So, someone asked me to put this up. Here it is!
Work, the Family and our church
What do I mean by work? By work we tend to mean “those things we feel we need to do in order to provide something we think we must have”. So normal paid work (for the purpose of income generation for livelihood), study work (for the purpose of gaining good marks to progress through schooling or gain employment or understanding), house work (for the purpose of providing a comfortable household for living in and perhaps raising children in), relationship work (for the purpose of maintaining relationships so that you have those relationships), church work (for the purpose of maintaining our church so that you have a church to keep going to) etc. Basically anything we feel compelled to do for ourselves, or our family, or our church.
Those last two, family and church, are important additions. We live in a culture that tells us that the individual is so very important. This focus can often cloud our judgement on what we are doing for ourselves. We think “I’m not doing it for myself, I’m doing it for our church”, as if we’re not a member of our church, or “It’s not for me, it’s for the benefit of my family” as if providing for our family does not include ourselves. We have to escape, as Christians, that individualism our culture pushes. Yes, we do need to have responsibility for ourselves, but we also have to acknowledge our communal nature in blood family and in church family. You can’t say that you are doing something for our church and not yourself any more than you can say you’re doing something for your hands but not your body.
If you want to know if I define something as work, just ask yourself “Would I stop doing this if I/my family/my church wasn’t getting any end benefit out of it?” If the answer is yes, it is probably work. If the answer is no, then it probably isn’t work.
There is another kind of work – work we are compelled to do by an outside force. This is still work, but it is not the kind of work we will look at so much. This does include, though, working “for God” out of obedience. Basically because in doing so we are not doing something for ourselves, but we are doing something for God – obeying him. It is his grace that means that we receive something for our obedience.
How do we currently treat work in our lives? Families? Church? Firstly, we see work as a means to an end – because we see productivity as important, and we are generally working towards something that meets our felt-needs. So work as a thing in itself is not as important as the results we get out of it.
Secondly, because we live in a money-centred culture, we see paid work as more valuable than unpaid work. When I say work, most people will inevitably think of employment in a job, rather than say, house work, or university study. I want to look at all the kinds of work that are self-compelled first, but also later and God-compelled work.
Thirdly, we spend a lot of our time either doing work (if you work a 40 hour week, that takes up 24% of your time (or 36% of your waking hours if you sleep 8 hours a day), or doing things involved in our work (preparing for work, travelling to and from work, reading things about our work field, talking about work, thinking about work). We see work (particularly paid employment) as very defining in who we are. We call people “a doctor” or “a builder”. We place value on work because we spend so much of our time doing it.
Fourthly, we do see employed people as more valuable than unemployed people, which indicates that we value employment and productivity (economic productivity in this case). We then place value on work because of its productivity over activities that we don’t see as productive.
Regarding work in family life, we have a cultural picture of one person as ‘breadwinner’ (usually husband), another person in charge of household affairs (usually wife), and dependants (usually children) who don’t seem to contribute much. Grandparents are a bit of a mixed bag – if they aren’t sickly (in which case they are dependants) they are seen as contributing mostly into the lives of the grandchildren.
Regarding work in our church, there are different aspects. People don’t primarily see church as a place of work (unless perhaps they are paid by our church to work), although it is a place that calls for people to contribute.
What does the Bible say about work? Lots.
How should this impact our lives? Families? Church? By making us follow what the Bible has to say about it.
Sermon: One Handful With Traquility: or Why we should work less for God, our family and our church.
Good morning, and welcome to another in our church's series on Living in Christian Family. Today's topic is work, so we want to look at work in the context of God and our two Christian families – our household family and our church family.
I've entitled my talk for today “One Handful With Tranquility” (the spiritual title) or “Why we should work less for God, our family and our church” (the punchy title).
But before I explain any more about what they mean, we really need to understand what I'm talking about when I talk about work. Work has a lot of definitions. In fact, dictionary.com has 13 definitions for work as a noun, two as an adjective, and 25 definitions of work as a verb. Not to mention another 14 idiomatic phrases that use the word 'work' in them.
The funny thing is that even though work can mean so many different things, when I mentioned work as a topic, you probably all thought of more or less the same definition. Let's see a quick show of hands – how many people, when I said I would be doing a church talk on work, thought first of all about “the transference of energy equal to the product of the component of a force that acts in the direction of the motion of the point of application of the force and the distance through which the point of application moves”? Apparently that's the definition of work in physics. I don't know, I never did physics. I'm sure I could have asked one of our engineers about it. Not surprisingly, a sea of hands didn't shoot up. So how many people, show of hands, first thought when I mentioned work “employment, as in some form of industry”, as in “I'm off to work”, “I'm out of work”, “don't call me at work”, “where do you work?” That's more like it. Isn't that interesting? 54 definitions of work, and you pretty much all thought of the same one straight away.
