SPEAKER_00: Well, good afternoon, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the one of the leaders here at City Church.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to you.
SPEAKER_00: If you're new or visiting, this is our uh second service uh today, and you can tell the students are all away uh this weekend.
SPEAKER_00: Uh both Trinity and UCD have their weekends away.
SPEAKER_00: That's probably why the 12 o'clock is a little bit uh lighter.
SPEAKER_00: For those of you who've been paying attention uh and have been here over the last couple of weeks, you'll have realized that uh last week's reading and this week's reading were the same.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's because we've been looking at Genesis 2 through a couple of different lenses.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at Genesis 2 uh thinking about the issue of gender and being created as gendered beings and the relationship between sex and gender.
SPEAKER_00: If you're interested in that, you can listen uh to that online.
SPEAKER_00: And this week we're looking at the idea of work and what it means to be created uh both in the image of a God who works and what that means for us and for our work uh as his image bearers.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're looking at.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like Genesis 2 is a diamond, and we're looking at a couple of different facets of it.
SPEAKER_00: So with that in mind, let's uh let's pray uh together.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we do thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that that you are sovereign over all things, both our religious expression, our spiritual life, and over how we work.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the scriptures teach us elsewhere that in you we live and move and have our being.
SPEAKER_00: And so we pray that you would not just inform our minds but thrill our hearts uh in light of another impending Monday morning.
SPEAKER_00: We pray these things for the glory of Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: It's true, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: We all we operate in a bunch of different spheres uh that you move through seamlessly throughout your week.
SPEAKER_00: You've got your your family sphere, how you are at home, how you relate either as a husband or a wife, son, daughter, brother, sister, and then you relate differently there to how you relate perhaps at work or at church.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I know when I'm back in the company of my mum, I'm 15 years old again, at least in her eyes, and she's like, um, mum, shut up.
SPEAKER_00: Um, where is you know, I'm like, I'm a grown man elsewhere, and I'm a father and a husband, and I actually pay bills, but when I go back there, I just feel like a sullen teenager again.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then you've got your private sphere.
SPEAKER_00: Your private sphere is how you think and how you act when nobody's looking.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you've got your uh your religious sphere, how you think and how you act here.
SPEAKER_00: You might kind of think and act a little bit holier.
SPEAKER_00: Um uh how's your week been?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's I've just had such a blast week.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, whereas as you get home and you're like, oh, it's been crap.
SPEAKER_00: You got different spheres.
SPEAKER_00: And then there is the work sphere, how it is you exist in your realm of paid employment or your uh course where you're studying, or uh maybe it is that you're a parent, and that is your sphere of work, right?
SPEAKER_00: We just haven't worked out how to monetize it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, my wife works much harder than I do and works 24-7 a lot of the time.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning we're thinking about the relationship between those spheres.
SPEAKER_00: How do they intersect and how do they interact?
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, what we uh what we want as believers in Jesus is to see an integration between all of those spheres.
SPEAKER_00: That our religious life and our beliefs isn't just compartmentalized into one little silo over here, and it's got nothing to do with uh with how we work.
SPEAKER_00: People mistakenly think that there is this kind of sacred secular divide, that there's the religious stuff that you do, and then there's the secular stuff over here.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the picture that the Bible paints because we're not divided people, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so some people kind of say, oh no, what you do for God, what you do in the spirit, and what you do religiously, that's much more important.
SPEAKER_00: That's why you get kind of monastic orders and things like that, because they just think that everything that's done in the world is somehow tainted and wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, the the most important thing that you can do is prepare yourself for heaven.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not actually the view of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The view of the Bible is integration between our faith and our work, our public and our private life, because we're integrated beings.
SPEAKER_00: You don't go into your workplace and and leave your belief system at the door, whatever it is, whether you call yourself a Christian or not, you don't leave your, if you don't like the word of bul uh the term belief, you don't leave your fundamental commitments at the door, your fundamental commitments about what's true and what's not, what's right and what's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: You don't leave them at the door.
SPEAKER_00: You work with them, you think with them, you speak with them.
SPEAKER_00: They form part of how it is that you operate in these different spheres.
