them so they can be endlessly lazy?
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I wouldn't want to live in that kind of society. Would we be a country that has this kind of technology if that had been our past as a country?
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No. It's the children spoiling the inheritance of their fathers.
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That's our country. What's the alternative? We have more technology than ever before.
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The Lamechites would blush to consider what we have at our disposal. But do you really think that now we've arrived at leisure?
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Or are we busier and more frantic and more anxious? Are people on more antidepressants now than there was ever a need to escape the vicissitudes and pressures of life?
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More technology, more opportunity for leisure than ever. But we're more whittled away and restless and hollow than ever before.
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Man is ungrounded and alienated from the earth, from his relationship to others in the world.
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And all because he's estranged from God. What's the alternative, really? We can't trust technocrats to establish a pattern of work and rest.
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We can't trust their false gospel that technology will lead to true rest, to fulfillment. Now, what's the alternative when we say, let us go that we may sacrifice to our
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God? We saw it in Exodus five. Why do you take the people from their work? Get back to your labor.
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You make them rest from their labor. They're idle. That's why they're crying out. Let us go and sacrifice to God. Let more labor be laid on the men.
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That's always the alternative. If we will not have God rule over us, we'll regret having
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Caesar rule over us. Caesar doesn't know how to give us rest. Caesar only knows how to add labor and to take the fruit of our labor from us.
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But when you have God as king and when the society around you reflects God's kingship over creation, then you can have property.
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Then you can have inheritance. Then you can understand the melody, the Sabbath song of true, hard, fulfilling work and true, blissful rest in the
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God, your creator. So our work is a primary part of our life through which we manifest our discipleship, but it's only a part of this multifaceted picture of Christian discipleship.
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It's a part, but it's the primary part. It's the largest chunk of our life's activity, the largest chunk of our week.
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As a Puritan said, it's not enough that a Christian have an occupation. He must carry out that occupation as it becomes a
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Christian, as it becomes a Christian. So that means a Christian's way of grounding their labor in the grooves and grain of creation, right?
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You begin at creation to understand what the fall has distorted so that you can understand what redemption is restoring.
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Grace restores nature. So we carry out our occupations, not just the nine to five, but every aspect of our activity, everything we do, even eating and drinking to the glory of God.
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We understand and carry out all of our activity, as is fitting for Christians, for those who name the name of Christ.
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That means we would never sacrifice as many sacrifice in our day to the goddess career.
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Many blessings from God are given to the other at the altar of career. Identity is not forged by being a child of God, but rather by what you do.
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What's one of the first three questions that someone will ask you? You know, what's your name? Where do you live? What do you do?
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It's whenever I get a haircut, it's the thing that ends all conversation. Do you have any plans today? You know, it's super and it's like, oh, so what do you do?
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Well, I'm a preacher. It's just like, whoo, crickets. Nothing like the closer.
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Christians seek to use their vocation for the sake of the household, because it's for the sake of the kingdom.
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Right. We occupy ourselves in a way that fits Christians when we begin at creation to understand the logic of redemption.
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We understand that our vocation is not something that we're sacrificing our family, sacrificing our household to carry out.
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I'll never be fulfilled as a parent or as a husband. The old ball and chain. I just got to escape so I can go to my job.
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My career is my comfort. My career is my identity, my success, my wealth, my reputation.
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These are the things that define my life. All that is you're serving the goddess career.
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You're serving the way of the world. Now, Christians understand their vocation is given for the sake of the household.
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You work in order to build a house. And why are you building a house in order to advance the kingdom?
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You labor for the sake of the household, for the sake of the kingdom. Very important that we understand this point.
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Something that modern society has utterly lost. You see it with a lot of immigrants that take such great risks to come to places where they can actually have an opportunity to work very hard, sometimes working two or three jobs.
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Why? They're literally sacrificing all of their time and effort to establish the next generation.
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My kids will have a shot that I don't have. So that means for the next 50 years, I have to work these three jobs in this way to sacrifice and lay down their prosperity, their future.
