Thank you very much for that. I felt like I should have passed the plate after that song. It got a little better offering. Thank you for that. I am a preacher and as much as I love what I do, I have to remind myself, when we get to heaven, there's no preaching anymore, but there is singing. Some of you undoubtedly looked at the voltage and you've seen that same text again. Genesis 1 and 26 to 28. Is this a misprint? Did we forget? Did we have a bunch of bolts left over? Just one, 20 to 28 again. I think I told you about the pastor who was called the church, the brand new, the church who preached a great sermon this first Sunday. Everybody loved it. The following Sunday, he got out and preached the exact same sermon again and people said, well, he's new. Maybe he's busy meeting people, going to meetings, got nervous, cut him some slack. The third Sunday, he preached the exact same sermon again, no more slack, no more understanding. Now, the elder is calling to a meeting in the church office, never a good sign. They said, what is the problem here? Same sermon. Do you not have any more sermons? He's, hey, you know, when I told you the first time, why would I move on and do a different sermon? That's not what I'm doing this morning. That's one, do you know? Why am I talking about work again? Other churches, pastors do series on relationships and those are often helpful. Sometimes just see a pastor do a series on finances. Those are occasionally helpful. Other pastor do complete sermon and series on prophecy. Those are never helpful. How they do the start fights? So I'm taking time to talk about work again on Labor Day Sunday. That's why I've done this series leading up to Labor Day. I want to talk about work because as a reminder to you over the last couple of weeks, the average American worker will spend 77,000 hours at work in an office, in a classroom, in a hospital, on an airplane, in a truck, in a car, on a work site, at home. The average American worker will spend 77,000 hours working. Yet how often does the church address the doctrine of vocation? I had this conversation with a good friend this past week and he said, three sermons on vocation, really? I said, have you ever heard another pastor preach a sermon on work on vocation? He thought about it and he said, I don't think I have. Well shame on us in the church. No wonder people think we're irrelevant. When we don't address something that affects your life as much as your work, as vocation which I've told you before comes from the Latin word to call your calling in life. Shame on the church. No wonder people think we're so irrelevant. Let me just reread for you again the quote from Dorothy Sayers. Dorothy Sayers, excellent essay. Why work? I would really recommend that you read it. Why work? Dorothy Sayers says, in nothing has the church so lost her hold on reality as in her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments. She has forgotten that the secular vocation is sacred. How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern for nine tenths of his life? So I'm taking one more Sunday. Yes, this will be the last one to talk about the doctrine of vocation. I'm using one of the most pivotal loaded texts, the most pivotal loaded texts in all the scripture to talk about. You know, Labor Day now is just a three day weekend to us. But it was originally intended to celebrate the American worker. Christians have particular reason to celebrate the doctrine of vocation and what the church has done for the secular, so-called secular vocation. The church has been instrumental in getting child labor laws passed and upholding the rights of workers all over this country which has spread to other nations. The rights of women in the workplace, the church has been there to advance the cause of civil rights. I remind you often of Dr. Martin Luther King, who was first and foremost the Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King. And you read his speeches or his letter from the Birmingham Daily, they are dripping with biblical references. The church has done more to uplift and uphold the rights in the dignity of the worker than any other force in the world. We need to speak meaningfully to that. We worship a God who labored he worked to bring the world into creation. Our God is a working God. They created human beings in his image to be workers. When God made Adam and Eve and put them in that perfect paradisical garden, he came work to do in the garden. Worked and come later, work was part of the garden to exercise dominion over and exercise care and cultivate the world. In the ancient world, the backdrop against which the Bible was written, the Greeks and the Romans, they viewed work as, they looked upon it as a curse as something for the lower classes and even for slaves. Christianity changed all that. Christianity views work as a high calling, a calling to be co-workers with God Almighty in his work of creating and subduing and ordering the rich potential. The rich potential of his creation. Read with me if you will, from Genesis 1, 26 to 28. If this is all you know about Genesis, but if you know this, I'll be happy. Genesis 1, verse 26, then God said, 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, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful in increasing number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Let's pray. Father, anytime we look into your word, we know we're looking into the very word of God, the very heartbeat of God Almighty. These words in particular are so close to the very creation and foundation and formation of this world. Father, it's like there's an EKG hooked up to those first pulses of when you said, let there be. Lord help us to catch a glimpse of the majesty and the truth of your word, your word is truth. We ask if you are sanctified in the truth. We ask it in Jesus name, who is the word? Amen. Americans work at