Disciples At Work | Week One

The start of our new series Disciples at Work was kicked off on Sunday with a question of how do we live out God's Word in our day to day lives? This series is specifically designed for those of us where our main missions field is our job. Join in as Pastor Ben Kaempfer dives into the beginning steps to take to be a Disciple at Work!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Please stand for the reading of God's Word. Genesis chapter 2, verses 2 through 9. By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth, and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth, and there was no one to work the ground. But streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the garden, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden was the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You may be seated, and kids, you may be dismissed to the kids' hallway.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

All right, kids. Love you guys. Have a wonderful kids' church. Church family, how are we doing? A round of applause. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's fantastic. And Benji over here on the stage. Thanks, my guy. My name is Ben. I have the honor of serving as a lead pastor here at Downtown Community Church. And I'm excited about today because we are starting something new. We haven't done a topical type of series in a while. And so you know, by the way, what we're doing is this month, the month of May, we're going to do a series. This series called Disciple at World Disciples at Work. Starting in the month of June, we're going to start a series. We're going to go through basically starting at Romans chapter 12 and going to the end of the book of Romans, and we're going to call it Summer in Rome. Aw. Yeah. Kind of cool, isn't it? So just so you kind of know what's on the periphery and kind of what's coming up. But today, and the reason I wanted to talk about this is because this Sunday kind of marks somewhat of an inflection point. Again, if you've graduated, that's amazing. Some people are going off to home, to school, to internships. Some of them are coming back home to home and school and internships. Some of you who are working, this marks literally no difference in your life. Except for maybe if you have kids who are in school, they're going to be out in about a month and you're starting to be more and more broke because you're starting to pay for summer camps and vacations and all kinds of things that are going on. Or, you know, maybe you're a little bit older and kind of a little bit farther on, kids are out of the house, whatever it might be. But what I wanted to talk about in this series is, in essence, there was one question that was the thing that started pinging around in my brain that I felt like honestly, pastorally, I just didn't have a good vision for and a good answer to, which was simply this question: what does it look like to be a disciple of Jesus with the same fervor and passion as someone who has listened to and lived into the calling of being a missionary in Cambodia or in East Angola or somewhere in India? Someone who knows, loves, trusts, feels the call of God on their life to the same degree, but instead they work at the Department of Revenue, making a comfortable salary. You've got responsibilities in life. Like what does it actually mean in just in normal life, in corporate America, in in school systems, as a student or as a teacher? What does it actually mean and look like to have the same love, the same desire, the same passion for Jesus, for people to come to know him, to live as a disciple while we're at work? Because, and when I say work, I don't just mean work is in like this is your nine to five, you know, instant, you know, industrial revolution version of this, that certainly applies. What I'm talking about is any type of meaningful constructive work. It could be that you are a student in your learning, it could be that you are a parent raising kids in the home or looking after the house, it could be that you are working in a nonprofit, it could be the place where you consistently volunteer. It's whatever the things and the productivity that you wake up in the morning and do and find yourself kind of drawn to, right? And we spend, in terms of actual vocational work and towards that year of our that stint of our lives, about 80% of our lives, Monday through Friday for most of us, working. And the time that we don't spend working, from the time at least for us and for our family, we're awake until we go to work, it's gearing up for work. And from the time that you get done with work, it's decompressing from work and getting ready for the next day. And then you got like a couple of, you know, days and weekends and all that kind of stuff where you can kind of, you know, maybe get a little bit of activity in. But what's interesting is if you peel back, what what I find to be fascinating is we spend so much time there, and yet the purpose of it seems very functional, very like I'm gonna pay bills, I'm gonna get a couple things done, I'm gonna accomplish a couple things, but it almost seems like it's devoid of spirituality, especially if you live in a place that doesn't have any type of a specific or explicit spiritual connection. You just work at a place and y'all build homes. You're not like building homes for Jesus. You're like, no, we just we do the framing. That's literally all we do. And that's beautiful and that's amazing. But it can often seem like it's completely devoid of spirituality. And work also has this interesting dichotomy, if you've ever seen this, where we actually, as humanity, as people, if we don't have any type of work or productive things that we pour ourselves into, we actually crumble as people. We existentially need this. There's something inside of us. In fact, study after study has shown this. When you remove meaningful work, when you actually remove just work, the structure, the socialization, the purpose, the wiring, the doing something, then categorically our