Now, as setting the basis and,
in a sense, the framework to our study in the Word of God
this morning, I would ask you to follow as I read Psalm 1 and
then two verses from the Book of Romans. Psalm 1. Blessed is the man that walks
not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law
of the Lord, and on his law does he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted
by the streams of water that brings forth its fruit in its
season, whose leaf also does not wither, and whatsoever he
does shall prosper. The wicked are not so, but are
like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked
shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation
of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of
the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish." And
now Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and two. I beseech you therefore, brethren,
by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service, and
do not be fashioned according to this world but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the
good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Now I would be very surprised
if there is anyone in this building this morning who can hear my
voice with any degree of comprehension who is not aware of the fact
that this day finds us in the middle of the last official summer
holiday, the Labor Day weekend. And because of that fact, we
have some of our own people away seizing this last opportunity
to indulge summer vacationitis. Others are away at the singles
retreat for which we prayed earlier And in the light of these facts,
and in the light of the tremendous necessity to address the subject
I'm going to address this morning, we're going to take a one-week
hiatus from our expositions in 1 Peter, which would find us
beginning verses 4 to 10 of chapter 2. And I want to speak to you
this morning on the very unglamorous but necessary subject, a biblical
perspective of work. and of labor, a biblical perspective
of work and of labor. And I want to begin our consideration
of this practical theme by asking you a very simple question. Do
you know the origins of Labor Day? Now, most of you are going
to be enjoying the holiday on Monday. You would not have a
boss who dared to have you expect you to come to work unless you
were involved in a work of necessity or mercy, but do you know the
origins of Labor Day? If I asked most of you what's
the origin of the Fourth of July holiday, you'd be able to answer
at least somewhat accurately. It had something to do with kicking
old King George in his shins and going off on our own. It
had something to do with our independence. But Labor Day,
where in the world did it come from? Well, don't feel so bad
if you don't know, because I didn't know until I did some research
in preparation for today's message. I was fascinated by the thought,
here I've been celebrating this thing for six decades, and I
don't have a clue how it got started. Well, it doesn't have
the most glamorous origins. If you were to look up the smallest
article in your Encarta encyclopedia with your Microsoft software,
you would find out that this holiday, a legal holiday celebrated
on the first Monday in September in the United States, Puerto
Rico, the Canal Zone, and the Virgin Islands. It is supposedly
an honor of the working class, whatever that class is. The rest
of you, I don't know what you are if you're not part of the
working class. And it was initiated in 1882
by a group called the Knights of Labor. Not N-I-G-H-T, but
K-N-I-G-H-T-S. Knights of Labor. Now when you
think of a knight, kids, what do you think about? Think about
the guy in his armor and a lance and a sword. You think of someone
going out to battle. A knight is not a salesman. He's
not performing a service. He's a warrior. And this group
named themselves the Knights or the Warriors of Labor. And
they were warriors indeed. And they held a large parade
in New York City. And in 1884, they held that parade
on the first Monday in September and passed a resolution within
their own ranks, which at one point swelled to 700,000 members.
that the first Monday in September would be designated Labor Day. And they began to agitate very
feverishly until the legislatures in Colorado, followed by New
York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey established the first
Monday in September as a special holiday. And then in 1894, the
U.S. Congress caved in to the pressure
and established it as a legal holiday. So for 104 years, we've
had Labor Day, fundamentally because of the agitations of
a group called the Knights of Labor. Now these Knights of Labor,
as I say, were a very militant group. At first, they were a
secret society, and they had their mystic rituals, and they
had a very socialistic philosophy of how society should operate. They wanted to have their ranks
filled only with those of the industrial and agricultural enterprises,
and they envisioned a society that would be owned and operated
by the workers, the farmers, the clerks, and the technicians
who constituted that society. If you were a lawyer, a banker,
a professional gambler, or a stockholder, you couldn't belong to the Knights
of Labor. Now, from those very radical
beginnings, there began a labor movement that eventually agitated
our national life to such an extent that between the years
of 1886 and 1887, that year, they estimate there were over
3,000 strikes. So you see something of the pressure
that was being exerted. Now, why do I tell you this?