SPEAKER_00: And what Christianity offers you is a holistic vision of how to express your belief, how to work, how to love, how to live.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus isn't just Lord of the church, he's not just Lord of Christians, he is Lord of all.
SPEAKER_00: He is Lord over every sphere of life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what uh Abraham Kuypern said, who is the uh the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
SPEAKER_00: He said, There is not one square inch of this present reality over which Christ, who is Lord of all, does not cry mine.
SPEAKER_00: Your work is Jesus'.
SPEAKER_00: Your work belongs to Jesus, let's put it that way.
SPEAKER_00: Your private life belongs to Jesus, your family life belongs to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He is Lord of all.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is worth therefore thinking through how does this passage inform our work?
SPEAKER_00: Three questions that we're gonna ask of.
SPEAKER_00: This text will dip in uh to chapter one as as well to get a kind of fuller picture.
SPEAKER_00: It would have been just a very long reading uh this morning, uh this afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the first question that we're going to ask of this text is what kind of world does God make?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of world does God make?
SPEAKER_00: Because the contention of Genesis 1 and 2 is that human beings are made in his image.
SPEAKER_00: We're made to reflect him.
SPEAKER_00: Being made in the image of God means that we have a kind of inherent value and dignity, but it also means that human beings are like a mirror, made to reflect God, made to show what he's like, to pursue what he pursues.
SPEAKER_00: And so it makes sense, therefore, doesn't it, to kind of think through well, what kind of work does he do?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of world does he make?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna list a few things from both of these chapters and then just expand on them.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that God does is he takes order and brings it, sorry, start again, right?
SPEAKER_00: He takes chaos and he brings it into order.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1, 2.
SPEAKER_00: The earth was without form and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of the Lord was hovering over the face of the waters.
SPEAKER_00: Waters and seas and things like that in the Bible's mind are always images of chaos, which is why in the new creation there is no sea, John says.
SPEAKER_00: It's not to say that there isn't literally any sea, but it's an idea that there is no longer any chaos in the world, that that God's uh God's good order reigns.
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the things that can kind of stretch our noodle a little bit, there was a there was a question in the first service around um, you know, does chaos mean that there basically that there was sin before the fall?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't think that that's true, actually.
SPEAKER_00: I think actually the chaos that is described in Genesis 1, uh, verse 2 is is good.
SPEAKER_00: That's the stretching thing.
SPEAKER_00: How can chaos be good?
SPEAKER_00: But you get to chapter 1, and God's creating the seas, and He calls them good.
SPEAKER_00: There's a sense in which after the fall, chaos gets imbued with evil.
SPEAKER_00: But even if you don't get that, you can park that for a second.
SPEAKER_00: The big headline is that God takes chaos and brings order to it.
SPEAKER_00: I've probably provoked more questions.
SPEAKER_00: Second thing that he does is that God provides for humanity.
SPEAKER_00: The thing that we the thing that is true time and time and time again in Genesis 1 and 2 is that God is cultivating a place for human beings to live.
SPEAKER_00: He's making their home, he's planting a garden.
SPEAKER_00: When we read about in verse 11 about uh you know trees and uh and plants and things like that, it's not it's specifically things that human beings would use to cultivate the land and things that human beings would eat.
SPEAKER_00: He's not talking more generally about grasses and things that the animals would eat, he's talking about fruit trees.
SPEAKER_00: He's providing a place for humans, that humans form the apex of creation, and God is providing a place for them.
SPEAKER_00: There is a provision to creation.
SPEAKER_00: Third, God doesn't just create a place that's useful.
SPEAKER_00: That's so important.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't just create a place that's useful, he creates a place that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: What's the repeated refrain throughout Genesis 1?
SPEAKER_00: And it was good.
SPEAKER_00: God saw that it was good.
SPEAKER_00: He creates a good world, a beautiful world.
SPEAKER_00: See hints of that in in chapter 2 in our reading about the this river flowing out of Eden and just nourishing the whole earth.
SPEAKER_00: There's a beauty to it.
SPEAKER_00: God creates a good world.
SPEAKER_00: Fourth, he creates a world that is abundant and generous.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing miserly about this creation.
SPEAKER_00: The waters teem with creatures, the skies are full of creatures, the rivers are you, they they nourish the uh the earth and they bring in a kind of abundance to it.