Now, the Bible has a fair bit to say about work, spread throughout its books, both Old and New Testament. Let's do a flyby tour. Genesis starts by telling us that work starts, not with humanity at all, but with God. God works at creating the universe. He creates humanity, and with it he creates work for humanity to do. That work is creative, encouraging growth and beauty in the garden. Man is given ownership over his work – he gets to name the animals himself. Humanity is given a leadership role in creation – to fill the earth and subdue it. But then came the fall, when man's relationship with God was broken, and everything was effected. Work becomes cursed. Although work does not lose the capacity for creativity and beauty, it also now becomes hard and painful, and becomes the only way to provide for yourself and your family.
We then fast forward a bit to the story of Jacob, who as you may know was told he had to work for his uncle for seven years to marry his darling Rachel. So we find the idea of one person working for another, and that a worker deserves wages. Of course, not only does Jacob's uncle, Laban, pull the switcheroo on him and marry Jacob to his older daughter Leah first, but then Laban organises to pay Jacob in goats, and keeps changing which goats he will give Jacob depending on which are the weakest or least numerous! So unfortunately, we also find that workers can also be underpaid, or deprived of their wages, and this is portrayed as injustice.
Zip forward again to Exodus, and we find God's nation of Israel has fallen into slavery under the Egyptian people. Since work has become hard and painful, it can now be used as a punishment, and Pharoah uses it to punish the insolence of the Hebrews when he takes away the straw they used to make bricks.
Zipping forward a little more in Exodus, after Moses leads Israel out of Egypt, God commands his people to build a big tent for him, we call the tabernacle. It's worth noting the many references to the skilled labour of goldsmiths, metal workers, embroiderers, and other artisans which God requires for his tabernacle. So work is not just ploughing the land and shepherding flocks – God has use for skilled artisans in specific work, and he still values things of beauty made by man.
Fast forward to the book of Numbers, and we find God instituting a mandatory retirement age for the Levites – everyone over the age of fifty is bumped to an advisory capacity.
Deuteronomy makes the clear point that God is going to bless his people, but that he is going to use their work to do it. God doesn't just say “follow my laws, and riches will rain down from heaven so you can live the fat life”. He says “I will bless the work of your hands” or “I will bless everything you do”. So God uses the work of his people to provide blessing to them.
This is further seen in Joshua, when God gives the promised land over to the Israelites, but they have to work hard in battle to claim it.
Zip over to Ruth, and you will find that a godly man, Boaz, has a cordial and friendly relationship with his workers. He obviously treats them well, and they respect him. God is a relational God, and work is a relational thing. It always brings us into contact with other people. When we work, we inevitably are brought to a place where we can build relationships with other people. We also see here a strong work ethic from Ruth herself. Now, some people might say she didn't have much choice, what with her and her mother-in-law being poverty-stricken and all. But you look at how much she harvests – more than what they needed for a day's meal. She is working hard enough not just to sustain herself and her mother-in-law, but she is actually seeking to better their position of poverty.
We fast forward through to psalms, and we see all sorts of attitudes to work. In Psalm 90, Moses apparently is requesting that God bless the work of the Israelites. It shows us that since work is something that is God-given, asking him to bless it is a totally reasonable request. Psalm 107 indicates that God undesrtands the bitterness of labour, and he can use it as a device to punish or rebuke those who have wandered from him, in an effort to make them call out to him.
The book of Proverbs has a lot to say about work, but let me sum it up for you – Work hard. Hard work is good work. Skilled work will be rewarded. Hard work means you get food. If you don't work, you won't get paid.
Let's make a quantum leap over to the New Testament. Jesus talks a lot about his work, and the work that he is accomplishing, which means that in Jesus, we again see God as a God who works. John 5:17 tells us clearly that God didn't stop working after day 6 of creation back in Genesis, so don't let anyone fool you into thinking that. Jesus says “A worker deserves his wages”. The parable of the talents or minas is about working faithfully with what you have been given, and not for your own benefit, but for God's benefit.
Acts tells us about people receiving callings from God to go into specific ministry. It also tell us about 'tentmaking' – where people use their paid work to fund their Christian ministry.
