Transcription downloaded from https://sermons.watermarkchurch.hk/sermons/15741/work-as-worship/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] Good morning. Okay, not bad. Not bad. Good. Good. It's a beautiful day. If you don't know me, my name is Chris. I work on the pastoral staff here at Watermark, and it's just exciting to see what God is taking us through and leading us through as a church. And we're kind of moving. We've been looking at Titus over the last few weeks, and we're moving into looking at a series on faith and work, how our faith affects our work. And I don't know if you know the story. There's this story that goes something like this. There's a man who's walking along, and he comes across a guy building a brick wall. And he says to the kind of brick layer, what are you doing? And the guy says to him, I'm laying bricks. Moves a bit further along, and he sees another guy who's building a wall there, and he asks the second brick layer. He says to him, what are you doing? The guy says to him, I'm building a church building.

[1:04] He thinks, okay, fine. Walks along a little bit further, sees another guy there doing the same thing, laying bricks, making a wall. And he says to him, what are you doing? And the guy says, I'm building the house of God to the glory of God. Three people doing exactly the same thing. The first sees his work as a job. The second sees his work as a career, a stepping stone, maybe to get on, to achieve something, to get somewhere. The third sees his work as a calling with a higher, bigger purpose than himself. I wonder as you think about your work and whatever's been going on in your work, the frustrations, the goodness, the things you enjoy, the things you hate, I wonder which of those brick layers you are like. Are you like number one? It's just a job. Number two, it's his career. It's a stepping stone. Or number three, it's a calling to something bigger and greater. Because we're talking about work.

[2:17] And I'm going to define work as anything you do which isn't leisure. So that means if you are changing nappies, that's work, okay? If you're a student and studying, that's also work, okay? Anything we do which is not leisure is work. And think about it. The majority of our lives are spent working, right? Majority of our lives are spent working. In Hong Kong, it's like 95% of our life. In France, it's about 65% of your life. But it's still the same.

[2:46] We spend most of our life working. But I wonder when you're doing the Excel spreadsheets, when you have demanding clients, when you have changing of nappies, when you're revising for exams, I wonder, does God have anything to do with that in your life? Where does God come in in those things? Because what we tend to do in our lives is we divide work into meaningful and non-meaningful work.

[3:11] When I, some people ask me, what do you do, Chris? And I say, I work in the church. And I get two reactions. One is like, they look as if I'm an axe murderer and kind of go off and talk to somebody else.

[3:21] The other response I get is people say, how meaningful. That's very meaningful. But the interesting thing is I have never heard anybody when asked the same question and they reply, I'm a lawyer. I'm a banker. I work in IT. Someone say, that's so meaningful.

[3:43] Because why? Because what we do, we separate out in our lives meaningful work from non-meaningful work. And you know, the meaningful work is kind of helping people. It's nurses, it's doctors, it's social workers, it's pastors. The non-meaningful work is the stuff where you actually earn money and you get status and things, but it's not meaningful. Why do we think like that? Because I was talking to a guy, a guy from a large charity in Hong Kong, and he said there was a lot of top, high earning, high status CEOs from some of the biggest companies go to this charity to volunteer.

[4:25] And I asked him, like, why do they go? And he said, well, you see, most of these guys for the first 10, 20 years of their career, they are just, they're just working to reach these top positions.

[4:36] Okay? But when they get there, they realize there's nothing there. It's empty. You see, they've got all the money they want, they've got all the status they want, they've got the power that they want, but there's no sense of meaning or purpose in their lives. And he said to me, he said, the reason they come to do charity work is to find some meaning and purpose.

