Transcript
Well, this has been an exciting week for me. I have signed actually over a hundred letters of appreciation to many of you, to those of you who last week took your pledge envelope and wrote, I want a kite on it, or sent a letter into our church with a contribution of this building project we're trying to do. We're trying to fly this kite here at UPC, and you've been helping. It's so wonderful. By the way, those
kites are available. If you sent in a contribution during this week and wrote on it, I want a kite, your name is on a big envelope in Room 101. You can pick up your poem, I Am a Kite, the poem that Bruce Bailey wrote. You can pick it up in there in 8 1/2 by 11 in the Room 101. And by the way, some of you have been contributing faithfully right straight through the whole year in
the building fund. You've just been faithfully doing it. And it didn't seem right to me that just because of the accident of last week, that last week I happened to mention this, that you shouldn't have a kite too. If you are regularly giving to the building fund, we just don't want any freeloaders in there taking a kite, but if you've been regularly giving to the building fund, you can go in there and say, I would like
one of these kites too. And there's some volunteers in there and they'll give you your kite, because after all, you've been flying this kite for us. And this has been so exciting. People are having fun. I got a wonderful letter from a lady in Tacoma saying how much she loved that poem and said, I want to have a copy of that poem to frame and put in my house because I listen every Sunday to this service
on the radio. And I want to give her a warm greeting today as you listen on the radio. And maybe you've already received it by now because we mailed it to you this week. It's so exciting to see the way people have got excited about Bruce's poem and also they're trying to help us fly the kite. I had a chance to go in and see the skylight, by the way, in Geneva. You can't believe the light
that's flooding into Geneva. You can't go there yet, though. It's off limits. But they're working on it and it'll be ready by September. And there are two ways you can help make this kite fly. One is by just regularly giving out of the general fund, of course you have to do that, but regularly giving to the building fund. And there are two main funds that we support in this church and that will help. Also there may
be some of you that are able to make a major gift. And we have a printout of all the breakdown of the cost of every project, of every part of the project, and there may be something you'd like to give in honor of or in memory of somebody in your family. Maybe your family wants to make a gift and if you want to do that, contact Tim Snow this week or Bruce Stewart, our elder, who can
help you find a project that you can do. But we want to make this happen and it's really exciting the way you're all just coming on board. Now I'm going to be gone for a while. I'm going over to England this week and teach a class on C.S. Lewis and then have some vacation time and I'll be back here on Sunday, Labor Day Sunday. You can see all the marvelous preachers from our staff will be
preaching in these next weeks. And I'll give you a report. You won't hear anything about it till then. I know you're just dying here every week and there are reports on it, but we'll give you a report in Labor Day and let you know how we're doing on this project. This is the final sermon in a series of sermons I've been preaching this summer on the theme I've been titled, Design for Happiness, Christian Reflections on the
Family in Today's World. Remember early on in the series I gave a definition of happiness. I said happiness is when I know I'm loved around here and I'm needed around here. Well, it's come to that point in the sermon series where we're going to talk about I'm needed around here. I'm going to talk about something else that happens in a family that we learn in a family that's a part of God's design for happiness in families
that makes us know that we're needed around here. There's one more part in the design for happiness that we need to think about today and that is in the family we first learn how to work. And believe it or not, work is a major ingredient in happiness. If you don't believe that, talk to somebody who's out of work. Work is a major ingredient in happiness. And in a family is where we first learn how to work.
We learn it early on in doing chores, helping our mom or our dad in the yard work, or maybe an older brother or sister in some project they're doing, helping in the kitchen, helping with the car. It all adds up to work and we can't really be happy without it. Now I want to do two things today. I want to define work and then talk about the rewards of work. I want to define it quickly and
then I've got two wonderful texts that will help us understand the theological significance of work too. But let's first of all define it. What is work and why do we like it so much? See if I can make the case for it. Some of you are wondering if you like work that much. Maybe when I get through the sermon you'll say, wow, I didn't realize I liked it so much. I hope. First, let me give you
the ingredients of work. And each of these is needed for work to happen. And in each case, a family and our family by the God's design is supposed to help us discover these ingredients of work. The first ingredient of work, these are all very obvious. You're going to say, oh, yes, of course, I knew these all along. But they're very obvious. But still, let's talk about the first ingredient of work is time, the faithfulness of time.