their play, play at their worship, worship their work. Americans work at their play, play at their worship, worship their work. Is that how it ought to be? Where is there a different way? Let me review two ECO. I said why we work. I'll lay the theological framework. I said, the work is good because God is a working God. I said, we are God's co-workers, His supervisors over creation and that work is not the curse. Work is not part of the curse. The curse in work is frustration, the never ending nature of it. You mo your lawn today and it's going to be knee high by Thursday with all the rain we're getting. You washed your car on Saturday and four days later with all the rain and the dust and the dirt and the mud splattering. It looks like it hasn't been touched for weeks. And then secondly, last week I said, how should we work? If we understand that our jobs are a stewardship from God, if your work is legal, ethical and moral, it is holy work. It is a calling. No matter how mundane or but now or trivia you think it is, your work is good work. It is noble. It is holy. It is sacred work. And so I said, how do we work with gratitude? We work with integrity and we work with excellence. Now this morning I'm going to do in classical homolytics and that's just a big word that means preaching. In classical homolytics every sermon ought to have certain parts of explanation, certain parts of illustration, certain parts of application. I will tell you this morning having laid the theological groundwork, this would be way more weighted toward the applications. Can we just start calling them apps? Can I just say I got some apps for you this morning, save some time, save some syllables? Now I say again, I would salute all of you, work hard, five, six days a week and you still get here on Sundays. God bless you for your faithless. I'm not going to tell you that I understand what's like on your job so I don't. I've done a lot of other things part time or even abocationally. I've dug my shared ditches and laid my share of block but I don't know what you deal with on your work site. I do know that God's word applies to all people everywhere at all times. So whatever you do, those of you who try to be faithful at your jobs, God bless you. I know it's not easy but whatever you do, whether you're a salesman, a realtor, a doctor, a nurse, a therapist, a dentist, an IT worker, an architect, an engineer, a contractor, a carpenter, a Frick Mason, you're a safety inspector, police department, the Bible, teaches and the reformation to claim the doctrines of the sacredness of all vocations that are legal, ethical moral. And last week I referred you to Colossians chapter 3 verses 23 and 24, whatever you do, whatever you do, do your work hardly, ask for the Lord rather than for men knowing that from the Lord you received the reward of the inheritance, it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. It's not that nasty old boss of yours that unreasonable impossible supervisor, it is the Lord Christ you serve, whatever you do. We need men, women and young people who will take this view of work, who will take this outlook, we'll take this framework into their work with them, work with pride, work with integrity and be stand up and stand out because they're different. Then the slacker mentality that's provided so much too much of the American workplace, people who won't just punch a clock, people won't just phone it in, people who will show up and do a day's work for a day's wages, consider our duty and our privilege to give our utmost for his highest knowing it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. So my first application this morning is that we work to exercise dominion, dominion. I've always been a good bit of time on this one but I just want to remind you that the desire you have to create, to build, to bring order out of chaos and beauty out of barrenness. Where would you get that desire but from God Almighty? Where else in a world like this would you get it? When the law of the universe is entropy that systems tend to run down, they go from order to disorder if left alone if you don't believe that look at my desk, the law of the universe is entropy. So when you have a passion to create, to bring order, to bring beauty, where else would you get that but from the God of this creation. So the architects, the architect and the artist, the engineer and the musician, the landscape or the teacher they're all giving expression to a God given impulse to impose order and beauty where there was none. Now you need to understand there is a sense in which nothing we do is truly creative, even though we like to use that term, nothing we do is truly created because we cannot create anything that wasn't really there before. Now think about this with me, we don't create anything that did not already exist in one form or another before we worked on, the musician can write an original song but he didn't invent the notes he plays, he didn't invent melody and harmony and rhythm and tempo. He takes the pre-existing stuff of music and he forges an original tune, an original melody, but using pre-existing material, the artist can paint an original painting but she didn't create all the colors of the spectrum, she did not invent line or form or texture, height or width, depth or dimension. She works within the framework of what already exists to bring something beautiful or once there was bareness. The sculptor created original work but he didn't create the iron or the steel or the marble or the wood that he takes any bends and shapes and mold and he brings into being a work of art that wasn't there before but he used pre-existing material. The writer can write an original novel or short story or screenplay but she didn't invent the words she uses and even occasionally when someone does come up with a new word she didn't invent the letters she uses and the lines