[4:58] Fascinating. It's what Madonna said. She said, she said, when I got to the top, I realized there was nothing there. And the question is, society tells us that work is a means to an end. Okay? What I mean by that is, you work to get something out of your work. Maybe it's to get fulfillment. Maybe if you're in business or finance, it's for the bottom line, right? Maximizing shareholders' profits. If it's, you're working for your bonus, you're working for your CV. You're working to provide for your family. You're working, maybe you hate your work, but you're just enduring it to get through the weekend to pay for your holidays. We're using work to get something. It's a means to an end. I ask, I speak to so many guys who say to me, once I retire, then I'll do something meaningful with my life. Just think about that. That means most of your life is wasted in meaninglessness, if you think like that. And the Bible has got to say something different to us. And there's another thing which I noticed is also, Christians, like, does it make any difference for Christians how we view our work? There's a guy called Jeff Van

[6:14] Duza. He heads up a business school. And he asked some Christian business leaders, okay, how does your Christian faith actually affect the way that you work? And do you know what they replied? They said, well, Jeff, business is business, but I try to be honest and kind.

[6:33] In other words, we all do business the same way, but we just try and be a little bit nicer. And Jeff says, he calls this Enron with a smile, because really, is that all that Christianity has to say to us? You know, other people say that work is just about sharing the gospel. You know, you're there just to share the gospel, or to get some money so you can bless the church. And those are good, great, God-honoring things. But the difficulty is this. Are we not just simply still using work to get something out of it, rather than seeing that if Jesus Christ is truly Lord of every area of our lives, isn't he not just, he's Lord not just of the results of the work, however good those are. He's also Lord of the work in and of itself.

[7:25] The gospel has got to say something to us. There's a writer called Dorothy Sayers. She says this, In nothing has the church so lost her hold on reality as her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments.

[7:46] And it's astonished to find that as a result, the secular world of work is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and that the greater part of the world's intelligent workers have become irreligious or at least uninterested in religion. She goes on, But is it astonishing? How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life?

[8:13] How can anyone be concerned about a religion which seems to have nothing to say about nine-tenths of our life? And as a church at Watermark, we want to talk about those nine-tenths of our life.

[8:25] Because if the gospel does not significantly shape the way you view your work and the way that you work, then basically God is shut out from most of your life, right? So that's what we're going to look at. We're going to look at over the next few weeks, what does the Bible really have to say about the way we view and treat our work? And we're going to look really, and today I'm just going to kind of set some of the scene that the Bible kind of talks in a, and no matter how mundane you feel your work is or meaningless, the Bible sets up this four-act play of creation for redemption and restoration, new creation. And this is what we're going to just kind of, I'm going to introduce today. And my hope is in community groups, we're going to have some forum where you're going to be able to discuss some of the things, because I'm sure this will raise many questions. I won't be able to answer all of them, but I want this to be a discussion, because we want God to be involved in every area of our lives.

[9:29] So let's start off looking at creation, okay? So if you've got your bulletin, we'll kind of, we'll skim through some of the passages and just pull out some themes. And here's a couple of themes I want to pull out from the creation part. All work is a reflection of God's work. That will be the first thing, and all work is worship, okay? So in creation, all work is a reflection of God's work.

[9:53] All work is worship, okay? So passage, Genesis 1, very familiar to many of us, okay? What we often forget is Genesis 1 and 2 are written in a culture which is surrounded by a lot of competing ideas things about who we are and why we work. And most of, and pretty much all the other ideas around said, work is bad, okay? There's a story called the Enuma Elish. It was actually, it came to Hong Kong two years. It's kept in the British Museum. They brought it over to Hong Kong two years ago. It's this Babylonian creation myth, which is fascinating. Basically, it says, gods kind of made humans as slaves so they didn't have to do any work. So they could kind of sit and drink tequila or whatever God drinks. So the work was basically, gods didn't do work. That's for slaves. That's for low-class people. That's what everybody thought in the ancient world. Genesis 1 and 2 come in and say something completely different.

[10:55] They say, God is a working God. God is a working God. In verse 1 of chapter 1, he creates the heavens and the earth out of nothing. Like this artist with a blank canvas, he begins to paint the first strokes of life. But this first kind of draft of creation is formless.

