Building A Career through Worship
Exodus 20:8-11
Jim Davis
Tennessee Titans center Kevin Long, who played under Coach Bobby Bowden at Florida State University, said his college coach inspired the team with parables. Long recounted a favorite story:
[Bowden] was playing college baseball, and he had never hit a home run. Finally he hit one down the right-field line, into the corner. He rounds first and looks to the third base coach. He turned at second, was halfway to third and the coach was still waving him on. He got to home; he hit the plate. He had his first home run, he was so excited and everybody was slapping him five. Then the pitcher took the ball, threw to the first baseman, and the umpire called him out.
[Coach Bowden] said, "If you don't take care of first base, it doesn't matter what you do."
The same is true in life, "If you don't honor the Lord first, it doesn't matter what else you do."
The first four commandments require putting God first as we develop a correct view of God so that we may honor God by ordering our life to fit his purposes. The first four commandments are given to help us focus our lives on God. The fourth commandment outlines the priority of work and worship in a focused life.
Exodus 20:8-11
"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (NIV)The Jews were commanded to work six days and worship one day. We must remember that even God labored for six days in creation and he rested on the seventh day. Some say, I need a day of rest and that is why I don't go to church on Sunday. Sunday should be a day of rest, but it cannot truly be a day of rest without giving God priority. In reality, there can be no rest without God.
I realize that the same laws do not govern the Jewish Sabbath and Sunday. However, there are relevant principles involved in both. There must be a time for work; and there must be a time for worship. "Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God."
Ordering Our Lives
Our worship and work build a sense of self-esteem. God created us to work. "Six days you shall labor and do all your work . . ."Knowing that we are created for a purpose builds our self-esteem. You cannot build a life without knowing how worship and work go hand in hand. Worship allows time for reflection on where we need to go, but only work will take us to where God wants us to be.
Any system that tries to help the poor without involving them in meaningful work is a system that robs those people of self-esteem. The Old Testament made provisions for the poor but they had to work. The rich landowners would leave the corners of their fields unharvested. The corners of the fields were left for the poor, but the poor had to harvest the corners of the fields themselves. They had to work to get what was provided.
The work was provided as a means to sustain life without robbing them of self-esteem. The rich and poor were enabled to see their lives from a divine perspective as God directed each to a meaningful way of life. The poor could reflect on God’s concern for them as they realized that it was God providing the corners of the fields to be harvested. The rich could take delight in their work as they respected God’s provision to help the poor.
However, we must not imagine that work for God in the world is a substitute for direct fellowship with him in praise and prayer and devotion.
There are too many workaholics worn out by the demands of their lifestyles. They worship their lifestyles, which have left them empty and burnt out. Their lifestyles have left no time for the spiritual. Many people engage in activity for activity's sake and use business as a device to avoid facing the reality of God's presence in their lives. Just as alcohol can deaden the senses to personal relations, family obligations, and community responsibilities, so constant work can be a narcotic to deaden our need to worship God.
Have you been pouring your energy into work and giving your family the "leftovers?" Have you been spending more time on urgent tasks than on important ones? Are you serving mostly in areas outside your giftedness? Are you wrapped up in future tasks and unable to concentrate on present ones? Affirmative responses to these questions indicate a need to examine motive, priorities, and desires.
A first-grader became curious because her father brought home a briefcase full of papers every evening. Her mother explained, "Daddy has so much to do that he can't finish it all at the office. That's why he has to bring work home at night." "Well, then," asked the child innocently, "why don't they put him in a slower group?"
Solomon discovered that trying to find meaning and satisfaction by being a creative, productive person was vain. For a while this made him happy. But then as he thought about the work he had done with his hands he realized it was full of emptiness. It was like a big bubble that had suddenly broken, and his heart was broken with it. Solomon realized that work is vain without God.
We may convince ourselves that work is the most important thing in our lives. There is a concept about time that may diminish our modern day worship. We may think the things we spend the most time doing, are the most important things in our lives. Many of you spend most of your time at work; but is work the most important thing in your life? Some spend their weekends getting everything done around the house so they can go back to work on Monday. Many fill their weekends with weekend trips more exhausting than a week of work. They may feel that this is the most important use of their weekends.
There is no way that work can be meaningful without God. To truly worship God we must understand how work and worship compliment each other. There is a time for work and there is a time for worshipping God. And, there is no way that worship can be valid if it fails to express itself in work.
Scripture doesn't call us to be more motivated, or even more productive; it calls us to be fruitful. The fruit-bearing tree is not frantic and frenzied, nor does it wander from its source or become distracted. It abides, remains. It is our spiritual fellowship with God that allows us to develop a spiritual perspective that we might abide in God.
Abiding in God is not passive, it takes effort, but it alone gives nourishment and renewal. It involves activities of body and mind that allows the soul to receive life from God.
Worship Empowers Our Lives
Worship energizes us as it instills the idea that our work has an eternal perspective. The purpose of the fourth commandment was to keep those who worked all week from losing their spiritual perspective. We are spiritual beings. Worship gives us a perspective of life that allows us to experience the satisfaction that God designed us to experience. It is at worship that we discover God’s purpose for our lives that makes what we do through the week meaningful.
Observance of the Passover served as a sign to Israel. God worked six days and rested on the seventh day, Israel’s adherence to six days of work and a day of rest was to serve as a sign from God. It was God that provided the rest. However, they were also reminded that it was God that provided work to sustain their lives. The mere fact that God has provided us with a job to sustain our families allows us to work as if we were working for God.
