Today's Sermon Is About Work

Sermon.973

“Today’s Sermon Is About Work!”

Colossians 3:23,24

Senior Adult Day

From the pulpit of Bayview Baptist Church, Sunday, May 6, 2001

Senior citizens are survivors!

Consider the many changes seniors have witnessed:

Seniors were born before television, before penicillin, before polio shots, frozen foods, Xerox, plastic, contact lens, Frisbees, radar, credit cards, laser beams, ballpoint pens, pantyhose, dishwashers, clothes dryers, electric blankets, air conditioners, and before man walked on the moon.

Seniors were born before computers, before day care centers, group therapy, 8 track tape decks, C D players, electronic typewriters, artificial hearts, word processors, pizzas, McDonalds, and instant coffee.

Seniors were born in a time when a chip meant a piece of wood and software wasn’t even a word.

You could purchase a new Ford or Chevy for about $600.00 and gasoline was approximately 15 cents per gallon.

Pot was something you cooked in not something people smoked!

No wonder there is a generation gap today.

But guess what, Seniors, you have survived, and you have reason to celebrate!

You not only celebrate, but you are the pillars of the community who continue to work and produce excellence for your homes, our country and world, and excellence for God.

Does excellence matter to God?

Does it make a difference to God how well you do things?

Some people would say that all God cares about is our hearts, and what matters to God are the internal things like love, compassion, and humility.

That’s partially right because God is certainly concerned with our hearts; but God also cares immensely about those things that are the expressions of our hearts.

God cares about the way we live our faith day-to-day.

He even cares about the level of commitment we have in doing our daily routines well, because these things bring honor and glory to God in every area of our lives.

God says when you work with your soul(Greek text), you are to do the very best work possible.

When my wife and I are out there collecting those rare Beanie Babies, we do our best, so:

The bottom line is: God wants our best and He deserves our best!

Let’s talk about the word “work” for a moment!

Confucius said, “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

An unknown person once said, “A woman’s work is never done, especially the part she asks her husband to do.”

Today’s sermon is about work!

The first verse in the Bible says that “God created.”

He worked!

God is the person who invented work.

By the seventh day, God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day (which is a day of completion), He rested from all His work.

God invented both work and rest.

The Old Testament perspective concerning work is that man and woman were created by God to subdue the earth and rule over it doing their work.

In the Old Testament, work is a God created ordinance.

The wisest man to live, other than Christ, was Solomon, King David’s son and the third king of the mighty nation of Israel.

Solomon wrote about work, “A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God” (Ecclesiastes Chapter 2).

So, that’s some of the Old Testament perspectives on work.

When we get to the New Testament, we find that the biblical view of work is refined.

Jesus worked.

He was a full time carpenter until the age of 30.

Jesus once said, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working” (John 5:17).

The New Testament view of work is that it’s something we should be participating in, for “we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works…” (Ephesians 2:10).

That reminds me of a story about an older sister who was working in the kitchen teaching her younger sister how to cook, and the younger sister asked her, “Why do you cut off the ends of the meat on the pot roast before you cook it?”

The girl’s older sister told her that she thought it added flavor to it, but perhaps she should ask her mother, since her mother had taught her to do that.

So the little girl went into the den and found her mother and asked, “Mom, why do you and my sister cut off the ends of the meat on the pot roast before you cook it?”

Her mother said, “I think it makes the meat tender since it soaks up the juices in the pot, but why don’t you ask your grandmother, since she is the one who taught me how to do that.