Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Joel Beeke - A Godly Work Ethic

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Jonny Ardavanis is the Lead Pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, TN and the President of Dial In Ministries. He formerly served as the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and as a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. Jonny’s heart is to see people understand and love the Word of God and more so, to love the God of the Word. Jonny is married to Caity Jean and they have two precious daughters.Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the Bible.In this episode, Jonny Ardavanis sits down with Pastor and Professor Joel Beeke to discuss A Godly Work Ethic.Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey folks, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. I want to thank you all for continuing to listen to and share the show and really the resources that Dial In Ministries is producing. There's a lot that we're currently working on and I'm excited to share those things in the upcoming weeks. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Joel Beeky. He's an author, a pastor, and the chancellor of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. And he's just a man I greatly respect. I'm looking forward to having him preach at my church, Stonebridge Bible Church,

in Franklin, Tennessee in September. And I'm eager just for the people that I shepherd to be able to hear from him and to be blessed by his ministry. But in this episode, I sit down with Dr. Beeky and I ask him about the nature of work. In the past, I've done a series on work and laziness and Sabbath and rest. And to date, it's still the most listened to series I've ever done on this podcast. And I think it really did strike a chord with people because work is something we do nearly each and every day. It's something that every single person, whether we're a mom or a child growing up as a student or a man, we need a biblical understanding and framework for work. And in this episode, Dr. Beeky helps us to see how we do our work as unto the Lord. You're not going to want to miss it. Let's dial in.

Dr. Beeky, thanks for sitting down. One of the things that I wanted to ask you is regarding the subject of discipline and work ethic. Our country, the one we live in now, the United States of America, was founded upon what's called the reformed work ethic. And I was reading even recently about Martin Luther, who used to talk about the division of the secular and the sacred, meaning that all of our work, whether we are a housewife or a pastor is, as you mentioned in a previous episode, Coram Dale, before the eyes of God and before the face of God to the glory of God. But that idea has kind of been lost in our cultural context. And what's sad is that people are often leaning towards lazy, even in a Christian context. So one, why is work so important as something

that Christian needs to understand biblically, just the value of work? And two, how do we implement discipline in our lives? Yeah. My wife just wrote a book on work called Teaching Children How to Work, Building a Positive Work Ethic in Children. And so I've been talking a lot with her

in the last few years about work and the importance of work. The first thing we need to remember about work is that work is a pre-fall institution. So work itself is not a curse. The fall of man made some unpleasant things come into the sphere of work. Just changed its nature, yeah. But it didn't take away the beauty of work.

God has designed us inherently as his image bearers to work, to reflect him. Jesus said, my father worketh hitherto and I work. So work is a gift of God. A man, for example, without work, it's amazing, it's amazing. I read a study of men who retired to Florida, just retired in cold turkey, and they go to Florida, and they're going to enjoy the rest of their life, right? Golfing. Yeah, fishing, yeah. And the end result of the study is that the average man who goes to Florida lives less than five years. Well, that's pretty short.

But, you know, how to draw that connection, I mean, you know, and I'm not going to go into that. But what I'm saying is... Eaten by gators. Yeah. Yeah. What I'm saying is you lose, you lose something when you're not contributing. God made us to be contributors to society or to his kingdom directly in ministerial work of one kind or another. So work is a gift of God.

And you want to say to yourself, don't you, you want to live to the glory of God, even when you eat and drink, do all to the glory of God. When you work, you want to do it all to the glory of God. You want to live, as one of my parishioners used to say, who's now in glory, every day he would pray, Lord, let me live wholly and solely to thee. So every day I want to ask God, let my work today be useful, let it be fruitful, and let it be to thy glory. And you want to pursue work in a way that you thoroughly enjoy it. And I think you can thoroughly enjoy it best when you're doing it consciously to God's glory. And that includes mundane work. There's a wonderful story of a guy named Horatius Bonner, a 19th century guy,

and he's walking along the street. He's somewhat depressed about the lack of fruit on his work, and he sees three guys working in a dusty pit, and they're working on a steeple for a church, but it's very dirty, dusty, choky. It just looks like such undesirable work. So he says to the first guy, he says, do you enjoy your work? Oh, the guy says, not really. He said, well, why are you working? He said, well, I got to put bread on the table for my wife. I got two kids, and I really hate my job. He looks at the second guy. He says, do you enjoy your work? Oh, it's okay. It's a job. Pays the bills, and I can't say I mind it. Looks at the third guy and says, do you enjoy your work? Oh, yes, sir. I love my work. He goes, what do you love about being down there in the dirt and the dust? He goes, you see what I'm chiseling out right here?

