Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Has 'Sabbath Culture' Gone Too Far? A Biblical Theology of Work

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Is work a curse from the Fall — or something far more sacred? In this episode, we kick off a brand-new series on the theology of work, exploring what Scripture actually says about labor, calling, and vocation — starting not with us, but with God Himself.📖 Pre-order Jonny Ardavanis's new book Get to Work: Seeing Your Daily Grind as God’s Good Gift here: https://a.co/d/04k0sFpoWe dig into Genesis 1 to see God revealed as Creator, Artist, Sustainer, and Worker long before Adam and Eve ever showed up. We look at Jesus's own life — including His 20+ years as a tekton (carpenter/builder) — and unpack why the Gospel of Mark uses the word "immediately" 41 times to describe His ministry. If we're made in the image of a working God, what does that mean for how we view our own 9-to-5, our calling, and our sense of purpose?Along the way we talk about:✅ The Biblical theology of work vs. the "curse" mentality✅ Genesis 1 and God as Creator, Sustainer, and Artist✅ Jesus as a carpenter and what His "immediacy" reveals about work✅ Why Christians talk more about rest & Sabbath than a theology of work✅ Labor force participation, burnout, and finding balance✅ Work as worship — from CEOs to stay-at-home parents to busboysThis is Part 1 of a multi-part series diving into a comprehensive, Scripture-grounded view of work — setting up themes from the upcoming book "Get to Work."

So my dad wakes me up at like 6 a.m. on my 16th birthday. And he said, get your nicest outfit on. He takes me up at this point we had moved to L.A. area. He drives me up to about seven or eight miles from our house. He drops me off, hands me a cliff bar and a gatorade, and says, men work. Go find a job. Don't come home until you have one. I was like, happy birthday.

Literally. I've had countless people come up to me and ask me if I've read the most recent books on Sabbath, shalom, hurry, and rest. But I've never had a single person come up to me and grab me by the literal or proverbial caller and say, Johnny, have you read the most recent book on the God glorifying, human dignifying theme of work? If you don't know how to work through a biblical perspective,

you risk living your entire life with a significant spiritual injury. And it leaves people working really hard until they read a book about rest, and then resting really hard until they read a book about work, and this constant ping-ponging back and forth, which is not what we see as a comprehensive view of the subject before us

when we look to God's word. Hank, how we doing? Johnny, I'm doing great. How are you doing? Are you? Why they're great today? Well, no, can I actually, can I give you some context? Yeah. So I was actually looking back. I was trying to look at history.

I think it was four years ago. It might have been, I think it's about four years ago. Picture me, business attire, sitting in the Charlotte airport. I could still tell you which terminal I was sitting at Housing a Chick-Filly sandwich, and I'm listening to the first sermon I'd ever heard you teach was actually on work. And so just a little preview for the people in the back. I'm super fired up as we kind of pivot towards what's going to be a multi-part series on work. Is that right?

Yeah, that's great. I want to start to walk through some of the themes in my upcoming book, get to work. and I guess I'll ease into it by telling you about my favorite birthday. My favorite birthday, I was 10 years old. My dad woke me up in the morning and he said, Hey, John, we were living in Wheaton at the time. And he said, hey, if you drive to Milwaukee with me for a pastor's conference, I'll buy you a pack of cards.

And, you know, I'm like at this point, Milwaukee's a few hours from Wheaton, do some quick math, you know, three hours there, three hours back, pastor's conference, you know, I know how to hang with the pastors. You know, a pack of top basketball cards, no-brainer. Yeah. And I walk into this place that my dad had. told me was going to be this pastor's conference. And I start to see some guys that look familiar.

I'm like, dude, there's Derek Fisher. There's Rick Fox. Vegas Bice up in the NBA. Yeah, I'm like, and if you don't know who I'm talking about, I forgive you, but they were Los Angeles Lakers. And it turns out my dad wasn't taking me to a pastor's conference, but he was taking me to my first game to ever see the Lakers. And it was an awesome, in an awesome experience.

