Mark Driscoll: Father God, thank you for a chance to get together to study the Scriptures. Pray, Holy Spirit, for your ministry to just do its work of teaching, leading, guiding, convicting, instructing as we need. Father God, we also pray, too, for a lot of friends and family who are in the midst of traveling today, going from wherever they have been, returning home. Pray for safety, that they would be able to make their connections and drive safely, that there wouldn’t be any drama or complications, just a safe and simple weekend return for them. Lord, thank you for some time off this week, an extended Sabbath for many to rest from their labors. Pray you would just cause us to go back to work tomorrow with a desire to serve well and to serve you. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.

Proverbs, as you guys may have noticed as we get into it, intensely practical book, intensely practical theology. We’re continuing in that this morning, and it deals with the stuff of life: marriage, food, sex, friendship, work, finances. All of these sorts of issues are intertwined in the book of Proverbs, and it’s an important book on that level because oftentimes we can view spirituality as something completely separated from just life in general, but the Bible integrates everything as being a part of our spirituality.

And today we’re gonna deal with the issue of work. For you whom are gonna spend your lifetime in the workforce, you’re gonna spend upwards of 100,000 hours doing that, and so it’s an enormous part of your life, and we’re gonna talk about how that connects to God. It should connect to God because Jesus Christ, Scripture tells us very plainly, is Lord over all. What that means is that everything, including your job, whatever that is, connects to Jesus and relates to him and is part of his work in this world. We see that God is a worker in the Bible, that God creates in Genesis 1, and in Genesis 1:31 it says that God looks at all of his work and declares it to be very good. So the Bible tells us that God is a worker, and he does his work very, very well. You see the same thing in John 5, where Jesus says that God the Father is working and that he, God the Son, is working with him as well.

We see that men and women were created for the purpose of work in Genesis 2, where we’re told that God created Adam and put him in the Garden to work it and to take care of it, so work is given for us to do. It is given good by God, and God intends that his people would work and that they would work hard and that they would work well. In Genesis 3, this becomes more complicated because God curses the ground. What that means is everything under our dominion that we’re supposed to be working on fights against us, and it’s going to take a lot more effort to do a good job and to produce well in our labors.

This is very clear in Scripture. It’s not hard to understand, reading your Bible, but because of some external influences, Christian thinking has throughout the course of church history been really corrupted on these matters. In the early church, it was corrupted by a gentleman named Plato who had lived some years earlier, and he was a philosopher who taught that there were basically two dimensions of reality, one being spiritual, one being physical, and that the physical world wasn’t all that important and wasn’t all that spiritual and wasn’t all that beneficial, that the things that mattered were really the spiritual, heavenly things, what he called the world of the Forms.

That led to a thinking that was called Gnosticism that crept into the early church, that sought to in some ways destroy the goodness of creation that God had made. Gnosticism showed itself by believing that God spoke to people in secret revelation, that food or pleasure or sex was bad, that work was inherently flawed and evil, and that anything that is done that is laborious or anything that is pleasurable, that must be bad; we should abandon those things and commit ourselves to spiritual things, as if working and eating and friendship and parenting wasn’t spiritual. It’s a complete dichotomy that the Bible does not recognize.

This led in the early church to a thinking that’s still real popular in our day that said the real spiritual stuff is to go into full-time ministry. If you’re really spiritual, you’re gonna go into ministry. And that led to this thing called the priesthood where certain people were considered to be very spiritual men because they didn’t get married, and they didn’t have sex, and they didn’t eat good food, and they didn’t drink good drink, and they didn’t have any pleasure, and they were poor, and they didn’t own anything or buy anything or amass anything, and those were considered the most spiritual men. I think those men are freaks. I don’t understand that at all.

The Bible tells us that a man is supposed to have children and have a wife and work a job and eat food and take care of his responsibilities, and just because he’s holed away somewhere not doing anything so he can connect with this god who just has a deep love to do nothing in the world other than just hang out with individual people, that makes no sense to me. God blesses us like he blessed Abraham, so we would be blessing to all nations of the earth, not just to hole away and just have a series of spiritual experiences, that our life is not detached from our spirituality.

This leads itself into our present day where this same thinking still continues. If I were to ask you “What is the most holy job you can have?” most of you would tell me, “To be a pastor; that’s the holiest thing you can do.” The Bible never teaches that. It comes out of Plato; it comes out of Gnosticism; it comes out of Greek dualism. It doesn’t come out of the pages of Scripture. It doesn’t at all. That’s why – how many of you were raised in youth groups? You were told if you really are serious about God, what do you need to do? Go into ministry or go to the mission field, which isn’t a problem if God has called you into ministry or the mission field.

But what does that mean? That everyone who’s not in ministry or the mission field is sort of junior-varsity Christian; they’re not really sold out? That the plumber, he’s not a real godly man because he’s not in Bible college. He just works with toilets. He’s not doing spiritual things. You say, well, we still need toilets, and it’s a spiritual thing, and we love good plumbers. We love them much more than bad plumbers. We love men who take their craft seriously and do well at it, because that’s biblical.

That’s the subject of what we’re gonna talk about today. This leads into, as well, about money. There’s a wide misunderstanding about work and money in Christianity, so I have to dispel all the myths.

There are two polar-opposite teachings in Christianity today. One says you’re righteous if you’re rich. It’s called prosperity theology. Means if you have a lot of money, that proves that you’re really holy. Now, there’s another theology – it’s called poverty theology – that basically says if you don’t have any money and you’re really poor, then you’re really holy. In Mars Hill, which one do you think is more popular? Prosperity or poverty theology? Poverty theology, because we’re all poor. Rich people think that rich people are holy; poor people think that poor people are holy. God says they’re all wicked and deceived. That’s the truth of it. Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you’re holy, and just ‘cause you’re poor doesn’t mean you’re holy. Now, some people do wrongly think in this church that to be poor means you’re holy, so they’re like, “Oh, I wish I could be poor.” Well, you can be. I mean, if you really think poverty is that – you could be really poor.

In the Bible, according to Proverbs, wealth and riches, and poverty and want, are not the primary issues. The primary issue is righteousness. In Proverbs there are people who are rich because they’re righteous and people who are rich because they’re wicked, and in Proverbs there are people who are poor because they’re righteous, and poor because they’re wicked. So you can’t say, “Well, it’s wealth and poverty; it’s a money issue.” It’s not a money issue. It’s a God issue. Proverbs says that rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the maker of them both. The issue is not rich and poor; the issue is the Lord and righteousness, holiness, love and obedience to God.

I’ll show you. There are unrighteous poor. I will tell you this. I grew up classically deemed poor. My dad worked hard. We had five kids. I grew up in a very poor neighborhood. Many of the people in my neighborhood were poor because of righteousness. These are people who did love God, but they’re first-generation immigrants just getting settled into a new country, and they’re struggling to get their feet under themselves. These are some people who possibly do love God, but the father has died, and it’s a wife left with three or four children, and they’re thrown into poverty. Are they in poverty because of sin? Not necessarily. They’re in poverty because of tough circumstances.

There were other people in my neighborhood who were in poverty because of sin: people who wouldn’t work, people who’d do drugs, people that were just lazy and unambitious and trying to work the system. I am not really compassionate toward poor people. I believe that there is a righteous poor and an unrighteous poor. I have a lot of sympathy on the righteous poor, the underpaid guy who’s working like my dad to make ends meet. The guy who’s just too lazy to work, I don’t have a lot of compassion then.

And that’s what it tells us in Proverbs. Proverbs 10:4, “Lazy hands make a man poor.” Some men are poor because they’re lazy. They don’t work.

Proverbs 19:15, “Laziness brings on deep sleep, and the shiftless man goes hungry.” Some men are hungry because they sleep too much. They don’t get up, and they don’t go to work.

Proverbs 13:4, “The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.” Some people are just sluggardly. They just – they’re not ambitious. They’re not doing anything. They’re not moving.

Proverbs 13:25, “The righteous eat to their heart’s content, but the stomach of the wicked goes hungry.” Some people are poor because they’re wicked, and it’s God’s judgment on them.

Proverbs 14:23, “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” Some people are poor because they don’t work, but they just talk all the time about all the things they’re going to do, but they never do any of those things.

