Westtown Church

Serving God, the Community, and Work

Cory Colravy

Is the old Canadian rock group Loverboy right?  Is it true that "Everybody's working for the weekend"?  Is our daily work something we simply endure and put up with?  God reveals to us in the Bible a rich and grand vision for our ordinary daily labors.  There is a reason why Jesus was a carpenter much longer than He was a preacher.

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Speaker 1:

Good morning, good to be in the house with you. We're going to look at work this morning. It's a Labor Day weekend and then next week we're going back to 1 Corinthians. Even though the verse I'm picking is from 1 Corinthians today it's a one-off, but I'll introduce it and pray in just a moment. Hugh Welchel he says in one of his books that he was at this conference and there were 5,000 business people at this conference, lots of business leaders there, and they had these big motivational speakers that you know Dick Vitale and Tony Robbins and other people. And one of the speakers asked all the business leaders present if you got $10 million dumped in your lap tomorrow, would you show up to work the following day? And the whole place just screamed what? No? And in a way it's funny, but in another way it's kind of pitiful, isn't it, that we can easily think of work in that way. There's one Gallup poll that Welchel points out 77% of Americans hate their jobs more today than they did in the past 20 years. Fewer than half say they're satisfied in their current job. What about you? Are you satisfied with your work? Something to ponder.

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There's a man named Oswald Chambers. Some of you probably have one of his famous devotionals there. But he speaks about the apostle Peter and how, knowing Peter's personality, which was impulsive, it was probably relatively easy for Peter to walk out on that water toward Jesus. But then Oswald Chambers says it's quite another to follow Jesus afar off on the land. And here's what he says. That I believe is insightful. Chambers says to follow Christ on land requires the supernatural grace of God To live 24 hours in every day as a saint, to go through the drudgery as a disciple, to live as an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Christ. It's inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God, but we don't. We have to be exceptional things for God, but we don't. We have to be exceptional in ordinary things to be holy in our common streets, among common people. And this is not learned in five minutes. Well, it most certainly isn't learned in five minutes, is it? It takes the supernatural grace of God to be exceptional in ordinary things, and that's what God's calling us to.

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One of the greatest challenges, I think, in our modern day is to see the splendor of the ordinary life. I think in many ways we live in a disenchanted world, as many theologians and philosophers are pointing out today, it's hard for us to see the good and the true and the beautiful in the common ordinary life. All of social media highlights the extraordinary, the flashy, the thing that's not ordinary, and it sort of trains us not to appreciate something that isn't flashy. I think many fail to see the glory of God, our Creator, all around them. We've lost the wonder of living in an ordinary world. What happens when that happens? Well, what happens is the ordinary becomes drudgery. And then what happens to work? Well, work just becomes something we complain about, something we endure, we put up with. And so, even for many Christians, I think there's a disconnect between the Christian faith and our work that we do in everyday life. On this Labor Day weekend, I think it's good for us to think about what theologians call the biblical doctrine of vocation or the biblical doctrine of calling, and a particular focus of that is upon how our common ordinary work is truly something glorious in God's eyes. Before we see our work aright, we have to understand how God sees it and then adjust our vision to how God sees it. And so how's that? I think we're home now. Let's try that. Thank you, ed. Grateful to have the IT guys there. But there's often a disconnect between what we do in our daily work and this divine calling.

Speaker 1:

Listen to Paul, 1 Corinthians 10.31. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. Do all to the glory of God. Now, if you've been in Reformed Church for any length of time, you're going to hear that quite a bit. You'll notice that little word there. So at the beginning of that verse. And that means that verse is connected to what came before it and the original context that Paul's giving this verse in has to do with Christians having what we would call Christian liberty. The gospel gives us certain freedoms by which we can carry out our life, but what Paul's saying is just because you have the freedom to do something, that's not the end of the story. You need to think about how to use those freedoms wisely and lovingly. And so he's saying whatever you do, even if you have the gospel freedom to do it, aim to glorify God. And we see in this context that, aiming to glorify God, we're to do it in very common things. You notice he says whether you eat or drink, there's nothing more common than eating or drinking. So we're to glorify God, even in that very ordinary thing. But then you'll notice that phrase or whatever you do, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. And there's where we see a link to our common ordinary work of every day. So, whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

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I want to pray and then we're going to look at this in three parts. All right, let's go to the Lord and ask His blessing. Father, we come to your Word this morning and we ask now because it's living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and it penetrates to the depths, dividing even the soul and the spirit. Would you do surgery upon our hearts this morning? Transform us by your grace. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Well, there's three things I'm going to look at today. I'm not going to have you stand because I'm going to unfold some Scripture into the sermon itself.