[11:18] It's chaotic. So what does God do? Like a kind of a manual laborer or like an architect, he begins to take the chaos and he begins to bring order and beauty and life out of it.

[11:31] You see, he starts sculpting the world. He says, let there be light. And there's light. Day and night. Sun, moon and stars. Land, plants, animals. And after every brush stroke, he says, that's good.

[11:48] Zebra, that's good. Lantau Island, that's good. Brussels sprouts, that's good. And then he, you see, God is delighting in his work. And he looks at his canvas and says, now I've saved the best till last. And he makes, in verse 26, he makes human beings in his image.

[12:13] And he doesn't wear gloves to do it. So his fingerprints are all over human beings. They are stamped, not with made in Hong Kong, but made in God's image. Every single one of us here, stamped with his fingerprints, made in his image. And there's lots of debate about what this word actually means, made in God's image. But there's a couple of things that it definitely means here that's clear. There's nothing else that is created in God's image, in the whole of creation.

[12:49] That means every single one of us has unique value and identity before we do anything. Before you lift a finger of work, there's no kind of organizational chart of like worth of performance, you know, that God kind of sets up. No, he says, before you do anything, before they start even their leaf-sewing business, they have value and identity in relationship with God. So whether you are a CEO or whether you're a toilet cleaner, you have the same dignity and value in God's eyes.

[13:25] That's the first thing. But it also means this. Being an image bearer also means this. We get to reflect what God does. You know, God has just done the most amazing gardening, okay?

[13:39] He's taken what was empty. He's filled it. He's made it abundant. It's perfect, but it's not complete. Verse 26, he says, Be fruitful and multiply. This is what we've got to do. Fill the earth, just like God filled the earth.

[13:53] Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over all the created things. So what's God doing? He's saying, just as I worked, I'm now inviting you to partner with me in the work, okay?

[14:07] And I want you to make something beautiful. I'm laying out the resources for you. I want you to make something beautiful out of this. This is what's sometimes called the cultural mandate. Filling the earth means developing culture.

[14:21] You know, you multiply as a family, and to have families, you then develop into towns and into cities. And then you need infrastructure and IT systems, and you need trading and food transportation. And this is how you fill.

[14:34] And the word subduing, it doesn't mean exploitation, because this is before the fall. It means you need to put in effort. Work is required to bring forth the full potential of what I've put here.

[14:50] You know, before the fall, get this, because I think we often don't get this. Before the fall, you know, Adam and Eve aren't sitting on a beach on the Maldives, like kind of just drinking coconut juice.

[15:02] They are called to work, and it's good. It's good. You may be thinking, yeah, right. But that's what the design is. We, in our work, are reflecting the work that God has already done.

[15:17] I think of it a bit like, have you seen MasterChef? Has anyone seen MasterChef? If you know, it's one of those cooking, it's like the X factor of cooking, okay? It's kind of competition. And, you know, there's a couple of top chefs.

[15:33] There are Gordon Ramsay and a couple of other chefs. What they do, they provide a whole load of ingredients for these contestants to come out. And he lays out the ingredients, and he says, you've got an hour and a half to create something amazing out of this.

[15:47] And these kind of budding chefs who are competing, they're not there saying, oh, man, do I have to do this? They're not there thinking, oh, I'd much rather watch TV. They're like, come on, let me at it.

[16:00] Okay, like, I watched one the other day, and they said, like I said, this is the moment I was made for. Now, when you go to work on Monday morning, I don't know if you think like that.

[16:14] Because there's something, there's a little gap there. But that's what God says. That's what work was made for. When you work, you're meant to have this sense of purpose. You're meant to have this sense of, you know, you want to show the judges what an amazing creation you can make.

[16:29] And that's what God's saying. That's what I want your work to be like. Now, if you think about how you develop culture, the most basic thing in culture, to develop anything, you need to have food, right?

