A Mind to Work
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
In Nehemiah chapter 4 verse 6, Nehemiah wrote that we build the wall and All the wall was joined together at half its height for the people had a mind to work Well, what was the alternative? Leave the wall in its ruins and leave Jerusalem unprotected for Nehemiah and the other Hebrews. This was just not an option It was in fact worth dying for they were ready to do that the principle governing this decision was the preservation of of the people of God because their identity was so tied to that city. The reality was that much of the Hebrew identity was tied to the city of David, that Nehemiah couldn't abide its remaining so vulnerable.
The reality was when it came to the city of David, so much of the people's identity was tied to that city that Nehemiah and his cohorts just couldn't abide its being left unprotected. Now, I mean, it really would be nice if all of our work had such obvious value and purpose, but it doesn't, and much of our life is lived in the gray areas.
The sort of commitment that they demonstrated is largely absent from our workforce today. Today's workforce is largely lazy and privileged. Technological advances have made many jobs easy And most of us just don't know how to work because we haven't been required to do so. And sometimes that's dereliction on the part of those who are in charge of us, but as often as not, it's just because we have been blessed. We have been the recipients of so much and we are prosperous. And even worse, many in the workforce today have the diluted notion that working is about money, about making money. Or that the point of it is to make money, when the reality of the point of it is far deeper than that.
And it's little surprise if that is our aim, why there's such high turnover in the workplace today. Why so many people jump ship when they're not making as much money as they think that they deserve or as much as they would like. Many American workers in that case move on to something that is perhaps more lucrative or let's say I guess like Clark Griswold's cousin or in-laws or whatever. they hold out for a management position. Well, Adam didn't have a salary in Eden, but he was still expected to work. The Jews of Nehemiah 4-6 weren't interested in the paycheck. That's worth noting. They were interested in something of far greater value.
They believed that their labor had great value. As I was saying, the Jews of Nehemiah 4 weren't interested in the paycheck. They saw what they were working to do as of such great value, you couldn't attach a paycheck to it. They believed their labor had great value. They had a strong why behind their work.
And so should we. We should have a strong why behind what we do. You may not be willing to die for every decision that you make in your workplace, but I would argue that you probably need to have a why for all of them. So here's a big why, that's exactly right, why. God has, now here's again, here's a why behind all of our work. God has purposed to bless the world through the labor of humanity.
And the degree to which that blessing is God's ideal will is reflected by our faithfulness, is commensurate with our faithfulness. So the labors of faithful humans, Labors of even Christians are increasing degrees of intentionality aimed at blessing the world. So beyond this, being principled in your decision making, whether the boss is looking or not, will enable your success and your joy in your workplace. When a farmer sows the seed and reaps the grain and sells it to the cereal maker and the paper maker fashions cardboard for the cereal box and the sugar cane grower provides the sugar to frost the cereal and the dairy farmer bottles and sells the milk to the grocery store.
They're all being used by God to bless our little ones with a yummy breakfast. And there's actually lots of other unmentioned jobs, other links in the chain in that process. It is completely fitting then for the farmer and the grocer and the paper maker to view their work as bringing good to others. It gives them a reason to wake up in the morning that is of far more lasting and intangible value than a paycheck. And we bow our heads at the time we eat that cereal in thanks to God for the food. Because you recognize that God has used all of those means to bring about our blessing. That's how it's supposed to work.
Now, and again, that's how it's supposed to work and none of those people have to be Christians for that to be the case. Now, when the farmer and the grocer are Christians, they can actually do their work as self-conscious efforts to bring blessing to others. They could even do their work as an act of worship. And when we view work as a strictly mercenary effort, we're just in it for the money, we completely miss the point, our principles are out of whack, and we rob ourselves of really a ton of joy. So I can't really overstate this. When every day when you go to work, Every day when you go to work, you are part of an elaborate system that God has in place to bring blessing to humanity.
If we don't view this as this operating principle on a regular basis, if we don't keep this before us, we'll flame out, we'll totally burn out over time, some sooner than later. I do wish to make the case tonight that all of our decisions ought to be traceable back to some principle, or else we just won't last. And I don't wanna be super dramatic in that because some small mundane day-to-day decisions, blue ink black ink, something that minor, are of fairly insignificant consequence, but even those, we'd be able to trace those back to a stewardship principle or a wisdom principle. So there needs to be a principle behind every decision that you make.
