Sermon Transcript
Our scripture for today is from 1 Peter chapter 4. It says, the end of all things is near. Therefore, be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. Above all, love each other deeply because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling, Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks with the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.
Thank you, Laura. Thank you, worship team, for leading us in an awesome time of worship through singing this morning. I cannot tell you how awkward it is to walk up here as you guys are walking down. I’m so used to being up here. Actually, can y’all come back up and just sit while I’m up here, so I have my comfort worship team with me.
Just kidding. What an honor it has been to get to see my daughter join the worship team on cello. My son is helping on mix the sound for the patio broadcast outside, and Casey, my wife, was helping in rehearsal with slides and was serving in the children’s ministry this morning. It is such an honor to get to serve you all as a family, so thank you. For this opportunity.
J.R.R. Tolkien was a confirmed procrastinator. It has been said that he wrote The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit while procrastinating on his academic work on Chaucer. He was also compulsive in his fussing over the smallest details of his writing, constant edits and changes, never fully satisfied with the work and constantly reworking it. On the brink of the Second World War, Tolkien feared that his Lord of the Rings would never get finished or published.
And it was about that time that he wrote a short story titled Leaf by Niggle. The main character was a painter. As the story says, he was the sort of painter who could paint leaves better than trees. He would fuss over every single leaf, all of the small details, but struggle to capture the fullness of the tree. On top of that, he was consistently interrupted by what he considered to be mundane tasks, like helping his neighbor.
And the painter knows that in a short time, he is scheduled to embark on a long journey, leaving his work behind, unfinished, forgotten to history. This allegorical and semi-autobiographical short story by Tolkien leads the reader to question, What is the point of all of our toil here on earth? Why do we work so hard when ultimately we’re just gonna leave it all behind? Well, we are in our 2nd week of our all-church 40-day focus called Use It Well: Stewarding God’s Many Gifts. Over these 6 weeks, we are talking about how to steward the gifts that God has given to us and last week, Dan, talked about the gift of time.
Today, we are talking about that dreaded 4-letter word, work.
So, whether you love your job or, like the painter in Tolkien’s story, wonder what is the point, I think today we’re gonna see that work is a gift from God, work is a gift for others, and work is a gift that glorifies God. And once again, that’s work is a gift from God, work is a gift for others, and work is a gift that glorifies God. Before I jump into these points this morning, I wanna pause and make one clarification. I’m going to use the word work a lot. A lot of what we’re talking about directly ties to our job or our vocation, the work we are paid to do.
But almost everything in today’s message applies to more than just our jobs. God’s definition of work is far broader than just vocation. For example, in Exodus 20, he mentions that even the animals work. When we talk about work, what we’re talking about is anything we do to accomplish a task. The obvious is our paid vocation, but the same is true for the students who work at school, or anyone who serves in a volunteer role somewhere, or anyone who works at home around the house.
Isn’t it work to do dishes and laundry?
So, from school age through retirement, we all work, paid for a job or free of charge. All right, so work is a gift from God. In our scripture passage today, Peter tells us, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. Here, when Peter is using the word gift, what he’s talking about is what we often call spiritual gift. You could also say gifting or a talent.
And he tells us to use these gifts or our gifting to serve one another. While Paul has much more in-depth teaching on spiritual gifts, what they are and how to specifically use them, in this single verse in Peter’s letter, he gives us 3 insights to spiritual gifts. And that’s every believer receives a gift from the Holy Spirit. Gifts are used to serve others, not self. And gifts are given by the grace of God, not by merit.
That’s every believer receives gifting from the Holy Spirit. Peter says, as each of you has received. He’s implying that since you are a believer, you have already been given gifting by the Holy Spirit. Gifts are used to serve others, not self. Peter says it plainly, use it to serve others.
One another. And gifts are given by the grace of God, not by merit. Peter says, as good stewards of God’s varied grace. The gifting has been given by God’s grace, and grace is never earned and never comes with an invoice that we are required to pay back. So, since we have received gifting from the Holy Spirit, we must steward it for God’s good work.
And what is God’s good work? It’s our work. God has commissioned us to work on his behalf. So, we use our gifting doing the work God has given to us. Because work is from God, and you’ve heard, every good and perfect gift is from above, right?
But when I say that, I know what you’re thinking. You’ve never met my boss. You’ve never been to where I work. There is nothing good or perfect about it. But let’s take a look at the history of work.