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Now, translate that in a spiritual sense to what kingdom advance looks like. Your work is for the sake of the kingdom's advance for the next generation.
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It's not at the expense of those things. Thirstein Veblen, again, no one to look into, but a very significant economist.
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And I was reading his excerpts from his book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. And one of the terms that he coined was conspicuous leisure.
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In other words, he argued the division of labor, which is carried over into modern society and particularly
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American society, has basically mimicked the leisure of the aristocrats.
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And so this is true of primitive society, and it was true in the British aristocracy, and he argued in American culture, those who have means basically don't occupy themselves with industry, but rather conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption.
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What do we mean by that? Leisure to be seen. Leisure that is a standard or a testimony to their wealth.
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I don't have to work. My wife doesn't have to work, you know. Even our servants have it pretty easy.
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So it's conspicuous leisure. We need to get back to conspicuous labor.
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Conspicuous labor, labor to be seen, labor to be regarded, labor that is a picture of our understanding that we reflect the kingship of God as workmen in the
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Lord. The labor of the righteous, Proverbs 10 .16
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says, the labor of the righteous leads to life. The labor of the righteous leads to life.
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Vocation offers more than simply the possibility of serving God in one's daily work.
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That's not our view of work. Vocation, this larger reformational understanding of a calling, it's not just that we can serve
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God a few times here and there in our work week. You know, this is my job and you've got your job, but, you know,
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I get to pray and read scripture on my coffee break. So, you know, I serve God in that way while I work.
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No. You serve God through all of your work. Every aspect of your work is toward God.
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That's the Christian view of work. That's the kind of song that you sing that leads you to the
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Sabbath. The songs of Sabbath teach us that God must establish the work of our hands.
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As Psalm 90 says, you know, let your work appear to your servants. Yes, Lord, establish the work of our hands.
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Establish the work of our hands. Remember that the Lord who establishes the work of our hands is the
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Lord who said, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest.
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This Lord knows how to establish the work of our hands and also how to give us rest.
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He made us, therefore, he knows how to bless us, how to satisfy us, how to surround us with good things.
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Perhaps it takes time to separate yourself from the flesh and from the world and from the devil to see them as good things and to have your soul be satisfied in them.
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It's kind of what we were saying from Isaiah 58. So the question is, as we head into the second point here, do we know how to work?
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Six days you shall labor and do all of your work. Do you know how to work? If you don't know how to work, you won't know how to rest.
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Do you know how to rest? If you don't know how to rest, you won't know how to work either.
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The Christian works from rest toward the greater rest to come. The Christian works hard, not at the cost of their home, but for the sake of their home.
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Because that's for the sake of the kingdom. That's a Christian's view of work. So in work, first point in work, we learn to sing the songs of Sabbath.
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Secondly, drowning false anthems, drowning false anthems. Psalm 127 begins by talking about the daily grind.
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The nine to five, the burning of the candle at both ends, something familiar to many of us.
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But it only does so in order to help us have a right understanding of our work in relation to God.
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And by the way, Psalm 127 dovetails work with family, with the household, right, in ways that we separate them.
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What is an economy? It's the law of the household, oikos namos, oikonomos, economy.
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So the household was never separated from commerce or the work in society. Work was always, at the most minimal unit, work done in and by the household for the sake of the household.
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That's what a society is. So our work in relationship to God. We're not jumping to an entirely different frame of reference when we all of a sudden consider the family.
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These things are held together. Why? Genesis 1 and 2, creation grounds redemption.
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But of course, Psalm 127 also is interested to point out the vanity of our labor. Verse one, unless the
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Lord builds the house, they labor in vain. Who build it? Unless the
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Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. The first phrase really sets the whole tone, unless the
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Lord, which totally counters our default mode of thinking. Unless I, unless I, unless I, if I don't do it, who's going to, if I don't get this done, then this is going to happen.
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This is unless I, and how does Psalm 127 begin? No, unless the Lord, unless the
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Lord. Christians are quick to see God's providential control of all things.
