Why We Work? – August 30, 2026

The Old Testament reading is found in Genesis chapter one, verses twenty-six through twenty-eight.

Then God said, Let us make humanity in our image, to resemble us, so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on the earth.

God created humanity in God's own image.

In the divine image God created them, male and female, God created them.

God blessed them and said to them, Be fertile and multiply.

Fill the earth and master it.

Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and everything crawling on the ground.

The word of the Lord.

Hello, my name is Laura.

The New Testament reading is found in Galatians 6, verses 7 through 10.

Galatians 6:7–10

Make no mistake, God is not mocked.

A person will harvest what they plant.

Those who plant only for their own benefit will harvest devastation from their selfishness.

But those who plant for the benefit of the Spirit will harvest eternal life from the Spirit.

Let's not get tired of doing good, because in time we'll have a harvest if we don't give up.

So then let's work for the good of all whenever we have the opportunity, especially for those in the household of faith, the word of the Lord.

Hello, my name is Ruth.

If you're able, please stand for the gospel reading found in John chapter 5, verses 16 through 19.

John 5:16–19

As a result, the Jewish leaders were harassing Jesus since he had done these things on the Sabbath.

Jesus replied, My father is still working, and I am working too.

For this reason, the Jewish leaders wanted even more to kill him.

Not only because he was doing away with the Sabbath, but also because he called God his own father, thereby making himself equal with God.

Jesus responded to the Jewish leaders, I assure you that the Son can't do anything by himself except what he sees the Father doing.

Whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.

The gospel of the Lord.

Please remain standing with me as we pray this morning.

But first, it's amazing how differently crawling things sound when Mary says it.

It's like suddenly crawling things sound really beautiful.

And normally that's just not my impression.

We're gonna join together and say the Lord's Prayer together this morning.

If you're comfortable, you can grab the hand of somebody next to you.

If not, that's okay as well.

But this is the prayer that Jesus gave all of us to pray as his people.

We're gonna put the words on the screen since we learned 15 different versions.

Um, so no King Jimmy words um in this one, but let's pray this together.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever.

Amen.

And you may be seated.

Well, good morning again, saints.

As I said before, my name is Jason.

I'm one of the pastors here.

It's so uh great to be with you.

I want to say hi to everybody who's watching online or who's watching the recording later after serving uh in our kids' ministry and our student ministry, which uh are both just um so many beautiful things happening there uh right now.

Last week uh we had uh it was 143, I think was the number of kids we had uh in the kid.

133 kids in the kids' ministry, 42 kids in middle school, and then 23 in high school this last week.

It's almost 200 people that are next generation folks that are being raised up in the way of Jesus here.

So so grateful for all of you who volunteer and make that happen.

Uh, this is the second week in our series through a really key aspect of our identity as a church, our kind of guiding sense of who we want to be is this statement that we are a community of disciples, followers, apprentices of Jesus who are formed together in a common faith through a common life for the common good.

That phrase really captures a real key part of our life together, is that we are trying to recover a sense of communal discipleship in an age of radical individualism, recognizing that you can have community without discipleship, but you cannot have discipleship without community.

We grow in love only in relationship with other people.

So each of the last couple of years, we've taken a few weeks to just do a deep dive into one of those three components.

Uh, we talked in 2024 about common life.

Last summer we talked about common faith.

And this year we're devoting a few weeks to the idea of the common good.

As I shared last week, this is a deep part of our story as a church.

We were launched with the mission to be a church in the city for the sake of the city.

We have always had as kind of a guiding thought that we want to follow that sense from Jeremiah that where God says through the prophet to seek the peace, the shalom, the flourishing of this city in which I have sent you.

So we have sought to be a church in downtown, a church for downtown, a church that reaches out from downtown to the rest of our city and beyond.

Of course, for this season, we're living between downtown and Mitchell, uh, and so grateful uh to have this place.

And yet our desire and prayer remains uh to find a permanent home downtown whenever the Lord uh provides that for us.

Last week, in our conversation around the common good, uh, we were starting off by talking about what do Christians mean by that term?

Recognize it can be defined in so many different ways.

But for Christians, when we approach that idea, we're defining the common good in terms of the gospel, in terms of the good news about the arrival of the kingdom of God in and through the person and work of Jesus.

