A Biblical Theology of Work - Workers by Design | Adult Sunday School

I'm just, yeah, just picking up, picking up snacks. Ring the bell? Good morning.

Hi.

Good morning. Welcome to KCC Adult Sunday School and our series of Biblical Theology of Work. This morning's topic is entitled Workers by Design, Workers by Design. Let's pray and we'll start. Father, thank you for enabling us to gather here together this morning.

We just rejoice in the opportunity to be together as believers and to exhort and encourage one another in our pursuit of Christ. Father, may all that we say and all that we do here in this place and in this time bring glory to our Savior.

In Jesus Christ, our name we pray, amen. All right, let's begin together by thinking about a question, and it's a simple question. The question is, what is work? That's the question. What is work? How would we define it?

What constitutes it? In his book, A Proverbs-Driven Life, the author, Anthony Salvaggio, defines work, I think helpfully and simplistically as follows. He says, work is any set of tasks to be performed in pursuit of a particular goal.

Any set of tasks to be performed in pursuit of a particular goal. That constitutes work. Now, by leaving money out of the equation, Salvaggio enables us to see that work is not simply cash in exchange for labor, which is often the way we're accustomed to thinking about work, cash in exchange for labor.

In fact, he rightly observes in that chapter of his book that in many cases, workers do not get paid. Workers do not get paid. For example, artists. Artists work in hope to be paid at some point in the future, at least many of them, but they do not exchange cash for labor.

College students work, and they pay in order to be able to work. So again, not cash in exchange for labor. Stay-at-home moms work and work for rewards that are not monetary at all. And so the notion that's often created in our minds and by our culture that work is just cash in exchange for labor is an inadequate definition of work and truncates, really, unless we can dispense with that, our ability to understand work as God has conceived it.

Many of you spend countless hours working at various hobbies without the least thought of financial gain. Why do you work like that? Because you love it. You do it because you love it. It provides great satisfaction to your soul.

Why?

Why does the pursuit of work provide great satisfaction to your soul? What is it that makes that possible? Tim Keller, who is no friend of mine, but he has written a book of which there is some really good stuff and there's some not very good stuff in it, but I'm going to step out on the limb here, and I'm going to risk a quote from that book because I think he says something very important and he says it in a really good way.

So in his book, Every Good Endeavor, he writes, without meaningful work, we sense significant inner loss and emptiness. Work is so foundational to our makeup, in fact, that it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm.

Indeed, the Bible does not say we should work one day and rest six, or that work and rest should be balanced evenly, but directs us to the opposite ratio. Amen and amen, insightful, insightful. Dorothy Sayers, who wrote a very fine article in 1942, so it has stood the test of time.

Dorothy Sayers was an Anglican woman, an Oxford grad, a writer, and a friend of C .S. Lewis. No shabby intellect herself, huh? And she wrote in that excellent essay, Why Work? She said, Work is not primarily a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do.

Not primarily a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do.

Why Work Is More Than Money

All right.

This morning, I want to look with you at three reasons why work is not something we do for money, but a critical component of what it means to be made in the image of God. Three reasons why work is not something we do for money, but is a critical component of what it means to be made in the image of God, to be a worker by design, by design.

So, here they are. First reason. Number one, God works for the sheer joy of it. God works for the sheer joy of it. Open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 2. Genesis chapter 2. At the end of Genesis chapter 1 and verse 31, chapter 1 narrates, of course, God's creation of the heavens and the earth.

And there at the end of chapter 1 and verse 31, there's a very important statement where God looked on all he had made and behold, it was very good, his judgment of his work. But I want you to zero in with me in chapter 2 at verses 1 through 3.

Let me read it for you. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts. By the seventh day, God completed his work, which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which he had done.

Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it he had rested from all his work, which God had created and made. Three times we see the statement or expression, his work. His work. Now the Hebrew word, malach, translated work here, is the common Hebrew word, the ordinary Hebrew word for work, as any other person would refer to it.

And God engaged in this work, as we said, for his good pleasure, verse 31 of chapter.

1.

All right.

Chapter 2 of Genesis is an expansion of the sixth day. The fact that God engaged in work, ordinary work, at least by the linguistic definition, it forever stamps work as an activity which is inherently pleasurable and good.

Let me tie this together for you. If you'll flip over to Exodus chapter 20, I want to show you this. Exodus 20, verses 9 and 10, the Ten Commandments, and verses 9 and 10 of Exodus 20. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, malachah.

Same word. Same word from Genesis 2. But in the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. You shall not do any work, same word, you or your son or your daughter or your male or your female servant or your cattle or your soldier who stays with you.

In other words, there we have the direct tie between our work and God's work back in Genesis 2. They're tied together linguistically. It's not a different word to speak about the work God did and the work that we do.