Just to give you a nice little tidbit of information? No. It
illustrates the very rationale for our study in the scriptures
this morning. The knights of labor had some
very distinct and very strongly held views about the subject
of labor and of work. They held those views so strongly
that they organized themselves into a very powerful power block
to impose those views upon an entire nation. Now, were those
views biblical? If they were not, Psalm 1 has
something to say about them. Blessed is the man, blessed are
the men, blessed the women, blessed the nation that in its views
and perspectives on work and labor does not walk in the counsel
of the ungodly. nor sit in the seat of scoffers,
nor stand in the way of sinners, but have views of work and labor
molded by the Word of God. And especially to those of us
who name the name of Christ, the mandate of Romans 12 comes
very, very clearly to us. We are not to be conformed to
this age. We are not to have views of work
and labor that reflect necessarily the origins of the so-called
labor movement and the contemporary perspectives of the heirs of
the knights of labor. That's the various trade unions
in existence today. But according to Romans 12, we
are not to be fashioned according to this world, but be transformed
how? by the renewing of our minds,
by coming to a biblical perspective concerning anything and everything
that touches our lives as the people of God. And so this morning
I want to set before you in what can only be a cursory study a
biblical perspective of work and of labor. And how will I
attempt to do this? I will attempt to do it by setting
this subject in that three-fold category into which we must place
all of the issues concerning which we desire to think biblically. We want to look at labor in relationship
to creation, to the fall, and to redemption. We want to ask
three questions concerning the subject of work and of labor. Question one, What were things
like when they came from the hand and mouth of God in His
original creative work? What was work and labor to be
when God made Adam and Eve and placed them in His world? That's
viewing the subject of labor in the light of creation. The
second question we need to ask is, what happened when sin intruded
itself into the human condition? When sin came into the human
condition, what did it do to the whole issue of work and of
labor? Does the Bible tell us? And then
the third question is, what has God done to this thing called
work and labor in His great work of redeeming grace and mercy? And so we're going to look then
at the subject of labor and work in the light of creation, fall,
and redemption. Consider with me first of all
then the duty of labor in creation, Then we'll look at the disruption
of labor through the fall and then the deliverance of, not
the deliverance from, but the deliverance of labor in redemption. So the duty, the disruption,
and the deliverance of work and labor. First of all then, the
duty of labor in creation. Turn with me please to Genesis
chapter 1. Here in Genesis 1, we have the
overall account of God's creative activity, culminating in the
first three verses of chapter 2. God completes His work of
creation in six days of creative activity, and it is on the sixth
day that we read in verse 26 of Genesis 1, And God said, Let
us make man in our image, after our likeness. and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the
heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. And God created
man in his own image, in the image of God created he him,
male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God
said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish 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 upon the earth." Now, what does this tell us about
the place of labor in the original creative activity and purpose
of God? Well, note the emphasis found
in these words. Adam and Eve are to be fruitful
and multiply and replenish or fill the earth. As an outgrowth
of fulfilling the creative mandate, the reproductive mandate, be
fruitful and multiply, they were to fill the earth. This mandate
given to our first parents involved filling the earth. Now think
for a moment. Had sin not entered, and there
developed from our first father and mother, dozens and hundreds
and thousands of human beings, what would filling the earth
involve? It would involve the labors in
conjunction with provision for the growing human family. The organization of that human
family into harmonious groupings so that interaction would be
efficient, so that there would be a multiplication of the gifts
and the talents and their proper use in the world that God had
made. so that in replenishing or filling
the earth, those labors associated with architecture, construction
skills, carpentry, if there's a river that must be crossed,
someone must design a bridge, just let your mind ramble for
a little bit as to the pregnancy of that directive to fill the
earth. Whatever it would involve of
these various things in its particulars, surely it involved labor, concentrated
labor of mind and of body, and the engagement of all of the
faculties given to man as an image-bearer of God. Furthermore,
the first pair are commanded not only to replenish or fill
the earth, but to subdue it. To subdue it. Now remember, there
was nothing hostile in the world. There was no evil present in
the world. But God says they were to subdue
it. They were to harness all of its
inherent powers and potentials to their service, as they in
turn were the servants of God, seeking to glorify God in His
creation. God did not send down, with His
creative activity, a complete manual of physics. He did not
give to Adam all of the principles involved in the natural world. He gave to him a mind and the
capacity to observe and analyze and to break down these things
into their inherent laws and principles as God had woven them
into the very texture of his world. But Adam and Eve are commanded
to subdue the earth. This would involve labor. They
were not simply to sit back and wait for God to send down an
angel and to break down the natural sciences for them. That was to
be their privilege, to explore God's world with a view to harnessing
all of its potential to the service and to the glory of God. And
furthermore, they were to exercise dominion over every living thing. And God is very clear. that they
were to exercise dominion, verse 28, over the fish of the sea,
the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that
moves upon the earth, and contrary to modern environmentalism that
says there is as in much intrinsic worth in some salamander that
may be extinct as there is in the fetus in a mother's womb,
God never created His world with that kind of egalitarian theology. Man was to subdue all of the
creation, not exploit it, not rape it, but to subdue it to
his own service and exercise dominion over every living thing. A massive task. taking again
within its orbit a host of disciplines in the mind and the body of man,
so that labor and work are not a result of the curse. They are
