Andy explains that a spiritually mature person has a habit of diligent labor for the glory of God based on Christ’s own zeal for his work.
Welcome to the Two Journeys Podcast. This is Sanctification Monday, and my name is Andy Davis. In this podcast, we seek to answer the question what is spiritual maturity? We believe that spiritual maturity can be broken into four main sections: knowledge, faith, character, and action. Today we complete the book An Infinite Journey, our look at the book, as we finish the action section with understanding the theology of talking about work. And as I begin, I want to bring up in your mind one of the strangest children’s stories that I learned when I was a child. You learned it too. It had to do with a certain miller who made an arrogant boast, it wasn’t true anyway, that his daughter had the ability to spin straw into gold. He was trying to curry favor with the king.
The king heard it and said, “Sounds good to me.” Basically, called his bluff and put this sad, pathetic girl in a dungeon room filled with a spinning wheel and a bunch of straw, and commanded her to spin straw into gold or else her life would be forfeit the next day. Well, she’s just sitting there weeping, she has no ability to spin straw into gold, when suddenly a strange man appears, a dwarf, and offers to do the magical deed. He has the ability to spin straw into gold, but she has to trade her firstborn in for this favor to be done. Now, this is bizarre. Who comes up with these stories, these Grimms’ Fairy Tales? I don’t think they should be read to children. Children will have nightmares. But at any rate, it illustrates an interesting principle that even connects ultimately to some Bible teaching, that fundamentally time is like straw. Every day is like straw of no eternal value. It’s worthless unless something happens to turn that day for the glory of God.
If we do not work for the glory of God, if we do not labor and serve and do what we do for the glory of God, then on Judgment Day, we’re going to find that those things that we did will be in the category that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 3 of wood, hay, and straw. It will burn up. It will be of no eternal consequence. However, we can take even the simplest everyday life experiences, as Paul said, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And that way you can spin straw into gold. You can see everyday life, even ordinary things like washing the dishes or mowing the lawn or training your children. Any task that you do, any work that you do, repairing something at your house or at someone else’s house or in your apartment or even just cleaning up or doing the laundry, you can see ordinary tasks from an eternal perspective.
And as you’re doing those things for the glory of God, you have actually changed them from having no value on Judgment Day to glittering with value. Whatever you do. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Now, last week we talked about a very important verse in Ephesians 5:16 where Paul says that we should redeem the time because the days are evil. We were talking last week about stewardship as you remember. And so, this is vital for the concept of work. We need to redeem the time. Again, what I said a week ago was the idea of redeeming the time means we’re going to buy back the time as though the time were a slave in chains, and you had to buy it out of slavery. Or the time were a kidnapped victim that had been captured by a marauding band of Midianites or something like that, and you had to go rescue and get it out. That’s what the word redeem means. It means to buy out of danger with the payment of a price.
if we do not do energetically what God calls us to do, then the day will be worthless,
And so, we have to do that to the time. Well, in what sense do we have to redeem the time? We have to redeem the time with a sense as Paul says, the days are evil. That if we do not do energetically what God calls us to do, then the day will be worthless, it will be wasted. And so, every single day, every moment of the day, we have to redeem the time and think about how we can store up treasure in heaven by how we faithfully serve on Earth. Everything we do, we have to do for the glory of God, that God would be put on display. So, when it comes to your work, every task you do, whether you’re making photocopies for the boss or finishing a report. Or maybe you’re an engineer and you’re doing a simple part drawing. Or maybe you work out in construction and you’re framing a house or something like that.
Every swing of the hammer, everything that you do. Maybe you’re a cook and you’re cooking a meal. You may be a homemaker and you’re cooking a meal for your family or doing laundry or raising the kids. Everything that you do can be done for the glory of God, done to put him on display for his glory so that his kingdom would be built. As it says in Colossians 3:23-24, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord not for men, since you know that you’ll receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” That’s how we spin straw into gold, following the Spirit moment by moment. As the Spirit leads and we follow, the labors of our hands are actually of value for the glory of God.