When we were leaving, this guy came up to my dad and said, hey, you need to leave this way. And so he leads us kind of through this cinderblock hallway. and we emerged not in the parking lot, but in like the waiting room for the locker room, kind of right outside the locker room. And I met Shaq, I met Kobe,

you know, Shaq's size 22 feet foot. Just slightly smaller than mine. Yeah. It was just, it's in my memory forever, but met Oscar Robinson, all these NBA legends.

And it was a birthday I'll never forget. And so with this in mind. Best gift you've ever received. Yeah, yeah, exactly. At that point, with this in mind, when my 16th birthday came around,

I'm like, dude, my dad, the big poppy took me to meet Shaq and Kobe for my 10th birthday. I'm going to play one-on-one with Jordan. What does he have cooked up for my sweet 16? So my dad wakes me up at like 6 a.m. on my 16th birthday. And he said, get your nicest outfit on. And I'm like, a whole baby. A corvette is in the driveway with Michael in it.

He takes me up at this point. We had moved to L.A. area. He drives me up to Stevenson Ranch in Valencia, about seven or eight miles from our house. and he drops me off, hands me a cliff bar and a gatorade, and says, men work, go find a job, don't come home until you have one. I was like, happy birthday. Literally. And, I mean, I thought it was a joke.

And it was not. That day I put in over 100 applications at, you know, pay less, Marshalls, J.C. Penny. I walk into a subway going, come on, please, Lord. I mean, the backbone of the American economy. Yeah, and Subway told me you don't have what it takes to be a sandwich artist. Johnny's been compensating ever since. I'm just like, I don't know what to do. And I remember kind of that idea, you know, at that time, even what my dad did may seem militaristic.

It's not like I was lazy. I had like some side businesses. Johnny's washing wax. You know, I was washing cars at that point. I had decent grades. I played sports. I remember thinking, why do I got to work? What's the deal here?

Well, and I remember I had heard this story previously. And it so resonated with me because one of the kind of early foundational conversations I had with my dad was I remember I was like seven or eight years old. I think we were coming home from Sunday school and we had learned about Abraham and the whole concept of a covenant and generations. And so I asked my dad kind of in passing like, hey, how about an inheritance? And I'll never forget. My dad stopped the car. This is 100% true. And he looked at me and said, I will never give you money.

But he said his point that he was making was, my job is to teach you how to make money. It's not to give you money. And so this is kind of the backdrop of when I was listening to this sermon for the very first time. I felt like it was immensely impactful and helpful for me because you put your finger on something that I think is maybe under talked about in kind of today's context. It has been addressed historically, but today it's not as addressed as frequently. And yet it's one of these deep theological principles that is so concrete to like our everyday life. There's all theology is practical, but there's something unique about the amount of waking time we spend working. And just helping build maybe a little bit more of a biblically structured foundation on which to kind of hang our understanding of work.

Yeah, we do spend the majority of our life, one third of our existence working. Ken Hughes is the one that said you'll spend 80 to 100,000 hours of your life working. and to not know how to think about that biblically means that our lives are going to suffer inevitable spiritual dysfunction. But I think even to your point, maybe as a reaction to growing up with their parents or whatever it may be,

it seems as if in many Christian circles today there seems to be an overemphasis on the good and necessary subjects of rest and Sabbath at the expense of providing a biblical worldview for work, and we're going to talk about those necessary subjects, rest and Sabbath. But I hear so many millennials and Gen Zers coming up to me. In recent years, I've had countless people come up to me and ask me if I've read the most

recent books on Sabbath, Shalom, hurry, and rest. But I've never had a single person come up to me and grab me by the literal or proverbial caller and say, Johnny, have you read the most recent book on the God glorifying, human dignifying theme of work? It's a way I mirror and mimic the God that made me. And I think because of that, it seems at least like there needs to be some balance because it feels like there is a cultural disjointing of some of the main priorities and principles that we see in God's Word. Absolutely. And you touched on this, but again, I want to keep in frame the object of the conversation is never to pendulum from one side to the other. And so I think you maybe even, I'm trying to remember to the manuscript, but I think you set this up in kind of the introductory sentences that depending on where you're hearing this, you're either carrying into the conversation a really healthy view of work, maybe an anemic view of work. or you might have been raised in a household where it was characterized by workaholism.