SPEAKER_00: There is no rationing in God's good world.
SPEAKER_00: Fifth, God exercises his dominion, he names things.
SPEAKER_00: This is important.
SPEAKER_00: He names things, he calls the light day, he calls the darkness night, he calls the uh the waters that are gathered together seas, he calls the ground that has come up land.
SPEAKER_00: God names things, and we'll see why that's important in just a second.
SPEAKER_00: Sixth and finally, God builds into uh creation a pattern of work and rest.
SPEAKER_00: He works for six days and he rests for one.
SPEAKER_00: And each of these things taken together inform what it means for us to live and work in the world.
SPEAKER_00: They inform what it means for us to express our identity as image bearers in that sphere of work that we find ourselves in.
SPEAKER_00: So let's expand them all uh just briefly.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, God brings order out of chaos, He organizes things, He systematizes, He's separating night from day, light from dark, sea from land, he's organizing.
SPEAKER_00: God is the administrator par excellence.
SPEAKER_00: In what ways does your work cause you to bring order to chaos, to bring structure to being?
SPEAKER_00: Do you help things to work more efficiently?
SPEAKER_00: Do you lead teams in the hope that they would operate more efficiently?
SPEAKER_00: If you're a homemaker, do you bring order out of the chaos that is in your home?
SPEAKER_00: The ways in which you do that, you're expressing what it means to be an image-bearer of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so your work has dignity.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we noted that God provides, there is a provision within creation.
SPEAKER_00: In what ways does your work create a context in which others are provided for, cared for, nourished, and sustained, their lives are changed and enriched.
SPEAKER_00: The ways in which you do that, you are expressing your identity as an image bearer of God, endowed with particular skills and abilities.
SPEAKER_00: Third, God doesn't just create a use a useful creation, but a beautiful one.
SPEAKER_00: It would be very dull, the world would be very beige.
SPEAKER_00: If it was merely full of useful things, if useful things were the only things that we valued, but they're not.
SPEAKER_00: What is the utility of art?
SPEAKER_00: It stirs the affection.
SPEAKER_00: What's the utility of music?
SPEAKER_00: It stirs the affection.
SPEAKER_00: There is an end to beauty in and of itself.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because these things are made by a beautiful god.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you create a beauty for all the beauty artists, musicians, dancers, cooks.
SPEAKER_00: What's making a beauty what's what's chefing?
SPEAKER_00: But cultivating beauty.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because food isn't just fuel.
SPEAKER_00: How boring would our world be if God simply ordered it such that we sniffed the nutrients that we needed out of the air through our noses.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not the world that he makes.
SPEAKER_00: He makes a world in which you can take some stuff from the ground and some stuff from an animal and put it together in a certain way with different quantities and in different preparation methods and make something beautiful, something that stirs the affections, something that stimulates the senses.
SPEAKER_00: Think about your favorite meal.
SPEAKER_00: For me, it's really good steak, good thickness on that, good char around the outside, good medium rare, well rested.
SPEAKER_00: And what is the emotion that I feel when I get towards well at the start?
SPEAKER_00: So I go on an emotional roller coaster kind of through that meal because it's because it's like, yes, praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: 16 ounces of amazingness.
SPEAKER_00: And then it's just like there's just a kind of this cresting upwards, this is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: But then you kind of don't you start to get sad because it's like, oh, this is coming to an end, or is that just me?
SPEAKER_00: And it gets sad towards the end of a meal because you know that it's kind of running out.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because food isn't just fuel.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what food is?
SPEAKER_00: Food is God's love made tasty.
SPEAKER_00: I mean that quite seriously.
SPEAKER_00: Food is God's love made tasty.
SPEAKER_00: God has created a world that is beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: And so do you cultivate beauty?
SPEAKER_00: Do you spend time preparing nice things?
SPEAKER_00: Do you make music?
SPEAKER_00: Do you create art?
SPEAKER_00: Do you write poetry?
SPEAKER_00: It's like the the start of um uh the Robin Williams film, uh, Dead Poet Society.
SPEAKER_00: What happens in the Dead Poet Society?
SPEAKER_00: First lesson Robin Williams is teaching, and what the book, what the textbook is telling him is how to plot the goodness or the beauty of a poem on a graph.
