Northside Church - Sydney
To Do: The Plan for Work
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Tonight we start a new series called "To Do," a finding meeting behind your work, and one might ask, "Well, why are we going to spend six weeks looking at the topic of work when we're in church?" Two reasons. One's mission or one's pastoral. The mission or reason is if we look at what we've been learning for the past six months this year, really, our whole theme this year has been about the missio day, the mission of God, and what we've been learning, whether it be wall flowers in that series where we learn that if the great dance at the center of the universe was happening and God himself invites you into that dance, would you join? Would you step off the wall? And from there we then went into the Ephesian series and we saw that God had great and incredible plans for the world, eternal plans for the world that would be enacted and carried out through his church, the modern family. And so it only seems to reason that when we talk about the mission of God, I thought statistically they say that you'll spend somewhere in the average lifetime over 90,000 hours at work. Some people worry thinking, "I don't want to do Monday," and statistically speaking, the time that we'll spend together here in worship and hasn't been great worship tonight, and gathering as a body of believer here, represents less than 1% in relationship to the work that you will do this week. And so it only stands a reason if we're going to look at how God is carrying out his mission for our church and more importantly for your life, then could it be that your work, not necessarily a mission trip to Madagascar, which of course is important stuff and we're doing this year, not necessarily helping out at women's refuges, which of course we're doing and we love that stuff, but could it be that the vehicle for your mission into the world will be your workplace? And often churches muck this up, don't they? Because look, here's how it feels, right? Often you feel that when we talk about mission in the workplace, that somehow you have to go and evangelize and save every member of your open plan section because that's what God has allocated to you, and you go and pray over the open plan section and you sort of dream of leading a mini church service around your desks and there'll be a Bible study and all that, you know, I think a lot of churches oversimplify the nuances in terms of carrying out your mission in the workplace. And so what we will see throughout this series, missionally, is that there are a whole range of different approaches that you can take to your mission in the workplace. You know, is mission just, you know, are we working to do our mission just in order to do social justice? Are we working for God just to be honest and good in the professional we're doing? Are we working for God in order to earn as much money as we can in order to be as generous as we can? See, all of those are legitimate answers to our mission at work, right? And yet I think churches oversimplify it and they overemphasize one over the other, nor is the answer that it's all of those added up together, that somehow to be a super Christian, you've got to do all of those at once. But more importantly, could it be possible that God through the incredible diversity that we've got in this place says, using your work for social justice is a way to serve God. Using your work to be as generous as you possibly can be is a way to serve God. Using your work to be good and all right and all things that are beautiful in your job is a way to serve God. So that's the missional piece of it. The pastoral piece of it is this, guys, you know, I'm 32 years of age. I've done a degree in business. I've first and foremost wrestled with many of the questions that we have, that we will have over the course of this series, particularly, you know, am I being as good a Christian as I can be if I'm just, you know, in the workplace and not a superhero minister like Graham Agnew? I've, I've, I've, I've been to the Friday night drinks. I've seen the state of the world and what it is like around you there. And so it's the pastoral implications. Never have I found in my generation situations, like recently when I'm sitting down with another guy my age and it's his third redundancy in the past three years. He's been seven months out of work. I haven't had the situation where, where there's, you know, young women who are having to go to HR to deal with a boss that's bullying them in the workplace. The situations where there are mothers who are grappling with their identity because they have once been solid career women and have had a kid and wonder, well, what does my life mean for me now that the career has been put on hold, that there are actresses and musicians and dancers who some of which are being chided and chastised by their family and said, you will go get a real job. What role does their skills and their talents and abilities that God's given them play into his mission? That's the situation of the person that's reconciling the shift in their career aspirations because they've realized 10 years into it that what they're actually doing, they're not all that good at. It's the person who's studied for nine years at university only to find out that at the end of all this study, there's no job for them and with all these incredible skills, what are they supposed to go to? It's the person who's studying their PhD and doesn't earn sort of any huge amount of money in the first place and no, certainly what they're going to in their future. It's not just