Let’s take a trip. Let’s go back to the garden, all the way to Genesis 1. Walk with me. God creates heaven and earth, all the plants, all the animals. He creates humans and he places Adam and Eve in the garden.
And God keeps looking around at his creation and he says, oh yeah. This is good. And in Genesis 1:27, we learn that God created man and woman in his own image. We are made in the image of God. And what is it that God is doing the very moment he creates us in his image?
He’s working. He’s creating. God creates. God works. And we are made in the image of God, therefore, we are workers.
And then in the next verse it says, God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Here in Genesis 1 comes God’s first instructions to humankind. Fill the earth and subdue it. We could call this the first commission. Later in Scripture we’ll get the Great Commission.
Steve referenced that this morning in his prayer. Do you remember the Great Commission? Commission, the Great Commission, Matthew 28, go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. But here, long before we get the Great Commission, we get the first commission: fill the earth and subdue it. To the rest of creation, the plants and all the animals that God created in Genesis 1, he says, let them multiply.
But to humans, he gives an instruction to be active and intentional. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Other translations use the word govern or rule here instead of subdue, which is one of the reasons that scholars seem to be pretty united in the fact that this passage is not just a call to fill the earthly maternity wards. It’s a call to be far more intentional. It’s a call to create civilization.
It’s a commission to populate the earth with community, which will take organization and work. Working the earth is part of God’s blessing to Adam and Eve and to us. And check this out, the fall hasn’t even happened yet. Sin has not entered the world yet. The world and humankind is not yet corrupted.
And part of God’s beautiful and perfect design is for us to work together to create community and culture and civilization. You know, God could have just as easily created all of that for us. He could have filled the earth with civilization, but part of his perfect creation was commissioning us to do the work. Jordan Rayner, author of the book, The Sacredness of Secular Work, puts it like this: God chooses to work in this world primarily through you and me. We are the primary instrument through which he works.
We are what Martin Luther calls the masks of God, working with him to fill, subdue, and rule creation on his behalf. In the words of N.T. Wright, creation, it seems, is not a tableau. It’s not a static scene. It was designed as a project.
Created in order to go somewhere. The Creator has a future in mind for it, and human, this strange creature full of mystery and glory, is the means by which the Creator is going to take his project forward. And surprisingly, this commissioning of entering the workforce is the only eternal commissioning we’ll receive. Even what we call the Great Commission will expire once we enter the new heaven and the new earth because there will no longer need to be us to go and make disciples. We’ll already be there.
So the commissioning to work is the only eternal commissioning. I know what some of you are thinking. Nate, aren’t you the worship pastor here? Don’t you know that our call to worship God will continue into eternity? Of course I know that.
Spoiler alert, I see that in every passage of Scripture, so I can almost guarantee that every time I preach, I’m probably going to talk about our call to worship for eternity. So yes, we will worship for eternity, but to clarify, let me turn once again to the words of Jordan Raynor. He notes, when we think of worship, we think almost exclusively of musical worship. And while there will certainly be musical worship in the eternal heaven on earth, see Isaiah 51, God’s definition of worship is much broader than simply strumming a harp or a lyre. Genesis 2:15 says that God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work and take care of it.
The work we— the word we translate as work in this verse is the Hebrew word abad. Which is the exact same word we translate as worship in Exodus 3:12. That means that Adam and Eve are worshiping God, not just when they walk with him in the garden or sing him a song. They are worshiping God when they carried out the first commission to fill, subdue, and rule the earth on his behalf. And in what may come as the greatest shock so far, the same will be true for you and me for all of eternity.
Revelation 22:3-5 makes this crystal clear. It says, no longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night.
They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever. Did you catch that? God’s Word doesn’t say that we’re gonna sing, Lord, I lift your name on high forever and ever, or recline in some hammock forever and ever. We will reign forever and ever, which is precisely what God intended for us to do from the beginning. Here in the final chapter of Scripture, we see the exact same commission humankind was given in the first chapter of Scripture.
In Genesis 1, God created the world but he didn’t finish it. He invited his image bearers to fill, subdue, and rule the world on his behalf and here in Revelation 22, God is restoring our reign and once again delegating his royal authority to you and to me. C.S. Lewis demonstrates this so beautifully in the finale of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Aslan, the lion, who we all know to be Lewis’s Christ figure, who could rule Narnia all on his own if he desires, delegates his power and authority.