Recognize that in Jesus, what God is doing is He's renewing all things and restoring all things and reconciling all things.

He's making all things good again.

In other words, he is making this world here and now like the world to come.

Signposts of his kingdom breaking in everywhere.

We know this is ultimately a work that only God can do.

And it's a work that only he can complete, and yet he graciously, lovingly, kindly, even radically invites us to join him in that work and to join him in the work in real and meaningful ways, not just in sort of token or illusionary sort of ways, but real, meaningful, significant ways that we get to join him.

But what happens oftentimes within the context of church is that when we think about joining Jesus in his work, we tend to limit that into two spheres.

We think about it in terms of volunteering, serving in some capacity, or witnessing, sharing the gospel.

Both of those are huge.

There's significant ways by which we partner with God and what he's doing.

Our meal groups over the summer studied the idea of service.

This fall they're studying the idea of witness, but we want to focus, particularly in this series, on two ways that we join Jesus that we don't talk about as often.

And that is how we join Jesus and our paid and unpaid work, as well as how we join him with our finances and resources, the areas that we might call vocational stewardship and financial stewardship.

So for the next three weeks, we're going to talk about work, then that broad idea of all things that could be classified as work paid and unpaid.

So we're thinking broadly about both our occupations as well as for those of you who are in school doing schoolwork, for those that do housework and yard work and food prep and raising kids and caring for aging parents and everything in between.

All of those things that we are uniquely responsible for that require energy and effort and attention from us to be able to make those things happen.

And interestingly, of course, our paid and unpaid work occupy most of our waking hours.

That we think about how we spend our time.

We do the most time sleeping, or at least some of us.

Some of us catch up on Sundays, which is always fun.

Um, the rest of our time is been doing paid and unpaid work.

And it's so such a big part of how we spend our days that it's actually one of the primary ways we identify ourselves.

When you meet somebody new, our conversations are usually what's your name?

Where are you from?

And what do you do?

How do you spend your days?

How do you spend your energy or your effort?

And yet we don't often talk about work in church.

That's changed in recent years.

I think there's been a number of movements within sort of the academy and churches to talk about faith and work.

Tim Keller's been at the front end of uh so many of those conversations.

But I think over the decades, our neglect of talking about work in church has made it seem like work is not spiritual.

Right?

That it's necessary, we have to do it, but it's not really significant.

It doesn't matter in terms of the kingdom.

And so we will use phrases like we hear all the time that we're working for the weekend, we're counting down the days to retirement, that we suffer a case of the Mondays, or we'll thank God that it's Friday.

And sort of just imagine at times when we think of our ideal worlds or our ideal state of being, we envision oftentimes life without work.

It's like, oh, if I can just get to the day where there is no more work to do.

But the scriptures actually paint a really different picture of work than that.

One that should shape as Christians how we work and why we work.

We're gonna focus on the why today and then we'll talk about the how next week.

But if someone were to ask you, if they were to come up to you and say, hey, tell me, why do you work?

Why do you do what you do?

Why do you spend that many days or hours or that energy or that effort, why do you do that job?

How would you answer?

How would you answer someone like, why do you work?

Why do you why do you even bother to sort of do this?

My first job that I remember as a kid, my have two older brothers, and after they graduated from high school, I took over the local lawn mowing and snow shoveling business.

Um, and so if someone were to ask me, like, as an eight, nine-year-old kid, like, why do you work?

I was like, well, I have to.

This is the family expectation, and I need to buy baseball cards.

Um, so that money has got to come from somewhere.

So I was working out of this sense of obligation to family, and because I had something that I really wanted.

How would you answer?

What does you think about it?

Let's turn to Genesis chapter one.

We're gonna be in verse 26.

We'll spend most of our time in Genesis today.

But Genesis uh chapter one, verse 26 is this.

And then God said, Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us.

Why?

So that they can take charge of the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and the livestock on the earth and all the crawling things on the earth.

Doesn't sound as pretty when I say it.

And then God created humanity in God's own image, in the divine image of God.

He created the male and female.

God created them, and then God blessed them and he said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and then master it and take charge of the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and everything crawling on the ground.

God commands here in Genesis chapter 1, every creature to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

This is a refrain that we see throughout Genesis 1.