And your principles should themselves based on Scripture. So there we have it. We have our decisions need to be based on principle, because your philosophy is what you do, and then those principles need to be based on Scripture, or else they won't have any staying power. You need to be able to trace all of your decisions back to some theological reason, ultimately. That may sound crazy, but I'm going to try and talk tonight about how uncrazy it is. What's more, when it comes to those big decisions, your why should be theological. It's not enough to have good logical reasons for your decisions. So I want to make this widget to make a lot of money.
Making money is fine, depending on what it is you want to do with it. If it becomes your God, that's a problem. But what if you don't make enough money? Well, then you'll probably stop doing that thing. So then you have to ask yourself, how valuable is the thing, doing the thing by itself? So it's not enough just to have good logical reasons for your decisions. Neither is it enough to have good practical reasons for your big decisions. These decisions need to be rooted in the Bible. So what sorts of questions require principled answers? I would say in short, all of them, big and little. So let's say you're operating a small business and you have a space you're renting in a strip mall.
The color of the carpet. What to pay your employees. The weight of the paper for your printer. The type of printer you buy. Who to hire. Where to locate your business itself. Where to locate your desk in the business. What sorts of principles will influence your decisions and these sorts of issues? Well tonight I'm going to offer three of them. The three principles that I'm going to share tonight relate to stewardship, to love, the golden rule, and if you have these principles driving your decision making, you'll find yourself happy, employable, and valuable to your boss. I'll go over those principles one by one here in a moment, but we all know that what's bad news for the sheep might be really great news for the wolf, right?
So likewise, what's bad news for employers and business owners may well be good news for those who are looking for work. As any business owner might be able to tell you tonight, good help is hard to find, isn't it? I'm saying, well, you don't have an answer there. This isn't qualified yet. So it's true. It's true. Good help is hard to find. There's a dire shortage of good help out there. So that's actually really bad news. But the really good news is if you're a worker, it's insanely easy to stand out in today's work culture. It is. There are bodies out there to be hired, sure. But they mostly belong to lazy and entitled people who are more interested in demanding their rights as employees than they are as rendering useful service for the good of humanity.
Doing good work for and doing good to others by providing useful service. These people, let's call them type L for lazy. They show up late to work, they call in sick, they do the minimum amount of work at work, they complain about their pay, They complain about their managers and they behave in different ways depending on who's watching. We can contrast those with what I might call type I for industrious. In a culture like this, the industrious, cheerful, self-starter who shows up on time and works hard is of tremendous value. Now, I just gave a few adjectives right there. And some of you are thinking, that sounds like a dream employee.
People, that should be a normal employee. it is so crazy easy to stand on this work culture, which is actually really good for many of you in this room. It's not hard. And Christians should be type I, not type L. They should be industrious, because this sort of industriousness is the principled type of behavior that the Bible is calling us to be marked by. Now, I don't typically do this, but tonight I'm going to make you a promise that related to something that I'm going to be talking about. If by the grace of God, and I say grace of God because I think your consistent application of these principles will only be spiritually generated.
If by the grace of God you manage to apply these few simple principles, you will become an absolute rock star in your workplace. And these rules apply whether you're pulling weeds for the neighbor lady or you're the CFO of a Fortune 500 company. And these principles will give us what those Hebrews in Nehemiah had, that is a mind to work. So the first principle I'd have us to keep in mind in our workplace decision making relates to, number one, the principle of stewardship. It's not your stuff. The principle of stewardship, it's not your stuff. In 1 Corinthians 4, 2, in kind of an ancillary comment, Paul suggests something that is assumed in the rest of scripture with regard to stewards.
He says, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. Now common sense tells us as much anyway, but there we do have it in the pages of scripture as well. A steward is one who is entrusted with what does not belong to him. His job is to manage it well on behalf of its owner. When you are making decisions at work, how can you exercise faithfulness with what you have been entrusted? If you've been given a company vehicle and a gas card, your employer probably trusts you to use it discretionary for business purposes as if you were him. So if you then gas up your private vehicle with the company gas card or if you use the company card to shuttle your kids to baseball practices without your boss's permission, you are probably not exercising good stewardship.