mental, our spiritual, our emotional, and our physical health all deteriorate. But you know what the wild thing is? We also can't wait for it to be done. You ever notice that? Like if you don't have meaningful employment, you're wanting it and creating it and wish you had it. And if you don't, in fact, if you've been to a nursing home and you kind of have an opportunity to talk to somebody for a long enough time and they'll tell you kind of a little bit in and behind the curtain, and they'll just say, sometimes, my biggest thing is I just feel like I could be more useful, more helpful, more purposeful. And so, what I want to do today is talk, and basically, and this is not how I would necessarily the ideal way to phrase this, but give you a biblical theology or the beginning of a biblical theology of work. And the reason is is because I think sometimes we're so focused on, like, okay, this is how all this stuff matters to me. Sometimes we need to look at who God is and how God has created things. Because here's here's what I think we're gonna find out today. The things that we experience existentially, the Bible actually gives beautiful, beautiful reason behind. And so we're gonna spend a lot of today just kind of zooming out and looking at God, and then at some point we're gonna kind of start to zoom in and find a little bit of our application. But today is more about just who is God, what is God doing, and what does God have to say about this idea of work? And interestingly, the answer is a lot. And even more fascinating, it starts at the beginning. If you got your Bible, Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning of the Bible and of existence, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, in a couple of minutes, right, there's gonna be a section where he creates six days worth of creation. And at the end of it, he says, on the seventh day and he worked, he took a rest from all his work. So in the beginning, God created this, and it's gonna say kind of in a six-day category how this works. But the other, in other words, how you could read this, and this is fascinating, if you were gonna create a book about God, what would be the first thing that you put in there about God? And the very first thing the Bible says, in essence, in the beginning, God created. In other words, in the beginning, the very first sentence, God went to work. He began working, he began doing something, creating. It says, He began to work. God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So God said, Let there be light. And sure enough, there was light. Now, what's fascinating is this initial picture creates this picture of basically what is chaos. It's it's it's it's everything was formless, void, spirit over the hovering, and all this kind of stuff. And over the next three days, the first three days, in fact, of creation, what you'll notice, and if you've never looked at the structure of Genesis 1 in creation, the first three days, he creates what's called realms, right? So it's the heavens, it's the it's it's the skies, and it's the waters, and then it's the earth. He creates each of these realms, days one, day two, day three. Why? Because here is what God's work was doing in creation. He was making order out of chaos. He was putting boundaries in it, he was putting limitations to it, he was putting rules to it. He was creating order out of chaos. So for the first three days, he creates these big buckets in the category. In the next three days, he fills each of those buckets in each of those categories. And when I say order out of chaos, right, the first thing, again, is the big bucket, and then it becomes the filling. It's the birds of the air, it's the stars of the sky, it's the it's the minds, it's the people, it's the it's all of the thousands of insects and bugs and all kinds of different things that he begins to create. And all of them have a structure, all of them have a purpose, all of them work in this kind of unified, consistent way. That's the fine-tuning of our universe, of which people still now and physicists still look at, and the fine-tuning was basically inexplicable outside of something out there that created all this. It was beauty, order. Everything from the ways that we understand to the things that we see, He creates. And then He decides to create us. This is interesting. Verse 25. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And by the way, this is a cool like refrain that continues to happen throughout the book or throughout this chapter, is every day God makes something, creates something, he looks and it's like, man, that was good. You know, like you get to the end of the work day and you're like, oh, that was good. You know? God's getting to the end of the day and saying, oh man, that was actually that was good. I like that. And he gets to this day, and he saw that it was good. But then he said, let us, then God said verse 26, let us make man in our image after our likeness. Now look at the plural form of that, right? Let us, that's the Trinitarian language of God, Father, Son, Spirit, looking down to humanity and said, okay, let's make man, and he says a couple things. One, we are going to make man in the image or in our image. Let us make man in our image after our likeness. That's the idea of we are the image bearers, the imagodei. That's what it comes to. We are made in the image of God. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the earth, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, even that little bug that gets in late at night, and your person shrieks because of the fact that there's a bug in the bathroom, right? All creeping things. So, what's interesting about this to me is think about it this way. God, in these verses, and we don't think about it in this context, we just think, oh, this is what the Bible says. He's literally giving humanity a job description. Here's your position description. God said, I'm gonna make in my image so that you would be like me, but down there. In the thing that I'm creating. I, the creator, have created creation, and I'm gonna put a mini-creation creator in this creation. And what they're gonna do is they're gonna have dominion over the fish and the sea and the birds and the heavens, and they're gonna, and all the livestock, and all the other earth, and even those little creepy things. He says, and they're gonna have rule and dominion over those things. So God created man in his own image, verse 27. In the image of God, he created him, male and female. He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, God says, Okay, now that you're here in heaven, we were talking about this is your reason, this is your purpose. God speaks to humanity. And I want you to see these first words that we read in this. And the very first thing he says, let me tell you why I made you. Be fruitful and multiply. And fill the earth and subdue it. He said, Humanity, you have two jobs, two big categories of responsibility. Number one, be fruitful and multiply. Have lots of babies. To which we would say yes and amen. Thank you, Jesus. And then he says this other part. I want you to take the earth. And I want you to subdue it. Explains a little bit more about that, what that is, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and of the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on earth. He says, I want you to take, I want you to subdue all this. Now, I'm gonna be honest. There's some times where I read the Bible and I didn't realize how much I projected into it until I read something that makes me say, oh, that's interesting. And this is one of those times. Because let me tell you, every time I have ever heard that in my life, I automatically assumed what that means. Because the assumption is, is God says, okay, you're gonna have to express rule and authority and dominion over. And every time in a broken world we hear the conversation or the categories of rule, dominion, authority to subdue something, it's because there's an adversarial relationship in nature to which what we have experienced, right? In other words, I've got to rule over and subdue the animals because they're wild animals, and if not, they're gonna go crazy. But you have to think about this. God is giving this instruction before the fall. There was work in paradise. You want to know why? Work was not a consequence of the fall. Work was caused because God works. And not like, oh, he works, he makes my life. He literally, day one, goes to work and says, I'm gonna make you in my image, and you're gonna be made to do things. That's part of the thumbprint of the productivity of God. Is I want you to go and I want you to create and I want you to make and I want you to subdue things. And we always again think that that means like exercising this sense of like wild beast animals. But but so what does that actually mean for the people to subdue the earth when they were in paradise before the fall? There was no animal attack, there was no, oh no, if we don't, it's gonna get bad, people are gonna die. No, this was paradise. No sin, no death, no destruction, nowhere around. And he actually gives us a picture in the very next chapter of what does it mean then to do this? This is what he said, this is what happens in Genesis 2. So if Genesis 1 is kind of the big, here's the categories, here are all these things worked out, here's the sequence. Genesis 2 gives us kind of the zoomed-in picture. And on the seventh day, God finished the work that he had done and rested on the seventh day from all the work that he has done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. These are the generations, verse 4, of heaven and earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth. It says, When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant on the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land. There was no man to work the ground. In other words, indicator. God's going to begin to work the ground. And the midst was going out from the land, and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He became a living creature. And the Lord God, what did he do? He was a gardener. He planted a garden in Eden in the east. And there he put a man, put the man who he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, why is this interesting? Because in the middle of this, God, God, says, I want you to take and I want you to subdue, and I want you to have rule, and I want you to have reign over this. Well, what does that look like? Well, he says, I haven't made man yet, but I do need to work this ground so that when man shows up, he sees kind of what he's supposed to do. And what is he doing? He's gardening. He's gardening. And why is that important? You have to see this. What a gardener does, and what God was doing, is God did not say, okay, as the gardener, I just step back and just let creation create creation and just let it go in perpetuity. I'm not going to do anything. No, no, no. What does he do? He takes creation. He uses it, he mobilizes it, uses the resources that are available, and redistributes them somewhat in a way that creates flourishing in general, but human flourishing in particular. He takes different things, different thoughts, different things, he takes, he takes the ground, he takes the springs, he takes the dust, he makes right. He creates these things in such a way that he takes them and organizes them. He doesn't leave them alone, nor does he pave a parking lot on top of it, but he takes them and organizes them in a way that causes and creates human flourishing. Now, to drop into us for a second, do you know and do you see that this is the thumbprint of God, no matter what your work is? That what he has called us, the reason, the reason why we deteriorate internally if we don't have something, is because we are the image of God. We were made by God for good works. And what's interesting is that we can't live without this sense of what God has called us to do, to take and to create and to recreate in terms of human flourishing. This is true, by the way, no matter what you do in your life. This is there, there's a um one of a