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They depend on him. George Mueller is a superstar. He doesn't have to be. You could depend on a milk truck breaking down too, you know, you could pray in that kind of way.
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George Mueller is exceptional. He shouldn't be exceptional. Some of us can testify.
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I can probably count on both hands how many times God has surprised me with his providential supply.
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Sometimes blessings just happen unexpectedly. In some ways, it's a reminder.
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I know how to meet your needs. You can trust me. Stop fretting. Don't be afraid.
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Devote yourself to me. Seek my kingdom, my righteousness. All these things will be added to you.
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We should be the last people to think it's our success, our advance, our gains, brought about by our formulas, our stratagems, by our own devising, unless the
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Lord builds, unless the Lord supplies. But how many bestselling books begin with something like this?
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Seven tips for nine ways you can, the most effective habits for all of the emphasis is put on what we're capable of doing, what we must do.
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If we want to succeed, it's all self -help. That's what it says above the barcode. Self -help.
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Christians don't begin with self -help. We begin with God's help, unless the Lord builds. So the first call of Psalm 127 is to acknowledge
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God determines the success of our labors. If he's sinking your aspiration, don't keep pressing forward in it.
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Perseverance is a good thing. But if he's like German artillery shooting you out of the sky, why would you keep pressing forward in it?
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God is the one who supplies and directs. God is the one who blesses faithfulness and diligence, but not in a way that we become trustful of ourselves and our own activity.
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He does it in a way that we trust him and depend upon him. He knows what to give and what to withhold.
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Doesn't it amaze you that the most glorious and blessed son, the firstborn of all creation, wandered through this life and didn't have so much as a place to lay his own head?
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And yet Jesus never for a moment doubted his God's fatherly care and disposal of all things. My father has so willed it that foxes have holds and birds have nests.
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The son of man has nowhere to lay his head. So be it. My father is good. My father knows what is right, knows what
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I need, and takes care of me. The first call of the psalm is to acknowledge that God alone gives purpose to our labor.
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As the house goes, so goes the city. The city walls can be guarded by highly trained, highly effective, highly caffeinated watchmen.
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But if the Lord's not watching the city, that's all useless. Of course, watchmen need to stay awake and workmen need to work.
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There's no excuse here to abandon care and effort and perseverance. The psalm isn't saying cut all these things off, but it's pointing out that everything under the sun is vanity when it's done with a lack of faith or a lack of dependence upon God.
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That's what Psalm 104 is saying. You're the one who gives. We're all waiting for what you will give.
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You provide, you sustain, you feed. Jesus commands us to look at the lilies of the field.
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They don't toil or spin. Verse two, it is vain for you to rise up early, vain for you to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows.
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For so he gives his beloved sleep. Now, bread of sorrows in Hebrew, the original term there is actually ramen noodles.
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The bread of sorrows, college students, that's the bread of sorrows. It is vain for you to rise up early.
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To sit up late. It is vain for you to pummel and deprive and grind out for some daydream of an opportunity if you are not dependent upon the
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Lord seeking his provision. This now covers any worker. You see, scripture rebukes the able bodied worker who refuses to work.
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Scripture rebukes the mindset of someone content to live by handouts in place of their own responsibility.
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Proverbs 21 warns, the desire of the lazy man will kill him. His hands refuse to labor. But this psalm is not speaking to one that's refusing work.
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It's speaking to the workaholic. So on the one hand, we're to work. Look to the ant, thou slugger.
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Or my dad used to have a dental lab in our basement. So growing up, dad was always downstairs, which didn't bode well.
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And my sister and I were acting up. We had to go downstairs and sit on the anxious bench. It wasn't the kind that Finney talked about.
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But he used to listen to G. Vernon McGee all day long on Bible radio. And I can vividly remember one time where he must have heard it, that message on the radio prior.
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And I think I was slacking on mowing the lawn. I was just getting distracted and not following through and therefore not doing other things.