It's time commitment. You have to show up on time for most jobs. I realize there are a few jobs where they say we don't care when you come in. Just come in any time you feel like it. There are not very many of those. There are some. But I have found that most of those companies expect you to work 10 or 12 hours a day. But in every other job that I know of, in almost all
jobs, one of the marks of work is you have to show up on time. You have to be there at a certain time. If a doctor is going to do surgery, the surgery is tightly scheduled with nurses and technicians and, of course, the poor patient and all those people. And it all is time around a very important time frame. Everything is time. The bus driver has to be on a schedule. If you're working on a train,
you have to be there on time. And where do you learn this to be on time? You first learn it from your family. It's a family that first teaches you about time by having a dinner. That's why I'm so much in favor of families eating together every night if possible. One of the biggest things we did all throughout growing up with our kids is we always tried to eat the evening meal together. And it meant that
one of the biggest conversation pieces in the morning in our family was figuring out when we were going to eat that night. Because we wanted everybody to be able to be there together. And when our kids were active in school and John was in football and Liz was in school plays, we had to work around their schedules. But we did it, set a time, and then people were there. And if you were not going to be
there, you let people know. And you learn that in a family. And that prepares you for work. Because one of the absolutely essential ingredients in work is time faithfulness. I've often tried to wonder, why am I so punctual? And I really am. I'm very keen on time. Session at this church starts exactly at 7:30, not 7:31. I do a class on Wednesday night. It never starts at 7:01. It starts at 7 o'clock.
And I'm very strict on that. It ends, by the way, at 8:32 sharp. I'm strict on that. Where did I learn that? I'm trying to figure out where I learned it. And I think I learned it because my father always woke me up. Always woke me up for my job. And I didn't really have an alarm so much when I was a kid because my dad was my alarm. And you might say, well, gee, that's
going to spoil a kid. But I'll advocate it to you. I think it's good. I think I learned time in this from my dad. My dad was never late for anything. And I used to work in the summers when I was in McLeod, worked for the lumber mill. I worked actually as an accomplishment in the cruising timber. We had to leave at 5 AM, the crew I was with. We had to leave at 5 AM
to get out to the strip in order to start our job and do it when we had to be there. And I think of all those two summers that I did that, my dad woke me every single morning at 4:15 to get me up, make coffee for me, make sure that I was ready and on time. Now, I think partly was he kind of wanted to talk with me and have a little fellowship with
me. And I appreciate that. And I've kept that up with my kids. I wake them up when they have a morning thing. It's fun to wake them up, to be able to talk to them, to be with them. But it teaches timeliness. And I think I learned it from my dad. And you learn it from your family. You learn when you're supposed to be places and you learn how to respect other people's time, too. And that
is work. That's the first mark of work, is timeliness. The second mark of work is skills. Now, we talked a little bit about skills last week when we were talking about risks because there is no risk taking without skills. These little falcons we've all been tracking with this week, they can't fly and take the risk of flying if they don't know how to fly. And they learn that from their father. It's a single parent family there.
And they have to learn it just from their father. But skills are important to work. In fact, work requires skills. More than that, it requires that skills grow and they get better and better. The very essence of repetitive nature of work is that it sharpens up your skills so that you get better and better and work gets easier and easier. You become what we call a pro. And the more you're a pro, the more you can
do your work with less and less, you might say, stress level because you become good at it. And that brings me to the third ingredient in work, responsibility. Responsibility is closely tied to skills and time. When you're faithful in time, when your skills grow, then you get more responsibility given to you and more freedom given to you to do more and more of what you wanted, more and more of what you do best. And that is
all, again, a part of work. That's why the goal in a family is to help a boy or girl catch their stride, to learn how to do something well so that I feel good about my hands and good about my mind. And then add that together with increased responsibilities, increased freedom to do my job. And of course, that is the third and fourth mark of work. The second and third. The fourth mark of work is the
one you think you don't like, but I'm going to try to show you like that one too, and that's sweat. Sweat is one thing money can't buy, right? Sweat. Sweat is one of the words for work. Did you know in the Greek vocabulary of the New Testament, there are two words for work? One word is the word erg in Greek, and that means work as an event. In fact, in modern physics, it's used that way. The
Greek word erg is used as a unit of work. It's a work as an event, and that's the skill and the event that's involved in work. But the other Greek word for work is the word kapos in Greek, which is translated in the New Testament labor or hard labor. It means sweat. There is no easy way to get to a place on time, certainly a four o'clock in the morning job. No easy way. There's no
easy way to learn the skills that go together to make up work. There's no easy way to have increased responsibility. There's no easy way to learn Greek. There's no easy way to do any work, like to learn to play the violin. You're going to hear a violin, two violins, three violins, and a cello for the offertory today. And they're going to play Pachelbel's Canon. There's no easy way to learn that. No easy way for a choir
to learn the parts that they play. It's work, and it's sweat. And yet that sweaty part of work that wears us out is what makes the end of the day so fun when you can relax. Pascal, who's one of my mentors, as you know, who lived in the 16th century, great Christian, once said, to urge a man or woman to be at ease is to misunderstand human nature. No one really wants to be at ease. And
as you know, when I preached on the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment is, I pointed out at that time that there's an evil doctrine afoot. And I don't know who's behind it, Sunset Magazine or somebody like that, got this evil doctrine that you're supposed to retire at age 65 and stop working, and just watch and let everybody else work and take care of you, earn it. Heaven knows you've done your part. What do you mean? You're
never supposed to stop working. Not according to the Bible, not according to Pascal. Six days out shall labor, one day thou shall rest. Doesn't say six days out shall labor, one day thou shall rest till 65, and then you rest for the rest of the time, just watch television? No! That's urging someone to die young. No, what you're supposed to do is to work six days and rest one day in a rhythm of work and rest
till the day you die. Now, the work keeps alternating and shifting around in your life. That doesn't mean you cling to a job and hold on to it for all your life. You keep shifting around like the Mesquites are doing. You keep changing your work. And work adapts to your physical strength. It adapts to all kinds of things. But the key is that you are to be in a rhythm all your life of work and rest.