the mandates of a gracious, loving, wise Creator God. And God no sooner makes the first
pair, but that He makes it abundantly clear that in His world in fellowship
with Him, they are to glorify Him in the accomplishment of
the assigned tasks. Now when we come to Genesis 2,
what we have is God's zoom lens on particulars about the creation
of the man and the woman that are not given to us in chapter
1. You do not have two conflicting creation accounts by two different
authors. You have one author, God. One
human penman, Moses. And what you have in Genesis
2 is God takes the zoom lens and zooms in on the particular
place in which he's going to put man and woman, and the particulars
of how he actually created the male and female. And so in Genesis
chapter 2, in the midst of that zoom lens picture of the creation
of the man and the woman, we read in verse 15, and the Lord
God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress
it and to keep it. Perhaps the best contemporary
rendering of the original is to work it and to take care of
it. He did not put him into the garden,
according to the text, to observe it and observing the wonder and
the beauty of God's creation to worship. Though that certainly
undergirds the entire teaching of the Word of God with respect
to God's creation revealing His glory and man's responsibility
in perceiving that glory to honor and glorify God. Romans 1 shows
that men are condemned when they do not give God glory in terms
of what they see in His creation. But that's not what the Holy
Spirit has emphasized. It emphasizes that God took the
man, put him into the garden to work it and to take care of
it. Now remember, Genesis 1 says,
God beheld all that he made and it was very good. There were
no weeds, no thorns, no destructive insects, no ladybugs to eat the
vegetables. Not ladybugs, Japanese beetles. Ladybugs are good. They eat the
bad bugs. But no destructive bugs. no weeds,
no thorns, no thistles, but what God made was so pregnant with
life that one author described it, there would be an exuberant
disorder. I call it a prodigality of productivity. So profuse! And I never cease
to be amazed at this, even in a cursed world. When I see all
of the little polynoses that fall down from our oak tree,
And all of the tens, tens of, not tens of, yeah, probably if
not tens of thousands, thousands upon thousands of acorns that
fall from our one tree. It's losing business to try to
keep a neat lawn under that oak tree. I mean the squirrels are
burying stuff all summer, digging stuff up all the next winter
and into the next fall. It's amazing. There is a prodigality
of productivity. And God did not make His world
such that the trees, the fruit trees, would be self-pruning. No, He didn't. Adam would have
to prune them. He would have to work it and
take care of it. And though the soil was perfectly
yielding, it would still have to be turned over for the next
crop. Adam was placed into the garden
to stave it crassly to work. to work, to work it, and to take
care of it. The flowers would not be self-arranging. I like to think of Eve over his
shoulder, a help answering to his need, and Adam scratching
his head and saying, I just don't think that those quite, and she
said, honey, the way they fit is, oh, that's right, the woman's
good. a helper answering to his need,
bringing her own unique aesthetic sensitivities to Adam as he fulfills
his task and with Eve at his side, a helper answering to his
needs. They were placed there to work
and to labor, not only to worship and to adore, but to labor to
the glory of God. And look at verses 19 and 28. And out of the ground the Lord
formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens,
and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them.
And whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was
the name thereof. And the man gave names to all
the cattle, and to the birds of the heaven, and to every beast
of the field." Now remember what you've been taught in the past
about the significance of names in the Hebrew setting. when Moses
writes that Adam named them, and later on you find him naming
Eve. He just didn't think, well, what
will sound nice? No, Adam was given the privilege
of looking at and analyzing and expressing invocables. What language he spoke we don't
know, but he was expressing invocables that would be the outward expression
of the perception of the particular function and the unique and distinctive
traits of this animal and this animal. And what's amazing is
God apparently approved of all that he did, because the text
says that whatever the man called them, that was its name. God
didn't have to say, now look at them, you've got nine out
of ten, but I think you blew it with this one. You ought to
call the elephant a giraffe. You ought to call the donkey
an ox. No, whatever he named them, for
remember, the tremendous intellectual powers that must have been present
before sin entered. a perfect sensitivity to the
aesthetics of the way the animals are made. And as Adam gave himself
to what, in my judgment, is the highest form of his intellectual
activity in the Genesis account, there was nothing physical in
this activity. Keeping the garden, dressing
the gardens, subduing the earth, physical and intellectual, but
here was a primarily, almost exclusively, intellectual labor. Is there enough thought of that? I can't read you. You're all
sitting there. I think you're listening, but I don't know if
I'm communicating. Are you getting excited about
this? I hope you are. That's what man was when he came
from the hand of God. Intellectual labor of the most
arduous kind is not a curse. Any more than physical labor
of the most arduous kind is to be considered a curse. This is
the world over which God said, it is all good. And when he was
done, he said, it's very good. And when God rested, God sabbathed,
he did so to stand back, as it were, fold his arms, admire his
work. And then we read, behold, all
that he made was very good. work and labor in the original
creation. And one thing should be clear
to us from this cursory examination of these passages, that Adam
and Eve were not only made that they might, in the place of God's
appointment, look up into the face of their Creator God in
delightful communion with Him, and look out and see His world
and praise Him for the abundant provision that He made for them.
They were not only to look up in direct communion and worship
and look out and reflecting or seeing the reflected glory of
God in His creation, praise and worship Him. They would look
down at their feet at the task before them. And for Adam and
Eve in a state of innocency, Labor was no more a task and
a burden than breathing. It was all part of a life lived
in its totality before the face of God, in delightful communion
with God, in the joyful realization of the presence of God. This
was man as he came from the hand of his God. It's interesting,
you see, as we think, well then how in the world could things
be what they now are? Where labor in so many ways is
a tragedy. Physical and mental labor is
at times so excruciatingly painful and we have such an aversion.
