The Beauty of Work

Sermon Transcript:

(transcribed with AI)

Promontory Community Church exists to make disciples of Jesus who know, live, and share the gospel for the glory of God.

Well, good morning, Promontory. It is my pleasure to be here with you today. My name is Tyler Schultz and I serve as one of the elders here, and today I'm going to be picking up on our summer sermon series, Ancient Beauty in a Modern World.

Now coming out of last night's men's barbecue, I fear I may have missed a real opportunity as a professional bocce player, but instead, and probably for the best, my vocation led me into a career of playing with numbers and building Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and then trying to explain them as best I could and as relevant as they could be to the others around me. Sometimes I succeeded, other times not so much.

As an elder here, my role within the church is to work as part of a team — a team that serves as the spiritual overseers, and we help to care for the congregation, and we give guidance to Pastor Jonathan and provide him with the resources he needs to carry out ministry and fulfill the vision and calling that God has put on our church. The original word that is used for elder in the New Testament is actually the same word as the one that is used for pastor. However, that does not automatically mean that we come with training as a preacher.

So when the topic of today's sermon came up at an elders meeting a few months ago, Jonathan pointed out that one of the other qualifications of being an elder is the ability to teach. And since both he and Pastor Rich already do this for work, they figured it would be good to have someone else tackle it from a different perspective. And if I recall, I believe I insisted that really, that should make them more qualified to preach the sermon, but you can see how the rest of that conversation went.

And so it's my privilege this morning to see what the Bible has to say about the beauty of work.

Now, as we get into the biblical view of work, let me tell you that putting together a sermon when you're not in the regular habit of doing so requires a lot of it. There is study and prayer and prep time and writing down things that you think are fantastic and then only realizing that they're terrible and deleting them, starting all over again. And there's a lot of research.

One day when I was curious, I looked up on the internet, "why do people work?" And I came across a lot of interesting things, but one thing in particular I want to read to you was from a social media page by a self-proclaimed life coach or motivational speaker, and it reads:

Things you learn too late at work:

1. Document every decision, promise, and change. Don't just have conversations.
2. Do the bare minimum or your reward will be more work.
3. Use up your sick time, vacation time, and paid time off whether you need them or not.
4. Save your emails for longer than you think you're going to need them.
5. Don't accept promotions in title without also getting compensation.
6. Keep your personal life private from your work.

In other words, when it comes to your work: get in, get out, stay low, trust no one, and cover your butt.

I'm not sure what this person's particular experiences have been or what qualifies them to be a life coach, but this seems like a fairly jaded attitude from someone who I would venture to guess never lived by the motto, "find a job you love doing and you'll never work a day in your life."

Now it was a bit disheartening for me to read that, because in my work I don't really follow any of those rules. I like to trust people. I like to work hard regardless of what that's going to lead to. I like to talk about my personal life with my colleagues because we spend so much time together — what better way is there to connect? But as sad as it was for me to read through that list, it was equally as sad to see the number of thumbs up that people gave this and comments from others who wished they had learned those lessons sooner.

You see, there's this negative view of work in our society right now. And sometimes it seems to be an air of entitlement — one of, "if you reward me, then I'll work hard," not the other way around. There's this desire for self-preservation and a view that work is not meant to be enjoyable but simply needs doing in order to pay for things that are.

But I'm not going to bash social media any further, because what I really want to do now is dig into what the Bible has to say on this topic.

Now, unlike last week when Pastor Jonathan was looking at how the Bible shapes our lives in the context of technology and AI — which are things that are very, very new — looking at work means we're going to see God's perspective on something that has been around since the very beginning.

Now it is our tradition here at Promontory to stand for the reading of God's Word. So if you're able, please rise and join me while I read Colossians 3:23–24.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

Thank you. Please have a seat.

Now, it's a short passage and may seem relatively self-explanatory, but there's really a lot in here. So how do we tie this short little couple of verses, which were written to a church in Turkey 2,000 years ago, into our lives today?

