“Shove That Job – I’ll Take It”
Ecclesiastes 5:18-20
(Labor Day Message)
We are in the third message of a series entitled “Seven of the Most Important Decisions You Will Ever Make”. Since this is Labor Day weekend, this is a great time to talk about the blessing it is to have a job. Some of us remember the old country western classic, “Take This Job and Shove It” sung by Johnny Paycheck. A few years later during a recession of the early 1980’s, I heard someone say that the new version of the song had been changed to say, “Shove That Job – I’ll Take It!”
Did you hear about the young college graduate who was interviewing for his first job? When the HR Director asked him what he was looking for, the young man explained that he wished to start at a salary of $100K, be placed in a corner office and he wanted his own secretary. The HR guy responded by offering to add a matching dollar for dollar to his 501K as well an automobile of his choice, preferably a BMW. He looked at the young man and asked how that sounded. He replied, “Are you kidding me???” The HR guy said, “Of course I am but you started it”.
Not everybody seems to appreciate their job. Perhaps, you have read some of these employee reviews that have been floating around on the Internet.
"Since my last report, he has reached rock bottom and has started to dig."
"His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity."
”This guy slipped into the gene pool when no one was looking. “
"This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definitely won’t be."
"Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."
"When she opens her mouth, it seems that this is only to change whichever foot was previously in there."
"He would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle."
"This young lady has delusions of adequacy."
"She sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."
"This employee should go far - and the sooner he starts, the better."
"This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."
"A gross ignoramus--144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus."
"When his I.Q. reaches 50, he should sell."
"She donated her brain to science before she was finished using it."
"If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you’d get change."
When it comes to our career, most of us have our dream job and then we have our real job. How did you end up in the job that you have? How did you end up in the career choice that you made? Would you describe yourself as being happy with that choice? Do you look forward to going to work each day? Have you ever considered the link between your work and how that impacts your walk with Christ? Your job is a big deal to God. In fact, there is a lot of plain talk in the Bible about work. Here are a few examples:
We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat. 13And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right. (2 Thessalonians 3:11-12)
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, 12so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12)
For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." (2 Thessalonians 3:10)
Laziness brings on deep sleep, and the shiftless man goes hungry. (Proverbs 19:15)
The sluggard’s craving will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work. (Proverbs 21:25)
“He who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work , doing something useful with his hands”. (Ephesians 5:28)
There are several reasons why so many people are not happy with their jobs. Some of us feel underappreciated by our employees. Others of us followed the career path we did to please our parents. Some of us did it for the money while others of us chose the road of least resistance. The good news is that more people are changing careers mid-stream than ever before. There are more ways to return to schools and re-tool yourselves than ever before. In fact, a huge cottage industry has sprung up on the Internet specifically for this purpose. Sites such as Monster.com, the Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com have huge pages dedicated to meet this need. In preparation for this message, I typed in “career change” to Google and more than 28 million choices of responses popped up.
I have a good friend who decided to take early retirement from the Petroleum Engineering profession. This was a man who was extraordinarily successful in more than 20-plus years of service to Phillips 66 but walked away from it three years ago. Today, he is building houses for disenfranchised people and has never been happier with his life. Let me suggest some ways you can appreciate your job and see it as a way of serving the Lord.
I. Whatever Your Job Is, View It As a Blessing
It occurred to me in writing this message that some people may have the wrong idea about work based on the story of Adam and Eve. They are under the impression that man was never intended to work and only was saddled with this responsibility after sin came into the world. However, that is not at all what the Bible teaches. From the very beginning, God has responsibilities that Adam was charged with. Notice these verses found in the book of Genesis.
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. 4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work 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… 19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
From day one, God gave Adam responsibilities to complete in the Garden of Eden. Even before that, God set the example for us of a productive life where it says that God finished the work he had been doing. Now, what happened when Adam and Eve sinned and found themselves banished from the Garden of Eden? We find the answer in chapter three of Genesis.
17 To Adam he said,
"Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ’You must not eat of it,’
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."
Now, catch this important distinction. God didn’t curse Adam or curse his work. He cursed the ground – or, in other words, God made the ground much more resistant to Adam’s work. Adam could still get results from the tilling of the ground – but, only with hard and difficult labor. Now, there were thistles and thorns where there once were none. Sweat would be required for bread to be provided. The dirt that now was cursed would also claim their lives someday.