And so there's a plethora of ways people are going to be coming to this conversation. And the goal is not to ping pong against culture, but rather grounded scripturally. Yeah, I do think that there is culturally, and even amongst many Christians today, a high view and high regard for work as being largely abandoned. And we want to talk about both these spectrums. I was reading the Washington Times, and they say that the labor force participation rate, that is the percentage of able-bodied workers who are either employed, or looking for work is at a near 25-year low.

That means that 37% of able-bodied Americans who are neither students retired nor caring for children at home have voluntarily dropped out of the workforce. The article says that's millions of potential workers who, for whatever reason, have chosen a life of idleness. A 2010 Pew Research Study found that millennials,

that's my demographic, are the only age group who do not cite work ethic as one of their principal claims to distinctiveness. And then last thing here. And in a 2022 commentary, American Enterprise Institute economist Nicholas Eberstadt notes that in the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdown, so just in the recent five-ish years, he says there are seven million men of prime working age that are neither working nor looking for work. So that seems like an issue. Now, on the flip side, some argue that Americans are actually overworked in a Western context. 85% of males say they're overworked, 65% of females say they work more than 40 hours a week.

Now, this could be true. And I think, going back to what you said, I think a lot of people find themselves in opposite ditches along the highway of work. Many people spend their life going to meeting and pursuing sale after sale. And other people spend their life scrolling real after real and binging show after show. And it leaves people working really hard until they read a book about rest and then resting really hard until they read a book about work. And this constant ping ponging back and forth, which is not what we see as a comprehensive view of the subject before. us when we look to God's Word. Psalm 119 reads, how can a young man keep his way pure by keeping it according to your word?

One of the priorities of a person pursuing purity is the Word of God. I've said it before and I've written this for myself that if God's Word is not my priority, neither is my purity. Now, in addition to a love for the Word of God and a dependence upon the Spirit of God, one of the practical strategies for pursuing purity

in a world that is littered with impurity is having some form of digital accountability. You have access, I have access by just the devices we have as an orative element in our life to all sorts of sin. And I want accountability in my life. And so we've partnered up with accountable to you. And I've been using this software for the last several years and been so blessed by it. The other people on our team use it as well. And I want to recommend it to you. You can use our unique code dial in to get 25% off the first year for your personal or family plan, and you can check out more information at accountable to you.com forward slash dial in. Yeah, absolutely. And so with all that, we're going to look

to what the Bible says about work, but there's an interesting observation you make, which is maybe we need to actually ground the subject of work first in the creator. Yeah, exactly. And I think by human nature, we like to hear what the Bible says specifically about us right away. Like, how What does this apply to me? What does the Bible tell me? Give me the deeds. But we are made in the image of God. So when we're approaching the subject of work, we need to understand fundamentally what

is God like? That's the main question in this episode, just to be clear. Now Dallas Willard was a Christian philosopher whose writings have shaped many people, young adults today through the continued writing of those whom he has disciples and mentored and, you know, that appreciate his work. And Willard was once asked, if he had to describe the life and ministry of Jesus in one word, what would you say? And I want you to think of all the words that you could use.

But what was Willard's response? He said, if I had to describe the life and ministry of Jesus in one word, it would be the word, relaxed. And he uses these examples of Jesus who his interruptability, his unhurried life, I think good things, right? Like I'm not trying to throw stones unnecessarily. There was a tenderness and a compassion to Jesus. He lived his life with a divine composure because he trusted God.

And so there was an absence of panic in his life. but I would say and just gently and respectfully push back on that and say the word relaxed provides connotations of Jesus' life and ministry that are hard to reconcile with the comprehensive picture of Jesus that we see in the scripture and I think you at bare minimum need some balance and I want to start at the beginning because if you're a view of God if you had to describe God in one word and you use the word relaxed that's going to shape your life because as AWTOiser says what comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you

And so when you think about Jesus, and if the one word that is the central core of who he was during his incarnation is relaxed, that's going to shape your life. Now, the first verse of the Bible, and I'll explain more as I go, and I'm not trying to be unfair. The first verse in the Bible presents a working God. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the pagan view of things, that God's created a labor as a way to punish mankind. Work was beneath them. Marduk, the patron deity of Babylon says, I will establish a savage. man shall be his name, he shall be charged with the service of the gods, that they might be at ease.

