Labor Day 2022 - Live to Work (Dr. Terry Thomas)

Hey, well, hello, everybody.

And I gotta say, I thought that was brave of Anthony to wear that shirt.

Failed a pit.

Okay.

So uh hey, good to be here with you.

I'm as happy as uh George Palumbo reading systematic theology.

That's all I gotta say.

So I'm gonna be a good time here today.

We're gonna look at some good stuff.

Before we do, though, I got one other announcement I wanted to let you know about.

That is that at Geneva College, we offer a class.

The class is called Closing the Gap.

It's for high school juniors and seniors, all right?

And it's a high school, it's a transition class.

It's a class to prepare you to be able to thrive and survive when you go to college, okay?

And uh it's we've done this for about uh I think this is our ninth year of doing it.

We've had great response to it from students.

They've enjoyed it and it's it's gone well.

Let me explain just what this class is.

By the way, it's an actual class.

It is a four-credit class.

Not only do you get college credit, which is transcripted at Geneva, but those credits can be taken to any college or university that you decide to go to.

But it's four credits.

The class is for particular social science credits, and uh in the spectacular deal, it only costs$300 for the class, which is cheaper than any class you could take anywhere else.

And that includes a lot of other stuff, especially when you realize how easy it is to take this class.

The class does not start until October, so people still have a month to kind of check it out and talk to people that they might want to do it with and so forth.

Again, juniors and seniors to help them survive and thrive when they go to college, this high school transition is the thing.

The first semester of the class, by the way, it goes over the course of the whole year, but it only meets one Saturday morning a month.

This is the way I wish class was when I went to college, okay?

One Saturday morning a month, all right?

And during that time, you know, we talk about a variety of subjects.

In the first semester, we talk about uh academic preparedness, you know, and uh we talk about a number of things about worldview and about understanding and trying to define what your calling might be to help you pick a major, and we talk a little bit about uh identity development and how that affects the way that you approach that and then other kind of learning stuff and so forth.

In the second semester, I like to call the second semester drug, sex, and rock and roll, you know, because it's about meeting the social challenges.

And here's the deal you don't really, you think you might know what it's about.

You've seen the movie Animal House, perhaps, but you know, it's not quite like that, you know, and you need to be a little better prepared, I think, for when these things happen.

So then what and the class itself is not just a matter of having high school students, juniors and seniors that come together for it.

We also invite a number of students from Geneva to sit in the class, college students.

So you're actually sitting in a class with college students, you see how they talk and act and you know, all that kind of stuff, misbehavior, whatever they do, you know.

And uh it is a great, great time.

And myself and a couple of uh other great faculty members who again we've taught this for a number of years, and we we really enjoy it.

We have a great time.

And again, the$300 tuition for the four credits is really spectacular.

Generally speaking, three hundred four credits at Geneva cost you like$3,200.

You know, so this is a pretty good deal.

And on top of that, everything is included in that.

We have a little retreat that we do over you don't have to pay for anything for that.

We give you the books, we we have more food than you can possibly eat at these events and uh all kinds of other stuff in addition to that.

So here's the deal.

If you know anybody or if you're interested in finding out a little bit more about closing the gap as an alternative for you, uh out at the info desk, you know, after the service here, you'll be able to find some folks and some brochures and some you know some propaganda about it out there for that.

So we'll do that.

Okay?

We good?

Everybody good?

Yeah, I'm good.

Okay, all right, good.

Glad to hear.

Well, hey, uh I said, I'm glad to be here.

And uh you for some reason I I'm the one who always gets to speak on Labor Day, on the Labor Day weekend, you know, because everybody's getting their last you know vacation in or whatever, you know, happens at that time.

And so last year, if you were here, maybe you remember I talked about one aspect of celebrating Labor Day, and that is rest.

I talked about Leviticus 25 and the year of Jubilee and the rest that comes from it, and what real rest looks like, and how do we accomplish rest and so forth and so on.

I'm going the other direction, going the other direction today, just in case you're wondering what we're doing.

We're gonna talk about work.

Work.

This is gonna be where it's at today.

I'm rolling up my sleeve, see, because we're working.