[16:47] You can't do much work without food. And, you know, hunter-gatherers don't develop lots of cultural products. Farming is what you need to bring stability. It's fascinating. Genesis 2.

[16:59] The passage gives a really interesting reason. It says, there are no plants, no bushes of the field, no plants of the field. That means crops. Okay? There's a couple of reasons.

[17:11] One, there are no plants, there's no crops, because God hasn't set up the water cycle yet. So he fixes that one. The second thing he does, he says, there's no man to work the ground.

[17:22] The reason the crops aren't growing, the reason culture can't happen, food isn't being produced because there aren't humans to grow it. So he makes humans to do the thing, to create what he's called him to create.

[17:35] Now just think about that for a minute. Psalm 145. It's a fascinating chapter. It says this, the eyes of all look to God, and he gives them their food in due season.

[17:48] How does God provide food for us in loving and caring for us? You know, God could have created these kind of little flaky wafers, which kind of drop down from heaven, and then we just kind of pick them up and ate them.

[18:03] He could have done that. He does that at one stage in life. It's called manna. He does that in the wilderness. But that's not the design. He provides seeds, and then we pull them together.

[18:16] That's capital. And then we grow wheat. That's agriculture. Then someone invents an oven to bake it. That's technology. And someone bakes the bread. That's skilled labor. And then the bread is transported to the store.

[18:28] That's logistics. And then it's sold to a hungry world. That's sales. So the way that God provides for communities is through work.

[18:41] That's how we experience some of God's loving provision for us. So God is like this gardener who has sown the resources, sown the seeds, the ingredients, and he asks us to be gardeners of his creation.

[18:58] To work the garden and to keep it. That's verse 15. So I don't know what your job is. I don't know what the seeds, the ingredients that God has given you to play with.

[19:11] You know, if you're an accountant, you know, your seeds are maybe figures. So out of all the chaos of those figures, he wants you to bring order into a balance sheet. I don't know if you're an investment banking.

[19:22] You take the seed of capital. And then you sow it into other industries to grow and develop even more capital so that can develop on. Studying, you take the seed of information.

[19:33] And then you bring it together to make essays or projects or designs. Every work in some way images what God was doing in the garden.

[19:46] You know, and it's every one of us. You know, like Martin Luther said, basically, even the milkmaid is the fingers of God.

[19:58] The fingers of God bringing to us what he wants us to help flourish things. When I was in France, even the most mundane job can do this.

[20:08] I was in France. You know, I lived in France for a year. In France, the national sport is going on strike. And they're the world champions at it, I can tell you.

[20:19] And I was there in the summer. And do you know who decided to go on strike? It was the rubbish collectors. Do you know, I have never realized how significant rubbish collectors are until you do without them.

[20:35] The most mundane, menial job you tried doing without it, the smell was horrific. The rats were everywhere. Society doesn't flourish. Every job is part of God wanting to flourish a community reflecting him.

[20:54] So that's the first thing. And I was spending longer on this because I want you to kind of get the big picture. Okay? We're going to move on to talk about other stuff and the frustrations later. But get that.

[21:06] All work in some way reflects God's work. But in that creation part, all work is also worship. In verse 15, the word work, it says, work, he put us there, he put us in the garden to work and keep it.

[21:22] Now that word work is a fascinating word. It's the word in Hebrew, avodah, not avatar, avodah. Okay? Okay? And that's translated in three ways throughout the Bible.

[21:33] It's translated as work, to work, to serve, or to worship. And in Exodus, God says, let my people go so they may avodah me.

[21:45] That means worship me. In the Ten Commandments, he says, six days you shall avodah, work, and then you shall rest. Joshua says, but as for me and my house, we will avodah, we will serve the Lord.

[22:00] You see, what the Bible is trying to tell us is, your work is always worship. It's always lived to serve somebody or something. And the question about our work is, who are you worshipping with your work?

[22:15] Because it always is worship. Who are you working for? That's the question. How do you know? Well, you see, in the garden, all the work was meant to be done in God's presence.

