Get a Job - Part A

When we open the Bible we make a discovery that is pretty obvious when we start going through the first chapter of Genesis. We are presented with a working God. God is at work. God is at work creating the world that we live in.

When God created people, He made us in His image with similar abilities, one of them being the ability to work. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzel, Skip shares about the honor and dignity you can have in the work God has called you to. Before we begin, we want to let you know about a resource that shares hope for our nation by calling on dads everywhere to step up and lead. Your gift to this teaching program has helped us grow and we want to do more in 2023.

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Call 1-800-922-1888 or go to connectwithskip.com to get your copy of Where's dad. Okay, we're in Genesis chapter one as we join Skip Heitzig for today's study. There was a guy who said, you know, I don't mind hard work. In fact, I love it. It fascinates me.

I can sit and watch it for hours. You might think, well, I know that guy. I want to talk to you in this series a little bit about work. There was a man who applied for a job. The prospective boss asked the applicant who was sitting before him, so he said, so tell me what you would consider to be your worst quality. The applicant thought about it and goes, I suppose my worst quality is that I'm too honest.

Excuse me, said the boss, too honest? Yeah, I think that is my worst quality. I think I'm too honest. Yeah, I think that is my worst quality. I think I'm too honest. And the boss said, well, that didn't sound like a bad thing. I think being honest is a good quality. And the applicant said, yeah, I don't really care what you think.

Well, he had a point then, didn't he? I do care what you think because in Proverbs 23, it says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. So I want to get you to think about work.

I think I'm skip. I came to church so I don't have to think about work. No, I want you to think differently, perhaps about how you have thought up until now about work. And it is my hope and prayer that not only in this study, but throughout this series, it will change the way you think about it. But somebody once said the first thing God did after creating man on the earth was to give him a job. And you're going to see that. I'm giving this message, the title, get a job. And please don't feel demeaned by that.

Some people hear that title and go, well, that's a very kind of in your face title, but I'm doing it in honor of my dad, who used to say those words to me quite frequently. Get a job. And he did not want his sons. He had four of them.

I was the last of the four. He didn't want us idle. He didn't want us just kind of sitting around. So he would say, get a job. And if I couldn't find gainful employment, he made sure I always had a job doing something.

So this is in honor of him. And you might want to consider this short little series, hustle and grind as sort of a theology about work. In the next few weeks, we're going to look at the place of work in our lives. We're going to look about what happens if you take it too seriously.

We're going to look at what happens if you don't take it seriously enough and you err on the lazy side. We want to look at the balance of working and resting, having leisure as well, because that is a pattern established in the scripture. But the average person still divides his or her day up, 24-hour day, into three eight-hour segments. Eight hours of work, eight hours of leisure time, eight hours of sleep. So we devote a third of our life to working. I should say, at least we used to devote a third of our lives to work. And we have a little bit of competition these days.

And one of the biggest competitions is this. Did you know the average American adult spends almost four hours a day on this? Four hours a day.

Three hours and 43 minutes, to be precise, is the going rate for average American adults. Now, I'd like to think that probably all of that happens on our leisure time. But I have a hunch that it bleeds into our work time as well. So one of the first questions that we asked one another when we meet each other, the first question is, how do you do? But usually the second question is, what do you do? What do you do? Where do you work? What do you do for a living? We kind of want to find out who a person might be in relationship to what they are producing in the culture in which we live.

It's a standard question that people often ask. Now, some of you get paid to work. Others of you work, but you don't get paid. We call those moms.

Moms put in so much work for their families. If they were to get paid, we could never afford them in terms of just the amount of hours and devotion. So they work, but they're not getting paid like that necessarily. But then there are people who get paid, but they don't work.

And that has become more of a problem lately in our culture than perhaps at any other time. Now, long before there was ever a pandemic, getting people motivated to actually work was becoming a challenge. One New York office put this notice up inside their building on a bulletin board sometime between starting and quitting time without infringing on lunch periods, coffee breaks, rest periods, storytelling, ticket selling, holiday planning, rehashing of yesterday's television programs. We asked that each employee find time for a work break.

That's pretty novel, isn't it? Let's have a work break. Let's actually get some work done. It goes on to say, this may seem radical, but it might aid in steady employment and assure a regular paycheck. Here's the thing. It's hard nowadays to get people interested in steady employment, though they want a regular paycheck.

