This week, we’re continuing our sermon series on Identity. As we continue, our goal is to rely on scripture and the Spirit to lead us into a new identity and find our story within God’s story. Each sermon will include some verses from the first chapters of Genesis, where God’s people first understand their identity, then also include verses from the New Testament, where we begin to see more fully. 1. Disconnected Work and Worship Each week, we come to this room and go out again to our various jobs and callings. And we are a diverse congregation with lots of different kinds of work! Some of us make a lot of money; others hardly enough. Some of us work for family or for God in ways that don’t earn money. Some of us have the job of our dreams; still others are unemployed or underemployed—and we long for something more. Some experience great job satisfaction, others of us struggle emotionally to do our work! Some of us are retired, while others of us are in school—maybe we don’t even think our work as work. Sunday worship can feel disconnected from life throughout the week. We might come to worship as a way of trying to run away from our work. If worship is where we come to avoid the rest of the week, then our worship of God and our work will always be disconnected. By contrast, some of us come to worship only once in a while, because the work or priorities we have leave us so busy and so tired that we struggle to find energy to come to church on a regular basis. These ways of being are not God’s design for us from the beginning. We can know this because they do not lead to the flourishing that God designed us for. We read in Genesis 1 and 2: 28 God blessed [humanity] and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” … 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” One of the things that we see in Genesis is this word “work”. Whether we are running from a bad experience at work, or so tired because we are putting all of our energy into our work, we sometimes mistakenly think that work is not the way it’s supposed to be. We imagine that vacation or retirement is the way it’s “supposed” to be—just flitting around with no requirements on our time and no cares weighing us down. Now, if you’re retired, you know that’s not how it goes anyway; but we can also look here in Genesis 1 and 2 and see that work was a part of God’s good plan for humanity from the beginning! We miss this because we sometimes misunderstand the Bible’s picture of heaven and eternity with God as a future where we will be in an eternal church service, just singing for all time! (My wife is a good musician—she might be interested in that!—but I’m not). Or, maybe we think that heaven will be some kind of disembodied place where we kind of float around without much to do. In other words, our picture of the past and present often sees work as a “necessary evil” because we imagine, in the future, that work will no longer exist! In fact, the opposite is true. 1 Corinthians 15 is the longest passage in the Bible about resurrection and life in the world to come. For 58 verses, Paul goes on about deep theological truths, building to a climax of particularly how the resurrection life and life to come should shape our lives today! He ends this expansive chapter with these words practical application: 58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Now when we read, “give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord,” we assume that Paul means here missions or evangelism or something like that. But there’s no reason to think that. The word “work” here is a general term—just how we use it today. Scripture shows us that not only were we made for work as a part of humanity’s original identity; but also that our future is a future of good work! There are three points I want to make about work today. And here I’m borrowing extensively from John Mark Comer’s book Garden—City. 2. Good work is worthwhile, even if it’s just for now. Whatever you do, whether it’s restocking shelves at a grocery store, or caring for your family, or working some high-powered job, or providing web services working from home. If you are doing it as an act of love for God and service to others, that is enough! Too many people believe that their work is a means to an end—that it’s only valuable if it accomplishes something or earns something else. But the Bible shows us that work is not a means to an end. Work is an end in itself with value in itself. 3. Our work is practice for our work in the life to come. As I just said, our work matters in and of itself. It brings glory to God and serves others just for what it is! But it also shapes us and our world for what is to come. Christian philosopher Dallas Willard says that work is “training for reigning” with God. And he’s exactly right! John Mark Comer writes, “The Bible opens with God giving humans a vocation, a calling to rule, to look after his creation and make it flourish, and after a long, drawn-out detour through human history, the Bible ends with that vision finally coming to pass and even going forward” (258). Revelation says “God has made us to be a kingdom and priests” (1:6) and “I [God] will give the right to sit with me on my throne” (3:21) and “They shall reign on the earth” (5:10) and “they will reign for ever and ever” (22:5). Our future hope isn’t just that Jesus will reign forever and ever, but that we will reign with him! This is exactly what Paul says: “if we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Tim 2:12). Through our work, God is making us the kind of people who can rule the world with him. Forever. The prophets Isaiah and Amos were clear that we will “build houses” in the age to come. This means that our work will continue, that we will need city planners, engineers, and builders, but also teachers and maybe even travel agents. As you go to work and sharpen your skills, you are not only making the world a better place now, you are also training for the future. Whatever you do and whoever you become will carry forward into the life to come. 4. Your good work will last and will be rewarded in the age to come. There are really two points here, but I am condensing them into one. Revelation 14:13 says, “the righteous shall rest from their labour, for their work will follow them.” What does this mean? The word “work” here is the same as in our text—general work, but also even occupation! Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian, puts it this way: “the noble products of human ingenuity, whatever is beautiful, true and good in human cultures, will be cleansed from impurity, perfected, and transfigured to become a part of God’s new creation. They will form the building materials; from which the glorified world will be made” (Work in the Spirit. 91). It’s the ugliness, the war, the stress and strain, violence, corruption, smut—these will be purified and cleansed. But some of our good work will remain. Again, the apostle Paul says, “Each one should build with care … if anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day [of the Lord] will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss, but yet will be saved.” (1 Corinthians 3:10, 12-15) Paul’s clear expectation is that some good Christian work will remain and find some place and purpose in the age to come. Not only will our good work last, but it will be rewarded! New Testament scholar NT Wright comments, “What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom” (Surprised by Hope. 193). If we are building and working for God and for God’s kingdom, then God will reward us! Working for God and for God’s kingdom is not a function of your employment situation. It is not a function of how much money you are making. It is not even a function of who says ‘thank you’ to you. Working for God and working or building for God’s kingdom is a function of the intent and purpose that you bring to your work in your own heart. When the apostle Paul is writing to slaves—those who has the worst work and the worst treatment—he says this: 23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. 25 Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism. (Colossians 3:23-25) Scripture promises that the good work of even the lowliest person will be rewarded. And likewise, that the evil of even the most important person in this world will also be repaid. God does not show favoritism as our world does. God looks at our hearts. Scripture promises, “you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward”! That whatever you do, when you do it for God, you are serving his kingdom and will receive his reward. That reward will come in the future, given by God, but it is also present in some way today. John Mark Comer writes, Christians “are people of the future in the present” (269). If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation! That new creation and age to come is somehow present with us here and now. You testify to it when you work for the Lord, not for human bosses. You embody it when you do your part simply and joyfully for the Lord. And you are the light of the world, even as you do your work in your corner of it, because the power and presence of the Holy Spirit goes with you, wherever you go! 5. Sent with the Spirit to Work for the Lord And so this Sunday, like every Sunday, God sends you out into the world. This week you will see colleagues and friends, family members and also difficult people. Through you, in your faithful work for Jesus, they may encounter the living God! And the shocking and humbling thing is that God has put you in the place that he has you, he alone has given you the job that you have right now for the season and time that he has chosen; and he has filled you with his Holy Spirit, so that the people around you can and will encounter the living God—in you! As you are shaped by an identity from the beginning and working for a future that is to come; God makes you a witness in the present to his kingdom, his power, and his glory to all those around you. Let’s Pray.