All right, okay, okay.

Trying to am I going too fast?

Okay, all right.

So, anyway, uh let me let me begin by by reading this.

Because if you want to know about work, this is a good place to start.

Well, I tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition, yawn and stretch and try to come to life.

Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumping.

Out in the street, the traffic starts jumping, with folks like me on joke to on the job from nine to five.

Working nine to five.

They sang last night, I just want to let you know, okay?

They were terrible, but they sang, okay?

You know, uh, really, uh work is a huge part of our lives.

A huge, huge part of our lives.

And it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter how old you are or you know, whatever, we're all continually working.

And we gotta ask ourselves, this is the question I want you to ask yourself today.

It's this good question here.

Do we work to live or should we live to work?

Live to work or work to live?

That's the question.

All right?

And by the way, if you go on, I I want you know, I searched the important sections of the internet to get you information about this, you know.

And you can't believe the number of songs that there are about work.

And most of them are pretty dark.

Most of them are not really upbeat songs about work, most of them are about complaining about some aspect of work.

And there are particularly a lot of country songs that are negative about work, okay?

And I think because, you know, somehow we equate the country singer with the working man, and so he can sing about work, you know, and so on and so on.

But I gotta tell you, this is my favorite.

I'm sure you're aware of it.

This is my favorite of all the country western songs about work.

It's done, it's done by a guy named Johnny Paycheck.

That's the guy, you know what song is talking about?

Here it is, you ready?

Take this job and shove it.

I ain't working here no more.

My woman done left and took all the reason I was working for.

You better not try to stand in my way as I'm walking out this door.

You can take this job and shove it.

I ain't working here no more.

That's fairly negative about work.

You know?

Uh, not the most positive thing you probably ever heard, you know.

Uh, and there are a lot of people who feel that way.

Hey, by the way, it's not everything goes right for people at work, you know.

Not like, hey, did you hear recently, I'm speaking of work, did you hear that the CEO of uh IKEA has been appointed the Prime Minister of Sweden?

Did you hear that?

Amazing.

Right now he's uh assembling his cabinet.

But thank you.

I'll be here all week.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

So I went on a lot.

You know, I went to TikTok and I went to some blogs and so forth to see what people are saying about work and so forth.

Here's a couple things people say about work.

You're right, here's one right here.

Nothing ruins a Friday more than realizing it's Tuesday.

That's somebody who doesn't really like okay.

Uh what's the best way to make a small fortune into in the stock market?

Start off with a large fortune.

That's so true.

That's so true.

Um there's one about work.

This kind of talk happens around the water cooler all the time.

Everybody is putting names on food.

I discovered this yesterday when I ate lunch with a sandwich named Mark.

Not that good, huh?

All right.

This is one of my favorites.

It has nothing to do with this subject, but I couldn't pass it up.

Okay, you ready?

My husband is mad that I have no sense of direction.

So last night I packed up all my stuff and right.

Right, left, right, left.

I packed up all my stuff and right.

I was coming here yesterday, my wife was driving.

This is a true story.

Coming here yesterday, my wife was driving, and I told her this joke, I told her this joke about this, and she didn't get it.

She was like this, what do you mean?

Right?

I said, left, left.

And we were just coming up on a turn where you were to turn left, and she was like this, left.

I said, Yeah, left.

But he said right, and she just straight through, missed the turn altogether.

Okay.

Hey, here's another little bit of knowledge about work you might not have passed you by.

Did you know that you cannot use beef stew as a password on your computer at work?

Uh it's just not strog enough.

That's for you.

Okay.

Hey, and here's another bit of wisdom in the workplace.

If you're ever feeling stressed out at work, uh make it make a nice cup of tea and spill it on the lap of somebody who's bugging you.

All right, that's crazy.

Um so here's the deal.

So here's the deal.

I don't know whether you got this or not, but uh people don't like their work.

A survey in 19 in 2019 said over 50% of people are unhappy with the job that they presently have.

Over 50% said they were unhappy.

Um 50 uh the the most unhappy group is between 18 and 34 years old.

18 and 34 years old, a huge number of them say they're not satisfied with their job.