That's going to go up there. And the guy said, what do you mean by that? Well, I'm going to do it. I'm doing this for the glory of God. And a lot of people are going to see this and benefit from it when I'm all done. So I do my work with pleasure, sir. I wouldn't want to do anything else. And the point is that that picked up Horatius Bonner in his depression because he said, all the work I'm doing as a pastor, I'm really doing it for

one day that these people will be up there glorifying God, of course, in heaven. And when you can have an eternity in view in your work, you know, that makes all the difference. So if you're a mother at home and you just say, is this worthwhile, changing diapers every 30 minutes or whatever? But you remember, this is God's calling to me at this moment to live to His glory, and I'm rearing this child for the glory of God. Part of that rearing of this child is changing diapers, doing the mundane. So you learn to enjoy even the mundane because everything is being done for God's glory. And that puts a spring in your step. That gives you strength to discipline yourself. And so, yeah, not every part of your work will be inherently as enjoyable

as every other part of your work. I don't like long meetings, but I put it in context and say, okay, this long meeting, I think went longer than necessary, but nothing on earth is perfect. And this long meeting is all part and parcel of my bigger panorama of work, and it comes with a territory. And so I embrace it, and I accept it, and I rejoice that I have good things to do for the glory of God. That's helpful, Dr. Beeky. Now, you've already answered it to a degree, but especially amongst, you know, Gen Z millennials today, there's this idea that if you enjoy what you do, you never have to work a day in your life. And that's the encouragement maybe they receive from their professors or their parents is find something you love and you'll feel like you've never worked a day in your life.

Why is that idea maybe divorced from reality? And is there ever a job where work won't feel like work? I'd like to reverse that question around. I want work to feel like work because I don't see work as a negative word. I see work as a positive word. So the whole idea of you don't have to work a day in your life sounds horrible to me. It's horrible to me. Yeah. Work is positive. So we take words like work and discipline and submission and even in some ways God, and we turn them into negative things. And we need to take a break from our work. Okay, yes, I need to take a break from my work.

I need to do a certain amount of recreation, enjoyable things, a breathing space. But I do those things so I can get back to my work and live to the glory of God. So the work is not something that you wish you didn't have to do, that you wish you could get down from 40 hours a week to 35, because, you know, you want to do your own thing. So when you see your work, not as a job, but as a vocatio, a vocation, a calling from God, then it's altogether different, you see. Then you treasure it. Then you can't wait to get to work. Then you, I had a man tell me one time, if you're a Christian and you really have a right understanding of work and you're working for the Lord,

when you look at your watch and it's four o'clock in the afternoon, you say, oh, is it really that late already? Yeah. Because you enjoy fulfilling your vocatio and you don't want it to be five o'clock yet where maybe your day is done because you want to get

more done you you're disciplined you you have this work ethic it's a calling from god yeah you want to do as much as you can for the glory of god in any day that's helpful even what you said about rest and leisure i think sometimes people have a skewed like perspective that we work so we can rest rather than we rest so we can work. Precisely. That's a good way of putting it. And I feel like at times rest is elevated in the minds of many people today without ever establishing a biblical framework that work is a gift from God. It's a pre-fall institution. And we're not chasing after retirement. We're going to work until we meet the Lord face to face. And even that element, I think what you mentioned about Jesus,

I think it's always interesting that one of the key words in the book of Mark is immediately, the word is used 45 times because he was on a mission. And as his, and those who follow him as his servants, we want to implement our Savior in that regard. So what you said was really helpful. So thank you for your time, Dr. Beeky. Thank you.