mission or it's pastoral and I thought there's no better season for us as a church that spends six weeks on the topic of work. How do we speak into this? More importantly, how does the Bible speak into this? What is the Bible going to say about it? My wife Kristen has been calling me an old man and rightly so at 32 years of age. Mainly because recently I've been having this trick in my neck. My neck is absolutely being killing me and so she says, you go and get it fixed you old man and so I went to go and get it fixed and I went to some Chinese message therapy place at Air and Affair like talk about being a man of faith. Go and put your hands in one of those guys up at the shops, just one of those stalls on the side of it and I went out of there and felt wonderful and the smells and the scents and the massage oils just felt beautiful. At the end of it I just felt so relaxed and fantastic as he'd gotten the elbows in and worked it all out and yet I don't know if you've ever had this experience but three days later it felt the neck felt just as bad and I'm back in the same situation. I'm thinking, I really am an old man but here's why I had the problem. You see what I really needed was not a remedy. I needed a realignment. I need to see that genius, chief formin laying cove, my chiropractor because the issue was not superficial. It was deeper. It was because there was a malalignment in my neck and so here's the question for us tonight. Now when it comes to the pains and the frustrations of your work, whether your work is paid or unpaid, I'm conscious there are people who are in between jobs tonight and will be praying for you. Whether your work is for the company or is it for the kids at home? Whether your work is chosen by you or chosen for you, whether your work is personally fulfilling or it's an absolute bore, here's the question. Could it be that the frustrations you're feeling and the pains you're feeling your work is because the solutions I want you to speak into and how you're trying to fix this is because you're trying to remedy the issue instead of realigning the issue? Could it be that through this series that is your work, I guess that's what I want to ask, is your work in alignment with the purposes for which you were built and for which your work was built? And that's what we'll be discovering. Could it be possible that the realignment of our perspective on work will be found in the recovery of this idea that all of human work is not merely a job, but it's a calling. And finally enough, the Latin word vocare, which means calling, is a word from which we get vocation. And so that's the big idea. Over the next six weeks, we'll unpack these lofty statements. We're going to look at God this week, God's plan for work. The next week, we're going to look at the problems with work. Why does work causes so many frustrations? Then we'll look at the perspectives on work, how the gospel could shape our work for the better. Then we look at the practices of our work. So in other words, the degree to which we get the gospel will affect the degree to which we live out our work. Then we'll look at the principles of your work. How can you, and it's better to get this earlier rather than later, live by the ethics and the guidance and the principles of the Bible faithfully in your workplaces. And most importantly, at the very end, we're going to look at power for your work and the nuclear fuel rod for your work. Could it be possible in the end of these six weeks that you could discover through the gospel both a freedom in and a freedom from your work? Stick around tonight. All I want is for us to grasp this. All I want is to get tonight, just this. First and foremost, we'll see from the Scriptures that work is important to God. And then we'll see also that God is really important for your work. Let's dig into the Scriptures. Actually, you don't need your bookmarks. I'm going to read from Genesis, the very first book of the Bible. I've got a few more pages because mine's a study Bible. Genesis chapter 2, "Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array, by the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day he rested from all of his work, and God blessed the seventh day, and he made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." And then verse 15 of chapter 2, when it talks about the Garden of Eden, it says, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." Let's think about that for later. Here's the first revelation. This could shatter. This could shatter your perspectives of places like Hamilton Island, Tasmania, if you're so inclined, Europe, all these beautiful places around there were. There is a startling truth here, and that is this, that work is a part of paradise. You only have to go to Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. I'm going to go and have to get through all my pages of my study Bible here. Look at this. In the beginning God created the heavens. What's he doing? He's working. In another way to paraphrase it, Sam's message version. In the beginning God worked. Like John should have said that, in the beginning was the work and the work was with God and the work was God. That's what John should have said when he was paraphrasing Genesis. Why is that so startling to us? I think it's because, look, what's the modern day view of work? Work is a duty. Work is a necessity. Work's an inconvenience. Work's something that we have to do. Now, that's not nothing new. The Greeks thought of that complaint with work. The Greek perspective on work was that that was the thing done by the riffraff, that these mighty and these pure