SPEAKER_00: And he gets them all to rip out the pages because that's not the way art works.
SPEAKER_00: Art has a utility in and of itself to stir the affections and to draw us out of ourselves, and God made a world like that.
SPEAKER_00: So, in the ways that you cultivate beauty and make good things, you're expressing what it's like to be made in the image of a beautiful God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh fourth.
SPEAKER_00: So that there is an abundance of generosity in creation.
SPEAKER_00: This goes more to our attitude underlying our work.
SPEAKER_00: Creation isn't miserly, and nor should we be.
SPEAKER_00: To be miserly is to desire to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: What is it that uh Charles Dickens uh how he does how does he describe Ebenezer Scrooge in a Christmas card?
SPEAKER_00: He says that Ebenezer Scrooge was as cold and solitary as an oyster.
SPEAKER_00: There's an abundant generosity about creation.
SPEAKER_00: And do you reflect that in your attitude towards your work, your productivity, and your time for others?
SPEAKER_00: Fifth, God names things.
SPEAKER_00: This is an expression of dominion, of authority.
SPEAKER_00: Naming is always that in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: So, what does he get Adam to do?
SPEAKER_00: He gets him to name the creatures as an expression of Adam's own dominion and authority over the created order.
SPEAKER_00: Because interestingly, if you read the gospels, if you're interested in this, this is why Jesus doesn't let the demons name him.
SPEAKER_00: Because he will not permit them to have an authority that is not theirs.
SPEAKER_00: So do you exercise authority?
SPEAKER_00: Do you lead?
SPEAKER_00: You are expressing what it means to be made in the image of a sovereign God.
SPEAKER_00: Sixth and finally, God builds into creation a pattern of work and rest.
SPEAKER_00: He works for six days and he rests for one.
SPEAKER_00: And rest isn't just good for you physically, though it is.
SPEAKER_00: When you think of um the uh the Maoist revolution in communist China where they tried to develop a 10-day working week, what happened?
SPEAKER_00: It's not just that people got tired, people died.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're not meant to work like that, you know, and and what that also shows us is it's not the pattern of kind of six in one isn't something that society's made.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we try to remake it, like in the in the communist revolution, it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: It's something received from a God who works in this pattern of work and rest, six in one.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not just a physical thing, though it is, but it is a it is a spiritual act, it's a spiritual discipline.
SPEAKER_00: It's a spiritual act of saying, I'm not actually in charge.
SPEAKER_00: When the chips are down, the bottom line, I'm not in charge.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that I am, everything that I have, it comes ultimately from God, and I rest in that.
SPEAKER_00: He is the source of my ultimate security and all of my exertion and all of my productivity is done in him with the strength that he supplies.
SPEAKER_00: If you are unable to ever take a day off, if you are unable ever to rest, you are busier than God created you to be.
SPEAKER_00: It is important that you find those margins, those times to stop, and to trust.
SPEAKER_00: When we refuse to rest, it is often a sign that we don't trust God.
SPEAKER_00: We don't trust him for our for our future.
SPEAKER_00: We might think that he is all powerful, we might think that he is sovereign and in control, but oftentimes we don't trust his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: And so we exert ourselves in thinking, no, I've gotta I've gotta keep a handle on this.
SPEAKER_00: But no, our God is both sovereign and he is good.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, he is the one ultimately from whom we derive our identity.
SPEAKER_00: So many of us get our identity from our career, from our work, from the things that we do, from the stuff that we make.
SPEAKER_00: God would say, no, that isn't that is an excruciatingly exhausting way to live.
SPEAKER_00: If your ultimate identity is as an image bearer of God, more moreover, as a believer in Jesus, as somebody who's in Christ, and has that as your stable core identity, that's how you're able to rest.
SPEAKER_00: It's a great example of this in Chariots of Fire.
SPEAKER_00: Chariots of Fire is the story of Eric Little or Liddell, however you want to say that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Eric Little, who's the the His main rival is Harold Abrams.
SPEAKER_00: And in a in the movie, there's a there's an interchange between Abrams and uh and Little.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham says this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, and now in one hour's time I will be out there again, and I will raise my eyes and look down that corridor, four feet wide, with ten lonely seconds to justify my whole existence.