1 Peter 2:17-19
Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king. Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. (NIV)1 Timothy 6:1
All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered. (NIV)Worship gives us rest and renews our strength. Without proper worship our work will be done without the power of God. Relying upon our limited resources depletes us. Worship is for the purpose of energizing our bodies by energizing our spirits. But there is no way we can truly energize our spirits without God.
Worship is a means to find rest as we labor to fulfill God’s purpose for our lives. "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience." (Hebrews 4:9-11 NIV) When we worship God understanding our lives from an eternal perspective we enter into God’s rest. Our burdens are made lighter as we yoke ourselves up with Jesus Christ.
Matthew 11:28-30
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (NIV)Worship was made for man not God. Jesus states this principle when he said that the Sabbath was made for man and man was not made for the Sabbath. Sure, God is the object of our worship. God desires our worship, but the purpose of worship is to keep our lives in perspective. Worship allows us to see beyond the materialistic world. The psalmist writes, "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10) What we do in life must be done from a spiritual perspective.
Worship provides time for reflection, which is an important part of life. Have you ever done something terrible and later thought about how that just a moment of reflection would have prevented the error? At times I have worked real hard trying to make a sermon work. I have gotten frustrated and forced myself to lay it down for the day. When I come back to it the next morning it begins to flow. Sometimes you can take a 15-minute break to reflect on what you are doing and during those few minutes of reflection you gain a totally new perspective of what you are doing. (There have been times when I reflected on sermons as I was delivering them in worship and decided that I should have thrown them away and started over.) It was God’s reflection in Eden that caused him to say, "It is not good that man be alone." It was then that he created woman.
Worship is a time of reflection. It gives us a chance to think about what we are doing: what’s good and what’s bad; what went wrong and what went right; what we want to avoid and what we want to repeat. It gives a chance to think about what we need to accomplish from an eternal perspective. Worship gives us a chance to think about where we want to go and what we want to become. It is a time to give serious consideration to your life.
Lee Iacocca credited his success as a businessman to his commitment to this principle. As a vice-president of Ford, and as CEO of Chrysler, he put in more than his share of long days. But, Lee Iacocca was committed to staying home every weekend, being with his family, going to church, and spending time in reflection.
Worship allows us to reflect upon God’s ongoing deliverance from sin. The Jews were to keep the Sabbath remembering they were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord had brought them out of bondage with an outstretched arm. (Deuteronomy 5:15) It was a reminder that what God had done was a clue to what he would continue to do for them. It is the Lord’s Supper that takes up back to Egypt. The Lord’s Supper was instituted at the last Passover meal eaten by our Lord. It was there that Christ incorporated two meals into one. The Jews see what God did in Egypt, but we see that the Passover foreshadowed Christ’s death for our sins. The Lord’s Supper reminds us that God continues to be with us.
God’s deliverance continues on our behalf on a daily basis. There is no way we can understand our deliverance from sin without understanding how God is continually working in our lives to deliver us from evil.
Philippians 1:4-7
In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. (NIV)Public worship energizes the Christian community. The Sabbath worship was the heart and core of the Jewish community. Worship brought them together as a community. Both personal enrichment and church enrichment are important. 1 Corinthians 13 is sandwiched between 12 and 14. As love controls the expression of spirituality in church a community is built. Through personal worship the church is built. Paul writes, "When you come together, everyone has a hymn; or a word or instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church (1 Corinthians 14:26).
Hebrews 10:24-26
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-- and all the more as you see the Day approaching. If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, (NIV)Failing to worship with faithful Christians caused the Hebrews to lose their perspective. They were forsaking Christ and were reverting to Judaism. The Hebrews were forsaking God because of the hardships imposed upon them by the world. They were giving up their faith. Proof of that was that they stopped attending the assemblies of the saints. They weren’t just missing an occasional assembly; they were forsaking God. However, missing church can result in forsaking God.
A few years ago, the world watched as three gray whales, icebound off Point Barrow, Alaska, floated battered and bloody, gasping for breath at a hole in the ice. Their only hope: somehow to be transported five miles past the ice pack to open sea. Rescuers began cutting a string of breathing holes about twenty yards apart in the six-inch-thick ice.
For eight days they coaxed the whales from one hole to the next, mile after mile. Along the way, one of the trio vanished and was presumed dead. But finally, with the help of Russian icebreakers, the whales Putu and Siku swam to freedom.
In a way, worship is a string of breathing holes the Lord provides his people. Battered and bruised in a world frozen over with greed, selfishness, and hatred, we rise for air in church, a place to breathe again, to be loved and encouraged, until that day when the Lord forever shatters the ice cap. (Craig Brian Larson, Arlington Heights, Illinois. Leadership)
If we fail to worship God on Sunday we will not be energized to face the difficulties ahead. True worship provides nourishment for the mind, body and soul. The nourishment we receive is provided when we surrender our wills to God’s purpose and it results in strong desire to seek God’s purpose for our lives.
When we submit ourselves to the nature of God, we discover a renewal in our lives that no other source can provide.
Conclusion:
When God finished creating Adam it was on the evening of the sixth day of creation. The first full day of Adam’s life was the seventh day of creation. It was the day that God stopped to rest and reflect upon his creation. Undoubtedly it was a day that Adam spent considerable time reflecting upon God’s purpose for his life in the scheme of creation.
This is what the first day of each week should be to each of us. It should give us a new perspective of where we fit into God’s purposes. When we understand how we fit in we will be motivated to live up to God’s purpose.