A Meditation on Labor (Day Weekend)

^{The Message Romans 12.1} So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. (italics added)

This is the Labor Day Weekend in Canada and the United States. Ruth wanted to find some worship content having to do with the theology of work, only to discover that, from a worship leader’s perspective, there isn’t much out there. The second verse below, which some of you know better as, “Do everything as unto the Lord;” is a reminder that our worship life toward God is holistic. We don’t worship only on Sundays or only in song, but we can make elements of what Eugene Peterson (in the quotation above) calls our “everyday, ordinary life” an offering to God.

by Ruth Wilkinson

Labor Day is part of a weekend that historically stands to celebrate and honor workers and those who have worked to humanize working conditions. Part of that celebration, aptly enough, is a day off work. (And all God’s people said, “Woohoo!”)

And while everybody likes a day off, there’s more to work than just obligation born of necessity.

The God who created us modeled us after himself.

This is a God who imagines and designs and builds.

A God who plants and grows and provides.

Who teaches and directs and supervises.

Who looks after animals and cares for people.

And he put within us the same inclinations and capacities as exist in himself.

Whether we’re earning a wage, or just helping a neighbor in need, our work is a gift from the Father who loves us and made us to be like Him.

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In the beginning, The LORD put the man in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Then God brought to the man every wild animal and every bird of the sky, so the man could give them all their own names.

In the same way, whatever work you do, do it willingly, with all your heart – working for the Lord, and not only for a human boss.

The soul of the lazy one craves everything and gets nothing…

But the wise one rises early, providing food for her household and jobs for her workers.
She studies, and invests, and makes an honest profit;
She wraps herself in strength, because her arms are strong.
Her lamp does not go out at night.
She learns her trade and uses her tools.
She opens her hand to the poor, and reaches out to the needy.
And when winter comes, she’s not afraid for her household.

The soul of the lazy craves everything and gets nothing…
but the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.

So let the thief steal no longer, but let him do honest work with his own hands, so he has something to share with anyone in need.

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O grant us, God, a little space
from our daily work set free.
To meet within this holy place
we’ve built apart for Thee.

But this is not the only place Your presence may be known;
In all our daily work, Your grace and blessing you have sewn.

Around us rolls an endless tide –
labor and trade and care.
Today we choose to turn aside
for one brief hour of prayer.

But this is not the only place Your presence may be known;
In all our daily work, Your grace and blessing you have sewn.

Work can be prayer, if it is wrought
as you want it to be done;
And prayer, by you inspired and taught,
can with our work be one.

For this is not the only place Your presence may be known;
In all our daily work, Your grace and blessing you have sewn.

– Scriptures based on Genesis 2, Colossians 3, Proverbs 13, Proverbs 31, Ephesians 4
– Hymn by John Ellerton, 1870, Edited by Ruth Wilkinson

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Consecrating our work to God:

I wanted to include Take My Life and Let it Be as a conclusion to Ruth’s liturgy, but searched for a tune different from the traditional one, or the Chris Tomlin one. This one is sung in the UK, and uses the tune Nottingham by Mozart.

Under Authority

Another first-time author here. Mark DuPré is an associate pastor, a film professor, a writer and a musician. He lives on the other side of Lake Ontario to us, in Rochester, NY. This article appeared at his blog and is actually indicated as a part one in a series, so besides our usual encouragement to “click the title below to read this at source,” you might want to return to use the link below to navigate to subsequent installments.

Authority, Part 1

Luke 7:8-9 For I [the centurion] also am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard these things, He marveled at him, and turned around and said to the crowd that followed Him, “I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!”

Romans 13:1-7 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves…. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake… Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

Jesus is recorded as marveling only twice. Once was at the unbelief demonstrated at his hometown of Nazareth. The other time was at the faith of a Gentile soldier, whom Jesus recognized as having faith greater than that of His own people. Specifically, the centurion’s demonstration of faith was based on his understanding of authority. He was a man who moved in his own authority, and was recognized as a man of authority. He knew how to take orders and how to give them. He recognized in Jesus someone with authority like him, but with power much greater than his own.