SPEAKER_00: But will I?
SPEAKER_00: Abraham was getting his identity from his ability to run.
SPEAKER_00: Will I?
SPEAKER_00: Uncertainty.
SPEAKER_00: Will I be fast enough?
SPEAKER_00: Will I justify my existence?
SPEAKER_00: Will I prove that I am worthy of being on this planet?
SPEAKER_00: Little, by conscience, responds and says, I believe God made me for a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: He also made me fast.
SPEAKER_00: When I run, I feel his pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: See the difference between the two?
SPEAKER_00: Harold Abrams was weary even when he was resting.
SPEAKER_00: But Eric Little was resting even when he exerted himself.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because they were deriving their identities from two different places.
SPEAKER_00: You see, beneath all of our work, there's another work.
SPEAKER_00: Beneath all of our work, our exertion that will come tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off, there is another work.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the work of self-justification.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham's sought satisfaction and joy, and it always eluded him.
SPEAKER_00: Little found his satisfaction in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so he was able to experience joy when he runs.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't looking at his work in order to give him a value that it was never designed to do.
SPEAKER_00: You place that sort of weight on your work.
SPEAKER_00: You place, you know, I want, you know, this is what gives me meaning.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea who I am outside of my career.
SPEAKER_00: You place that sort of meaning on your work, and you will crush all the joy out of it.
SPEAKER_00: More than that, you will make yourself very, very anxious.
SPEAKER_00: Because you'll constantly have to push yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll constantly be looking over your shoulder at somebody doing it better than you.
SPEAKER_00: The second question.
SPEAKER_00: So we've looked at what kind of world does God make?
SPEAKER_00: The second question is, what does God command?
SPEAKER_00: Because God gives uh commands here in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: In 1 verse 28, after he makes the man and woman in his image, verse 28 reads, And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.
SPEAKER_00: There are a number of things there.
SPEAKER_00: There's be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion.
SPEAKER_00: And then in chapter two, he places the man in the garden to do what?
SPEAKER_00: Kind of sit in the shade of a tree and sip a cocktail?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: To work and attend it.
SPEAKER_00: Human beings are made for work.
SPEAKER_00: Some people mistakenly think that work is a result of the fall.
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
SPEAKER_00: Toil is difficulty in work.
SPEAKER_00: You all know how difficult your work is, how difficult the people that you work with can be.
SPEAKER_00: But the work itself is you should not be laughing.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you have to fire people.
SPEAKER_00: It's an exercising of my authority.
SPEAKER_00: God given.
SPEAKER_00: Work is in our DNA.
SPEAKER_00: It exists before sin entered the world, before brokenness enters the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's part of what we're made to do.
SPEAKER_00: We're made to exert ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We're the only creature in all of the creation narrative that is given a job description, as it were.
SPEAKER_00: The animals are blessed and told to be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_00: You know, do what bunnies do.
SPEAKER_00: Reproduce, fill the earth.
SPEAKER_00: But human beings are not just told that.
SPEAKER_00: We're told to subdue, to bring to heal, to bring to order, to cultivate, to tend.
SPEAKER_00: For human beings, therefore, filling the earth doesn't just mean procreation, it means the development of civilization.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just the furthering of our species, but the forming of societies.
SPEAKER_00: Even before the fall, it seems that God made a world with this sort of potential that human beings were supposed to unfold.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why work is required.
SPEAKER_00: We join Him in that work.
SPEAKER_00: God made a material world that is good, it matters, and He gave us the freedom to explore it, to fill the earth.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just tend the garden, it's that Eden would extend, to mold it and to shape it.
SPEAKER_00: What that means is there is no denigration in any of our work.
SPEAKER_00: We too easily distinguish between work that we think is valuable and work that isn't.
SPEAKER_00: Normally it's between manual jobs and knowledge jobs, professional jobs, vocations.
SPEAKER_00: And we somehow, even instinctively, we somehow think that one of those is better than the other.
SPEAKER_00: Would you rather that your child was a doctor or a bin man?
SPEAKER_00: Bin person, sorry, let's be politically correct.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible makes no such distinction.
SPEAKER_00: Who is God here?
SPEAKER_00: He's a gardener.