You need sweat and work and responsibility and skills and the growth of skills and time faithfulness till the day I die. I made a little joke about that. You may have remembered once I said that this would be a successful person, where someone gets on the phone one day and says, I'm sorry, Mary can't make her Bible study class, she just died. She can't make her saxophone lesson, she just died. She can't make her Habitat for
Humanity building project, she just died. In other words, we live with work and rest up until the day we die. And to urge someone, like Pascal says, just to be at ease and not work, not sweat, not have any sweat, is that supposed to urge somebody to be happy? Do you want to be a voyeurist all your life and just watch people and watch everything? You know, watching games is OK for a while. But even on
New Year's Day, you get tired of watching football, find it. You have to go out and take a walk or do something. How much football can you take? Watching. So you need to work. And where do you learn that? You first learn it in a family. And now there's three rewards you get too. And it's the three rewards, at least two of the three I want to specially talk about today. You get three rewards from work.
And the first reward is money. And I'm in favor of it. I am a capitalist at heart, I guess, in a way right now. I'll give you a pro-capitalist sermon. I think it's very important that you be paid for your work. Honest day's work for an honest day's pay. I don't believe in children being exploited. I don't believe in anybody being exploited for their work. Now, don't get me wrong. I think there's a certain amount
of free labor you owe your family. A certain amount of free work you do just to be a member of this family to help keep everything going. But after you've done it, and I think every family has got to negotiate this, after you've done the free work that you owe to mom and dad and to everybody and brother and sister to help make everything happen, then I think you should be paid for what you do. I
think it teaches you something important. I think it teaches you that your labor is worth something. And you need to teach this to a young boy or girl growing up and to an older person too. We need to know that what we're doing is worth something to someone else. And also, it's important to give people money. I'm more in favor of being paid for what you do than just an allowance. I don't think I favor allowances.
But for some work you do, you get some pay, because money is an important thing to have in your hand to learn how to spend it and to learn how to invest it and to learn how to share it. So it teaches healthy things, and it's also downright fair, to have money for your work. You need it. But there are two other rewards that I especially want to talk about today that are a little more spiritual.