What does that mean? Work has never been a curse but a gift from God and a part of his purpose and plan for mankind from the beginning. The way sin impacted our work is simply that it made it more difficult to accomplish than it once was. However, work is not a curse from God but one of his greatest gifts. It is a blessing to have a job. If you don’t believe me, try going without one for a while and see how you like it!
The best way to choose a career or to improve your attitude about your current position is to change your attitude about it. Look at it not as a burden but as a blessing to you from the Lord. It’s not only a blessing to have a job – it’s a blessing to have the health to be able to work. Ask someone who has become disabled and can no longer do so. It’s a blessing to have a job in which you are able to utilize the talents and abilities that God provided to you.
“The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic--in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea--known to medical science is work. “
- Thomas Szasz, M.D.
Ronald Reagan was famous for saying, “The man who does what he loves will never work another day in his life”.
One of the things you should ask yourself about your current job is if it is something that you can fall in love doing. Do you have a true passion for it? Or you excited each day to get back to facing the challenges it presents to you. If you cannot answer, “Yes” to that question, evaluate why and what can be done to change it. If it’s an attitudinal adjustment that must be made, begin praying for God to do that. On the other hand, if you have taken this career path for all of the wrong reasons, don’t stay in this rut. The right job for the right person is a blessing God wants you to know and experience!
II. View Your Job As A Bridge
The right job will be a bridge for you to accomplish many wonderful things. Here are just some of the more obvious ones.
(1) It is a bridge for building a good reputation. Someone has wisely said, “Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it Autograph your work with excellence. “
One of the great joys of my life occurred many years ago when I was a Youth Pastor of a growing church. The community had gone through a difficult time economically and our church board was forced to freeze salaries for two consecutive years. These were years when inflation was running at double digit numbers so were actually losing ground financially over those two years. However, in the third year things were beginning to turn around and the Finance Committee of the church granted to the pastors a 10% raise for the coming year. After the meeting, I was asked to remain behind by the Chairman when as the other Pastors left. I was then told that the board had been watching the quality of my work during the previous 24 months and had reached a decision about me. They told me that I would be receiving the same 10% raise the other men were being given – but, that I would be receiving an additional 10% raise for the hard work I had done during those difficult days. Do you think that made me work harder in the following years? It absolutely did because I now had a reputation that I wanted to protect and build upon. Our jobs are a bridge for building a good reputation. How is that going for you?
(2) It is a bridge for ministering to the needs of others. Your job offers to you a wonderful opportunity for reaching out and meeting others needs.
“Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people”. (Galatians 6:10)
“Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. .(Philippians 2:4)
If you will pay closer attention, you may find that the reason God has placed you in the job that you have is that you might have the opportunity to reflect the love of Christ towards them. There is an old adage that says, “People will never care what we know until they know that we care”. Who do you work with that needs to know that you care about them?
(3) It is a bridge for introducing the reality of Jesus Christ. Many of the people whom you work with will never come to a church service like this one. Few of them are going to turn on their television and hear a gospel message and fewer still are going to get into the automobile and drive to any type of crusade. What does that leave? It leaves the powerful tool of a Christian testimony. God hasn’t called you to preach in the cafeteria or pass out tracts on your coffee break. However, he has called you to begin to build relationships when the gospel can be naturally introduced. In fact, the New Testament model we discover taught is one in which the conduct and character of believers working side by side with non-believers is so powerful that they are the ones who initiate a conversation with you about faith. Listen to how Paul describes that happening.
“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” (Colossians 4:5-6)
Here is how Peter describes our bridge building methodology.
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. (1 Peter 3:15-16)
Let me tell you about a man I know who did this in an extraordinary way. Several years ago, there was this little man with meager resources and without the benefit of much of an education who began attending the church where my father was pastor when I was a teenager. His name of Albert and he was the kind of person who often goes overlooked in a crowd of people. It would have been easy for him to have become an anonymous attendee but my Dad always had an eye for people like that. He gave Albert a very important job in the church. It was his responsibility to light the heater on the baptistery in the church. If he didn’t do his job, the water was going to be stone cold and even the bravest convert finds it hard to step into cold water for a Baptism. All the years that I knew Albert, he drove a milk truck for home deliveries. But, I discovered a few years ago that after I left for college, Albert went to work selling life insurance. He would have been the last person that I would have ever expected to do something like that but evidently he did fairly well at it.