Lewis writes, Aslan solemnly crowned them and led them to the 4 thrones amid deafening shouts of, Long live King Peter! Long live Queen Susan! Long live King Edmund! And long live Queen Lucy! Then turning to the 4, Aslan says, Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen.
Once again, quoting from Jordan Rayner, if I were forced to summarize the mission of humankind in a single line from a novel, that would be it. Because as we’ve seen, the story of Scripture is that we were made to be royals, but we sinned, abdicating our thrones. But praise God, Christ came to save our lives and to restore us to our original purpose. Ruling the world with him and for him, a reign that starts now and lasts forevermore. Contrary to modern popular belief, Genesis makes it clear that work in itself is not a punishment or a curse.
It’s a beautiful, intentionally designed part of God’s perfect creation that will last throughout eternity. But if work is part of God’s perfect design, and if it’s such a blessing, I imagine many of us have to be thinking, why do I hate it so much? Why does it seem like such a chore to go to work when we’d much rather be seated on some tropical shoreline with our feet in the sand, watching the waves, sipping a chilled beverage? And unfortunately, It’s because we land in Genesis chapter 3, the fall. Work itself is not a curse, but it has become cursed as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin.
Like the rest of creation, work will be redeemed and restored by God, but in the meantime, we wait and we toil and we endure and we seek out ways to better steward the gifts that God— that come from God including this gift of work. Work is a gift from God. So, if work is a gift from God, how do we steward it? Well, we make sure we focus on others. Work is a gift for others.
We saw earlier that Peter instructs us in verse 10 to use our gifts to serve one another, and the how actually comes right before that in verse 8. Peter says, above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. That’s love one another. Show hospitality to one another.
And then he mentions the part we’ve already talked about, using our gifts to serve one another, and follows it up in verse 11 with, whoever speaks as one who speaks speaks oracles of God, whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength God supplies. Here, Peter gives 2 broad categories of gifting that we have received from the Holy Spirit: speaking gifts and serving gifts. In 1 Corinthians and in Romans, Paul gives more specific examples of the types of gifts from the Holy Spirit. If we combine that with Peter’s categories here, some examples are, in speaking gifts, could be the gift of teaching, the gift of evangelism, the gift of exhortation, or even the gift of speaking in tongues. The serving gifts could be, for example, the gift of healing, of leadership, or what Paul simply calls the gift of service.
Scholars agree, none of these lists of spiritual gifts in Scripture are complete or exhaustive. And many would conclude that spiritual gifting is limitless. In fact, one scholar thinks that if Peter or Paul were writing today, they would just as easily add the gift of web development or coding. The point is, God has given every believer skills needed to do his work in accordance with his will. His good and his perfect will.
If you are speaking in line with what God would have you saying, God will have given you what to say. If you are serving in line with what God would have you doing, God will have given you the strength to do so. The key is to make sure we are not using our gifts to build up ourselves. At work, at home, in church, in the community. Remember, our gifting and our work is for the benefit of others.
Edmund Clowney, former president of Westminster Theological Seminary, warns us like this: Christians eagerly discuss spiritual gifts but in a way that would surely distress the apostle. Their concern is not how they can service others and bring glory to the Lord; rather, they seek self- self-fulfillment. They want to discover their gifts so as to establish their own identity. In a Christian context, they want to do their own thing. The fact that gifts are granted for service is lost from sight.
Be careful not to assume that anything we’re naturally good at is automatically in line with God’s will and calling. Simply put, if we use our gifting to build ourselves up, tear others down, amass power or wealth or fame only to keep it for ourselves, building our own kingdom, we are not being others-focused. We are not being faithful to the others-focused gifting that God has given to us. We are not using our spiritual gifts. We are doing as it says in the book of Judges, what is right in our own eyes.
God has not granted gifting so a person can become the CEO of a Fortune 500 only to accumulate enough wealth to be the next Scrooge McDuck. You remember Scrooge McDuck from DuckTales? Diving off the high dive into his pile of money, doing the backstroke through his coins, but too stingy to give away a single penny to those in need.
So, what does it look like to serve others with our work? We kind of flew past it in the passage a few moments ago. Verse 8 and 9 summarized like this: Love one another earnestly. Show hospitality without grumbling. Now, there tends to be a misconception here that we’re only doing kingdom work if we’re actively evangelizing.