Now, because God engaged in work prior to the fall, that means we should not understand work as a necessary evil, right? But rather as an activity in which we imitate God. We imitate our Creator by engaging in work, the activity of work.

Beyond that, even though God ceased from his work of creation back here in Genesis 2, so he rested, middle of the verse, he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. He has ceased from the work of creation, and that's the sense in which he's resting.

But he's not idle. God is not idle. He's continuing his work through providence, through providence, guiding, directing, maintaining, sustaining, healing, shaping, and replenishing his creation. God is still actively at work.

No longer in that original creation context, but God is still working. Jesus himself said in John 5, 17, my Father is working until now, and I myself am working. That was spoken in response to the Jewish authorities who were, had their nose bent out of joint because he healed on the Sabbath.

Now, Psalm 145 and verse 15, you can turn there, Psalm 145 and verse 15 is a statement about God providing food for people, 145, 15, the eyes of all look to you, you give them their food in due time. It's a statement about God providing food for his people, but, but he doesn't do so by having it dropped from heaven on a parachute.

It doesn't come by manna, but it comes, and as Martin Luther skillfully noted, it comes providentially to people through the work of the farmer. You see that over in Psalm 104 and verse 14, 104 and verse 14 links God's provision of food for mankind with the work of the farmer, verse 14, Psalm 104, verse 14, he causes the grass to grow for the cattle and vegetation, notice this, for the labor of man, so that he may bring food forth, so that he may bring forth food from the earth.

In other words, God provides, but he provides providentially, and he provides providentially through the work efforts of his people, mankind. So because God finds great pleasure in work, and we as made in his image and likeness, that means that we can find a measure of pleasure in work as well.

In other words, work has pleasure built into it that can be extracted by us, the children of God. So the first reason why work is a critical component of what it means to be made in the image of God is because God works for the sheer joy of it.

God works for the sheer joy of working. Sounds like a long way off from your experience, right? We'll get to that. Not today, but we will get to that. Second reason, God created us to join him in his work.

God created us to join him in his work. Back to Genesis again, Genesis 1, beginning in verse 26, Genesis chapter 1 in Ephesians beginning in verse 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let him rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Then God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree that has fruit yielding seed, it shall be food for.

You.

And to every beast of the earth, and every bird of the sky, and everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food, and it was so. Humanity, right, man, adam, man, humanity, was created in the image of God for the purpose of subduing and ruling God's creation.

Psalm 8, verse 6, you make him to rule over the works of your hands, you have put all things under his feet, speaking of man, created by God to manage, if I can say it that way, his creation for him. Now, the words that Moses uses here to describe humanity's purpose in the text, to rule and to subdue, are very strong words, very strong words.

They denote force, strength, the assertion of our will, and they're the means by which humanity is to continue God's work of forming and filling the world that he had made. And as we carry out that purpose for which we have been created, then it is in that sense that our work becomes a partnership with God.

In work, we are in partnership with God. Again, we see this here in chapter 2. You see it worked out. Verse 8, the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, and there he placed the man whom he had formed.

Verse 15, then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. God planted the garden of Eden, that's his work, and then he placed Adam into it to rule over it, and by extension to rule over the creation, ruling over creation.

God is the owner, we never forget that. This is God's world, he is the owner, but Adam was the steward, the manager, and he managed the garden on behalf of the owner. That's our role. We are the stewards of creation.

We are to manage creation on behalf of its owner. Its owner is God, and when we do it well, we partner with him. Now, the management is to include both cultivation, right, you see it, verse 15, put him into the garden to cultivate it as well, and this is an interesting word, shamah.

The word means, it's translated here, keeping. Same word is used over in 324. If you want to just turn and let your eye go there, it is translated there as guard. Right, this is after Adam has failed in his stewardship commission.

He drove the man out of the garden, or drove the man out of the east of the garden of Eden, he stationed the chair of him and the flaming sword which turns every direction to gashamah, the way to the tree of life.

Same Hebrew word translated keep in 215, translated guard in 324. In other words, that the responsibility as the stewards of God over his creation is to both cultivate it and keep it, preserve it, protect it, guard it, that's the idea.

That two-fold purpose. To draw out its bounty, its productiveness, its beauty, that's cultivation. To guard it, preserve it, protect it, keep it, that includes the ideas of preventing its or fighting against its decay or its misuse.

Right, I mean, you could, there's a lot you could do with those, if you're going to tease out those ideas, for sure. Beyond that, here in Genesis chapter 1, where God is directly creating, he is directly naming the things he created.

Right? So, just try to go there. Verse 3, then God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness, and God called the light day and the darkness he called night, and there was evening and there was.

Morning one day.

God named this creation, light, darkness, and it is forevermore known by the name God attached to it. Why do we call it light? Because God said it's called light. So, light, day, night, heaven, earth, plants, classes of animals, even Adam himself, Adam, translated man, named by God.