that we recognize in our script and other languages of other lines that are on the page or on the commuter monitor. So there's a sense in which nothing we do is truly created because only God can create but we are sub-creative under his hand but when we do those things that impulse we have, that urge we have to impose order or to bring beauty in a world like this can only come from our creative, beautiful God. Art, ladies and gentlemen, is intended to be whether it's the art of the architect or the engineer or the artist or the writer or musician. Art is intended to be one of the highest ways God has given us of taking the raw stuff of creation and molding it into something beautiful. You know the first time we hear someone being filled with the Holy Spirit? It's in Exodus 35. When God says the Holy Spirit will fill Vezile and O'Holiab who are two of the leek craftsmen and artisans who are to make the beautiful interior design and decoration of the tabernacle and the wilderness. The first time we hear a read of the Holy Spirit filling somebody, the Holy Spirit was there from the very beginning. The first time we hear of him filling somebody are the artisans and the craftsmen and the tabernacle. I think ladies and gentlemen, the closest we ever come to being truly creative isn't the conception of a child. When we bring into being a child that was not here before, we create a human being who did not exist before but even then we're still using the raw genetic material of a husband and a wife, a man and a woman. It's interesting that in Genesis 1 here, when God speaks within himself, within the counsel of the Trinity, the pre-existing counsel of the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit, when he speaks within the counsel of the Trinity, he says his first order of business is to create mankind and that mankind's responsibility is to exercise dominion. Then God said, verse 26, let us make man in our image and listen, you think we've taken three weeks to talk about work? We could take that phrase, let us make man in our image and talk endlessly about what it means to be his image bearers. So by saying preach, you can talk endlessly about anything. I'm telling you, this is one of the mother loads of Scripture and theology. Let us make man in our image, one small part of that is to be a worker. In our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds there, over the livestock, over all the earth, over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female, he created them. That's what he says within the counsel of the Trinity, but when he speaks to our first parents, when he speaks to them he tells them their first order of business. It's to fill up the world with other little image bearers of God. Their first job wasn't to bring order, their first job from the mouth of God was to fill up the world with other image bearers of God Almighty. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number. By the way, we've done a pretty good job of that. We obeyed that part pretty well. Fill the earth and subdue it and it tells them to rule over. That is the first part of what we call this cultural mandate. We are to make other little image bearers of God. Children are not just noisy little two-legged carbon-based life form that run around and costs us a lot of money. Make a lot of noise and a lot of chaos. They are those. Children are image bearers of God and wherever people go, we are a reminder that we are a reflection of the image of God Almighty. It may be very faint, very distorted, defaced, even vandalized by what other people have done to us, but what we've done to ourselves but no matter who you meet in human form, he or she is an image bearer of God Almighty. We are to exercise his dominion to bring order out of chaos. And it might end with our children as soon as they stop contributing to the order in the chaos, there to help us exercise dominion. Second application here. First I've said, we were for dominion. We also were for provision. We were for provision. Now it used to be this was a well done preacher moment. It's not anymore. We work to provide for ourselves and for our families. Martin Luther said, God gives the birds their food, but he doesn't throw it into their nests. God gives the birds their food, but he doesn't throw it into their nests. They have to go get it. Let me refer you to 2nd Thessalonians chapter 3 verses 10-13. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule. If a man will not work, he shall not eat. We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy. They are busy bodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat, and ask for you brothers, never tire of doing what is right. Listen, there are times when we are unable to work for various reasons. If you were in that category because you just got downsized or outsourced or your job got eliminated or just given to somebody who will do a cheaper than you will. If you are physically or mentally unable to work, there is no guilt here. There is no shame. That's been imposed upon you as beyond your control. Please understand that. The shame is for the man who can work, but won't. That's the man who needs to feel a God-induced sense of shame. To him Paul says, if you don't work, you don't eat. Simple, but it's pretty radical by today's standards, isn't it? You don't work, you don't eat. If you can't work, then we need to take care of you. No problem. But if you can work and you won't, Paul would say, shame on you. Now, I've mentioned to you before, I know this gets real tense when I talk about this, but I think what the crime of the welfare state is, that it is not that we have welfare, we need that. We need that safety net for people. But we created a welfare mentality, a dependent mentality on the parts of so many people who not only don't work, they don't understand they're supposed to. Because of what the welfare state has done, they think the government is supposed to take care of them. Not as an emergency short term thing, this is the way it's supposed to be, and therefore they never experience the satisfaction of a job well done. They never get a sense of pride in saying, I did that, and I did it well. Praise be to God. I knew a guy when I worked with you for Christ, you know, I'm a recovering youth worker, I worked with you for Christ, and knew a guy who worked with a wife in Denver. He was friends with the guy who was a social worker. Well, listen, I've been at you for Christ for 25 years, so this goes a long way back. This wife, see, brother, told me of just accompanying his social worker, and said, why aren't you coming with me today? 