Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - A Theology of Work

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

In this episode Jonny Ardavanis embarks on a new series surveying the Biblical themes of work, laziness, rest and time management. In this episode Jonny talks about 1. Work’s Designer, 2. Work’s Design, 3. Work’s Distortion, 4. Work’s New Dimension. The average individual spends 80,000 - 100,000 hours working during their lifetime. Can we possibly afford to not have our lives shaped by a biblical perspective of our work?Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hello everyone, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. I want to take a moment and thank all of you from all over the world for listening to this podcast. I've been grateful for the ways the Lord has used it and I hope the Dial In podcast has been a blessing to you and maybe even your family. I'm excited to embark on what I believe will be a four-week series on the theme of work. We will cover the biblical theology of work itself, laziness in our next episode, discipline, rest, and time management over the next month. If you find these episodes helpful, please share this series with your family and your friends. I'm excited to dive in, so let's get to work and let's dial in. When I was 10 years old, my dad came home from work one day and asked me

if I wanted to go to a conference with him in Milwaukee. He was a pastor and still is a pastor and we were living in Chicago at the time. So this was like a three hour drive from Chicago to Milwaukee. And he told me that if I went with him, he would buy me a pack of basketball trading cards. So I did the quick math, six hours of driving, a couple hours of listening to my dad preach for a $2 pack of basketball cards. No brainer. I went, but turns out my dad wasn't taking me to a Bible conference, but to the Los Angeles Laker game against the Milwaukee Bucks. I was pumped out of my mind. After the game, he said we had to go to a different way to the parking lot, but it wasn't the parking lot at all. My dad ushered me right into the Los Angeles Laker locker room.

I met Shaq. I met Kobe. I mean, if you know me, you know that this was the greatest day and the greatest gift of my entire life, a gift I will never, ever forget. But the best gift my dad gave me wasn't a Laker game. The greatest gift my dad gave me outside of instructing me in the ways and understanding of the gospel was a lesson that I learned over many years. The greatest thing my dad ever gave me was a biblical work ethic. My dad was, and my dad is a hard worker, and he raised

his boys and his girls to work hard. We live in a country that is progressing towards socialism, but this, of course, is not how our country was founded, for those of us who live in the United States. The United States was founded upon something that was known as the Protestant work ethic, a work ethic that was grounded in biblical convictions. The earliest settlers of our country were known not only for their religious fervor, but for their diligent labor. They were known for being hard workers. Culturally, and even amongst many professing Christians, this high view and high regard for work is being abandoned. Furthermore, in Christian circles today, there seems to be an overemphasis on the good and biblical subject of rest and

Sabbath at the expense of providing a biblical worldview of work. Let me just explain what I mean in this regard. I hear many millennials and Gen Zers asking me if I have read the recent books on rest and Sabbath and Shalom and busyness. But I am rarely ever asked, Johnny, have you read the new book on the God-honoring, human-dignifying theme of work? Now, to be fair, many people today find themselves in opposite gutters along the highway of biblical work. Those gutters being laziness, idleness,

and a lack of discipline on one side, and then the other gutter being workaholism, where money, success, and notoriety become your idol. Some people spend their life chasing meeting after meeting or shift after shift. And others spend their lives binging show after show or scrolling reel after reel on their phone. Side note in this regard, the average person listening to this podcast scrolls their smartphone and peruses Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, or NBC Peacock

a total of seven hours a day. That's over 2,500 hours in a year, which means that over the next four years, you'll spend one year looking down at your phone or looking at the television. Assuming you reach the average US life expectancy of 78 years old, the average person listening to this podcast will spend 15 of those years watching television. There is indeed a reality where many Christians are distracting themselves into spiritual oblivion and phone-saturated television binging Christians will likely never turn the world upside down with

the gospel. Many people want to change the world for Christ, but few have the self-control to get off Instagram. Now back to work, literally in this sense, we need our view of work to be aligned with God's word and God's way. And at times I believe we are now living in an environment where there can be at times an allergic reaction to hard work. In this episode, I want to provide for you a theology of work. If you are to live for Christ faithfully while you are here on earth, you must have a biblical framework of what, in many ways, God has made you to do. In this episode, I want to cover four main ideas regarding work. Number one, I want to look at works designer. Dallas Willard was a Christian philosopher whose writings are shaping

