W*RK: It’s Not just a four-letter word – God’s Plan
Sycamore Creek Church
April 24/25, 2016
Tom Arthur

Friends, let’s work! 

The other day I was sitting on the couch cuddling my two-year-old. Here’s the conversation we had:

Me: I have to go to work.
Sam: Why?
Me: Do you like having a house to live in?
Sam: Yes.
Me: Do you like having food to eat?
Sam: Yes.
Me: Do you like daddy participating in God’s work & mission in the world?
Sam: No.
#samsayings

Today we’re beginning a new series called W*RK: It’s not just a four-letter word. We’re going to be exploring all the ins and outs of work. What did God plan for work? What problems do we face in work? Are we supposed to work all the time? Is there any Good News for work? What about work and the church?

What did you want to be when you grow up?

When I was little I wanted to play baseball for the Cincinnati Reds. That didn’t happen! But over the years I’ve had several jobs. As a kid growing up I had a paper route. I started a hamster breeding business. I did well with the breeding part but not with the business part. I started a lawn mowing business. Did better at both of those. My first job as a teenager was to help open a new Fazoli’s store. Then I worked at Target in the electronic department. In college I worked at the Gap (the worst job ever…I spent all my money on clothes). Then I worked at Subway. I was also a dark-room assistant for a photographer. One summer I worked for my step-dad’s ticket business. And then toward the end of my college life I got to be a youth pastor for one summer. After I graduated from college I took a part-time job at a church (that eventually led to a full-time job) and a part time job as a line-cook at a fancy resort-town Italian restaurant. Then in seminary I was a research assistant (I got paid to read books and articles!). Of course after seminary I became a pastor, but I also do a little writing and coaching/consulting on the side. Somehow I missed the Cincinnati Reds.

What has been your favorite and least favorite job?

Our culture tells us that “THE Good LIFE” is leisure, entertainment, and no work. And yet when we get home from work, we watch TV shows about work: The Office, 30 Rock, Madmen, Parks and Rec, Suits, Scrubs, The Good Wife, The Newsroom, Shark Tank (“I’m out”), and of course The Apprentice (“You’re fired”).

We have a complicated relationship with work. We hate it. We love it. We need it. Those who are hospitalized or bedridden or in nursing homes or have illnesses often feel “useless” and without “something to do.” Rob, a young man in our church who recently had a heart attack, and is off work told me the other day he feels adrift. He can’t wait to get back to work. Katie, another young woman in our church who can’t work regularly because of illness told me on Facebook, “It feels like I’m not a real person. I feel invalid and weak, useless even. It makes me question what kind of role I’m supposed to play if my body won’t let me live the way other people are able to live. I want to be more than my illnesses.”

What’s the deal with work? Why do we value it? Have you heard of the “Ikea Effect.” Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and Duke have all shown that we value something more when we’ve put work into it. Wikipedia defines the IKEA effect as “a cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created.” The same basic thing happened in the 1950s and 1960s with instant cake mixes. Pillsbury and others invented the “just add water” cake mix. But sales slumped even though it was easier than ever to make a cake. Sales didn’t go up again until they started advertising all the unique and creative ways you could layer or build a cake with a variety of icing types. People didn’t just want to get out of work. They wanted to make something creative (Bon Appetit).

Today we are going to look at God’s plan for work and what that means for our work today. Guiding us along the way will be a helpful book by Tim Keller titled Every Good Endeavor. I suggest you pick it up and take a look. Today I want to explore three ways that God works.

1. God Worked – Creation

In the beginning God worked.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work (melakah – work, workmanship, occupation, business) that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work (melakah) that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work (melakah) that he had done in creation.
~Genesis 2:1-3 ESV 

Work is not a necessary evil for God. This is in contrast to other ancient creation stories. In the Babylonian creation story, Ennuma Elish, the god Marduk overcomes the goddess Tiamat, and creation is from the remains of Tiamat. Tim Keller points out that in Genesis:

“Creation…is not the aftermath of a battle [between cosmic gods as in other ancient creation stories] but the plan of a craftsman. God made the world not as a warrior digs a trench but as an artist makes a masterpiece.”
~Tim Keller (20)

We can learn from the biblical story of creation that work is not beneath the dignity of God. “God worked for the sheer joy of it” (Keller). Seven times in the first chapter of Genesis we read, “And God saw that it was (very) good.” In the beginning God worked and work has an exalted beginning.God Worked and God works.

2. God Works – Providence

God continues to work today. “God works not only to create but also to care for his creation” (Keller). We continue reading in the creation story in Genesis:

A mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
~Genesis 2:6-9 ESV

God continues to work. God waters. God breathes life. God plants. God provides food. In the prayer book of the Bible, the book of Psalms we read:

The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open your hand;
you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
~Psalm 145:15-16 ESV