25 plus years ago, this man paid a call on House in Denver, they were in their fourth generation of people who had never had a job, four generations, and it wasn't as though they were saying, well, we're really getting by with this one. I mean, we're really pulling over. There was no understanding that they were supposed to work. Their mentality was no other people work. The government sends us a check. They thought it was normal. Shame on us. For ever allowing that kind of situation to happen in a country like this, that has been the hardest working nation in the history of the world. That's why we've been the most problem, the strongest, the most free. Shame on us for ever allowing people to not know the dignity that comes, the self-respect that comes from doing a job well and working hard, going home exhausted because you knew you gave your utmost first highest. When we take away a person and send him to work, and we eliminate all negative consequences for not working, guess what happens? People don't work. And we rob them of their God-intended dignity. Again, I'm not saying we don't need a safety net. We do, for people who cannot work, for whatever reason, for a period of time. People who've fallen on hard times, they know fall to their own. We need female. They're helping the people who are being hit by this disaster. But I am saying that safety net is not intended to be perpetual, multi-generational, to give people an excuse not to work. At one point in the early 90s, we were putting $150 billion a year into welfare. Now, that number, we thought, throw out trillions now, so my head doesn't stare at you. But what might bother you more is to know that other $150 billion a year we were putting into welfare, 60 billion of that went to administrative to administer it. So only 60% of the tax dollars that went to Washington to help administer welfare programs, only 60% of that money got to the people. The other 40% went to administer it. We wonder why we're in the shape we're in. Is that bother you? It bothers me a whole lot. I'm no economist, but I don't think that's a winning strategy. Somebody said, now there you go again, you're making political pronouncements. This is not political ideology, folks. This is biblical theology. We are made to work in the image of our working God. If you can't work, we understand we're here to help. Let me tell you, there's never been a better welfare network than the church. I wish the government would get off our necks a little bit, let us do a lot better than they do. We do a lot better than they do. Until such time as the government allows the churches and the synagogues and the salvation armies, more free reign to do what we do and do well, we have to have that safety net. But it's not political ideology, folks. It's biblical theology. We're made to work to be productive, to be creative if you let me use it that way. By our working productive, creative God, when we won't work, it does violence to who we are, it's God's image bears. Michael Novak, the American Enterprise Institute, says this, a healthy democracy stands on a three-legged platform of political liberty, economic freedom and moral responsibility. Political liberty, economic freedom, moral responsibility. Three-legged stool, you take away any one of those three and guess what happens to the three-legged stool? It collapses. We can any one of those in the platform collapses. More responsibility, democracy and a free market economy depend on persons of moral integrity. Where did people learn moral integrity? They learned at home, they learned in the church, they can learn in their schools. We know the state of the public school today, you teachers know better than anybody. We know the state of the home for the most part. We better be teaching in our churches. Those of you who are teaching in your homes, God bless you. If you can get your kids in a Christian school, God bless you triply. I want to say again, moms and dads and especially dads, they're watching us all the time. They hear what we say but they watch what we do and if our lives don't conform to our words in terms of moral integrity, moral responsibility, they're going to do what we do now what we say. That's why it's so crucial, we live out of Christ's inner life before our children. Let me say again, if you're hearing me this morning and you don't know Christ is Lord, this is just moralism then. It's just paltry, wimpy, moralism. That's all it is. If you don't know Christ is Lord, this is just platitudes. I can say these sayings with authority based on the word of God written in the word of God incarnate, Jesus who came and did the work of the toning for our sins. And that's the only reason we can aspire to be the kinds of people God's called us to be. If you don't know Christ is Lord, here's your invitation. Open up your heart today. Receive the payment he made on the cross for you for your sins. Let him make you a new creation able to live out the words I'm talking about this morning. I can do all things to Christ who strengthens me without him. I don't amount to anything. You need to do my works, but they're offered up. Our atmosphere is