I remember the time when I was just getting active in the campus ministry when I was a college student. In our Bible study, I heard an announcement inviting people to join the leadership training. The word “leader” immediately caught my attention. In my mind, I see people following my lead. That was my mental image of a leader. A leader leads. It’s obvious, right? So, I signed up. On the first day of the training, our trainer asked me to look for a vacant room where we can hold our training and arrange the chairs. As I was grudgingly setting up the room, I was wondering, “I thought this was leadership training?” Right then and there, on the first day of our “leadership” training, our trainer taught us a valuable lesson. Leaders are servants. So, what about you? What comes to your mind when you hear the word “leader”? Do you think of a leader who is being served? Or do you think of a leader who serves?
This morning, we will continue our series on the 7 Habits of a Highly Effective Servant-Leader. Remember the acronym S-E-R-V-A-N-T? We inserted a card in our bulletin where we printed for you what S-E-R-V-A-N-T means…
Serves the Lord
Empowers Others
Reaches seekers
Values the Word
Adores God in Worship
Networks with Believers, and
Thrives in Prayer.
You can put this card in your wallet or purse or pin it in your cork board… wherever you place it as long as you memorize it. For the next two Sundays, I will focus on the first one, “Serves the Lord.” I will talk about “Hands On!”
Now in your card, we also printed the first part of our verse for today’s message. It’s from Ecclesiastes 9:10. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”.[1] So, let’s memorize it together. Repeat after me, “Whatever your hand finds to do…” [Audience: “Whatever your hand finds to do…”] “…do it with all your might.” [Audience: “…do it with all your might.”] Let’s recite it again. [Audience recites the verse.] Together! “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”. Let us first commit our time to the Lord in prayer.
We tend to view life like a pizza. We tend to slice our lives into separate areas. We think this area belongs to God and that area belongs to me. So, the area that belongs to us we ask God to bless but He is off-limits. We don’t really say He is off-limits. But we don’t want Him to meddle with it. For example, we don’t want God to dictate how we run our business, how we handle our relationships, how we manage our time or how we deal with our finances. Yes, He can bless those areas. Yet that’s as far as He can go.
Now, let us say that by some miracle Bro. Jun lends me his Nissan Skyline GTR for the day... the only one in the Philippines! It can jump from zero to 320 kilometers per hour in just 20 seconds. Not really fast. It’s not really expensive, right? It’s actually very cheap… by Bill Gates’ standards. Of course, it’s expensive. Can I tell him, “I would only take care of ten percent of your car”? “I will vacuum it. No French fries on the floor, I promise.” “I will return it to you with a full tank.” Would that be okay with him? I don’t think so. When I return it to him, if ever he would actually lend it to me, I think he will examine it thoroughly with a magnifying glass. Why? It is because when he lent me the car, I am responsible for the GTR one hundred percent. He holds me liable for the entire car.[2] So, it is also with our lives. God holds us liable with everything in our lives.
We think for example that, because we gave our tithes or ten percent of our income to God, the rest we can do as we please. But, even that ninety percent belongs to Him. Just as we are accountable to God to give our ten percent to Him, we will also be as liable to Him for the way we invest or spend or save that ninety percent. God holds us responsible to pay the right taxes at the right time. He wants us to keep one set of books only in our business. He does not want us to keep one set for internal books of accounts and another set for external books of accounts for the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Don’t think that because you gave your tithe, God is bound to bless your business even if you are actually cheating on your income tax return. Don’t ever think God would turn a blind eye away from your financial dealings just because you are a giver. Why? It is because life is not a pizza. It is not divided into “This belongs to God” area and “That belongs to me” area.
That’s why I like how our verse today starts. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”. Whatever. I’m not talking about that expression of “whatever” that we say when we just wanted to end a debate with our parents for example. Whatever here shows us the extent of God’s ownership of our lives. Whatever means anything and everything. Whatever means whatever. That means every area of our lives belongs to God.
In our verse, it specifically refers to our work. Solomon was the wisest man who has ever lived on earth other than the Lord Jesus. He wrote Ecclesiastes, which means “The Speaker in a gathering.” In this book, he wrote that life is empty without God. We can only be satisfied… we can only be fulfilled… we can only enjoy life if that life revolves on the Life. Someone wrote that the “meaning for life is not in life, but in the One who gives life.” One of the ways we can really enjoy life in view of the Life-giver is found in our verse: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it will all your might”. God meant for us to enjoy work. And we can only enjoy it if we see our work as our worship to God. Keep in mind that we serve God through our work. That’s why we are commanded, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”. What the verse is teaching us is this: “Do your BEST with WHAT you can WHILE you can.”
The conditional clause “Whatever your hand finds to do” mean “whatever you are able to do”.[3] Whatever ability God gave us, whatever gifts, whatever opportunity, whatever job we handle, whatever company we work with, we are to do our best with what we can while we can. Of course, I am talking about jobs that are legal and moral. So, if you are into gambling, that’s not included in God’s “whatever.” I am talking about honest labor. I am talking about a decent job. Whatever it is, be it as CEO or rank and file, be it janitor or top executive, be it high-paying or chicken feed, “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”. That’s why we have to do our best with what we can while we can.