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So I had to go sit with my father. And I remember he sat there and he said, son, look to the ants.
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Look to the ants. I love looking at ants. I love burning them under the magnifying glass. Look to the ant, thou sluggard.
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Look to the industry. Look to the ceaseless labor of the ant. But the psalm is not talking about the one who is priding themselves on their efficiency, on their industry, on their work ethic.
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It's talking about one that has all those things in spades and does so without dependence upon God.
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Therefore, cannot see the vanity of what they're striving for. The issue is whether we work unto the
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Lord, not whether we work. Whether we work unto the Lord with a trust that realizes apart from him, every labor under the sun is vanity.
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If we live 70 years, if by reason of strength, 80 years. All we get is sorrow.
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Our year ends like a sigh, Psalm 90 says. There's vanity, unavoidable vanity in the fallen life.
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What the songs of Sabbath teach us is this daily grind, this way of gaining bread by sweat in thorn is not our future.
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It's not our inheritance. It's not how things will be because it's not how things were intended to be.
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And this begins to shape and form the highest ideals of what our work can accomplish in this life.
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Begins to establish priorities about our relationship to God, neighbor and the world around us.
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Working hard without this understanding can result in total collapse. And I say this especially to young up and comers.
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It's an entrepreneurial spirit and a great recovery of work ethic among young men in reformed churches.
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Praise God for that. But realize that for all of that industry and for all of that rugged and resilient work ethic, if you're not trusting in God, you're risking a total collapse.
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So the one who wants to build and expand his barns, Jesus says, fool, your life is required tonight.
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What did all that forethought and all that ambition gain you? You lost the most important thing.
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So don't let your view of the gospel impacting your daily work life and your way in this world.
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Don't let that be at the cost of faithfulness and the kind of faith that sets you to a greater hope yet to come.
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We have to be honest about this and singing a Sabbath song is a way of keeping honest about this.
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It becomes a daily reminder that our earthly labors are crowned with a hope beyond them. What does
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Paul say in First Corinthians 15? If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we're of all men the most pitiable.
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All of our hope in this life amounts to vanity.
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If we're working in a way that the Sabbath songs are training us to have a hope fixed on what is yet to come.
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So that we're walking not by sight, even in blessed work, even in fruitful work, we're not walking by sight, we're walking by faith.
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And it's not robbing us of a hope such that Paul could rebuke us like he did the Corinthians in chapter four.
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You're already rich. You're already wealthy. You're like kings. I wish we could rule with you,
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Corinthians. No, Paul understood. You've maximized your hope in this life.
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You've looked at your labors in this life rather than for the life to come. Don't store up that which thieves can steal.
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Rust can destroy. Inflation can ebb away. Store up in heaven, Jesus says.
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Build your inheritance in the life to come. That's the way a Christian views their work. In this way, the
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Sabbath songs, the heavenly music, drown all anthems but its own.
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And we need the Sabbath song to drown all the false anthems that flood our ears in this life.
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We see this in Psalm 108. What is it going to look like? Well, God's providential control of our life gives us the ability to carry out our daily work with joy.
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He's in control. Our brother testified to that in his prayer, right? You work with someone who's been there for two months trying to build up his hours, and the
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Lord just streamlines it for you, and you can't help but see his hand. Lord, you're in control of that timing. And if you're in control of these three weeks, you're in control of every aspect that fit within these three weeks.
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You're in control of everything, Lord. You see fit to supply and to deprive according to your goodness and your wisdom.
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And so, endless worry in your work, endless anxiety, a loss of peace, a sense of hollowness or dissatisfaction.
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The feeling that vanity really is setting in, and what's the point of it all? This may be the result of not working independent upon God.
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In other words, you're not singing the Sabbath song. You're just going through the paces, going through the motions. What's it all for?
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Where's it all going to go? What about this? What about this? Unless I, unless I? No, the fruit of our labor is in His hands.
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So this trust in God, it's a God -fearing thing. To fear God is to trust
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Him. Fearing God resolves in a trust. It's Genesis 32. Jacob begins with this terror of Esau.