54% said that they would leave their job right now if they could find a job, another job with a raise.

By the way, that tells you a little bit about what people think about work.

Do they live to work or do they work to live?

They work to live.

They think it's all about just making money.

Matter of fact, it's not ever about the work, it's about the leisure that the work might give you the opportunity to experience.

That's a crazy Greek dichotomy that's followed us for centuries.

That somehow the good life is leisure and the bad life is work.

And so as a result, we work to live.

We don't live in order to work.

Uh 52% people of people surveyed said they would like to change jobs.

Okay?

said they'd like to leave their job right now.

Right now.

77% of Americans say, overall, they do not like their job, they're not satisfied with their job.

77 for one reason or another.

By the way, and I'm I'm giving you a little too much information here about data and surveys about uh work, but I want you to see this, see this.

Why is that?

Because here's what people say satisfaction in a job comes from.

I'll read the things to you.

Recognition, opportunity, recognition means people say giving you credit for what you've done.

Opportunity, that is the chance for you to be able to have some mobility in your job.

Autonomy, the chance to make some decisions that are purely yours.

Salary, that is the ability to get paid according to what you think you're worth.

Meaning.

By meaning, we mean the job actually means something.

See, here's the problem with American jobs to a great degree.

We don't see how what we're doing necessarily means anything.

Our jobs have been so sort of specialized and so forth.

You know, here's what I do.

I work on an assembly line where I take this piece and I put it here.

I don't even know what we're making.

I just know that I do, I'm this little cog in the wheel.

And so I don't have any connection.

I sell this.

I don't know what it's for, I don't know how good it is, I don't know if people if it really benefits people and so on.

I can tell you that if somebody advertiser tells you, but basically, all I'm really doing is just sell.

This is all I do.

You can put anything in my hand to make me sell it.

It could be just as much one thing rather than another.

I don't have any meaning, I'm not connected to it.

I don't see the importance of it.

I don't see the way it that it speaks to the benefit of the common good of people, that it's important.

The next one has to do with respect.

In other words, do I get the respect that I deserve, especially from my coworkers and the people that I work for?

And most people feel they don't get hardly any of those.

And so they're very unsatisfied with with their work, very, very unsatisfied with their work.

Um you know, one guy said this, he says, uh I've a lot as I've gotten older and wiser, I've discovered there are six things that really make me love my job.

One, payday, two, lunch time, three, quitting time, four, vacation time, five, holidays and weekends, six, retirement.

It has absolutely nothing to do with anything that a person does in their work.

It's almost meaningful.

You know what?

There's a guy named Lee Hardy who wrote a book, and uh, the book was about work and a Christian view of work and so forth.

He says, Unfortunately, in America, we've experienced what's called devocationalization.

Devocationalization.

That is, our personal connection to the work that we do has somehow been removed.

It's not about that anymore.

It's not about you discovering what kind of gifts you have, what kind of passions God has given you.

It's not about you analyzing the great needs of the world, you know, in your own experience and trying to figure out how can I fit in to speak to these things?

How can I be creative?

How can I, you know.

No, it's not about that.

It's doing something that will get you a certain matter of fact, it gets you paid.

That's basically what it is.

We work for money.

You know, when I talk to students, when I talk to college students, unfortunately, here's what I say to them I say, well, hey, why do you come to college?

And they say, Well, I can't college because uh I want to get a good job.

And I say to them, Well, what's a good job?

You know what they immediately go to?

It's one where you make a lot of money and there's room for advancement.

I said, Why do those things important?

Well, because the higher you get up the ladder, you know, the more money you make, the sooner you can retire.

I said, Let me see if I get this right then.

So the reason you're going to college is so you don't have to work.

Is that it?

The reason you're getting a job is so that you don't have to work.

The work itself means nothing.

You don't see any meaning in it.

Of course, they're not gonna see.

No, that's right.

But if you saw the way they lived a lot of times, you'd think that was the case.

It doesn't mean that much.

Matter of fact, when you look at the numbers of students that are recruited for various majors, you wonder if God is really hurting for engineers and finance people right now.

He must need them desperately.

Because that's a lot of places where the students will go to.