Romans tells us that a worker earns his wages. They are not a charity or a gift. They are a debt. You owe a worker their wages.
1 Corinthians tells us that people who are undertaking “Christian” work deserved to get paid for it.
Ephesians tells us that stealing is not an acceptable occupation for Christians. It also tells us that our work should produce enough so that we have the ability to help others with what we earn.
1 Thessalonians tells us to be productive in our work, while 2 Thessalonians warns us not to be idle, lest we starve and die.
2 Timothy tells us that Christians have to be prepared to do any good work that God might bring before us.
James talks about the injustice of not paying workmen their wages, and how God hates such injustice.
That is just a snapshot of the many things that the Bible has to say about work. But if I'm giving a sermon on work, why did I rush through them so quickly? Because I think that as a church, and as a society in general, we have a pretty good grasp of all those concepts that I raised. I'm not saying they are important – they are vital lessons that we need to understand. They are important biblical concepts about work. But I think we know them pretty well. Hands up if, before today, you didn't know that,as Christians, God expects us to be productive? And in fact, most of these are commonly known truths. Our society knows that workers deserve wages. People know that work can be painful and hard. They know that there is value in things of beauty, not just in function.
Of course, knowing things doesn't always translate into doing things. Society may know that workers deserve wages, and yet farmers in Queensland are being investigated by the taxation office for underpaying backpackers hired for fruitpicking jobs. People know that work can be painful and hard, and yet some companies still trade in cocoa, coffee and other primary produce harvested with slave labour. But Australians are generally appauled at such unfairness and injustice. Aussies know the value of working hard.
But the other reason I'm not going to pick up any of these very important themes for my talk today is that I'm not just talking about work for work's sake. This talk is part of our “living in Christian family” series, and so what we want to look at is where work fits in with regards to our relationship with God, and with our relationships with our household family and church family.
See, Aussies know the value of working hard. In fact Australia has some of the highest unpaid overtime figures in the developed world, and Australian business owners have the second highest average work hours in the world, second only to India and Argentina (equal first). Phew. Sounds like we work a little too hard. That means we spend on average over 42% of our waking hours working (unless you're a business owner, in which case it's a flat 50%). That doesn't include time getting ready for work, time spend upskilling for work, time spent talking about work, time travelling to and from work, time reading about things to do with work, or time dreaming about work (where you dream you're at work, then you wake up tired, and you feel like you just exhausted yourself working for no pay). That's a lot of time.
Well, I would say it's too much time. The punchy title for this talk is “Why We Should Work Less For God, Our Family, And Our Church”, and I mean it. Working less will bring about a change in our relationship with God, it will change how we see and spend time with our household family, and it will revolutionise how we see what we can do for our church. I want to spend the rest of this talk addressing three myths that our society tells us about working more, three truths the Bible tells us about working less, and three active outcomes that we can expect if we follow the Bible's commands rather than this world's advice.
Myth #1: Working more makes you a more good or more godly person.
Wow, this is a big one to start with. It sounds so plausible! I mean, someone who doesn't work is lazy, and laziness isn't good. So working must be good. Obviously, then, working more makes you more good, right? I wish I could say that this myth was only prevalent in the outside world. But the truth is that this myth has pervaded the church ever since the industrial revolution. We encourage people to take on extra responsibilities, to put in the extra effort, to go the extra mile with the idea that this is a morally righteous thing to do, with the idea that it's what God wants us to do.
And then, we complain that we don't have time for daily Bible readings. We wished we prayed more. We wish we had more time to reflect on God and his character, or to buid up our relationship with God. People are busier than they've ever been. Don't tell me that this busyness doesn't impact the quality time we spend relating to God. You know it does.
Let me make this clear – God wants us to work. He doesn't want us to be lazy. But he also commands that we rest. So here's...
Biblical Truth #1: God demands that we worship him with our rest, not just with work.
We all know that for six days God created, and the Bible says that “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” We all know our fourth commandment, right? Exodus 20:8, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates”. Why did God institute this Law? Well, Exodus 23 (repeated in Deuteronomy 5) tells us that the sabbath day will allow you, your work animals and your slaves to rest and be refreshed. God knows that work is hard, and he wants people to have a chance to rest from their work, and to be refreshed. He even institutes sabbath years of rest for the land, so that it gets to rest and recuperate from being tilled and worked for 6 years. This also provides a welfare system for the poor, who are able to gather food from your land during the sabbath year. And every seven sabbath years plus one, there is Jubilee, where Jewish slaves are freed from their slave labour.