Israel was often rebuked by God for her rebelliousness, and it’s clearly an aspect of human nature that is evident from Adam to the present. But we live in a particularly rebellious age, when even the idea of authority is under great attack. The very word “authority” is often expressed and often received as if it had the word “abusive” in front of it. But as we can see, the concept of authority is from God Himself (Romans 13:1b: “For there is no authority except from God.”).

We can wring our hands over the misuse of authority all we want—and there will always be plenty of evidence for hand wringing—but the idea of authority is from God. So as disciples of Jesus Christ we must come to terms with what authority is, how it’s manifested in this earth, and how we are supposed to deal with it.

The first issue with authority, however, is not a mental understanding of its various manifestations. It’s getting it straight in our hearts that we are to submit to or work with authority where we find it. Since authority is from God, it is to be honored. It is to be adjusted to, perhaps even bowed to in our hearts. There will be little true revelation of authority in our lives if we haven’t settled it that authority is an aspect of God worthy of our efforts to understand it the best we can, with the goal of recognizing it, submitting to it, and glorifying God in the process.

The attack on the idea of authority is, at its foundation, an attack on God, as authority is from Him. The great struggle for many of us is the constant parade of abuses of it in history and even in our own lives. But man’s misuse of God’s authority doesn’t negate its reality. Neither should we let it blind us to where God’s authority is in our lives, so we may rightly position ourselves before Him and reap the rewards that come with faithfulness.

While much of the rest of the world is blind to authority, dismissive of it, or even rebellious against it, the Christian should be eager to locate God’s authority in every aspect of his/her life. We should be eager to use that authority to bless and just as eager to submit to authority as unto the Lord.

Prayer: Father, cleanse my heart of the rebellion that comes to the surface when I consider the issue of authority in my life. I repent of using man’s misuse of authority as an excuse not to follow You in that area. Help me to see where You’ve placed authority in my life, and help me to honor You in working with it.

A Theology of Work

Steven and Brooksyne Weber covered this earlier in the week as part of Labor Day, but I felt it was worthy of consideration here as well.  (Apologies to those of you who read both!)

You can find this online at DailyEncouragement.net where it appeared as Enjoying Your Work.

Listen to this message on your audio player.

“There is nothing better for man than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work” (Ecclesiastes 2:24).

Yesterday was “Labor Day” here in the USA, the last holiday of the summer and the unofficial start of the Autumn Season. Most American readers had the day off and are back to work today. We know a good number of our readers who are representative of the entire constituency of Daily Encouragement Net. Just considering the types of work you do reveals a vast variety. We are often asked to consider whether we find our work fulfilling or if we enjoy our work.

So many have a view of work as drudgery, a dreaded necessity. This is not healthy nor is it Biblical. Each day is a day the Lord has made and we are called to rejoice and be glad in it. Ecclesiastes 2:24 speaks of enjoying work so today let us examine four aspects of work that can bring joy:

1) The joy of obedience. God has ordained work into His created order. This ordaining of work predates the fall (original sin) although the difficulty of labor increased as a result of the fall. When we work we are expressing obedience to God. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work” (Exodus 20:9). Psalm 40:8 states, “I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.”

2) The joy of providing. This is a critically important attitude. It grieves us greatly to see the rotting fruit of a system where people aren’t expected to work to provide for their own needs and that of their family. Many years ago I encountered a man who had left his wife and children, giving no thought to their future since he expected others to care for them. I still recall sternly using this verse, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8). God has ordained that we provide for our own! What joy that brings.

3) The joy of contributing.  “Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need” (Ephesians 4:28). We may initially consider the need to work in the sense of having resources to give to God’s work and those in need, and this is certainly true. However, also consider how that which you make and do is contributing to the needs of others.