When you are trying to decide whether or not to use that vehicle to run to the store on company time, Well, the principle of stewardship will come into play and help you to decide what is best. And in an ultimate sense, we recognize that even our bosses are under stewards, right? Christians recognize that with your boss's stuff isn't his stuff. It's God's stuff. God owns all the ice cream and all the warehouses and all the paint brushes and all the desks with the ballpoint pens. By your faithful work, you're helping your boss to steward that stuff for his boss who's in heaven, whether he acknowledges that his boss is in heaven or not.
As Christians, we also embrace Ephesians 6, which is sort of a go-to passage that helps to inform Christian and employer relationships, and it relates to slaves and masters. Paul says in Ephesians 6 verses 5 through 9, bond servants obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling with a sincere heart as you would Christ, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but as bond servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bond servant or is free. Masters do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven. There's no partiality with him." So Paul is suggesting that God, he's actually suggesting that God gives particular slaves to particular masters and gives, and then by extension gives particular masters to particular slaves.
And we can apply the same principle when it comes to employers and employees. Paul draws on some truths from the rest of the scriptures and makes assumptions here. The idea is that God would place certain slaves in certain master's households and that is not by coincidence, it's intentional. We affirm happily that God is sovereign and he sits and thrown in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases. Humanity then is the image-bearing medium that he uses to paint a masterpiece of his grace, his mercy, and his justice for display before the angels. We are the medium that he's using to paint that masterpiece. And because God's glory is of greatest importance, then our role in all of that is also of great importance.
So like I said, the concept then applies well to employers and employees, and that comes to bear on our conversation. He ordains those relationships and we should do our work as though we are there by God's design because we are. Our very jobs themselves are a stewardship from Him that we can manage well or we can manage poorly. If we affirm that God is sovereign, then He has placed us where we are in our workplaces on purpose. We should embrace that. The second principle to have a supply here is the principle of love. God, then neighbor, then self. It's the principle of love. God, neighbor, self in that order. Men have no problem loving themselves.
We know that. Paul makes that assumption in Ephesians 5.28 when he is giving the charge or making an observation about husbands when he says the husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. If men didn't love their bodies, then his argument would break down. and ungodly husbands alike do the necessary things to stay alive. Of course, some do a better job than others, but all care for themselves at least at some basic level. We all do this. We're good at this and we ought to do it for our wives. We ought to serve our wives as we do our own bodies.
What we're not very good at is practicing love for others and we're terrible at practicing love for God. But when we get that order right, I suggest it in exact reverse. When we get the order right, our lives are rightly oriented as well. Love of God and love of your neighbors will help you make a hundred decisions before you even go to bed tonight. Jesus called his followers to love one another, not just to be nice, but because that would be a hallmark by which the world would be able to identify them as His disciples. In John 13, verses 34 and 35, he says, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
By this, all the people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. He's pretty emphatic and repetitive there. That love that Christians have for the saints it is to be a hallmark by which they're identifiable to the world. So, as we're talking about Christians in the workplace, yes, that applies to Christians, but importantly, it applies to other people. But changing gears and looking at Matthew 22, 36, and through 40, Jesus offers more instruction about the direction of our love. He was asked, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law, and he replied, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. In that order. That's inverted from our natural order. God, neighbor, self. And he doesn't have to instruct us in how to love ourselves. We do that already. He assumes we love ourselves. And just as we love ourselves, So we also ought to love others in degree and inconsistency. In degree and inconsistency with how we love ourselves, we ought to love others. So drawing that together with Christ's instruction from John, we're to love others, and in particular, have a particular love for the saints.
So when we apply the principle of love as well, when we apply the principle of love in our workplace, We find ourselves applying the principles that are associated with the gospel. Mercy, grace, forgiveness, restoration of fellowship, reconciliation, all of those things. In the workplace, we get opportunity to do things like die to our own preferences and schedules and conveniences and desires, all in order that we may bring life to others. Whether they are our coworkers or our employees or our customers. That is what it looks like, what it's supposed to look like. Doing so consistently, as we've argued, requires the work of the spirit.
