Scripture Reading: Colossians 3:22-24
Two women were shopping at a department store, and a well-dressed man walks down the aisle and notices piece of trash on the floor, so he picks it up to throw it away later. One woman says to the other, "That was kind of him to do." The other woman says, "Oh, he only does that because he's the manager." Just as they were speaking, the actual manager turns the corner and says, "Ladies, that man does not even work at this store, he's the manager of a restaurant down the street. He doesn't pick up trash because he's a manager; he's a manager because he picks up trash." (THAT should be a Christian's work ethic! -- Seeing what needs to be done, and doing it.)
Today we talk about work. It is Labor Day weekend after all! Work is one of the big rocks, one of the important priorities in our lives. For most of us, work is an unavoidable, no choice big rock. We gotta pay the bills! And since it’s a basic requirement for life, an automatic priority, we might wonder why we need to make it a priority? Some people, we call them workaholics, make it too much of a priority to advance in a career and gain wealth. It is easy to lose the proper balance between work and healthy relationships.
Well, our text today speaks about our attitude toward work. That is something we can and ought to be intentional about. The attitude we choose to take toward work is shown to be of primary importance to God. There’s more than 500 verses in the Bible about work. That makes it a big rock. And for those who are retired from a career, you know that as long as you are alive your work for God is not yet done.
Probably none of think of ourselves as slaves, but technically, unless you are self-employed, you are, technically speaking, a slave, at least while you’re on the job. If you have a job, there is a job description and you are expected to fulfill your duties and responsibilities. There will be performance reviews. So at least for part of the day, you are like a slave in the sense that you can’t just do whatever you want, or shouldn’t anyway, because you are expected or required to put in a good day’s work. So, you’re a slave, but not in the sense that you aren’t paid for your work. It’s not that your boss abuses you or treats you like property. Or maybe it does feel like that sometimes!
Even so, the right attitude toward work is given in our text. “Obey your earthly masters in everything;” Of course, the word “everything” there doesn’t really mean “Everything!” It means do your job well and thoroughly. God wouldn’t expect you to obey an illegal or unethical command. In fact, he would require that you not.
I used to work at a storm window factory in Grand Rapids back in the early 80’s. We made frames of aluminum or vinyl. I was usually the glass cutter. But one day we received a return load of a whole bunch of vinyl framed windows that weren’t assembled correctly. One corner was loose in every window. I think there was about a hundred of them, for some new office building. I was given the tedious task of making the repair so the windows could be returned in good shape. My supervisor showed me how he wanted it done. I tried that a couple of times, but it didn’t seem secure enough, so I tried something else on my own and that seemed to work really well.
After I had done a couple my way, I showed my supervisor, when he was available, and explained what I was doing and why I thought it was better than what he showed me. He told me to keep doing it his way. I told him I just couldn’t do that because I believed that it wouldn’t last after they were installed. I think I might have mentioned how we want to do good quality work. In the end, since I continued to refuse, he wanted to write me up for insubordination. Now I might lose my job. As part of the process, the shop manager wanted to see what I was doing. Turns out he liked my solution and told me to keep up the good work. He told the supervisor to let me do it my way. So, I didn’t exactly obey my earthly master in “everything.’
I’m also pretty sure I wasn’t currying the favor of that supervisor. But with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord, I did my best to do the right thing for the good of the company and for the g lory of the Lord. The text goes on to say, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
In our world, there is a tendency to distinguish between sacred work such as ministry and secular work such as anything other than the ministry. But this verse in the Bible erases that distinction. All legitimate work is sacred, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”
One of the reasons this is so is that God gave work to Adam and Eve right for the very beginning. Work is good! Even God works! Genesis 2:3 says, “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” That means the Bible calls God’s creative efforts work. God did work. And similarly, in Genesis 2:15, still before the fall, we read, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Work is good. It is part of the creative process. God invited his human creatures to put the finishing touches on God’s work as it were. Work adds meaning and purpose to our existence. Work is the privilege of being invited into partnership with God.
Also, in the so called secular world, the way you do your work can have a sacred impact. In the late 80’s, I used to work for the factory that made shop vacs. For at least a couple of weeks there, I spent my whole day, every day, sitting in front of a machine that many people considered one of the most boring jobs in the place. Pick up the motor, stick the end of the bare wire into the machine, press the pedal and voila, a terminal clip gets clamped on to the end of the wire. It worked by pressure sort of like a staple gun, only way bigger and louder. But that was the whole job. Attach one terminal clip to each of the two bare wires sticking out of the motor and put the motor in the box with the other motors that would soon be taken to the assembly line. No skill required, no variation. It was kind of a lonely job too, not many people to talk to in that area.