Some might say it’s only God’s work if we’re holding Bible studies in the break room or leaving gospel tracts by the water cooler. Now there is nothing wrong with inviting coworkers to a Bible study at work and there’s certainly nothing wrong with sharing your faith and the good news of Jesus with your boss. But you don’t have to hang a banner from your cubicle saying, repent of your sins, judgment is coming, in order to be loving and offer hospitality without grumbling. I’ve told this story before and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I’ll tell it again.
I did not come to faith in Jesus until I was in my 20s. I was a lost, confused first-year teacher in a public middle school here in California. And surprisingly, my principal was a Christian. And one of the teachers I worked with and looked up to was a Christian. Neither one of these men thumped me in the head with a Bible, but as I looked around the world around me, fresh out of college, beginning my life as an adult, I thought to myself, these 2 men were who I’d like to be.
So, one day after school, I went to the teacher in his classroom and I sat on top of one of the desks as he prepped for the next day. And I asked him, I said, hey, Don, you go to church, right? Can you tell me about your church? And he invited me to join him in church that Sunday and I went and it changed my life.
If you have the opportunity to share your faith with someone at work, by all means, share away. And we can start small. How about be the person that others would like to be? How about be the person that others see and think, now that is how you love. That is how you offer hospitality.
Be the person that others will come to when they are lost, lonely, and confused. Love one another earnestly. Show hospitality without grumbling. Really, isn’t that just a picture of what it’s gonna look like in eternity? Everyone working and serving others without selfish ambition, serving others at work is just thinking about what it will look like in eternity and doing that now.
Does that sound familiar at all? Taking what’s gonna be in heaven and doing that now, something like, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Do you remember that prayer that Jesus taught us? We call it the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it already is in heaven. Serve others with that in mind. And once again, you don’t have to enter the mission field to do this today. You don’t have to sign up to go abroad to evangelize the lost because Peter is telling us we cannot compartmentalize our work and our ministry. Love one another earnestly.
Show hospitality without grumbling. Speak and serve how God has equipped us to speak and serve. And in every situation, at home and at work, may his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Work is a gift for others.
Finally, we come to our 3rd and final point today: work is a gift that glorifies God.
Since we’ve learned that work is a gift from God and is really a blessed part of God’s design, and since we know that work is for the benefit of others, we need to be careful not to fall into one of 2 traps. Both of these traps would be considered idol worship. Work is a form of worship, but remember, Scripture warns us against idol worship. Martin Luther defines an idol as looking to some created thing to give you what only God can give you. Yes, God has given us work.
Yes, God has given us our talents and our giftedness and our jobs, but he also said, you should have no other gods before me and do not Do not worship idols.
So what is the first trap of idol worship we can fall into? It’s the avoidance of work. I remember Dan sharing in a sermon in the past about the tendency, especially in Western cultures, to value and elevate leisure above work. So much so that the goal is to get out of work completely. In much of the United States, work is treated as a means to an end, the end being maximum leisure.
And we work only as much as we need to, to achieve our goal of ultimate relaxation. If I work hard and make enough money, I can spend the rest of my time at the beach or at the lake or fishing or golfing or playing video games. Now, leisure and relaxation and rest in moderation is not bad. In fact, God commands us to regularly rest and take Sabbath. Remember, since we’re using God as an example of why we should work— God works, we’re made in his image, therefore we should work— then we should remember that we also need to rest.
God rested. However, never-ending vacation is not exactly what is meant by Sabbath day’s rest. And if we’re trying to find our ultimate satisfaction in endless vacation and recreation, If we’re trying to find the satisfaction that can only be found in Jesus from infinity pools overlooking Santorini, we will end up feeling empty. No matter how beautiful that sunset is, we will always seek a better one. No matter how comforting the sand is between our toes, there will always be a need for a better beach.
Once again, rest and recreation is not bad. I love vacation. But finding our self-worth in achieving maximum chill will leave us wanting more. And if work is a gift from God that we are commissioned for, the extreme avoidance of it would not be good stewardship.
Using the gifting God has given us just to achieve our own pleasure would not be serving others and would not be glorifying to God. So now, I said there were 2 traps of idol worship. The first is work avoidance, of never-ending leisure. The other trap is just as bad, possibly even worse, and it’s the other extreme. While it’s not limited to Silicon Valley, I think it’s especially visible here.