SPEAKER_00: He places he plants a garden and places Adam there to be a gardener too.
SPEAKER_00: He works with his hands.
SPEAKER_00: Think of housework.
SPEAKER_00: Well, nobody values housework.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not true.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean what I'm about to say quite seriously.
SPEAKER_00: Housework is the preservation of human life.
SPEAKER_00: If nothing were ever sanitary or clean, we'd all get sick.
SPEAKER_00: Why else do you clean your house?
SPEAKER_00: Because social convention, well, I mean, if you're an Irish mammy, yes, all the time to within an inch of its life, and you have the good tiles, but that's a that's a whole other that's a whole other thing.
SPEAKER_00: We clean because it is part of causing human beings to flourish.
SPEAKER_00: Or else you end up in Rory's operating table.
SPEAKER_00: Housework is bringing order out of chaos.
SPEAKER_00: It is creating a context for human flourishing.
SPEAKER_00: We tend the garden, the little patch of the garden that we've been placed in.
SPEAKER_00: We harness and unfold creation's potential.
SPEAKER_00: It also means that every entrepreneur, every inventor, even those, yes, who make money for a living, imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Even as Christians, you know, as Christians, we're like kind of poo-poo, kind of people who make money or make money for a living, well, that's a bit kind of bit kind of unsavory.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: You're harnessing the God-given potential within creation and unfolding it in a way that God intended and expressing what it means to be an image-bearer.
SPEAKER_00: And when we tend the garden in these sorts of ways, when we work to subdue creation and bring order to it, what are we doing?
SPEAKER_00: We're creating culture.
SPEAKER_00: Creating culture.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you work in teams or in work environments where the culture is toxic.
SPEAKER_00: Where everyone is unhappy and morale is low.
SPEAKER_00: There's infighting, backbiting, people stepping over one another in order to get ahead.
SPEAKER_00: So, what does it mean for Christians to tend the garden in a way that creates a better culture, a culture in which the people around you begin to flourish?
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you three quick things that you might consider.
SPEAKER_00: First, in your particular sphere, work with excellence.
SPEAKER_00: There is no sense from these passages that God's good creation was in any way defective.
SPEAKER_00: He was a diligent workman.
SPEAKER_00: He worked with excellence.
SPEAKER_00: That's why creation is good, and at the apex of it, it's very good.
SPEAKER_00: And so work to them, work to maximize the talents that you have been given.
SPEAKER_00: Work with diligence.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a student here this morning, can I encourage you not to be prepared to drop a degree classification in order to do something like help Christian Union?
SPEAKER_00: It's not to say that Christian Union is a bad thing.
SPEAKER_00: But you've got to ask yourself, what's the most God-glorifying thing that you can do?
SPEAKER_00: It's to work with excellence in the sphere, in the department, in the class that God has placed you in, maximizing the gifts and abilities that He has given you.
SPEAKER_00: If you can do that in concert with your serving, then all the better.
SPEAKER_00: But you honor God by working to your potential, not just working on spiritual things, quote unquote.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus is Lord all over all of those spheres.
SPEAKER_00: It means diligence, it means being on time, it means being on budget.
SPEAKER_00: And in that, sometimes what we're doing there is we're setting an example for people around you, because you think, what is your, what do we mean when we say your work culture?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody you're working with is like could describe your work culture, but think about it this way.
SPEAKER_00: People talk about it in terms of this is just the way it's always been.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's your work culture.
SPEAKER_00: This is just the way we do things here.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how can we cultivate?
SPEAKER_00: How can we create and imbue a better way that things have always been done here?
SPEAKER_00: Second.
SPEAKER_00: Work with the flourishing of others in mind.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just mean helping others, though it is that.
SPEAKER_00: Because flourishing is a holistic thing.
SPEAKER_00: It means speaking with honesty and integrity.
SPEAKER_00: And that actually is very important.
SPEAKER_00: Don't lie.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just that it's not just that God doesn't like it.
SPEAKER_00: It's not I'm not saying because it's one of the Ten Commandments, you know, it's one of the big ten sins, so you don't lie.
SPEAKER_00: No, when people lie, societies disintegrate.
SPEAKER_00: So you saw in Soviet Russia.
SPEAKER_00: People lie to one another all the time.