many young adults today through the continued writing of his disciples, John Ortberg and John Mark Comer. Willard was once asked, if you had to describe the life of Jesus in one word, which word would you use? Now, I want you to think with me of all the words that you could use to describe the life, teaching, and incarnation of Jesus. But what was Willard's response to that question? What word would you use to describe the ministry of Jesus? Well, he used the word relaxed. He uses the examples of Jesus' interruptibility and unhurried life as the example, meaning that Jesus would be on his way somewhere, and then he would be interrupted by someone in need,

and he would stop to help them. This tenderness and compassion of Jesus is, of course, true, but the word relaxed provides connotations of Jesus' life and ministry that are hard to reconcile with that of the scripture. I'm not disparaging the work of Willard as a whole, nor that of Ortberg or Comer, but I do believe this idea of Jesus being relaxed needs to be addressed as we approach the theme of work as a whole. Now, I love the gospel of Mark, and one of the unique things about Mark's gospel is that he uses a specific word 41 times throughout his writing. This word appears a total of 10 other times throughout the rest of

the New Testament, 51 total times, but 41 times in Mark's gospel alone. That word is immediately in your translation or right away. And in the first chapter alone, Mark uses this word immediately to describe what Jesus was doing 11 times. Now what's the significance here? Mark wants you to understand something. Jesus wasn't waltzing through his life. He was working. He was on a mission and was on a divine timetable. As we understand works designer, we need to understand that Jesus and God himself is a working God. Jesus says in John 9, 4, I must work the works of my father.

In John 4, 34, Jesus says, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. In fact, Jesus will say exactly the same thing in John 5, 17, when he says, my father is working still, and I am working. After hearing this, the Jews went nuts because they said he's making himself equal with God because Jesus says that he does the work that God does. When we talk about work, we must understand fundamentally that the God who made you and me

is a worker. Jesus was a teacher for three years, but he was a carpenter for 20. His hands were not soft. They were calloused and splintered and hardened by labor. Jesus, in whom all the fullness of deity dwells, represents to us that God is not a relaxed deity. He is working. Now the question is, how does God work? Well, God works when he created the heavens and the earth. He works right now as he sustains the universe in Hebrews 1 by the word of his power. He works as he providentially channels the hearts of kings and kingdoms to accomplish his perfect plan for his glory and our good. He works as he answers prayer and accomplishes redemption. Jesus is a worker because John 1 says all things were made by him and apart from him, nothing has been made that is made. Jesus was

working as the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. He worked during his incarnation. He was a carpenter. He would have built doors and bridges. And the Old Testament, he worked during his incarnation. He was a carpenter. He would have built doors and bridges. And in his ministry, he worked as a teacher and a healer. And after his ascension, he continues to work right now as he prepares a place for you in glory. He is working as he rules and reigns over all creation. The Holy Spirit is also a worker. He hovered over the waters in creation.

He is transforming hardened hearts. He is illuminating our minds to the scripture. He is interceding for believers right now with groanings too deep for words. Understand this. God is a working God. And you don't understand the nature of God until you understand that he is a worker, not in the sense where he is expending energy because he has no body, but in the sense where

he is constantly upholding, sustaining, answering prayers, orchestrating nations, kingdoms, and individuals to accomplish his perfect plan. God is not relaxed. He is working. So that is works designer. The designer of work is a worker. Now, secondly, I want to look with you at works design, works designer. The designer of work is a worker. Now, secondly, I want to look with you at works design, works design. In the opening chapter of Genesis, in Genesis 1, 26 through 28,

God sets the scene. He says, let us make man in our own image. And then immediately, what God commissions for them to do is to work. I want you to imagine the scenario playing out in Genesis 1. God made a perfect world. Now, maybe you imagine the jungle in Lion King with the waterfalls and the lush gardens, or maybe that's only me. But the world that God had made and the garden he had placed man in were not just tov, it was tov ma'ov in Hebrew. It's not just good, but very good. And before the fruit, before the serpent, and before Cain crushed Abel with the leg of a table, as my grandpa used to say,

men and women were placed in a garden. And the first instruction given to them by God was to do what? To be fruitful and multiply. Then every successive imperative in Genesis 1.28 is going to flow out of this. In verse 28, God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Adam and Eve were given dominion over all of the animals and God placed Adam and