[22:29] It was meant to be done for an audience of one. You know, as in the MasterChef kitchen, we were meant to proudly present what we've done to God's eyes only.

[22:47] You see, there's a theater company that went around New York a couple of years ago. And they went around with this kind of box, which was about three meters out on the street. Three meters by three meters out on the streets.

[22:59] And they performed their plays inside this black box. But, you know, they only allowed one person to come in and see the play at a time. It was a personalized performance every time before this one audience member.

[23:17] The Bible is telling us, Colossians 3 tells us, it says, whatever you do, whatever you do, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men.

[23:35] There's an audience of one that you are working for, and that is God. You see, when you're writing emails, when you're drafting documents, when you're preparing lessons, when you're cooking food, are you doing it saying, God, I want this to honor you, to glorify you?

[23:55] Now, that doesn't mean like every minute of the day you're kind of singing worship songs, you know, you're in a meeting. It doesn't mean that. What it means is that in the big picture, you're offering your day to God.

[24:05] God, you're bringing him into the work and saying, God, I want this to be for you. I want this to be for you. If you see on your seats or in the bulletin, you see there's a card here. On the back is a prayer.

[24:19] I would encourage you to use this. Take this to your work. Use this as just a reminder to pray, God, I want you to be the one that I'm worshiping with my work. I want you to be the one I'm worshiping with my work.

[24:32] Because in the busyness, if you're like me, I just forget. I just forget. And every work, every work that you do is worship.

[24:46] So what does that mean in practice? In practice, that means a couple of things. One is when you go to work, we work and do our work to the best of our ability.

[24:59] We do it as well as we can. Okay? It doesn't matter how mundane the task is. I want to work well, excellently. You know, there's this story.

[25:11] There's some prisoners in a concentration camp. And they were forced to build a wall just to keep them busy. It was meaningless. Meaningless work.

[25:21] At the end of the day, a bell rang by the guards calling them all to come back in. If they came in late, you know, they were on pain of death. But as the bell rang once, one man didn't come back straight away.

[25:34] Everyone looked around and they saw this man who'd been building the wall. And he was just going around the wall just checking that it was all in alignment. That it was all correctly done.

[25:46] And then like two minutes later, he kind of snuck in back. You see, that's a man. He wanted to do his work well. No matter how mundane.

[25:57] Because he knew that that work, you know, God doesn't do sloppy work. Right? He was doing that work because I'm going to honor you, God, with the way that I do my work.

[26:10] No matter whether it seems meaningless or not. It's not perfectionism. But we do it to the best of our ability. Secondly, it also means this.

[26:23] There is no kind of divide between sacred jobs, kind of holy jobs, like spiritual jobs, like working in a church. And secular jobs, like banking or IT or whatever you do.

[26:35] There is no division. You know, some Christians that I meet, and this is so common, think that somehow the most godly jobs are if you work in a church. Or if you do something Christian.

[26:45] You know, I even saw an advert for a Christian media company which said, Join our staff. Now you no longer need to separate your work and your faith. And I thought, that's nonsense.

[27:01] That is complete unbiblical nonsense. Every one of us, if you are a Christian, you are ordained, anointed by God to go out into whatever workplace he has brought you in.

[27:13] Unless you're robbing banks or like pole dancing. Okay, you need to, we need to talk about that. But I assume you're not. Okay? Okay? So, every one of us, listen, we are all called to go out as part of this garden into the role that God has given us in society.

[27:30] So, who in this room is in the best position to be able to reach out to guys in business? Those of you who are in business. Who of you are the best people to be able to reach out to other homemakers?

[27:45] Other homemakers. Who are the best people to reach out to the students or the bankers or the artists or the IT guys? Those of you who are in those professions. I can't do that so easily working in a church.

[27:56] Don't you see, every one of us has a valuable part to play in God's big design. And if we start doing this sacred, secular thing, we've missed the whole vision for work.