So work was a curse for the savage humanity. But the very first words of the Bible describe the radical distinctiveness between the god of the Bible and the gods of Egypt, Babylon, and so forth. The God of the Bible doesn't despise work. He doesn't offload it to unfortunate creatures. He loves work. And the opening sentence of the Bible describes who he is as a creator. That's maybe if we're kind of thinking through this in some sort of structure. God is a creator is the first thing we have to examine.

God is an artist. It says here in the beginning God created. That's the Hebrew word, barra. Humans can asa, they can make, but only God can barra create. And it says in verse two, the earth was formless and void. I'm not like a Hebrew guy necessarily. I've studied it obviously in seminary or not obviously. I'm still learning, but I like that phrase for it was formless and void.

is Tohu wavohu. And it just means that there was nothing there, total emptiness, even chaos. And not only was it formless in void, it says that darkness was over the surface of the deep. That word is Hosek. It means that there is nothing there. And one commentator refers to verse two as the opening scene of the scripture is a galactic wasteland. It's dark all over.

And God dispels this darkness by the first words recorded in history. Let there be what? Let there be light. And in the same breath, God's going to see that happen, and he's going to declare it good. In verse 5, God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and there was evening, and there was morning,

and there was one day. Now, when he calls the light day, I want you to keep this in mind for maybe just future episodes. We look at the subject, and you'll read about this more in the book. Naming rights are the prerogatives of authority. When God tells Adam and Eve to name the animals, he's giving them authority.

So when it says that God calls the light day, that's something that God can do because he has all authority. In verse 6, I like this. It said, then God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the heavens. So don't get lost here.

This is, I mean, the Bible is epic. And I think in order to love God's word, you have to see the story of it. In verse 6, the NKJV translation of that says, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. So God's separating the sky in the waters. That word for firmament is from the Latin word, firmamentum, which literally means to stamp

something into place. It's the same word used in Job 37 of a process of molting glass or like a blacksmith in a shop. So verse 6 of the Bible presents God in his lab, so to speak. He is smelting and beating something into place. He's crafting. And the Bible wants you to understand. This is the God you serve. And so here he is this master artist. And then in verse 11, then God said, let the earth sprout vegetation. He turns into a gardener. I know I'm going quick here. But the whole scene of the opening pages of scripture is presenting God as an artist, a builder, an architect, a blacksmith. Then on the fifth day, verse 20, it says, then God said, let the waters team with swarms of living creatures, and let the birds above fly above the earth and the open expanse

of the heavens. God created the great sea monsters in every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind, and God saw that it was very good. Now, I know that those two verses, are pretty general. It's just as saying, God made all the animals. But I want to think about God's creativity for a moment, his commitment and his passion for excellence. God made

in a span of two verses here, creatures that move through the air and soar, glide, flutter, hover, dive, swoop, migrate, spiral, dart, wheel. He made creatures that move on the land and gallop, trot, bound, leap, scurry, scamper,

wadl, strut, prance, prow, shuffle, dash, sprint. And I had a lot more than these, but I just find this fascinating because this is a reflection of who God is. He made creatures that move through and on water and dive and plunge and breach and surface and float and drift and paddle, swim and wade. Creatures that tunnel, dig, perch, roost, nest, coil, slither, rhythm, ride, wiggle, squirm, contract. And then creatures that make all sorts of sounds that chirp, tweet, warble, screech, howl, roar. And all of this. And again, I have way more words to describe.

But all of this, God is going, Tov. This is all good. This is very good. And so when it just says God made all the creatures, you have to see this opening scene of the scripture as God's commitment to beauty and artistry and creativity. And it says that while he's doing this, my interpretation of Job 38, 7, when it says that the angels, the morning stars were singing with joy while God created the world, is that while God is doing all these things and making all these animals,

the angels are there watching, and there's a film score to everything that's happening because God is not only a builder and an engineer, he's a musician and he's a poet. And I like setting that up because, again, we're going to ask, what does it mean to be made in the image of God? But when God says, let us make man in our own image in Genesis 1-26, at that point, what do we know about God? He's a worker, and he loves to work, not because he has to, but for the sheer enjoyment of it. It's so helpful, and it just strikes me as I'm listening that there's almost a childlike wonder and beauty that needs to be recaptured that Genesis 1 is kind of be beckoning us towards.

