Labor Day 2024 - Vain Is Your Labor?
Message Description
Teaching Pastor Dr. Terry Thomas explores the essence of work through the lens of Psalm 127, understanding the frustrations and the pursuit of labor without God's involvement as futile. Discover how a restored relationship with God and a renewed perspective can transform work from mere toil into a meaningful vocation, and learn the importance of rest in finding peace in our labor.
Message Transcript
Hey, it's great to be here. My name is Terry Thomas. I'm here on most holidays. Labor Day included. Kurt said if I did it right, I could come back for Arbor Day and maybe Groundhog Day later on. So, we'll see what happens. Anyway, we're here today, and we're going to talk about work. This is Labor Day so we should be talking about work, you know, and that kind of thing. Work is tough for a lot of people. I mean, it's really, really, much harder for some people than others. Work is frustrating. I found a Gallup poll recently that talked a little bit about people's experience with work. Let me share some of this with you here.
Gallup polls in a recent release found that among dissatisfied workers, they are experiencing staggering rates of both disenchantment and unhappiness. Staggering rates. 60% of people reported being emotionally detached at work. 19% said that they were miserable. Only 33% said that they felt engaged in any way. In the U.S. specifically, 50% of workers reported feeling stressed at their job on a daily basis. 41% said that they were worried. 22% said they were sad. 18% said they were angry.
The Gallup finds it's not just the hours, the work life balance, or the workplace location that leaves workers dissatisfied. In fact, workers disengagement rises with remote work and four-day week workers. The stress levels rise for in-person and five-day week workers. So, even as the nature of one's work schedule or the location is important to a worker's happiness, it is not the entire story. Workers are unhappy at home, at the office, and working 30 or 60 hours a week. Wow. Well, that doesn't sound good, does it? That sounds like people are not enjoying their work. And yet, you know, it doesn't matter whether the work is simply a job, it could be other work. It's just things you feel like you got to get done at work, you know?
You know what's really weird? Is there was another survey done where they asked people if you had one extra hour in the day, 25 hours in a day, what would you do with the extra hour? This is an unbelievable answer. 70% said work. Seriously. I mean, people are miserable, angry, stressed, and disengaged. And yet, if they had an extra hour, 70% said that they would spend it working. Seems a little counterproductive, doesn't it?
Well, hey, we're going to look at this passage. Here's a passage in the Book of Psalms. By the way, Psalms 127 is part of a selection of Psalms, 15 Psalms called Songs of Ascent. They call them that because they were organized in a way, so that what happens was on the Festival of Tabernacles, people went up the hill into Jerusalem and up to the Temple Mount. And then when they got to the temple, there were 15 steps up into the temple that the priests and so forth went up. So, they had these 15 songs that they would sing on the way up the hill and on the way up the steps. These were the Psalms of Ascent. And they're kind of Thanksgiving songs about how God's good to them and, you know, so forth and so on.
This psalm is right in the middle of them. So that's important structurally whenever you see selections of books and stuff like this. 127 is in the middle of the 15 songs of ascent. And even better than that, guess what? It was written by a special guy, we don't know who wrote some of the other ones, but this one was written by King Solomon. And by the way, it's a little bit about work as you can see here. Solomon had a little feeling about work. Even though you think to yourself, you're a king. Wow. You got it going on for you.
He wrote another book altogether in the Bible called Ecclesiastes. I don't know if you've ever read the book of Ecclesiastes, but you know the word that gets used more than any other word in the book of Ecclesiastes? Vanity. It's about being vain. It's worthless. Pointless. So, he thought about it. He knew about it. And even as they were going to the church, he was trying to get to the heart of it so he wrote this song that people could sing as they were going up to be in God's presence.
Here's what it says. “Unless the Lord builds the house...” That’s talking about your house. Okay? Not the house of God. Tabernacles, places where you live. So, “...the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” There's the vanity. It’s pointless. It’s worthless. “ In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat - for he grants sleep to those he loves.” Hey, that's the thing about vanity. All I do is work to get paid. All I do is work to eat. I work to pay the bills. I work to do. It's vain. And what he really does, what God does for the people that he loves, he gives them rest.