And lastly, Proverbs 28:19-22, “He who works his land will have an abundant food, but he who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty.” Some guys are always looking for the get-rich-quick scheme, the shortcut, the way to work the system, rather than just go to work.

And Proverbs says some people are poor because they’re lazy, they sleep too much, they’re wicked, they talk and don’t work, and they chase fantasies. I tell you that because the Bible says we’re supposed to help widows and orphans and those in need. Single moms with kids, that’s a legitimate need. Men who have been hurt on the job, that’s a legitimate need. Men who are working poor, really struggling to pay for their family, that may be a legitimate need. Men who are lazy, people who won’t work, people who are just looking for a shortcut, people who sleep too much, drink too much, mess up their life – there is not a lot of sympathy for them. If you have a cause-and-effect relationship with your life, you may be in a dire strait because you’ve done that to yourself.

There are also righteous people, though, who are poor. Some people are poor because of their holiness. I would submit to you men like Job. He was wealthy. Lost everything and was poor because he was righteous, and then God prospered him, and he became rich again. In addition, Paul says, “I know what it’s like to have much and to have little, to have a lot and to have nothing.” Paul at certain points missed meals and was starving to death. Because he was unrighteous? No, because he was righteous.

Proverbs 15:16, “Better a little with fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil.” Some people could make a lot of money, but it would cause their life to be filled with struggle and strife, so they say, “Well, I’m not going to ruin my whole life to get a lot of money.”

I remember watching a special on television. They were following potential doctors through med school, and every single one of the doctoral candidates for medicine ended up divorced by the time they finished their residency. And they interviewed a few of them. They basically said, “Well, if you wanna be a doctor, that’s just one of the pitfalls of being a doctor. Your marriage and your life are gonna fall apart. You’re gonna lose your family.” It’s like that’s a lot of turmoil. You don’t cause that kind of turmoil just to make a lot of money. Proverbs says, no, no, it’s better to have a little without the turmoil than have a lot of turmoil with a lot of money.

Proverbs 16:8 says, “Better a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice.” Some people can get rich, but they would have to sin against God. They’ve have to break the law to do it, and so they decide, “I’d rather be poor than wicked.”

And Proverbs 28:6, “Better a poor man whose walk is blameless than a rich man whose ways are perverse.” Some people are rich because of sin and wickedness and perverseness. I tell you that because I keep meeting young men at this church in particular who think that because they don’t bathe and they have long hair and they don’t work, that they’re just like Jesus. It’s not that simple. Is Jesus – was Jesus poor? Yes, he was, but he was a righteous poor. He wasn’t – did he not work? No, he was working hard, and he was working long, and he actually died, so he was doing things. He was redeeming the entire world, which is an enormous job. Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean necessarily you’re holy.

In addition, just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you’re holy. In the Bible, Pharaoh was one of the richest men in the Bible, but he’s rich because he enslaved God’s people and he stole their days and he stole their life. You can be rich because of sin and wickedness.

Proverbs 10:22, “Ill-gotten treasures are of no value, but righteousness delivers from death.” Some men are rich because of ill-gotten treasure. Proverbs 11:16, “A kind-hearted woman gains respect, but ruthless men gain only wealth.” Some people are rich because they’re mean and they’re nasty and they’re violent.

Proverbs 28:25, “A greedy man stirs up dissension, but he who trusts in the Lord will prosper.” Some people have wealth because they’re greedy. They horde money. They don’t tithe to God. They don’t help people in need. They don’t take care of their responsibilities. They horde all their money.

Proverbs 23:4, “Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint.” Some people are wealthy because they have neglected everything else in their life. They don’t come home to have dinner with their family. They don’t invest in their children. They don’t spend time reading their Bible. They don’t involve themselves in anything or anyone else’s affairs. All they do is just work, work, work, work, and they wear themselves out trying to get rich, and they may have money in their pocket, but they’ll have poverty in their soul.

And lastly, Proverbs 28:8 says, “He who increases his wealth by exorbitant interest amasses it for another, who’ll be kind to the poor.” Some people gain a lot of money by exorbitant interest. They charge more for things than they should, or if they lend money, they are really gouging people for exorbitant interest. The Bible doesn’t teach against usury and making interest; it teaches against unwholesome or excessive interest being charged to God’s people.

I was reading this week – you know those check-cashing places where, if you’re short on money, you can go in and they’ll give you a loan till payday? They said if you amortize out what they are charging you in interest for your week-long loan, you’d be paying at some places up to 200% a year in interest. That’s exorbitant interest. That’s an [Audio gap]. They’re gouging you enormously.

Some people are rich, but it’s not because they’re holy and love God. Some prosperity theology that says, “See, look, I have a lot of money; that proves that God’s blessed me.” No. You may have stolen that. Also, some people are rich, and they’re righteous. Job – God restores him to wealth. Abraham is a very wealthy man. God blesses him. One of the richest men I’ve ever met is a Christian, and he is one of the most generous men I’ve ever met, and I believe that God keeps giving him money because he keeps giving it away. He sees himself as a steward sort of dispensing God’s resources, rather than a consumer who’s eating everything that God has given him.

Proverbs 15:6 says, “The house of the righteous contains great treasure, but the income of the wicked brings them trouble.” There’s this connection in Proverbs continually between wisdom and good living.

Proverbs 10:22, “The blessings of the Lord brings wealth, and he has no trouble to it.” God blesses certain people and gives them great wealth, and there’s no problem. There’s no trouble. There are other times where wicked people get money, and it creates a lot of trouble, but if God gives you money and he blesses you, there’s no trouble with that.

Proverbs 11:24-25, “One man gives freely, yet gains even more, and another withholds unduly but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.” God blesses some people and gives them a lot of money because they’re generous people. They help those in need. They’re kind to the poor. They help those that have legitimate need. They tithe to God’s works. They take care of their responsibilities. They’re generous, and so God gives them more because they’re very generous people.

And lastly, it tells us, “Honor the Lord with your wealth” – Proverbs 3:9-10 – “with the first fruits, the very first of all your crops, then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.” God blesses some people because they’ve been very generous with their tithe. They are faithful in giving to God first, and then God can bless them. Scripture says if you’re faithful with little, you’ll be entrusted with much more. The context there is finances. Some people, God blesses.

So the issue, again, is not rich or poor. The issue is righteous and unrighteous, holy and unholy. I would agree with John Wesley. He says, make as much as you can; give as much as you can. That would be my encouragement to all of you, to see God entrust you with a lot of resources so that you can be a good steward with them. If this world is filled with money and it is filled with wealth and it is filled with opportunity, I would hope that it would go into the hands of the people who love the Lord,, so that they could disseminate it for good use. If it goes into wicked hands, then it just gets used for wicked things, and it goes to the wrong people, and it supports the wrong causes.

But the issue is not wealth or poverty; it is righteousness. What do you do with that which is given you? How do you earn money, and how do you spend it? This week we’ll deal with work, and how to make money next week. And the next few weeks we’ll deal with tithes, offerings, investments, savings, and how you spend the money you receive.

First I gotta dispel – I had to dispel some myths regarding money. How many of you honestly, before I told you this – if I would’ve asked you “Which is more holy, to be rich or poor?” how many of you would’ve thought that poor people are just naturally closer to God? Some of you think that. It’s not true. How many of you would’ve thought that rich people are necessarily closer to God? None of you, because you’re all poor.

And see, that’s the thing. You even see this sometimes where people will come to down into the city to hang out with the street kids because they think that’s more holy, as if the millionaire living over in Medina doesn’t need the Gospel too. As if it’s more righteous to see an unemployed teenager come to Christ than it is a multimillionaire. And my issue is, no, they’re both made in the image and likeness of God. They both sin and fall short of the glory of God. They both need the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They both need to be reconciled to God. And this one isn’t closer to God because of their lack, and this one isn’t closer to God because of their abundance. And so we need to think about righteousness and unrighteousness, not just about wealth and poverty.

There are a number of myths as well in Christianity about work. I have to dispel all the myths, and some of you say, “Why have you picked these?” Because we get these questions all the time, and most of my bizarre, odd questions come from Christian young men who were raised in youth groups. They have the most bizarre thoughts about work. It’s just true.

The first one is – the first myth is that work is only what you get paid to do. How many of you here are students? That is your work. That’s your work right now, and you need to do a good job at that. You’re not getting paid for it. You’re paying for it, and so you need to do a good job. That’s your work.