The next reward is this. I discover that second mark of happiness. I discover that I am needed around here. And it's work that does that to you. I've got a skill, and I can do something that no one else can do as well as I can do. And I yearn for that for every boy or girl growing up and for every person going into their older years of their life, to know that there's something I can
do well, so that I can do most of what I do well. And there's certain things I can do that this family absolutely needs, this church needs. I love the way Kay Brolite put it with regard to this little blue, this little blue insert in our bulletin for children's ministry, say yes to children, and she said last week, does this have your name written on it? Is your name written on this? Is there something that you
can do with children that no one else can quite do the same way? Do you have a special gift to give that you've learned from working with your hands and your heart and your mind that no one else can quite do? I'll tell you folks, when you know that and when you're able to do that, then you're happy. That is happiness. And if you're feeling blue right now, maybe it's because you need to work more, and
you'll be happy. You need to find out where your work is. Happiness is not people serving you. Happiness is serving. It is more blessed to give than to receive. Our Lord knew this. And when I find my work, and when I find that it has my name on it, and when I find that I can make a contribution here, and that I can do something and do it well, and then I get increased responsibility and increased
freedom, and I become a pro at it, and then I have a job to do. And I know I need it. And that's the joyous side of responsibility. That's the joyous side of sweat. And I yearn for it for every single young man or woman growing up. And in the family is where that can first begin to happen in a boy or girl. That's why affirmation of jobs well done and affirmation of boys or girls when
they're growing up in a family are so important when they begin to try their hand at their work. Now finally, and this is what we want to talk about the most, by work I become a concrete player in the world. And I put together, by my work, I put together possibilities that begin to take place. And those possibilities, whether it's yard work in a family, planting crops, planting gardens, and I watch flowers grow, helping to build
a house with my dad or my uncle, helping to paint a house, doing projects, working at Boeing or working where I'm in a church where I'm doing things for others. But all together when you add them up, I do these things and they become ingredients to new possibilities. They become ingredients to things happening and taking place. And when it all happens, the result is hope and meaning. Meaning begins to happen and hope happens because I become
a player and I build toward hope. And this is what causes respect. This is what causes good things to happen. Remember the film Breaking Away several years ago? This film was an Academy Award film. It was about a boy growing up. It was kind of one of those coming-of-age films. The boy had a fascination with bicycles and wanted to ride bicycles. He was living in Bloomington, Indiana. And his dad in the film, there's a
pathos in the relationship between the boy and his father because the boy has no respect for his father. That's established early on in the film. His father is a used car salesman. That's an honorable profession. But the way the film decides to portray his father, they kind of make fun of him and his son makes fun of him because the father is sort of bored when he's doing it. He just sits around all the time at
home and the son begins to lose all respect for his father. And then a beautiful, beautiful vignette occurs in the middle of the film. And it just so happens that the father and the son are walking in downtown Bloomington. By the way, I gave this illustration in the first service and in our choir, there's a woman that's in our choir from Bloomington and she told me the name of the building that I'm going to refer to.
She knows the scene. She grew up there. The town used to have a great quarry of granite, but the quarry had been closed by the time the film was shot. And the father and the son are walking in downtown Bloomington and they were walking by this building and the father, who's never really conversed much with his son, points to this building and it happens to be the university library that he's pointing to. And he points to
the building, he says, see that granite? And he says, notice the grain in that granite? And he explains the grain in the granite. I quarried that granite. I worked in the quarry when we quarried it. And then I got into actual chipping and framing it. And I framed that granite. And I helped to work on this building and matched all those pieces for that face. I did that. And the boy never even knew that his father
worked with granite and helped to build that building. And the father is kind of standing there, kind of embarrassed. He says, yeah, I did that. The son says, you did this? You worked on this? I did. Yeah, yeah. And that's one of the most beautiful moments in a film. As the son discovers the greatness of his father, a greatness that had been blurred, that he hadn't been able to see, in terms of his father's work, which
now had been lost because they had closed down the quarry and they were no longer working with granite. But that was a moment, it was a very important moment in that boy's life, to realize that his father was an important person. And where did that importance come? That hope that gave him meaning came from his work. Our work is, you know, the greatest source of our meaning is grace. We're going to sing a song at the
end of this service about grace. That's the greatest source of meaning. But out of grace comes encouragement to us to do our work. And so this boy got a new appreciation for his father because of what his father was doing with his work. Now, open to the fifth chapter of Luke, I have a work passage for you that will take you by surprise. In the fifth chapter of Luke is a scene that's also in the book
of Mark. A couple years ago when I preached to the book of Mark, I preached on this very scene, but I had a little different focus then. Then I was talking about Jesus Christ, who's the main center of the scene. This time I want to read this scene and talk and not focus on Jesus so much, but focus on the workers in the scene. It's an amazing story of four workers, four people who do something well,
who use their time, their skill, their responsibility, and their sweat in favor of another person. And you'll recognize this scene immediately. It's the 17th verse of the fifth chapter of Luke. It also appears in the second chapter of Mark. One of those days, as Jesus was teaching, there were Pharisees, teachers of the law, sitting by, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him
to heal. Now, there was a great crowd then in this house, and people couldn't get near it because all the people were there. And behold, men, we find out from Mark's Gospel, four men, behold, four men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, evidently their friend. And they sought to bring him in and bring him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the