We will use some examples we see weekly in our chaplaincy ministry:

• A company which installs HVAC and another roofing, siding, doors and windows. We need these and they are a blessing. These workers and all who support them have skills to help and bless others.
• A company which makes precision machined parts for the medical industry. Next time you or someone you love is in the hospital consider the machinist who made a part for a valve. I visited with a Vietnamese worker who had trouble communicating with me. He showed me a very tiny part he was making that goes into a pacemaker. The slightest error and it must be disposed of and the worker must start all over again. (Imagine the extraordinary eye and hand coordination for such a task.)
• A group of men making live animal traps. Visiting friends in rural Missouri several years ago we heard a glowing story of these traps in action catching 11 armadillos that were destroying a home garden over several weeks.
• A company that makes displays that go into retail stores. Next time you go to a Lowes, Staples, Walmart and many other stores you will likely see a display made by this company although you probably won’t pay much attention since the goal is selling the product!
• A huge commercial tree farm that grows and sells trees and shrubs to wholesalers all through the eastern states. We sure appreciate nice landscaping and the blessing of plants.

So today ask yourself, “In what way is my work contributing to the needs of others?”

4) The joy of influence. A healthy outlook for the believer is to see his associations at work as a means of ministry. We regularly visit with a man about our age who trained for ministry. He’s had some disappointing setbacks and is still open to a vocational ministry assignment but in the meantime works with a good attitude and sees his present place as a means of letting his light shine. Consider this verse: “After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them” (Acts 18:1-3). In the text quoted from Acts note the phrase, “and worked with them”. At this point Paul was already an esteemed minister yet he worked as tentmaker for a season. He could have resented this and seen it as a setback but I have a feeling he had some good discipleship talks with Aquila and Priscilla who went on to have a fruitful ministry together.

Let us experience the joy of work, whatever that looks like; today and in every season of our life!

Daily prayer: Father, our ability to work is a blessing. The drive and dedication to be a good worker, rather than one who does as little as possible to draw a paycheck, is pleasing to You and a testimony to others. We are further motivated because You give us a healthy mind, strong bodies and a desire to provide for our own. In addition we are spurred on to help others who are truly in need and joyfully give of our resources to help provide for them. We pray for those seeking employment but have found one door after another closed. Provide for their needs, open doors for employment and grow them in ways they never imagined during this dry season of their lives. We delight in doing Your will; we joyfully contribute to the needs of others; and we seek to positively influence those around us. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Six Days Shalt Thou Labor

Exodus 20:9 (NIV)

⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work

I couldn’t help but notice this passage a few weeks ago. As I read it, I thought about the number of families that are faced with massive household consumer debt, and wondered if perhaps this offers a solution. Even if one of the income earners in a house picked up something on Saturday, that could mean an extra 20% income, provided such jobs were available.

But the note in my NIV Study Bible was somewhat dismissive, saying something to this effect, ‘A shorter work week in an a modern industrialized culture is not in view here.’

Furthermore, we focus on the distraction of the six-day work week here at our peril, because our entire attention in this commandment should be devoted to the practical and spiritual implications of the concept of cessation from labor for the purposes of sabbath rest (i.e. to rest as God rested, to give God worship, etc.).  The Voice Bible says in essence that you’ve got six days to get everything else done, the seventh is a day of rest.

⁹ You have six days to do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is to be different; it is the Sabbath of the Eternal your God…

Still, I believe we skip a possible secondary takeaway from verse nine too easily, especially in western society where ‘long weekends’ and ‘casual Fridays’ push us further and further toward a four day work week.  It’s said that we live in a culture of entitlement, and certainly we feel we are entitled to enjoy a certain degree of comfort and a certain number of consumer goods; so we amass great levels of personal debt to obtain those things.

While we should be pleased if our employer offers us extra work that will help reduce that debt, our labor laws insist that we be paid overtime, which means the employer thinks twice before offering us extra hours. And I do wonder what the agriculturally-based readers of the Decalogue in Moses’ time would think of our modern concept of vacation.

The website Theology of Work Project looks at different areas where the Bible addresses this topic.

John MacArthur notes the erosion of the work ethic in a sermon devoted to this topic that you can either read or listen to online.

When God doesn’t matter anymore, then there is no universal, transcendent standard for behavior. And natural human corruption runs rampant to the degree that any individual person chooses to live. And one of the basic moral virtues that disappears in a culture is work…work. People once worked hard because of the influence of Scripture and because Scripture is a reflection of the will of God. God is the authority and the Bible is the revelation of His will as that authority. Work, you see, is a virtue, work is a moral behavior.