Those are a lot of the majors.

And you know what?

Not because they love the the challenges of engineering and the mind creativity that's required of mathematics to be part of it or something.

No, huh?

They know they can make a lot of money.

And they know if they do it, if they do it right and whatever they build doesn't collapse and they're involved in a scandal, you know, uh they can basically feel comfortable and safe for the rest of their existence.

It's just about that.

It's just about that.

Well, I'll tell you right, I'm here today to tell you that is not what it's about.

In spite of the fact that that's what our culture tends to say it's all about.

Recently, uh last year, as a matter of fact, there was a uh a conference of 5,000 business leaders down in Florida, and national motivational speakers were speaking to them about trying to motivate them to do better jobs on their work and so forth.

And one of the speakers said this if you went home and you found out that a distant relative had died and left you$10 million, would you go to work tomorrow?

And they said the resounding sound of no in the auditorium was so loud that they couldn't believe it.

Because you see, it's not about what they do, it's not about what we do when we work.

It's about money, we we work to live, and we think living is leisure and not meaningful necessarily, unless it's simply us choosing how we're gonna spend our time meeting our own needs in more and more indulgent ways, more and more spectacular ways.

Matter of fact, here's something that's come up recently in the last couple months.

A lot of talk, particularly from an article that started in the New York Times about what's called quiet quitting.

Anybody heard this phrase before?

Anybody heard somebody talking about quiet quitting?

Okay.

Quiet quitting is a phenomenon that they think is uh predominantly driven by millennials and Gen Z people, but it's older folks as well, okay?

And it's the result of what's happened because of the COVID experience where and the later the more recent recession where people ended up going home to do their work.

They worked remotely.

And so less requirements were put on them in terms of having to come to work or how they dressed or you know what they ate or you know what they how they kept their workspace or you know, whatever.

So they went home.

And then meanwhile, what happened was the quiet quitting, or or another phrase for it is laying flat, you can imagine how it got its name, became so that it was like, here's what I'm gonna do, and this is what it means.

I'm gonna work only as much as is required for me to continue to get paid.

I'll meet the minimum expectation.

Do not ask me to work, don't ask me to come early, don't ask me to stay late, don't ask me to do extra work if I'm not getting paid for it.

So quiet quitting is sort of where like you decide I'm just I'm gonna sort of check out and do the the minimum requirement.

You know, you you don't do that because you love your job, you don't do that because you live to work and you think the work is meaningful.

You do that because you work to live and you're looking to get some money.

And that's basically it.

One of the people in the magazine article said this the idea of dream jobs is dead, and the only dream is about leisure time and having enough money to have coffee in the morning.

Out.

Okay.

Well, before, you know, before we run out screaming and you know, quit our jobs, um, I want to tell you about some stuff that was in this book that I found by Hugh Wetchell.

Hugh Wetchell, he teaches at a Christian think tank down in Washington, D.C.

And uh good guy, very interesting book.

It's called How Then Should We Work.

How Then Should We Work.

And he has a number of things in this book that he suggests that if we understood them better, we would have a different view of work, and that different view of work would lead us to a different style of living in our work.

I want to tell you about four of those things.

Okay?

Here's the first one.

The first one is he says this we need to have a picture of the Bible as a four-chapter book, not a two-chapter book.

It's a big deal to him.

It's a big deal to me, too.

This is one of my hotspots when I'm teaching.

You know, the Bible is a four-chapter book, not a two-chapter book.

Here's the four chapters: creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

Unfortunately, for the majority of Christians in the world, here's what the Bible is not a four-chap book, it's a two-chapter book.

Fall and redemption.

It's about coming in an encounter with Christ that because of my sin, I get that sin paid for by his life, death, and resurrection.

And as a result, I don't go to hell.

It's about sin and redemption.

When in fact, the Bible is about creation, fall, sin, and redemption.

When it's just about sin and redemption, you can have your Christian life be in your personal life exclusively.

And your public life doesn't have to be affected by anything in your faith.

As long as you got that personal relationship with Jesus and you know you got that down, you don't have to worry about anything else.

It's sometimes what we call dualism.

