Sermon Title: “Take This Job And…Love It!”
Date: Sunday, August 27, 2017
Church Calendar: Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
Our Theme Today: Work
Our Question:
Work.
To some people, it’s a 4 letter word.
But what about the Scriptures?
What do the Scriptures have to say about “work.”
We’ll work on that, and more, during our sermon time today!
Scripture (For Reader): Exodus 20:1-9 (New International Version)
20And God spokeall these words:
2“I am theLordyour God,who brought you outof Egypt,out of the land of slavery.
3“You shall have no other gods before[a]me.
4“You shall not make for yourself an imagein the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.5You shall not bow down to them or worshipthem; for I, theLordyour God, am a jealous God,punishing the children for the sin of the parentsto the third and fourth generationof those who hate me,6but showing love to a thousandgenerations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7“You shall not misuse the name of theLordyour God, for theLord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8“Remember the Sabbathday by keeping it holy.9Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
1
Labor Day is just around the corner.
Has it ever seemed ironic to you
that one of the few days of the year
where most of us DON’T have to work is:
LABOR Day???!!!
(Shouldn’t it be called
“UN-Labor Day”
or
“FREE of Labor….Day? Just a thought.)
Regardless,
this morning,
I’d like to look at this concept of “labor.”
How IS it that we view our “work?”
Biblically speaking,
how is it that we are to put our work into perspective?
Anyone here ever hear of the “Pentathlon?”
What is it?
(Response.)
Yeah,
it is probably the most prestigious
sporting contest in all of Europe.
Now,
is is SIMILAR to our decathlon,
only it has FIVE events instead of TEN - -
- running
- swimming
- horseback riding
- pistol shooting
- fencing.
5 VERY diverse events.
2
And,
if someone is going to succeed in the pentathlon,
the person, the athlete,
has to do well in all FIVE of the areas.
In other words,
the athlete can’t spend all their time
training in a swimming pool.
A person could swim like Mark Spitz
but if he or she runs like me,
they’ll still lose.
I mention this because
it is a helpful analogy
in examining how we live life:
what we do in 1 area
will ultimately have an impact on all the other areas.
This is certainly true of work:
it impinges upon all that we do and all that we ARE.
And the question I raise this morning is,
“What can we do to see that our work
takes its PROPER place in our lives?”
Because
even those of you who are “retired,”
you’re still going to work,
only now they call it “VOLUNTEERISM.”
You may no longer officially report to a “work” site;
but you are still in the midst of this
“balancing act thing.”
And let’s face it,
none of us
(when push comes to shove)
wants to be married to our jobs.
3
So how DO we approach this area of “labor?”
Christian author, Doug Sherman,
in his book Your Work Matters To God
gives 8 suggestions
on how to put work into perspective.
Let me mention 2 of them.
1st
SCHEDULE NON-WORK AREAS JUST AS YOU WOULD WORK AREAS
Sherman tells an account of visiting the office of a CEO
and admiring this guy’s phenomenal efficiency in running his company.
The guy had 3 ring notebooks
with dozens of pages of neatly typed goals & objectives,
each with its own action plan.
And the company was doing great.
But Sherman tells how the guy began talking about his family.
And he began expressing a sense of real failure
about his relationships there.
So, Sherman asked to see the guy’s goals for his family life.
And as you might expect, he didn’t have any.
So, Sherman challenged him with the fact
that since he displayed such brilliance & wisdom
in planning out his company’s direction,
perhaps he needed to consider putting that
SAME effort and planning
into the other areas of life.
It came as a revolutionary idea to the guy.
But if you’re like me,
what doesn’t get planned, doesn’t happen.
4
Sherman sums it up this way,
(Quote),
“In our date books
we need to put more than just work-related appointments & reminders.
We need to add family times,
church and ministry commitments,
community involvements
and PERSONAL plans.”
(Unquote)
In our Scripture passage this morning
in the 9th verse of Exodus, Chapter 20, it says this:
Exodus 20:9
“Six days you shall labor.”
Translation: There needs to be time left over for something else.
But he makes a second suggestion re: putting work into perspective, and it is this:
2nd
GUARD YOUR USE OF EMOTIONAL ENERGY
For many of us,
work may take up only 50% of our time;
but 95% of our emotional energy.
It’s the classic scenario of
our leaving the work;
but the work not leaving us!
How do you tell if you are one of the victims of this particular plague?
One author provides a STRATEGY for determining this.
5
He puts it this way:
(Quote)
“Some of the signals that work may be holding you captive EMOTIONALLY are:
(check yourself out on this list):
- when your spouse (or a significant friend) tells you something
and you realize you have not heard a word he or she said
(Deb, don’t listen to this!),
you know you’re being held captive by your work;
- when you wake up at night with thoughts and emotions about work
STREAMING from your mind,
you know you’re being held captive by your work;
- when you spend hours on the phone with an associate
talking about a work situation - -
even though you’ve both talked about it all day
and you’ll talk about it all day the next day,
you know you’re being held captive by your work;
- when your only friends are friends at work,
you know you’re being held captive by your work;
- when your only serious reading is work-related,
you know you’re being held captive by your work;
- when you spend a good portion of your hours after work
AT your place of employment,
you know you’re being held captive by your work.”
That author’s advice?
“When you leave work, LEAVE work.”
It’s the advice of Exodus 20:9 all over again.
“Six days you shall labor.”
In a prioritized life, there is time left over for something else.
6
One of the problems often faced by “workaholics”
is that when they DO take a break from work,
they have no energy left over to be active elsewhere.
And so,
they adopt a kind of “entertain me” mentality.
Author Molly Irvine puts it this way:
(Quote)
“Why sit down and pound the piano yourself
when you could go hear Rubenstein play at Carnegie?
Why join a singing group
when you can hear Pavarotti?
Why participate in amateur theatricals
when Broadway is right there?
We spend a great deal of our lives now being audiences,
watching other people do.
We go to the movies instead of playing Horse in the driveway
with our kids or grandkids.
We go out to the ballpark instead of joining a slow-pitch team;
We watch the soaps instead of having emotional lives of our own.”
Maybe, just maybe,
it all goes back to our passage of the day.
Exodus 20:9
“Six days you shall labor.”
There’s time left over for something else.
You think about that!
Let us pray.
“Our God,
the balancing act is so tough for us.
Show us how to do it.
Lead us to the place of work AND rest.
We ask in Jesus Name. Amen.”
Resource For This Sermon: Doug Sherman