And that brings us up to where we are right now in our culture. The Harvard Business Review said there is a crisis of long-term employment that is looming in the United States. Virtually every businessman or business owner that I have talked to said it's so hard for me to find people who are willing to come in and work. And you've seen signs on businesses like this. Signs that say, we're short staffed today. Please be patient. I like what they wrote after that. If you run out of patience, ask for an application. That's good. Or this one, we are short staffed. Please be patient with the staff that did show up.

No one wants to work any more. Well, we are in Genesis chapter one. It's the opening pages of the Bible. And when we open the Bible, we make a discovery that is pretty obvious when we start going through the first chapter of Genesis. We are presented with a working God. God is at work. God is at work creating the world that we live in. So, back to that statement that the first thing God did after he put man on the earth is give him a job. Actually, God did more than that. He gave him four things, four directives that God gave.

We're going to go through each one. First, God gave us a position. God gave us a position.

I want you to see what that is. In verse 24 of chapter one of Genesis, then God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind. And it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

That's the position. We are in the image of God. God gave us a position. Now, what does that mean, the image of God? Well, there's books that are written about what that means, but I'll give it to you in a nutshell.

Being an image bearer of God, having the image of God means we are capable of embodying God's communicable attributes. Okay, I know that's a mouthful. That's sort of theology talk. I'm going to break that down. We are capable of embodying God's communicable attributes. Okay, let me push the pause button.

Beep. God has attributes. Some of those attributes are incommunicable attributes. They're non-communicable. We don't share them. We can never share them.

Here's one. God knows everything. You and I don't share that attribute. Sometimes people think they do and try to do that.

It never ends up well. Another attribute God has is he is all-powerful. Another attribute God has is that he is everywhere present in the totality of his being.

He is omnipresent. We don't share any of those attributes. They are incommunicable attributes, but we do share other attributes with our Creator, communicable attributes, moral attributes, love, justice, mercy, also intellect, emotion, and will. We aren't like other creatures that God has made. We are the crowning creation. Mankind is God's crowning creation. According to the New Testament, he made us just lower than the angels.

So we are the crowning creation. We don't react to stimuli. That is, we don't just react to stimuli. Your dog does. Your cat does. They go by what they see or smell or hear.

They react to it, or they operate by instinct. We, on the other hand, are able to think complex thoughts and have the ability to reason through things. We are able to love. We are able to worship. We are able to discern and have complex relationships with each other. That's what it means to be in the image of God. But something else it means, and this takes us to really our point. We also are able to work creatively.

So God is at work, as we're about to see, and we, in His image, are able to work creatively. So monkeys don't write symphonies. Monkeys don't grow gardens. Monkeys don't start businesses.

But people do. We are in the image of God. We work creatively. So when we open up the first chapter of the Bible, as we did, even the very first verse of the Bible, we are confronted with a working God. Look at verse 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's work. I know you can say, well, it's no big deal for God. He just spoke it into existence.

I'm not talking about how much energy it takes or how hard it is to do the work. It's still work. He produced something. Go down to verse 7. Thus God made the firmament. He's producing something. He's creating.

He's working. Go down to verse 16. Then God made two great lights. Verse 17. God set them in the firmament of the heavens. Verse 21.

So God created great sea creatures. Go over to chapter 2, next chapter, verse 1. Thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished. And on the seventh day, God ended his work. So he worked up until now. Now he stopped his work. On the seventh day, God ended his work, which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. And when it says God rested, it's not because God was pooped. It's like, oh man, I'm so tired.

I need a day off. It's just that he was done with this creation. He's still working to this day, but he ceased his work of creation. But the point being, God was at work.

Oh, something else. Go back to chapter 1, verse 31. Then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So God even enjoyed job satisfaction. He looked over his work and said, that's good.

It's very good. All of that to make a point. There is to be dignity in our work. Work is an activity of dignity, and it is instilled in us by the Creator who himself worked for six days in creation.

And why is that important? Because too many people see work as a negative, like it's a prison, like I'm being sentenced to something bad. No, when you work, you are given freedom to create, freedom to produce. But one of the bad things about modern society is that we start viewing work as something we have to do.