Dualism, the separation between the unbiblical notion of the separation between the sacred and And the secular, God cares about these things.

He doesn't care about those things.

As long as you take care of the short list of religious obligations that Christians have, going to church and praying and uh reading the Bible occasionally and sharing your faith, perhaps at the office or anywhere else, and uh giving some money to the church and the missionaries.

As long as you do that, you're good.

The rest of life, do it however you want.

Align yourself with any group that you want, regardless of how anti-Christian that group, oftentimes in terms of its activities, might be.

Feel free.

The two-chapter story is a divided between sacred and secular that allows us to be only concerned with a narrow thing and to think we're doing what God has in mind.

When in fact, the picture of the Bible starts in the creation.

And by the way, it ends in the restoration of the creation as well.

A guy I know wrote a book called Heaven Is Not Your Home.

It was a disturbing title for a lot of people because they said, What happens?

If you die, you don't go to heaven?

Yeah, if you die, you go to heaven.

But you know what?

Heaven is like the celestial motel.

People check in, but they never stay there.

They eventually go home.

Guess where home is?

The creation.

That's the picture of the Bible.

The picture of the Bible starts in a garden and it ends in a city.

And that city is on the restored creation.

And that's what people are gonna do.

People are gonna live the life that was planned for them to live.

Here's the question you ought to ask yourself: what would the world have looked like 10,000 years down the road had the fall not taken place?

What would people have done?

How would they have lived?

What kind of spectacular experience of grace and shalom and peace and beauty and uh you know unbelievable possibilities?

What would it have been like?

But no.

We assume God would, as long as sin hadn't taken place 10, 20 years, God would have said, okay, you're gonna go to heaven.

As if that was the plan.

The plan was never about the other world.

The plan was always about this world.

And the fall takes place in the midst of this world, and the restoration for it takes place in the midst of this world.

So the first thing he says is we've got to have a different worldview.

We've got to work on our worldview.

Get to the four-chapter book of the four-chapter understanding of the Bible creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

Get out of the dualism, or else our work will never mean anything to us.

Oh, it might if you take a job being a pastor or a Bible professor.

I have a meaningful life because I'm a Bible professor and I get to speak in church.

No.

But if you get some other job, a pitiful businessman of some kind, sorry about it.

Teacher.

Well, teachers are up on, they're a little more satisfied with their work because they can see some of the meaning in it when they're not being beaten up.

So, but you know, that's where it starts.

It starts with the four-chapter, the four-chapter picture of the Bible, a new worldview.

Here's the second thing he says.

The second thing he says is we have to understand what the real nature of the kingdom of God is about.

Did you ever notice when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we pray this, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in heaven.

No, that is not what we pray, is it?

We pray, Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

The kingdom of God is a much, it's not some sort of ethereal special group project that we participate in.

It's the, you know, in the Psalms, the Psalms over and over again talk about the kingdom of God as being the rule of the sovereign God over the creation at large.

The famous Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper he said it once like this: he says, There is not one inch of the creation that Jesus, the sovereign Lord of the universe, does not point to and say, mine.

There's no vocation that takes place.

There's no job.

There's no activity.

Whether it's fun or whether, and by the word, fun can still be word.

Or if it's labor, that God does not say, mine.

And I want to see my sovereign rule over that.

That's what I've done.

I've entered into a creation.

I started it with a plan, and I want it to expand.

I want it to be beautiful and spectacular and filled with all these.

And he said that leads you to the third thing.

The third thing he says is this it's the idea of something that comes from that first chapter of the worldview in the Bible.

It's called the cultural mandate.

I don't know if you know what the cultural mandate is exactly, but uh, let me explain it to you.

It's in Genesis 1, verses 26 to 28, where God basically says this, I'm gonna make man in my own image.

Genesis 1:26–28

In the image of God, I'm gonna make him male and female I will make him.

And so then it says, and so God made man in his own image.

In the image of God he made him, and he blessed him, and he said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the earth.

The plan from the beginning, the meaning of life, of human life from the beginning, was to rule over the earth for God.

Now, what did that mean?

Well, you get a little hint in the second chapter of Genesis in Genesis 2.15, when God says, He took Adam and He put him in the Garden of Eden.

