Introduction
Everyone knows that Jesus was a carpenter. But where in the Bible does it say that?
Mark 6:1-3 Is this not the carpenter?
Not a priest. Not a merchant. Didn’t study at the university. Not a professional, like a lawyer or doctor. Not in government. A craftsman, he had callused hands.
It doesn’t seem that carpentry experience added much to Jesus’ resume.
Approach
* What do we do with the fact that Jesus was a lowly craftsman for the bulk of his career on earth?
* How can we redeem the fact that, as Christians, most of us spend the bulk of our days in the secular workplace, often in lowly trades, attending to mundane details?
* What role should our religious experience have in our secular work?
* What meaning should our secular work have to us?
Let’s turn to the Bible and try to answer these questions.
1) God Works
a) in creation Genesis 2:2
i) God is a worker. Most of us don’t view God this way but that’s how He first reveals Himself in Scripture. Genesis 1:1 states that God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 2:2 calls this activity “work”: “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all his work.”
ii) God found joy and satisfaction in his Work
(1) Genesis 1:9,18,21,25,31 And saw it that is was good. Satisfaction and joy.
b) every day - keeps everything running. Sustains life.
i) John 5:17 My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.
2) God gave mankind work to do
a) Not only is God a worker, but we are workers as well.
i) Genesis 1:27 He created us in His image
(1) Like our creator, who works
ii) gave us work to do.
(1) Genesis 1:26 says that man is to “rule over” the creation.
(2) Genesis 2:5 no man to till the ground
(3) Genesis 2:15 states that Adam was placed in the garden to “work it and take care of it.” I should point out that this work was given to Adam before the fall. God planted the garden and man cultivated it. This was a partnership that continues today. God gives to us and we manage what we’ve been given.
b) But wasn’t work cursed?
i) Genesis 3:17-19
(1) Because of sin, ground cursed, not work.
(2) Made work harder, painful, less efficient.
(a) Haying, last field, full of thistles. By then, gloves were wearing out, knees of pants were thin.
c) Commanded us to work
i) Exodus 20:9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
(1) If God commanded it, it must be a good thing.
ii) Ephesians. 2:10. "For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
d) Desire of Ages, p. 72 God appointed work as a blessing, and only the diligent worker finds the true glory and joy of life.
3) Jesus dignified work
a) What do with the fact that Jesus worked as a lowly craftsman?
b) Ilustration: Our first house in Washington state needed some foundation repairs. We didn’t have a basement, just a crawlspace with about 18” clearance. I decided to do it myself.
i) The first step was to dig trenches for the footings. I had to lie on my stomach in the crawlspace, and shovel the dirt in front of me into a pan, so I could crawl with the pan to the edge of the house and empty it. Over and over again. Like a mole, but much less adapted.
I thought, is there any more humble labor?
One day I was just laying there in the semi-darkness, on the soft dirt, with the spiders and whatnot, and wondered what trade Jesus might have if He lived on earth today. Carpenter perhaps, or a plumber, drywaller, a handyman, maybe someone who poured foundations for houses.
He forged a tie of sympathy with every one of us. I am not called to do any labor that Jesus would not have done.
ii) Jesus was not demeaned by his humble occupation. Instead, he gave it dignity.
c) Desire of Ages p.74 “His (Jesus’) work began in consecrating the lowly trade of the craftsmen who toil for their daily bread. He was doing God’s service just as much when laboring at the carpenter’s bench as when working miracles for the multitude.”
4) As unto the Lord
a) How then shall we work?
b) Colossians 3:22 Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance: for you serve the Lord Christ.
i) I doubt there are any slaves here, but as an employee, the principles still apply. Keep your bookmark here while we unpack this.
Be clear who you are really working for. I get my work assignments from my boss, my paychecks from my employer, but I serve the Lord Jesus Christ.
As an employee (or slave), you will probably not be paid what you think you’re worth, and you certainly won’t inherit anything from the company. But this says our inheritance comes from the Lord. He’s got that taken care of.
ii) What is eyeservice? Looking busy when the boss is watching.
(1) Hebrews 4:13 Nothing hidden from God.
iii) Men-pleaser – kissing up to the boss.
(1) Luke 2:52 – Jesus increased in favor with God and man. (while working as a carpenter)
(a) Aimed to please God (first).
(b) Martin Luther understood this when he wrote
(i) "The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays -- not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors. The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship."
iv) Sincerity of heart
(1) Consider Joseph as a slave in Egypt
(a) Genesis 39:1-6
(i) Could have tried to escape
(ii) Sabotage
(iii) Put in his time
(iv) Diligent, honest, acted in the best interest of his master.
v) Do it heartily
(1) Ecclesiastes 9:9,10 Enjoy your work, do it with your might
(2) II Timothy 2:15 A workman who does not need to be ashamed.
(3) “only the diligent worker finds the true glory and joy of life.”