And like I said before, any employer in the room can tell you that hard workers are hard to find. Any employer can also tell you that selfless workers are worth their weight in gold. So selfless workers are worth their weight in gold. So we've talked about the principle of stewardship. It's not your stuff, it's God's stuff. Second, love, God, neighbor, self. And the third principle that have us drawn is the golden rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated. So what we have come to know is the golden rule, of course, as you're probably familiar, comes from Matthew chapter seven verse 12, and Jesus said, so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.
Well, this principle has endless application if we're being honest with ourselves. I mean, if you're not using this rule to justify poking your sister in the eye because you think you would like being poked in the eye, or you hear this sort of rationalizing, I'm okay with that. Well, no, you're not. And so let's be honest with ourselves. And if we are, then we know that this has endless application. So, as an example though, this principle is the one that will make you, those of you who work in retail, here's our example, those of you who work in retail, this will make you absolutely indispensable. Like your boss won't be able to live without you if you will just operate by the golden rule in the workplace.
If you treat your boss the way you'd like to be treated, if you treat your co-workers the way you'd like to be treated, if you treat your customers, the way you'd like to be treated, man, watch out. I mean, it really is true of the most basic and common sense principles like arriving on time or completing your tasks. But for the moment, let's just stick with the golden rule. Okay, so like being indispensable in the workplace is not hard to do. But so there's all sorts of very simple things you can do that everybody ought to do that will make you a rockstar. But let's just talk about this one for a moment. I've gotten opportunity to work a few jobs and my own experience related to those, and my own enjoyment and success in those has been in direct correlation.
There's been a proportionate relationship to my Christian maturity. It's not hard to figure out. And the more I try to live and work according to the golden rule, and the more of the spiritual sure I got the more I wanted to do that. The more successful I was in work. Now as an aside, like I know the pastors aren't supposed to say this sort of thing, but I'm going to say it anyway. I really do think that I could be happy doing a number of things. I know, gasp, horror. So like pastors are supposed to say, and the call of God was so clear that I couldn't possibly have been happy doing anything else. Like I do think that God's call to me here was clear, but it's not Not that I would have been miserable doing anything else.
And in preparation for this talk, I was thinking about that. For years, I attributed that to a healthy curiosity. Like, I think the world is fascinating. And I think all kinds of stuff is fascinating. And I think a lot of occupations are fascinating too. However, I think there's also a reality that as long as it's lawful work, All of the work that we are doing is full-time Christian work. All of it is noble, insofar as God is using it to bring good and blessing to people. So whether you are a widget maker, or a dairy farmer, or a small business owner, or you turn screws at Boeing, or you sell houses, or what have you, the work that you are doing is bringing good to other people.
And all of those vocations are awesome. They're all noble and they're all good, all those lawful vocations. And it is funny that when we apply these principles, they also serve as a litmus test for us determining whether or not other vocations are lawful or not. For instance, somebody who is, I mean, we'll use some extreme examples, somebody who is a hired assassin, or a drug dealer or a pimp, is unable to do his work while loving others or practicing the principle of stewardship, right? Killing somebody, that person doesn't belong to you. You actually don't have jurisdiction to do that. Or selling somebody drugs wherewith they will destroy their bodies and exercise poor stewardship.
You're totally violating the principle of stewardship. Do you see that? But where those principles play out and apply well, man, the sky is the limit, go for it, have fun. Now, I'm having fun here, but I do think that the world is a fascinating place and Jesus is Lord over all of it.
Some of you know that before I came to TEC, I enjoyed a short stint working the paint desk at Home Depot. And the operations manager who had interviewed me was hilarious because he'd obviously been burned a few times with a lot of bad hires. Of course, that's sad, but you know, what's good for the sheep is bad for the wolf and so on. I told him, hopefully without arrogance, but with absolute confidence, I'm thinking of Nicholas Cage and the family man, I can do this job. I'll start parking cars if I have to, but I can do this, I know people. No, it was, I told them, I can do this, because though I don't really know much about paint, This is customer service, and customer service is not hard.