Well, there's actually a lot of richness about the idea of work throughout the entire Bible. So the first thing I want to do is recognize that this principle of work is not anything new. In fact, if we go all the way back to the very beginning of our Bibles, to Genesis chapter 2, verses 7 to 9, we read:

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

And then if we skip ahead to verse 15 of Genesis 2, we read:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

One of the very first things that God did after the creation of everything, including us, was to take us and place us in the middle of it — to work it and to keep it. Right from our very origin, we were intended to take care of and be stewards of what God had provided us with. God didn't just create a paradise in the Garden of Eden for us and then say, "Here, bask in my glory, hang out all day lounging around doing nothing." No, we were put in the garden to work it and keep it.

Our work had meaning. It gave us purpose and it gave us fulfillment. It was designed to be an act honoring to God and His creation. It was originally a source of worship.

But just like everything in our relationship with God, it was corrupted when sin entered the world. We were separated from God, and he pronounced a curse that affected our work. And in Genesis 3:17–19, God says:

Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

That which was beautiful — something designed by God to be an act of worship to him — became a source of resentment during the fall. What was meant to be working in God's perfect creation actually became a source of pain. But things still need to be done. We still need to work, we still need to find a way every day to put food on our table and a roof over our heads. But at its core, the separation from God meant it was no longer automatically an act of worship, unless we choose to make it so by recognizing its original intention.

And how many people do we encounter in our daily lives where we see this played out? People who follow those rules from earlier, who are just putting in time, going through the motions, working for the weekend — not for joy, and certainly not to honor God or worship him. But since part of the curse of sin fell upon our labor, we're left to toil through life. "By the sweat of your face," it says, "you shall eat bread till you return to the ground."

So is that it? Are we just destined now to a life working in misery?

Well, if we skip ahead to chapter one of Ecclesiastes, yeah, it kind of seems like we are. In verse 2 and 3, the writer of Ecclesiastes writes:

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

So it's not sounding particularly hopeful yet. And he even goes further as the writer continues this idea in chapter 5, where he's writing about wealth and honor — two things that tend to go part and parcel with working hard. In Ecclesiastes 5:10, it says:

He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This also is vanity.

So again we're subjected to this idea that work is hard and we're just toiling under the sun for the sake of toiling, and it will all be meaningless. And as generations go and generations come, essentially you live, you work, you die — and even if you do work hard and make money and become successful or accumulate wealth, you probably won't be satisfied.

Now, of course, that's not where we're going with this. Toiling for the meaningless sake of toil is not the main point we're going to focus on this morning. But it certainly helps to understand where this modern perception of work comes from.

What we're really dealing with here is a matter of the heart. It's a question of motivation and where our sense of worth comes from. Why do we do what we do?

And fortunately, I am going to start getting to the encouraging part, because just a few verses later in Ecclesiastes 5, the writer starts to draw out purpose and give us hope. In verse 18 he starts writing:

Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun, the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil — this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him the power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil.

So here we finally get to a few of our key points. Firstly, it's important to recognize that it is God who gives us all the days of our lives, and he has not given them to us to be miserable. Because secondly, it is also God who gives us the ability to enjoy the things that we toil over. And thirdly, it is a gift from God that we are able to accept our lot in life. It is a gift that we are able to take joy in our vocation, our calling, in our possessions, and actually rejoice in our toil — not because we will always love what we do or because everything will always go right, but realizing that regardless of what we are doing, if we keep our focus on God, that will keep us occupied with joy in our hearts. God is calling us back to our original purpose and gives us a way to turn our daily work into an act of worship for him once again.

John D. Rockefeller was one of the richest people that ever lived — about 100 years ago — and he was once asked the question, "How much is enough?" To which he famously replied:

Just a little bit more.

It's a futile question, "how much is enough?" So it's only appropriate that his answer was equally useless, because the answer is not quantifiable. You don't have to look hard at the world to realize that joy and happiness are not about the quantity of things that people have. Things will never satisfy. But rather, it's about recognizing the quality of the source — the one who gives us the ability to enjoy the things we have, which is God.