Those ideas of be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth are not unique to humans, but he doesn't stop there when it comes to us.

After saying be fruitful and multiply, he gives us two additional commands that are unique to what it means to be human.

He says to master and to take charge.

Other translations will say subdue the earth and have dominion over the other creatures.

Those very commands, those verbs that are used there, suggest that God's good world needed more work.

But there was still stuff to be done in God's good creation.

It gives a sense that it was wild and underdeveloped.

It needed to be tilled and needed to be formed in order to realize its full potential.

The God looked at his creation and thought it needed divine image bearers who would be devoted to his good world's well-being, who would ensure its peace and seek its prosperity.

We see the same image complimentary in Genesis chapter 2, where the Lord God formed the human and settled him in the Garden of Eden to do what?

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

To farm it and to take care of it.

That word farm is the word that we get the word we get the word work or to serve or even to worship.

It's a similar word in Hebrew.

The next word is that the idea here is to cultivate, to care, to tend.

That God needed humans to bring about the garden's fruitfulness.

An idea to take care is to guard or protect.

That God needed people to ensure the garden's safety.

I love how Terrence Fretheim, the former Lutheran scholar, he passed away a few years ago.

He says this he says, from God's perspective, the world needs work.

Development and change are what God intends for it.

And God enlists human beings to that end.

From another angle, we could say it this way: God did not exhaust divine creativity in the first week of the world.

Thank God.

But instead, God continues to create and uses creatures in a vocation that involves the becoming of his creation.

This is what we get to be a part of.

This is part of what it means to be human, to be made in the image of God is in part to work.

And that work in the scriptures is seen as a royal and even sacred activity.

When we approach then the question of work through Genesis 1 and 2, a few things really start to emerge that are very different than how we normally talk about it.

The first one is simply this is that according to Genesis, we were made to work.

And this is how we were designed.

It's not the only thing that we were made for by any means.

We were made for that end, for relationship and love and for worship and for all of those other things.

But there is a part of us that was made to work, and that work shows up before our rebellion.

In other words, work in its original state is a holy calling, not a curse.

It's something holy and beautiful and sacred about it, and not just pastoral work, all work.

All of your work, all of my work, gets seen through this lens.

This is, I think, one of the reasons why retirement and aging can be so challenging.

Is that sometimes in those moments we can begin to question our identity and value.

How is it that we're contributing?

Because there's a part of us as humans that looks to sort of do that.

I remember the last church that I worked at, there was a guy named Scott who just crushed it at business.

And he was in his mid-50s and got to a place where he could retire.

And I was like, Scott, what are you gonna do with your time?

He's like, I'm going fishing.

In the back of my mind, I was like, for 40 years?

Like, that's the plan.

And we had several conversations about it, and that was the only thing you could articulate was I'm going to fish.

One week later, I see him at church after retirement and he goes, I'm done.

Like, I fished for one week and I realized I really like doing it occasionally, but I can't do it all of the time.

And so Scott went and as a business person volunteered at the adult education program at a local university, mentoring small business leaders and entrepreneurs.

And I never saw Scott more alive than when he was doing that.

That all of a sudden he had all these gifts and skills and experiences and he leveraged them in a different way.

Those that oftentimes navigate aging and retirement really well is they find new ways to contribute, new ways to take all that God has given them and to contribute it in a different way, either through unpaid work or volunteer service or just working in a different job in a different way.

We were made to work.

Second thing we see is that our work is meant to reflect God's rule, that as divine image bearers.

We're meant to mirror, reflect what God is like to the rest of the world.

And we're meant to do this in every single way.

And one of the unique things about the Bible is that it depicts God as a worker.

He's a potter and a gardener and a farmer and a shepherd and a teacher and a doctor and a parent and a king and a judge and an architect and a metal worker and a composer and a builder and more.

This is how God is depicted.

And so one of the ways that we mirror or reflect God and who he is is that we mirror or reflect God's work.

We continue what he's doing, we further it, we join him in it.

This is what Jesus was getting at in the gospel reading in John 5 saying, hey, my dad's still working.

And so whatever the Father does, that's what the Son does.

And as followers of Jesus, we say, Well, whatever the Son does, that's what we do as well.