Some translations say to work it and to take care of it.

Other translations say to cultivate it and to keep it.

But you notice the work, the word work showed up there.

You know what God's plan from the very beginning was?

For us to work to live.

No, it was to live to work.

His plan was he created people in his image who then he said to them, I want you to be my representatives in the world to unlock all the unbelievable potential that I've put within the creation.

And as you do that, here's what will happen: as you trust me, and these beautiful, spectacular things begin to develop.

You figure out how to play with wood, next thing you know, you get a piano.

You know?

You figure out how to put these different plants together, next thing you know, you're eating lasagna.

You know?

You figure out how to deal with machines, you make a machine, you get electricity.

Oh my gosh.

God said, I'm the one who put this potential within the creation, the lawful order of the nature.

I'm the sovereign one who rules over all things.

And I've made you to be my representatives in the world.

You're to work it.

Work my kingdom, work my rule, demonstrate and when you do it right, I get the glory.

God gets the glory for that.

You know, the Westminster Confession, which is the confession of the Presbyterian Church.

The number one question is this: what is the chief end of man?

What's the most, what's the point of human beings?

And the answer to it is this to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

Glorify him and enjoy him.

You know how you do that by fulfilling the cultural mandate.

Matter of fact, before the fall, there is only one command given to human beings to explain what it means to be human.

Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over it.

Cultivate the creation of my behalf.

Cultivate, you know what cultivating is?

Cultivating is like I like the word cultivating because it's it's a nice, easy metaphor analogy, you know?

It's that sort of thing where you what you do is you take, you take stuff that's in seed form and you try to figure out what the laws of God for how He's put it together, so that when you obey those laws, you unlock that potential and it becomes what it was possibly meant to be.

And when that happens, God gets glory and you get blessed.

God, you you're like this.

Oh God, you're you're so good, I can't believe it.

That lives on, it was unbelievable.

You know, I had I had the uh two two nights ago, two nights ago, I had the uh fajita burrito.

Uh oh man, was that good?

You know, you have to, when you're eating that, you gotta say, oh God, it was nicely done.

Nicely done with all the potentials.

You know what I mean by cultivation?

You get the pig, but you ever heard the story about the guy who was the farmer?

He actually wasn't a farmer, he is a businessman who retired out to a farm and he decided he would have to do something on his farm.

So he goes into the Agway store, he says to the guys, hey, listen, I get thinking of growing something, doing something.

What should I do?

The guy says, uh, do something simple.

I'm you know, why don't you raise chickens?

He goes, Okay.

So he's got a truck, and the guy puts on about a hundred peeps on the back of his truck and he takes him out to the his farm.

About two weeks later, the guy comes back and he says to the guy, uh it's just it's not working out with the peeps.

And the guy says, What do you mean?

He goes, I don't know, maybe I planted them too close together.

It's not just a matter of doing the work, it's doing it right.

It's trying to figure out how God, it's about not trusting your own idea of how things ought to go, but trying to discover what the rule, the law of God is for how to unlock that potential and all of its unbelievable glory so that God can be glorified and you can be blessed.

I use this example a lot in class, and I've used it here in the past.

I'm gonna use it again because it makes the point very well.

You know, it's like this you can you can mess it up and you can make it right, you can do it right.

You can have your work be about simply making money, looking for leisure and autonomy, and miss the point of what it means to be human, made in the image of God.

As a matter of fact, I see students at Geneva who take my class, I talk to them about this, the meaning of life being found and cultivating the creation and so forth.

And I see them then later on that day at lunch.

And they're at lunch, guy being lunch, and he'll be eating cereal.

You know, guys eat a lot of cereal, and then he's eating cereal at lunch, you know, and so all of a sudden he goes, and you wonder why he stopped.

You know why he stopped?

Because he saw you coming in the cafeteria, you know.

He saw this woman coming in the cafeteria, and he thinks this is what he's thinking in his mind.

I'll give you what he's thinking.

He says, Ooh.

I see that woman, that creature of God, that God is filled with all sort of multidimensional potential.