Eve in the garden to be his image bearers, to represent who he is and the immediate instruction he provides is that they are to work. In verse 26, the word let them rule over is used five times, that Adam and Eve were to preside over God's creation, to have dominion over fish, over cattle, over every creeping thing. And God assigns this work to them before the fall and before original sin. This mandate that God gave them to work has never been withdrawn nor need to be repeated. It is still a part of God's will for all of mankind. Work in the garden was a good thing and it's given to us by a good God. Therefore, idleness is a sin. Laziness is ungodly and labor is noble and godly. Labor is a part of our dignity as humans. Only men can write symphonies and only men and women

can shoot movies. Only men and women can make the Eiffel Tower or pour a cappuccino or carve marble statues. This is part of the nobility of being a man. And this is what it means to be an image bearer of a creator God. Whenever we create something new, we are imitating God's creativity. We are imitating his wisdom, his skill, his strength, and intelligence. The curiosity that spawns the creation of a new instrument carved from the wood of a tree with strings made in ancient times from animal gut, yes, animal gut, represents the creative power, skill, and strength and personality of the God who made us, whether that is paper from a tree or laptop screens made from sand.

In all of this, we are imitating God's creative activity. God creates out of nothing. We create out of existing matter. In work, we show the wonder of our God. This is how God made us to be. Whenever we bake a cake or when we come up with a medicinal discovery or prepare our growing company for an IPO, this is a way we can reflect God. Animals can do some work.

Dogs can grab you a snack from the fridge. Oxen can help you plow. But only human beings can create. Beavers can build dams, but they cannot make cell phones. Work gives mankind the unique privilege of creating value. When Sally makes a shirt for $3 and sells it for $14, she just added $11 of value to the world that didn't exist before. This is a uniquely human thing. God has made you to work and he tells you to work. And this alone provides your work with dignity. And it doesn't matter whether you're not, you're a surgeon

or a server at a restaurant. Your work is inherently good and valuable because the Lord tells you to do it. Furthermore, work is a way you love your neighbor. When the farmer grows, when the baker bakes, when the builder builds, when the transporter transports, and when the sales guy sells, God is providing for you and consequently loving you through other people's work. Martin Luther, who had much to say on the topic of work, helps us understand that whenever there is good order or good city planning, whenever you marry and bear children, that is God in disguise. When you dig a ditch, when you write a play, you are God in disguise. Now the question is, why didn't God create the world in such a way where Adam and Eve wouldn't have to work in order to survive? I want you to

imagine a scenario with me. When a father takes his son camping and has the son gather wood and kindling for the fire, it's for multiple reasons, is it not? Well, number one, yes, so that the boy will not grow cold at night. But not only that, the father has the boy go and grab wood and kindling because the father wants to involve the son in what he is doing because the father loves his child and wants to involve him. This is how God works. Does your work matter to God? Absolutely. And it doesn't matter whether you have a career of prominence or obscurity. The work you do matters. William Tyndale once said that if we look externally, there is a difference between washing dishes and preaching the word of God. But in regards to pleasing God, there is no difference at all.

Now third here, I want to look at works distortion in Genesis chapter 3. We've looked at works designer. We've looked at works design. And now I want to look at works distortion. In Genesis chapter 3 verses 16, it says to the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your pain and childbirth. Now this is after Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree of good and evil. He says your pain and childbirth and pain, you will bring forth children. Yet your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. Then to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from

the tree about which I commanded you saying, you shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you. And in toil, you will eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles. It shall grow for you and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. As we've covered, the fall did not introduce work. It changed its nature. We often think of work itself as a curse, but work is not a curse. Mankind was workers before the fall, and they will be workers in the new heavens and the new earth. It says, Work is now done by the sweat of our brow. There is now a difficulty for God's people to work in God's world.