and these wonderful gods created human beings for this reason and this reason alone, that they were the ones to do the work. Work was a dirty thing. It was for the riffraff and the gods, they were pure and free from that dirty thing called work. And even when you look through the philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, a lot of their philosophies go on the notion that the esteemed one of society, the learned ones, the intellectuals, the successful ones should be freed up from these laborious tasks and freed up into the purity of thought and they shouldn't have to do work. And so it's nothing new for the Greeks because particularly their perspective on the material world was that the material world was a bad thing and it was a frustrating thing and it was just inhibiting the soul and the spirit and that the world was something bad that was to be escaped. And so here are the Greeks saying, look, work is for the riffraff. It's for the everyday people. The objective is to get away from work. And I wonder, I don't know about you. I wonder if a lot of that Greek thinking still pervades our society today and how much do we constantly think that work is something that we've just got to get through. It's for that laborious stuff. Look, the biblical perspective is utterly different, right? Artally different. And it says in Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 to 28, it says, then God said, let us make man in our own image. Let us know a little bit of a Trinitarian feel in there in the right, the very, very beginning of Genesis. Let us. God's not schizophrenic here. He's Father, Son, Holy Spirit at the very heart of creation. He says, let us make man in our image in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over the livestock and over the earth and over the creatures that move along the ground. And so God created man in his own image in the image of God. He created him male and female. He created them. Notice how when it says God created man, it means anthropos in the Greek. This was Hebrew, but it just meant God created humanity whenever it says man. The Bible's not trying to be sexist. But here's what we're saying. The biblical view is totally different. This God of the Bible loves this world unlike the Greeks. The Hebrew perspective is the God of this world created it. And the care and the cultivation of this world is so important. It's so important that the message of the gospel that we see is that God is one day even going to redeem and restore this world. It's not to be escaped. And so what that means is whether you're a ditch digger or a mathematician, all of your work is important to God. All work is important to God because whether it's with the hands or whether it's with the mind, it reflects the very image of the created God in us. You want to take the analogy further. I need no other illustration than when it says in verse 15 and it says God put the man in the garden as a great image, isn't it? You know, what do gardeners do? What do gardeners do? Do they sit there and do they pave the garden, make a parking lot over it? No, no, they don't. Unless you're one of those people that Joni Mitchell really hates. But that's a reference for those who are a little bit older in the congregation tonight. But you don't pave over it. And does the gardener just ignore it? Do they just leave it? No, here's the wonderful thing. A gardener comes in and a gardener looks at all the rawness of the garden and looks at all the potential of the garden and uses their own God given talents and abilities and thinking and they plot and they look at which tree could go here and here and here and they begin to create. And they're active. And so here, here's what you see, what was he was saying? There was work in paradise that one of the great mysteries of the biblical view of work is that yes, God created the world, but God created the world with a little bit of creative potential in it. That it was wonderful and it was beautiful, but it was somehow incomplete until an aspect of his creation, humanity would come into it and look at all its rawness and all of its potential and begin to shape and mold and think and build and create. Why would he do that? He does it in the same way that my dad always made me used to chop the wood for the webber before he had dinner with the tomahawk downstairs. I used to hate doing that. The tomahawks, a little funny mini axe, and I had to go down and he'd always make me break up the fence palings and go through and split them down the center and take them back up so we could have the barbecue and it was such an annoying thing to do. He'd always make me do it and I could never understand why he would make me do it. And because I knew deep down that as my father, if I really didn't do it, he's not going to make me starve. He's still going to have to cook the barbecue. Why would he make me do it then? Because he wanted to demonstrate to me that although he was a father of incredible provision and a father who would bestow upon me all of his grace and his gifts and his provision into my life, there was something special about him involving me in his plans and his work. Can you see what God's doing here in Genesis? We might think work is frustrating but what he's saying is saying kids go into the garden, go into this world, pick up the tomahawk that I gave you, go chop the wood even when it doesn't make sense. Because I want to involve you in this infinitely creative process and there we have the definition for work. Work is taking raw materials and rearranging them for the purposes of flourishing God's creation. See