I want to discover what the laws of God are for properly cultivating a relationship with another person so that I can help her to become everything that she was meant to be.

And so doing, God will be glorified and she and I would be blessed.

No, that is not what he's thinking.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Here's the reality.

Here's what he's thinking.

Oh, I see some potential.

Apparently, it's the kind of potential that you should identify from across the room.

All right?

Then he's wondering, wonder how I can manipulate that woman to rip off some of that potential for my own selfish benefit.

Now he might not be honest enough to say that, but you know what?

That's the way our culture goes.

They do the same thing about work.

We've misunderstood what work's about.

We've we've worked to live instead of living to work.

The cultural mandate is the meaning of human life.

It doesn't mean we don't get rest or we shouldn't get rest or something.

I've talked about that before.

The point is we have to figure out how to make our work be meaningful in our life.

And so finally, you in the book here, he suggests this thing.

He suggests Christians ought to have an understanding of what success in work looks like.

What success in work looks like.

And so you know what he turns to?

Immediately he turns to the gospels and he turns to the teaching of Jesus, and he turns to one of the parables that's in it's in Matthew and it's in Luke.

And it's the parable of what we call the uh uh what do we call it?

Uh it's this sort of thing.

I forget what it is.

No, it's called the um uh the parable of the talents.

You know this one here?

Think about it for a second.

Here's how the parable of the talents goes.

There was a master who owned a great piece of land, and he was gonna go away for a while.

Same way that after Jesus was resurrected, he was gonna go away, intercede to the Father for our activity as human beings, image bearers as we work to live, uh no, as we live to work on this planet, you know.

And uh he comes up to a couple of his guys, his servants, his slaves, so it depends on which translation you read.

He says to them, I'm gonna give you five talents, I'm gonna give you two, I'm gonna give you one.

And uh, you know, take care of them, and I'll be back.

See how you do later.

Talents.

The ever-popular theologian John Calvin from the Reformation period, he was the first one to realize that that term talent was a metaphor for something bigger than simply a big bag of money.

It was about everything that God gave you, there was the possibility of you applying towards your efforts as an image bearer in cultivating the creation.

It was about your intellect, it was about your passions.

It was about your experiences, ways that he had shaped you to see things and to know things and to be in certain places.

It was about opportunities that he gave you that set you up for certain types of things.

It was about desires that he, desires of your hearts, things that were passions that you said, oh, I love this.

You know, this is this excites me.

It was about your a heart of sympathy that could say, oh, here's one of the great needs of our world that's not being met.

I gotta, hey, by the way, just let me just say this.

You know, oftentimes the fulfilling of this success is not always in our job, job.

Because we're called to something bigger than that.

We're called to be image bearers, we're called to be kingdom representatives.

We're called to, you know, it's not about jobs per se.

Bless God if He gives you the opportunity to do something in your job to do this.

For most of us, it might have to be something we try to figure out how to maneuver outside our job.

Or we're sneaky and we figure out how to do it inside our job without them catching us, you know?

It's like, you know, when Jeremiah wrote that letter down to Daniel in Babylon, people were like they were slaves, they didn't want to participate in this other culture that was now, they were dualists to some degree.

And God has said in the letter through Jeremiah to Daniel, no, no, no, no, no.

Be for the prosperity of the city of Babylon, be with them, build houses, marry people, get involved in the businesses and so forth.

Because here's what he says, because as the city prospers, so will you.

I'll bless you in this.

It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be outside of the typical work.

So but it doesn't always have to be inside of the typical work thing either.

And so God gave these people these talents, you know, the the master gave them these talents.

And he goes away and then he comes back.

He says to the guy with five talents, how'd you do?

The guy says, Well, you gave me five?

Look, I got ten.

Back.

You know what he says to him?

Well done, good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of your master.

The second guy, I got two.

Hey, by the way, the work that you do might not be as spectacular as somebody else's work.

It's not a comparison game.

It's a you doing what God has called you to do with what he's given you.

And so as a result, here's what happens.

The second guy says, I had two, got four now.

You know, God says, Jesus says to him, Well done, good and faithful servant.

This is what it's about.