All right, so we've come full circle now on work being an act of worship, then becoming a meaningless toil, to once again being able to take joy in what we're doing as a gift from God. And we've ultimately landed back at the question that Paul is addressing in our passage. What is our motivation?

So back to Colossians 3:23:

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.

Regardless of the what, the question is why. Why do we do what we do? And the principle of this message applies across all areas of life — it's not just about working. In everything, whether you're a student or a stay-at-home parent or in between jobs or retired, no matter where you are in life, this applies. But in this passage in particular, it was definitely written in the context of people doing a job.

So to put that into context, we need to look at whom it was written to. This letter as a whole was written by Paul to the early church in Colossae, a city in modern Turkey. And I'm not sure if everyone's up to date on their labor law history, but our modern concept of the employer-employee relationship is fairly new in the grand scheme of things, only dating back really a couple hundred years. But in these communities thousands of years ago, the population would have been made up of commoners and tradespeople, and then wealthy landowners and their slaves, or bond servants as they're referred to in this passage.

So if we back up one verse in Colossians 3, we can see the section that the letter is addressed to. Starting in verse 22, it says:

Bond servants — that is, slaves — obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.

Now I don't think any of us can really put ourselves into the shoes of someone who would have been living as a slave and had just been told, "It's important to obey your masters and work hard. And what's more, don't just do it for appearance's sake, but do it with sincerity of heart, because remember, it's not for your master that you're working — it's for God." I'm sure they would have rather heard something along the lines of not needing to be in slavery at all.

So it's an important distinction to note — and it could be the subject of another couple of sermons — but Paul is in no way endorsing slavery here. He's addressing this to Christians who are already slaves, essentially asking the question: how does a Christian live faithfully regardless of the situation they find themselves in?

Because as a slave, rightfully so, it would have been easy to say, "It's not fair. I don't have a choice. And what if the other slaves aren't even working as hard as me? That's not fair either."

Now, as a point of interest, "fair" is one of my least favorite words in the whole language, because "fair" implies that things need to be equal. One thing I used to say to my kids when they said something wasn't fair was, "Whose actions can you control? Do you control the actions of others or do you control the actions of yourself?" And while I was working through preparation for this sermon, I realized the source of my dislike for this word, because it implies only needing to do as much as someone else. It only implies needing to do the minimum to get a job done. And if our source of motivation is only our boss or our parents or our colleagues, then the pursuit of "fair" can often lead to resentment of employers, of others, and even the job that we are doing. Which is why it's so important in this context to keep the focus on working as for the Lord and not for men.

And if we skip ahead to Colossians chapter 4, verse 1, Paul does address the flip side of this as well, and he says:

Masters, treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.

So the masters of the time — and employers now — aren't off the hook either. In our day of employment contracts and labor laws and the ease with which people can change jobs, the context is not quite the same, but the principle still applies. If you're a business owner and have employees, it is also not honoring to God to abuse your position of power or authority. They too are called to treat people justly and fairly, with the acknowledgement that no matter how high up you can move in a company, you still have a greater Master.

But if you are an employee, work heartily. Not just to please your employer — though hopefully working heartily will also do that — but do it as if you're working for the Lord.

And so this brought me to an interesting point, because what does that mean exactly? What does it mean to work heartily? So I got to studying this word, because that's what happens when you're putting together sermons, and it's fun to dig into all sorts of different things. The word used here is the Greek word psyche, and it's used in this context to essentially be translated as "with all your heart." That hardly makes sense. But as I kept looking, we see several other uses of the word psyche in the New Testament as well, and we often see it used to describe your soul, your all, your entire being. It's the word used for "soul" in the book of Mark when someone asked Jesus, "What is the greatest commandment?" And he replies:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Your psyche — literally your soul, mind and spirit, your entire being. Paul is saying, whatever you do, give it everything you've got for your Heavenly Father, not for your earthly masters.