Fast forward a couple of years to the time we were getting ready to go back to Grand Rapids where I would finish my philosophy degree at Calvin College. In one of our last visits to the local YMCA, a guy came up to me and wanted to shake my hand and say something. I really had no idea who he was. He said that he used to work at that same shop vac factory and though we seldom ever talked, he watched me. He knew that I was a Christian because on other days, when I was working next to other people on the assembly line, he had heard me witnessing. And at first, that was one reason why he didn’t want to talk to me. But he told me that he watched me to see if I was just another hypocrite Christian. He wanted to see if I was walking the walk that I had been talking. Or was I just all goody-goody talk, but really acting just like everyone else when I thought no one was looking.
And I honestly didn’t know he was looking, but he told me he saw me working at that terminal machine without complaining, always cheerful, always got a lot done, and it did impress him after all. He decided that maybe there really was something that Jesus had to offer and he looked into it more deeply. So here at the Y, he wanted to thank me for the role I played in leading or pointing him to the Lord. He wanted to thank me for my integrity and attitude toward work, and furthermore, that partly thanks to me, he had just graduated as a youth pastor from Dunbar! I gave thanks to the Lord don’t you know.
So, in that sense, all work is sacred. If you do any work at all, do it as unto the Lord, and he who sees what you do, sometimes seemingly in secret and unnoticed on the earth will one day reward you in public. And you may not always be blessed, as I was that time, to know how God used you in this life. But, you can be sure that the Lord can use your work in unexpected ways to bring glory and honor to his name.
I have one other short story about how working for the Lord actually gives our work meaning. One of my other jobs, also in the early 80’s was at an office furniture factory where they made cabinets and panels that were assembled into those office cubicles. One day, the foreman walks up to me and my buddy and says, “I don’t know boys. Sometimes I just don’t think it’s worth it. You work to earn a living so you can buy food and stay healthy and have a somewhere you can sleep, but all you do with all of that is get up and go to work again. It’s like a vicious, pointless cycle.” He probably didn’t even know he was practically quoting the wisdom of Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes!
I said, “You’re right Carl, if that’s all there is to life, it is pretty pointless.” He was taken aback that I agreed with him instead of arguing, so he said, “Well, then what keeps you going?”
I said, that I believe there is more to life, that as a Christian we’re here to serve the Lord and work on building up God’s kingdom. God provides for our needs so that we can serve him.
He then asked me if God is the provider why am I working at this menial labor job?
I told him that this was the means by which God was providing for me and my family with sufficient income to not just feed my family but also to support the church I belonged to, making regular tithes and being a part of that very meaningful work.
His first reaction to that was, “You give your money away?” I assured him that it was my joy to do so and that it is what made my work so much more than a pointless cycle of mere existence. That’s another way that my so called secular work had sacred significance. I was laying up treasures in heaven! That’s how you make work work for God.
In addition, even though, as I have shown you, our secular work can be used for sacred purposes, there can also still be a distinction made between the work you do specifically to earn a living, versus any other work you do for the kingdom, such as volunteering, or ministry or just being a good person in general, even off duty, so to speak. Some people think that’s the stuff you have to do to get saved. But I say, no, all the good works we do to serve the Lord or people is stuff we get to because we are saved!
This is where 1 Corinthians 3:10-14 can come in. “By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward.”
Jesus is the foundation. Without that, any labor on our part would all be in vain, for we cannot save ourselves. But we can build a life on the foundation of Jesus Christ who has saved us. We are called to be workers in the fields that are ripe unto harvest. We are called to go and make disciples and teach them to obey Jesus commands. That’s work! And James even dares to say that our work for the Lord is so important that faith without works is dead faith! Each and every one of God’s children needs to offer himself or herself as a living sacrifice to do the work of building the church using whatever gifts you have been given.
You can’t be saved by your works. That is true. But there was a covenant of works between God and Adam and Eve. That was not simply forgotten by God. The Covenant of works demanded death for those who were disobedient. That is why Jesus died for our sins. Jesus worked, on our behalf to fulfilled the Covenant of works! Jesus’ infinite eternal work on our behalf, performed by him as a human, while a human, was the work that meets the requirements of the covenant of works. He was perfectly obedient on our behalf so that we could benefit from the covenant of grace!
That is why it is so fitting and proper that even on the weekend of labor day, a day established to honor the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws and well-being of the country, we can more importantly remember and honor Jesus for his labor of love that made America even possible in the first place. It is really the Christian work ethic that has done the greatest good to support and create material prosperity.
But it is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, who singlehandedly performed all the necessary work of restructuring the human heart in his own image through his death on the cross, his victorious resurrection and his gift of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of believers. Without that foundation, there wouldn’t even be a Christian work ethic.
I personally give thanks to God, and I am sure you do too, that Jesus came and died for me. We praise God too that he lives because we know by faith in him that we will live forever too! Works for me!