And I referred to the golden rule. I said, when a customer comes into the store or my department, I'll treat him the way that I would like to be treated when I go to the store. I'll ask him the right questions to make sure that I'm able to get him what he needs, and I'll help him find the product, and I won't try to sell him stuff that he doesn't need.
Now, to a manager who's simply interested in the bottom line at upselling, upselling, upselling, those aren't necessarily good words. But I said, it's really simple. And he kind of gave me this side long glance and goes, all right, I'll give you a chance. But don't call him sick and don't be late. I said, OK, got it. So it's pretty easy to see what sorts of folks had come through his office. And so after I was hired and then trained and then I got on the sales floor, it was all easy. And all I had to do was apply the golden rule. And all you have to do is apply the golden rule. And the customers usually left happy if we had what they needed.
So that was it. So when they would leave disgruntled is when they come for something you just don't have and then they make it grumpy. But otherwise, if you bend over backwards and help them the way you'd like to be helped, like you're indispensable. I even enjoyed escorting customers to other departments and handing them off to colleagues or selling them a hammer or some pipe glue in Spanish. It was pretty fun. It was South Everett. There was a pretty robust Hispanic population. So I got all kinds of fun practicing Spanish too. And listen, the reality is when we know the purpose of our work and we know the, and we apply the proper principles, work should be fun.
I mean, it's still work, but it's fun. In the same way that when you go out on a Saturday morning and your bed is full of weeds and you take a break at lunchtime and the bed is devoid of weeds, That's gratifying. That's good. That's taking dominion. In a sense, it should be fun. It still work, but it's satisfying and it feels great. And at Home Depot, I knew every day I did that I was bringing good to other people. They got to take home paint to beautify their homes. Or like these fancy fiberglass repair kits to repair the hole in their bass boats or whatever. I got to be an instrument of blessing to other people making 10 bucks an hour and fattening the pockets of my superiors, to be sure.
But who cares? Admittedly, there was no way that I could have supported my family long term on a Home Depot sales floor salary, admittedly, but at the same time, there was like tons of opportunity for upward mobility, for capable, joyful, competent people who show up.
Like warm bodies who apply the golden rule. Management, boom. It is so not complicated. If you're willing to do the work, there was a great purpose behind it, and I was happy. And I could have been happy there for a long time, I think, if I hadn't received an offer to be here where I'm happier still. But it's not because the office of a pastor is more noble or is more lawful than the office of a paint mixer or a person who knows which grid of sandpaper to sell you or whether or not that two-part epoxy actually works. All good questions. And you could have asked me, and I could have told you the answer. I can tell you more about the Fun Home Depot days.
There weren't very many, but I mean, I did learn a lot in the short time I was there, but it was largely confirmation of what I've been arguing here. Just like another fun story, this is not my notes, was like when I got to coach volleyball. I'm so not a volleyball coach, but I did learn, hey, all that philosophical stuff I'm always telling the coaches, it actually is true when you're a coach too. So I did have a little bit more street cred after that to say, hey man, when you're coaching, it's not just hypothetical. Yeah. So got to apply. It's a lot of the stuff I'm saying here. It's totally true. Being principled in your decision-making, whether the boss is looking or not, will enable your success and and your joy in your work.
So what about other contexts though, outside of the paint department at Home Depot? What does the application of these principles look like elsewhere? Well, we could return to that list of mundane examples for our little strip mall office for our small business and apply the principles of stewardship and love and the golden rule. So watch this for just a moment. The color of the carpet, we asked that. Well, applying the principle of the golden rule, what would you like to look at? Or applying the principle of love, will the color of the carpet introduce anxiety or calm?
Is it nice looking or ugly? And here's an issue of stewardship. Are you looking to put an antiseptic white carpet in a soup kitchen? That's poor stewardship if your answer is yes. Or how about orange shag carpet in a hotel lobby? That's unloving and poor stewardship and I can make up more principles as to why that's a bad idea. Well when you answer these questions you can do so pointing to a principle. Well what about paying your employees? Well apply the principles of stewardship and of love. Watch what happens. So you ask questions like what is going to bring optimal blessing to your employees while enabling you to still have your doors open, because there's the right balance.