And one of the dangers of not working heartily and only working to serve your earthly boss or doing what's best for yourself is that it can be a path that leads down to laziness, bitterness, or dishonesty. And in Ephesians 4:28, it says:

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

The idea of working heartily speaks to character — to integrity, to honesty and trustworthiness, to having respect for authority and those you have authority over, to being diligent and hardworking, showing kindness and respect to those around you, and to being able to help those in need.

And really, many people live a life where they are able to do all these things and they don't know God. But in this day and age where everything seems to get so heavily scrutinized and can easily be recorded and end up quickly on the internet, another question to ask is: does your work help you to be a good witness? Does your motivation for doing work reflect what God has also done for you? Because other people are going to see how we behave. Christians and non-Christians alike will be watching, and they should be able to see who we are in our workplaces and then not be surprised — to the good or to the bad — to also hear that we profess to be Christians.

In Matthew 5:16, Jesus is speaking to a crowd and he says:

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

And in 1 Peter 2:12, Peter writes:

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

And there is a famous quote attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi:

Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.

Now I do think it's very important to preach the gospel with words as well, lest people think you are just a good person. But ultimately, if your words and your deeds don't match, then your words are not going to hold any weight. So we are called to work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, and know that people are watching.

And it's also important at this point not to confuse working hard with always working. Because that too may get noticed — if you're always absent from events, away from your family, always at the office, burning the midnight oil, always working to the exclusion of other important things. And for that I'm mostly talking about myself, because at one point in my life that was how I defined success — by how much I was working. I made the number of hours I could put into working become an idol of mine.

So as one of the elders of the church, it's good for you to know a little bit about me. This is flipping a little bit into devotional mode, but right from when I was in high school I've loved math and numbers, and in my mind I created a perfect plan for my life: go to university, get married, become an accountant — everyone's high school dream — have a family, work hard, be successful, retire, live happily ever after. I created a plan for myself, by myself. And I did plan on working heartily, of course, giving everything I had to my career. But was I doing it in a way to honor God? No, probably not. I wanted to do it my way. I wanted to follow my plan and perhaps even expected God to bless me or reward me in my hard work, but it certainly wasn't for his benefit.

And everything was actually going perfectly according to plan. By age 30, it was all in the works. I had a family and a career and I was on track. But there was no work-life balance in it. And as much as I wish it was, what I was doing wasn't being done for the Lord, but rather for myself.

And then God revealed a new plan to Cheryl and I. We both on the same morning felt called to go out into the mission field. We had never planned to be missionaries — that was definitely not in the plan. We didn't really know how to be missionaries in a global context. We'd been involved in church most of our lives, but not in roles that were preparing us or getting ready to send us away from home. But there we were, both feeling at the same time that God was calling us to something different. It's hard to describe exactly what that feeling was, other than to say that to have done anything else at that time in our lives would have felt like being disobedient to God.

And so we moved with our family to East Africa, arriving in the small country of Burundi on a team with another family, having been trained on life and overseas missions and being open to how God would have us serve, but not knowing entirely what we would be doing.

And you know what I ended up doing? I ended up working with several local churches, ministries, and Christian organizations, helping them with finance and administration. I spent most of the five years that we were in East Africa teaching and training admin teams of local organizations how to put together financial statements and reports to be able to provide to their donors around the world. I worked with existing ministries helping to create capacity within them to continue to do what they were already doing, but hopefully be able to do it better. What I found was that my role in the mission field wasn't to go out and do something completely out there that I didn't know how to do, but God took the gifts that I had and the vocation I had chosen, and he said, "Go and use them somewhere else for my glory."

