August 29, 2024
This Sunday we resume our series in the gospel of Luke! It's actually been a year since Pastor Carl preached Luke 6:12-16. From that time, on Sunday mornings we've preached through the Elisha narratives, a series on stewardship, Romans 12-16, selected Psalms, and a series on the "one anothers" of the New Testament. So I'm excited to start walking through our Savior's life once more. The plan is to be in Luke up until Easter, with breaks for a series on prophecies of Christ's incarnation in December and our Missions Festival in February. May the Lord grow us in our knowledge of Him and His work for us!
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This coming Monday is Labor Day, which always makes me think of the Bible's teaching about work. Since work is so important and time-consuming in a normal lifespan, it's important for the Christian to know what (and how much!) the Bible has to say about it. Work, like essentially every other topic you can imagine, can be outlined by the basic redemptive-history outline of Creation-Fall-Redemption. Here's a brief overview:
Creation: Genesis 1-2 clearly teach us that work was a good gift of God to man before the fall, and thus not a result of the fall. The mandate to fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over the creation was a command to bring the creation under man's control – to harness and utilize all of earth’s resources and forces. Adam and Eve were (and we are) to change, transform, rearrange, guide, reorganize, and improve upon the original creation. So work is a blessing, and we must never think of it as a curse. Manual labor and mundane labor is not undignified, so we must not treat it as such. And there was variety before the fall. As John Murray has written, "The subduing of the earth must imply the expenditure of thought and skill and energy in bringing the earth and its resources under such control that they would be channeled to the promotion of certain ends which they were suited and designed to fulfill but which would not be fulfilled apart from the exercise of man’s design and labor..." We were made by God to work.
Fall: Genesis 3 shows us that work is hard because of the fall. The ground is cursed because of Adam's sin, and so we can only create food and wealth by the sweat of our brow and toilsome labor. Futility has set in (Ecclesiastes 1:3; 2:18-23; Romans 8:20). Not only is the arena of work affected, but we as workers are affected as well. We succumb to the temptation to make an idol out of work, or to work for the wrong reasons. We are not only prone to overworking, but we are prone to laziness. Again, John Murray: "The Christian ethic strikes not only at conspicuous idleness; it strikes also at the sloth, the laziness, which is too frequently the vice of professing Christians. It strikes at the dissipation of time and energy of which we all must plead guilty. The principle that too often dictates our practice is not the maximum of toil but the minimum necessary to escape public censure and preserve our decency . . . [Man] is out to do the least he can for the most he can get. He does not love his work; he has come to believe he is very miserable because of the work he has to do. Labor is a burden rather than a pleasure."
Redemption: When God graciously saves lost and dead sinners, He saves us for good works: and one of those good works is work. He tells His ransomed people that we are to work, and how we are to work. II Thessalonians 3:10 tells the church, "if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either" (vs. 10). The fourth commandment commands us not only to work, but to work six days - and only six days - a week. The seven day week (work six - rest one) is a creation ordinance, and we rub our lives against the grain of God's word to our own misery if we seek to live by another pattern. We are to work for Jesus - "Whatever you do, do your work . . . as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve" (Colossians 3:22-23). And we are to work hard - the word in the ellipsis in the previous sentence is "heartily" - we're to do our work heartily, with all our strength. We glorify God when we use our gifts to serve Him and the people around us. Even when we retire from active labor in a specific career, there is still work to be done around our house, church, and community, whether paid or unpaid. When we are able to stop working for a living, we are freed up to do the other works of ministry that we didn't have time to do when we needed to work. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might!
So if you enjoy an extra day off from work next week (or even if you don't), I encourage you to remember to thank God for the gift of work, to pray that He would keep you from the temptations that beset our work, and to seek His face for grace to work in a way that pleases Him and does good to your neighbor.