As I walk through the street of maybe like a large city with our five-year-old or our two-and-a-half-year-old, you can see them darting around all these different sites they've never seen, sounds they've never heard, smells, they've never smelled. And we can become so numb in our routine. Yeah, absolutely, kind of just circuitous rhythm of the day. There's this element to where, as we're beckoned into the story, our eyes should gaze up at this unbelievable creator. And it just strikes me as we situate the conversation on work. We need to situate the conversation, actually in the doctrine of creation. And that's not an intuitive place to start, but actually there's no more foundational place to start. At least the doctrine of God in general.

And you start with creation. So we looked at that first with God as a creator. But even secondly, to look at God as a sustainer, God didn't just create the world once upon a time. he sustains the universe in every moment of every single day. Hebrews 1-3, I reference often when I'm preaching, that it says that Jesus upholds the universe by the word of his power. Like we're on a planet at a 23.5% tilted access, 93 million miles away from the sun.

God didn't just set up a process and then disengage and watch from the stadium of heaven while he eats popcorn. No, he is actively upholding and sustaining all things. It says in Colossians 117, he is before all things and in him all things hold together. That Greek word for hold-together Sinestican is literally that God keeps everything at every moment from falling apart. Acts 1728, in him we move and breathe and have our being.

So God didn't just do something. Acts 17, Paul saying that, no, he gives you every breath in your lung. He does that in your lungs. Every single person on planet earth. And even this idea in Psalm 104 I love. And again, I'm just painting for you the activity of God. In Psalm 104, verse 10, it says, that he sends for springs in the valleys.

They flow between the mountains. That's God. They give drink to every beast of the field. The wild donkeys quench their thirst. Besides them, the birds of the heavens dwell. They lift up their voices among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of his works.

He causes the grass to grow for the cattle and vegetation for the labor of man so that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine which makes man's heart glad. So bottom line here. God sends the rain to water the hills so the grass grows so the cattle can eat the grass so the cattle get fat because he knows that steak and wine make the heart of men glad. So all of this is God's activity and this is why Paul says in 1st, Timothy 6th, God gives everything for us to enjoy and he's active in the universe. He didn't just create it. He sustains it. And so I want to keep going because there's so much here to cover, but we've got to fit a lot into this first episode. He's the creator, he's the sustainer, keep rolling.

Well, God also works in Providence. And I mean, you could just look at a couple verses. Proverbs 21-1, the king's heart is like a stream of water in the hand of the Lord, and he turns it wherever he wills, meaning that God is directing the most powerful human rulers, but not just Joe Biden, also Joe Schmoe. Like he's directing the lives of every single person, Proverbs 169, the heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. God is guiding actual outcomes of human decisions.

And Ephesians 111 says that he is orchestrating all things according to the counsel of his will. So God is not disengaged from history, nor is he disengaged from my story. He's involved. And I think just fourth, and I think this is going back to the heart of what Dallas Willard said, I want to look at just Jesus' work and the incarnation.

So Dallas Willard said if he had to describe the life and ministry of Jesus in one word, he would use the word relaxed. And I want to look at that in comparison with the Gospel of Mark. I love the Gospel of Mark. It's the shortest gospel. One of the unique things about Mark's gospel is that he uses a specific word

41 times throughout his writing. Now, when I'm writing a book, I have an editor. If I use the same word over and over and over again, they're going to be like, bro, appreciate what you're doing here. Stop using stupendos. Yeah, but literally, stop using this word all the time.

Unless it's like, no, I want every single person that reads these chapters to hone in on a specific idea. This word that Mark uses is used 10 times elsewhere in the entirety of the other three Gospels, but 41 times in Mark's gospel alone, and the word is that you face. It literally means immediately or straight away or right away.

In the first chapter of Mark alone, Mark uses this word that's translated immediately to describe what Jesus was doing 11 times. What's the significance here? Well, Mark wants you to understand when you turn his gospel, when you read it, that Jesus wasn't waltzing through life. He was working.