Two women were shopping at a department store, and a well-dressed man walks down the aisle and notices piece of trash on the floor, so he picks it up to throw it away later. One woman says to the other, "That was kind of him to do." The other woman says, "Oh, he only does that because he's the manager." Just as they were speaking, the actual manager turns the corner and says, "Ladies, that man does not even work at this store, he's the manager of a restaurant down the street. He doesn't pick up trash because he's a manager; he's a manager because he picks up trash." (THAT should be a Christian's work ethic! -- Seeing what needs to be done, and doing it.)
Today we talk about work. It is Labor Day weekend after all! Work is one of the big rocks, one of the important priorities in our lives. For most of us, work is an unavoidable, no choice big rock. We gotta pay the bills! And since it’s a basic requirement for life, an automatic priority, we might wonder why we need to make it a priority? Some people, we call them workaholics, make it too much of a priority to advance in a career and gain wealth. It is easy to lose the proper balance between work and healthy relationships.
Well, our text today speaks about our attitude toward work. That is something we can and ought to be intentional about. The attitude we choose to take toward work is shown to be of primary importance to God. There’s more than 500 verses in the Bible about work. That makes it a big rock. And for those who are retired from a career, you know that as long as you are alive your work for God is not yet done.
Probably none of think of ourselves as slaves, but technically, unless you are self-employed, you are, technically speaking, a slave, at least while you’re on the job. If you have a job, there is a job description and you are expected to fulfill your duties and responsibilities. There will be performance reviews. So at least for part of the day, you are like a slave in the sense that you can’t just do whatever you want, or shouldn’t anyway, because you are expected or required to put in a good day’s work. So, you’re a slave, but not in the sense that you aren’t paid for your work. It’s not that your boss abuses you or treats you like property. Or maybe it does feel like that sometimes!
Even so, the right attitude toward work is given in our text. “Obey your earthly masters in everything;” Of course, the word “everything” there doesn’t really mean “Everything!” It means do your job well and thoroughly. God wouldn’t expect you to obey an illegal or unethical command. In fact, he would require that you not.
I used to work at a storm window factory in Grand Rapids back in the early 80’s. We made frames of aluminum or vinyl. I was usually the glass cutter. But one day we received a return load of a whole bunch of vinyl framed windows that weren’t assembled correctly. One corner was loose in every window. I think there was about a hundred of them, for some new office building. I was given the tedious task of making the repair so the windows could be returned in good shape. My supervisor showed me how he wanted it done. I tried that a couple of times, but it didn’t seem secure enough, so I tried something else on my own and that seemed to work really well.
After I had done a couple my way, I showed my supervisor, when he was available, and explained what I was doing and why I thought it was better than what he showed me. He told me to keep doing it his way. I told him I just couldn’t do that because I believed that it wouldn’t last after they were installed. I think I might have mentioned how we want to do good quality work. In the end, since I continued to refuse, he wanted to write me up for insubordination. Now I might lose my job. As part of the process, the shop manager wanted to see what I was doing. Turns out he liked my solution and told me to keep up the good work. He told the supervisor to let me do it my way. So, I didn’t exactly obey my earthly master in “everything.’
I’m also pretty sure I wasn’t currying the favor of that supervisor. But with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord, I did my best to do the right thing for the good of the company and for the g lory of the Lord. The text goes on to say, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
In our world, there is a tendency to distinguish between sacred work such as ministry and secular work such as anything other than the ministry. But this verse in the Bible erases that distinction. All legitimate work is sacred, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”
One of the reasons this is so is that God gave work to Adam and Eve right for the very beginning. Work is good! Even God works! Genesis 2:3 says, “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” That means the Bible calls God’s creative efforts work. God did work. And similarly, in Genesis 2:15, still before the fall, we read, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Work is good. It is part of the creative process. God invited his human creatures to put the finishing touches on God’s work as it were. Work adds meaning and purpose to our existence. Work is the privilege of being invited into partnership with God.
Also, in the so called secular world, the way you do your work can have a sacred impact. In the late 80’s, I used to work for the factory that made shop vacs. For at least a couple of weeks there, I spent my whole day, every day, sitting in front of a machine that many people considered one of the most boring jobs in the place. Pick up the motor, stick the end of the bare wire into the machine, press the pedal and voila, a terminal clip gets clamped on to the end of the wire. It worked by pressure sort of like a staple gun, only way bigger and louder. But that was the whole job. Attach one terminal clip to each of the two bare wires sticking out of the motor and put the motor in the box with the other motors that would soon be taken to the assembly line. No skill required, no variation. It was kind of a lonely job too, not many people to talk to in that area.