Any mothers, stay-at-home moms? That’s your work. You’re not getting paid for it. That’s why I hate it when I introduce my wife to people, and they say, “Oh, what do you do for a living?” She says, “I stay home with the kids.” “Oh, so you don’t have a job?” “Yeah, I have a job. I wish I worked 40 hours a week. That’d be like vacation for me. I have a job.”

If you’re a mom who’s staying home with the kids, you have a job. You’re working. If you’re a student, you’re working. If you’re a – let’s say you’re a son or a daughter who’s young and has household chores. You’re working. Mowing the lawn, doing the dishes, cleaning up your bedroom. That’s working. That’s your job. Even if you’re not getting an allowance, if you’re not getting paid for it, you’re working.

So work is whatever you do. If you’re volunteering time for a ministry, that is work. Whatever you’re doing, all that you do, that is part of your work, not just what you get paid for. Some people will work very hard when they get paid, but if they’re not getting paid, they really slack. That’s the guy who, on the job, is just getting it done and then comes home and really doesn’t help his wife, doesn’t help his kids, doesn’t take care of anything around the house, ‘cause he’s not getting paid. It’s not work for him; it’s not his job. Biblically, all of our work is under the Lord whether or not we get paid.

The second myth is that work is a necessary evil. “It’s too bad we have to work. Must be God’s punishment on us. God must really hate us to make us go to work.” Work is given in Genesis before sin enters the world. It’s part of creation. Work is good. God works, so it can’t be bad.

And also, this issue of work, we’re created to work, and work is God’s gift to us. We need to see it that way. Now, because of the curse, work has gotten a lot harder. That’s for sure. But work is not evil. Work is not bad, and in the Scriptures we’re told to work how many days a week? Six days a week, and then rest on the Sabbath. Some people think it’s backwards. “Is there any way I could get a six-day Sabbath and a one-day work week? That’s what I’m looking for. I’m working for that – I’m looking for that six-figure job that I have to work on Monday, and then I get the rest of the week off.” The issue is, no, it’s not biblical.

Americans complain a lot because, depending upon the statistics, we’re the No. 1 or No. 2 most worked nation in the world. Other nations sometimes get two or three months off. Some nations in Europe give the whole summer off to most of their employees. You say, “Couldn’t it – wouldn’t that be great?” No. It’s just not biblical. Six days you work; one day you rest. The reason you love to rest is because you’ve worked hard and you need to Sabbath, to refresh, and to – like God. God creates the six days. The seventh day he rests from his labor to appreciate and enjoy that which he has made. In the same way, you and I should work hard for six days and take our Sabbath to enjoy the fruit of our labors and to worship God with it. And so we are to work. It is good to work. Some of you are trying to figure out how to live your life without ever going to work. You’re trying to find a way around it. There’s no way around it.

Here’s another myth: It would be best if Christians didn’t have to work at all. Only Christians think that. Non-Christians don’t think that. I know a lot of Christians who really think that it’s unfair that they have to work, because they wanna dedicate themselves to spiritual things, whatever those things are. I don’t even understand what that means.

The worst I’ve seen – I’ve seen a lot of bad – I’ve seen one worst-case scenario. I had a pastor call me this week. He said, “I have two people in my church. They’re a young married couple, both healthy, fine. They could work, no problem. They showed up my church, and they have redefined biblical hospitality. They go live with this family till this family gets sick of them and kicks them out, and then they go live with this other family, and then this family gets sick of them and then kicks them out.” He said, “They’ve lived with most of the people in the church now, and they call it hospitality.” And he said, “The people in the church call it freeloading.”

So we’re having a little grammatical Greek argument from the New Testament as to whether or not this is biblical hospitality, because they’ll say, “Hey, we’re a family. You’re supposed to feed us and house us and take care of us.” So they literally live at people’s homes, make long-distance phone calls on their phone, eat the food out of the fridge, don’t pay anything, and don’t work because they don’t feel that they should have to work. They don’t feel called to that. Like any of us do. Like we all wanna go to work tomorrow.

And he said, “Now they’ve decided that they’re called into full-time ministry, so they’re gonna go to Bible college, so they’re applying for welfare, so that they could get money from the state, so that they could go to Bible college, so that they could go into ministry. And they asked if they could use the church address for their welfare checks, because they don’t live anywhere.”

He said, “What do I do?” I said, “Take a special offering, and buy weapons and kill them. I mean, what else are you gonna do?” You’re supposed to work. I mean, can you even imagine if this guy became your pastor? Or this woman became your mentor? You go to them. You say, “I’m trying to figure out how to be a good employee. I’m trying to figure out how to work hard and take care of my kids.” And they say, “Oh, we don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s not spiritual. What is spiritual is freeloading.”

Ecclesiastes 3:22, “So I saw that there is nothing better for a man to do than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot.” God made you to work; work.

And 1 Thessalonians 4:11, “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands, just as we told you.” Christians are supposed to work. It’s not bad to work. It’s good to work, especially if you are young and single; you can work a lot. I cannot even understand guys who say, “Well, I can’t work ‘cause I’m going to college.” You’re going to college, what, 30, 40 hours a week? What else you doing? Playing video games? Skateboarding? Flag football? That’s not an investment plan. It’s good to work. It’s not bad to work.

The other one: Someone else should feed me. Some people think this. Proverbs 16:26, “The laborer’s appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on.” Some people don’t feel called to working until they get really skinny. And then all of a sudden the Lord shows up, and they all of a sudden have this new revelation: “I need to get a job. I’m getting very skinny. My pants are falling off. Why is that? Oh, that’s biblical. Proverbs says something about that.” Hunger drives you on.

The worst I’ve seen – I know a guy. Tell you all kinds of bad stories about people today. I know a guy who literally mooched off his mom and dad into his 40s. Into his 40s. Lived with them. Nothing. Just his parents fed him until he was in his 40s, and they finally kicked him out, and almost every day on my way to work, I pass him. He lives down off the cut by SPU. Freeloads. If he can’t find a place to freeload, then he just sleeps out in the park and panhandles.

He’s a guy I’ve known for years, and most days I drive by him on my way to work. He thinks it’s somebody else’s job to feed him. He is a 40-something-year-old, able-bodied man, and most mornings I see him, he’s panhandling for change or he’s walking up to the 7-Eleven to buy a Slurpee. He eats Slurpees by the gallon. I’ve known this guy for years. And every morning I just wave at him, and I will never buy him breakfast, because I am biblical.

2 Thessalonians 3 tells us, “We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” For some people, starvation is the biblical consequence of laziness. Are there legitimate needs? Sure. I told you, there are legitimate people who are poor that need help. We’ll talk about that in Proverbs. But just because you’re poor does not mean that you necessarily get free stuff from the Bible.

Here’s another myth, that there are such thing as Christian and non-Christian jobs. Some people think, “Well, I need a good, Christian job.” I will say, there are some jobs that are not Christian. You can’t be Christian crack dealer. You can’t be a Christian hit man. You can’t be a Christian prostitute, okay? There’s a certain list of jobs that’s, like, not gonna work. You’re gonna have to find another line of work. You can’t run a Christian meth lab. You can’t do that.

But for the most part, most jobs are biblically justifiable. You guys tell me, in the Scriptures, which careers, vocations, and jobs come to mind that are fully acceptable?

Response: [Inaudible comment]

Mark Driscoll: What’s that?

Response: [Inaudible comment]

Mark Driscoll: There are some musicians.

Response: [Inaudible comment]

Mark Driscoll: What’s that?

Response: Fishing.

Mark Driscoll: Fishing, farming, agriculture, livestock, textiles, clothing manufacturing, education, investment, politics, parenting, being a mom. There’s a huge number of vocations. Law. Military. There’s an enormous number of people in the Bible that are working in an enormous number of vocations.

The issue is, well, which one is the Christian job? I’ll tell you this. I don’t think that there is such a thing as a Christian job. I think there’s jobs, and then there’s Christians who do those jobs in Christian ways. What makes a job Christian is not the job or the Christian working the job. It takes the job, a Christian working the job, and a Christian working the job in a biblical way. That’s what makes a job Christian. So a Christian job has very little to do with the job and has a lot more to do with you and how you work the job, because even if a Christian has a good job and they don’t work biblically, it’s still not a very good job. They’re not doing a good job, so they’re not being biblical.

Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for in the grave, where you’re going, there’s neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” Galatians 3, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.” You guys see the word there? “Whatever.” Whatever you do. That means you can do just about anything, and I don’t think God cares. I don’t think that God really cares what you’re doing; I think God is more concerned with how you do it. If you’re sweeping floors, are you sweeping floors biblically? If you’re a doctor, are you practicing medicine biblically?

See, we have this weird myth, or some people have this weird myth, that God’s will is this little dot that they need to hit, and if I don’t hit that little dot, then I’m in sin. I think that God’s will is more of a direction of life. God wants you to love him, honor him, obey him, serve him, glorify him. That’s God’s will. It doesn’t say in the Bible, “Hank, you have to be a plumber.” It’s not in there.

And so whatever you do, that’s the thing. Do it to the glory of God. I talked to some college students. They said, “Well, I’m just trying to figure out what my job is, and then I’ll get my degree, and I’ll da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.” Let’s do this for the college students. How many of you went to college, got your degree, and now you’re not working in the field that you studied in? All of you. Did you miss God’s will? Are you in sin?

Whatever you do. Some of you are gonna go to school and get a degree in a trade that’s going to disappear. The economy reinvents itself, and the culture reinvents itself every three to four years, which means you may get trained and go work a job, and then there may be a shift in the economy, and you may have to go find another line of work. There’s not a huge demand for horses and buggies. One day, that was a really good income stream. Some guy made a mint on eight-track tapes. He’s skinny now if he hasn’t found a Plan B.

Whatever you do. Just work at it to the Lord. Serve the Lord. Glorify the Lord. Honor the Lord. Do that, whatever it is. Some people think, too, that they should just sit there until the Lord speaks to them and tells them what to do. This is notorious with Christian college students. “As soon as the Lord tells me what to do, I’m gonna do it.” Well, he told you to work. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing.

Some people actually think that God’s gonna show up and say, “Hank, you’re a plumber. Go to work. This is Jesus.” God doesn’t do that. That’s Gnosticism. That’s really weird. Like each of us gets a career counseling seminar with Jesus: “What are your skills? What are your interests? What’s your education?” No. I mean, it’s really bizarre, but people do this. Some of you are laughing ‘cause you’re doing this right now. “Well, as soon as the Lord tells me what to do…”

Part of it is you know what you’re supposed to do by what you’re good at and not good at. Another guy recently says, “I feel called to engineering.” I said, “How are you at math?” He said, “Not very good with numbers.” Well, then for the love of God, don’t build anything. If you can’t do math, do not build something that is gonna house people. You’re not called into engineering if you’re not good with numbers, okay?

I mean, really, I had a meeting with a guy not too long ago. He’s in college. He says, “I really feel called to be an accountant. I just hate numbers.” Well, guess what? You should pick something else, because if you hate – what kind of – I mean, it’s like, “I wanna be a lifeguard; I’m just allergic to water.” Well, then rethink the whole plan. Come up with something else.

Whatever you do, work it. How do you know what God wants you to do? Part of it is, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is God-breathed, useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness, so that the man of God will be thoroughly equipped for what? Good work.” If you wanna know what a good vocation or job or ministry or whatever it is, read your Bible a lot. Read the Old Testament a lot. If you wanna be an architect, look at architects in the Old Testament. If you wanna be a musician, look at musicians in the Old Testament. If you wanna be a lawyer, look at lawyers in the Scriptures. If you wanna be a doctor, look at doctors in the Scriptures. If you wanna be a mother, look at mothers in the Bible.

Don’t think that you could just sit there and wait for some revelation to drop out of heaven. God has told you to work, and God has given you the Bible to equip you for that work, so you need to read your Bible. Sometimes we – Christians have this tendency sometimes to sort of ignore the Old Testament when a lot of practical vocational living is back there.

Jesus is a carpenter. If you’re gonna be a carpenter, look at Jesus and say, “I wonder how Jesus ran his shop. I wonder how he billed his people. I wonder how he worked with his hands. I wonder how he was on deadline. I wonder how well he was with his product.” Peter’s a fisherman. If you wanna look at fishing, look in the Bible. You’ll find fishing. Whatever it is you feel called to do, look at the Bible and find it in there and learn from that.

The second thing is, as well, Proverbs 15:22 says, “Plans fail for a lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.” Get counsel. That’s one of the great things in the church. If you wanna be an attorney, if you wanna be a doctor, if you wanna be an architect, if you wanna be a mom, if you wanna be a plumber, if you wanna be a sheetrock hanger, you should find someone who loves the Lord and is doing that, and you should talk with them. You should say, “This is what I’m thinking. You’re doing it. What do I need to know? Where do I get started? What is it that I need to think about? And am I even capable of doing this before I go spend all this time and money seeking an education or seeking certification or training? Is this possible?” And then talk to that person and learn from them. That’s the older teaching the younger. That’s the people who are doing teaching those who desire to do. Do you understand that?

It’s really amazing to me. Some people will think they wanna do something, and then they go all the way through college or maybe even grad school and get their degree. And then they’ll go off into the workforce and find out that they’re not very good at it or they don’t even like it. It’s like, well, it would’ve been good to know that before you chose that vocation.

Some of this as well is, there are specific calls that are laid on people in the Bible where God shows up in this miraculous way and picks people for certain jobs. Who comes to mind? Paul. Absolutely. Moses. Samuel. Noah. “You’re gonna be a boat-builder.”

“I live in the desert, and it’s never rained.”

“You’re gonna be a boat-builder.”

“No, I wanna do ministry.”

“I guarantee ya, this boat’s gonna be a really important ministry. Build a good boat. Don’t build a junky balsa-wood boat. You build a junky balsa-wood boat, and nobody ever does ministry again, Noah.”

God does call certain people into certain ministry tasks, and those are highly unusual. They’re usually prophets, priests, kings, apostles, and God sets them apart for an enormous work. Moses gets spoken to by God in the burning bush to go free God’s people from slavery and bondage in Egypt. Now I don’t think that the clerk at 7-Eleven gets the exact same thing. You’re gonna sell lotto tickets and Slurpees. Thus sayeth the Lord. Tell them I AM sent you. I don’t think you get that, understand? Am I saying that it’s bad to sell – no, that was my first job. I’m mocking myself.

That we have to just love God and pick something that’ll take care of our responsibilities and that certain people get extraordinary calls, and that is within God’s providence, but that is not normative. John the Baptist is set apart from his mother’s womb, filled with the Holy Spirit. That is unusual. And some people will look at the Bible and say, “Well, Moses got his call. How come I didn’t get mine?” Because you’re not Moses. You’re a regular guy who’s gonna work a regular job, love his wife, pay his bills, study his Scriptures, and serve the Lord.

You say, “Oh, is that denigrating?” No, not at all. Not at all. There’s a lot of men in Scripture who got called that would love to trade places with a regular guy. Jonah would’ve loved to have been called into plumbing. He did not wanna go to Nineveh. Just because God calls you does not necessarily mean it is easy or simple. Most of the men who were called to those ministries, how did their lives end? They were murdered. So usually God calls men and women to extreme things, and they die, but that is unusual. That is not typical operation with God.

Another myth: If I want to be in vocational ministry, I should not waste my time with working a job. Single men, this is their favorite thing: “I would work, but I really wanna serve the Lord, so I can’t.” And this comes outta this weird, awed understanding of ministry. It has nothing to do with Scripture. Most men at Mars Hill think that they are called to full-time ministry, and most aren’t. They’re just not. Every guy reads the Bible and thinks he’s gonna be Paul, and he’s not.

You guys see that clip in the movie Fight Club where he just sort of wakes up and says, “You know what? We’re all not gonna be president. We’re all not gonna be rich. We’re all not gonna be famous. Some of us are just gonna work a lot of hours and buy stuff at IKEA that we don’t need.” And that’s true. Some of you are just gonna get up and go to work and love the Lord and be simple about it. You’re not all gonna do global, life-changing ministry, but you will love your wife. You will love your kids. You will teach Bible studies. You will serve those in need, and your influence will go out in a very subtle, invisible way. It may not be extraordinary, but it should be consistent, and it should continue indefinitely.