Someone wrote that the Jewish people looked upon work as a trust from God, not a curse.[4] Even rabbis have to learn a trade. They taught that “He who does not teach a son to work, teaches him to steal.” That’s why Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12, “Even while we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘Whoever does not work should not eat.’ Yet we hear that some of you are living idle lives, refusing to work and wasting time meddling in other people’s business. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we appeal to such people—no, we command them: Settle down and get to work. Earn your own living.”[5] But we work not just because we want to meet our needs. We work as our worship to God. We serve God through our work.
We tend to think that only those who serve “full-time” in church such as pastors like really serve the Lord. We believe that worship only happens within the four walls of this worship hall. We assume that only those who do the tasks in the church or participate in church activities are the ones who serve the Lord. Yes, we also give opportunities to people to serve God in our church. This morning we have a sign-up table at the foyer of the church building for those who would like to join our greeters’ ministry. I encourage you to sign-up. This could be the start of your involvement with our church. I believe this is the best way to discover or exercise our gifts. But, we should not limit serving God to church activities. We should not think that when the worship service ends at 9:30AM and you exit this building, our worship has ended. No, our worship continues. We are to worship God 24/7, every day of our lives. We continue serving God in our work, in our studies, in our companies, in our homes and in our schools.
That’s why “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”. Give it your best shot. Really earn your wages. How we do it is as important as what we do. Do it with all your might. It’s a command. We sin, when we don’t do our best… when we do our job haphazardly… when we are lazy… when we don’t do what our job requires and even beyond… we disobey God when we don’t do it with all our might. So, don’t think that only pastors serve God. You also serve God through your work. Your work is your worship to God. That’s why don’t assume that God only called pastors. God has also called you in your sphere of influence, in your place of work. What you are doing is God’s calling or vocation to you. Don’t even think that only pastors serve God directly. Right now, you say in your mind, “Yeah, I serve God through my work. But it is indirect.” No, you are also serving God directly. I believe Paul has Ecclesiastes 9:10 in mind when he wrote Colossians 3:23-24, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men… It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Underline that last part. “It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” So, when you deal with your customer, you are dealing with the Lord. When you take a call as a call center agent, even if the person curses you, harasses you, you remain patient. You do that not because that call is recorded and your supervisor might listen to it. You graciously talk to the customer because the Lord is listening to you. Your boss might not get to hear what you are saying. But surely the Lord is listening to you real time.
When I get to counsel people who wanted to become pastors or missionaries, I usually ask them how they are doing in their present job. There are times I discover that they just want to get out of their jobs and they thought that the so called “full-time ministry” is an easy way out. That’s a wrong reason to get into the ministry. Besides, that is already ministry. Their present job is their ministry. And if they are not doing their best in their work at this time, what’s our assurance that they will do their best when the church hires them? That’s already the measure of their faithfulness. So, if ever somebody applies to our church as a pastor or a church worker who’s coming from another job, I would recommend to our deacons that they also check with their former boss or former company. I would like to ask, “How’s your job? Were you ever promoted? Or, were you ever issued a memo? How’s your relation with your former boss? With your co-employees?” The Lord deserves the best. We want people who do their best with what they can while they can.
When I was working in the media as a writer-segment producer, for a year or two, almost every working day my boss would castigate me. I admit it was my fault. Charge it to inexperience. There was a time my boss almost ripped my script into shreds. The other writers would tell me, “We will talk to him first. Don’t go ahead of us. If you talk to him first, his day would be ruined and we will be hit by the stray bullet.” At first, he would not even assign the juicy, the sensational and the controversial stories to me. I almost gave up. I felt like throwing in my resignation letter. But I told myself again and again, I will not resign like this. I don’t want them cheering when I leave. I want them to value me or see me as somebody who did a great job. So, I pressed on. I did my work with all my might. When I resigned, I was about to become the head writer of the program. When I asked a friend in the office to edit my resignation letter, he almost did not return it to me. He wanted to prevent me from resigning. In that letter I wrote, “This life will pass away. Only what’s done for Christ will last.”
That’s what the last portion of the verse is telling us. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” We have to give it our best shot because it is our only shot. We have to do our best with what we can while we can… while we have the time… while we have the strength. When we die, that’s the end of it. That’s the end of our opportunity to serve God. If at the end of our lives we failed to do with all our might what we found with our hands to do, we missed our chance. We really blew it. We will be facing God and we will not hear the words, “Well done my good and faithful servant.” Again, I think Paul had Ecclesiastes 9:10 when he wrote 1 Corinthians 10:31, “…whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” Whatever our hand finds to do, we are to do it with all our might because that honors God. When we do our best with what we can while we can, we give Him glory. We please God with a job well done. Now, if you haven’t put your trust in the Lord Jesus as Savior, you are not even working for Him. You need to become His follower first. Accept the Lord as your Savior.
Brothers and sisters let us do our best with what we can while we can. For, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”.
Let us pray…
[1]All Bible verses are from the New International Version, unless otherwise noted.
[2]Thanks to Andy Stanley for this illustration.
[3]John F. Walvoord, Roy B. Zuck and Dallas Theological Seminary, The Bible Knowledge Commentary : An Exposition of the Scriptures (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1983-c1985), 1:999.
[4]Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Satisfied (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1996, c1990).
[5]New Living Translation