If you pay them too much, you won't be able to sustain it. If you pay them too little, you want to attract the right sorts of people, and you'll be robbing them a blessing that you could be providing. Would you like to have a generous? Would you, Golden Rule, like to have a generous or a stingy employer? Would you like to have a generous or stingy employer? In writing contracts, do you represent shareholders, stewardship? You operate on behalf of somebody else. Do you look at your company and your hours as belonging to God? Or are they yours to do with what you wish and then to pay others accordingly?
Well, how about something mundane like the weight of the paper in your printer? Well, what is going to communicate care and competence while expressing care for those that you serve? Or who to hire? Well, who will help you advance your mission? Who will help you bring good to others? What about where to locate your business? Once again, where will it bring maximum good to others? What about where to locate your desk? What do you wish to communicate to your customers in terms of your own availability to them or your colleagues? Well, that list isn't intended to be exhaustive. What it's intended to be is provide some example as to how you could apply this really high philosophical head in the clouds type principle to bear on the mundane.
And so when we, in rapid succession by addressing these, were able to point to the principles of stewardship, love, the golden rule, and help inform our answers. I even use these silly situations here to suggest that you can and you should have these principles coming to bear on big and small decisions. Principles play out in the particulars. And they transcend the particulars because you may not know what particulars are coming, but you can have principles to anticipate them. You can have principles to bear on what decisions you're going to make when those particulars do come up. and the company remodels, if the company remodels your building and you have to move that desk and you don't know where to put it, well, you can return to your principles.
Well, asking the question again, where is it going to enable me to be optimally available to my people? That sort of thing. Or if you're operating by a different set of principles, where is it going to enable me to have maximum privacy to be able to get optimum amount of work done with minimal distractions because I represent somebody who's paying me for to get as much done as possible and to not be distracted. So as we look at then bringing these principles on the ground and then applying them to particulars, I'd like to offer a word about mission statements. I really do try to be principled in all my own decision making, which is why I think often about the mission statements of TEC, Trinity Evangel Church, and Evangel Classical School.
Most of you in the room are probably aware that I serve as headmaster of Evangel Classical School as well. So I think about these mission statements. And if you have a personal mission statement or your company has a mission statement, it ought to be principled so they can actually have a broad application. So you can use it to determine if your decisions are actually helping to advance your mission or not. So consider, for instance, the mission statement of Trinity Evangel Church. we are laboring in joy to cultivate community, a Trinitarian community of worshiping, maturing disciples who would acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord over all the world.
And it's loaded, and they should be. These statements should be loaded. I'll read it again. We are laboring in joy to cultivate a Trinitarian community of worshiping, maturing disciples who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord over all the world. This mission statement then comes to bear when we are examining whether or not to introduce another piece of trellis for the TEC vine. It comes to bear when as leaders we sit in a big circle and discuss whether or not the trellis that we have in place is actually bearing fruit. You know, the vine on the trellis that is, it doesn't bear fruit by itself. Or consider the statement for Evangel Classical School.
We commend the works of the Lord to another generation with the tools of classical education, weaponized laughter, and sacrificial labors so that they will carry and advance Christ-honoring culture. As headmaster, I rehearse that statement silently and out loud several times a week as I try to make decisions, really. And one of my favorite parts of that is the statement that classical education is but one of the tools that we're using in the loving process of commending the works of the Lord to another generation. Classical education is not itself the aim. Likewise, weaponized laughter is not itself the aim, but is a tool we are using for cultural advancement.
Likewise, sacrificial labors. That's actually applying. Well, I get ahead of myself. Sacrificial labors are not themselves the aim, but they are a tool of enculturation. Now, listen to it again while I insert into it some of the principles from this evening. We commend the works of the Lord to another generation. That's stewardship. They're God's work that we are commending as we represent Him. We're the tools of classical education, weaponized laughter, and sacrificial labors. That's love and the golden rule. Loving others and then treating others the way we'd like to be treated so that they can in turn actually be a blessing to the coming generation.