You remember what Jesus did with a question about the institution
of marriage that goes all the way back to creation? Remember
what he said in Matthew 19? He said, from the beginning it
was not so. They were saying, look, if marriage
is such a wonderful institution, what about divorce? And what
about infidelity? And what about the disruption
of relationships? Jesus took them where? Back to
creation. He said, have you never read,
in the beginning? Go back to Genesis. See what God intended the institution
to be. We need to do the same thing
with the subject of work and of labor. Don't try to understand
it in terms of what it now is. Go back and see what it once
was and what God intended it to be. Well, that's a brief consideration
of the duty of labor in creation. Now, secondly, consider with
me the disruption of labor because of the fall. And you see, this
is why people who deny biblical revelation, believe that man
is simply the product of this brute force upon these material
substances and he's just evolved somewhere, somehow or another,
over some indefinite period of time. They can't think straight
about labor because they've rejected the biblical doctrine of creation.
And furthermore, they have no biblical doctrine of the fall.
You can't understand what labor is unless you understand that
man is not now what he once was. And so the scripture gives us
in chapter 3 of Genesis the tragic account of the fall of man. Verses
1 to 7 tell us of the temptation of the woman, then the man, the
man's willful disobedience. Then beginning in verse 8 we
have the account of God coming to the man and the woman in grace
and in judgment. God takes the initiative to come
to man who is turned away from Him. God seeks him out. And as God seeks him out, then
He begins to deal with the major players in this whole tragic
event of the fall. And so in verse 14, God speaks
to the serpent. And the Lord God said to the
serpent. And He pronounces a curse upon
the serpent, And as a little aside, never forget that verse
15, the first gospel promise is spoken directly to the serpent.
God sticks it to the devil. It's an amazing thing. I read
that for years and just never paused and contemplated. The
first word of gospel promise is spoken to the serpent, the
devil. And God says, I'm going to mess
up the alignments that my creature, Adam, has made with you. And
he says to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the
woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your
head, and you will bruise his heel. God says, I'm going to
undo your horrible, nefarious work in my creatures, and your
head is eventually going to be crushed. And that gospel promise
flowers out in the rest of scripture. But now he turns from the serpent
in verses 14 and 15, and he speaks then to the woman, verse 16.
"'Unto the woman,' he said." Then, in verse 17, he addresses
Adam. "'And unto Adam,' he said." Now
notice, here is God dealing in grace and in judgment, particularly
with the man. And notice how much the issue
of labor enters into what God says. And unto Adam he said,
Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife, and have
eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat
it, cursed is the ground for your sake. on account of you,
Adam, and your sin, the ground that up till now has been nothing
but part of this blessed creation, it will be cursed for your sake. In toil, in sorrowful toil, you
shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles
shall it bring forth to you, and you shall eat the herb of
the field, in the sweat of your face shall you eat bread, till
you return unto the ground, for out of it you were taken, for
dust you are, and unto dust you shall return." What is God saying? The ground will be cursed because
of man's sin, and what will some of the results be? First of all,
there will be in connection with this an increase. There will be painful toil in
connection with its increase for the rest of Adam's life.
Cursed is the ground for your sake in toil, painful toil. Some would translate it in sorrowful
toil. So to the concept of toil is
added an element of discomfort that causes grief and sorrow
and pain. Cursed is the ground, in toil
you shall eat of it all the days of your life." Adam, this condition
is going to obtain throughout the entirety of your life. Secondly,
there will be unyielding elements that must be overcome. There
will be elements introduced, forms and thistles shall it bring
forth unto you. There were no forms or thistles
until now. The earth was perfectly yielding.
Adam had to dress the garden and keep it. Yes, but as I sought
to emphasize, it was not because of any negative influences. Now
those influences are present. Thorns and thistles shall it
bring forth to you. God makes it personal. Every
time you see the weeds and the thorns and the thistles, see
a finger pointing in your face as part of Adam's fallen race,
bring forth to you. And then God goes on to say, and you shall eat the herb of
the field. I'm not sure of the exact significance of that. I've
checked the number of several of the commentators. None are
agreed, so I pass over it. But verse 19 is clear. In the
sweat of your face, notice, shall you eat bread till you return
to the ground, for out of it you are taken and unto dust. you shall return." What is God
saying here? God is saying, in the sweat of
your face you'll eat your bread. Your toil will be a part of your
life. Even when you sit down to eat
your bread, the reminders of the toil that had to go into
the labor that would enable you to eat your bread, it will accompany
you. Your sweat drops will fall off your head and into your plate
and be absorbed by your bread. This is what God is saying to
Adam. And remember, this is because of the intrusion of sin into
the human condition. And he says, this will obtain
not until you're 65 or 62 and take early retirement. This is
going to be your life until you go back to dust. That's what
he says. You shall eat of it all the days
of your life. Thorns and thistles will bring
forth to you. In the sweat of your face you'll
eat bread till you return to the ground. Thus you are, and to dust you
will return. Sin has radically disrupted the
nature of labor. It has introduced elements never
attended by God in the original creation. But these are the realities
that are with us until God releases the earth from the curse, cursed
for man's sake. And it will not be released,
according to Romans 8, until the manifestation of the sons
of God. That is, at Christ's second coming, when He gives
to all of His redeemed their resurrection bodies, then the
Apostle says this earth itself shall be delivered from the bondage
of corruption. It was made subject to vanity
on account of man's sin. But at the coming of the Lord
Jesus, that curse will be released. The Lord Jesus will usher in
the new heavens and the new earth, and it will be paradise regained,
and that forever. But until then, this is the real
situation in which labor is to be carried on. All of its dignity
as seen in creation is now conditioned by these negative influences
introduced as a result of the fall of man. Therefore, it should
not surprise us when we read our Bibles from Genesis 3 onward
to see that many sins recorded in the Bible, identified, condemned,
illustrated, are sins in conjunction with labor. You read on a bit
in the book of Genesis, and you find in Genesis 31, one of the
complaints of Jacob to his uncle Laban. He says, Ten times you
changed my wages. Why did he do that? Because he's
a sinner, trying to exploit someone else who's laboring for him.