[28:07] But I think most of you probably realize that, actually. Work, even though that Genesis account is just a beautiful picture.

[28:21] We know there's something that's kind of, when you go to work on a Monday morning, there's something missing. There's something different. Because it's sometimes frustrating, painful.

[28:32] People are annoying. It's stressful. Orders get canceled. People don't pay on time. Deadlines. The Bible story continues with fall.

[28:46] And the fall says that Adam and Eve in the garden, they didn't live for that audience of one. They chose to change the person they were working for.

[29:00] They started working for themselves. Do you know, what's the first thing that Adam and Eve do after they sin and eat the fruit? Do you know what the first thing is they do?

[29:11] They work. They sew fig leaves together. They do their sewing business. That's the first thing they do. But work has now become about themselves. You see, they're covering up their own inadequacies, trying to give themselves dignity.

[29:26] They're naked. They're ashamed. And so they're working to cover themselves. Go to that MasterChef kitchen again. You see, it's really, really fascinating.

[29:36] Here's what some of the contestants often say. They say this. I've got one and a half hours to prove myself to the judges. I'm going to prove that I belong in that kitchen and I deserve the title of MasterChef.

[29:52] That's what they say. And you see, as the clock is ticking around and the stress levels are rising and Gordon Ramsey, if you know him, he comes around, one of the judges, and he starts making nasty comments about their work.

[30:04] And something goes wrong and the panicking comes over and then they start getting defensive or they start feeling crushed. Oh, maybe it's so terrible. And then if they've done a good job in their time, do you know what happens?

[30:17] They start kind of thinking, yeah, I think I deserve this one. You know, I'm better than those guys down there. You know, I definitely deserve this one.

[30:29] And the work has gone from being for the pleasure of the one, for the pleasure of the work, for doing it to create something beautiful. It's now become all about themselves. It's a competition.

[30:39] It's all about justifying yourself and your identity. And isn't that just so much of what our work is like? As work-based stress is all about that because it's not just about the work that's frustrating.

[30:55] We've made the work all about ourselves and all about trying to get our own way, to prove ourselves, to get our plans through, to get our way in the office politics.

[31:06] You know, if you're a workaholic, a workaholic is someone who's made work all about themselves because they've misplaced their worship and they're worshiping their work to prove themselves.

[31:21] How do you know? Because in the garden, what does God do? God actually rests on the seventh day. Work isn't everything, right? And if you can't rest, you're not working for God in that situation.

[31:34] You're working for yourself. Just look at your work patterns and say, who am I really doing this for? Who am I doing this for? Is it for myself?

[31:45] And you know, there's multiple reasons why we do things. Multiple reasons. But if you go down a root level, can you say, I'm doing this for the glory of God? Because if you can't, you know, you're going to be so frustrated and annoyed and stressed in your life.

[32:04] Because the Bible says, when you work for anything other than God, you're always going to be enslaved to your judges. You know, your judges could be your boss, could be your shareholders, could be your clients, can even be yourself.

[32:20] Because you've always, you're this slave who's always got to live up to the expectations. And either, if you do it, you think you're meeting them, it's going to go to your head and you become proud about yourself.

[32:33] Or it will go to your heart and you'll feel crushed and despairing. Because we weren't made to work for work to be about ourselves.

[32:44] We were made for the audience of one, which is God. Final two things. We've seen creation. We've looked at work was made to reflect God.

[32:59] God's work. Work is worship. We've seen the fall when we make work all about ourselves. The third thing is redemption. Because you see, the Bible story kind of continues and says, when you worship for an audience of one, you have a completely different judge from a Gordon Ramsay or somebody else like that.

[33:18] We've got one who's been in the kitchen, who's experienced the pain and frustration of work. In fact, his work was the most agonizing work of all. You see, Jesus, when Jesus came, he worked not for himself, but for the glory of God.