One of the funniest things I hear about young men – from young men – I hear a lot of funny things from young men. One of the funniest I hear is, “I really wanna go into ministry full time so that I could have time to study.” Do you think I just sit around and read all day? This week, with Thanksgiving, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday – those four days – how many hours did I work? Not studying. Sixty hours. I put in 60 hours in four days so that I could have a turkey with my family on Thursday. And then on top of my 60-hour week, I will do my studies.

What that means is the guy who’s working 40 hours a week, he has more time to study than his pastor. He has more time to study. If you’re in full-time ministry, you have things that are compulsatory. You have to teach. You have to show up to all five services on Sunday, and there goes 13 hours of your life. You have to do counseling. You have to do weddings. You have to do meetings. You have to respond to e-mail. You have to answer the phone. There’s a lot of compulsion that comes in with full-time ministry.

And young men think, “I’m not studying my Bible now. I need to go into full-time ministry so I can have time to study my Bible.” Men, if you’re not studying your Bible, you shouldn’t go into full-time ministry. If you can’t work 40, 50, 60 hours a week and read your Bible, you are not fit for the ministry, because you’re gonna have to do that when you’re in the ministry. And there’s this weird thinking that somehow, if you really are sold out to the Lord, you’ll go to Bible college and seminary and then into ministry.

I have a stack of resumes that is real deep, from men all over the country that wanna work at this church, and we get them, and we sit around, and we make fun of them because I see things like, “I went to Christian school, and I went to Christian college, and I went to Christian seminary, and now I wanna do ministry.” Doing ministry is instructing and equipping and training and sending and commissioning God’s people into the workforce.

You’re gonna go to work. You’re gonna go to your neighborhood. You’re gonna go into your social network, and you’re going to bring the grace of God with you, and you’re gonna look for opportunities to serve the Lord there. And if I have somebody who has never worked a job, never raised decent kids, has never had a decent marriage, why should I send ‘em into ministry because they went to Bible college? Makes no sense at all. Is Bible college bad? Is seminary bad? I’m not saying that. I’m saying if that’s where you’re hiding from your curse and hard work and the duties of working, then you’re not qualified for ministry.

1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, what is required of an elder or a deacon in the church? Good reputation with outsiders. That means that they’ve been working outside of the church. It means – it also says that they have a good marriage, that they have obedient children, that they’re good with their money, that they work hard at their job, that they manage their household well. I wanna see somebody who does that, and then we can call them into ministry full time if that is what God has decreed. Most of our elders aren’t even paid; they’re volunteer. We don’t pay them. You could be a pastor without even collecting a salary. In fact, most pastors do.

And within that as well, does God call some to full-time vocational ministry? Yes, but he calls them out of normal working jobs. What was Jesus doing before he went into full-time ministry? Working with wood. And you say, “Wasn’t that a waste of his time? I mean, after all, he’s God. Doesn’t God have better things to do than to work a lathe and make chairs and tables? Doesn’t God have something better to do than that?” No.

“Well, isn’t Jesus – shouldn’t he have been in Bible college and seminary?” No, he’s working. He’s working a job, and he’s working it well. I’m sure Jesus made nice tables. I’m sure his lines were straight. I’m sure his chairs held together. You say, “Well, what was Jesus doing? Shouldn’t he have been off doing spiritual things?” Well, he was. Whatever you do, do it to the glory of God. His dad’s a carpenter. He’s a carpenter, until he gets called into something else. Peter is a fisherman and then gets called into something else. Men in the Bible are serving God in their vocation, and if God has them to do something, they go do it, and then oftentimes they come back to their vocation. Some farmers get called out to prophesy for a while, and then they go back to farming.

Do you understand what I’m saying? You can’t look at Jesus’ 30 years as a waste of time, and you can’t look at it as any less than him out preaching good news. It’s all to God’s glory, and it’s all sacred activity, and it’s all done because of God’s sovereign decree. You have to look at your job that way. I wanna see people who are good moms. We’ll let them be leaders in the church. I wanna see guys who are good employees. We’ll call them to be leaders in the church.

I love this one too: I should use my time at work to do evangelism. Any of you work with a Christian on the job who never does any work, but they’re always trying to save people? The Bible says, “Thou shalt not steal.” If you’re getting paid to do a job and you’re using that time to read your Bible or evangelize, you’re stealing your employer’s time. That’s a sin.

Romans 3, I think it’s verse 8, says – some actually say, “Well, it’s good to do wickedness, providing that good results.” Some guys will justify this, or gals will justify this; they’ll say, “Yeah, I don’t really do much good on the job when I evangelize, but that’s okay because so-and-so came to Christ, and so that proves that I wasn’t sinning.” Not at all. God sometimes will bless things even that are – God is a gracious and kind god.

I worked with a guy – I was working at a hotel as a shuttle driver, one of my summer jobs, and we’d – it’s just the most boring job in the world. You’d take a shuttle, and every 15 minutes you drive through the airport and pick people up and then drop them off at the hotel. Okay, you do that for eight or ten hours, all of a sudden you’re getting a little nuts by the end of the day. Just every 15 minutes, driving the same road. I could tell you every bump in the road. I could tell you every pothole. It was amazing. 

And there was this one guy – when it got busy, they put two of us on the shift, so one guy’d make a trip and then unload the van, and then the other guy’d take a different van, so we’d take two vans. And I kept getting paired with this Christian guy, and I was a new Christian, and he felt it was his job to evangelize people, and so he would never go to the airport ‘cause he’d be dropping the Gospel on people. “If you died tonight, do you know that you’d stand before Jesus? What would you tell him?” I’d be like, “Can I have my bags?” He’s like, “Well, in a minute.” And he’d literally, like, withhold people’s luggage until they made a profession of faith, and then he would take their bags to their room. And he would skip his trips to the airport, and I’d be like – and then I would go to pick the people up at the airport, and they’d be furious ‘cause they’d been waiting 30 or 40 minutes with their luggage, waiting to get picked up, and we had a guarantee we’d come every 15 minutes.

And I said, “Dude, you gotta go to the airport.” He says, “Well, the Lord has called me to more important things.” I said, “No, man, the Lord has called you to get in the big bus and drive to the airport. That’s it. That’s what they’re paying you to do.” And it is not a good witness for me to pull up and have these people really mad ‘cause they’ve been waiting at the airport for an hour, and say, “Well, I’m sorry I wasn’t on time; it’s Jesus’ fault.” That’s not – I mean, they’re all gonna be atheists. They don’t wanna worship our god. If our god doesn’t go to the airport and pick them up, they don’t want anything to do with him.

And it was interesting ‘cause he said, “Well, God has sent me here as an evangelist.” I said, "Well, that’s great. Then quit your job, and stop taking the check, and just hang out here and visit with people, but don’t take the company’s money and do evangelism." He always felt called to evangelism the flight attendants. That was his particular outreach. If there was a 20-year-old flight attendant, God had called him to share the Gospel with her, and this guy drove me crazy.

It finally got to the point where some of the guys on the job said, “You’re a Christian; he’s a Christian. You need to go talk to him about this.” I said, “Why?” They said, “‘Cause if we do it, he’ll think it’s a Christian issue. It’s not a Christian issue. It’s a driving-the-van-to-the-airport issue is what it is.” If you’re getting paid to work, work. If you wanna do evangelism, have your co-workers over to your home for dinner. If you wanna teach a Bible study, and people who do that, do it on your lunch break. The time that’s yours, use your time, but don’t use the company’s time.

Oh, what else do we got? Oh, here’s the last one: Once I choose a job, I cannot change it. Some people say, “Well, I have this job, and I can’t leave. I’m stuck with this one forever.” So they have a really hard time choosing a job ‘cause they feel like, once they’re in it, that’s their life. It’s not that way.

1 Corinthians 7, Paul says, “If you’re a slave, work as a good slave; if you get an opportunity to be free, buy your freedom and move on.” I’ll tell you this. You may be underemployed right now. You may be working a job that’s a dead-end job, that’s not a career; it’s a job. You’re saying, “Why should I work hard at this? This stinks. I need a real job. I’m not gonna work until I get a real job, a job where I don’t have to have a hat and a uniform and people talking into a clown. I want a real job.” And I can sympathize with that.