And you find that all the way in the New Testament. James speaks
to these employers who are withholding legitimate wages from their employees
and he says, the cry of the laborers has come into the ears of the
Lord of armies. God is concerned with equity
in the workplace. You turn to the book of Proverbs.
And you find six references to the slugger, eleven references
to the slothful and slothfulness, seven references to diligence
in labor, add them up and you come up with two dozen explicit
references to a work ethic. Most of it in condemnation of
the sin of laziness and idleness and slothfulness. and the absence
of diligence. Why was that necessary? It was
necessary because Solomon was the realist who understood that
he was writing to men in a fallen condition in whom the original
purpose of God with respect to labor and to work had been greatly
marred and crippled because of the intrusion of sin. We learn
from this that in this world, until we die, our labor personally
will be tinged with sorrow. There will be unyielding elements
that will make it difficult. But that refusal to labor is
sin of a most serious nature, so serious that according to
2 Thessalonians 3, 6-14, it can be the occasion of church discipline.
It is laziness that is identified as disorderliness that warrants
church discipline, and Jesus, in the Day of Judgment, according
to Matthew 25-26, will condemn some people to hell for being
lazy. Thou wicked and slothful servant. My friends, it's not a matter
of indifference that you have a biblical perspective on work
and labor. and that that perspective percolates
down into your life and into your practice. Well, we looked
at the duty of labor in creation, the disruption of labor as a
result of the fall. Now then, thirdly, let's consider
the deliverance of labor in redemption. The deliverance of labor, not
the deliverance from labor. And I want you to note with me
five passages of scripture, and I want you, as we work through
them, and I'll give a very brief exposition, to try to catch the
common denominators, because once we've gone through these
passages, I want to identify four of the major leading emphases
of these passages. The first one is Romans chapter
12 and verse 11. Remember the overall context? Paul has been expounding the
salvation that God brings to sinners in Christ, and in the
light of that great salvation, chapters 1 to 11, He entreats
these Christians to present themselves living sacrifices unto God. Not to be fashioned according
to the world, but transformed by the renewing of their mind
with a view to proving in their experience the good, acceptable,
and perfect will of God. Now he's going to descend into
particulars. And in the midst of this collage of particulars,
in Romans 12, in verse 11, we have a trilogy of concerns that
relate directly to what we would call a redemptive work ethic. How a man or woman, boy or girl,
redeemed by the mercies of God should think and act with respect
to his work and labor. Indiligence, not slothful. Fervent in spirit, serving the
Lord. Here in the most terse Reduced
language, we have a compendium of a biblical theology of labor. Notice the emphasis of the text.
As to diligence, Paul says, not slow, idle, or lazy. Your performance should be marked
by diligence in contrast to idleness and laziness, and that ought
to be observable to all who assess you with any degree of accuracy.
That has to do with your actual performance. Indiligence, not
slow, idle, or lazy. But what about the internal attitude?
Look at the text. With respect to diligence, not
lazy, slothful, indolent. with respect to your spirit,
your internal disposition, fervent, literally boiling in spirit. In other words, your heart and
your soul are engaged in that which you are doing with diligence. True diligence is traced to its
root in the spirit, the human spirit, not referring to the
Holy Spirit, but with respect to your own spirit boiling And
then look at the last words, serving the Lord. What is the
ultimate reference point in your work ethic? It's the realization
that you are Christ's bond slave. This enslaving to the Lord would
be a literal rendering. You recognize that in being an
adopted son or daughter, and having all the liberty of filial
access to God through Christ, you are nonetheless Christ's
willing and joyful bond slave. and you recognize in your legitimate
calling the will of God in Christ for you, and you see beyond your
job, beyond your paycheck, beyond your boss, and you see Christ
Himself who has conscripted you to that task, and you are His
bond slave, as with respect to diligence, not lazy or indolent,
with respect to your own spirit, boiling with the engagement of
your whole being. and your ultimate reference point
is Christ Himself. Second passage, Ephesians 4,
28. And I do this flyover to let you see how critical this
must be to the thinking of the Apostle that he should include
it in so many of his letters to the young churches. Ephesians
4, verse 28. Briefly, the context is His instruction
concerning what it means no longer to walk as the heathen or the
Gentiles walk. Verse 17, This I say therefore
and testify in the Lord that you no longer walk as the Gentiles
walk in the vanity of their mind. He said you're to walk in terms
of what you are. You've been created anew in Christ
Jesus, in righteousness and holiness. Now you're to walk in a way that
reflects what you are. And now He descends to particulars.