Fast forward a couple of years to the time we were getting ready to go back to Grand Rapids where I would finish my philosophy degree at Calvin College. In one of our last visits to the local YMCA, a guy came up to me and wanted to shake my hand and say something. I really had no idea who he was. He said that he used to work at that same shop vac factory and though we seldom ever talked, he watched me. He knew that I was a Christian because on other days, when I was working next to other people on the assembly line, he had heard me witnessing. And at first, that was one reason why he didn’t want to talk to me. But he told me that he watched me to see if I was just another hypocrite Christian. He wanted to see if I was walking the walk that I had been talking. Or was I just all goody-goody talk, but really acting just like everyone else when I thought no one was looking.
And I honestly didn’t know he was looking, but he told me he saw me working at that terminal machine without complaining, always cheerful, always got a lot done, and it did impress him after all. He decided that maybe there really was something that Jesus had to offer and he looked into it more deeply. So here at the Y, he wanted to thank me for the role I played in leading or pointing him to the Lord. He wanted to thank me for my integrity and attitude toward work, and furthermore, that partly thanks to me, he had just graduated as a youth pastor from Dunbar! I gave thanks to the Lord don’t you know.
So, in that sense, all work is sacred. If you do any work at all, do it as unto the Lord, and he who sees what you do, sometimes seemingly in secret and unnoticed on the earth will one day reward you in public. And you may not always be blessed, as I was that time, to know how God used you in this life. But, you can be sure that the Lord can use your work in unexpected ways to bring glory and honor to his name.
I have one other short story about how working for the Lord actually gives our work meaning. One of my other jobs, also in the early 80’s was at an office furniture factory where they made cabinets and panels that were assembled into those office cubicles. One day, the foreman walks up to me and my buddy and says, “I don’t know boys. Sometimes I just don’t think it’s worth it. You work to earn a living so you can buy food and stay healthy and have a somewhere you can sleep, but all you do with all of that is get up and go to work again. It’s like a vicious, pointless cycle.” He probably didn’t even know he was practically quoting the wisdom of Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes!
I said, “You’re right Carl, if that’s all there is to life, it is pretty pointless.” He was taken aback that I agreed with him instead of arguing, so he said, “Well, then what keeps you going?”
I said, that I believe there is more to life, that as a Christian we’re here to serve the Lord and work on building up God’s kingdom. God provides for our needs so that we can serve him.
He then asked me if God is the provider why am I working at this menial labor job?
I told him that this was the means by which God was providing for me and my family with sufficient income to not just feed my family but also to support the church I belonged to, making regular tithes and being a part of that very meaningful work.
His first reaction to that was, “You give your money away?” I assured him that it was my joy to do so and that it is what made my work so much more than a pointless cycle of mere existence. That’s another way that my so called secular work had sacred significance. I was laying up treasures in heaven! That’s how you make work work for God.
In addition, even though, as I have shown you, our secular work can be used for sacred purposes, there can also still be a distinction made between the work you do specifically to earn a living, versus any other work you do for the kingdom, such as volunteering, or ministry or just being a good person in general, even off duty, so to speak. Some people think that’s the stuff you have to do to get saved. But I say, no, all the good works we do to serve the Lord or people is stuff we get to because we are saved!
This is where 1 Corinthians 3:10-14 can come in. “By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward.”
Jesus is the foundation. Without that, any labor on our part would all be in vain, for we cannot save ourselves. But we can build a life on the foundation of Jesus Christ who has saved us. We are called to be workers in the fields that are ripe unto harvest. We are called to go and make disciples and teach them to obey Jesus commands. That’s work! And James even dares to say that our work for the Lord is so important that faith without works is dead faith! Each and every one of God’s children needs to offer himself or herself as a living sacrifice to do the work of building the church using whatever gifts you have been given.
You can’t be saved by your works. That is true. But there was a covenant of works between God and Adam and Eve. That was not simply forgotten by God. The Covenant of works demanded death for those who were disobedient. That is why Jesus died for our sins. Jesus worked, on our behalf to fulfilled the Covenant of works! Jesus’ infinite eternal work on our behalf, performed by him as a human, while a human, was the work that meets the requirements of the covenant of works. He was perfectly obedient on our behalf so that we could benefit from the covenant of grace!
That is why it is so fitting and proper that even on the weekend of labor day, a day established to honor the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws and well-being of the country, we can more importantly remember and honor Jesus for his labor of love that made America even possible in the first place. It is really the Christian work ethic that has done the greatest good to support and create material prosperity.
But it is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, who singlehandedly performed all the necessary work of restructuring the human heart in his own image through his death on the cross, his victorious resurrection and his gift of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of believers. Without that foundation, there wouldn’t even be a Christian work ethic.
I personally give thanks to God, and I am sure you do too, that Jesus came and died for me. We praise God too that he lives because we know by faith in him that we will live forever too! Works for me!
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