Well, what it is, is the Lord has you there to build a work ethic in you so that the next thing he calls you into, you’ll be up to the task. And so he’s gonna keep you there until you learn your lesson and until your character forms and grows, and then as he gives you an opportunity to move on to something else, take it. If you’re working an honest, hard job, you’re doing a good job, and then an opportunity comes to get a promotion or go into another field, 1 Corinthians 7 says, well, then take it. Take it and go, but you gotta start with something, and if you’re moving, the Lord can change your direction. But if you’re just motionless and sitting, he can’t direct you, ‘cause you’re not going, so you have to start with something small, be faithful, and then continue to move forward.

Here are some principles for Christian work. Okay, I had to deconstruct the myths on money and the myths on work. Here are some principles to keep in mind for you to be a good employee. Proverbs 11:1, “The Lord abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight.” This is about business ethics.

I remember when I was in India a couple years ago. I wanted to buy a nice piece of jewelry for my wife, but they sell it by the ounce, and I was really leery ‘cause I didn’t know the stores, and I was afraid if they had dishonest scales, they’d be charging me for ounces that I didn’t receive. And so I talked to the pastor’s wife, and she was kind enough to help me find an honest, reputable businessman.

Some of you need to be very careful with how you conduct your business. You need to watch your ethic carefully. What this means very practically is if you’re a contractor, you keep honest record of your hours. You don’t overbill people. If you work six hours, you charge six hours. What this means is if you are setting a bill for someone, you’re making an estimate – let’s say you’re in contracting or consulting. You say, “It’s gonna take this much time, and it’s gonna cost this much money.” You make sure that you’re accurate with that.

What you don’t do is say, “Well, they want it done in four weeks. It’s gonna take six, but I’ll tell ’em I can do it in four, just to get the job, and then extend them out for another two weeks.” If you’re a mechanic, what that means is if you know it’s gonna cost $1,200.00 to rebuild the motor, don’t quote ’em 8 and, when you tear it all apart, call ’em and say, “Oh, we found a few things,” knowing you were gonna charge ’em 1,200 the whole time.

If you make an estimate, live up to your estimate. If you make a timeline or a deadline, live up to your word. Be honest in your business dealings. Don’t have dishonest business practices. Don’t skirt the law. Don’t skim the top. Don’t mess with your invoice. Don’t overbill people for work that you haven’t done. The Lord abhors these things. He abhors dishonest practices, and the Lord knows these things, and you reap what you sow.

In addition, he says, “Do you see” – Proverbs 22:29 – “a man who is skilled in his work? He will serve before kings, and he will not serve before obscure men.” You should have honest business ethics. I’ll say within that as well, this means showing up to work on time and not leaving early. At the Marriott where I worked, you’d have to – it was a time clock, and you had to wear a uniform. So what’d people do? They’d punch in and then they’d go take 20 minutes to get dressed, on company time. That’s not biblical.

I worked a union job longshore one summer, and the guys on Friday would punch back into work after lunch and then play cards for two hours. They’d play poker on company time. Not biblical.

The Lord abhors dishonest business ethics. What he wants his people to do is to work with skill. Your goal is to be very good at what you do, and what God says is that he will bless that, and you will not serve before obscure men, but he will lift you up to serve before kings, and this is true. How many of you would kill to find a good mechanic? An honest mechanic who, when they said it’ll be done Thursday and it’ll cost $200.00, you showed up Thursday and it was done, and they charged you $200.00. Say, “My gosh, I didn’t think anybody was perfect but Jesus, and I might’ve found an exception. I got a mechanic who does the job.”

You wanna be skilled and honest, and you wanna be good at what you do. What that means is if you’re a mom, you wanna be a great mom. If you’re an attorney, you be a great attorney. If you’re an accountant, you be a great accountant. If you’re a doctor, you be a great doctor. If you’re a student, you be a good student. If you’re a child, you do a good job with your chores. Whatever it is, you do it skillfully. You do it very well.

And I was – any of you guys see that show on TV on PBS where they take all their old antique stuff and they bring it in for an estimate? Was that the Antique Roadshow? That’s the most addictive show. I love that show ‘cause I love – the guy’s like, “Yeah, this was in the garage.” They’re like, “That’s $1 million,” and then to watch the guy just have a heart attack and die. I love watching that.

I was watching the British version with my wife this week. We were laying in bed, and it was interesting ‘cause they bring out this small pocket watch from the 1700s. I was thinking, “Man, my watch is not gonna be here in 300 years. Not that kinda quality.” They pull it out. It’s got one exterior case, and then it’s got another exterior case to protect it. And then he opens the second case, and then he takes the watch up, and then he takes the back off of the watch, and he holds it up and he says, “Now look at this.” And the whole back of the watch was all inlaid gold, and it was all hand-hammered out. There were birds, and there was a sunset, and there was this huge number of artistic engravings on the back of the watch, where no one would look and no one would ever see. It was internal. And then the man who made the watch, he inscribed his name, and I thought, “There’s a guy who’s skilled, and he’s proud of his work, and he puts his name on it.” Today we don’t even have that kind of skill. We don’t have anything that’s going to last for 300 years.

And then the man went into – the man on the television went into talking about this man: “Oh, he lived 300 years ago, and this is what he did. He did big clocks and small clocks, and this was his craft, and he did this for the king, and he did this for the royal court, and he did these pieces commissioned for the government,” and he went into this whole man’s life. I thought, “Man, most of us are gonna die, and our things are gonna erode away, and here this guy’s legacy is on television 300 years later because he was skilled at his work.” Amazingly skilled. It was like a $3,000.00 or $4,000.00 pocket watch.

You wanna be skilled at what you do. You want your reputation to be “That person does an amazing job. They work hard. They work honest. They show up on time. They meet their bid. They do their deadline. They only charge you for the work they’ve done, and they do a tremendous job.” And what that does, that builds your reputation, and that enhances your business. Word-of-mouth is still the best form of advertising, and skilled people get found. If you find a good restaurant, you find a good mechanic, if you find a good school, you tell people, and that causes their business to grow, and they get more and more prominence.

It says in Proverbs 12:24, “Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor.” You have to be diligent with your hands. I had a sad conversation this week. My father-in-law’s been a pastor for 35 years, and we were talking at Thanksgiving at my house, and he said, “I had the weirdest experience this week.” I said, “What was that?” And he said, “I met a pastor who – he travels and teaches a lot. He said he only teaches at a church for two or three years at a time, and then he moves around, and he’s been in ministry for a long time. And I asked him why, and he says, ‘Well, that’s all the sermons I’ve got.’”

He’s got about two or three years of sermons, so he’ll go to a church, he’ll preach those sermons, and then he’s done. It’s like milk: He hits the expiration date, and he goes bad, so he’s gotta go to another church then and preach those same two or three years of sermons. And Gib said, “Well, don’t you study?” And the guy says, “I haven’t read a book in 15 years.”

My father-in-law was stunned. Just like, “You’re a pastor who hasn’t read a book in 15 years?” And the guy said, “No,” and he was kinda bragging about it ‘cause it frees up time for other things. I guess if you don’t study your Bible and you don’t work, you have time to golf or fish or something. And it says here in Proverbs, diligent hands rule. You can’t just get a skill. You need to continually cultivate it and keep working and keep progressing, and laziness ends in slave labor.

How about – any of you guys garage-sale? Have any garage-salers in the house? You love to hit the garage sales? Here’s one for you. Proverbs 20:13, the garage sale verse. “It is no good. It is no good,” says the buyer. “That’s a piece of junk.” And then off he goes and boasts about his purchase. Right?

You go to the flea market. You go to the secondhand store. You go to the garage sale. Say, “Oh, that’s a piece of junk. You want ten bucks? I wouldn’t give you five bucks. I’ll give you a buck. Look, it’s all tarnished, and it’s junky.” And you just wear ‘em down. You’re like water on a rock. You’re just wearing ‘em down, bit by bit, and then they sell it to you for a buck. "Look, Martha, I got it for a buck. It’s worth 50 bucks. Praise the Lord. I just stole it."

Used-car salesmen. Don’t you love to go in and sell your car? You could have a new car, and they’ll tell you it’s a piece of junk. “Give you $27.00 for that car.” “That’s a 2001 Cadillac.” “I’ll give you $28.00.” “Twenty-eight dollars?” You shouldn’t do that. Am I saying you should pay full price? No. I’m saying you go in and you tell them what you wanna pay for it. Do not disrespect the person and dishonor the item.

