Sunday, September 2, 2007

Is Your Work a Blessing or a Curse?
Matthew 6: 19 – 34.

I. Introduction.

This is Labor Day Weekend…The last three day weekend of the Summer…The last opportunity for family vacation or to get some work done around the house…Or your last opportunity to wear your white patent leather shoes…

But Labor Day is an often overlooked holiday…It is a unique holiday, because it is not devoted to any particular religious group or nationality…First Monday in September is Labor Day in America…Other nations have their own days set aside as Labor Day…

In America, Labor Day began in 1882 when the Central Labor Union designated September 5 as a “working man’s holiday.”

Even though Labor Day is not a Christian holiday, it does fit with our Protestant work ethic and our understanding of the value of a good day’s work…As Christians, we ought to give thanks to God for our work and for allowing us to live in a country where work is available…

We can even pause today and look at the biblical perspective of work…The Bible presents us with two ways we can view our work…

Read Genesis 3: 17 – 19…Work as a Curse…This curse came as a result of the Fall and a consequence of human sin…Notice there are two sides of that curse: work and separation from God…Through Christ our relationship with God has been restored, so we have reason to believe that the first part of that curse has also been broken…

Read Colossians 3: 22 – 25…Through Christ, our work does not have to remain a curse…It can be a blessing and a kind of service to God…

Today I want to encourage you to let Christ break the curse that has held our work captive and move to an understanding of work as a blessing…There are three ways that you can know if your work is a blessing or a curse…

Read Matthew 6: 19 – 34.


II. Is Your Work Irreverent?

Work that is irreverent is work that does not show reverence toward God…We show reverence by honoring God and loving God through our actions…Revere is another word for worship…to focus our mind, attention and affection on God and to act in ways that reflect those thoughts and love for God…

Many people like to compare the Old and New Testaments and say that the OT is about Law and the NT is about Grace…This is a great idea, except it is wrong and does not reflect what the Bible teaches…Grace does not just show up in the NT…The OT is all about Grace…Law does not just show up in the OT…The NT places legal requirements that are actually tougher than the OT…

In the OT, believers were required to give a tithe or 10% of parts of their income to God…In the OT, believers were required to give 1/7 of their time—one day out of every week totally devoted to worship and rest…In the NT, Paul called all Christians to present themselves as “living sacrifices” to God…In other words, the NT requires more than the OT ever thought to require…Now, believers are required to give 100% of both financial assets and time…Worship is not reserved for Sunday mornings…It is for every day of the week…We are to worship God with all that we have…

Paul said in Colossians 3 that Christians ought to work as if God himself were our boss…Not the earthly boss that we report to every day…We can even worship God through our work…

How can we know if our work is Reverent or Irreverent? We should compare our work to Jesus’ words in Matthew 6. Are you storing up for yourself treasures in heaven or treasures on earth? Reverent work stores treasures in heaven.

If all you are doing in your work is storing up treasures on earth…Then your work might be more of a curse than a blessing…


III. Is Your Work Irrelevant?

Work that is irrelevant is work that does not accomplish anything significant…Or make a meaningful contribution to change the world for the better…

I have confessed to you before that I like to do things…I don’t like to be idle or to waste my time…I can remember when I was in school how I always hated having a substitute teacher…Because having a substitute usually meant doing busy work that didn’t seem to accomplish anything…

When our work is a blessing, it is relevant work…Work that makes a difference…

How can we know if our work is Relevant or Irrelevant? Again, we should compare it to Jesus’ words in Matthew 6. Is the Kingdom of God your number one priority? Or do you spend your time worrying about food, drink, clothing, etc…Relevant work places the Kingdom of God as the top priority…Irrelevant work focuses on secondary concerns like food, drink, clothing and ironically creates more stress…

I am sure you have heard of Tony Campolo. He is a Baptist minister and sociology professor from Philadelphia, PA. I had an opportunity to meet Dr. Campolo in July of 1994 while I was serving as youth minister in South Jackson. I was on the associational committee that put together the Friends Forever camp that year and invited Tony Campolo to be one of our featured speakers.

The youth minister who contacted Campolo was surprised when he checked his calendar and immediately agreed to speak. He asked him what his normal speaking fee was. Campolo replied that he didn’t have a set fee but was willing to accept the engagement for whatever we were willing to pay. (For this particular camp, this was unusual, because all the other speakers had set fees and elaborate contracts, some requiring as much as $1,500.00 per day and a hotel room with room service.)