And in verse 28, Let him that stole, steal no more, but rather
let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good,
in order that he may have whereof to give to him who has need. The negative, don't acquire necessities
or luxuries by theft. Don't be a thief of another's
goods, another's time, another's money. Don't acquire anything
by means of thievery. Now, he's writing to people who
lived in a society that didn't think this was a big deal, so
he had to tell them, stop this. No longer walk in this pattern.
Let him that stole, stop his stealing. But rather, let him
labor And the verb here is not just the ordinary word for labor,
it's kapiapo, labor unto toiling and painful labor. This is labor
hard. Let him labor, working with his
hands, that is, working with his own abilities and capacities,
the thing that is good. There's the qualification. People
say, well, any calling sanctified and given to God is noble. Not
every calling. If you were the professional
gambler, you'd have to leave your trade. If you were a go-go dancer, you'd
have to leave your trade. You have a trade that in its
very essence is a living, standing, clenched fist in the face of
God's moral law where exploitation, and immorality are part and parcel
of that trade, you've got to leave it. You see, Paul is assuming
that when he says, let him labor working with his hands the thing
that is good, it is a morally, ethically defensible sphere of
endeavor. And he says you're to work now,
to what end? Not simply to have your own needs
met in an honorable way, but he goes beyond that. work to
the extent that having met the modicum of your own needs, you'll
have a surplus to give to others. You'll be like the God who has
given of his only begotten Son. That's the work ethic in Ephesians
4, but look how it advances when we come to chapter 6. And here
he is speaking to slaves, people who are regarded as the
property of another. And notice what he says to these
slaves in verses 5 to 8 of chapter 6. Slaves, bond servants, be
obedient to them that according to the flesh are your masters,
with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto Christ,
not in a way of eye service as men pleasers, but as servants
of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill
doing service as unto the Lord, and not unto men, knowing that
whatsoever good thing each one does, the same shall he receive
again from the Lord, whether he be bond or free." Do you see
the Christ-centeredness of this work ethic four times in this
brief passage? He says, as unto Christ, as servants
of Christ, as unto the Lord, receiving from the Lord, Now
who were these people? They were slaves. We would say
they had the least desirable occupational framework imaginable. Now don't assume that their masters
were all cruel and unreasonable. If they were Christian masters,
they wouldn't remain members in good standing of a Christian
church after Paul wrote this epistle because in verse 9 he
gives directives to the masters and how they are to treat their
slaves. And they are to remember they
have a master in heaven, but we're focusing upon the work
ethic as he lays it upon these slaves. It is to be unto Christ,
as servants of Christ, as unto the Lord. What a revolutionary
perspective. You see, Adam labored as unto
his God, whom he knew as creator, as benefactor, as loving father,
for Adam is called the Son of God. Adam labored in fellowship
with the God whom he knew as Creator, Sustainer, Provider,
and Loving Father. But he did not know Him as Redeemer.
And here are these slaves. They've been redeemed by the
pouring out of the life of the Son of God, as he says in chapter
5. Christ loved the church. gave
himself for the church that he might sanctify it and present
it to himself. And now Paul comes to these slaves
and says, look, you have been apprehended by the Lord of glory
who came in saving mercy by way of Mary's womb. He was immolated
upon the cross for you. He suffered under the wrath of
God for you. He was raised from the dead for
you. And He has come and laid hold
of you in grace and mercy now as you work in the same setting
for the same Master, perhaps doing the same humdrum tasks. Can you see how revolutionary
this was? He now tells them, now that you're
saved, slaves, Obey your masters. And how are you to do it? With
fear and trembling. That doesn't mean the fear and
trembling of someone who's afraid he's going to get caught in some
wretched, immoral deed. No. But with the concentration
of all of your faculties upon the seriousness of your present
position in singleness of heart as unto Christ. Not in a way
of eye service. You look beyond your Master and
whether or not He will smile and He will say, well done. That's
being a mere man pleaser. But as the servant of Christ,
you are not just your Master's bond slave. You have been the
purchased slave of Christ Himself. He, the gracious Master who loved
you and died for you, who continues to nurture you and cherish you,
as He says in chapter 5, you are to fix in the mind's eye
that it is Christ who is your ultimate Master, as the servants
of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. What was
the will of God? Going to a mission field for
these slaves? No! Listening to the Master's orders. and meticulously obeying them. That was the will of God for
them. That was the will of God for them. And He says, you do
that will of God, how? From the heart, literally from
the soul. What a revolutionary concept.
not grudging, external, minimal obedience to the Master's directives,
but whole-souled engagement with fear and troubling as unto Christ,
with goodwill doing service as unto the Lord. Someone says,
well, I want to get out of my secular employment so I can serve
the Lord. That isn't what Paul says. He
says, you slaves, you're serving the Lord in obeying your masters. That's what he tells me. You're
serving the Lord. And then he goes on to say, you're
to do this knowing that whatever good thing each one does, and
what is a good thing? It's doing what he has just prescribed. Doing your work in the framework
of your Master's directives with fear and trembling as unto the
Lord, not with eye service. Doing it with all of your soul.