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He thinks his life is about to be taken from him. And then he's overtaken by a greater fear, the fear of God.
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And how does that resolve? He clings to Him in trust. The fear of God resolves in trust.
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And then, how does he go to Esau after that? No sweat. He's got the right fear.
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It's framed his whole view of what lies in front of him. The fear of the Lord, Proverbs 19 .23, the fear of the
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Lord leads to life. And he who has it will abide in satisfaction. Are you satisfied with the work of your hands?
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Could it be that you're not satisfied because you're not singing the songs of Sabbath? You're not learning from them to have a hope beyond this life.
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You're not learning from them to trust in the God who faithfully provides and providentially governs all that He has made.
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Except thou build it, Father, the house is built in vain. Except thou, Savior, bless it, the joy will turn to pain.
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So where do we expressly begin our labor? With a complete dependence and rest upon God?
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The Sabbath. The Lord's Day. On this day we begin from rest for the work ahead.
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The Lord's Day establishes the rhythm of work in the week ahead. The Sabbath, therefore, teaches us in the ultimate sense how to rest that we may work and how to work that we may ultimately rest.
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Do you enjoy good in your labor? If not, you're probably singing the wrong song. Both Marxism and Capitalism teach a false gospel.
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They teach that salvation comes through the work of your hands. And as Christians, we can't have the false gospel of either
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Marxism or sort of carnal Capitalism. We must understand that God establishes the work of our hands.
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God provides for something beyond this life, but for purposes in and through this life for His purpose of the kingdom in the world.
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And so again, we drown false anthems by singing more consistently, more faithfully, more loudly, and more purposefully the songs of Sabbath.
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And then lastly, tuning our days. Tuning our days. Realize that if you work in this way, if you work singing the songs of Sabbath, you're going to upset and bring into ire all those who have false anthems on their lips.
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All those who have an entirely different way of working, a different end for work, there's going to be a collision.
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I worked with a guy at a plastics factory, young family man. This was before Alicia and I had children. And he used to gain a lot of ire from his supervisor and some of the co -workers.
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He was a Christian, good man. Grew up in Louisiana, was here in the New England to marry, and now he's, I think, serving at a church in Texas.
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We worked together. We used to go bass fishing on lunch break instead of eating. It was great. And he had a, you know,
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I'm here for eight hours, you have me for eight hours. At four o 'clock I leave. You won't see me again until the next day.
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Trucks come, they're going to have to wait. I have a family. I have other things that I need to accomplish.
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You know, you have me between these hours. I was like, what do you need? I'm here. Two a .m., you got it.
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I ended up covering a lot of his work and staying late and getting overtime. But he caught a lot of flack from other co -workers and from his supervisor, you know.
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We want more out of you. We want to be able to have you sort of on tap, on demand. And he just had this simplistic,
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I'm not going to bend over backwards. You know, this is the time that I've allotted for this job. This is the job description. This is what
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I'm willing to do. While I'm here, I'll work hard. When I'm gone, I'm gone. You're not the controller of my life.
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You don't arrange the priorities of my life. I'm a Christian. He had a wonderful example, but he gained the ire of those that didn't view work in that way.
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That viewed their career and the means that came from their career as everything. So they couldn't relate to him.
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In fact, they began to be frustrated with him. Began to kind of, you know, he was sort of a gossip. And a lot of people would badmouth him and so on.
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You need to understand, if you start singing the songs of Sabbath, that's what it's going to look like for you to be a worker. We bring the gospel with us wherever we go.
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So the hours that you devote to your work, you work diligently. You work hard. That's especially important so that when you don't work in that vocation, but you go to the work that God has given you in all these other aspects of life.
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Work in the home, work in the church, work in the community. When you do all the other kind of activity, that you can't be badmouthed.
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That's what 1 Peter is saying. Let not a charge stick, as it were, from the Gentiles. Let them observe your good works, that they may be ashamed on the day of visitation.