I’ll give you an example. My wife had a 1988 Jeep Cherokee. We needed to sell it. I went to sell it. And I told my wife, I said, “Honey, I’m gonna tell him about the Jeep.” She said, “You gonna tell ’em about the white guy?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll tell ’em about the white guy.”

The white guy was this very pale, pasty, old white man who came to buy the Jeep, and he was wearing white socks and white shoes and white shorts and a white shirt, so we call him the white guy. And this guy came, and he wanted to buy my Jeep to tow a boat, and he – I think I was asking 4,500. I wanted 3,800. He took like three hours looking at my Jeep, before he even turned it on. Climbed under it, pushing everything, taking parts out, going through everything, looking at everything. I mean, he pulls all the seats, and he’s looking underneath and, every time he finds anything, comes and knocks on the door: “Oh, c’mere, I wanna show you something.” I’m like, “Oh, gosh.”

And I go look. He’s like, “See here, the stitching on the side of the seat? It’s kinda coming undone.” I’m like, “Yeah. So am I. I mean, I’m coming undone now.” Every little thing. “Oh, looks like one of your kids spilled a Coke here.” It’s a 12-year-old vehicle. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever.

Finally, we start – and he starts – he says, “Well, I’ll give you 1,700.” I said, “No, you won’t. You won’t give me – you’ll give me 1,700, and I’ll take your life. That’s not a deal.” So he kept knocking – “Okay, 1,800,” and he did this for hours. So I finally said, “Sir, please just leave me alone. I won’t even sell the car to you because I wouldn’t do that to the car. I love this car, and this car deserves better. It deserves a nice person.” And finally he says, “Well, I’ll give you $4,000.00.” He works slowly – it took almost a whole day. I said, “No, I’m not selling you the car. You could offer me $50,000.00, and I would turn you down. At this point, it’s not about the money; it’s about the principle.”

I had another guy show up, and he looked at it, and he says, “Man, this is in really good shape. It’s worth more than you’re asking. I’ve got $3,800.00 cash. That’s all I got. Will you take it?” Nice guy. I said, “Yeah, I’ll take it.” I’d rather give it to this guy for 3,800 bucks. I’ll cut a deal to an honest man, and I won’t cut a deal to a dishonest man, ‘cause it’s not about the money; it’s about righteousness.

Proverbs says, don’t walk in and try and rip somebody off. Just walk in and look at him and say, “That’s a nice vase. I’ll give you 10 bucks.” If it’s worth 40, offer 10. If they give it to you for 10, good, you get it for 10, but don’t run around lying and denigrating people, all you garage-salers.

Proverbs 27:18, “He who tends a fig tree will eat its fruit, and he who looks after his master will be honored.” Take care of your boss. “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside,’ or ‘I will be murdered in the streets,’” Proverbs says.

Any of you work in management and it’s your job to keep track of employees and their hours? Don’t you hear the craziest things? “There was a lion outside.” You’re like, “I’ve heard that. We live in the city. I don’t even –” “Oh, I was gonna come to work, and then I thought I was gonna get murdered.” Well, you are gonna get murdered if you don’t come to work. People come up with the most insane excuses. High school teachers should just write books on the things they hear. Don’t make excuses. Just do your job.

I was reading in the paper. They had practice for the Sonics. One of the Sonics was late because he blew a head gasket on his Range Rover. You know, boo-hoo. And the coach benched him and fined him. He says, “Hey, you’re late, you’re late. No excuses.” I thought, “Oh, that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful.”

Ecclesiastes 2. Here’s some principles. “When I surveyed all that my hands had done, what I toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless and chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” Solomon was very successful, but he did not honor the Lord, and so his life was without meaning. Your duty is to find a way to infuse meaning into your present job. You have to find a way that it honors God. You have to find a way that it connects with God’s purposes. Even if it is nothing more than cultivating character in you, you need to find it meaningful. Otherwise it will just end up causing you nothing but grief and disdain.

Here’s the last few. Galatians 3, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.” It is the Lord that you are serving. Your paycheck may say your company’s name, and it may be written by someone in accounting, but ultimately you work for Jesus Christ. You work for him. What that means is if you’re boss doesn’t see something, Jesus does, and you do it for Jesus, and you do it well.

Last one, Proverbs 20:17, “Food gained by fraud tastes sweet to a man, but in the end he ends up with a mouthful of gravel.” Solomon basically says here, we’re all gonna eat gravel. Some people, they don’t wanna eat gravel, so they just eat honey. They’re looking for a sinful shortcut, but if you start by eating nothing but honey, looking for a sinful shortcut in life, it ends up turning into gravel.

In the same way, if you eat your gravel first – pay your dues, work hard, learn your lessons, work your way up – if you eat your gravel first, it turns into honey. Every one of you, insofar as your work goes, you’re gonna eat gravel. The issue is, are you gonna eat a little at the beginning, or are you gonna eat a lot at the end? And you’re gonna eat honey. Are you gonna eat all your honey up front, or are you gonna wait for a long haul, a long season of honey after you eat your gravel? Work your hours, do your job, pay due diligence, eat your gravel, and wait for the Lord to turn it into honey.

And I’ll close with this. Paul says, “But by the grace of God, I am what I am.” You can do your work by God’s grace. God has given you health or skill or mental acumen or talents or abilities. That is all God’s doing. “And his grace was given to me not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them – yet not I but the grace of God that was with me.” All work gets done by God’s grace and our hard work. Some people think, “I don’t wanna work hard; I just want God’s grace.” Your work is God’s grace. God has given you work to do and the ability to do it, and that is his grace. And so work and grace go together, and work and grace are friends, and grace enables us to work, and that is grace.

I wanna close with this. I wanna introduce you guys to a friend. I don’t do this very often. I don’t wanna embarrass him. I wanted him to tell you his story, and then I’ll close with a prayer. Why don’t you tell ’em your family background, where you grew up, mom, dad, brother, sister stuff?

Male: Growing up, we were pretty poor, you know. We were kinda just borderline. Never had too much, but we never went hungry.

My dad went to college for seven years, spend $50,000.00 on it, and ended up working at the library or at Taco Time. He wanted to be a teacher, but as soon as we were kind of established, he didn’t feel like moving around to find where the teaching jobs were at, ‘cause my mom had a good job at the university. So we stayed, and he just kinda worked various just kinda humdrum jobs that he really didn’t feel was very challenging or very fulfilling or meaningful or whatever, and I kinda learned something from that.

But as I grew up, I hit about 17, and I was just doing just whatever I wanted, just kinda being lazy, hanging out, smoking lots of weed and whatnot. And my mom had what they called an episode of sudden cardiac death, and she was at work sitting there at a meeting and just stopped breathing. And so they revived her ‘cause the building in which she works is right next to the hospital at the university. So she was in the hospital for three weeks, and she was fine, so it was kinda like a speed bump in my life. I didn’t think about it too much.

And eight months later, I was 18, and my father died of a ruptured brain aneurysm, and that hit us all pretty hard. We kinda fell apart for a bit, everybody in their own way. I was 18 at the time. My little brothers were 16 and 9. My older sister was 20. And it was kind of at a weird time. It was just a few days before my sister got married, and so it just kinda cast this big shadow on the next few years, but it got me to do some thinking just about where I was at and just what I was doing.

But later on as time progressed, life started coming together a bit more. I met my wife, and we were engaged, and I was still smoking a lot of weed, not really doing too much of anything, still just kinda hanging out, when my little brother died. And he died at 18 of, like, some same sudden cardiac death kinda thing they couldn’t really pinpoint. And that’s when I decided that – I just basically had a breath, and then that was it, and I needed to something with it, so we got married and came up to Seattle, started going to Mars Hill, and I still wasn’t working, really. I was working at the temp agency at Microsoft, just kinda reorganizing storerooms and whatnot, and they’d give me software that I didn’t have a computer to use, so I gave that away.