That's the good thing that you need to know, will be rewarded
in the reward of grace. The same shall he receive again
from the Lord, whether he be bond or free. In other words,
these directives apply not just to slaves, but to free men as
well. That's a radical work ethic,
isn't it? That's what redemption does to
work and to labor. It elevates it into the whole
context of redemptive grace and redemptive obligation. Quickly
now, Colossians 3. In the interest of time, I'll
just pass over this passage quickly. It's very parallel to the Ephesians
passage, verse 22. Servants obey in all things those
that are your masters according to the flesh. not with eye service
as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. See
the many echoes of the Ephesian letter. Whatsoever you do, work
heartily, literally, from the soul, as unto the Lord and not
unto men, knowing that from the Lord you shall receive the recompense
of the inheritance. You are serving the Lord Christ."
Again, a radical concept. And when we come to 1 Thessalonians
4, 11 and 12, we have a similar exhortation. They are to strive
eagerly for something. And what is it? Not to have an
exciting life with all kinds of new things. And he said, no,
you're to strive to live a life in quietness. Give yourself to
your legitimate labor. To what end? He gives two ends
that they are to have in view. And I want to just note those.
in verse 12 of 1 Thessalonians 4, that you may walk becomingly
to them that are without and may have need of nothing. He
said the goal in view is that you may have a credible witness
with the unsaved and that your legitimate needs may be met legitimately. Now, if you take all these passages
and put them together and say what are the major strands of
emphasis, I think your judgment will be carried when I say The
Word of God teaches that in the orbit of redemptive grace, our
labor should be pervasively Christ-focused. Pervasively Christ-focused activity. You see, Paul does not just occasionally
say, Oh, by the way, the Lord is there with you and think.
No, as unto the Lord, from the Lord, to the Lord, from the Lord. There is to be a pervasive Christ-focused
focus in our labor. Secondly, our labor should be
a heart-engaging activity, singleness of heart, from the soul, your
spirit boiling. We are not simply to trudge through
the motions of our legitimate sphere of labor, whether it's
the shop, the office, or whether it's the kitchen and the bedroom,
the dining room, the living room. Our labor should not only be
pervasively Christ-focused, heart-engaging, but result-oriented. Yes, it's
right to have a result-oriented work ethic. He says that you
may provide for yourself, that you may have to give to others,
that you may have a good testimony. It is right to think of those
specific results. The Word of God mandates them,
and it is to be reward-motivated. He says, knowing you will receive
the reward, the recompense of the inheritance, you know that
there will be the reward of grace for the good that is done. I
ask you sitting here this morning as a Christian, can you say that
this past week in your place of employment, not perfectly,
but the baseline ethos of your labor was one that was pervasively
Christ-focused? heart-engaging, result-oriented,
reward-motivated. You see how such a perspective
governing your attitudes and actions in respect to labor will
indeed cause you to be light and salt in this particular generation? That regards labor by and large
as a necessary evil to get to where the real action is, and
that's recreation. Shorter work week. Higher wages. Why? So we can have more fun
on extended weekends. Because the real action is the
fun, not the labor. And if you have this biblical
work ethic, don't let anyone call it the Protestant work ethic.
It's a biblical work ethic. You'll be light and soft in this
crooked and perverse generation. I don't often share personal
incidents. When I do, a number of you usually say, please do
that more. I shall never forget in the summer
of 1954 when dad moved the family from Stanford, Connecticut to
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Because he'd already been transferred
there as an executive, he asked me, I was in the midst of college,
and he said, son, would you oversee the move? Well, with all the
batch of kids they had in the house they'd lived in for all
those years, that was no little undertaking, so I oversaw the
move. And I had a month left at the
end of the summer, and I was working my way through college.