So they will carry and advance Christ-honoring culture. They have a job to do. That's stewardship. So love, stewardship, the golden rule, they all come to bear even in that mission statement, for instance. So those are just examples. from mundane to more cerebral to day to day and what have you to you know year by year or maybe once ever if you're making big decisions where to locate your business. So I want to finish with this namely that scripture needs to be our starting point. Scripture is our essential starting point. I want to conclude this evening by arguing once again why I believe that our principles and our philosophy, our work philosophy, have to be rooted in scripture.
Why must principles be rooted in scripture? Well, my short answer is this, staying power. Now, I know you could say that the proper answer ought to be something like the glory of God, hello, or Jesus. Well, why must our principles be rooted in scripture? Because otherwise they won't last. Listen, most things that are worth doing are hard.
And the harder it is, the more fun success tends to be. And further, the harder it is, the more lonely you're going to be while doing it because who wants to do the hard things? Very few people wanna do the hard stuff. So if you can't trace your big decisions back to a theological rationale, then you might just wanna change your mind. And maybe that's not a temptation, that is a smart move. Like make a change. You should at least be willing to do so. You won't just be tempted to quit, you probably will quit if it gets hard and you have no theological rationale ultimately for it. I'm making the case that just a personal conviction that's rooted in human wisdom is not enough.
Those can be unsatisfying. Those can be fleeting and temporary. And they actually can't stand the test of scrutiny and brutality that doing hard things actually tends to be. So if you can't trace your big decisions back to a scripture-informed principle, you probably will quit. Because why shouldn't you? Like if you came up with the idea, then don't you give yourself permission to go ahead and dismiss it? There's got to be something bigger than you, and there's nothing, of course, bigger than God, as cheesy as that sounds. If you gauge success by dollars, well, you'll quit when you don't make enough money. If you're a student who gauges, and this is dangerous, if you're a student who gauges your success by good grades, you are so desperately at the mercy of your teacher, You rather, you ought to be gauging your success by faithfulness and growth, and maybe the testimony of others in that process.
It could be that that C represents tremendous faithfulness, in which case, well done. But if you're an hourly employee who's waiting for the praise of his manager, you need to rethink your priorities and do one of two things. You need to quit, like stop that, because you're actually being unloving to your manager. You're putting your manager in the place of God. And you're actually, you are holding him hostage in a sense. You don't praise me enough, I'm leaving. So you should quit or you should repent.
But do you see the process here? If your work is, because I go back to Nehemiah on the wall, they weren't waiting for the praise of men. They were not waiting for the right amount of wages. They were not waiting for favorable circumstances. The circumstance even got harder. When they were convinced they needed to do it, and so did they stop? No, they decided to work with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other because it needed to get done. If your work is worth doing, it is worth doing well, and it's worth doing gratefully, and it's worth doing as an excellent steward. It's worth doing, loving God and loving others.
If your work is not loving to God and others like those unlawful vocations that I rattled off earlier, then it's not worth doing at all, and you should not do it. And like Nehemiah's associates, we should view our work as indispensable. And if not, then again, it may not be worth doing. So you may be thinking that all this sort of work sounds rather costly. Yes, yes it is. Because when I say it's worth doing excellently and having a good attitude, it doesn't mean that it's going to be a flat kick in the pants, super duper duper fun all the time. But insofar as we're being obedient we can know that the Father is honored with what we are doing, there is definitely an element of fun to it, but it's work, make no mistake.
It is costly and that is part of the point. It's costly financially, it's costly of ourselves, it's costly. Which is why these principles have to be rooted in Scripture. If they're not, then the temptation to compromise will inevitably keep in. So may God find us to be excellent faithful workers, may we be faithful to apply these principles, and may He grant us by His grace a mind to work. Let's pray together. Father, we do pray that you would help us to have scripture-informed principles driving our decision-making and help us to be faithful, whatever that looks like. In most cases, we know what that looks like.
We just want to make excuses for ourselves. We pray that we would not do that. We pray that the young people in this room would be some of the hardest workers that Marysville knows, that they would do their work as unto you with a view to bringing good to this community and to this world through their faithfulness. We pray that as we do churches in Marysville, train up Christians to go out into the workplace and do noble work, valuable work, that it would have a cultural shaping effect. And may all of this bring you honor as we just do what we're supposed to do for the life of the world. We thank you and we pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.