But my wife was making all the money, ‘cause she was an administrative assistant, which is pretty good money at Microsoft, with medical benefits and stock options and all this stuff. But she was really stressed out, and being an administrative assistant, depending on how large your group is, really sucks. And so she wasn’t down for doing that for too long, but while she was this administrative assistant, like a week after her medical benefits kicked in, my lung ruptured for whatever reason. And I was in the hospital for five days with a tube in my chest, and that cost a lot of money that Microsoft just paid for, so that was cool. But soon after that, she – yeah, it was like 100 percent. They’d send us bills that said, like, “Yeah, covered by your insurance,” for like five grand. Like whoa, five grand’s a lot of money. That was like my yearly wage.

So she was pregnant when she was just like, “I just can’t do it anymore.” So I was like, “All right, put in your two weeks’ notice, and I’ll find a job. I’ll do something. I’ll find something that’s every day, not just like when they need me two days a week at Microsoft to help somebody pack their cubicle or something.” And so I went ahead and just said, “Put in your two weeks,” and I just started looking for a job, and I figured I’d go into construction, so I went into laboring, but that tops out at about 12 bucks an hour. So soon enough, I needed to find something else.

So I just decided that – I was always pretty sure God really didn’t care what you did, as long as it was legal. My dad used to say that: “Just make sure it’s legal. Make sure it’s ethical and legal. Like don’t, like, legally steal money from people.” And so I went with that. I was like, “Yeah, that sounds good. That sounds biblical.”

So I decided that pretty much it just needed to be legal and not addictive, and so I decided that my list was gonna differ from my father’s. My father said, “I wanna be a teacher, so I’m gonna do that,” and he shot for it, and he missed. So I figured I’d go for a broader target, and I just listed mentally, like not on a piece of paper with a career planner person or anything, but I just listed things that I could do for 30 years without going insane, and it was a pretty big – it was decent. It was a big enough list.

But then I thought, “I wanna have a big family, so as my family grows, my income also needs to grow. So what types of things can I do where the income will continue to grow?” And the list shrunk. Some things don’t – they don’t profit that much. But I decided there were a few things that were kinda like qualifiers for what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with my hands, maybe have some tools. There were just a few things that I thought would be cool, so I went after it, and I decided I was gonna be an electrician.

So I just quit laboring one day. Like halfway through the day, I called my wife at lunch, which was my custom, and we were talking, and she’s like, “You just gotta be done with this laboring thing. You should just move on the electrical thing. Don’t wait for like –” ‘Cause we were kinda waiting for this magical time of – you know, just fall into the electrical apprenticeship thing, which people do. Somebody’s always waiting for something.

So she was like, “Just go for it today.” And so I just walked off the job. I was like, “Hey, I’m sorry. I’m gonna go be an electrician.” And he was cool with it. He was like, “Yeah, you know, go do your thing. Right on.” And so he appreciated my help and everything. He’s like, “You’ve been a good laborer. Go do your electrical thing. You’ll do great.” So I was like, “All right.”

And I went to Mars Hill when our offices were down in the U District, and I was like, “The computer sounds like a useful tool, and I’m looking to be an electrician. Could you print me up a list of electrical contractors somehow?” And he’s like, “Yeah, US West Dex, and here you go,” and bam, he started printing it out, and it took a long time to print out ‘cause there’s like over 1,000 electrical contractors in the Seattle area.

So it printed out, and I started calling ‘em, and I had called 308 places when I got to F. Like, lots of places. And most of ’em weren’t, like, talking to a person. Most of ‘em were just, like, 30-second messages on a machine, but I just went for it. A guy called me back, and I went to work for him, and he was pretty hardcore, but I’d done so much praying about it that I figured that’s where God wanted me to be. So when I thought, “This guy paid me a good wage at first, but now I feel he’s holding me back, and he’s kinda cruel to me, so I’d like to be somewhere else.” I kinda had a problem just up and leaving, just saying, “Bye, thanks for my start in electrical. I’ll see you later. You’re an evil man.”

So I talked to various people and just sought counsel from my peers and from the godly folks I was hanging out with, and everybody said, “Dude, you really don’t owe him anything. Just leave.” And someone said something to me that I’ll always remember and that I’ve thought about a lot since, and he said, “Well, you gotta think about it. You do have a loyalty to this guy. He gave you your start in electrical, but does God want your family eating pasta or steak?” And I decided it was steak.

So I quit and went to work for another place for a lot better money and a lot better treatment and better training, and just as I was – just by the grace of God, he made me equal to every task I was asked to do. And the one thing I focused on as far as my work ethic – some people focus on being fast and always looking really busy and just going and going and going, and on a construction site, most people look at that as a drug abuse problem.

So what I did, instead of just being constantly, like, perpetually strung out on something and just go, go, go, I decided that I would never complain about anything. And if they gave me a gnarly job or whatever it was, just do it, and do it to the best of my ability, and so I did that, and I never complained. And that’s always been something that has set me apart from everybody else because in construction, most people have a hard time getting up in the morning, not just because they’re tired but because they’re hung over. And when you’re hung over, there are jobs that are as bad as possible to do. Like you don’t wanna have to hammer anything, and you don’t wanna have to use a really loud, squealy saw.

So I didn’t complain, and I think that was one thing that set me apart a little bit, but at the company I’m at now, there’s always kind of a good-ol’-boys system at all the companies you’re at, and most of the guys at the company that I’m currently at were from Vancouver, Washington, but they’ve done a lot of work up here. And the guys that are from Vancouver make good money, and the guys who aren’t typically don’t, and so I was kinda worried about it. I was like, “I’m not from Vancouver, and I don’t hang out and drink with these guys.” That was another thing that’s like – a huge camaraderie builder is just being, like, belligerently inebriated, and I didn’t do any of that, so I was kinda worried about my wage.

But I prayed about it, and as it got closer and closer to my journeymanship, when you’re supposed to get this big bump, which can be big or can be huge, I would see people come to work for the company at what was basically bottom dollar for an electrical journeyman, so I got more and more worried about it. But then I finally got my card after my two-year apprenticeship, and I finally started talking to this guy, and they gave me like the top-top dollar for what I was doing. And getting my card, passing my examination was a good feeling, but it was a better feeling to know that I’d just been appreciated to that degree, and this is also something that’s really big. I’d like to thank Mark and the elders for this ‘cause it’s easy when you’re out there and every day.

In construction, people cuss at you a lot, and it’s not that big a deal. I mean, it’s something that you kinda get used to a bit. It’s a harsh environment, but it’s easy to feel like nobody sees what you’re doing, but it is seen. And it’s something that – if I was to give a piece of advice, it would just be: Make your list of things you can for 30 years without going insane. Keep narrowing it down and just keep going forward with it. Don’t spend too much time sitting there contemplating what would be the best option. I mean, put thought into it, but put more action than thought into it. That might sound crazy.

Mark Driscoll: Thanks, bro. That’s great. I saw him start walking with God. I saw his wife come to Christ. They’ve got two beautiful daughters. He’s got a son on the way. God just opened a house for ‘em, so they’re moving into a big place up in north Seattle. It’s just cool to see God’s grace, and he built a little momentum in what he does. I don’t know anybody who calls 308 places looking for a job just ’cause they wanna do something, but God honors that.

We’ll take Communion now and take our offering. If you’re not a Christian or you’re a first-time visitor, don’t give. For the rest of you, it’s part of your act of worship. Communion is, for us, the celebration that Jesus has died for our sins and freed us from Satan, sin, and death, so we could belong to him and live with wisdom instead of folly, and experience life instead of death, and so we celebrate that as well.

Father God, thanks for a chance to get together to study the Scriptures. Lord God, I pray for all of us who are gonna just continue in our work. Some of us have to go back to work today. Some of us are gonna be at work tomorrow. Some of the moms are at work all the time. Lord God, pray for grace and wisdom upon our endeavors. Pray that the hundreds of thousands of hours that are represented in this room would not be in vain, that things would be meaningful and purposeful, that you would lead and guide your children, and that they would concern themselves with their ethic and the way they conduct themselves and the way they do their labors, and that it would show that they are your children and that their work is like yours – very good – and that it is done consistently and with due diligence.

Lord God, we love you. We thank you that you’ve created us to work, that our lives have intention and purpose and meaning, that we’re all in full-time ministry, that some of us are cutting fish at the supermarket, and some of us are attorneys, and some of us are students, and some of us are moms, and some of us are musicians, and some of us are baristas, and we’re all in full-time ministry there. Pray, Lord God, that we would glorify you in all that we do. Amen.