Adam names Eve, another sermon, different day. But here's what I want you to see now. Again, chapter 2, verse 19, out of the ground, chapter 2, verse 19, out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to Adam, or man, generically, to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.

Ooh, that's interesting. That is interesting. Because what has just happened is God the owner has delegated to Adam the steward the responsibility and the authority in the management of his creation to assign the names to the individual components.

And from that point forward, God uses the same name that Adam uses. Don't miss that. This is a real delegation of authority. I mean, why is it called a dog and not an aardvark? Because man named it dog.

And that's what it is. And that's how God refers to it. See, there's something real and tangible going on here. There's a partnership in play. Adam is in partnership with God, and it's a partnership that is real and meaningful.

Adam isn't simply preserving the creation, although he is doing that, but he's shaping it by his own imagination. Again, why is it called an apple tree and not an orange tree? Because some man, somewhere, named it an apple tree.

And that is its name. That is its name. Now, what we are talking about here, this divine purpose for mankind, it's typically called the dominion mandate. That's how theologians refer to it, a dominion mandate.

Or it's sometimes called the cultural mandate. That's another way that you'll find it referred to, a dominion mandate or a cultural mandate. And here's the important point. It is the basis for all science, invention, medicine, mechanics, art, music, education, agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry, to just name a few.

It is the dominion mandate that stands behind, authorizes, motivates, bounds these human enterprises. It is the divine authorization for humanity to extend its influence over all aspects of creation. That is an amazing dignity when you begin to think about it.

An amazing authority that has been delegated to us. We participate with God. Now, since the creation mandate, right, here in chapter 2, is given prior to the entrance of sin, death, and decay into the world, then it is wrong to see the creation as an enemy to be conquered, right?

I said that to rule and subdue are strong words, convey strong activity, but it is a wrong idea that we should see the creation as an enemy that has to be conquered, right? Instead, what we should see creation as is a vast opportunity of untapped resources.

A vast opportunity of untapped resources that need to be discovered, harnessed, managed, and invested in in order to draw forth all the riches and all the potential that God has invested in them. Think about Jesus, because there we find further evidence that God created people to work.

In his incarnation, the Son of God became fully and completely human. We should always need to put this caveat in, yet without sin.

Why?

Because sin is not essential to humanity. It is an invader, and as such, Jesus was born into a family, grew up with siblings, experienced normal growth in physical, emotional maturity, intellect, religious understanding, and devotion.

It's all part of the human experience. Luke chapter 2, verse 52, and Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and structure, or stature rather, and in favor with God and man. But here's the interesting point, the reason I bring this up.

It's instructive to know that Jesus worked as a tecton, the Greek word. Translated in most English Bibles as carpenter, okay?

Carpenter, tecton.

Probably more likely the idea of a local building contractor, maybe even a stonemason, right? There's not a ton of wood in Israel, okay? So they're not stick-built houses in Israel. Certainly not in the first century.

But the point is that he's working at a trade with his hands that he learned from his father, Joseph, Matthew 13, 35. The carpenter's son.

The carpenter's son.

And for the first 30 years of his life, he occupied himself with that task. Until God the Father called him into public ministry at his baptism, Matthew 13, 13 to 17. God the Father called him into and launched him into his public ministry.

30 years. He worked in obscurity with his hands. Again, when we work, we are engaging in God-like activity. God-like activity. Not in the sense of God's creative work, right? He created out of nothing.

That's not the sense in which we engage in it. But now that he is resting and working providentially in the forming and filling process, we are in cooperation with that. His providence works through us.

That means that all legitimate work is an extension of God's work and is thus a spiritual endeavor. It makes all legitimate work a spiritual endeavor. That crushes the whole secular, sacred divide, right?

Sunday, that's my Christian day. And then Monday through Friday, that's the, well, that's the other day.

It's all crushed.

God works for the sheer joy of it. Second, God created us to join him in the work. Third, third, we will work in eternity. We will work in eternity. We see and have seen here in Genesis chapter 2 that work is a vital part of paradise.

And thus it is God's good gift to us, to man. And it therefore goes on into eternity.

Now think with me on this.

When Christ returns to establish his earthly messianic kingdom, we will be with him to rule and reign. A bunch of places we could turn to, but I'm just going to turn you to one passage in 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 2.

1 Corinthians 6, 2. Paul writes there to the Corinthian believers. He says, do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts?

The saints will judge the world. That notion of judging is more than just a condemnation kind of idea. The judge is a concept of rule, to reign. Now, when are we going to rule and reign over?

There is a question.

What are we going to rule and reign over? Well, Micah 4, 4. In Micah 4, 4 we read the following. Micah 4, 4. Each of them will sit under his vine and under his fig tree, with no one to make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

Check it out, huh? Under his private property.

