In the Bible, the very first chapter of the first book, Genesis, tells the story of God creating and uses a framework of six workdays to describe its development. Then in Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, we see work, work, work.
[2:1] Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. [2] And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.
The story of creation from the Jewish scriptures, believed by Christians, is that creation was the product of
God gets right to work from the beginning of time. That’s unique. Many other creation stories in other cultures start with conflict between gods. They say we and our world are products of destruction. But the Christian story says we are products of construction.
When it’s all done, God is satisfied, and can rest. He’s said over and over as he created, it’s good. When he created humans he said it was very good. And then he rested, satisfied he’d done good work.
For the rest of the summer, we’ll be looking at work and rest, and how important they are for followers of Jesus.
And it starts here, with the simple fact that God works, and is still working to provide, care, heal and sustain life for us on earth.
God and Jesus work: in John 5:17 he responded to those who objected to him healing people on Saturday, what should have been a day of rest. He said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
God didn’t stop working forever, he is still at work, including in and through his son Jesus.
Later in John 5:36 it’s clear God the Father has given him work to do…like an assignment.
Finally, work is in paradise. If the Garden of Eden, in creation, we get a picture of heaven on earth, and we see work is meant to be there, not just added in after humans rebelled against god – it was there before the rebellion. The nature of work changed, but it was meant to be there already.
Today we’ve seen, work is meant to be a good thing…something God embraces. Not an evil virus infecting life.
Question: Why is the goodness of work not more apparent in human life? What makes this so hard to believe?
Acknowledgements: Tim Keller, Every Good Endeavour and Work & Rest
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I know a PHd student who asked this question on Facebook: "How do you cite Facebook?"
Researchers like her live and breathe citations. It's critical that they learn how to quote someone properly. There are whole books written about referencing sources properly.
Good teaching in Jesus’ day was the same. Rabbi Hirschel says this. Rabbi Hillel says that. At best, a good teacher might come up with some creative parallel, paradox or new insight into those ancient words.
But to say something original, that was risky. Maybe you could get away with it at end of your career, or maybe after you'd died, people would say it about you.
The Jewish people have such a long history – to make up your own stuff was as if you thought you were better, and could ignore the past.
If you did, people would ask, "Who is this guy?" In this case, he was Jesus, a carpenter from a small town. He never went to the advanced schools of Judaism. Lucky he was literate.
He was not where you’d expect original, profound teaching to come from. You might expect teaching that was original and trite, or profound and dated, but not original and profound at once.
Yet, everyone, even his enemies, saw this profound, original teaching in Jesus. They said the same as these crowds. “He teaches as one with authority” meaning he wasn’t quoting the great teachers of the past, like other Jewish Rabbis always did. He just taught, and people recognized his words as good and true, despite his lack of citations.
He hadn’t followed another rabbi, he just gathered a school of students around him.
He doesn’t need to cite, because he is the source of all truth. He is called the "Word" of God - the "Word" being a Greek concept of the truth with personality.
Question: How is Jesus different from other teachers in your life? What did he teach that no one else said before, or has ever improved upon since?
We meet for coffee every Wednesday night at Starbucks in the Chapters Store in Ajax, in Durham Region just East of Toronto. Maybe we'll see you there?