book that's some of the kind of the big broad basis for this sermon in this series. In it, uh, Pastor Tim Keller gives a beautiful, and if you want to read that book, you should read that book and you'll know this series plus a whole lot more. And this is one of the things that he says, and this is a little bit long, but it was one of those, I as I started to read it, I was like, I just I can't, this this whole thing needs to go in there. And he talked about, you know, so are we to leave it alone? No, are we to just pave everything over it? No, he says this. He says, no, we are to be gardeners who take an active stance toward their change, towards their charge. Gardeners do not leave the land as it is, they rearrange it in order to make it most fruitful, to draw potentialities from for growth and development out of the soil. They dig up the ground and rearrange it with the goal in mind, to rearrange the raw material of that garden so that it produces food, flowers, beauty. And that is the pattern. Look at this, for all work. He says, all work has two things. It is both creative and assertive. I am creating and I am asserting. This pattern is found of all kinds of work. Farming takes physical material of soil and seeds and produces food. Music takes physics of sound and rearranges it into something beautiful and thrilling that brings meaning to life. When we take fabric and make a piece of clothing, when we take a prisp room and clean up a room, when we use technology to harness the forces of electricity, when we take unformed, naive human mind and teach it a subject, when we teach a couple how to resolve the relational disputes, when we take simple materials and turn them into poignant work of art, we are continuing God's worm work of forming, filling, and subduing. He's like, this is the point. This is the point. Did you know? In other words, let me say this. It's not that, because sometimes we go to work and we're like, oh man, my work is just devoid of spirituality, right? I'm gonna do my work time. Gage talked about this in run through this. He put it really well. He talked about how how, for a lot of it, what we can see is like my work time is non spiritual time, my work time is things that I have to get through until I can get to my Sabbath time. Because Sabbath is spiritual, not work. And Genesis is saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The only reason that we, in fact, have work. And by the way, the reason that we fall apart without it is because we were made in the image and the creation of God. In those times that you look over a project at work, right, and you look at it and you say, man, this is incredible. This is awesome. I feel good about what I've done. And sometimes it's like, oh, is that prideful? No, no, no. There's a joy that you experience as the creation when you fulfill the desire of the thing that you were created to do. The baseball glove just has a special pop to it when somebody throws a fastball and it hits the mitt right like it was designed to. It just resonates different. And the same thing happens with us in work, which means this. You might feel like your work isn't spiritual. But the only reason that we have work is because the Spirit of God created it. The person, to the Trinity. Whenever we bring order out of chaos, whenever we draw out creative potential, whenever we elaborate and unfold creation beyond where it was when he found it, we are following God's pattern of a creative cultural development. In fact, our word culture comes from this idea of cultivation. Just as he subdued the earth in his work of creation, so he calls us now to labor as his representatives in a continuation, extenuate, extension of that work of subduing. You see, this is it. This is it. It's not that we go to work and we do the functional. So then later we can do the spiritual. Simply the activity that we do. We do because that was the job description. That was the wiring and the purposing of humanity. Have babies and cultivate the earth. Make more of you and take care and manage and steward all this well for flourishing. And as good as that sounds, and as wonderful as that might say, make work feel, we all know that tomorrow, everybody who goes to the office, you're gonna get to the office. And then Derek's gonna be there. You know? I don't know who Derek is. We don't have a Derek that works here, so it's a safe thing, right? Right, but this is you're like, man, Derek, he doesn't do anything. He's on our team, he never shows up, he's always behind. I don't know, I don't know why Kathy hasn't fired Derek, honestly, yet. And I'm kind of losing respect for Kathy, because Kathy, are you doing your job right? And so it's just frustrating. And then the copy machine doesn't work, and you're like, are you kidding me, right? And then worst of all, you're working at McDonald's, and you're like, if I had a nickel for every time this McFlurry machine didn't work, right? And this is awful, and we bring that a Chick-fil-A sauce at Chick-fil-A, what are we gonna do, right? And you kind of go through all of these things, right? There's this table at this one place, they're driving me nuts. My teacher, she's she hates me, you know. If I had a nickel forever that time, now it was a lot of times because I talked and I didn't do any of my work, granted, but she still hated me, you know? And it was frustrating. And here's what's fascinating again, this is why I think the Bible explains our our ex our existential experiences so clearly. Because for some reason we were made and we crumble without it, and yet at the same time, when we go, we can't wait for it to be over. And we can go be in the garden in paradise. Asleep, maybe. So God tells them there's only one place that you can't go. One place that you can't eat, and it's just one tree. You can eat from the tree of life, because that's gonna give you life. But if you want to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you can do that, and you're gonna know a lot more, and you're gonna experience a lot more, and you're gonna see a lot more, but it's not gonna be the good experience that you think it's gonna be. Sure enough, they eat from that tree. God said death, destruction is gonna enter the world when that happens. Sure enough, the inevitability of the deterioration of all things has begun. And everything that we know eventually would die. But as this is happening, there's a fascinating little part. When God first comes and sees, after they had just eaten, Eve and Adam. It says verse 7 of chapter 3. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sowed fig leaves together, and they made for themselves loinclaws, and they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife they hid themselves. Why? This is classic. What does sin always cause us and make us want to do? It makes us want to cover up, hide from God. So that's exactly what they did. They felt shame. They cover up, they hide from God. They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called down to man and said to him, Where are you? I love that. That's one of my favorite, that's one of my favorite verses and one of my favorite questions in all the Bible. Every time that we're in sin, every time that we're in shame, God pauses and says, Where are you? You see, he gives them the agency to understand where they are and what they're doing. He doesn't just dictate, he doesn't just be says, Come on, where are you? They said, This is where we are. He said, We're they said, We're naked, we're scared, we're terrible. He said, Who told you that? In other words, that's the consequence of something you've done, and they need you to see that. And then he begins to hand out these consequences. He said, There's gonna be some curses for this. Verse 14, the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, above all the beasts of the field, on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, talking in this, and this is so beautiful, in a way that talks specifically and singularly, that points to the Messiah who would be Jesus. And this is what he says next. He says, and between your offspring, her offspring, he shall bruise your head, and he shall bruise your heel. In other words, he will destroy you, serpent, he will bruise your head, but it's not going to be without you inflicting pain back. This is what virtually all theologians refer to as the proto-evangelium, which means the very first proclamation of the gospel. Did you know that God created a way and communicated deliverance back into the garden before he ever kicked humanity out? Why? Because he's a good loving father. Of course he would. And like a good loving father, he also says, and there's gonna be some consequences of the thing that you've done as we're getting back to that place. And so to the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing in pain. You shall bring forth children. He says, Okay, so again, I gave you two things here make babies and work hard. And that make babies is gonna be a lot more hard work than what it originally felt like. Can you imagine, by the way, what our population would be like if childbirth didn't feel like anything? It was like a cough? You know, you're like, oh, I kind of enjoyed that one, you know? It sounds crazy. But when God first created this, it wasn't with pain, it wasn't with all that difficulty. Both of the job descriptions of humanity became intrinsically more difficult when sin entered the world. If you jump down to verse 17, he said to Adam, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and you have eaten of the tree which I've commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. In other words, I'm gonna curse the ground, it's gonna cause pain. Thorns and thistles, it shall bring forth for you. I love that thing. I love that phrase, thorns and thistles. Isn't this crazy about work? Work can concurrently, anything that we do, again, that might be raising children, that might be as a nonprofit, that might be in your middle school classroom or high school classroom, that might be in your internship, that might be as you're watching kids, or you're nannying, that might be as you are kind of whatever it is, you're volunteering. There's this sense of accomplishment, of a sense of I love this, of I'm called to this. And there's also this concurrent sense of thorns and thistles, right? Man, this copying machine never works. The McFlurry, and can you kidding me, Derek? Right? This is why we experience both of those things. We can't live without it, and at the same time, we can't wait till it's over. Why? Because Genesis 1 and 2 means we were made for it, but Genesis 3 means there's also a component of it which is intrinsically painful and difficult. We can't get away from it because it's our purpose and because it's our wiring. And yet at the same time, it's difficult for us to fully live into that because it doesn't just mean that things break, it means that we are never going to be as productive as we want to. It means all of our to-do lists will never fully be accomplished. It means we will never gain the total marketplace, space, and dominance that we hoped it would. It means that even if we do, it won't be as fulfilling as we hoped it will. No matter what your work is. I mean, one of the most beautiful things of work, Nelson Mandela, who overcame apartheid in South Africa. An incredible, beautiful demonstration of overcoming. You know what he said? When you get to the top of the mountain, and you climb to the top, you realize there's a thousand mountains left to climb. The beauty and the meaning, and the endlessness of it at the same time, and the difficulty. That's work. Here's why that matters to us. Here's what I want you to do with it. We've got to see that when we show up, to whatever we show up to workwise, school, internships, kids, boardroom, and you feel that sense of accomplishment. You turned in that PowerPoint, you gave that presentation, you worked with the student and they learned, you know, whatever it is like, like you got to that point and it was incredible and it was beautiful, and you stood over it and you felt proud