One of the most interesting figures in the Bible is a repeated individual that we keep meeting in the Book of Proverbs called the sluggard. Now, a sluggard is just simply a lazy person, somebody who doesn’t do the works that God wants them to do. And so, the sluggard is so lazy that he spends much time in bed. As Proverbs 26:14 says, “As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed.” He’s constantly making imaginative excuses for why he can’t get work done. He says, “There’s a lion outside!” or “I’ll be murdered in the streets.” He can barely lift his own food to his mouth, he’s just so lazy. “The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and he will not even bring it back to his mouth,” Proverbs 19:24. He’s become worthless through self-indulgent laziness.
Now these are humorous to one degree, but they’re also rather harsh, and they make it seem that life is so strict we should never enjoy anything. We know that that’s not true. God, as we see in 1 Timothy 6, gives us many things richly to enjoy. Jesus enjoyed reclining at table with his disciples. He ate a lot of meals. A lot of the work Jesus did was at the dinner table. Whether he was a guest at someone’s house or in the upper room, they reclined at table. But just like money, we must be vigilant about the alluring siren call of a life of comfort and ease, and recreation. Money is a tool and can be used for the glory of God, but it can be dangerous, and so also it is with amoral pleasures. We can become addicted to them and become lazy as a result.
if we’re not careful, we can begin to look at life as though it’s all about our own fun and pleasure and ease.
I don’t think there’s any nation on earth that has made such a study of recreation, of leisure. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry, whether movies or games that we can play or electronics and other things like that. And if we’re not careful, we can begin to look at life as though it’s all about our own fun and pleasure and ease. Well, having set the table for this topic of work, let’s look at a brief overview of a theology of work from Genesis through Revelation. Now, as we begin, we think about the creation of God. The Bible begins with God working, God making heaven and earth. And he’s energetically crafting the heavens and the earth, and then he puts man into the Garden of Eden.
And so, in Genesis 2, it says that he put him there to work it and take care of it or serve it and protect it. So, there was work to be done in an agricultural sense. Also, interestingly in Genesis 2, we have four rivers flowing out of the Garden of Eden and talking about different lands and their natural resources. So, the idea is really one of exciting exploration and adventure, but also of work. That as Adam moves out and God told him to fill the earth, to do it, rule over it, exercise dominion over it. That Adam and Eve and their progeny, their children would be developing the earth and getting the gold and the onyx from the land of Havilah. It says the gold there is good, and they’re going to take these rivers and go and explore and develop planet earth. So, all of this gives us a very clear indication that work was a gift from God before the fall.
It’s easy for us to think that work is some kind of a curse, but it’s not. Actually, work was a gift from God, enabling us to use our God-given intelligence and our physical strength created in the image of God to do creative works like God. But in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve fell into sin. Specifically in Adam’s case, his work was cursed. His agricultural efforts were going to produce thorns and thistles. And so, from the fall on, work (originally a good gift from God) has been cursed. And so, there’s still good benefits to work, but there’s also a curse to it. We can labor on something that amounts to nothing. As a matter of fact, it can get so depressing that the author of Ecclesiastes, who we believe is King Solomon, looks back over the productive, creative, energetic works of his kingly reign. And he wondered if everything was vanity and dust in the wind, chasing after the wind because he didn’t know what kind of man he would give it to. And what he would do with it after Solomon was dead.
And he worried if that man would be a fool. And then everything that he had worked for would become ultimately dust in the wind. Frankly, that’s exactly what has happened to so many great projects and developments over the centuries, they just become dust in the wind. And so, the Book of Ecclesiastes seems to indicate how empty and vain life can be in this cursed world, everything is meaningless. Well, I think that’s true if there’s no resurrection from the dead. If Christ has not been raised from the dead, then everything is vain. Nothing will amount to anything. “But if Christ has been raised from the dead,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “then our labor in the Lord is not in vain.” So, there’s a combination then of a sense in which the work we do with our hands can often amount to nothing, that we’re still under Adam’s curse.
I remember when we were missionaries in Japan, and my kids and I made the most elaborate sandcastle I’d ever made. We worked on it for two hours. I mean it had moats. It had parapets. It had a drawbridge. It had all the stuff. It went up to my thigh, I think. It was so tall. It was massive. But it’s a sandcastle. And we happened to drive by that same beach about three days later, and all that was left was a kind of a mound. It was all smooth. We could tell where we’d been, but none of the details were there. The incoming tide had basically erased it. And so it is with the great projects that human beings do on planet earth. Ultimately, everything physical is going to be destroyed to make way for the new heavens and the new earth.