We like to give our lives to those things.

So when we think about who God is and what God does, our work is meant to join him in that.

We are in every way co-workers, collaborators.

We work with him alongside of him toward his ends, toward his goals, toward his dreams, toward his vision of a renewed earth.

So that gets us to that third thing that emerges is that we work for the common goods.

That part of what it means to be human is to work and to reflect God's image.

Well, God's work is always for the benefit of his creation.

And so our work is meant to be for the benefit of others, for the sake of the world, for the sake of other people, for the sake of all creation.

This is what Paul was getting at in our New Testament reading.

He says, so then let's work for the good of all whenever we have the opportunity.

Let's find ways to work for the good of all.

But this, of course, is maybe the primary way that our work has been bent by sin.

This is, I think, maybe most poignantly illustrated just a few chapters later at the Tower of Babel, the Tower of Babylon.

They say this in Genesis chapter 11 that all of humanity is kind of gathering together and they've got these grand dreams.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

And they said to one another, Come, let's build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top into the sky, and let's make a name for ourselves so that we won't be dispersed over all the earth.

Those who are called to be fruitful and to multiply and fill the earth, those called to represent God, those called to make his name known, those called to mirror his image, those called to extend his reign on his behalf, those called to fill the whole earth and to form it through their work, are now employing their strength to create a name for themselves and to keep themselves from being scattered.

In other words, their work has become entirely self-serving.

It is turned in on itself.

And oftentimes that becomes the primary lens for which we view our work.

If we were to answer that question, why do you work?

Oftentimes the answer is limited to ourselves.

That we work because of what it affords, or what it provides for us or for our loved ones, or we work because we get paid or we enjoy it.

And please don't hear me say that those are bad things.

We are meant to enjoy the fruit of our labor as well.

We can see work sometimes as a way to obtain wealth or status or honor or prestige or power.

But whatever we think of it, oftentimes is we think we're just working for ourselves for the benefits that it provides.

Again, it does provide so many good and beautiful benefits.

But I think what happens is that we can very easily lose sight of the bigger picture.

We can lose sight of how our work contributes to the common good of the world.

How it goes not just the benefits for us, but how it can actually benefit others and how it can join Jesus and what he's doing.

And when we lose sight of that, what ends up happening is that in many ways we devalue work in some way.

We start to lose sight of what it's meant for and we begin to devalue it, or we'll devalue certain kinds of work, we'll devalue work that pays less, or we'll devalue work that doesn't personally fulfill us, or we'll devalue work that's hard.

And that can lead us to quiet quick, to quiet quit, to stop giving our whole selves and our best efforts to the work that we're doing, to stop doing things with excellence as a worship to God and a good for other people.

What can happen is we can miss the divine invitation in the present moment of how our labor can worship God and serve others.

Of course, that inward bent doesn't just simply exist within us, it exists within every industry.

It exists within every line of work.

All of them can be distorted in some way, marred by dishonesty, by greed, by injustice, by dehumanizing practices, where they become so focused on the bottom line that we're willing to do what's unethical to get ahead.

We can see that.

Maybe ways you're like, oh, this is the temptation within this line of work.

I love how N.T.

Wright says it.

He says, here's what we need.

We need Christian people to work as healers, as healing judges and prison staff, as healing teachers and administrators, as healing shopkeepers and bankers, as healing musicians and artists, as healing writers and scientists, as healing niblements and politicians.

And we keep going as healing general contractors and mechanics, as healing engineers and electricians, as healing food service providers and customer service workers, as healing parents and healing grandparents, and healing financial professionals and healing farmers and healing caregivers and healing custodians and healing whatever it is that your job is.

We need people who will hold on to Christ firmly with one hand and reach out with the other with wit and skill and cheerfulness and compassion and sorrow and tenderness to the places where our world is in pain.

We need people who will use all their God-given skills, all of those skills, to analyze where things have gone wrong, to come to that place of pain and to hold over the wound the only medicine which will really heal, which is the love of Christ made incarnate and made incarnate in God's people, working everywhere and in every field.

So when you think about your line of work, whether it's your paid line of work or your unpaid line of work, the question that sets before us is how can we bring the healing presence of Jesus to that vocation, to that work, to the people that we interact with in that space?