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The first thing I want us to understand about our work is that we're called to a life of serving God. We're called to a life of serving God. God calls us in our work to serve Him alone, and so it follows that if we're to work to the glory of God, we have to understand that we've been called by God to serve Him in all things, including our work. I think one of the great tragedies of our day.

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People think of their work more in terms of a career to advance the self, rather than a calling by which to serve God. If you have merely a career, you're going to be man-centered, you're going to be self-centered, you're going to be oriented toward climbing higher and higher up that ladder in the world, and there's nothing wrong with advancing in your field. But if you have a calling, a calling from God means you're going to be God-centered, you're going to be Christ-centered, oriented toward descending lower, like Christ for the kingdom of God. Two different orientations of mind and heart. A career, on the one hand, focuses upon this age, in this world it's that kind of a vision, is confined to this earthly life. But a calling rightfully places, as Asgandha says, it brings eternity into view. It brings the goal beyond this world. We're considering things off in eternity, like heaven, hell, god and other things. In that regard, a career, it's a goal a person sets for himself in the job market. But a calling is something different. It's something that supernaturally comes into our life by God. God is the divine caller. You can't have a calling without a caller. He is the caller and he calls us through his word and by his son and spirit.

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This English word vocation you pop any dictionary probably says right there, latin vocare comes from that to call you. Hear it in the word vocal or vocational Probably says right there, latin vocare comes from that to call you. Hear it in the word vocal or vocational. It's used and it's pregnant with this idea that we, as God's people, are called by God into our work. We're called by God into our work. We don't just have a job, we're called to represent Him in our work.

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But you've noticed what's happened with this word vocation In our society? It's becoming more and more secular. Vocation is becoming a synonym for work without this sense of divine calling. Most people, when they think of vocation, they think of a vocational school. Maybe someone's on a track to go to college and someone else is on a track, perhaps, to go to a vocational school. Maybe someone's on a track to go to college and someone else on a track, perhaps, to go to a vocational school where they don't have a particular skill. And that's good, by the way.

Speaker 1:

But it's been evacuated of its spiritual sense in our day, and biblically, we have a primary calling. What's that primary calling? To serve God in all of life. And then, out of that primary calling, all of our secondary callings flow and are connected too. They flow from this primary calling. Calling what? Serving others in our work, in our family life, our neighbors, and so on.

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And so we have seminars, we have books galore, and they all do their best to talk about the meaning we have in our work. But many of these books do it without any primary sense of call from God upon our work. Cs Lewis once said that's like the silly woman in the First World War who said that if there were a bread shortage it would not bother her house because they always ate toast. You see what he's saying. You know no bread, no toast. You got to understand the nature of things, the connection of things, no sense of divine calling. There's no ultimate true meaning in that work. Let me put it a different way. What meaning does your work have 500 years from now, 5 million years from now, 50 million years from now? You see, but with a divine calling. You see, but with a divine calling. God blesses our work with eternal significance. And so Os Guinness points out.

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We hear a lot today, or at least from some, that we need to take responsibility for. We need to take responsibility for our lives, for our work, for this and for that. But he points out and I think rightly there's a question that's being forgotten who are we responsible to? Who are we responsible to in our life and in our work? And so we can say, yeah, I'm responsible for my family, for my career, so to speak, perhaps even responsible to your boss, but have we forgotten? We're responsible to the God of heaven and earth in all of life, including our work life.

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The risen Lord Jesus Christ says in the Gospels there's a judgment coming, and he has a very pointed saying where he says he will judge every careless word. But that also means he'll judge every chair that's made carelessly. He'll judge every minute of work performed lazily. He will judge every incident of inexcusable, poor customer service. Now, that's humbling. That's humbling to think about.

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We will give an account to God for our work, and so the first thing we're called to if we're going to be right with our work, we have to be right with God. If we're not right with God, we're not right with anything else for that matter To be right in relationship and thinking right and pursuing things right. We have to be right with God, and so the first thing to get right with our work is we have to be right with Him and hear His call. Jesus, when he went to the Galilean fishermen, said he called them, he commanded them to follow Him, and they did. And he declares the same thing to you this morning Follow me. Jesus says, follow me. And he says repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And so Jesus is calling all of us away from a life of sin and into a life of loving service by faith to our God and to our Savior.