Theologians refer to this as God’s “providence.” God’s providence is God’s divine guidance or care. “Providence” comes from the word “provide.” We only exist now because God continues to provide for existence. I’m not talking about “deism.” Deism says that God created the world like a clock and wound the clock and now lets it run on its own. No. God provides when God comforts, encourages, heals, and acts in natural and supernaturally miraculous ways. Some of this can be seen in the way that God has created the universe from the very beginning to support life. Scientists call this the “Anthropic Principle.” Anthropic is from the Greek word “anthropos” or “man/human.” In the universe we see fifteen different physical constants of nature such as the speed of light, the force of gravity, etc. All fifteen of these are fine-tuned to support life. If one of the fifteen were a hair different, our universe wouldn’t support life, wouldn’t have produced life. For example, the age of universe is such that it’s old enough to develop heavy metals necessary for life but young enough that all the stars haven’t all burned out. One scientist says, “There’s something about the world that makes it friendly for life – it almost looks as if the universe knew we were coming.” Alister McGrath—Professor in Science and Religion at the University of Oxford with three doctorates from Oxford in Molecular Biology, Theology, Intellectual History—explains the Anthropic Principle. The point of all this is that God didn’t just work in the beginning. God continues to work now.

God worked, God works, and God works through us. 

3. God Works Through Us – Dominion

In the beginning there was work.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work (avad – work, serve, till) it and keep (shamar – to keep, guard, protect) it.
~Genesis 2:15 ESV

Tim Keller says:

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 ration. Leisure and pleasure are great goods, but we can take only so much of them.
~Tim Keller

We need work. Work blesses us.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
~Genesis 1:28 ESV

We are to work in creation by subduing it. What does it mean to subdue creation? Tim Keller says:

The word ‘subdue’ indicates that, though all God had made was good, it was still to a great degree undeveloped. God left creation with untapped potential for cultivation that people were to unlock through their labor.
~Tim Keller

I’m reminded of the mural that Tara George painted down the street with our church at Mt Hope STEAM school. STEAM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. We unlock the potentials of creation and continue to work when we engage the STEAMs of this world.   God calls each of us in different ways to do this creative work. In fact, the word “vocation” comes from the Latin word that means “calling.” Our work is a calling. It’s not just a four-letter word. When you belong to Jesus you participate in Jesus’ mission in the world. You do science for Jesus. You do technology for Jesus.   You do engineering for Jesus. You to the arts for Jesus. You do math for Jesus. Jesus teaches us to pray saying, God, “your kingdom come, here on earth as it is in heaven.”

Because we follow Jesus there are at least 8 ways we serve God at work. We’re going to look at two of them each week of this series.

8 Ways to Serve God at Work:

1. Do skillful, excellent work.
2. Further social justice in the world.
3. Be personally honest and evangelize your colleagues.
4. Create beauty.
5. Work from a Christian motivation to glorify God, seeking to engage and influence culture to that end.
6. Work with a grateful, joyful, gospel-changed heart through all the ups and downs.
7. Do whatever gives you the greatest joy and passion.
8. Make as much money as you can, so that you can be as generous as you can.

1. Do Skillful Excellent Work
We serve God and bring God glory when we do excellent work. Excellence is doing the best you can with what you’ve got. You do skillful excellent work in whatever job you have when you don’t cut corners. You do skillful excellent work when you continue to improve your craft and learn more about how to do it better. This is not to say that you work all the time and have no rest. In fact, researchers have shown that we are most productive when we get a brief period of rest every hour (52 minutes of work and 17 minutes of break away from computers, Fast Company). We do skillful excellent work when we know that our gifts and talents contribute in a way that compliments others’ gifts and talents. Take something as simple as a toaster. How many people does it take to build a toaster? How many skills? Thomas Thwaite attempted to find out. He bought a simple toaster and took it apart. He found that it had four-hundred parts. Four-hundred! He wanted to replicate this toaster himself. He reduced the parts to five: steel, mica, plastic, copper, nickel. Then he attempted to build a toaster by himself. What he ended up with was nothing like what you or I would call a functional toaster. Check it out here. There’s a lot to learn from Thwaite’s attempt, but one thing that is clear to me is that for us to do skillful and excellent work, we need the skills of everyone around us chipping in too. We serve God at work when we do skillful excellent work.

 

2. Further Social Justice in the World
We also serve God at work when we create work or advocate for work or business that makes a useful, helpful, and non-harmful (to people or the environment) product and provides a living wage for those who do the work. According to the online living wage calculator created by researchers at MIT, a living wage in Lansing which would cover the basic costs of housing, food, childcare, medical care, and transportation would be the following depending on the size and makeup of your family:

1 Adult – $9.86/hr
2 Adults 2 Kids – $14.13/hr
1 Adult 2 Kids – $25.58/hr

If you’re wondering why you are always in crisis mode financially, part of the reason might be the choices you’re making, but part of the reason might be that we as a culture tend not to pay people a living wage.

Creating a living wage isn’t the only way to further social justice in the workplace. Serving God at work means making sure that our businesses don’t discriminate. For example, women make $0.78 in general for every $1 that men make in the same job with the same qualifications. We serve God when we work to further social justice in the world.

God worked. God works. And God works through us when we do skillful excellent work and further social justice in the world.

How can you do skillful excellent work at your job? How can you work for social justice in your job?

Prayer
God, we thank you for the excellent skillful work you did in creation. We thank you that you continue to work and sustain us and provide for us. We thank you that you continue to work through us. Help us to serve you in our vocations by doing skillful excellent work and working to further social justice, so that as Jesus prays, “Your kingdom come here on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen.