Skip Heitzig - Get a Job
Good morning. Nice to see your smiling faces. Most of you are smiling, and it's just great to have you at church, and welcome to our series. We call it "Hustle and Grind." It's going to be a short series. I'll be explaining, today, a little bit about what it will be about, and you'll get a taste of it. But let's turn, in our Bibles, to the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis Chapter 1.
There was a guy who said, you know, I don't mind hard work. In fact, I love it. It fascinates me. I can sit and watch it for hours. You might think, well, I know that guy. I want to talk to you, in this series, a little bit about work. There was a man who applied for a job. The prospective boss asked the applicant who was sitting before him, so he said, so tell me what you would consider to be your worst quality.
The applicant thought about it and goes, I suppose my worst quality is that I'm too honest. Excuse me? Said the boss. Too honest? Yeah, I think that is my worst quality. I think I'm too honest. And the boss said, well, that didn't sound like a bad thing. I think being honest is a good quality. And the applicant said, yeah, I don't really care what you think.
Well, he had a point, then, didn't he? I do care what you think, because in Proverbs 23, it says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. And so I want to get you to think about work. Skip, I came to church so I don't have to think about work. Now, I want you to think differently, perhaps, about how you have thought, up until now, about work. And it is my hope and prayer that not only in this study, but throughout this series, it will change the way you think about it.
Now, somebody once said the first thing God did after creating man on the Earth was to give him a job. And you're going to see that. I'm giving this message the title, "Get a Job." And please don't feel demeaned by that.
Some people hear that title and go, well, that's a very kind of in-your-face title. But I'm doing it in honor of my dad, who used to say those words to me quite frequently, get a job. And he did not want his sons, he had four of them. I was the last of the four. He didn't want us idle. He didn't want us just sitting around. So he would say, get a job. And if I couldn't find gainful employment, he made sure I always had a job doing something.
So this is in honor of him. And you might want to consider this short, little series, "Hustle and Grind," as sort of a theology about work. In the next few weeks, we're going to look at the place of work in our lives. We're going to look about what happens if you take it too seriously. We're going to look at what happens if you don't take it seriously enough, and you err on the lazy side.
We want to look at the balance of working and resting, having leisure as well, because that is a pattern established in the scripture. But the average person still divides his or her day up, 24-hour day, into three 8-hour segments. 8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure time, 8 hours of sleep.
So we devote a third of our life to working. I should say, at least, we used to devote a third of our lives to work. And we have a little bit of competition these days, and one of the biggest competitions is this. Did you know the average American adult spends almost four hours a day on this? Four hours a day, 3 hours and 43 minutes, to be precise, is the going rate for average American adults.
Now, I'd like to think that probably all of that happens on our leisure time, but I have a hunch that it bleeds into our work time as well. So one of the first questions that we asked one another when we meet each other, the first question is, how do you do? But usually the second question is, what do you do?
What do you do? Where do you work? What do you do for a living? We want to find out who a person might be in relationship to what they are producing in the culture in which we live. It's a standard question that people often ask.
Now, some of you get paid to work. Others of you work, but you don't get paid. We call those moms. Moms put in so much work for their families, if they were to get paid, we could never afford them in terms of just the amount of hours and devotion.
So they work, but they're not getting paid like that, necessarily. But then there are people who get paid, but they don't work. And that has become more of a problem lately in our culture than, perhaps, at any other time.
Now, long before there was ever a pandemic, getting people motivated to actually work was becoming a challenge. One New York office put this notice up inside their building on a bulletin board. Sometime between starting and quitting time, without infringing on lunch periods, coffee breaks, rest periods, storytelling, ticket selling, holiday planning, rehashing of yesterday's television programs, we ask that each employee find time for a work break.
That's pretty novel, isn't it? Let's have a work break. Let's actually get some work done. It goes on to say, this may seem radical, but it might aid in steady employment and assure a regular paycheck. Here's the thing, it's hard, nowadays, to get people interested in steady employment, though they want a regular paycheck. And that brings us up to where we are right now in our culture.
The Harvard Business Review said there is a crisis of long-term employment that is looming in the United States. Virtually every businessman or business owner that I have talked to said it's so hard for me to find people who are willing to come in and work. And you've seen signs on businesses like this, signs that say we are short staffed today. Please be patient. I like what they wrote after that, if you run out of patience, ask for an application.
That's good. Or this one, we are short staffed. Please be patient with the staff that did show up. No one wants to work anymore. Well, we are in Genesis chapter 1. It's the opening pages of the Bible.
And when we open the Bible, we make a discovery that is pretty obvious when we start going through the first chapter of Genesis. We are presented with a working God. God is at work. God is at work creating the world that we live in.
So back to that statement that the first thing God did after he put man on the Earth is give him a job, actually, God did more than that. He gave him four things, four directives that God gave. We're going to go through each one.
First, God gave us a position. God gave us a position. I want you to see what that is in verse 24 of chapter 1 of Genesis. "Then God said, 'Let the Earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind,' and it was so." And God made the beast of the Earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the the earth.'" So God created man in His own image, "in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them".
That's the position. We are in the image of God. God gave us a position. Now what does that mean, the image of God? Well, there's books that are written about what that means. But I'll give it to you in a nutshell. Being an image bearer of God, having the image of God, means we are capable of embodying God's communicable attributes. I know that's a mouthful. That's sort of theology talk. I'm going to break that down. We are capable of embodying God's communicable attributes. OK, let me push the pause button. Beep.
God has attributes. Some of those attributes are incommunicable attributes. They're non-communicable. We don't share them, we can never share them. Here's one, God knows everything. You and I don't share that attribute. Sometimes people think they do, and try to do that, it never ends up well. Another attribute God has is, He is all powerful. Another attribute God has is, that He is everywhere. Present in the totality of His being. He is omnipresent. We don't share any of those attributes. They're incommunicable attributes.
But we do share other attributes with our Creator. Communicable attributes. Moral attributes. Love, justice, mercy, also intellect, emotion, and will. We aren't like other creatures that God has made. We are the crowning creation. Mankind is God's crowning creation. According to the New Testament, He made us just lower than the angels. So we are the crowning creation. We don't react to stimuli. That is, we don't just react to stimuli. Your dog does, your cat does. They go by what they see, or smell, or hear. They react to it, or they operate by instinct.
We, on the other hand, are able to think complex thoughts, and have the ability to reason through things. We are able to love, we are able to worship, we are able to discern, and have complex relationships with each other. That's what it means to be in the image of God. But something else it means, and this takes us to, really, our point. We also are able to work creatively. So God is at work, as we're about to see, and we in His image are able to work creatively. So monkeys don't write symphonies, monkeys don't grow gardens, monkeys don't start businesses. But people do. We are in the image of God, we work creatively.
When we open up the first chapter of the Bible, as we did, even the very first verse of the Bible, we are confronted with a working God. Look at verse one. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." That's work. I know you can say, well it's no big deal for God, He just spoke it into existence. I'm not talking about how much energy it takes, or how hard it is to do the work. It's still work. He produced something.
Go down to verse seven. "Thus God made the firmament." He's producing something, he's creating, he's working. Go down to verse 16. "Then God made two great lights." Verse 17, "God set them in the firmament of the heavens." Verse 21, "So God created great sea creatures." Go over to chapter two, next chapter, verse one. "Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work."
So He worked, up until now. Now He stopped His work. "On the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He had done." Now when it says God rested, it's not because God was pooped. It's like, oh man, I'm so tired I need a day off. It's just that He was done with this creation. He's still working to this day, but He ceased His work of creation. But the point being, God was at work.
Oh, something else. Go back to chapter one, verse 31. "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good." So God even enjoyed job satisfaction. He looked over His work and said, that's good, it's very good. All of that to make a point. There is to be dignity in our work. Work is an activity of dignity, and it is instilled in us by the Creator, who himself worked for six days in creation.
And why is that important? Because too many people see work as a negative. Like it's a prison, like I'm being sentenced to something bad. No, when you work you are given freedom to create, freedom to produce. But one of the bad things about modern society is that we start viewing work as something we have to do. I mean, listen to it in our language TGIF. What does that stand for? Yeah, thank God it's Friday or thank goodness it's Friday.
And then it takes us into the weekend and the weekend, ah. And so we have a couple of days off. And then, by the end of the weekend, we say things like, well it's back to the grind. Hence, hustle and grind. Back to the grind, weekends almost over. Where does that come from?
Well, let me take you back to pagan days. The Babylonians had a myth, about the creation of the world. And their myth, their religious belief, was that the world was created as a result of the gods having a battle. And in the battle between the gods, one of them won the battle. His name was Marduk. He's the chief god of the Babylonian Empire. And so when Marduk won the battle, the myth is he created the world from the body of his enemy, Tiamat, who was the guardian goddess of the seas. So he created the world and the other gods saw what he did, and they said to him, now that you have created the earth, you have to work to keep it up. And Marduk replied I will create a lowly creature called man to take care of it.
And so the gods scorned work in the ancient times. So if you're wondering where the idea of people getting all bummed out negative about their work, that's not a biblical worldview, it's a pagan worldview. God doesn't scorn work. God works. And then God shares that activity with us. You know Jesus said, in John chapter five, He said, "My Father is working until now, and I also am working." Aren't you glad God is at work? Aren't you glad God is working? Romans 8:28. "He is working all things together for good." To those who love God, and are the called according to His purpose, God is very active in working for you and in your life.
And He wants us to share a bit of that. Not only activity, but the satisfaction of that. Listen to Ecclesiastes, chapter two. "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink, and find satisfaction in his work. This too is from the hand of God." That's scripture. He wants you to work and have a satisfaction quotient, much like what God did after He made what He made and He said, it's good, it's very good. He wants you want you to be able to come home at the end of your day, and of your week, and say it's good. There's satisfaction in it.
Tim Keller wrote a book called Every Good Endeavor. Let me throw a little piece up on the screen. "Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality. It is not simply medicine but food for the soul. Without meaningful work we sense significant inner loss and emptiness. People who are cut off from work because of physical or other reasons quickly discover how much they need work to thrive emotionally, physically and spiritually."
God gave us a position. We are in His image. Second, God gave us a commission. He gave us a commission, let's look at the commission. Verse 28, the very next verse. "Then God blessed them, and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
Now what you will notice, and I hope you're reading that verse with me, verse 28. You'll notice, in that verse, there are three commands. Three successive commands. First command, "Be fruitful and multiply." What does that mean? It means reproduce, it means have babies. "Be and multiply." Second command, "fill the earth." What does that mean? Keep having babies. After you have babies, have some more and then tell your babies to grow up and have babies, and more babies. And tell their babies to have babies. So reproduce. "Be fruitful and multiply." "Fill the earth." Third command, "and subdue it."
Now each of these commands leads logically to the next command. You can't subdue the earth without first filling the earth. And you can't fill the earth without first reproducing yourself. So this is part of our purpose, as human beings. Our purpose on the earth is partially tied to this. So that any ideology, any philosophy, any theology that denies that this is important, reproduction, filling the earth, subduing it, is against nature. Romans chapter 1, it's against the natural order.
Let's look at that third directive, subdue. Let's read a little further, because God expands on that. He says be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Now He explains that. "Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth." What does that mean? God is saying to man and woman, you are my crowning creation, and you are in charge of all the other creatures, you're to have dominion over them. This is so important. We are not just one of many creatures on earth, and one creature is as good and equal to another creature. Dogs are people too, bears are people too. You can't say you're better than... Yeah, I can. I'm having dominion over them.
That's part of the creative order. The idea that we're all exactly the same, that is Sierra Club theology. It's not biblical theology. And I know this from experience, because I was a member of it, in another life. What does subdue mean, what does have dominion mean? Literally, and the Hebrew word is radah, to have dominion, it means to subjugate, to be master over. Literally, it means to enslave, in a positive sense. To enslave, that is to capture, to discover its secrets, and to harness its potential. That's the idea of having dominion over the earth. So this is God's mandate for scientific research.
This is God's mandate for material progress. Master the environment that you have. Use the resources that are on the earth. Extract coal, oil, mineral wealth, plant life, and later on God will say and animals , for your sustenance. And later on Adam's descendants will build cities, and raise livestock, and make and play musical instruments, and forge tools of bronze and iron. They'll do this. They'll subdue the earth. They'll have dominion over it. They will master the earth, as they make discoveries and observations of what's around them, and what's inside of the earth. And it continues until now.