Then he goes on and says this. “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.” So, if you're somebody who's thinking about their life, it's great to have a family.
By the way, you know those 70% of people that said that if they had one more hour to work, they'd work it. They didn't say they'd spend it with their family. That's a bad sign, folks. That's a bad sign right there. If you had another hour to spend, you'd figure out some way not to have to spend it with your family. That's going in the wrong direction. Part of it is because their life is so stressful. It just seems like more stress. It seems like more work. People have a hard time figuring out how to live more easily.
There's a couple of reasons why this is the case. I’d like to point out two reasons why I think that oftentimes our work is in vain. The first one is from a book called The Fabric of this World by a guy named Lee Hardy. It's a book about work, a Christian’s Worldview perspective about work. It's a great book. I'm not sure I recommend it. It’s a little heavy. He's pretty philosophical, historical, and all that kind of stuff, but he's a smart guy, and he's got some great stuff here.
I'm going to read you one of the things he says about what makes work like this. Here's what he says. He says, “Those of us with paid occupations must not give up on the attempt to find meaningful employment and some sense of vocation within the domain of work. No doubt this often will be difficult, but wage labor and the division of labor have conspired to devocationalize human work.” So, here's what he says. Wage labor is just working for money, and the division of labor is a special division of labor work. “The system of wage labor encourages us to look at work as simply a way of making money and nothing more. The division of labor has made it difficult for us to discern the social purpose of our work where the individual worker is simply a minute wheel, which at any point could be exchanged for another one, in a vast piece of machinery. When he does not know for what purpose or persons his work will serve, when all he knows is the others will be enriched by his labor while he himself remains poor, humanly speaking. He can no longer regard his calling as a divine vocation. He does not experience the superiority over nature, nor his connection with the others in mutual service. At the present time, the life of labor has reached such a state of moral disintegration that the order of labor has become a disorder. It is scarcely possible to speak of serving the community in the midst of anarchy.”
Work has become a disorder. And the way he talks about those two things, one where, you know, you're just like a little cog in the wheel. You don't even know what the big picture is of the things you do. Just do this little thing. And the reason why you do that little thing is because they pay you to do it. And so, you're in it for the money. You know you're paid. You're fine. That's fine with you. Or, he says, the result is also that you don't think about whether this is something you're called to do. That's what the word vocation means, you know, to be called to do something. You don't think about that because that's not the point in your mind. You don't see it.
By the way, the whole idea about vocation and calling is a central theme to Christianity. The reason why is because when God created the world, he created the whole world, then he created human beings. And then he says this, I'm making you in my image and because you're my image, I want you to reflect me in the development of the world and all aspects of the world. This is what Genesis one says. I'm going to put you down there to rule the world. I'm going to put everything, art, business, athletics, family, and environment. I'm going to put everything under your feet. And what I’m going to do is I'm going to ask you to figure out how I put it together. I'll reveal it to you. I'm not trying to hide it. I want you to know what it is so what you can do is you can figure out how to unlock it.
You know what it’s called in Genesis two? Adam was put in the garden. It says he was put in the garden to cultivate it and to take care of it. You know what you do when you cultivate? You take the potential that's in seed form, and you figure out how to nurture it and develop it so that it becomes all it could be. And when it becomes all it can be, God is glorified by it because he gets the credit for making a spectacular world and giving you the possibility to be able to do that. And not only that, but you also get blessed by it. You get to experience what life was. We sang a song here today. In the end of one of the verses, it says we will live forever. And the emphasis in the song in terms of the music is on the word forever. I would have figured out someone to make that song where the emphasis would have been on live. That's what you want to do. You want to live. You want to have life.