roof and they let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. Now, there's only one sentence there, but believe me, a lot of work has gone into that one sentence. They walked up the stairway to a first century house. It's usually a stairway up to the roof. The roof is flat, but this happens to be a modern house, a more wealthy house, which has Roman tiles. And those Roman tiles are a
little bit like a puzzle, especially someone who's done a lot of stonework, like in Breaking Way, that father knew all about stonework. Well, maybe one of these four guys knew about Roman roofs, and he knew that if you start taking the tiles away, it's like a puzzle, you can pull the whole part of them apart, make a nice hole, so these men pull these tiles apart, they make a hole, they create an elevator, you might say,
for this friend of theirs, and they lower him with four ropes. Evidently, they're carrying an amount of stretcher, and they lower him right in the middle of the room in front of Jesus. Notice how calm, cool, and collected Jesus is just to stand there through all of this, and they do this, and then an amazing thing happens. And I want you to maybe to think of these four friends when you hear these next lines. And they
lower him through the tiles in the midst before Jesus, and when Jesus saw their faith. Whose faith? The man on the stretcher? Well, perhaps, he had to have some faith to trust himself to these four friends on the stretcher. And certainly, the four friends are included in the faith. When he saw their faith, he said to the man, Man, your sins have forgiven you. And the scribes and Pharisees began to question, saying, Who is this that
speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God only? See, they were theologians. They knew some of the big theological issues that were involved here. And then Jesus said, Why do you question your hearts? What's easier to say, Your sins are forgiven, or rise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. And he said to the man who was paralyzed, I say to you, rise, take up
your pallet, your bed, and go home. And immediately he rose before them and took up that which he lay, and he went home glorifying God. And amazement seized them all. And they glorified God, and they were filled with awe. And I loved Luke's last line. And they said to each other, We have seen strange things today. Brothers and sisters, there's a work passage. It's a simple work passage. Four men each carried a corner and did a
job in favor of somebody else. And that friend of theirs would not have been healed, or maybe he wouldn't have been healed that day if it had not been for four friends who did some work for him. They worked for him. And so in their work, they created hope. And that's what work does. They worked. They had to figure out a way to get him in. And he couldn't get in. So they went up to the
roof. They figured out a way to get those tiles open. That takes skill and a certain amount of responsibility, because who's going to pay for that hole in the roof when it's all over with? There aren't insurance companies in those days. And the one or two stones that happen to fall on the crowd below. They're trying to be careful, but you know, things like that happen. Those four men are taking responsibility for that. That's responsibility. And
it's timely. They figure, We've got so much time. Jesus is in Capernaum today. He may be gone tomorrow. We're going to do it now. That's work. We're going to do it. Don't you love people that say, Hey, we can fix this car. Let's fix it. Let's do it now. And you hope he knows what he's talking about when he tears into that engine. But you love people that have that kind of decisiveness. That's work. And then
they sweat a lot. Man, they had to lift that guy up in that roof and to carry him up there. And they had to lower him and get ropes and lower him. That's work. And then they got a wonderful reward. The whole Christian church down to the centuries has celebrated four friends who care enough about their friend that they worked for him. Is there anybody you're working for? Believe me, when you do, you know the rewards.
Here are the rewards. You may get some money for it. That's OK, too. But the best things you get are one, you know, you're needed around here. And two, you get a chance to contribute toward hope. And you know, there's no easy way to raise a family. The biggest work anyone can do is just to be a parent and to raise some kids, hopefully some decent kids who have a hope in their own lives and some
happiness and some joy and to see them catch their stride. And that's work. But all the rewards. Now, one last text, and I'm going to let you go home. In the Book of Ephesians, Paul has a prayer. And this is a kind of a text that I'd like to end the whole series with, because it's a good text for the whole series. It's a prayer for the Christians at Ephesus. And here it is. For this reason,
verse 14, chapter three, I bow my knees before the father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with might. See, there is a worker that's a greater worker than you or me or our parents. And that's God. He's the worker who's working in our families. And he's Paul's praying that God will strengthen with might through his spirit, the
inner man, the inner woman, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith and that you be rooted and grounded. There is that growth and strengthening in faith and may get rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend, to understand with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge and that you may be filled with the fullness of
God. What a prayer for every family. And then a benediction. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Now listen to the next line. I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling that you've been called.
He urges us to now do it. Get on with our work and thereby build hope for the future. Well, there's the family. There's the grand design. We've been designed for to discover a generous name. We've been designed for risk. We've been designed for adventure. We've been designed for a hug, the love that hugs us. And we've been designed for work, the work that gives hope. Heavenly Father, thank you for this. Thank you for our families. We
realize that in this room or listening over the radio, there are so many families represented. And there are so many of us that have things in our family we like to change. And maybe, Lord, you have to begin by changing us. So, Lord, change us. Root us and ground us. Hug us in your love. And then give us a job to do. Help us to know how to do the job we're supposed to do. Give us
skills and help us to use our freedom and use our arms and legs and our minds, our hearts, to get around some great task. And, Lord, I pray for every one of us that we may know and discover that we're loved around here and that we're needed around here too. Through Christ our Lord, we pray.