Proverbs 25 verse 2. "It is the glory of God to conceal the matter, but it is the glory of kings to search out a matter." That is to make discoveries, to make discoveries. Kings can finance the discoveries and the observation of the natural world, and so expand upon it. So here's the big picture. The big picture is, God wants us to reproduce, and fill the earth, and subdue it. That's part of being in God's image.
And the opposite of that activity is either to be idle, so inactive, or to be destructive. Not constructive, not creative. Either to be idle, or to be destructive. And the first option, laziness, is never exonerated in scripture. If you're a lazy person, and I'm not saying any of you, are but if you are, you can't read through the book of Proverbs unscathed. Am I right? You get to the Book of Proverbs, pretty soon you, ooh. Right?
Like this one. This is right out of the Book of Proverbs. "Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise." I mean, it just gets right in the grill of a person who is idle, or lazy, and says, eh don't do that. Be productive. So part of being a human, reaching our potential, is work. Now I want to just drill down on that a little bit. Because this is what I am not saying. I am not saying that if you're a child, or if you're a patient in a hospital, or if you're retired, that you're less human, or you're not going to reach your human potential. I'm not saying that.
But a child wants to grow up, not stay a child. And a person who's sick wants to get better, get well, and get out of the hospital. And a person who's retired is celebrating the fact that they've lived a whole life that was productive. And now they can retire, and perhaps now they have time even, not to stop working, but just to work in a different way. By volunteering, by serving, by getting involved in helping other people. Still being productive. One denomination, a Christian denomination, put out this statement.
"Work is one of the characteristics that distinguishes man from the rest of creatures. Work is a good thing for man, not only because through work he transforms nature to serve his needs, but because through it he also achieves fulfillment as a human being, and indeed, in a sense, becomes more human." God has given us a position, His image. God has given us a commission, to subdue the earth, have dominion over the earth.
Number three, third directive. God gave us a provision, a provision. Look at verse 29. God said, "See". I always love it when God says see, because I just picture God is pointing to something and say, hey, check this out, see that, look at that, check this out. God said, "'See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed. To you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food,' and it was so. Then God saw everything that He had made indeed it was very good. So evening and morning were the sixth day.
Now notice what God did not say. God did not say see, I have given you prepackaged meals which will be delivered, right to your doorstep, at your address in the Garden of Eden. This isn't some kind of angelic DoorDash system that he sets up. God says, see, I have given you the raw materials, the building blocks like seeds and other things, for you to do something with. You still have to be busy, and engaged in the process. Let's call this cocreation. Cocreation.
God gives us provision, still takes work. God gives you seed, you still got to plant the seed. The seed grows, you've got to go into the field and get the harvest. That takes work. You've got to go pick the fruit that grows on the trees that God has provided. You've got to cut up the herbs that God also provides in the earth.
So in the New Testament, when the disciples said to Jesus, Lord teach us to pray. Jesus said, when you pray, here's a good model. Say "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done in earth as it is in heaven". What's the next line? "Give us this day our daily bread". OK, it's part of the prayer. A prayer for God to give us what we need daily. Give us this day our daily bread. Now how does God answer that prayer? Does He answer that prayer by you doing this? Give us this day our daily bread. I'm just going to wait here for that to happen.
And we, in our minds, imagine the menu. And we pray the menu. Lord, I'd like steak and potatoes, maybe a Krispy Kreme donut at the end. Hot now would be really good. I just want to add that, throw that in, and I'm going to do it in Jesus's name, So I really want... is that how He answers the prayer? No.
He answers the prayer by farmers caring for cows and raising vegetables. He answers the prayer by truckers transporting the food, to grocery stores across the country. He answers the prayer by the store staffing it with people, who stock the shelves, and check out people who buy the food. He answers the prayer by restaurant owners, who hire cooks, and waiters, and dishwashers. He answers the prayer by businesses that make plates and cutlery. From designers who design it, to manufacturers who work in the factories.
If you think about it, the home that you live in, the clothes that you wear, the food that you eat, the medical care that you enjoy, all of that is the result of people co-creating with God. I've provided all that you need, now go do something with it. Go plant that seed, go harvest what grows, et cetera. By the way, let's talk about God's provision. Do you know that scientists tell us that we live in a very unfriendly universe? An unfriendly universe. There are asteroids, floating around up there, at a very high speed. There are gases, out there. All the planets that we know of have hostile environments, on every planet. So if you think, man, I want to go to the moon, no you don't. Ever look at the surface of the moon? It's got pockmarks all over it. You know how it got those? Things hitting it. We live in a hostile and unfriendly universe.