When Jesus came in around John 10:10, he's talking to some people. He says, you know why I came? He says this, I came that you might have life and life abundantly. In my translation, this is the Terry translation of the Bible, it says, Jesus says, I came that you might have the all-around good time. Life! Do you want life? Or do you want bored, disengaged? Do you want, I can't believe I have to go to work. I'm stressed. I don't see the point of it. If I didn't get paid for it, I wouldn't do it. So, what do you want? Which one do you want?
Matter of fact, I think is a nice way of seeing the gospel in a way, we use this particular handout in class. We ask students why they're students. Well, here’s what we say. “We study in order to understand God's good creation in the ways that sin has distorted it, so that in Christ’s power, we may bring healing to persons and the created order. And as God's image bearers, exercise responsible authority in our task of cultivating the creation to the end that all people and all things may joyfully acknowledge and serve their Creator and true king.” In case you missed it, let me just put it in a simpler way. You ready? The meaning of life is to be an image bearer of God. If you're not reflecting who God is in your life, then you're missing the point of life. You wonder why we're dissatisfied, why we're stressed, and why we're angry. That's probably why. We've forgotten who we are. We have a wrong relationship.
Here's the first point. We need to have a restored relationship with God for us to get back to where we were meant to be, who we were meant to be, image bearers of God. That's the meaning of life. We used to do this thing in class where we were talking about being called, vocations, God loving you, and how he wants you to have a full life. And so, I would give this example. Imagine you could get a job that was exactly the thing you wanted to do. I mean it matched your skills, gifts, and abilities perfectly. It provided such an enjoyable experience to work in that job, and you knew it was meaningful in terms of its contribution to other people and to the world. And it paid $50,000. Wouldn't it be great to have that kind of job? What am I going to get a chance to do today that's going to be so spectacular? I can hardly wait to get to work because of that.
Then I said, or would you like this job? It's a job. It has nothing to do with your gifts, interests, and abilities. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even ask you to have any special gifts or abilities. You know, it just tells you to show up and do what we tell you to do. And you can figure out what the real point of it is, whether it's really worth doing or not, whether it's really a contribution to anybody's life, including your own life, as long as you get paid. But this job pays you $100,000.
Then I'd say to the students. Which job would you take? Most of them would say this. I'd take the $50,000 job because it seems right, doesn't it? It's you. That's calling. That's a vocation. That's life as being the image bearer and having the right relationship. That's what it was about. And then I'd say, what if you had the $100,000 job and you got offered the $50,000 job, would you take it? It went from yes to I don’t know.
What drives us? Let’s go back to Psalm 127. It says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.“ It's about God being in control of things. It's not you being in control of things. It's about that relationship. By the way, here's the second part that says this. “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat - for he grants sleep to[a] those he loves.” He grants sleep to those he loves. You know what we need? We need a restored relationship with somebody who really loves us in spite of the fact that we've messed up, and we're going to mess up. We need a relationship with somebody who's so gracious and loving.
We've sang about it in three different ways earlier today about how unbelievable God is, how different he is, how holy he is, how set a part he is, and that he loves us so much that he would do what he's done in Christ for us. But it's not just that that he's done. He's made us special people in his image, and he's called us to a full, powerful, exciting, and fun life. Are you going to give that up for toiling day and night, vainly, just so you get a little something to eat? Is that really it? Is that what’s going to go on? Or, are you loved?
So, it begins, I think, with that restored relationship. But secondly, I think what happens is you have to have a renewed direction for your life. That's one of the reasons why I love teaching at Geneva. Our goal is an attempt to try to bring a biblical world life view to bear on every discipline that there is. You know, I don't know how much students always get of it or, you know, how much it translates into the opportunities that they have or the jobs they get and so forth. But that's the point. You know, a renewed direction basically says this. It’s not just a matter of giving your life to the one that's loved you because he's died for you and saying thanks. It's about responding to that love and the call to be his image bearer.