Now, in the New Testament, we get a development of the theology of work, especially through our Savior Jesus Christ. In John’s Gospel, Jesus talks again and again about work, and he gives us the best way we can possibly think about work. For example, in John 4:34, Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work.” So, he’s doing the work. Now in that chapter, the work was talking to the Samaritan woman about her soul and winning her for the kingdom of God. And so that was the work. And he even talks about fields that are white for harvest. And he’s talking to his apostles and he’s referring to the Samaritan village that’s coming out to talk to him more about the kingdom of God. That was work to be done, but Jesus uses that language, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work.”
Then in the very next chapter, he said, “My father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” (John 5:17). That’s in reference to the Sabbath, where… It says that the Father ceased his work of creating and began the Sabbath rest. Jesus said, “Actually, God is always working.” Our God in heaven is an energetic, hardworking God. He created a needy universe that requires him to exert his divine will to keep every atom of the universe from flying apart. And so, he’s continually working. And Jesus said, “I too am working.” That’s John 5:17, the continual work of the Father. And then Jesus said in that same chapter, “The very work that the Father gave me to do, which I am doing testifies that the Father sent me” (John 5:36).
Then in John 9 or before he heals the man born blind, he said, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:4). So. we’ve got a certain narrow window in which we can do the works of this present age, and we need to be faithful to do them. He says in John 11:9, “Are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world.” And so, the idea is we’ve got 12 hours of daylight. Let’s use them to work. And then he says beautifully in his high priestly prayer in John 17:4, he says to his Father, “I brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” It’s incredible. Right before he died, he said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). He did all the work the Father gave him to do.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful, dear Christian brother and sister to be able to go to bed at night, maybe even this very night, put your head on the pillow, and to know that today as much as you can tell, you did all the works God wanted you to do today. That’d be a perfect day. Now, I don’t think we’re ever going to attain it, but that’s a goal for every day. Whatever works that you have for me to do, I want to do them. I want to work hard for the glory of God and get the things done that he gave me to do because night is coming when no one can work.
The apostle Paul, actually, after Jesus, also gave a very clear pattern of diligent labor. He was a hard worker. The Apostle Paul worked very, very hard. As a matter of fact, he was a tentmaker. And frequently he would go into a certain community, and he would spend the day reasoning in the marketplace with the people that were there, sharing the gospel, disputing with Greeks, with unbelievers. He would then go to the synagogue and reason with them on the Sabbath with the Jews and try to win them to Christ. He’d spend the evenings doing Christian training for the disciples, building them up in theology, preparing future elders of the church and leaders of the church.
And then late, late, late at night after all that was done, he’d sew tents and sell them. And he would take the money and use it to help his co-workers who didn’t have similar trades, etc. He was an incredibly hard worker. And he says plainly to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:34-35, he said, “You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” In 1 Corinthians 4:11, he says, “We work hard with our own hands.” 2 Corinthians 6:5, he mentions hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger.
Jesus and Paul both set forth very clear examples of diligent labor for the glory of God, of not wasting time, of not being lazy, and taking even the homeliest of tasks
Boy, that’s a phrase that’s stuck with me when I was doing scripture memorization. And that triplet of hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger, that’s Paul’s life. He was a very, very hard worker. And then when he lists his own sufferings, he said, “Are they servants of Christ? I’m out of my mind to talk like this. I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely” (2 Corinthians 11:23). Paul was an incredibly hard worker, and he gave this theology of work to us. So, Jesus and Paul both set forth very clear examples of diligent labor for the glory of God, of not wasting time, of not being lazy, and taking even the homeliest of tasks. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, you can do for the glory of God.
And so, we learn how to do basic menial tasks. Cooking a meal, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, painting a fence, making a bed, doing laundry, any works that we can do, we can do for the glory of God. And as we’re tracing out this theology of work, we end up in heaven. In the new heavens and the new earth. No, it’s not a place of idleness. We don’t believe in the Muslim vision of being on silk pillows up there in some kind of Islamic paradise, eating grapes and drinking wine, and all of those sensual pleasures. No, actually we’re going to have resurrection bodies that will be limitless in their strength and energy and creativity and power and intellect and all that.