It’s elevating work to an unhealthy place, putting work above all else, above family, above others, above faith. Making work or a career your idol. Elevating work to the point that we find our self-worth in it. The idea that the higher we climb the status ladder in the workplace, the more value we have, the more value we feel. The more money and power and influence we can accumulate, the better.
And too often, if we’re not careful, we can, and I will say, often do, Try to find the satisfaction that only God can provide in our work, in our status, in our position, in our title? Whether it’s paid work or volunteer work, are we looking to our work, our job, our career, our volunteer positions to find self-worth, to find meaning, or to find status and power? If so, that’s an idol. The reality is, just like every other gift given to us by the varied grace of God, work should be an act of worship. It should be stewarded in a way that glorifies God.
And Scripture says that creating an idol is the exact opposite of worshiping God. So, ask yourself this: Is your job a way for you to obtain status and self-worth? Or is your job a way to earn a living? To provide for yourself, your family, and to be able to be generous to those around you? Is your job a place where you will do anything to get to the top, where you can stomp on the fingers of people you pass as you climb the corporate ladder?
Or is it a place where you can demonstrate hospitality to those around you and love others so earnestly that they hope someday to be just like you? Work is not for selfish ambition or conceit. Work is a place, as it says in Philippians 2, where in humility we can count others more significant than ourselves. Love others earnestly. Show hospitality without grumbling because, as it says in verse 11 of our passage, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to To him belong the glory and dominion forever and ever.
Amen. Use your gifting to serve others because work is a gift that glorifies God. And giving glory to God is the only way to break the cycle of idol worship.
Whether that idol is endless leisure or endless work, Giving glory to God is the only way out of that cycle of idol worship. Colossians 3:17 says, and whatever you do, in word or deed, word or deed, that sounds an awful lot like speaking or serving, doesn’t it? Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Giving thanks to God. Giving glory to God.
And not because you’ll gain anything from God because of it, but because God has already done the ultimate act of work. As soon as we realize that the work Christ has done on the cross is greater than anything we could ever put on a resume, as soon as we realize that being wholly welcomed into literal paradise is greater than any vacation we will ever take on earth, Only then can we find our self-worth in Christ and truly work to serve others and glorify God. Only then can we break the cycle as it’s described in the book of Ecclesiastes. Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher, utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless. What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?
We can break free from this endless toil when we realize that Jesus went to the cross so we can receive the ultimate promotion. Jesus went to the grave so we no longer have to fear permanent layoffs. Jesus rose from the dead so we can know the work is complete and Jesus will return so we can retire in the ultimate paradise. The redeemed creation where every moment of work will be enjoyable and an act of worship to the one who sits on the throne. So, when work seems like an endless toil, remember the one who has given us the gift of work has also given us the way to feel content and satisfied with our work.
The one who ordained work has given us peace for our toil. Jesus says, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
We don’t have to work to find rest or self-worth. It’s already been accomplished. And when God, our heavenly employer, looks at us through Jesus, he said, there is my star employee. Jesus has finished the work. Now we get to work for him.
We get to work for others and for the glory of God.
Tim Keller says it like this. He is the only boss who will not drive you into the ground. The only audience that does not need your best performance in order to be satisfied with you. Why is this? Because his work for you is finished.
In fact, the very definition of a Christian is someone who not only admires Jesus, emulates Jesus, and obeys Jesus, but who rests in the finished work of Christ instead of his or her own. Remember, God was able to rest in Genesis 2 only because his creative work was finished. And a Christian is able to rest only because God’s redemptive work is likewise finished in Christ.
Would you pray with me?
Lord God, we thank you that all you have given to us and provided us with. We thank you for any gifting and talents that you have given to us out of your varied and abundant grace. God, I pray that we can all use those gifts to serve one another, that we can serve one another in our places of work, at school, in church, in the community. Wherever we are, God, I pray that we can be the type of people that love one another earnestly and show hospitality without grumbling. And God, I pray that if any of us are struggling with either of the idol worships that I mentioned today, I pray that you help us out of that.
God, if any of us are trying to find our satisfaction in ultimate relaxation, Or if any of us are trying to find our self-worth in our career path or in our jobs, God, help us to know that only in you can we find rest and the self-worth that only you can provide. God, we come to you, we lean on you, and we thank you for who you are and all that you’ve done. In Jesus’ precious and holy name I pray, amen.