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And it means we have to think differently now. We have to think not about living just for ourselves. We have to now think about what does it mean to live for God and to live for our family and to live for other people? And the Bible's clear that as we come to God through faith in Jesus Christ, we're not received by God. We're not accepted by God because of our good works. We're received by God how?

Speaker 1:

By faith in him alone. Faith truly just receives. We're accepted based on Christ's works, not our own works, and when we come to the Lord. By faith, trusting in him, he forgives us of all of our sin, past, present, future, something we'll remember this morning in this Lord's table. And not only that. He declares us righteous on the record books of heaven next to our name perfectly righteous. That's our legal record forever, even as we battle our sin practically. And then not only does he make us right with him legally, but then he reconciles us to God relationally.

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And now we have the Holy Spirit in us by which we can do the work of God. And now we have the Holy Spirit in us by which we can do the work of God, fueled by His grace, no longer by our own weakness and our own strength. For the wages of sin is what Death? But the free gift of God. The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. So that's how we get right with God. We receive His free gift of salvation through Christ. How can God do that? Because Christ lived the perfect life and he died the perfect death in our place, as our substitute.

Speaker 1:

And so to serve God in your work, to understand your calling from God in your work, you first have to hear his calling for you to come to him by faith Through Christ. We have to be right with him to be right with our work. And then we have and we come to realize I am a child of God. I'm a child who's beloved of God, and now I'm dedicated to what? Not simply pursuing my own self-interest, but I'm about the Father's business, just like the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise God that Christ came to serve. He came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, and it wasn't the righteous for who he came for, it was for the ungodly and sinners like you and me. And so trust him and whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. First get right with God and then dedicate your life to glorifying him, including in your work. So that's the first thing. We're called to a life of serving God. But there's a second thing I want you to see this morning. We're called to a life of serving the community.

Speaker 1:

God calls us to glorify Him by loving and serving our neighbor in and through our work. Sometimes people say I want to live a life of service. Start right where you're at. Sometimes we think that means adding more things to what we do, when in fact it means a lot of times just reorienting our heart and mind of what we're already doing. We spend most of our lives working, so think about what you do every day and do it all to the glory of God. Make that your aim.

Speaker 1:

And in Corinthians, here in the 10th chapter, paul, he says this in verse 31,. But you'll notice, seven verses earlier he says this. He says because it puts that verse in context. He says, verse 24, we should not be about seeking our own good but the good of our neighbor. That's part of what it means to glorify God. We're looking out for their good. And then a little couple of verses after, in verse 33, he says I try to please everyone in everything. I do, not seeking my own advantage.

Speaker 1:

So you see, those verses sandwich, this dedication to glorifying God in whatever we do. So glorifying God's bound up with our loving our neighbor and our fellow Christians and our fellow workers and customers and bosses and employees and clients. And yes, god makes clear the greatest commandments to love God with all of our what, all of our heart and all of our mind and all of our soul and all of our strength. But Jesus says there's the second commandments, just like it, to love our neighbor as ourselves. So how do we do that in our work? How do we do that in our work?

Speaker 1:

Well, let me start with this. We can come at it a lot of different angles, but I'll start with this Is the customer always right? I don't want to start a fight in here, but is the customer always right? Well, if it means always giving the customer their immediate desires, well then they're clearly not always right. Certainly, if what we mean is bend over backwards as much as you possibly can to serve your customer, even when they're wrong, I think that's a biblical, gracious thing to do. But there are limits even to that. There are limits that we cannot go past as Christians, because we live in a moral world and there's something called goodness and truth and beauty that are not just mere opinions but anchored in the standard of God's holy character. So we can't just be concerned about a lack of standards, for example, in our schools or universities or movies or whatever. We have to be concerned for godly standards in the economy as well. In the business world as well, there are standards, and God calls us to that high standard. If the customer is always right, then how do we explain the ministry of Jesus Christ Do we find him tickling ears to grow his ministry and quote be a success.

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Dorothy Sayers said over 50 years ago I think she was a friend of CS Lewis. But she says why is it? We as Christians go along with the idea that the value of work is measured only by the money that it brings to the producer, rather than the worth of the thing that is made. Now, profits are not bad. I want to be very clear. More and more we're getting Marxist teaching in our culture, which I think is extremely dangerous.