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In Acts 19, we see a picture of this. Paul is situated in Ephesus, and we read that the whole city is disturbed.
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Luke says, no little disturbance broke out. That's 1923. In fact, as we read by the end of the event, the whole city is broken into a riot.
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They're all gathered into the main theater at Ephesus. And why? Because a silversmith named Demetrius, who made these elaborate shrines of the chief goddess in Ephesus that was worshipped, their sort of patron deity,
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Artemis, Diana of the Ephesians. And so Demetrius recognizes the preaching of the gospel is beginning to pinch our commerce.
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We don't like that. And so he raises up all of this concern to his fellow craftsmen, not just other silversmiths, but anyone who were, as it were, gaining their profit by building false idols or things for the temple industrial complex.
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That's really what it was. Gathering all of their workers, he stirred up this great riot.
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He said, men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see in here that not only in Ephesus, but in all of Asia, this
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Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that gods made with hands are no gods at all.
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So Luke is exposing this, right? Here's Demetrius with all the other craftsmen. He's like, hey, our business is shrinking.
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You know that our wealth comes from this business. You almost get the sense that piety and reverence toward Artemis is just a facade.
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It's really about the provision, the wealth. We make money. We sell hot dogs by the temple.
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If Artemis goes, if the temple goes, we don't have a livelihood. What's messing all that up?
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The gospel. Christians. They're the ones to blame. So the whole city comes out to riot.
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What do they do for two hours? They chant, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. For two hours,
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Luke says, they chant that. Paul wants to go in the middle. He's like, this is great, preaching to thousands of people in the theater.
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I couldn't dream of this. Disciples say, no, no, no, don't go, don't go. Finally, it's broken up.
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But Demetrius fears what? He fears, as he says to the craftsmen, that his idol may be counted as nothing and may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all
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Asia and the world worship. But again, it's not piety that drives these craftsmen of idolatry.
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It's wealth. It's livelihood. Artemis is, at the end of the day, a business for the craftsmen.
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And so we learn from this, this principle, if you want to know what is worshipped, follow the wallet. If you want to know what is worshipped, follow the wallet.
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Demetrius doesn't recognize his wealth as some divine benefaction from Artemis. He says, from our work, from our business, we have wealth.
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This is our business. The gospel is threatening our business. So now what? He's flooded with anxiety. He's flooded with fear.
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He's got to take evasive action. He's got to do something bold and violent. He's got to get the state to harass and persecute these gospel preachers, these
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Christians. They're messing everything up. This isn't what work should be like. But do you see any of that in Paul?
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Paul doesn't have this business -like acumen when it comes to the gospel. He's trusting in God.
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I don't know how I'm going to make ends meet. God will provide. He knows. So he goes forward. Sometimes he's a leather worker, a tent maker.
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He goes forward. He works. God always provides. He preaches the gospel. The contrast between Paul and Demetrius couldn't be more striking.
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What's motivating their work? What's motivating the work of Demetrius versus what's motivating the work of Paul?
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What's motivating their fear? Where does their fear come from? Is Paul fearing,
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I don't know how, I'm going to say, I can't do this because what about that? Unless I, unless I, unless, no.
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What does Paul fear? Not the roller coaster fortunes of his work, but he fears
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God. He fears God. Therefore what? He has joy. He has peace. He has hope. This is the effect of faithfulness in work.
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I don't just mean faithful working. I mean faith in God as you work.
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This is the effect of that. Faith has become, as Alistair McKenzie wrote, faith has become individualized, a private, personal leisure time pursuit.
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Oh, you're a Christian? That's fine. In your time off you can go be a Christian. Oh, you know, you go to church and that's fine.
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Yeah, that's your leisure time. Religion's okay for your personal, private leisure time, but not in the workplace.
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This is not the way that Christianity ventured forth in the Roman Empire. This privatized, decommercialized understanding of faith.
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Livelihoods were lost, right? You couldn't be in the association. The very issues we read off the face of 1 Corinthians.