And we will be in a new heaven and new earth, and we will have work to do. There’ll be no curse. No longer will there be any curse is what it says. Revelation 22:3, “No longer will there be any curse,” that is a curse on work or on our bodies. “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city and his servants will serve him.” So, we’re going to work even throughout all eternity. But in heaven, our work not being cursed will be nothing but blessed. It’ll be productive and fruitful, and it will develop, and it will unfold. And it will be beautiful and satisfying. So that’s a theology of work from Genesis to Revelation. That’s what the Bible teaches about work.
Now, for us as Christians, we need to understand, all honorable work is sacred. I’m a pastor, but for 10 years, I was a mechanical engineer. I do not consider the calling of a pastor to be a higher calling than the calling of a mechanical engineer, but I did feel called to use my gifts and my abilities this way. Now, I was raised Roman Catholic. And in the Roman Catholic heritage, there’s this history of a division between sacred and secular work. The sacred tasks were done by the priests, they were done by the monks and the nuns, and they had a higher level of piety. And then the lay people who were just husbands and wives and raised families and worked jobs that had a second-grade lower level of piety. Well, the Reformation came along and taught that the Bible says the priesthood of all believers, that some are called to vocational ministry. That’s true, most are not.
And the work of a judge or a magistrate or a farmer or a craftsman is every bit as holy and sacred as the work of a pastor preaching a sermon. And so therefore, all honorable work that you can ever do in your life is sacred and holy. So, whatever your career is, maybe you’re a doctor, maybe you’re a lawyer, maybe you’re a businessperson. Maybe you’re a secretary, maybe you work with your hands creatively. Maybe you’re an electrician or a plumber. Maybe you’re a homemaker, you’re raising a family, you’re a woman who homeschools your kids and you do these kinds of things. Any honorable work that you can do will glorify God. And all of the things that we do flow from our sanctification, they flow from our knowledge of the word of God, from our faith in Christ, and from a transformed heart then the works we do will glorify God.
So, as we conclude today, I want you to go into your week knowing that God has gone ahead of you, and he’ll be using everything you experience this week to sanctify you and to bring you more and more into conformity to Christ.
Welcome to the Two Journeys Podcast. This is Sanctification Monday, and my name is Andy Davis. In this podcast, we seek to answer the question what is spiritual maturity? We believe that spiritual maturity can be broken into four main sections: knowledge, faith, character, and action. Today we complete the book An Infinite Journey, our look at the book, as we finish the action section with understanding the theology of talking about work. And as I begin, I want to bring up in your mind one of the strangest children’s stories that I learned when I was a child. You learned it too. It had to do with a certain miller who made an arrogant boast, it wasn’t true anyway, that his daughter had the ability to spin straw into gold. He was trying to curry favor with the king.
The king heard it and said, “Sounds good to me.” Basically, called his bluff and put this sad, pathetic girl in a dungeon room filled with a spinning wheel and a bunch of straw, and commanded her to spin straw into gold or else her life would be forfeit the next day. Well, she’s just sitting there weeping, she has no ability to spin straw into gold, when suddenly a strange man appears, a dwarf, and offers to do the magical deed. He has the ability to spin straw into gold, but she has to trade her firstborn in for this favor to be done. Now, this is bizarre. Who comes up with these stories, these Grimms’ Fairy Tales? I don’t think they should be read to children. Children will have nightmares. But at any rate, it illustrates an interesting principle that even connects ultimately to some Bible teaching, that fundamentally time is like straw. Every day is like straw of no eternal value. It’s worthless unless something happens to turn that day for the glory of God.
If we do not work for the glory of God, if we do not labor and serve and do what we do for the glory of God, then on Judgment Day, we’re going to find that those things that we did will be in the category that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 3 of wood, hay, and straw. It will burn up. It will be of no eternal consequence. However, we can take even the simplest everyday life experiences, as Paul said, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And that way you can spin straw into gold. You can see everyday life, even ordinary things like washing the dishes or mowing the lawn or training your children. Any task that you do, any work that you do, repairing something at your house or at someone else’s house or in your apartment or even just cleaning up or doing the laundry, you can see ordinary tasks from an eternal perspective.