[33:40] And in a dog-eat-dog world where everyone's working for themselves, you know, humans, we use the ingredients God had given us, metal and wood, to fashion a nail, nails and a cross, to hammer him onto it.

[33:55] That's how we used what God had given us. But unlike other judges, Jesus said, I didn't come to condemn the world.

[34:07] You know, other judges, you look over your shoulder, criticizing your mistakes all the time. He says, I didn't come to judge you. I came to save you. The ultimate judge took the judgment.

[34:18] He worked so we can find rest in him from all the striving where we have to continually try and prove ourselves. Think of that MasterChef kitchen again.

[34:32] Just imagine if you really get hold of what the cross has done. What it means is this. Your judge, the one who's going to make the decisions, is already delights in you.

[34:48] He's on your side. Can you imagine how different that means? When you go into your workplace, you've got absolutely nothing to lose, nothing to prove. You go into that kitchen, you're going to work hard.

[35:01] You're going to work to your best. But you have a judge who you know says, that's good to you. That's good to you.

[35:13] Do you see how much stress that takes off you? Because most of our work is not the work. Stress is not the work. It's the work under the work. That we've got to keep trying to prove ourselves.

[35:25] But if you get what Jesus has done, you get that he worked for you so you can rest. From all that, trying to prove yourself. That means we're free to actually create something beautiful with our lives, with our work.

[35:40] Work doesn't have to crush us any longer in those things. Redemption. Final thing. The work is meant to be something good.

[35:55] It's twisted and it's frustrating. We have a God who begins to change and fix our brokenness so we can focus on him and find our identity in him. The final thing is that passage in Revelation 21 and 22.

[36:11] Just have a look in the bulletin for me. This is the new creation that he says. Do you notice? In Eden, where were we? Eden was a garden.

[36:26] Move forward to the end of the story. Look at where you are now. There's a garden. There's fruit. There's trees. There's a river. But it's a city.

[36:37] Did you notice that? It's a garden city. You see, there's been development. It's been developed and thriving into a new city. It's teeming with cultural products. It's filled with work, the glory and the honor of the nations.

[36:52] You know? The iPhone is there. Mozart's symphonies are there. All of One Direction's hits are there. No. No, they're not. They're in hell. But there's all this work comes through.

[37:10] And it says, we, verse 5, we will reign forever. Do you remember in the garden what we were meant to do? Have dominion? But we were meant to have dominion with Him as our center.

[37:26] You see, in the new creation, we'll be working. Don't think you're going to be drinking tequila on the Maldives. You're going to be working, but it's going to be satisfying. It's going to be delightful.

[37:38] And the frustration that we experience now, the crushing nature of work, there's rest. There's rest in the work. What's different?

[37:49] Here's the final thing for us to take away. What's different? It says, the Lord God Almighty and its Lamb are its light. Jesus is right at the center of everything.

[38:02] And that's when work functions. In your life, if you put Christ at the center of everything, He begins to rewire the way you view work.

[38:15] MIT has put in huge amounts of money into research, into work. Do you know, here's what they came up with for what makes work meaningful.

[38:26] Here's the final thing. They said, work, meaningful work is when an individual perceives an authentic connection between work and a broader transcendent life purpose beyond the self.

[38:39] They could have saved a lot of money by reading the Bible. Because if MIT is saying what the Bible has always said, if you want to have meaningful work, realize that you're going to do it for an audience of one.

[38:56] One who has died and has taken the work under the work for you. So fill your day with bringing Him into your work. Because that's going to be the secret of meaningful work.

[39:11] Let's pray. Father, I just thank you that the way that you've set up work is so that we do it for your glory.

[39:29] And that even the work itself is something we can use to love and bless other people. I know many of us struggle with that. We struggle to see where the connections are. Help us to see first of all today that our work, we can offer our work for your glory, for your eyes alone.

[39:49] And that is where our value, that is where our worth, that is where the center of everything comes. Please would we go out this week to love you and to know you and to worship you in our work.

[40:02]  Amen.