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What do you do about sacrificial meat to idols? What Christians are concerned about that?
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Workmen in trades that have patron deities and meals are sacrificed to them. And they're saying, this is my livelihood.
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If I don't go to this because of my Christian exclusivity, they're going to exclude me. And then
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I won't be able to work. And how am I going to provide? These are on the ground issues. Our faith was always meant to be something that goes forward in and through our vocation.
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So how do we connect the moral demands of our faith with work? We would do well just to begin to thinking about it as individuals in the vocations that God has given us.
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We would do better as a church to consider the society, the cultural and society -wide ramifications of how our moral demands of our faith meet with our work.
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70 % of people in this country could not, at this moment, spare $500 for an emergency car repair.
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70 % of the country. Is that not a moral issue? Is that not something the church ought to speak to?
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As Kenneth Barnes stated, the eight richest people in the world have an equivalent wealth to 300 billion people.
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Is that not a moral issue? If we have an economy that's built on ever -ascending mountains of debt, which inevitably burdens the lowest wage earners, is that not a moral issue?
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Is that not something the church can speak to? What has been the net loss of faithfulness, of Christian faith, objectively being removed from the workplace, from the marketplace?
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Concerns like these occupy everybody. The old adage, though it wasn't true in 2020, the old adage was people vote at the gas pump.
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Concerns like these start to raise serious theological issues, which are embedded in biblical values. What do we do with compassion, prudence, justice, courage, temperance?
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These things are important to God. These things occupy what it means to love God and love neighbor.
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These are things that Israel has commanded to understand how to apply to the nations around them. Why? Because they reflect our moral life toward God and toward others.
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The rub is that when the church removes faith from the marketplace, from the work environment, people have no objective hope in the gospel.
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They look for populist solutions. And that's where you get Bernie Sanders, free ice cream.
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It's all fool's gold. But there's no alternative because the gospel's not there in the workplace. It's privatized.
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It's a leisure time pursuit. There's nothing concrete. How many Demetriuses in our day are upset with Christianity because it's pinching their commerce?
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Not many. Have you seen how many rainbow -colored labels there are on Pride Month in Target and Walmart and every other store under the sun?
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We're the ones being pinched by pagan commerce. Rather than allowing our industry, our ingenuity, our labor to drive forth the promise of hope beyond this cursed world.
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It all comes down, at the end of the day, to sin, selfishness, profligate greed. And if we're going to oppose this and oppose the way of the world by being ambassadors of the gospel, we need to have a strong theology of work.
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We need to have a strong theology of work. Not an abstract, theoretical theology, but a practical theology that we live out in our occupations, in our callings.
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Whether that's something that's done more domestically, again, because you work for the sake of the household, not at the cost of the household.
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Something that we take with us to our workplaces. It's something we live out in and toward our community. The kind of theology that's not merely political in purview, but prophetic in witness.
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That's what the church needs. We need to put, in other words, Protestant back in Protestant work ethic.
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All sorts of studies. And, of course, the most influential is Max Weber, the spirit of modern capitalism and the
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Protestant work ethic. And he argued that, increasingly, the spirit of capitalism, which was founded upon the sort of Calvinistic enterprise of industry, that sort of Protestant insight to work, and vocation all being to the glory of God, rather than divided between spiritual occupations and secular or mundane occupations.
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But Weber said, in due time, the spirit of capitalism had a sort of economic rigidity without a religious heart.
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It was devoid of a religious heart. So we need to get Protestant back into Protestant work ethic.
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Richard Baxter exhorted his readers, right upon the doors of your shop and your chamber, this is the time on which my endless life depends.
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This is the time. Every time I work. Every day I begin. This is the time on which my endless life depends.
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Are you singing the songs of Sabbath? If you're not, you won't be thinking in that way.
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You won't be writing that on your walls. Because our faith is not some private leisure aspect of our life, but embedded in everything we do, the gospel is not just something you look at while you work.
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You're working and you're just thinking about that. You know, well, I've got to do this. This is my trade.