the pattern God, Genesis 1, God's a worker. Genesis 1 verse 26, God makes us in his image. Genesis chapter 2 verse 3 and 15, God puts us in the garden to work. In other words, if the garden Genesis is about this world around us, the implications are clear for you and I tonight that the world around us is not our enemy. Far from it, God puts us into the world to cultivate it and to flourish it. We are given specific work to do A because God worked and 2 because he makes us in his image and we're called to stand in for God in the world and to exercise stewardship over what we've got and to share in the very thing that he is done by picking up the tomahawk to create, to participate in his creation. Could look, come on, could there be no more noble definition of work? To take what God has given you and to engage in limitless creativity with either your minds or your hands and a partner with him in communal and if you're a Christian eternal creation, there's work in paradise. Question, who sits there Monday morning up like that, huh? Who trots off to work? I'm off for the process, my desk, wherever I might be, to participate in God's eternal creation. I'm a gardener. Guys, are we grasping at this? This is what's hit me in studying this series. Works important to God. And so here's the litmus test to see whether or not you have grasped the biblical view of work. If you don't grasp this and your neck will be out of alignment for the rest of your life, here's the litmus test. Like say that you win the lottery tonight, you win like 35 million bucks. What 10% of that is 3.5 million a year, 5% is what? 1.75? Thank you. I used to be an accountant. Once was lost, now I'm found. The 5% put it in ING, you could live off $1.75 million in perpetuity for the rest of your life. Here's the litmus test. If that happened to you, if you woke up tomorrow with that lottery ticket, would you want to live a life of vacations or vocation? From a biblical perspective, work is as much a need of the human soul as food is, as beauty is, as friendship is, as rest is. What it's saying is works good. God created it. God built you for work. And it's the very thing that will nourish your soul. Look, there was a case study done on this. Can you believe that there was an example that exactly fitted what I wanted to say just then? Because in CNN.com, they described three teachers recently. I think it was last year who each won $35 million in the Maryland Lottery. And it says here, "Each will collect their $35 million after taxes." That's pretty good. In the Maryland Lottery director, Stephen Martino said that they planned to buy new homes, travel to Europe, help their own children, pay for college. They plan to do that, but as teachers, they couldn't stand to leave their schools. They were so clearly committed to their kids, he said, of the teachers. They both said, "Yes, I can't give up my kids." Work. You're designed for work. And I put it to you that if we grasp the biblical view of work, that it wouldn't be about vacation, it would be about vocation because that is what you're built for. Work is important to God. Genesis shows it through his creation, through his calling us to rule over that creation, through placing of humanity in the garden. That work is a good thing. That God does it. That you were built for it at a lofty level. Here's the thing. At the loftier level, work is the means by which God blesses and flourishes an unbelieving world around you. And as a result, work will give you a significance and it will give you a dignity that is totally unrelated to your level of power, of your level of position, to your level of pay. All work is important to God. Work is important to God. Then we see here that also God is important to your work. The big question is, why do you work in the first place? And many would say that you work because work is what you do in order to do what you really want to do. In other words, you work to live, right? Everyone wants to work to live. We just work is a means by which we can go and do the things we want to do. Very often we work for the supporting benefits that go with work. We work for the money and the power and the status and the approval. But again, the Bible offers a different perspective. And listen to what Paul says in Colossians 3.23. That was just a preaching technique, by the way. Keep you interested. It says slaves obey your earthly masters in everything and do it, not only when their eyes on you and to win their favour, but with the sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work out it with all of your heart as if you were working for the Lord and not people. The Bible, again, offers us a totally different perspective. Fundamentally, it's saying, why God is important to your work is that because you work for him, that you don't work for your boss or for your clients, that you don't work for your audience or for the grades that you're hoping to achieve. You're working for God. And what it means in is that work is no longer just your means. It's not just your means to success. It's not just your means to survival. It's not just your means to approval. It's not just your means to status. And all of these can be good things, by the way. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But what it means is that work is no longer just your means, work becomes your mission. And how? Well, look, if we're looking back here and if we see that our work is important for God, that is, you're built for it and work is a means by which you're flourishing the world around you, then here's a question. Your perspective becomes this, how can I in my workplace work in such a way as to allow the people around me to flourish, flourish psychologically, flourish spiritually, flourish emotionally? How can I in my workplace tomorrow, Monday morning, when I walk into work, work in such a way that even without evangelizing, by the way, people around me flourish? And so what it means is that one of the aims of the series is we bring the message to a closed night is to begin thinking about what it means to be a Christian accountant, what it means to be a Christian teacher, what it means to be a Christian actress, what it means to be a Christian lawyer, what it means to be a Christian tradesperson, what it means to be a Christian student, because I think so often in the world that we privatize our Christian life, that we we tear our Christian identity away from that. And so we almost live a duplicitous life in which we live as, you know, accountants, actresses, lawyers, students, we live there for the 90% of the week and then we play Christian for 1% of the weekend, that's if we're at church. And so now admittedly, here's the thing, being a Christian accountant, actress, lawyer, tradesperson, student, musician, for that matter, it's difficult and it's nuanced for a couple of quick reasons. The first reason it's difficult is because every field of work is different. Every field, as we'll see in these coming weeks, has its own idols, has its own nuances, has its own pressures within the various fields. And so for example, a Christian accountant looks very different to a Christian violinist. I mean, does the Christian violinist, you know, when they're thinking out the implications of their faith, they sort of start quoting scripture before their finger is about to push down upon the fret. Does their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ somehow give that pressing of the fret just a resounding glow about it that no other violinist in the world has? Of course not. They just play the violin. You know, does the Christian accountant, when they copy the cell from C3 into D5, when they press control V, take that precious piece of creation, see all work is important, and they take that precious piece of creation with that cell and that cell and they create that beautiful formula that just rings and just gives them a shiver down their spine. There's being a Christian effective in that way. No, of course it doesn't, but here's what we're getting at. For the violinist, it may not affect how they press the fret, but it does affect how they will talk and how they act and how they will behave backstage. For the Christian accountant, it will dictate whether or not they are going to manipulate the data they're putting in the spreadsheet in order to further their own prospects or their company's prospects. You get what I'm saying? And so what it means is that it's very difficult because every field is different. Of course, the violinist can't talk to the accountant about C3 and D5. And so what it means for you is that this is not something that you can work out by yourself in your workplaces apart from community. What you need is you need to come into a place that is nuanced. You need to find someone else to talk it through. Where else in the world could you go? In this world, in Sydney, in the Loewen or Shaw, which club could you go and join where if you are a violinist, you could find another violinist? But at the same time, you're going to find accountants and you're going to find lawyers and you're going to find tradespeople and you're going to find musicians. You're going to find artists. What club are you going to join? The church. And what it means is you can't process this whole series. You can't process a concept of work outside of community. And that's why it must encourage you strongly, starting this week. Are you in a connection group? Are you coming to exchange? Are you coming to explore? Are you coming to the only place that I know of in the Loewen or Shaw? I don't think rotary or toastmasters will quite do it for you. Where else can you go to begin to work the nuances and the challenges of your work out without a like-minded people? It's the church. And so that's the first thing. It's tough because each field is very different. But here's the other reason. It's difficult to think through the importance of God on your work because every church is different. Like I said in the beginning, we must recognize that there are different streams in which we can bind the heart and the motivation and the reason and the purpose of your work. Some will say whether it's social justice or to give you joy or just work with a grateful heart or to have a Christian motivation to glorify God or to create beauty or do your work excellently or to do what is honest and right. Each church could preach a different thread in terms of why you should be doing work. And like I said, to what extent are those complementary to each other, fighting against each other? Or to what extent are these a way to serve God? And so that's what we've been saying. If 90% of your time is going to be spent at work, if 90,000 hours in a lifetime is going to be spent at work, what if the way to fulfill our mission of a church is not just the Matagasca trip? Although I'm excited about what's going on there. What if the way for us to fulfill our mission as a church is not just the pantry packs or helping out a glee with the glee barbeques? What if the way for us to fulfill our mission as a church is to gather together like this, to understand a biblical grasp of work and to send out into the world accountants and artists and doctorate students and sign students and