This curse is not to be lifted, and we will work all of the days of our life, and by it we will glorify God. But in the midst of it, thorns and thistles, literally and figuratively, will abound. There will be speed bumps and challenges, and now in the workplace our lives will be often challenging. After the fall, God has frustrated what he had created us to do. Women are now going to experience pain and childbearing, and men are going to have painful toil on the ground. The world is not going to cooperate with us anymore, and our bodies is not going to cooperate with us anymore and our bodies are not going to cooperate with us anymore. So this makes work hard. Now to our fourth title here, works new dimension. The question is, how can we bring God glory now? How do we work effectively in a post

fall post curse environment? This is by the way, a question that matters, whether you are a businessman or a housewife, we will stand before God and we will be judged on whether or not we have done the work assigned for us to do. The reformers used to say that inscribed upon every tool, every instrument and every pen, there should be an inscription, God delights in work. And what the world considers to be a curse, the Christian should consider a blessing. So back to our question, how can we bring God glory now? Well, when you claim to be a Christian but deliver poor quality work laced with grumbling and complaining, you make the gospel look bad. I want you to consider, can you really say that you belong wholly to God if you don't honor him with your effort and labor

40 hours throughout the week? Your faith doesn't have nothing to do with work. It has everything to do with work. And you need to learn this now because the older you get, the more locked into this value system you become and the more divorced you may become from a biblical work ethic. Furthermore, work is more than just a place to win people to Christ. It's a place to honor God through the labor itself. I find it funny that people often pray for mission strips before people travel. They pray for seminary. They pray for the pastor before he preaches. But very few people pray for the workman on his way to work, just to his business. But in God's eyes, there is no distinction. Colossians 1.18 says that Christ deserves and demands preeminence in everything.

Therefore, every job, except for deliberately sinful ones, are dignifying and honoring to God. But under this banner of works new dimension, I want to look at four brief elements of how the Christian is to work. Number one, we glorify God by working with enthusiasm. Colossians 3.23 says, whatever you do, Paul told the Colossians, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. Ecclesiastes 9.10 says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all of your might. The Christian is to work with gusto. It is natural to be enthusiastic about your work if your work is prominent, but less natural when your work is in the shadows. Kent Hughes tells the story of a conductor of a great symphony orchestra who was once asked, what's the most difficult instrument to play? What do you think he said? Well, this great conductor said,

second violin. He said, we can get plenty of first violinists, but to get someone who will play second violin with enthusiasm, that is a problem. The Bible wants to ask you a question because it's a living and active word. Do you work at a restaurant? Are you a trash man? Are you a lawyer? Are you a doctor? Work with enthusiasm. It doesn't have to be your forever job to honor the lord with enthusiasm in the here and now secondly we glorify god by working with enjoyment ecclesiastes 2 24 and 25 says that we are to find enjoyment in our toil this is from the hand of god additionally it says in ecclesiastes 5 18 this is solomon speaking he says here's what i have seen to be good and fitting, to eat, to drink, and to enjoy oneself in all one's labor, in which he toils under the sun.

Work is to be seen as part of God's purpose and one of the privileges that God has extended to us to enjoy. Work is to be seen as a rightful source of personal fulfillment and dignity. Therefore, we should strive to be productive, hard, and cheerful workers knowing that it pleases God. I've often heard the axiom, enjoy what you do and you'll never work a day in your life. We are to enjoy our work, but if you're looking for a job where no day will ever feel like work, I'm afraid you're going to need to ask Elon Musk to take you to another planet. Every job has its thorns and every job has its own difficulty. So the question is, how can we

enjoy our work regardless of the difficulty or the challenges that we may face? Well, Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 12, 13, after saying much on the subject of work, he says the conclusion when all has been said is to fear God. Solomon will help us understand that the key that unlocks the door to fulfillment, whether or not you necessarily enjoy your job or not, is the fear of God. Because when we fear God, we understand that the work that he has put in our life is a gift from God, and we will understand that work is a way in which we can imitate our creator and love our neighbor. So if you want to enjoy what you do, you grow in the fear of the Lord and learn that work itself is God honoring. And as we labor, we represent to those around us that we have been made in the image of God. Third, we are to glorify

God by working with excellence. Work that is truly Christian is work that is well done. Genesis 1 describes God's own commitment to excellence when it says that God saw everything that he made and behold, it was very good. God looked at what he had done and he did it with excellence. And Christians should always do good work. I worked at a restaurant for six years and I loved it. I remember I got hired initially because my brother and sister both worked there before me. They worked hard and when they, the restaurant that is, found out that there were more kids in the Art of Anna's Quiver, they hired me. This isn't as much a pat on my own back as it was the environment that we had all grown up in.