In the book of Romans, when they're summing up the whole story of what Romans is about in Chapter 12, it begins by saying this. I beseech your brothers by the mercies of God, namely in relationship to all the dreams that God has shown you in Jesus Christ. I beseech you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Don't sacrifice yourself to some other God who doesn't love you. Don't give yourself over to some plan that's going to destroy your life and your family.
By the way, there was another survey done where people were asked when they had a choice to spend time at work rather than spend time with their family, why would they do that? You know what they said? People answered because I love my family. What? Yes. Their idea was if I can be the source of stability, the future guarantor, or make enough money that will show that I love my family. No, that's not what it's about. It's not about ignoring your family to show them that you love them. It's about trying to figure out how do you respond to the grace that you've been shown by presenting your body with everything that you do as a living sacrifice. This is your true service of worship.
By the way, you notice it doesn't say this. This is your true worship service. It’s not about coming to a worship service. It's about your life being a service of worship to God. And then the next verse says this. Don't be conformed any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You know what that means? Get a new perspective. Get a new direction. Pay attention to what God’s saying, particularly in his word. Be taught by it and study it. Talk to people about it. If you must, buy a book every once in a while to find out what it's about. And when your mind gets redirected, when you're transformed in that way, your mind is transformed in that way, you can begin to figure out how God wants you to unlock that potential and all those different areas of life.
So, you start by having that new relationship with the one who loves you. He calls you beloved. He really loves you. He wants the best for you. And then he says, get redirected. Don't fall for that devocationalize stuff. Don't be giving yourself over to make your job being about making money. Here's the problem. In our fallenness, what we try to do is we try to take the place of God. That’s kind of what we do. We kind of push him to the side. We decide we'll take the things and do the things he's supposed to do to guarantee the future. I bet we can have 100-200 stories right here in this room of how you can't guarantee the future. God can guarantee the future. He’s in control of the future and your future. But we can't do that. We can't provide certainty about things. We like to act like we got the answer to everything, don't we?
I remember one time I was at dinner with some guys, and one guy said he was out in Akron, Ohio. The guy said, what do you do? And the guy said, I work for a company over there. And I said, oh yeah, doing what? He goes, well, I'm a polymer chemist. I had no idea what that was, so I said, what do you do? He said, well, polymer chemists work with complex carbon molecules. I was like, oh. A couple of months later I was at an event here at Orchard Hill. I was standing around some people and they were talking and somebody said, yeah, so-and-so's a polymer chemist. And immediately I said, yeah, that's somebody who works with complex carbon molecules. And in that one sentence, I had said everything I knew about polymer chemistry, but why did I feel compelled to say that? Because that's the brokenness we are in. We have got to have the answer to everything, don't we? We've got to be able to speak authoritatively. We've got to be able to guarantee the future. The worst thing is we've got to do things that we think will make us lovable before other people. And yet, God isn’t looking for that. He's going to love you regardless, and he wants you to trust him, not yourself. And when you trust yourself, your life becomes vain.
But the ones that decide to get reoriented, get a new relationship, and get a new perspective on things, you know what he offers them? Rest. For those he loves, he gives them sleep. Oh, that's sweet. Sleep. I love to sleep. I'm good at it, too, because I know God loves me, and so I know how to sleep. But there's so many things that disrupt your sleep. Have you ever had times where you just can't get a good night's sleep. Stuff's bothering you. You're stressed and worried about something. There's lots of things that will disrupt your sleep. For instance, you know, one of the things, I'm a snorer. At least that's what my wife tells me. And also, I do that one where, you stop breathing, and then your wife thinks you died. Yeah, snoring can disrupt you.
You know what other weird things you can do? Some people get so stressed, so uptight, and so forth, I don't know if you’ve experienced this thing called hypnic jerk syndrome. Anybody ever heard of this? This is what happens. You work so hard, your muscles are so tight that what happens when you go to relax is you get an involuntary muscle jerk. The nerves fire, and you get that little jerk. Then after a while, it's like you're in a vibrating bed.