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From a biblical standpoint, prophets are indeed not only necessary, but they're good. If there aren't prophets, there's no businesses. There's no businesses, there's no work. It's really quite that simple. So prophets are important. I'm not denigrating prophets, but you see, jesus said you cannot serve both God and mammon. The issue isn't whether we're trying to make a prophet. The issue is what always has our higher allegiance. Whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God, even as you seek those prophets which are good and necessary if an economy is to thrive.

Speaker 1:

I like these questions that Sayers asks. I'm going to share them with you. Listen, she says, is the most important question of our work. Will it pay? More important, she says shouldn't we also be asking is it good? I mean, you do have to ask if it pays, right? I've noticed that my wife and kids they like a roof over their head and something to eat and a place to sleep. We have to ask whether it pays, but that's not all we have to ask. We have to ask is it also good? Is it enough for us to say what does that person make? Is it enough for us to say what does that person make? She says isn't it also important to ask what is his work worth? They might make something, but what is it worth? It's one thing to make a product and say can we convince people to buy this product? But shouldn't we also ask are they useful things made? Well, of course we want to sell what we make. We could say about a job well, how much a week, how much a year? Somewhat of a necessary question. But is that all we ask? Or should we also go on and ask will this work exercise my faculties and abilities and gifts that God has given me to my utmost, to the utmost? You see, it's just a different orientation. It's going higher.

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I know some people will say well, you know, pastor, you live in a dream world. You live in a dream world. Well, to that that I say this Isn't the real dream world to live and work as if the living God doesn't exist. Isn't that the dream world, as if there's no judgment, that we will not give an account to God for what we do? Isn't the real dream world to live our lives according to the world's values rather than the values of the kingdom of God? I want you to hear what Dorothy Sayers says.

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Listen, the church's approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling this carpenter is this that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. Church by all means, and decent forms of amusement, certainly, but what use is all that if, in the very center of his life and occupation, he's insulting God with bad carpentry? No crooked table legs, real fitting drawers, ever came out of the carpenter's shop of Nazareth. Nor, if they did, could anyone believe that they were made by the same hand that had made heaven and earth. No piety in the worker will compensate for work that's not true to itself, for any work that is untrue to its own technique is a living lie.

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And yet, speaking of the church in her own building, she says in her own church, art and music, in her hymns and prayers and her sermons and her little books of devotion, the church will tolerate or permit a pious intention to excuse so ugly, so pretentious you can hear her British thing going on here so tawdry and twaddling, so insincere and insipid, so bad as to shock and horrify any decent draftsman. You see what she's saying there. Just because we intend good doesn't excuse the bad work. It's either good or it isn't. The only Christian work is good work well done, she says. Let the church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well as to God, and then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is church embroidery or sewage farming.

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And I think she's so right. And I think she's so right, christian, what an opportunity you have in our day. First of all, just show up to work Right. There you're way ahead, especially if you show up on time. I don't know if I mentioned him to you, but I still remember the guy in Panama City driving his truck around town. Every few months I'd see him and there, on the side of his maintenance truck. We show up. That's his motto, christian. Show up on time with a good attitude, ready to do what you're supposed to do and do it well. And guess what? You are way ahead of many in the world. Right there we have a great opportunity as God's people to shine in the workplace. Our culture has lost the sense of the work ethic. We've lost it.

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Believing in Jesus means that God is glorified in the chairs we make. Believing in Jesus means that God is glorified in the chairs we make. A poorly constructed chair is a poorly constructed chair, and it doesn't matter whether it's one made by a Christian or non-Christian. It's either a good chair, done well, or it isn't. I hear sometimes and I have to say as a pastor, sometimes I'll hear on the radio so-called Christian music and because they Velcro Jesus' name on there, they think that that makes a good music. Well, some of it is good and some of it's horrible, and by the fact that we name Jesus doesn't make it good music, it's just bad music, with Jesus sadly associated with it. Do you see what I'm saying. Be careful you stick one of those little fishies on the back of your car now, because when people come out of work they're going to say, oh, there's their car, they're going to know.

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And what am I saying? There's musical standards, there's levels of musical excellence. Of course we do to the best of our ability. Not everybody is going to be the Mac Daddy of all this or that. I get that. Of course we have time limits and all the rest of it. But what I'm saying is there are standards and we should strive to the best of our ability for excellence. That's is our God excellent. You see, that's what we should strive for, not elitism, but excellence. There's a difference. This is what Sarah's means when she says we're called by God to serve the work. We serve the community by serving the work, the standards of the work, whatever it is that we're in. That's what we're called to do. Why? With the aim of glorifying God. With the aim of glorifying God who does all things well. If we're a carpenter, make your tables as good as you can. Make them as good as you can Make good tables. If you're a movie maker, make good movies, not just with good content, but also made well attractive things that are gripping with the lighting and the camera angles and all the rest of it. Competence in piety or competence in faith of God must marry and give birth to a child called excellence. That's what we're called to as Christians. We've got to serve the work.