And as you’re doing those things for the glory of God, you have actually changed them from having no value on Judgment Day to glittering with value. Whatever you do. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Now, last week we talked about a very important verse in Ephesians 5:16 where Paul says that we should redeem the time because the days are evil. We were talking last week about stewardship as you remember. And so, this is vital for the concept of work. We need to redeem the time. Again, what I said a week ago was the idea of redeeming the time means we’re going to buy back the time as though the time were a slave in chains, and you had to buy it out of slavery. Or the time were a kidnapped victim that had been captured by a marauding band of Midianites or something like that, and you had to go rescue and get it out. That’s what the word redeem means. It means to buy out of danger with the payment of a price.
if we do not do energetically what God calls us to do, then the day will be worthless,
And so, we have to do that to the time. Well, in what sense do we have to redeem the time? We have to redeem the time with a sense as Paul says, the days are evil. That if we do not do energetically what God calls us to do, then the day will be worthless, it will be wasted. And so, every single day, every moment of the day, we have to redeem the time and think about how we can store up treasure in heaven by how we faithfully serve on Earth. Everything we do, we have to do for the glory of God, that God would be put on display. So, when it comes to your work, every task you do, whether you’re making photocopies for the boss or finishing a report. Or maybe you’re an engineer and you’re doing a simple part drawing. Or maybe you work out in construction and you’re framing a house or something like that.
Every swing of the hammer, everything that you do. Maybe you’re a cook and you’re cooking a meal. You may be a homemaker and you’re cooking a meal for your family or doing laundry or raising the kids. Everything that you do can be done for the glory of God, done to put him on display for his glory so that his kingdom would be built. As it says in Colossians 3:23-24, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord not for men, since you know that you’ll receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” That’s how we spin straw into gold, following the Spirit moment by moment. As the Spirit leads and we follow, the labors of our hands are actually of value for the glory of God.
One of the most interesting figures in the Bible is a repeated individual that we keep meeting in the Book of Proverbs called the sluggard. Now, a sluggard is just simply a lazy person, somebody who doesn’t do the works that God wants them to do. And so, the sluggard is so lazy that he spends much time in bed. As Proverbs 26:14 says, “As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed.” He’s constantly making imaginative excuses for why he can’t get work done. He says, “There’s a lion outside!” or “I’ll be murdered in the streets.” He can barely lift his own food to his mouth, he’s just so lazy. “The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and he will not even bring it back to his mouth,” Proverbs 19:24. He’s become worthless through self-indulgent laziness.
Now these are humorous to one degree, but they’re also rather harsh, and they make it seem that life is so strict we should never enjoy anything. We know that that’s not true. God, as we see in 1 Timothy 6, gives us many things richly to enjoy. Jesus enjoyed reclining at table with his disciples. He ate a lot of meals. A lot of the work Jesus did was at the dinner table. Whether he was a guest at someone’s house or in the upper room, they reclined at table. But just like money, we must be vigilant about the alluring siren call of a life of comfort and ease, and recreation. Money is a tool and can be used for the glory of God, but it can be dangerous, and so also it is with amoral pleasures. We can become addicted to them and become lazy as a result.
if we’re not careful, we can begin to look at life as though it’s all about our own fun and pleasure and ease.
I don’t think there’s any nation on earth that has made such a study of recreation, of leisure. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry, whether movies or games that we can play or electronics and other things like that. And if we’re not careful, we can begin to look at life as though it’s all about our own fun and pleasure and ease. Well, having set the table for this topic of work, let’s look at a brief overview of a theology of work from Genesis through Revelation. Now, as we begin, we think about the creation of God. The Bible begins with God working, God making heaven and earth. And he’s energetically crafting the heavens and the earth, and then he puts man into the Garden of Eden.
And so, in Genesis 2, it says that he put him there to work it and take care of it or serve it and protect it. So, there was work to be done in an agricultural sense. Also, interestingly in Genesis 2, we have four rivers flowing out of the Garden of Eden and talking about different lands and their natural resources. So, the idea is really one of exciting exploration and adventure, but also of work. That as Adam moves out and God told him to fill the earth, to do it, rule over it, exercise dominion over it. That Adam and Eve and their progeny, their children would be developing the earth and getting the gold and the onyx from the land of Havilah. It says the gold there is good, and they’re going to take these rivers and go and explore and develop planet earth. So, all of this gives us a very clear indication that work was a gift from God before the fall.