Not too long before my dad died, I heard him tell a story about Albert and his career as an insurance salesman. It seemed that several times a year Albert was put in a position to attend conventions and trainings with other men in his company. Evidently, their lifestyle was quite different from that of Albert and he was the only one that professed to be a Christian. However, he had come up with an ingenious way to introduce Christ to those men. Several of them smoked as many did in those days and Albert always made it a point to carry a book of matches with him. Whenever they were prepared to light a cigarette he would pull out a match to light it for them. Invariably, they would be surprised at the fact that he was carrying matches since they thought that he didn’t smoke. With a smile, my father recounted, Albert would explain that he didn’t but that he carried matches with him because it was his job nearly every Sunday to light the baptistery at his church. And from there he would explain about faith in Christ and how baptism was the means for declaring a person’s public faith in Jesus Christ.
What kinds of bridges are you building to introduce the reality of Christ where you work?
III. View Your Job As A Building Project
There are two particularly strong passages of scripture which, if taken to heart and applied, will change the heart and the mind of a Christian about their job, whatever it may be.
The first passage is found in the advice Paul provided to the Christians in one of the earliest churches.
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.(Colossians 3:23-24).
The implication of this verse is clear: as a Christian, it is much more important HOW you do what you do to earn a living that it is WHAT you do to earn a living. We have this unfortunate practice of attributing greater worth to some people because of the job that they hold. We also tend to denigrate people who serve in jobs we may look down at or not fully appreciate. The truth of the matter – any job you hold may be transformed when you view it as a way to serve the Lord and glorify God in whatever it is that you do. This verse was written to people who were living, for the most part, as nothing more than menial slaves. There lives were never going to improve, their work conditions would always be bleak and seldom, if ever, were their fortunes going to improve. Everything changes, however, when you begin to view your occupation as both a way to honor God and to represent God in the way in which you accomplish your daily tasks.
The second passage is even more profound. It is directed to the Christians who lived in Corinth.
“For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. 10By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. 11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. 14If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.” (1 Corinthians 3:9-15)
Take a moment and let the truths of this passage soak in. As you do, reconsider what you do or what you are considering doing and evaluate in light of this important teaching. It drives home one of the most crucially important truths about our professions. Notice that we work not for a corporation, not for a company, not for a boss or even for ourselves if we own our own business. Whatever we do, we work for the Lord. We are fellow workers with him and with other Christians. And the sum of our labors is going to be inspected by God at the end of our lives. More specifically, God is going to inspect the building products we have utilized throughout the years. He is going be look to see if we built our lives and our professional reputations with products that will not stand the test of time nor the storms of life – of if we built them with the kinds of materials that can pass the test of time, the test of tribulation and the trained eye of God.
It is clear from reading the New Testament that ultimately, we are going to give an account for what we have done with our talents, with our treasures and with our time. Since in the sum of a person’s life, so much of all three of those components will have been linked to our jobs, our accountability before God necessitates a careful consideration of how we live out our careers.
The test of fire eventually comes to every one of us. Once they have come, it becomes clear to us what kind of foundation we have used to construct our lives. The simplest way to speak of that when it comes to our career choices is that those decisions will have either lifted up the name of Jesus and brought others closer to the Lord – or it will have been the principal and primary obstruction which came between us and obedience to the Lord. The flame will not corrode or blacken gold, for fire burns it pure and clean, and gives it a shining color.
Three men worked side by side as masons on a great cathedral. Each one was asked why he did what he did it. The first man answered that he was working for a certain amount of money each day. The second man said he was a brick layer and did so to pay off a hospital debt. The third man said he was building a great building for the worship of God. All three men were doing the same tasks but with far different intentions. God wants you to find joy and purpose in your labor. As the shadows fell on the life of Solomon and he reflected back upon his life, this is the conclusion to which he came.
“Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him” (Ecclesiastes 5:18-19).
An American television network filmed an interview with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India, a woman who gave her life to feed starving people and minister to the dying. The person conducting the interview asked Mother Teresa about her feelings of being used of God to minister to the poor. Her little work was known world wide, even the President of the USA knew her and her labor of love. She answered, "But it is His work, I think God wants to show His greatness by using my Nothingness." She was asked later, " You feel you have no special qualities?" Mother Teresa replied, "I don’t think so. I don’t claim anything of the work. It is His work and I am like a little pencil in His Hand. That is all. He does the thinking, He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it. The pencil has only to be allowed to be used." What a beautiful story of this little woman using her talent to cook and feed others.