(4) Several years ago my wife and I dined at the Olive Garden, and noticed the person busing tables, unlike any I’ve seen before or since. He was very fast, yet the dishes didn’t clatter when he stacked them. Each move was carefully honed and precisely executed. With a single sweep he laid out the silverware at precise locations. And just like that, he was gone. He cared about his work. He put his heart into it.
5) Cobbler’s helper story
a) Harry Ironside writes:
b) When I was a boy, I felt it was both a duty and a privilege to help my widowed mother make ends meet by finding employment in vacation time, and other times when I did not have to be in school. For quite a while I worked for a Scottish shoemaker, or "cobbler," as he preferred to be called, an Orkney man, named Dan Mackay. He was a forthright Christian and his little shop was a real testimony for Christ in the neighborhood. The walls were literally covered with Bible texts and pictures, generally taken from old-fashioned Scripture Sheet Almanacs, so that look where one would, he found the Word of God staring him in the face. There were John 3:16 and John 5:24, Romans 10:9, and many more.
c) On the little counter in front of the bench on which the owner of the shop sat, was a Bible, generally open, and a pile of gospel tracts. No package went out of that shop without a printed message wrapped inside. And whenever opportunity offered, the customers were spoken to kindly and tactfully about the importance of being born again and the blessedness of knowing that the soul is saved through faith in Christ. Many came back to ask for more literature or to inquire more particularly as to how they might find peace with God, with the blessed results that men and women were saved, frequently right in the shoe shop.
d) It was my chief responsibility to pound leather for shoe soles. A piece of cowhide would be cut to suite, then soaked in water. I had a flat piece of iron over my knees and, with a flat-headed hammer, I pounded these soles until they were hard and dry. It seemed an endless operation to me, and I wearied of it many times.
e) What made my task worse was the fact that, a block away, there was another shop that I passed going and coming to or from my home, and in it sat a jolly, godless cobbler who gathered the boys of the neighborhood about him and regaled them with lewd tales that made him dreaded by respectable parents as a menace to the community. Yet, somehow, he seemed to thrive and that perhaps to a greater extent than my employer, Mackay. As I looked in his window, I often noticed that he never pounded the soles at all, but took them from the water, nailed them on, damp as they were, and with the water splashing from them as he drove each nail in.
f) One day I ventured inside, something I had been warned never to do. Timidly, I said, "I notice you put the soles on while still wet. Are they just as good as if they were pounded?" He gave me a wicked leer as he answered, "They come back all the quicker this way, my boy!"
g) "Feeling I had learned something, I related the instance to my boss and suggested that I was perhaps wasting time in drying out the leather so carefully. Mr. Mackay stopped his work and opened his Bible to the passage that reads, "Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of god."
h) "Harry," he said, "I do not cobble shoes just for the four bits and six bits (50c or 75c) that I get from my customers. I am doing this for the glory of God. I expect to see every shoe I have ever repaired in a big pile at the judgment seat of Christ, and I do not want the Lord to say to me in that day, 'Dan, this was a poor job. You did not do your best here.' I want Him to be able to say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'"
i) Then he went on to explain that just as some men are called to preach, so he was called to fix shoes, and that only as he did this well would his testimony count for God. It was a lesson I have never been able to forget. Often when I have been tempted to carelessness, and to slipshod effort, I have thought of dear, devoted Dan Mackay, and it has stirred me up to seek to do all as for Him who died to redeem me.
j) H. A. Ironside, Illustrations of Bible Truth, Moody Press, 1945, pp. 37-39.
6) To Glorify God
a) One more verse
b) 1 Corinthians 10:31 Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
i) Does “whatever you do” include your occupation? Cooking meals? Mowing the lawn?
ii) Desire of Ages p.74 “He (Jesus) lived to please, honor, and glorify His Father in the common things of life.”
(1) Do we please, honor and glorify God in the common things of life?
iii) Philippians 4:8 Whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy – think about such things.
(1) Does God like to think about your work?
c) Here is another way our work can be a blessing to us.
d) Many of Jesus’ parables involved occupations in that era – housewife, shepherd, sower, merchant.
e) Christ’s Object Lessons, p.26 “Christ has linked His teaching, not only with the day of rest, but with the week of toil. He has wisdom for him who drives the plow and sows the seed. In the plowing and sowing, the tilling and reaping, He teaches us to see an illustration of His work of grace in the heart. So in every line of useful labor and every association of life, He desires us to find a lesson of divine truth. Then our daily toil will no longer absorb our attention and lead us to forget God; it will continually remind us of our Creator and Redeemer. The thought of God will run like a thread of gold through all our homely cares and occupations.”
Appeal
I challenge you to
* Receive work as a blessing from God
* Do your work as unto the Lord
* Glorify God by your work habits
* Find a lesson of divine truth in your work that will continually remind you of our Creator and Redeemer.