And scientists have made this discovery that the earth is in what they call the Goldilocks zone. Isn't that a great term? The Goldilocks zone. Scientists refer to the Goldilocks zone as the circumstellar habitable zone. Or it just happens, that all of the right factors necessary for biological life, as we know it, take place in only one place that we know of. The earth.
There is virtually no other place in the universe that has the habitable conditions that we know of, except the earth. Huh, I wonder how that happened? Isn't that amazing that it just so happened. Now talk about provision. That in the entire... OK there may be, and it's funny, because there's always these shows out there like, there may be life on this planet. And people eat this stuff up, and spend millions of dollars making shows with absolutely zero proof. None. Doesn't exist. But it's all around us. Why? Because God has provided that. That's God's provision. God has given us position, He's given us a commission, He's given us His provision.
Fourth, God has given us a vocation, a vocation. I want you to skip ahead now to chapter two. I'm going to take you to one verse. After all this happened, in chapter two, verse 15 says, "Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden watch this to tend and to keep it." He gave him a job. He gave him a job. This is the first day on the job, Adam come here, welcome to your new job. You're a gardener. You're to tend and to keep the garden.
Now in chapter 2, verse 15, we go from principle to practice. After declaring man's special status, as being in God's image, after commissioning him to subdue the earth, to have dominion over it, after promising to provide all that would be necessary for that to happen, now God puts him to work. We go from appointment, to enjoyment, to employment. Now he works. And here's what I want you to notice. Everything we have talked about so far didn't happen after the fall. Happened before the fall. The work that God engaged His creation in, the command to subdue the earth, the idea of taking the provision that God has made and working with those elements. All of that comes before the fall, not after the fall.
Why do I even bring that up? Because you wouldn't believe how many people, when they talk about work, will say something like, well don't work as part of the curse. It's part of the curse, because of sin that came upon the earth. No, it's not. Work isn't part of the curse. The curse, sin, just made work harder. That's all. And so God said later on, after the fall, in chapter 3, "By the sweat of your brow you will work all the days of your life." The work became harder. work is not a curse ordinance, it is a creation ordinance. Ordained at creation, before man sinned. So the fall did not introduce work. It introduced death and that changed the nature of work. Follow?
So you might look at it this simplistically. Adam was originally a gardener. But then he became a farmer, because of the fall. Really more like a plow horse. He had to really work hard to get results. So then, to sort of sum it all up, since this is sort of an introductory study to this series we're doing, working is good because it reflects the nature of God as a worker and a Creator. Work is good because it enables us to fulfill our purpose in exploring and using the natural world. Work is good because it benefits others, as we work together to co-create with God. And work is good because the God who, Himself, works declared it is good.
OK, so, how do I know work is good? Because God said it's very good. Enough said. Because of all that, because we find this in the very first chapters of the Bible, it is not surprising that whenever we encounter work in the scriptures, it is always spoken about with dignity, with honor. The Bible extols the place of work in people's lives, throughout the Old Testament.
Here's one of the most famous verses you know of in the Bible, Ecclesiastes 3. "To everything there is a season a time for every purpose under heaven." Now watch this, "A time to plant," what's that? That's work. "A time to pluck what is planted," what's that? That's work. You can talk. "A time to build up". Work. "A time to break down". Work. "A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones," all that's work. "A time to tare, a time to sew". And at the end of that little section of verse, and I didn't quote all the activities, just the ones that pertain to work, "What profit has the worker, from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time".
Proverbs 14, verse 23, "All hard work brings a profit but mere talk leads only to ". Again, extolling work. Oh and by the way, did you know that even the Old Testament system of welfare was built on work? There was a welfare system in the Old Testament. Very different from the modern American welfare system. The welfare system, the biblical welfare system, gave the poor dignity, and here's how. Here's how it worked. If you're a farmer, you plant and you reap. But you keep some of that produce left in the fields. You keep the stuff on the vines. You keep some of the fruit on the trees. You get most of it, and that's your profit. But then you leave some of it. Why? Because the poor of the land are allowed to go into your field and pick.