How can we employ all of our God-given strength to join Jesus in saying, I want to restore this.

I want to see what this looks like when it's more fully shaped by the kingdom of God.

A couple of maybe just some really practical ways to begin before we come to the table.

The first thing I would say is this if that feels overwhelming.

Just begin where you are.

In her beautiful book, Kingdom Calling, Amy Sherman uses the phrase, bloom where you're planted.

We often sort of think that in order to do that, in order to connect our work to God's work, the first thing that we sometimes do is like, we need to change jobs.

I need to, you know, become a pastor.

Maybe, but maybe God has you right where you are for a reason.

Maybe He's given you those passions, those skills, those opportunities, that wiring, your personality, your education, your unique skills and opportunities to have you right where you are, to be an ambassador for the kingdom in that place and in that field.

Maybe begin right where you are.

The second thing I would say is start small.

Sometimes we can sort of look at either the way that we approach our work or look at the industry and like, oh my gosh, it's helpless.

We have to change it all.

We have to change it now.

So show up at work on Monday, you're like, I'm gonna fix it, and start turning tables over, and there's a time for that.

Um, but most of the time it's small changes that are done over a long period of time that can make a really huge difference.

Even just that change of attitude or perspective.

Oh, I was made for this.

Oh, there is a way that I can do good for others here.

Just even that shift can make a huge difference.

Or even just the shift of motivation of saying, I'm not just in this to maximize good for myself and my family, but I'm in this to maximize good for others.

How can I maximize this role for the sake of those that are all around me?

Number three is I would say, pay attention.

Pay attention to those longings, those passions, to the things that you uniquely care about, the things that you're burdened by, the things that you wish that this world was more like the world to come in this particular area.

Amy Sherman calls that the places of our holy disconnect contents.

That might be the place where you might eventually find your vocational sweet spot.

It may not be an immediate change, maybe like stay where you are, small changes, but you might find over the course of time that you are burdened by something in a particular way.

Maybe that is God-given.

And maybe after discerning with other people, you might make a change.

But Frederick Biekner puts it this way: he says, the place that God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

So you're like, I love doing this.

I care so much about this.

I want to give myself to that.

And there's deep hunger there.

There's deep hunger everywhere.

Now I recognize it is not always possible to pursue that.

There are seasons where we have other priorities, other responsibilities, other limitations, other commitments that require us to just simply be present and to be sacrificially faithful in order to meet the needs that are right at hand.

There are times where we are called into really hard kinds of labor, where we find ourselves doing a lot of unseen work that is rather thankless and can often be joyless.

And I want to say if you find yourself in that season, God sees you.

You might be paying attention to all of those things going on inside of you, but know that our Father also pays attention to you in the middle of that.

He sees you and he knows what it's like for you to just faithfully show up and continue to bring all yourself to something that is really hard right now.

The fourth and last thing that will say is to be creative and courageous.

That if you do see an opportunity, if you do think of one, if you find one, or you see, like you look at yourself and you're like, I am uniquely designed to join Jesus for the common good in that field, in that role, in whatever it is.

And you have discerned that in community with others.

Remember, we talked about that a few weeks ago.

You've discerned that with others.

That would encourage you to pursue it, to seek that out for the good of others.

There is something about that creative movement of the spirit that I think is the good and beautiful and true part of the entrepreneurial spirit.

It's like, oh, there's an opportunity, let's go for it in the name of Jesus for the good of others.

And as we come to the table, that we recognize in all of that that our work is simply joining with his.

That he is the great worker.

And he is the one that will bring all those dreams and hopes and longings to completion.

And so let's just take a moment right now and just pause for just a second.

And to remember that we have the ability to work in whatever ways that we're able because we've been given that gift.

God made us to work, He gave us the opportunities and strengths and the skills.

Yes, we've partnered with Him and schooling and everything else.

All things are a gift from Him.

And so, Jesus, we just take a moment to say thank you for the opportunities that we have to join you, and for the opportunity that we have this morning to come back to the table, to remember that everything that we have is a gift.

All that you've entrusted to us has come from you.

You've invited us to steward everything you've given us, including our work, for the good of others and for the glory of God.

And Jesus showed us the way of that.

Even as we come to the table, shape us today.

In your name.

Amen.