This is, by the way, this parable that Jesus is giving is on the Tuesday before he dies.

Brought this parable out on the Tuesday before he dies, basically telling people in the midst of a story about what the future is going to be about.

The future, that's our future, that's our experience right now, is about this that the master is gone and he's coming back, and until then, he's left us with these talents.

And he expects us when we when he comes back for him to be able to say to us, What'd you do?

And we can be able to say, Well, we worked.

No, we live to work.

That's what he wants us to say.

We live to work.

Look what I got.

It was and it was so much fun, it was spectacular.

You blessed me.

I see why.

And Jesus said to that guy, Well done, good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of your the rest and joy of your master.

And then he goes to the last guy.

What'd you do?

The guy says, Well, I know you were pretty demanding.

In other words, that you really had an agenda here.

By the way, you know what the agenda was?

You're an image bearer that's called to fulfill the cultural mandates, the meaning of life.

I want you to be a representative of my kingdom.

I gave you everything you needed to be able to do it, and you misunderstood the whole thing and did the thing wrong.

Is this what you're gonna tell me?

Uh yeah.

So what happened?

He goes, Well, I knew you were serious, so what I did was I buried it.

You know what Jesus says was, at least you could have put it in the bank, couldn't have done something, would have got a little interest on it or something.

How about it, man?

What a jerk.

He didn't say that.

She just didn't say that.

But you know what he did say?

Take what he's got, give it to the other people, and throw this guy out into the darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth.

In case you missed that, that's not good.

All right?

Weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And so what Jesus is saying is this, you know what I'm looking for?

Is I'm looking for people who live to work.

They live to work.

And they look at their work as kingdom activity.

They see it as the fulfillment of the very humanness that they are made in the image of God as a cultivator of my creation.

I want them to do it in every area of life.

And here's the deal: we are not doing very well.

We're not doing very well.

We tend to be very much more interested in working to live.

And when we say working to live, that simply means getting a lot of money for ourselves so we can autonomously live a life of leisure the way that we simply want to.

And that's not really what life is about.

And so Jesus comes to us and he says one more thing.

And this is in the one more thing you need to hear, is comes from the uh the book of Romans, where Paul says this.

He says, you know, this is Romans 12.

He says, I want you to present, I beseech you, brothers and sisters, by the mercy of God, to present your body as a living sacrifice.

This is your true spiritual worship, service of worship.

Then he says, and don't be trans, don't be conformed any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

You know what he's saying there?

Get the new worldview.

Get the four chapter gospel picture here from the Bible.

Figure out who you really are.

And then what I want you to do, based on the mercy, beseech you by the mercy of God.

What mercy of God?

The fact that Jesus has come to die for you so that you can't, you don't have a miserable life.

You have the fullest life possible.

I came that you might have life and life abundantly, Jesus said.

Full life as you work, in your work, in all of your life.

So what do I want you to do is based on what I've done for you, the mercy I've shown for you already, I want you to offer your body as a living sacrifice.

You know what a living sacrifice does?

It dies, it gives itself willingly to death, even, offered up to the one that it loves and knows it loves them.

I have one last quote that I want to read to you.

This is again from uh John Calvin from his Institutes of the Christian Republic.

This is Reformation kind of stuff, 1500s.

Here's what he said.

We are not our own.

Let not our reason nor our will therefore sway our plans and deeds.

We are not our own.

Let us therefore not set it, set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to our own flesh.

We are not our own.

Insofar as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours.

Conversely, we are gods.

Let us therefore live for him and die for him.

We are gods.

Let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions.

We are gods.

Let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful goal.

In other words, live to work.

Let's pray for a second.

Lord, thanks for this chance to be together, to hear things from your word, to be encouraged by the thoughts of folks that have gone before us, and uh, we want to be people who recognize as being yours.

We want to respond uh to the mercy that you've shown us in Christ and make our lives full and meaningful, not for our sake, but for your glory and for the benefit of the world.

Uh, we we want our lives to exhibit what you said was the most important thing the love of you and the love of our neighbor as we give our lives in service and work.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Hey, good to see you here.

If you're interested in hearing about closing the gap, stop out and talk to us afterwards.