1.  There are few topics that occupy our mind as much as work.  It’s where many of us spend most of our lives.  Some of us spend more of our lives working than we should.  Some of us have found work that doesn’t seem like work at all.  My Dad had a phrase that described it for him.  “Work is the glue that holds life together” and that seems to be true.  What would life be without work?

There are literally tens of thousands of job titles in this country.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics has divided work into 840 different job categories and within each category there are hundreds of different jobs.  We all know that the nature of work has changed dramatically over the last century. For instance, 100 years ago over 60% of jobs in America were agricultural or manufacturing. Today, only 1% of the jobs are agricultural and 12% of the jobs are manufacturing.  Today, over a third of the jobs are in what we call knowledge work or what Richard Florida terms “the creative class.”  Most of us in this room grew up with the background of physical labor being work.  All my summer jobs were that kind – even the worst one – inspecting tin can lids coming off a metal press in a factory.  That’s over…with a few exceptions.

In fact, many of the jobs that exist today did not exist even ten years ago.  For example, here are ten jobs that did not exist ten years ago:
Social Media Manager
Elder Care Services Coordinator
Patient Advocates
Green funeral directors
Senior Move Management
Search Engine Optimization Specialist
Medical Biller/Coder
Online Advertising Manager
Video journalist
User Experience Manager

The fastest growing jobs in the country today are in the service industry.  Here is a recent list of the ten best jobs in the next ten years:
Actuary
Biomedical Engineer
Software Engineer
Audiologist
Financial Planner
Dental Hygienist
Occupational Therapist
Optometrist
Physical Therapist
Computer Systems Analyst

Of course, there are also the ten worst jobs today:
Newspaper reporter
Lumberjack
Enlisted military
Actor
Oil rig worker
Dairy farmer
Meter reader
Mail carrier
Roofer
Flight attendant

2.  All this to say, we don’t need to be Pollyanna about work when we look at it in Scripture. Work was hard.  It was, for the most part, physical and exhausting.  It was not necessarily creative – with a few exceptions.  It was traditional and passed down for generations with little variety.  It was, in other words, very different from our idea of work today.  We look for our identity and even our happiness in our work.  Our children and grandchildren are even more like that.

A study of how Millennials view work shows that:
They do not want work to become the central driver of their lives.
They want flexibility.
They prefer working in teams.
They want a creative work culture.
They want a variety of work experiences that include travel overseas.
They are not as motivated by pay and benefits but by the total work experience.

A tombstone in England reads:  “Here lies Timothy Perkins, born a man, died a grocer.”  They do not want to trade their life for their work.

That would have been seen as more than a luxury over the thousands of years represented by the Bible.  They could not have even imagined the opportunities we have to create jobs and new kinds of work today.

There was very little struggle with the meaning or purpose of work like there is today.  It probably started with the Boomers – us – as books like “Your Work Matters To God”, “God Is My CEO”, “Joy At Work” and “Mastering Monday” and dozens of other titles that were written to help people find meaning and purpose in their secular work.  Everyone knew that full-time Christian work was good and full-time secular work was often seen as a way to support those who were doing it – like the old Levites.  The message too often had been work was either a means to financially support Christian work or to be a platform for evangelism and ministry.  It was something of a step-child of the kind of work God blesses – full-time vocational ministry.  In fact, that is not the way Scripture looks at work.  It does not idealize either of them.  They are all work in God’s eyes.

3.  You can trace the “history of work” through Scripture.

Creation: We were created to be the managers and stewards of the world.  We talked about that last week.  We were designed – physically and mentally – to work.  We have hands instead of hooves.

The Fall: Work became a struggle and even a source of conflict with some work seeming to be more pleasing to God than others.  Work becomes a source of envy. Abel kept flocks and Cain was a farmer.

Egypt: Work becomes slavery.  It becomes monument building for other people at the expense of your own life. Work literally kills you.

Canaan: Work becomes temptation for self-glorification.  “Be careful that you do not say the work of my hands produced this wealth.”  Wealth and accumulation becomes the goal of work.

Ecclesiastes 4:8: The disillusionment of work and the futility of spending your life building wealth and position.  “There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother.  There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth.  “For whom am I toiling,” he asked, “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?”  This too is meaningless – a miserable business.”

The Exile: The transformation of work from manual labor to knowledge workers, traders, artisans, physicians, academics, lawyers and professionals.  Babylonia created a whole new class of workers for the Jews that has become their specialty wherever they go.  There was no longer a Temple to limit the professional class to those who did Temple service – the Levites.  New work for new generations.

The New Testament: Work is redeemed and given a new place in our lives.  It is neither the central way of defining our lives or unimportant.  It has purpose no matter what our work is.

4.  Let’s look at a number of passages in the New Testament and get a picture of the role and purpose of work in our lives.

1 Timothy 5:8: “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

1 Thessalonians 4:11-12: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”

Let me go down a side road here for a moment to give you an illustration of the value of work to create respect.  You may have seen the story about the 23 year old computer software designer who walked past a homeless person, Leo Grand, in New York for months.

“Leo Grand, by his own admission, didn’t know the first thing about computer programming four months ago. The 37-year-old man was living on the streets of New York City in late August, when a complete stranger approached, offering a choice between two months of coding lessons and $100 in cash.

Grand opted for the lessons, and 3,621 lines of code later, he has released his first mobile app. The app — an environmentally conscious carpool organizer called “Trees for Cars” — went live on the App Store just after 12:00 a.m. ET Tuesday, around the same time it went live for Android users.

We caught up with Grand and his teacher, 23-year-old programmer Patrick McConlogue, on the night Trees for Cars launched, and waited with the duo until after midnight in an otherwise empty New York City office.

“This is going to change my life in a magnificent way,” Grand told Mashable shortly after the launch. For his part, McConlogue didn’t seem to mind that his initial offer of lessons for one hour a day for two months had stretched to three-and-a-half month journey with a marathon finish. “It is by far the most rewarding experience of my life,” McConlogue said. The two began their lessons on Aug. 26. McConlogue provided Grand with a used Chromebook laptop and a few text books. The first two months consisted of outdoor lessons conducted on the city benches near Chelsea Piers, where Grand slept. After the hour-long lessons, McConlogue would head off to work, while Grand continued to review and practice what he learned until his computer’s battery died. Aided by one of his many friends in the area, Grand recharged the battery overnight at a nearby warehouse. At the end of the two months, however, Grand and McConlogue realized it was going to take much more work to achieve their goal of launching a mobile app. With the weather turning colder at the end of October, Grand and McConlogue received an unexpected bit of good fortune. Buoyed by an offer from McConlogue’s boss, Princeton Review founder John Katzman, the duo moved their lessons into the New York City office of Katzman’s new educational search engine company Noodle. Katzman allowed McConlogue to work with Grand on the app full time for the past five weeks. “My boss deserves a…,” McConlogue said, trailing off before finishing the thought: “I owe him big.”
Though the project has earned them tens of thousands of supporters, Grand and McConlogue watched the app go live in the office where they had spent so much time working together. Instead of clinking champagne glasses and lighting celebratory cigars, they exchanged high fives and relieved looks, surrounded by the energy drinks and empty pizza boxes that fueled them to the finish.
Grand said he has already begun to research for the next iteration of his app, “Trees for Cars II.” He also said he hopes to soon land a job as a computer programmer, though he has yet to submit any applications. “My first application will be at Google,” Grand said. “It’s right up the block.” Meanwhile, McConlogue is working to scale his mentorship program. He said more than 150 programmers around the world have signed up to spend an hour each day for two months teaching others how to code, though he hasn’t yet figured out how to organize the effort.

Maimonides, the 12th century Jewish philosopher, created what is now called the Eight Step Ladder of charity.  You’ve probably heard of it.  Each rung up represents a higher degree of virtue:

1. The lowest: Giving begrudgingly and making the recipient feel disgraced or embarrassed.
2. Giving cheerfully but giving too little.
3. Giving cheerfully and adequately but only after being asked.
4. Giving before being asked.
5. Giving when you do not know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient knows your identity.
6. Giving when you know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient does not know your identity.
7. Giving when neither the donor nor the recipient is aware of the other’s identity.
8. The Highest: Giving money, a loan, your time or whatever else it takes to enable an individual to be self-reliant.

2 Thessalonians 3:6-10: “In the name of The Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.  For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example.  We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it.  On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you.  We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow.  For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”

Ephesians 4:28: “He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.”

2 Corinthians 9:11: “You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.”

Titus 3:14: “Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order that they may provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive lives.”

Work in the Bible does not give meaning to our lives – only God can do that.  Work is not intended to take over our lives but it has a very important place in our lives.  You probably noticed the repetition of a particular phrase in many of these verses – “so that”.  In other words, work is not an end in itself, is it?

“So that” leads us to the role of work in our lives:
So that we will not be a burden to others.
So that we may win respect.
So that we can live a productive life.
So that we can provide for our families.
So that we can share with those in need.
So that our generosity and lives will result in thanksgiving to God.

I love the passages in Ecclesiastes 3:9-22 and 5:19: “What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men.  He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning to end.  I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.  That every man may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is a gift of God.  I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing will be taken from it…So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work because that is his lot.”

“Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work – this is a gift of God.”

Finally, the passage from Psalm 90:17: “May the favor of The Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us – yes, establish the work of our hands.”

That would be my prayer for all of us this morning – that God would give us a true picture of the work of our hands.  Not to create envy and strife.  Not to be the center of our lives.  Not to be simply a money pump for other things but to be something that will endure, benefit the lives of others and cause thanksgiving to God.