highest. Ah, now, so that's an offering of worship. When you do your work well, whatever you do, when you offer it up, it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. That's a holy offering. It's a sacred offering for God Almighty. Third application. We're for dominion. We're for provision. We work for satisfactions. I know. I know a lot of your jobs are not terribly fulfilling. I know that. Your boss is less tact and Simon Cowell. You're not sure, but you think they patterned the character Mr. Burns on the symptoms after your boss. I know. You know they will gladly replace you. The minute they can find somebody who do it cheaper, not better, just cheaper. Near a housewife, you think nobody even knows what you do. I was talking with a mom, a housewife this past week and told her maybe you know the story. The husband comes home one day. The place is cluttered with all manner of toys and books and games. The diaper on the floor over here and the kids are going crazy and the TV's bearing and the sink's full of dirty dishes and he walks into the living room. There's his wife sitting on the sofa with her fuzzy bunny slippers on her housecoat eating bomb bombs and reading a novel. And he said, what happened here today? She says, you know how every day you come home and you ask me what I did all day? Well today I didn't do it. God bless you, moms. I have never been one of those guys. I'll go out and do the hard work. You stay home and play with the kids. No, I've been home with the kids. You're doing the hard work. But if you understand, then we do our jobs well. It's just one of the ways we can be like God. One of the tools he uses to conform us to the image of his son that it helps us put up with the other stuff. Remember whatever you do, whatever you do, do your work hardly as for the Lord rather than for men. Knowing that it is from the Lord you receive the reward of the inheritance, it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. If there is no inherent satisfaction, what you do, find satisfaction just in the fact you do your job well for the glory of God and the Lordship of Christ. Dr. Martin Luther King, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, if it follows your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures like Shakespeare wrote poetry like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, here lived a great sweeper who swept his job well. Amen? And I would say very briefly, we work for dominion, for provision, for satisfaction, and for completion because I would remind you, you're a work in progress too. As I told you last week, Paul says in Philippians 1, verses 3 and 6, I thank my God every time I remember you. Being confident in this that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus as we do our work. Let us remember that God is doing His work too in us, to mold us, and to shape us, and to form us more and more fully into the image of His Son Jesus until he can look at us one day and say, I'm done enough here. And he takes his home and we're made perfect, completely Christ-like. And then he says, I'm done, I'm finished. You know, in 1985-86, they did a complete facelift of the Statue of Liberty. You remember that some of us who were of a certain vintage? 1985-86 did a complete facelift of Lady Liberty. Lady Liberty was given to us in 1876 by the people of France in honor of the American centennial, of the 100 years of our independence. And it was a Frenchman of sculptor, but I'm a Frederick Bartoli who designed Lady Liberty and he oversaw the construction of what we now call our Statue of Liberty. And it stands 151 feet tall, that is shipping over here in sections and assembled that way. In 1876, at 151 feet tall, I think towered over the landscape all around it in New York. So when we gave it a facelift in 1985-86, 1910 years after Frederick Bartoli had sculpted it, they were amazed at the exquisite work. He and his workers had done the attention to detail, including the top of Lady Liberty's spiked head. You might remember that in 1880-1876, there weren't a lot of helicopters hovering over the top of Lady Liberty's head. The Wright brothers didn't get off the ground until 1903. That's about 17 years after. So 27 years, not a mathematician, Paul, I know you were calling on that. About 27 years after Lady Liberty was erected. But yet, as far as Frederick Bartoli and the workers knew, nobody was going to see the top of her head except God Almighty. And they wanted him to be pleased with what they did. I spray together.
Our Father, our working God, I thank you so much for calling us to be a working people, giving us vocation. I thank you so much for my work as a pastor. Lord, thank you for the privilege I have to be a shepherd of a flock. I thank you for the men who co-labor with me to attend this flight. I pray, Lord, you forgive us our shortcomings and our failures. That you'll help us to do our jobs well. I pray for every working man, woman and young person in this place, that you'll help us all to do our jobs as an offering, a sacred offering unto you. And Lord, for those who want to work, Lord, they want to work and they can't find a God, sustain them as they look. Lord, encourage their hands and their hearts. Don't let them give up. We pray that you would open a door for them to find that next job. That wouldn't just bring some money rolling in, just pay some bill, but it would be normal and uplifting, and they'd find great satisfaction in what they do knowing that when we do our jobs well, it is the Lord Christ whom we serve. It's like well on his dignity as well. And his name I pray. Amen. Thank you for being with us. We wish you a great rest of your Sabbath day and a great Labor Day weekend receiving the Lord's benediction. Go now in the love of God the Father, the grace and mercy of God the Son, the fellowship and companionship of God the Holy Spirit and live the life. Amen.