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I want to speak to you, young people, for a minute. Mark this down. Some of you are going to go off to very good colleges. You probably came from pretty sharp parents and God gifted you with a good brain. Why do you want to go to college? Is it just so you can make a lot of money? Or do you want to go there study at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ, full of gratitude that God would so bless you with a good mind and a good opportunity and good parents that can send you to such a place? And you're now dedicated God. I'm going to study to the best of my ability so that I not just so that I can go make money although that's you got to make some money, I get it but so that I can better serve my neighbor, so that I can better serve my community.

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If you're going to a vocational school to learn plumbing, learn it, not just so you can make a good hourly wage, but so the people can say you know what? Every time I call that guy he shows up, he calls me back and when he leaves it's not leaking in the bathroom. Now, I picked that one because we had two leaks upstairs in our house in Panama City. But I'm just saying maybe you have your own examples, right? Don't you appreciate a good worker, right? That's what God's calling us to be, to represent Him in the world. So we're called to serve God. We're called to serve the community by serving the work or serving the standards of excellence of our work.

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But there's a last thing, final point I want to make, and this is really the most of the application of this sermon. We're, thirdly, called to give thanks. God calls us to a life of giving thanks as we see his blessings not only through our own work but, listen, through the work of others in our life. Sometimes we get so used to the blessing that we're just flooded with that we cease to be thankful because we're just so blessed by so many people around us doing so much work that we become numb to it. I'm going to explain in just a minute what I mean. Throughout the centuries, the church has not always done very good with explaining the importance of ordinary common labors and work. And I'm not talking about just the work of Christians, I'm talking about the work of non-Christians as well. During New Testament times the Romans and the Greeks you know the philosophers, like Aristotle and others. They taught that the really happy life was a life of the mind and that a demoralizing and demeaning life is if you had to work with your hands. So different from the New Testament and the Old Testament.

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How does the Bible open up? The Bible opens up with God as a worker. God created the heavens and the earth. It opens up with the work week of six days by God. God is a worker. And then, even before the fall, god calls Adam and Eve to tend and to work the garden and then to have dominion over the whole earth. You see things in the Bible like the apostle Paul, who had a great mind. God gifted him with a great mind, great theologian, and yet he was a tent maker. And then we see the very son of God, the king of heaven, who when he comes to earth, he's a carpenter. He was a carpenter much longer than he was a preacher. There's something profound in that. You and I would not have planned it that way.

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Jesus, by being a carpenter all those years, gives a certain dignity to what you do every single day. Eusebius, an early church father, father of church history, he said there was the perfect life, that's the life of the mind, of course, therefore, it's the life of priests and monks and nuns and other spiritual workers. And then you had the permitted life, and that's the life of the farmer, monks and nuns and other spiritual workers. And then you had the permitted life, and that's the life of the farmer and the trader and the soldier and the homemaker, and so forth. You see how he splits, as if the life of the mind is something greater than working with the hands. I don't know how we explain Jesus being a carpenter.

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Then this duality between the sacred and the secular. In the Middle Ages the church used to call itself the spiritual estate and see, therefore, the work of everyone else was not spiritual, it was worldly. Such a damaging teaching, and the Reformation came along and corrected this. The last couple of hundred years, this has seeped back in between the sacred and the secular. Philosophers from the Enlightenment, like Immanuel Kant and others. They taught that the spiritual and moral life ought to be kept private and outside of public matters. Get over there in the corner. But that's not the biblical vision. 16th century reformers, people like Martin Luther and John Calvin, did such a service just by what, going back to what the Bible taught on the dignity of human work, the importance of it, the value that God sees in human work. And it's a shame when we consider that, our Savior, he, was a carpenter, he worked with his hands and he was a preacher, and he gives dignity to all this labor, both the hands and the mind. What a shame that communism then took over the tools of the hammer and the sickle for their symbol.