And that's why he uses the word immediately, immediately, immediately, immediately. Because you do see this hustle, divine hustle, not panicked hustle, a divine mission in the life of Jesus. John 9-4, Jesus says, I must work the works of my father. John 434, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. John 517, my father is working and is working still. So when he said this, the Jews went nuts because he was making himself equal with God. And he was saying that when God works, I'm working. But I would just want someone to understand that when you're talking about God, you're talking about a God that is fundamentally a worker.

When he came in the incarnation, he didn't appear as a one writer refers to this. Like he didn't appear as a flowery romantic or a philosopher. He came to Earth and for the first 20 years of his life, he's a tecton. He's a carpenter. He didn't have soft, effeminate hands. I mean, this was a man's man whose hands were callished and splintered. And sometimes when we think about carpenter, we think that he was like making, you know, a kitchen cabinetry. But like, this was a construction worker.

For the first 20 years of Jesus' life as an apprentice in his father's shop. A stone mason. Yeah, a stone mason. He's building bridges. I mean, this is a guy that is working. Work was not beneath the god of the universe. That's why they say, is this not the carpenter? The son of the carpenter?

because far from work being too mundane or even the secular sacred divide that we talk about a lot. Like, oh, when Jesus came, he only taught. No, no, no. He was honoring the father for 20 years in obscurity as a bridge builder or a Mason. It just strikes me. There's so many things there. The immediately point, and not trying to like artificially dunk on previous quotes and take them out of context. I think the point being, what, if I'm listening to as an audience member, I'd be thinking,

there's an unrushed presence that Jesus brings into every interaction. Sure, that's like Martin Lloyd-Jones. Faith is the refusal to panic. He wasn't panicking, and I would say, like, I understand that. Absolutely. But we also need to, as students of the scripture, be aware of he's up before the sunrises, withdrawing to go pray. Why?

Because there's a solitude and a solemnity where he approaches his father and he's modeling for us. Also, practically, every other recorded moment for us, he's getting, crowded by people as he's banishing disease and demons. He's teaching in the temple, then he's healing someone, then he's casting out a demon. So yeah, going on. I just think that we, another tozer quote, it takes nothing less than a whole Bible to make a whole Christian. So when you define God in a word, you present the possibility to misrepresent that God because God is all of his character all of the time, right?

So like you would say he's unhurried in a sense, like he's trusting. of the father. But everybody that knew Jesus, while he may have been interruptible, he said night is coming when no man can worketh. And so there was this mission and this drive that, again, and we're supposed to be imitators of Christ. And that's where we model that. We're going to explore this more in the weeks ahead. And so I don't want to kind of frontload it here. But one of the practical observation kind of application points that's bouncing around in my mind as I hear you speaking, is if someone was watching my life from a work ethic perspective, would they be able to deduce that I was trying to worship indeed a God who was a worker,

a God who created the institution of work before the fall, which we'll get into more in the coming weeks? But just as like a practical touchstone, I shouldn't be rushed, I shouldn't be hurried. I shouldn't be running around frenetically like a chicken with my head cut off. But would people actually look in from the outside? and being like that man is kind of squeezing out every minute of every day in a way that reflects the God he serves. Yeah, I think it's a great thing to think through. And again, we want to take the whole Bible to make a whole Christian.

So we're going to look at the subject of Sabbath and rest, enjoying life, right? Ecclesiastes, all of those things. But I don't feel like the church in general is making too big of a deal about work. I feel like it's the opposite. Absolutely. And even when going back to Genesis 1, when God says, let us make man in our own image. What does that even mean to be made in the image of an invisible God?

You can't see God. So what does it mean? Well, it means we do what God does. And what God does in the opening chapter of the Bible is create, work, build. And then you have to ask the question, if God makes man in his own image, what's the first job description that he gives to those who are made in his image? And can you dig it? Let us make man in our own image and let them what?

Rule. Rule. I mean, that's the way the scripture starts. That rocks. That does rock. And God didn't put Adam and Eve on a beach. He put them in a lush wilderness and it wasn't like Augusta National or Mr. Darcy's house from Pride and Prejudice. Like it was already perfectly manicured. No, no, far from it. He said, Subdued. Yeah. Pride and Prejudice. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Come on. One of the first movies I saw. Which one? A family of three sisters.