real estate agents into an unbelieving world to flourish in. It's tricky, but can you see the importance of God in your work? The degree to which you bring God into your work is the degree to which you're not only going to survive in your job, but you're going to thrive in your job, that you're going to live with a sense of meaning and of purpose in all that you do. And we'll get to that at the end of this series. But look, all of this year, whether it's been wallflowers, modern family, and now it's to do finding meaning behind your work. All of these series we've been discovering that God has a plan for you. God has a plan for our community in the world. God has a plan for the world. And that plan is that through the in-breaking of his kingdom, the establishment of his kingdom, that it began to break into history through the person of Jesus Christ in his birth and his death and his resurrection. And Jesus comes into the world and brings through the Holy Spirit, gathers a bunch of people together who, guess what? We learned it last Sunday a.m. We're going to be salt and light and there to flourish the world. And so at that point in time with this kingdom, it's now, but it's not yet. And until that time, which God establishes a new heaven and a new earth, and unlike the Greeks restores this beautiful, wonderful world, I'll tell you what, I hope he does. I love surfing. I love God's creation. I want to surf for all eternity and also do a bit of work, of course, because that's what the Bible tells me tonight. But here's what I'm saying. Until that new heaven, that new earth comes in a decisive lens, all evil and all suffering and all injustice and all tears and all pain in this world, until that time to become a Christian is to enter into that story. To become a Christian is to pick up the tomahawk. To become a Christian is to begin to actively, no matter how boring or meaningless you think your work is tomorrow, to become a Christian is to be part of that. And what it means is if that's the case in every part of our lives have to be shaped by, every part of our work lives have to be shaped by the gospel and what the word of God says. And so look, let me finish with this. You know, we see in Genesis 1, God, God's a God of work. In the beginning was the work. You know, in the beginning God worked. God created. God is infinitely creative. And then in John 17 we see an incredible passage from Jesus Christ Himself. He says, John 17 verse 4, he says, "Father, I have bought you glory on earth by," we know how to finish the line, "completing the work that you have given me to do." Jensen, Archbishop, says that if the Romans had to think of the ultimate incarnate God then maybe he'd come down as a warrior. You know, if the Greeks had to think of the ultimate incarnate God then maybe he'd come down as a philosopher. And yet in Christianity we see God coming down as a carpenter, as a God who works, who gets his hands dirty, but it wasn't just the wood that he was creating. What is Jesus talking about? When he gathered these disciples, when he gathered them around and they're eating fish and he's saying to them the kingdom of heaven is like and the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of heaven is like, and you will be a people that are salt and light and come up on the hill. I'm going to tell you how to live life together. You know what he was doing? He was gardening. He was gardening. He looked at each and every one of his people and said, "If I could plant them here they could grow to be this. If I could plant them there they would grow to be that." And he said to them, "Go and be perpetual gardeners." It started in Genesis and it will not finish. And he said, "Go plant seeds of the kingdom and grow people into wonderful creations." And when he said, "I've completed the work that you have given me to do," here's what Jesus was doing. He was creating a community of gardeners, people that would constantly take these seeds out into the world and flourish it. And so friends, you can make God the reason for your work. If you're still wondering why you should make God the reason for your work, what you've got to understand is that when you see that in Jesus Christ you were the reason for his work, you can make God the reason for your work when you see that you were the reason for Jesus's work, that he transcended space and time in order to plant you and to grow you and send you out to flourish other people around you. So work is important to God and God is important to your work. That's all I want you to get tonight. And that's what we must realize that the work is a good thing that you were built for, that you are called to. It's the means by which you participate in flourishing the world around you. And why can it feel so painful? Why can work feel so frustrating? Why can work feel like such a chore? Will you have to come back next week? Because we'll look at it then. But biblically, you start to get these pains when you start to get these pains when you take good things and you turn them into ultimate things. And already you're getting a hint at where I'm going to get out with the problem of work next week. But in the meantime, your biblical, I hope, and I pray your biblical work, if your work is clear, or clearer, the way that it's been clearer for me in studying the scriptures for this series, and I'm so excited about, is it clear, do you see that it's good that work you were built for it, that work you were called to it? Are you seeing that it could be the very beginning of the way that you will redeem, that you will recover the workplace around you? Let's pray.