They have to go in and pick themselves So there's dignity built into it because they're not just sitting around like, come on give me a paycheck. Come on somebody, drop off some fruit at my house. That they got to go in and work, this is Leviticus 19 and Leviticus 23, so there's still dignity built into the process. But the poor of the land are taken care of, and God commands His people to do that.
By the time we get to the New Testament we also see work with its exonerated place. Jesus worked. You know what Jesus did for a living. What was it? He was a carpenter. The Greek word is tekton. We usually think of a carpenter as a guy who works with wood. The word tekton means he was a craftsman. And most of the materials used back then, a little bit of wood, mostly it was stone. He was principally a stone worker. A tekton worked with wood as well.
And he did that for 30 years. He apprenticed under His father Joseph. His stepfather Joseph. And then, after age 30, he went to work for His Father full time. A salvific work, a salvation work. And then when Jesus told stories, He gave parables, He often used work related themes.
Matthew 13 the sower and the seed. A sower went out to plant and sow seeds. Matthew 20, he gave the parable of the landowner who hired workers at predetermined rates. Luke, chapter 18, the parable of the nobleman who said to his servants, do business til I come. All of this places work in a good light, not an evil, light. Paul the apostle, Ephesians, chapter 6, "Servants be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh". And then Paul even writes to the church at Thessalonica. 2 Thessalonians, 3 and says this, "We gave you this rule, if a man will not work he shall not eat".
OK, so that's getting in your face. I mean, I really need stuff. Well, you're willing to work? No. If you don't work, you don't eat. Now He's not addressing those who are unable to work, He's addressing those who are unwilling to work. If you're unwilling to work, you don't get the benefit. If you are willing to do something, you get the benefit. By the way work isn't just your career. Work includes a lot of things. What your output is, what your production is, housework, driving the kids to school, volunteering for organizations, and serving.
So I named this sermon in honor of my dad, who are often said to his sons, get a job. But I really do admire my dad, because he had a very high work ethic. And he wanted to make sure that his sons had the same work ethic. And he would often say not only, get a job, but he would say, when you do your job really do it right, son. Don't just do it, do it well. Do it so well that you become the best person in your company who does that job. And so he would say, a job worth doing is worth doing well. He said that so often, I don't think he invented that, I know he didn't, but he said it so often that I thought he invented that. Because he said, get a job, and, a job worth doing is worth doing well. So he instilled that within me.
There's a guy who died, and he went to heaven, and who was there, meeting him at heaven? Peter, right? Peter meets all these people in these lame jokes. And so Peter meets him, and says welcome to heaven. And the guy protests, goes, man something isn't right, this isn't right, I'm only 35. I'm only 35 years old, man, I shouldn't be dead . Peter goes, well I don't know, stay right there, don't go any further, let me check the records, I'll get back to you. So Peter goes, checks the records, comes back, and says to the guy, well, according to the hourly work reports that you've been turning in you, are 97 years old. That guy's been fudging on his work. Probably because he viewed work as? A drag, a negative, a drudgery.
Let me leave you with this. A task, without a vision, is a drudgery. A vision, without a task, it's just a dream. But a task, with a vision, is a victory. If you can do an activity, and have purpose in doing it, you're winning. You're winning when you can discover that, like the guy who ran the Olympics, Eric Little, who eventually became a missionary, but he loved to run, he said, "and when I run I feel His pleasure".
If you can work and say, when I do that, I feel God's pleasure. That's a task with a purpose, and you're winning. So let your work be the means by which you offer yourself to God, to reach the world for Jesus Christ. God has you at that job to teach you lessons, but also to reach other people for His glory.
Father, thank you for the ability to look directly at these truths. And to consider that your plan was to make creatures different from all other creatures. Your crowning creation were those who were created in your image, bearing the mark, the stamp, of your attributes. Part of that is creative work. We model that. And in doing so, Lord, to responsibly carefully superintend the universe that we find ourselves in. The earth that we are living upon. Creation care, of course, Lord, we know is a part of that. But using those things for the betterment of humanity living on the earth is essential. There's so much we didn't cover about that, but we have enough to go on today. That work is good, because you said it as good. And may we find real job satisfaction. To be able to walk away from whatever task it might be and say, it's good, it's very good. In Jesus's name. Amen.