Dr. Campolo was scheduled to speak twice, once to all the youth and a second time to all the youth ministers. He spoke to the youth about hunger and the needs of the poor around the world. He told stories about his own experiences with mission trips to Haiti and to extremely impoverished regions of the world.

While Campolo was speaking to the youth ministers, it was obvious that this was a hostile crowd. The youth ministers were attacking Campolo for some things he had said in the meeting with all the youth.

Some youth ministers said, “You’re just giving our kids a guilt trip, making them feel bad about what little they are able to do.” “So, you’ve taken a few mission trips to Haiti, what makes you such an expert?”

This went on for a long time before Campolo was backed into a corner. Then he told us what he does to meet the needs of the poor and hungry and lost around the world.

He has a discipleship group of seven men…doctors, lawyers, ministers, businessmen. This group began to realize that they made an incredible amount of money compared to what the rest of the world makes and lives on. So, they decided to set household budgets…They would live on what they needed and give the rest away to missions.

In Campolo’s own family, his children are grown and his house was paid for…He had discovered that he and his wife could live comfortably on $23,000.00 per year. Everything else, he gave away to missions. That is why he didn’t have a set fee…He was planning to give away whatever we paid him…We actually paid him $1,000.00 to speak twice.

These seven men eventually formed their own missions sending organization. In 1994, these seven men fully supported over 100 missionaries around the world.
They had placed the Kingdom of God as their number one priority.

I realize this is an extreme example…You don’t have to pay the full-time salaries of 100 missionaries to have the Kingdom of God as your top priority…But if the Kingdom is not your top priority in your work, then your work might just be Irrelevant…It might be more of a curse than a blessing…


IV. Is Your Work Irresponsible?

Work can be irresponsible when it does not consider the needs of others…Does your work look out for your own needs, or for the needs of others? This includes family…

How can we know if our work is Responsible or Irresponsible? Again, compare it to Jesus’ words in Matthew 6…Does your work give life to others, or does it actually take away life from others? When our work is responsible to God, then it provides for our personal needs and for the needs of others—including our families…

Work that is Irresponsible is work that only looks after our own personal, selfish needs…It is nothing more than stress and worry and “vanity, vanity”…

Jesus’ words on this subject were plain enough…Worry and Stress cannot add to your life…They actually take away life…

Many people today tend to find their meaning and identity in their work…This had led many to spend inordinate amounts of time working…Of course, it is easy to rationalize this kind of addiction… “I am just providing for the needs of my family”… “I just want my children to have more than I had”… “My family comes first, so I work to provide for my family”…

The reality is that this kind of addiction to work does not improve the quality of life for a person’s family…It actually destroys the family…It does not give life to others…It takes away life from others…By creating more stress, anxiety and worry…Jesus said that you cannot improve your life through worry!


V. Conclusion.

I took a group of college students on a mission trip to Mexico during Spring Break of 1997. We worked on several building projects at a Christian orphanage in the Mexican city of Reynosa. On our last full day, our host took us on a trip to observe the site of a new mission he was trying to develop.

This was a small fishing village on the Gulf of Mexico that was so small and so remote that it didn’t even have a name. They just referred to it as “Fish Island.” We drove four hours southeast from the Texas border on the worst roads I have ever driven in my life.

We were not prepared for what we saw when we got there…Families lived in shacks and crates and cardboard boxes on the beach with no access to electricity or plumbing. The filth and smell was unbelievable.

The men made their living by fishing. Every morning they rowed in small boats onto the Gulf to a small island that was just over the horizon and out of our sight. On the other side of that island they fished and then brought what they had caught back to the beach to sell to the trucks that came by every afternoon.

They made next to nothing for their fish and lived in filth and poverty. Just as I was beginning to feel sorry for these Mexican families, I learned something else. They didn’t work year round. They only worked for six months each year. And this was not because of the weather or the fishing season.

They only worked for six months, because that is how long it took them to earn enough money to live for the rest of the year. Once they made as much money as they wanted, they took their families and moved back to an inland village to live.

These poor fishermen did not live a glamorous lifestyle…And they did not have the wealth and luxury that you and I are used to…But it seems to me they had something that we have missed…They have broken the curse…