But let me ask you a question – did God rest and bless his day of rest before or after work became cursed and became hard and painful? It was before. So there's more to the sabbath than just relaxation and freedomfrom hard work. The sabbath rest is about setting apart time which is holy, a distinct time for God. God wants his people to have a time where they can focus on him without distraction. It is no surprise that God refers to the first and last day of every holy festival as a sabbath day – on which you will do no work. Those festivals were designed for God's people to remember what he had done for them, and he wanted them to have holy days where they could devote their time to God, and not be distracted by the humdrum need to work their fields or lead their oxen.
Now we don't follow the Old Testament sabbath laws. We don't stone people to death if they don't follow the Sabbath (although that might show you just how important God thought this separation of devotion between work and Him is). How then can we turn this Biblical truth into an active outcome?
Active Outcome #1: We spend more time with God, and we grow spiritually.
Jesus said that “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. Jesus calls himself Lord even of the Sabbath. So I don't think it's worthwhile making up a bunch of rules about making our work time distinct from our worship time with God. But we must understand the principle – that we must make sure that we have time set apart from the daily grind of work, so that we can be rested and focus on our relationship with God. The Israelites had one day out of every six, plus the first and last day of every festival, plus one year out of every seven, plus the jubilee year every 50 years. These aren't just holidays (the sabbath years you still have to eat after all), but they are holy days – set apart specifically for God's people to remember him and focus on him. Let me ask you this, and be honest – if you spent a day out of every week focussed wholly on God and your relationship with God, do you think your prayer life would be better? Do you think your spiritual walk with God would be closer? I think mine would.
So what does the modern day sabbath look like? Is it even possible for us to take a day every week to focus on God, let alone year off of work every seven years to concentrate on God? I don't know, to be honest. What I do know is that we have a number of opportunities available to us. Whether you choose to get involved in a regular bible study group or study full time at Bible college, whether you give up a week of your work to be involved at a camp at Camp Kedron, or give up 6 months of your work to go on a short-term mission trip to help a missionary team. Perhaps you are planning on dedicating a significant portion of your retirement to God? Whatever appeals to you, let me just reiterate – God wants us to spend time away from work with him. Remember Mary and Martha – Martha “was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made”, but “Mary had chosen what is better, and it would not be taken away from her.”
Myth #2: Working more provides more for your family.
Our society tries to tell us that if we work more, we will be able to earn more, and therefore provide more for our families – a larger house, another car, a private school education, a lump sum to help children buy their first home, a laptop to help them with their studies – whatever it might be. And truth be told, there is nothing wrong with any of these things. In fact, we read in 1 Timothy that “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever”. But for some, providing these material goods becomes all consuming. Often both parents will work in order to provide more for the family. The truth is...
Biblical Truth #2: Families need more than money.
The Bible says in Ecclesiastes chapter 4 verse 6, which reads “Better one handful with tranquility, than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind”. The wise writer of Ecclesiastes wants us to know that we should work hard.The verse before says “The fool folds his hands and ruins himself”. So being idle is ruin. But he also wants us to know that it is better to work to have what we need, a handful, and maintain tranquility, rather than work for two handfuls, more than we need, and suffer the pain of toiling, not to mention suffering the meaninglessness of chasing after more.
Throughout this series on the family so far, we have seen some important aspects of the Christian family. We've heard about the necessity for discipline as a desirable tool for growth. We've heard about the centrality of marriage and the importance of the relationship between husband and wife. We've heard about the need for the Christian household to be a place where people can see and hear and discuss the truth about God. Remember the Shema? “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” We hear all these things, and we think “That's great, but where will I find the time to do them?” We simply can't afford to think like that. We should be thinking “The Bible commands us to do all these things – how will I make sure that I am doing them?”
Active Outcome #2: We end up spending more time with our families, rather than more money on them.
It will be that some people can afford to provide a wealth of material benefits to their families, as well as being able to spend time developing the relationship with their spouse and children. But for many of us, we hold those two in a balance, in a tension. And if we listen to society, it will tell us that the balance should be tipped in favour of work. I was told at a marriage enrichment seminar last week that companies used to look for people who were happily married – the idea being that if you're happy at home, you'll be happy at work, and hence more productive. Companies don't hire like that anymore. They now want their employees to be “married” to their work, and they will look for people who are prepared to put their work lives ahead of their family lives. The workplace provides restaurants, gyms, sporting facilities, showers, even bedrooms. Why? To keep their workers at work! And then we wonder why young people feel disconnected from their working parents. We wonder why they have an attitude of getting everything handed to them, rather than earning it for themselves. Ecclesiastes says that is meaningless! And Jesus repeats it! “A man's life does not exist in the abundance of his possessions” he said.