Christians ought to be the best workers wherever they are. They ought to have the best attitude, the most integrity, and the greatest degree of dependability. Sadly, statistically, there is little difference in the work ethics of Christians and non-Christians. And if this is true, there is cause for much alarm. I know Christian business owners who steer clear of hiring Christians because they waltz into the workplace less motivated and more entitled than the others. But how could this possibly be? When you as a Christian present sloppy work to your boss, you are presenting sloppy work to your God. For Christians to not work with excellence, there is a sign that our lives are spiritually dysfunctional. Why? Well, because it

is impossible to dedicate over half of one's waking hours, 80,000 to 100,000 hours in an average lifetime, to inferior biblical work ethic and not suffer spiritual injury. Girls, are you looking for a man to marry? Well, don't marry a lazy one. Guys, are you looking for a man to marry? Well, don't marry a lazy one. Guys, are you looking for a woman to marry? Don't marry a lazy one. And everyone, if your job is difficult or if it seems menial, is it the same thing day after day? The Lord says it doesn't matter. You are to do your work with excellence, to do it with joy, and to do it as a way to worship him. Have you been passed over for recognition or for a reward? Well, you can do your work well and with excellence right now, looking forward to a reward to come, not from your boss,

but from the Lord of all creation. Now, fourth and finally here, we are to glorify God by working with integrity, by working with integrity. In Ephesians 6, Paul says, bond servants, verse 5, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ, not by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as bond servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. The impetus for excellence is when we remember that all of our work is before the will of God from the heart. The impetus for excellence is when we remember that all of our work is before the eyes of God. Paul helps us in Ephesians 6. He says, be a God pleaser, not a man pleaser. The instruction that Paul provides here assumes that there will always be a lingering temptation to work for lesser motives, to do your work for the wrong reasons, and to please the eye

of the wrong people. But the believer works as if God's eye is always upon them, meaning that sometimes people can spend the entire day looking at Facebook, and as soon as their boss walks around the corner, they shut down their browser and look like they're working busily. Your boss might be fooled for a while, but God is not. Christians don't do the bare minimum. They work with excellence and they work with integrity as unto the Lord. When Paul says that we work as unto the Lord, he means that God not only expects you to work hard, but he expects you to have a good attitude while you do it. And Paul here isn't writing to CEOs. He's writing to slaves.

And yet the instruction of scripture is all the same. The second way you can be a man pleaser instead of a God pleaser is when you work to be noticed by men instead of doing your work as a means of worship to the Lord. Being employee of the month is not a bad thing. In fact, it's a great thing. But all excellent work should be fueled by a desire to honor an excellent God. Can I just encourage you as we begin to land the plane?

You don't ultimately work for your manager. You don't ultimately work for your immediate boss or your supervisor or your CEO. Every boss you have is middle management in view of the boss of all creation. Your work is not ultimately done before the eyes of your peers. It is done before the eyes of your creator. Your work matters to God. Your attitude while you work matters to God. Your drive for excellence matters to God. God is a worker, so those who are his creatures who strive to obey him must have an elevated view of work. Christians, as we just discovered, are to work with enthusiasm. They are to work with excellence. They are to work with integrity, and they are to work with a level of

joy. Now, you may be asking, what about rest? Well, I'll cover this important subject in a couple weeks. But for now, you need to understand this. We do not work so we can rest. We rest so we can work. We are not living for the weekend. God made us to strive for excellence. So we rest and live for the work week. God made you to work.

He wants to be honored by your work. So let's work well this week. Stay dialed in.