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But it's to us, the church, we need to remind people that what they do every day is important. It matters because it matters people that what they do every day is important. It matters because it matters to God. What you do every day matters to God, whether you're a student, a homemaker, a doctor or whatever. Whatever you do, do it to the glory of God. And I want to say, even beyond that, that what you do every day is the work of God himself, and you may not have thought about it that way before, but that is the truth and I want you to let that sink in. The common, ordinary work that you do every single day is the work of God himself. In fact, even the work that the non-Christians do around us is the work of God. They may not acknowledge it, they may not care that you think that, but God works through us. He blesses the world through the work of human beings, christians and non-Christians alike. Listen to what Lester DeCostner says. He talks about God working through our fingertips.

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Look at the chair you're lounging in and pretend it's made out of wood, not metal. Okay, look at the chair you're lounging in. Could you have made it for yourself? Think about that. What if you had to make that chair completely by yourself? How would you get, say, the wood? Would you go chop a tree? Oh, but you could only go chop a tree after first making the tools to do that and then putting together some kind of vehicle to haul the wood, and then constructing a mill to do the lumber and the roads to drive on from place to place. In short, a lifetime or two to make one chair.

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If we worked not 40, but 140 hours per week, we could not make for ourselves from scratch even a fraction of all the goods and services that we call our own. That's a remarkable thing. Our paycheck turns out to buy us the use of far more than we could possibly make for ourselves. In the time it takes to earn the check, work yields far more in return upon our efforts than our particular jobs put in. Imagine that everyone quits working right now, this moment. What happens? Civilized life quickly melts away. Food vanishes from the shelves, gas dries up at the pumps, streets are no longer patrolled, fires burn themselves out, communication and transportation services end, utilities go dead. Those who survive it all are often huddled around campfires, sleeping in caves and clothed in raw animal hides.

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He says this the difference between a wilderness and culture is simply this work. You see the beauty of labor, and not just our own, but everyone around us and people around the world that make possible just for us to sit in a chair without taking weeks, months, years or a lifetime. We are blessed from and through the work of other people. God blesses us through workers and through work, and it's the work of God himself. Luther reminded the church that not all Christians are formally priests, right, but all believers are spiritual, and that's why the apostle Peter in 1 Peter 2.9 calls us a royal priesthood. And then John in Revelation says you've made us to be kings and priests by your blood. You may not think of yourselves as kings and queens or priests. You may not think of what you do out there as spiritual work. But it is spiritual work, it's priestly work, it's holy work. And so God calls men not simply to be pastors and missionaries, but he calls people into all kinds of work, and Luther takes for an example Psalm 147.

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Think about this for a minute. Psalm 147, verse 13. Here's what it reads God strengthens the bars of your gates. Now he's talking about city gates, right, and the gates when they'd close them at night. That's how they kept security in the city, and the psalmist is praising God for that, for giving them security. But notice what Luther says. How does God provide for the security and safety of the city? By the word bars, luther says we must understand not only the iron bar that an ironsmith can make, but everything else that helps to protect us, such as good government, good city ordinances, good order and wise rulers. This is a gift of God, and so we see how God works through lawmakers and police officers and government officials.

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And then Luther goes on to talk about that phrase, our daily bread, from the Lord's prayer. And listen to what he says. When you pray for daily bread, you're praying for everything that contributes to your having and enjoying your daily bread. He says you must open up and expand your thinking so that it reaches not only as far as the flour bin and the baking oven, but also over the broad fields and the farmlands in the entire country that produces and processes and conveys to us our daily bread and all kinds of nourishment. That loaf of bread you pull off a shelf, run that thing all the way back, all the hands that dealt with that, all the way back to the farmer who put it in the ground. That's how God blesses us through the work of other people. That's how he gives us security. Doctors and nurses and pharmacists heal. How does God take care of little babies? He does it through motherhood. That's the work of God.

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Luther said God milks cows. He milks the cows through the vocation of the milkmaids. There's that famous picture of a milkmaid by a Dutchman, vermeer. And so God not only saves the soul of sinners, he helps us in his gospel. See the glory of the work that we do and the work of everyone else, whether they're a believer or not. For if we get right with God through our good works, then the church ministry will always tend to be elevated over other forms of work.

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But we're not made right through our good works. We're made right through the works of God and therefore everything that we do is spiritual, and so it opens up. The implication is it opens up work by itself. Whatever it is, becomes spiritual because we're priests offering sacrifices unto God in a spiritual manner. Tim Keller says, because of Jesus in the gospel, work now becomes a way for us to love God, our father, who has already saved us freely, and, by extension, it's a way for us to love our neighbor. Have you ever thought about your work as the way that you love your neighbor? It also helps us appreciate our neighbor for the love of God that flows through the work of their hands, whether they realize it or not.