SPEAKER_00: It just became part of the norm.
SPEAKER_00: What happens?
SPEAKER_00: You can't trust one another.
SPEAKER_00: Societies begin to disagree, disintegrate, and fli and because mistrust grows up, families uh when families stop trusting one another and that unit starts to fall apart, society becomes affected.
SPEAKER_00: When you lie, you are causing a disintegration in your workplace and in your work relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Don't lie.
SPEAKER_00: If you can't tell the truth, don't say anything.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, just get up and walk out of the room.
SPEAKER_00: It really is quite important.
SPEAKER_00: And and that's why God's laws just aren't arbitrary.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that he says don't lie just because it makes baby Jesus cry.
SPEAKER_00: He says don't lie because it's not good for humans.
SPEAKER_00: It's not good for society.
SPEAKER_00: So it means speaking with honesty, with integrity.
SPEAKER_00: It means being compassionate and generous with your time being available to others.
SPEAKER_00: A third thing that you might try in creating a new culture in your workplace is you might have regard for the spiritual well-being of the people that you work with.
SPEAKER_00: God had regard for every aspect of Adam.
SPEAKER_00: Adam was given a task of naming the animals in order to stretch his mental capacity.
SPEAKER_00: He was given to tend the garden in order to grow him physically, but he was also given God's command to not eat the tree that is in the midst of the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Come back to that next week, in order to grow him spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: Do you have regard for the spiritual state of the people that you work with?
SPEAKER_00: And so one thing simply that you might do on your commute tomorrow morning is you might pray for your colleagues.
SPEAKER_00: Where you are like, well, they're dishonest and deceitful and annoying.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you pray that why don't you pray that you would get more good out of them and that God would put more good in them?
SPEAKER_00: You see, everyone that you work with is a spiritual being.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone that you work with is in relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Even the person who says, I don't believe in God.
SPEAKER_00: The person who is in open rebellion and rejection of him.
SPEAKER_00: That's still a way of relating.
SPEAKER_00: You just wouldn't say that it was particularly healthy.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone is relating to God in some way spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: So why wouldn't you pray for your colleagues and see what God does?
SPEAKER_00: You see, your work isn't just a part of the garden, it's your mission field.
SPEAKER_00: Mission as a Christian is not going overseas, you know, to the Gambia or uh or you know to Papua New Guinea.
SPEAKER_00: It can be that.
SPEAKER_00: It is that.
SPEAKER_00: That is no denigration of short-term missions or going overseas to take the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That is necessary.
SPEAKER_00: But for many of us, it would be a mistake to think that that's only what mission is.
SPEAKER_00: The mission is doing the everyday things of life with a with an intentionality that I am a Christian with all my Christian beliefs and values, my fundamental commitments, coming into this workplace, and I'm here seeking the good of the people around me.
SPEAKER_00: And that good ultimately is that they believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So we cultivate, we produce, and we work with excellence, excellence, holiness, beauty, integrity, because our desire is to commend and to reflect the image of a God who is all of those things perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: And because we love our colleagues and we want God ultimately to speak order into the chaos that is in their lives through the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly and finally, what enables us to work like this?
SPEAKER_00: What enables us to work like this?
SPEAKER_00: Who is the energizing agent in creation?
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1, verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
SPEAKER_00: Or 2 verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath, it's the same word for spirit, the breath, the ruck of life.
SPEAKER_00: And the man became a living creature.
SPEAKER_00: What is the energizing agent in creation?
SPEAKER_00: The energizing agent in our work?
SPEAKER_00: It is the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who vivifies, who energizes our work.
SPEAKER_00: In our world, it is broken by sin.
SPEAKER_00: Many are driven by the lie of independence.
SPEAKER_00: That I don't need anyone, that I create my own worlds, that I create my own destiny, my own comfort, my own future.
SPEAKER_00: That can either lead you to one of two places.
SPEAKER_00: You can either lead you to pride if you manage to achieve it and you're one of the few people.
SPEAKER_00: But for many, for many in our world, what it leads to rather is to anxiety, to stress, to burnout, even to suicide.
SPEAKER_00: What's the problem with the guy who drinks too much?