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I'm installing these lines or hanging this drywall. But I've got RefNet on, so I kind of can think about the gospel.
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A theology of work means you're not just looking at the gospel, somewhat removed from what you're doing in your occupation.
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It means you're looking at your work through the gospel. That's a vital, vital distinction.
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We don't want to feed into this privatization, this subjectivity of the gospel.
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We understand it's something objective. Our work and the good of our neighbor depends on us looking at work through the gospel.
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In so doing, we join the chorus of the faithful in every age, singing the songs of Sabbath, whether we fill
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Excel spreadsheets, teach cursive, write software code, change diapers, hang drywall, learn to serve in a family as a child, learn how to mow lawns and look to the aunt, as it were.
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All that we do is dignified, because all that we do is given for us to do by the one in whom we live and move and have our being.
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Jesus did not begin to glorify his father at his baptism. He glorified his father when he was being taught household chores by Joseph and Mary.
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He glorified his father when he was sweeping up cracked rock or wood shavings in his father's shop. In everything that he set his hand to do, he glorified
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God. So you don't need to come to some spiritual plane. I have to become a missionary or go into ministry or have something that really counts for the advancement of the kingdom or the glory of God.
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No, in whatever you do, whatever you have before you that you put your hand to, you are able and called to glorify
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God. So look at that through the gospel. Remember, we do this looking to Jesus.
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Jesus is the one who prayed in John 17, I have glorified you on the earth, I have finished the work which you have given me to do.
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Other translations, I think, do better than that. Finished as a participle of means.
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I have glorified you by finishing the work you gave me to do.
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This ought to be our prayer at the very last. And until then, that ought to be our daily aim. Lord, I would glorify you by the work you've given me to do.
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May the day come that I complete everything you've given me to do. May you be able to say to me on that great day,
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Well done, good and faithful servant. Johann Sebastian Bach, on his sacred compositions, would always write, to the glory of God.
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This whole thing that I've composed is for God's glory. And a Christian's understanding everything they do, you can inscribe on it, for the glory of God.
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A right understanding of our work would write this, whether we eat or drink, whatever that we do, we do it to the glory of God.
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Living and working for his glory, which is our glory. To live and work for his glory will be your glory on that great day.
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So, as we close, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. It points us to a nobler rest above, but here below, sing the songs of the
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Sabbath. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. May the
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Lord of the Sabbath help us to do all that he has commanded. Amen. Father, thank you for your word,
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Lord. Bless us now, we pray, to be not forgetful hearers, but doers of your word,
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Lord. We would be those who don't truncate the gospel, nor pay homage to the ways of the world,
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Lord. We would be those who have an ambition for your kingdom's advance, and acknowledging with thankfulness and gratitude in our hearts all of the goodness that surrounds us,
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Lord. Your faithful provision and care, knowing, according to your goodness, that your providence toward us is endlessly good,
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Lord. And even the deepest, darkest valleys of our lives, we are brought out from those valleys into the countenance of your wisdom.
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And there, we too confess, you do all things well. Father, help us to reflect your kingship in this way, to be diligent and good workers unto you.
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And Father, we pray that those hindrances, Lord, those thorns and thistles, the things that curse and make our work hollow and vain, that by singing songs of Sabbath, Lord, these would soon become satisfying, fulfilling,
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Lord. Not because we're fulfilled and reigning in this life, but because part of their satisfaction is the way they remind us and point us to that greater rest yet to come.
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In this way, Lord, may we remember with all the saints of the ages that there remains a
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Sabbath rest for the people of God. Help us, then, to have this Sabbath rest frame our days of labor as we await.
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Lord, help us to remember the Sabbath, to sanctify it by keeping it holy. And help that,
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Lord, to in turn establish the work of our hands on these following six days, Lord. Bless this church with men and women that are diligent workers,
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Protestant workers, in the full sense of what that used to mean in our society.
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May it never be at the expense of the home, but for the sake of the home, that it may be for the sake of the kingdom. And these things we ask in your