It’s easy for us to think that work is some kind of a curse, but it’s not. Actually, work was a gift from God, enabling us to use our God-given intelligence and our physical strength created in the image of God to do creative works like God. But in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve fell into sin. Specifically in Adam’s case, his work was cursed. His agricultural efforts were going to produce thorns and thistles. And so, from the fall on, work (originally a good gift from God) has been cursed. And so, there’s still good benefits to work, but there’s also a curse to it. We can labor on something that amounts to nothing. As a matter of fact, it can get so depressing that the author of Ecclesiastes, who we believe is King Solomon, looks back over the productive, creative, energetic works of his kingly reign. And he wondered if everything was vanity and dust in the wind, chasing after the wind because he didn’t know what kind of man he would give it to. And what he would do with it after Solomon was dead.
And he worried if that man would be a fool. And then everything that he had worked for would become ultimately dust in the wind. Frankly, that’s exactly what has happened to so many great projects and developments over the centuries, they just become dust in the wind. And so, the Book of Ecclesiastes seems to indicate how empty and vain life can be in this cursed world, everything is meaningless. Well, I think that’s true if there’s no resurrection from the dead. If Christ has not been raised from the dead, then everything is vain. Nothing will amount to anything. “But if Christ has been raised from the dead,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “then our labor in the Lord is not in vain.” So, there’s a combination then of a sense in which the work we do with our hands can often amount to nothing, that we’re still under Adam’s curse.
I remember when we were missionaries in Japan, and my kids and I made the most elaborate sandcastle I’d ever made. We worked on it for two hours. I mean it had moats. It had parapets. It had a drawbridge. It had all the stuff. It went up to my thigh, I think. It was so tall. It was massive. But it’s a sandcastle. And we happened to drive by that same beach about three days later, and all that was left was a kind of a mound. It was all smooth. We could tell where we’d been, but none of the details were there. The incoming tide had basically erased it. And so it is with the great projects that human beings do on planet earth. Ultimately, everything physical is going to be destroyed to make way for the new heavens and the new earth.
Now, in the New Testament, we get a development of the theology of work, especially through our Savior Jesus Christ. In John’s Gospel, Jesus talks again and again about work, and he gives us the best way we can possibly think about work. For example, in John 4:34, Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work.” So, he’s doing the work. Now in that chapter, the work was talking to the Samaritan woman about her soul and winning her for the kingdom of God. And so that was the work. And he even talks about fields that are white for harvest. And he’s talking to his apostles and he’s referring to the Samaritan village that’s coming out to talk to him more about the kingdom of God. That was work to be done, but Jesus uses that language, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work.”
Then in the very next chapter, he said, “My father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” (John 5:17). That’s in reference to the Sabbath, where… It says that the Father ceased his work of creating and began the Sabbath rest. Jesus said, “Actually, God is always working.” Our God in heaven is an energetic, hardworking God. He created a needy universe that requires him to exert his divine will to keep every atom of the universe from flying apart. And so, he’s continually working. And Jesus said, “I too am working.” That’s John 5:17, the continual work of the Father. And then Jesus said in that same chapter, “The very work that the Father gave me to do, which I am doing testifies that the Father sent me” (John 5:36).
Then in John 9 or before he heals the man born blind, he said, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:4). So. we’ve got a certain narrow window in which we can do the works of this present age, and we need to be faithful to do them. He says in John 11:9, “Are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world.” And so, the idea is we’ve got 12 hours of daylight. Let’s use them to work. And then he says beautifully in his high priestly prayer in John 17:4, he says to his Father, “I brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” It’s incredible. Right before he died, he said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). He did all the work the Father gave him to do.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful, dear Christian brother and sister to be able to go to bed at night, maybe even this very night, put your head on the pillow, and to know that today as much as you can tell, you did all the works God wanted you to do today. That’d be a perfect day. Now, I don’t think we’re ever going to attain it, but that’s a goal for every day. Whatever works that you have for me to do, I want to do them. I want to work hard for the glory of God and get the things done that he gave me to do because night is coming when no one can work.