Continues into the kingdom.

Under his vine and under his fig tree. So there is ownership of private property in Messiah's kingdom. In exercising the stewardship over that private property, Isaiah says that people will enjoy the work of their hands.

Isaiah 65 and verse 22. Isaiah 65, 22. So in the stewardship, the management of private property in Messiah's kingdom. Who owns all the earth in Messiah's kingdom? It's like who's buried in Grant's tomb?

It's Messiah. But there is private ownership of property and stewardship and management, and it generates great benefits. So here it is, Isaiah 65, 22. They shall not build in another inhabit. They shall not plant in another eat.

For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

Wow.

To long enjoy the work of my hands. That is something to look forward to. Now eventually, a thousand years, the millennial kingdom transitions into the eternal state. 1 Corinthians 15, 24. One verse. 1 Corinthians 15, 24.

Then comes the end. When he, that is Messiah, hands over the kingdom to the God and Father when he has abolished all rule and all authority and power. He rules on his throne from Jerusalem for a thousand years with a rod of iron.

And when his thousand years end, he surrenders the kingdom to his Father. We pass into the eternal state. But what about work? Is it like over? Is that it?

No.

Our ability to work does not end. We continue to work in service to God for all eternity. Revelation 22, 3. Revelation 22 and verse 3. There will no longer be any curse, and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his body and servants will serve him.

Dispense now and forever with the foolish notion that you're going to play a harp fluttering around on a cloud somewhere.

That is awful. We will work. We will work.

What kind of work we will do we can't say with certainty. We will work with glorified bodies that no longer are subject to frailty and fatigue. If you'll permit me some sanctified speculation, I will speculate that we pass into eternity with the knowledge base and experiences that we have accumulated here on earth.

In other words, we don't get one of those things they shine you in the face and you forget everything, whatever that foolish movie was. Or blank slate start all over. No, I don't think so. I suspect that work in the millennium slash eternal state will look very much like work today, except it will no longer be spoiled by sin.

Hey, that's cool. You want to you want to play an instrument? That always been like a secret desire of your heart.

I would love to play the piano.

You're all eternity to learn and to play and to make beautiful music. Maybe you're a cabinet maker. There's just a great joy in the use of your hands, but a frustration when when your hands don't exactly do what your mind wants them to do.

That you've got this this idea in your head and you do your best to get it out into the real world. And it's just never quite there in eternity. You have forever to practice. To learn the skill.

To produce.

The most beautiful cabinet imaginable. Maybe you always long to be an astronaut. But you got bad eyes. There's a whole slew of galaxies out there that need exploring. And plenty of time to do it. Because God's good gift of work is a foundational purpose for our humanity.

Listen to me, if work were to cease in eternity, then I think we would cease from being human. An essential piece of our humanity would be lost. Remember, Jesus was and is human in every way like us. Yet without the intruder's sin.

Work in the Millennial and Eternal State

Well, let me wrap it up for you this way. Conclusion.

The conclusion of the matter.

When we work as God intends, we glorify Him by echoing His creativity and productivity. This is part of what it means to be made in His image. This way of thinking is not merely helpful, but essential in enabling us to understand, and here it is, the money statement, a spiritual significance in every act of work.

A spiritual significance in every act of work. That destroys the clergy-laity distinction. I have three minutes, and I'm going to pray, and that's going to take one of them. I have two minutes. If anyone has a question they would like to ask.

Yes, ma 'am.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Okay, her question is, what is the intersection of work and calling?

Very good question.

And if I can defer my answer until several more weeks from now when we look at the doctrine of vocation, we'll make it clear. It's more than I can answer in two minutes. But yes, you are right. Maybe not.

I'll teach you with that. You can come back and see. The intersection of work and calling, yeah. Okay, good. Thank you. All right, let me pray. And we need to stay in here until 1015. That's two minutes.

I'll just pray a long time and we'll be good. Okay, let's pray. Father, Father, we want to return thanks for your word. Father, you have not left us to grope in the dark blindly as to why we're here. What is our purpose?

How is it that we, who are mere flesh and blood,.

Can engage with you?

Father, the topic of work and the joy to be received from it is often a hard connection for us to make. We live in a sin-broken, bruised, twisted, deformed world. And yet, Father, the image of God in us, and if I can say it this way, the image of God in this world is not obliterated.

And so as we are redeemed in Christ, we can be agents, as it were, of redemption as well to this world. Our Father, I pray for each of us as we think on the things we've discussed here this morning and begin to tease that out in our own mind that you would help us to come to a good and full understanding of our own potential.

And that it would enable us to engage on a Monday morning with a fresh spring in our step, a purpose for being there that transcends the mere paycheck. And we ask it for Jesus' sake. Amen. It is 10 .15.

Bang. On the money.