As Christians, we have to swing the balance in the other direction. Work is necessary to provide for our families. But our society is telling us that spending money on our families is more important than spending time with them. It's a myth. God's plan of sabbath rest is not just made for individuals. It is made for the whole family. We should be spending time away from work so that we as families can focus on God together, can worship God together, and can celebrate God together! The sabbath rest is for you, your son and your daughter, your servants, even your animals. God says that sabbath rest “is a sign between me and you for the generations to come”. If we heed Biblical truth, we will make sure that our whole family puts God in the proper place.
Myth #3: Working more give you job security.
Did you notice that I said Australia has some of the highest unpaid overtime figures in the developed world? Unpaid overtime! Working extra hours for no extra money! Do you know why most people do that? The statistics say that it is because people feel that they need to keep up the hard work, or they will lose their jobs. And of course, when you've got a mortgage on a house you can barely afford, a maxxed out credit card, and debt on your new car, you can't afford to lose your job, or else you'll lose everything.
Unfortunately, this idea that working more provides job security, which has hypnotised our society, is a complete myth. Why? Because...
Biblical Truth #3: It is God who provides for us, not work.
How often do we have to re-learn this principle? God says, “Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.” It is God that provides us with work, and provides for us through work. If we fall for this myth that work provides us with security, then we are in fact turning work into an idol.
God has no problem frustrating the work of man in order to bring their attention back to him. Job 37 tells us “He says to the snow, 'Fall on the earth,' and to the rain shower, 'Be a mighty downpour.' So that all men he has made may know his work, he stops every man from his labor.” Psalm 107 shows us that God understands the bitterness of labour, and uses it as a device to punish or rebuke those who have wandered from him, in an effort to make them call out to him.
We have to learn to put God in charge of our provision, to make God our plan for job security, because then...
Active Outcome #3: We begin to value what God values – work with eternal reward.
Just after he spoke about life being more than our possessions, Jesus said “do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. 30For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”
Now I've been talking about work, but basically using it as a synonym for employment. But there's a problem with simply defining work as employment. In the household family, depending on the age of the kids, it's possible to have at any one time: grandparents who are retired, kids at school or still at home, a wife/mother looking after those kids and the household, and then you've only got the husband/father “working” in the sense we just defined, unless he finds himself out of work! So then my talk would only be talking to people who were employed in some industry. But we have all these other people in our church. Let's ask some people from these different groups and see what they think. Juliette Hackett, are you currently employed in some vocation? Do you think you still do work? What kind of work? Graham Marlin – are you currently gainfully employed? Do you think you still work? What kind of work? Child X – do you have a paid job? Do you think you still do any kind of work? What do you do? Peter Weldon, are you currently employed? Do you think you still do any kind of work? What kind of work?
Work suddenly becomes pretty big, doesn't it? It involves employment, yes, but also maintaining a household, study, volunteerism and more. We need to expand our concept of work to take in these things so that we can properly relate what the Bible has to say about work to our lives.
God says in Colossians, “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” and then “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
Our church tradition has been built on the idea of the priesthood of all believers – that we all can contribute to the work of our church. And we can do that with our employment – whether it be by assisting in the building project because you're skilled at building, or helping to fund the work of our church with your wages. But if work starts to get in the way of us being actively involved in the work of our church, God's eternal work of building up the kingdom of God, then we have to put it in its place. Whether work is taking our time away from directly impacting the kingdom, or simply making us so stressed that we can't keep loving fellowship with our fellow church members, it has to be put in its place. This doesn't mean that we ditch our jobs. It just means that it is an untenable situation that has to be resolved, and it has to be resolved for the benefit of God's kingdom first, rather than our provision. Sometimes that means making a sacrifice. But it is through sacrifice that God's kingdom grows. Just look at anyone who has been involved in Camp Kedron. People give up a week of work to help lead on a camp, reschedule entire semesters of study to provide bible studies, or donate their entire lives to seeing the ministry of God continue.
I know I might have sounded like I am anti-work this morning, but that's not my point at all. I just want us to know that work must exist as just one part of our lives, as we seek to serve God, our families and our church. We have to be serious about putting God first in our lives, and in our modern society, that means not letting work take our focus away from God.
Amen
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