SPEAKER_00: Who argues with his girlfriend or his wife, who works all the R's God sends.
SPEAKER_00: What's the solution that you would prescribe?
SPEAKER_00: The issue is not primarily his work, nor is it primarily his drinking, nor is it primarily his anger issues.
SPEAKER_00: The problem that he has is a spiritual one.
SPEAKER_00: It is a matter of crippling self-reliance.
SPEAKER_00: You see, our world can offer counseling, it can offer medication for the surface issues.
SPEAKER_00: The heart of the matter for our world is the matter of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: That people struggle to accept that they are dependent creatures, dependent on God.
SPEAKER_00: As I said in my prayer, quoting Paul from his speech to the Aryopagus in Acts 17, where he says, In him we live and move and have our being.
SPEAKER_00: But for the Christian, this is a beautiful reality.
SPEAKER_00: Because it frees you.
SPEAKER_00: If you realize that you're a dependent creature, dependent on the Spirit of God, working with the strength that He supplies, relying on Him, knowing that even when you sleep, He is sustaining your world and the rest of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what that does?
SPEAKER_00: That frees you.
SPEAKER_00: It's immensely liberating.
SPEAKER_00: And what it means is it means that you can use creation as a gift rather than using it to give you an identity it was never meant to do.
SPEAKER_00: And it means that we can truly rest in a God who is not only in charge, but who is good because he loves us.
SPEAKER_00: This is supremely exemplified for us in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The women went to the tomb on that first Easter morning, and who did they mistake Jesus for?
SPEAKER_00: The gardener.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't really a mistake.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who perfectly tends God's creation.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who is bringing order out of chaos.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who is liberating it from the effects of the fall.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in his ministry, he worked for the good and flourishing of others, didn't he?
SPEAKER_00: He healed the sick.
SPEAKER_00: He restored sight to the blind.
SPEAKER_00: He gave provision in the feeding of the 5,000.
SPEAKER_00: He restored the widow's son back to her.
SPEAKER_00: He stilled the storm as an expression of his dominion over creation.
SPEAKER_00: And in doing so, he gave us a glimpse of the world that he is remaking.
SPEAKER_00: A world that we are journeying with him towards.
SPEAKER_00: A world that we are working alongside him to break in in our experiences, in our workplaces.
SPEAKER_00: And his death for us liberates us from these false notions of self-reliance.
SPEAKER_00: It liberates us from the restless anxiety of trying to prove ourselves by our productivity or by our career.
SPEAKER_00: He restores our image.
SPEAKER_00: He gives us a new, stable identity.
SPEAKER_00: And he sends us out again.
SPEAKER_00: He sends us out to live and to work for his glory.
SPEAKER_00: He sends us into our classes, into our workplaces, into our homes with the news that Jesus is the one who brings order out of chaos, who speaks light into this dark world, and who brings life where there is death.
SPEAKER_00: And we go with that message.
SPEAKER_00: How do we truly, how do we truly fulfill the command to fill the earth and subdue it?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it is done hand in hand with the Great Commission to go into all the nations and to make disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Part of filling the earth is filling the earth with new Christians, subduing sin and chaos, subduing the Darkness.
SPEAKER_00: How by the word and proclamation of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And so we work with excellence, we work with diligence and integrity and with honesty.
SPEAKER_00: We cultivate beauty.
SPEAKER_00: Because in doing so, we always want to be pointing to him.
SPEAKER_00: We always want to be speaking concerning him.
SPEAKER_00: We want how we act to adorn the gospel when we tell it.
SPEAKER_00: That is how we work in the energy that God supplies.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together and then I'll take any questions that you might have.
SPEAKER_00: Lord help us by your spirit to think through how we ought to operate, think differently about tomorrow morning when our alarm goes off.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to be concerned for the flourishing of those around us.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to image you in how we speak and how we act.
SPEAKER_00: Give us courage to point to the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And give us rest.
SPEAKER_00: Give us rest that even when we exert ourselves, even when we work long, long hours, would we rest?
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that you are sovereign and that you are good.
SPEAKER_00: And that our identity doesn't come ultimately from our work.
SPEAKER_00: But from who the Lord Jesus declares us to be, would that free us to enjoy our work again as a gift?
SPEAKER_00: We ask it in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.