Most of us, from childhood, have been taught that if we are going to get ahead, we must work hard. Solomon said, “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” (Proverbs 14:23) Paul exhorted the Thessalonians to “work hard with your own hands, just as we taught you, so that your daily lives may win the respect of outsiders, and so that you won’t be dependent on anyone.” (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12) The idea of humans working is reflected in the opening pages of Scripture, and one could easily argue that one of the main purposes of mankind’s original design was for working in and caring for the well-being of the earth.
Sadly though, in Genesis 3, work, along with several other things, was cursed. Not only did weeds and thorns show up to frustrate Adam and Cain, so also did their attitude toward work. One could easily argue that the pride of Cain and his work-output was the domino that pushed him to eventually murder his brother Abel. Let’s face it, most of us don’t love our work! Many of us get our identity from our work, and like Cain, it spoils our lives. For managers and owners, our work-life balance usually strains every other relationship in our lives. Conversely, if you are a paid worker, you may have no problem leaving work at work, but wish you brought home more money and find yourself jealous of your owner’s salary and lifestyle. Admittedly, you love “sticking it to the man,” finding ways to steal time and resources from your employer. In God’s top 10 ways humans mess up the image of God in their lives list, (aka, the Ten Commandments), number four addresses this human flaw head on: “Six days shall you labor, and on the seventh, you shall rest.” (Exodus 34:21) Let’s face it — WORK IS BROKEN.
Enter Jesus. He begins to preach a counterintuitive Gospel of the Kingdom where all that was broken in Adam is somehow fixed. Suddenly, as you embrace His Kingdom, you find your emotional and personal life is somehow healed in relationship with Him! You notice your relationship with others around you changing and becoming healthy. But what about work, our vocation? Does Jesus’s Kingdom affect our vocational lives? Is there something that radically reverses Adam’s curse, and redeems our work as something pleasing to God and easier for us? What did Jesus have in mind when He said, “take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light”? (Matthew 11:29-30) Does this change our attitude and relationship to work?
This week we invite you to listen to Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, and Paul in the busy context of working-class Corinth, speak deeply into this subject. Our prayer is that your attitude to work would become so radically counter to the thinking of the world, that your work would become a beautiful and effective platform for the advancement of the Gospel. Our desire is that you might get a glimpse of your design in Christ (Ephesians 2:10), seeing your vocation as something that Christ has, in fact, redeemed, planned and most importantly, has empowered. May you seize a view of vocation that allows you to transcend what may appear menial and insignificant and turn it into the stuff of worship! The beauty of the Gospel of the Kingdom, is that God has redeemed human work, transformed it into His sacred workshop for our souls, and made it to be the preamble of our future eternity with Him. We pray with Moses: “May your works be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children. May the beauty of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us — yes, establish the work of our hands.” (Psalm 90:16-17) The Lord has certainly invited us to co-labor with Him as He establishes His Kingdom among the redeemed of the earth and fulfills through us His eternal plans as we both rest and work in worship to Him.
As you prepare for tonight’s home group, look back over the devotions from the past week. Which devotions were most meaningful to you and why?