And I said, Dad, any chance you'd get me a job at Chick for one
month? I can't go out and get hired out any other place for
a month. He said, well, we'll see what we can do. He said,
I'll speak to the maintenance manager. So he came back home,
and he said, yeah, they'll hire you. Well, you know what my job
was for a month? I don't know if they have them anymore. They
used to have these big cans full of sand, and people put their
cigarette butts in them. My job was to go around with
a little sieve shake out the sand, get the cigarette butts
out, and go in the bathrooms and clean the urinals and the
toilets. It was the most mundane form of labor. But I used to
go around singing hymns, and I used to sift out the cigarette
butts as unto the Lord, and seek to get out those butts as thoroughly
as though the Lord Jesus were going to expect a sand can when
I was done, and clean the urinals that if the Son of God came in
to use one, he would not be offended. Often singing a hymn to myself,
humming a hymn, I'd have people say, what in the world are you
so happy for doing this kind of work? Well, that's like saying
sick unto a bulldog. And I'd tell them why I was so
happy, that I was a child of the king, doing the king's business. I might not say it in those words,
I'm using that, but it gave a marvelous opportunity to bear witness to
who and what I was as a Christian, that I could clean urinals and
sift out cigarette butts with joy and do it from the heart
with a boiling spirit. That's what God calls you to
do in the drudgery of that housework, housewife. In the drudgery of
that miserable commute, Mr. Businessman. In the drudgery,
in the humdrum, You serve the Lord Christ! May God grant that
this will so grip us that our light and our salt will be brighter
and tastier because we see that laziness or mere external performance
without the heart or diligent performance that only terminates
on the boss's eye and on the paycheck falls far short of that
to which God calls us as those who bear the name of Christ. What about those of you who are
not Christians? And if you children are not sure
where you are spiritually, do you see why mom and dad won't
let you buy into the notion of so many of your peers that unless
it's fun, it's dirty? I get so sick and tired of this
idea that we've got to persuade kids that what we're asking them
to do is fun. This life ain't all fun and games,
kids. God puts you in His world to
labor to His glory. And that labor's going to have
sweat drops on it. And the thing in which you're
laboring will often be unyielding. This is a cursed world! And no
amount of American affluence and ingenuity and the plethora
of games and trinkets can change the fact that cursed is the ground
for man's sake. And thorns and thistles it's
going to bring forth to us and in the sweat of our brow we're
going to eat our bread until we go back to dust. And I plead
with you children to thank God for parents who seek to inculcate
in you a biblical perspective about the nobility of work and
of labor. As you think of going back to
school, sure your teachers want to make the subject as interesting
as possible. They want to get you enthusiastic
about the subject, but at the end of the day, you've got to
learn your conjugations. You've got to know the difference
between a subjunctive and a past tense. It's not if I was a rich
man, even Octavian knew better if I were a rich man. He knew
the difference between the past tense and the subjunctive. There's
no way to make that such fun that you don't have to bend your
brain to learn it. We've got a whole crop of uneducated
people carrying around degrees that can't even use the multiplication
tables. Because people bought into the
notion there's no way to make learning. 7 times 7 equals 49? Make it fun! Fun! Fun! Don't buy into it, dear people.
It'll be the death now of rearing a generation who'll count for
anything. What about you who sit here and
are unconverted? One of the texts that gripped
me afresh in preparation was Proverbs 21.4, where it says,
even the plowing of the wicked is sin. The wicked man must plow
because God commands him to plow. But even his plowing is sin. Why? Because he doesn't plow
to God's glory. out of a motive of love to God
in Christ. He doesn't plow with the biblical
perspective shaping the way and the reason why he puts his hand
to the plow. They that are in the flesh cannot
please God. Why ought you to become a Christian?
May I give you a very crassly practical reason, if for no other
reason, so you can work and not have your work sin. Yeah,
you heard me right. So you can work and not have
your very work be sin. The plowing of the wicked is
sin. That's what the scripture says. I didn't write it. The Bible
says that. You say, I don't like that. I work hard. I work. Yes, yes, you do. But why do
you work? What's the terminus of all your
engagements and your labors and your efforts? If it is not to
glorify God out of gratitude for His salvation in Christ,
you work to an end that runs cross-purposes to the revealed
will of God. It's a wonderful thing to be
able to appeal to sinners to repent and to believe the gospel
for all kinds of reasons. The reason this morning is so
that your work might no longer be seen, but might be part of
that spiritual sacrifice that you offer unto God, acceptable
to Him through the Lord Jesus. And I'd like you and your little
groups together to start rethinking a lot of things that are part
and parcel of our American way of life. The pressure for a 35-hour
week, justify it from the Bible. Forced retirement at 65, justify
it from the Bible. Change of careers may be necessary,
but the idea of retirement in which you hoard up your money
to spend it on the golf course and going to the Bahamas, show
me from this book. My Bible says, all the days of
thy life, and consistent with waning physical powers and job
opportunities, I'm not being legalistic and saying if you
retire at 65 you're sitting. No, don't anyone say I said that.
I'm saying we must rethink this whole mentality that I work till
65 and then I take it easy and have my heaven on earth. No,
my Bible says, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from
henceforth, and they rest from their labors. You rest from your
labors when you die. As long as you're here, you have
a labor to accomplish. Consistent with your physical
and mental powers, with opportunity, yes, all of those variables,
but you must view yourself as a laborer till you go to your
eternal Sabbath. Well, we've covered a lot of
material. You've been attentive. I trust God will bless these
meditations and God will help us as his people to think about
this biblical matter of work in the light of creation, fall,
and redemption. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for
your word. We thank you that it is a lamp to our feet and
a light to our pathway. And we pray that you would take
the things we've considered this morning and write them upon the
tables of our hearts, and may they bear abundant fruit in all
of our lives. Seal your word then to our prophet
and to your glory, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.