People worked hard because they believed they were accountable to God and they were accountable to the revelation of God in Scripture. They had reverence for biblical authority and they had a basic fear of God. Even those who weren’t particularly evangelical Christians understood the place of God in society, understood the place of Scripture in society that it was the will of God and understood they had a transcendent responsibility before God to behave in a certain way. Now that God doesn’t matter, and the Bible is ridiculed and removed, if not banned from speaking authoritatively on any subject, there is a kind of fearless immorality. And one of the things that’s going to disappear is the virtue of work…the virtue of work. Sinners are happy to think that they answer to no one, but to themselves.

And later

Somebody made the suggestion that originally man was a gardener and the curse turned him into a farmer. Originally man was a flower arranger, and the curse turned him into a plow horse. The Fall did not introduce work, it changed its nature. And as the nature of work that is the punishment, but not work itself. Work neither began nor ceased with the Fall, it just took a different shape. It went from being a righteous blessing solely to being a righteous blessing with a curse on top.

And so, man seeks to restore the glory of work with the sweat of his brow, and all of his ingenuity he goes after this cursed earth, using the wonderful creative gifts that he’s been given because he’s in the image of God to abstract out of the richness of this planet everything that he can possibly extract, to provide value to his life, to provide meaning to his life, to provide provision for his life and those in his family, to provide for the needs of others and most importantly to bring dignity upon himself as one made in the image of God who demonstrates God-like creativity…

…In Psalm 104 we read, “He made the moon for the seasons, the sun knows the place of its setting. You appoint darkness and it becomes night in which all the beasts of the forest prowl about. The young lions roar after their prey and seek their food from God. When the sun rises, they withdraw and lie down in their dens. Man goes forth to his work and to his labor until evening.” God has ordained that men work originally six days a week here. You go to work in the morning and you finish in the evening. Work is designed by God to redeem the curse in a measure. You look at the civilized world, you look at the world that has flourished, you look at the western world in particular, and now, of course, many ascending nations in Asia and other parts of the world, and you see the magnificence that is extracted out of the creation by work. Go to Africa, and you see parched lands, starving people, murderous tribal warfare…people don’t work. It’s a tragic reality.

Work was always God’s design for us to be able to draw out all that is in this creation for the demonstration of our nobility being created in the image of God and for the glory of God and for the benefit of all man. It can be redeemed. It must be redeemed and that’s why we work. You know how that works. You redeem your yard every week. And if you went away for six months and came back, you would find out what the curse would do…just no water for six months, that will do it. Or just open all the windows and doors in your house and leave for six months and come back and see what’s inside. See what lives there. It’s a battle and we all understand that battle. We extract goodness out of His creation. That was Adam’s job and now we have to fight against the curse to extract that goodness. We are called to that work because it is noble and because it is God-glorifying.

This is a sermon/article rich with commentary on this topic, and I encourage you to click the above link to get into more of it.

I offer this today not to try to bring back the six-day work week, but rather to allow us to reconsider our attitude and our approach to the five-day work we do.

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The Reformation Study Bible offers a theology of work:

God’s purposes in ordaining work

That people should be self-supporting Ge 3:19 See also Ps 128:2; 1Th 4:12

That people should find self-fulfilment Ecc 2:24 See also Pr 14:23; Ecc 3:22; Ecc 5:19

That people should serve others Eph 4:28 See also Pr 31:15; 1Th 2:9; 1Ti 5:8

That people should glorify God Col 3:17 See also 1Co 10:31; Eph 6:5-8 pp Col 3:22-24

Consequences of viewing work as God’s ordinance

Work is seen as a moral duty Tit 3:14 See also Pr 6:6; Ecc 9:10; 1Th 4:11; 2Th 3:7-12

Any legitimate work may be seen as God’s calling Ge 2:15 See also Ex 31:1-6; Ex 35:30-35; Ps 78:70-71; Mt 13:55 pp Mk 6:3; Ro 13:6; 1Co 7:17,20-24

Work is seen as a stewardship from God himself Col 3:23-24 See also Mt 25:14-30 pp Lk 19:12-27; Eph 6:5-8