of it. You know what? That's the thumbprint of God. That's Genesis one and two. That's that's the purpose-filledness. But then you go a different day, or maybe the same day, and a little bit later, and it's just incredibly frustrating, mind-numbling frustrating. You want to pull out your hair. You know what that is? That's Genesis 3. So here's what I want to, and I want you to feel those things when you go to work tomorrow. When you feel it and it's great, I want you to think Genesis 2. When you feel it and it's awful, I want you to think Genesis 3. In fact, here, let me tell you the application for this entire sermon. And it's going to sound surface level, but I promise you, please do it. And I'll tell you why. When you come home, or whenever you see, you know, maybe it's your community group, maybe it's your roommate, maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your, you know, whoever it is, maybe it's somebody that you talk to on a regular basis, but they know this, they've heard this. Here's what I want you to do. When you come home every single day this week, or at the end of the week, or when you gather with your community group, I want you to ask this question. What kind of week was it? What kind of day was it? Genesis 2 or Genesis 3? Did you feel purpose? Did you feel alive? Did you feel like I was made and created for this? Or do I feel Genesis 3? That means it was just straight thorns and thistles today. Derek was there, it was awful. I'm so sorry if your name is Derek, by the way, in this room. Genesis 2, or is it Genesis 3? Is it a Genesis 2 day or Genesis 3 day? And let me tell you why. The rest of the series, we're going to start to talk about some of the practical functions of how mission works out in the life of typical work. But the problem is, is for too long we have had a sacred and a secular divide. That only the things of explicitly sacred nature are the things that are spiritual. The spiritual, sacred, this other thing. But when I actually go dig the dirt, man, that is secular. Did you know Psalms talk about how it's the Spirit of God who waters the face of the earth? And did you know that John talks about it's the Spirit of God who brings conviction of sin and the need for Jesus? So, in other words, did you know that it's the Spirit of God who both is the gardener and who brings the gospel? We know the gospel is spiritual, but sometimes we don't realize that the gardener is spiritual too. In fact, always, the only reason that we have that conceptually is because of God. And here's why. And hear me clearly. I want us to be missional in our workplace. But if you will just wait for one week, and you can start to try to interview whatever you want to do, but here's why, here's why. If we don't see our work as intrinsically spiritual, we will never see it missional. If we don't see it intrinsically as spiritual, that the reason that I might go to work in a godless place, I might do a thing that I feel like has no connection to God the Almighty, but did you know that when you're taking those resources, you're creating them, they're cultivating them, you're using them in a way that creates and adds to human flourishing, you're doing the exact purpose. That in Genesis, the very first thing God said that we are to do is to cultivate. And when you experience the pain, it's Genesis 3, thorns and thistles. When we start to see the spiritual dynamics that even exist within us at the places that we work, of Genesis 2, Genesis 3, it makes all of a sudden every moment holy, every moment spiritual. Because simply the fact that I'm here at this workplace is a movement of the Spirit of God. So what I want you to do with this this week. If you don't have anybody to ask, write it down in your journal when you spend time with Jesus. Genesis 2 or Genesis 3. How was today? How was yesterday? If we see it as spiritual, it makes it infinitely easier to move in to mission. And for right now, so many of us live in a context where spiritual is what happens in these rows, not what happens in the boardrooms, in the classrooms, in the households, in the farms, in the fields across the world. But that's why God needs us. Let's pray. Jesus, help us to see that what you've called us to do is not simply this sense of survive the weeks. Live for mission on the weekends, live for Sabbath, live for you. Your spirit gardens and brings the gospel. And God, we want to see, we want to see our workplaces as mission fields. But we know we'll never see them as mission fields unless we first see them as a spiritual place, a place that you've called us to, us embodying. And God, I pray that when every single person in this room tomorrow they go to work and they feel this like, man, that worked really well, right? That was incredible, that was amazing. They'll just think Genesis 2, Genesis 2, God, this is what you've named me and created me before, that I'm cultivating. And God, when they at the same time get up, you know, maybe that's the part, is that they're trying to get up and it's incredibly difficult and they don't want to, and it's difficult to even go to work, and they're just feeling the thorns and the thistles. They've got the Sunday scaries looking in towards what's happening on Monday, and it's just, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. God, I pray that you would help them to see clearly that those are the thorns and the thistles of Genesis 3. Help us to see that this is the thumbprint of you. The reason why we fall apart without it, the reason why we can't wait for it to be over is because you were made and you created us in your image, the worker, God, who created in six days and on the seventh day rested. You put us in your image to garden, to create, to cultivate, and yet we feel the consequences of sin. God, I pray that we would see our workplaces as incredibly spiritual as the foundation of the creation and our purpose on this planet. And as we move into mission, help us to first see the mission field is spiritual. It's in your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.