Yeah, go on. He says subdue it, which means that this was untamed and it needed to be harnessed. And we were going to talk about this more in the weeks to come. But big idea here, what you believe about God, how you view God, shapes your view of work. And when I'm talking about work, I'm not talking about just the 9 to 5. I'm talking about your vocation. I'm talking about what you do. So that may be your work as a mechanical engineer. It could be your work as a mother.

And never, I want to, as we look to the scripture, that calling is appreciated far more than it is in the culture in which we live. It's elevated. So it could be mothering, mechanical engineer, CEO of a company. a busboy, whatever it may be. It doesn't need to be your forever job to honor the Lord in the here and now with how you think through it. But we need to kind of go back to the scripture and reframe our thinking. And going back to the question I asked at the beginning when I asked, why do I got to work?

As we looked at the scripture, work is not a got to. It's a get to. People say things like, hey, you know, got to go to work. It's a part of the curse. And when you look to the scripture, you go, no, no, no. We do work in a fallen world. We'll talk about that. But work is not a curse.

before the serpent, before Adam and Eve sinned, and before Cain killed Abel with the leg of a table, as my grandpa used to say, work was a divine imitation to mirror and mimic the God that made us. And the first imperative he gives in his word to those whom he made is rule, subdue.

And so I would want people to sense, even in a broken world, the epic nature of how work was designed to be, and as we continue to explore through God's word, how we still think through it, knowing that we live in a world with thorns and thistles and difficulty and unfairness and injustice and it even strikes me just thinking off the cuff live it was started the bible reading plan again this past week and god gives the command be fruitful multiply subdue the earth

and then what do we have we have the fall these familiar stories and then we get to noah and there's the flood and then when noah gets off the ark with his family what's the first command god gives back to noah this is now post fall and so there's no question here is this like some preconceived notion that then the order of events got out of control and got kind of lost focus. No, be fruitful and multiply and go and subdue the earth. And again, like V2 post fall, here we go. I'm super excited for the weeks ahead, Johnny. I really appreciate you kind of broaching this subject. Maybe to sum it up here, we're going to be looking at work. Before you can look at work, you actually need to look at the author of work, the creator. So we're starting the conversation today

of what will be many weeks ahead. Maybe do you have anything to close? otherwise I have a couple house coming around. No, no, thanks so much. That's what we want to look at over the next few weeks. And obviously I'll go into greater detail in the book, but just some major themes. And honestly, for me, it's like I'm a pastor, but I want to work as under the Lord.

And you don't have to be in ministry. The same principles apply. And this is even going back to the Protestant Reformation, William Tyndale said that it may look different when you're preaching a sermon or washing dishes, but to God there is no difference. Because one of the things that came out of the Protestant Reformation was an elevated view of work.

That's why Martin Luther used to say, whether you dig a ditch or you write a play, you're God in disguise and you're God in a mask. Because every single thing that we do, Clause 103 23, whatever you're doing is to be done unto the Lord and to see it through a biblical perspective is paramount because, going back to Kent Hughes, my guy,

if you don't know how to work through a biblical perspective, you risk living your entire life with a significant spiritual injury. Because how can you do something for the majority of your waking hours and not think and do it through with the biblical perspective. And so it's very critical.

It's paramount that we understand it, and it should be exhilarating. Cool. I'm really excited for the weeks ahead. For those of you are listening, if you find this helpful, sincerely we ask, you consider like, comment, subscribe,

do all the YouTube podcast things, all the platforms of various that you're listening on this wonderful medium. And then also practically, on a serious note, I think sometimes we get in here week over week, and it can be really exciting to just open scripture and dive into a bunch of different topics that are really important to consider. For folks who are asking, dial in is a 501c3. And so to the extent anyone would be interested in partnering with us, whether that be monetarily

or through prayer, sincerely, we welcome that partnership because this resourcing, we want to reach the four corners of the world. And so we'd be grateful if you'd consider it with us. But until next time, Johnny, appreciate it, brother. Thanks, bro.