In our early marriage, my wife and I had a waterbed. Okay? Full motion. Yeah, that's right. We had a full motion waterbed. One time my wife and kids went away for the weekend. I went out and played basketball all day. I love basketball. It was summer, and I was playing outside all day. I came back and laid down in the water bed. Whatever position you lay in on a water, that's the position you're sleeping in. So, nobody was there to wake me up. I was snoring away. I was having a great time. Then I finally woke up, and I went to move my leg over the side of the bed and got a hamstring cramp. Of course, there was nobody there to help me. So, I'm trying to rub my calf and then my arm starts cramping. You need some rest. You need some real rest. You need some sleep that'll restore you and not destroy you.
You know another thing that will destroy people’s sleep? Sleep talking and sleepwalking. My wife talks in her sleep. She doesn't know, of course, but she talks in her sleep. You know what the worst thing is? When you think she's actually talking to you, and you start to answer her. And then in the middle, she goes, close the gate. Close the gate? What?
Anyone know a sleepwalker? I was a sleepwalker when I was a little kid. And some sleepwalkers have a disease called Nocturnal Eating Disorder. You ever heard of this? This is true, a real thing. People wake up, walk in their sleep, go to the kitchen, go to the refrigerator, and they're trying to diet and they're gaining weight. They can't figure out how because they're nocturnal eating. And they come back to bed later with heartburn. They can't figure out why they get heartburn. They wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and they got barbecue sauce on their pajamas. It's like water, you know, because they don't get good sleep.
But you know what God says? We're going to give the people I love sleep. I'm going to give them rest. I'm going to let them be able to relax. I'm going to restore them. But you see, make sure you get the right relationships, because if you don't, you're living in vain. Make sure you get redirected when you're doing that. Get a new mindset. Don't be conformed to the way that we pattern this world, the way we typically think. And then here's the thing. Enjoy that rest. Embrace that rest.
I am a volunteer at a food bank for a place called Families Matter over in Monaca, Pennsylvania. And I go over there and help with the food. So, it’s a big place. They have three days a week. They do distribution and hundreds of people come in, and we fill up their cars with all kinds of food. And I'm one of the guys who does the outside stuff carrying and putting it in cars. I don't know if you've noticed it lately, but the weather has been like 93 degrees. So, when you're outside all day in 93 degrees, you're carrying stuff, and you're an old guy like me, it wears you out. And on Tuesday, it really took me to the limit. I went home and said, man, I'm done. My wife said, take a shower and go to bed. And I said, I'm just going to bed. Forget the shower. And I lay down and said honey, can you take my shoes and socks off for me? She said no. No, she said yes. She's wonderful. So, she goes over, she takes my shoes off, takes my socks off, and throws them in my face. I throw them on the floor. I slept for hours. I slept in peace. I was tired.
And you know what? I went back the next day and volunteered for another 4 hours out in the heat. I’ll tell you this, it was meaningful work. I felt called to it. I felt loved to have the opportunity to be able to serve a God, to call me to be his image bearer. It wasn’t that I wasn't tired at the end of it. I slept well that night too. God blessed me again. He showed love to me and gave me rest. But I experienced vocation, not vanity. And it was a great thing.
Let me pray for us. Lord, thanks for this day and a chance to be together here and consider these things. And here's what we want. We want to have a restored relationship with you, your graciousness that you offer through Christ, and a chance to be reminded about who we are and how important we are to you that you've made us in your image. And Lord, we want to commit ourselves to having our minds renewed, having a redirection of seeing the way we look at things, whether it be the time we spend with our family or the time we spend or our job, or the just the opportunity to hear you talk so we can hear your call, your vocation for us. And we pray Lord for this too, because life is hard, and we don't always get it right. And so, we pray for rest. The kind of rest that only you can give Lord. We're not God. You are. You can make it happen. We pray this in Jesus’ name for His kingdom's sake. Amen.