And when the time eventually came for us to return to Canada, rather than recreating my own plans that I had built before, Cheryl and I sought what God would have for us. And since then I've ended up doing a couple of different things before being led into what I'm doing now. So I'm certain that preaching was never part of that plan.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone who puts in long hours or is away from home or gone often needs to make a change. But if I personally had gone back to the job I was doing before, I'm sure I could have easily fallen back into that pattern of letting the volume of work and the number of hours I was putting in become an idol of mine and try to define who I was. Again, it comes back to the motivation. So knowing my own limitations and weaknesses, I let God lead me into a new path — one that still allows me to use my gifts, work hard, take care of my family, but also to serve the Lord without the temptation of always trying to prove myself to people.

And to be clear, is it likely that God is going to call everyone here to leave Canada and go into the mission field? No, not likely. But in everything we do, wherever we are, we are called to be open to what God has for us and what he calls us to, and to do it for his glory. It's just that for me, it took sending me across the world for that to really hit home.

I had wanted a nice life. I had been willing to let my work during my working years become my sole focus so that I could make the most out of my rest and my retirement years. I was essentially in the process of living out the parable of the fool in Luke 12. It reads:

The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, "What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?" And he said, "I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and all my goods. And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.'" But God said to him, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

So there's nothing wrong with planning ahead — in fact, I strongly encourage it. There's nothing wrong with success — I'll be right there alongside you, championing you along. But what do you do with it once you have it? What's the end goal? What is the source of motivation for getting there? Is it pride or self-serving, or is it for God?

Just as there is a temptation to make work an idol, there's also a danger in turning rest and retirement into an idol. While society seemed to talk for so long about "freedom 55" and this desire to work hard and retire early, we see this inherent warning that until our time on Earth is done, there's always more that we can be doing for the kingdom. Take Pastor Rich, for example — he spent a lifetime in ministry and finally retired, and now what's he doing? Pastoring.

And we've seen this shift in the viewpoint of work over the generations. In my parents' generation, spending a career with the same company was not uncommon. They were committed to the company and tried hard to make sure that personal time did not negatively influence their work. And in our current generation, we seem to have flipped that a little bit, making sure that our work doesn't negatively influence our personal time. And I'm not saying either one is better or worse — it's just how it was and how it is. There are pros and cons to both. But the results, if you are working for the Lord, are the same.

And that's where verse 24 of Colossians 3 comes in:

Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

Note here that it doesn't say you'll receive the reward because you've earned it. It says you will receive the inheritance. It's not an if-then situation. It builds upon the idea of — you asked why? Well, here's why. There's absolutely nothing that we can do to earn our salvation. We receive the inheritance as a reward by the work that Jesus did for us — not his work as a carpenter, but by the work he did laying down his life for us on the cross. Because Christ finished his work, we also are to work with all of our hearts, because of what Jesus has already done for us. It's to serve him. It's not for our own glory. Working hard will not result in acceptance by God, but rather we work hard because we are already accepted.

What Christ did for us on the cross was a step towards restoring us to our original purpose in the Garden of Eden, where we can use our work to honor and worship God and for His glory.

And so here's the thing practically — is every day going to be the best day where we want to give it our all? No. Is it possible to always like your job or always like your boss or always like all your coworkers? Probably not. That's part of being a human being. That's the lingering effect of sin. But while we are human beings, we're also human doings, and we all have a part to play in the redeeming work of God.

So whatever it is that we're doing, whatever roles or occupations our lives lead us into, it's important to let what we do reflect God to the world. Because whose actions do we control — our own, or the actions of those around us? Regardless of the circumstances we find ourselves in each day, let's continue to recognize that we should strive to give it our all, knowing that it is for God, not for man, that we always were and still are designed to please.

Let's pray together.

Father, you are the Lord and Master of our lives. There are no jobs too great or small that we can't give you the glory in them. Lord, guard us from our desire for human praise. If we feel unseen or overlooked or discouraged, Lord, strengthen us with the assurance that our labor for you is never in vain. And forgive us, Father, for the times we've complained or given less than our best. Remind us again to work wholeheartedly for you, and thank you for the promise of salvation, Father, and the reminder that our inheritance comes from you. Let our words and our actions reflect the character of Jesus in our daily lives. In your name. Amen.