I mean, listen to it in our language. T-G-I-F. What does that stand for? Yeah, thank God it's Friday, or thank goodness it's Friday. And then it takes us into the weekend, and the weekend, ah. And so we have a couple days off. And then by the end of the weekend, we say things like, well, it's back to the grind. Hence, hustle and grind. Back to the grind.

Weekend's almost over. Where does that come from? Well, let me take you back to pagan days. The Babylonians had a myth about the creation of the world. And their myth, their religious belief, was that the world was created as a result of the gods having a battle. And in the battle between the gods, one of them won the battle.

His name was Marduk. He's the chief god of the Babylonian empire. And so when Marduk won the battle, the myth is he created the world from the body of his enemy, Tiamat, who was the guardian goddess of the seas. So he created the world, and the other gods saw what he did, and they said to him, now that you have created the earth, you have to work to keep it up.

And Marduk replied, I will create a lowly creature called man to take care of it. And so the gods scorned work in the ancient times. So if you're wondering where the idea of people getting all bummed out and negative about their work, that's not a biblical worldview.

That's a pagan worldview. God doesn't scorn work. God works.

And then God shares that activity with us. You know, Jesus said in John chapter 5, He said, My father is working until now, and I also am working. Aren't you glad God is at work?

Aren't you glad God is working? Romans 8 28, He is working all things together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. God is very active in working for you and in your life. And He wants us to share a bit of that, not only activity, but the satisfaction of that. Listen to Ecclesiastes chapter 2. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too is from the hand of God.

That's scripture. He wants you to work and have a satisfaction quotient, much like what God did after He made what He made. He said, It's good.

It's very good. He wants you to be able to come home at the end of your day, end of your week and say, It's good. You're satisfaction. Tim Keller wrote a book called Every Good Endeavor.

Let me throw a little piece up on the screen. Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer and sexuality. It is not simply medicine, but food for the soul. Without meaningful work, we sense significant inner loss and emptiness.

People who are cut off from work because of physical or other reasons quickly discover how much they need work to thrive emotionally, physically and spiritually. So God gave us a position. We are in His image. Second, God gave us a commission. He gave us a commission.

Let's look at the commission. Verse 28, the very next verse. Then God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it.

Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And what you will notice, and I hope you're reading that verse with me, verse 28, you'll notice in that verse there are three commands, three successive commands. First command, be fruitful and multiply. What does that mean? It means reproduce. It means reproduce. It means have babies. Be fruitful and multiply. Second command, fill the earth.

What does that mean? Keep having babies. After you have babies, have some more and then tell your babies to grow up and have babies and more babies and tell their babies to have babies. So reproduce, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth. Third command and subdue it.

Now, each of these commands leads logically to the next command. You can't subdue the earth without first filling the earth and you can't fill the earth without first reproducing yourself. So this is part of our purpose as human beings. Our purpose on the earth is partially tied to this so that any ideology, any philosophy, any theology that denies that this is important, reproduction, filling the earth, subduing it, is against nature. Romans chapter one, it's against the natural order.

So let's look at that third directive, subdue. Let's read a little further because God expands on that. He says, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

Now he explains that. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth. What does that mean? God is saying to man and woman, you are my crowning creation and you are in charge of all the other creatures. You're to have dominion over them.

This is so important. We're not just one of many creatures on earth and one creature is as good and equal to another creature. Dogs are people too.

Bears are people too. You know, you can't say you're better than that. Yeah, I can. I can.

I'm having dominion over them. That's part of the creative order. The idea that we're all exactly the same, that is Sierra Club theology. It's not biblical theology.

And I know this from experience because I was a a member of it in another life. What does subdue mean? What does have dominion mean?

Literally, and the Hebrew word is radah. To have dominion, it means to subjugate, to be mastered over. Literally, it means to enslave in a positive sense.

To enslave, that is to capture, to discover its secrets, and to harness its potential. That's Skip Heitzig's message from the series Hustle and Grind. Now, here's Skip with an important message for you. As believers, knowing that our future is in heaven should motivate us how we live on the earth. Our goal is to equip friends like you in your faith as you live for Jesus Christ. That's why we share these Bible-based messages everywhere we can.

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