The apostle Paul, actually, after Jesus, also gave a very clear pattern of diligent labor. He was a hard worker. The Apostle Paul worked very, very hard. As a matter of fact, he was a tentmaker. And frequently he would go into a certain community, and he would spend the day reasoning in the marketplace with the people that were there, sharing the gospel, disputing with Greeks, with unbelievers. He would then go to the synagogue and reason with them on the Sabbath with the Jews and try to win them to Christ. He’d spend the evenings doing Christian training for the disciples, building them up in theology, preparing future elders of the church and leaders of the church.
And then late, late, late at night after all that was done, he’d sew tents and sell them. And he would take the money and use it to help his co-workers who didn’t have similar trades, etc. He was an incredibly hard worker. And he says plainly to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:34-35, he said, “You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” In 1 Corinthians 4:11, he says, “We work hard with our own hands.” 2 Corinthians 6:5, he mentions hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger.
Jesus and Paul both set forth very clear examples of diligent labor for the glory of God, of not wasting time, of not being lazy, and taking even the homeliest of tasks
Boy, that’s a phrase that’s stuck with me when I was doing scripture memorization. And that triplet of hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger, that’s Paul’s life. He was a very, very hard worker. And then when he lists his own sufferings, he said, “Are they servants of Christ? I’m out of my mind to talk like this. I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely” (2 Corinthians 11:23). Paul was an incredibly hard worker, and he gave this theology of work to us. So, Jesus and Paul both set forth very clear examples of diligent labor for the glory of God, of not wasting time, of not being lazy, and taking even the homeliest of tasks. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, you can do for the glory of God.
And so, we learn how to do basic menial tasks. Cooking a meal, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, painting a fence, making a bed, doing laundry, any works that we can do, we can do for the glory of God. And as we’re tracing out this theology of work, we end up in heaven. In the new heavens and the new earth. No, it’s not a place of idleness. We don’t believe in the Muslim vision of being on silk pillows up there in some kind of Islamic paradise, eating grapes and drinking wine, and all of those sensual pleasures. No, actually we’re going to have resurrection bodies that will be limitless in their strength and energy and creativity and power and intellect and all that.
And we will be in a new heaven and new earth, and we will have work to do. There’ll be no curse. No longer will there be any curse is what it says. Revelation 22:3, “No longer will there be any curse,” that is a curse on work or on our bodies. “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city and his servants will serve him.” So, we’re going to work even throughout all eternity. But in heaven, our work not being cursed will be nothing but blessed. It’ll be productive and fruitful, and it will develop, and it will unfold. And it will be beautiful and satisfying. So that’s a theology of work from Genesis to Revelation. That’s what the Bible teaches about work.
Now, for us as Christians, we need to understand, all honorable work is sacred. I’m a pastor, but for 10 years, I was a mechanical engineer. I do not consider the calling of a pastor to be a higher calling than the calling of a mechanical engineer, but I did feel called to use my gifts and my abilities this way. Now, I was raised Roman Catholic. And in the Roman Catholic heritage, there’s this history of a division between sacred and secular work. The sacred tasks were done by the priests, they were done by the monks and the nuns, and they had a higher level of piety. And then the lay people who were just husbands and wives and raised families and worked jobs that had a second-grade lower level of piety. Well, the Reformation came along and taught that the Bible says the priesthood of all believers, that some are called to vocational ministry. That’s true, most are not.
And the work of a judge or a magistrate or a farmer or a craftsman is every bit as holy and sacred as the work of a pastor preaching a sermon. And so therefore, all honorable work that you can ever do in your life is sacred and holy. So, whatever your career is, maybe you’re a doctor, maybe you’re a lawyer, maybe you’re a businessperson. Maybe you’re a secretary, maybe you work with your hands creatively. Maybe you’re an electrician or a plumber. Maybe you’re a homemaker, you’re raising a family, you’re a woman who homeschools your kids and you do these kinds of things. Any honorable work that you can do will glorify God. And all of the things that we do flow from our sanctification, they flow from our knowledge of the word of God, from our faith in Christ, and from a transformed heart then the works we do will glorify God.
So, as we conclude today, I want you to go into your week knowing that God has gone ahead of you, and he’ll be using everything you experience this week to sanctify you and to bring you more and more into conformity to Christ.
