Twenty Conversations About Jesus in 2020!!
Jesus loved to work!
· What would your job be if you weren’t working at a church?
· What would your dream job be?
We know about Jesus’ public teaching ministry. He started at the age of about 30. But what did He do before? Jesus labored with his hands for about 20 years… 6 times as long as His 3-year public ministry.
· Mark 6:3
· Matthew 13:55
Tekton = Builder, Architect, Carpenter, General Craftsman with stone, wood, or even metal
So what can we learn from Jesus, as a worker?
Work is a gift…
When the Son of God became man, he got a regular job. That’s making quite a statement about the value and dignity of work. The first Adam was a gardener, the last Adam a carpenter. Both were manual laborers. Was Jesus just treading water for those 15 (or however many) years? Could his time have been better spent? No, he was fulfilling all righteousness. Living the perfect life. Serving the Lord. Working for him.
And that will have meant he worked hard, was conscientious, didn’t do a shoddy job. You can bet his tables and chairs were well-made. Shame none of them survived. Would be quite something to have an original chair made in the Galilean workshop, with the initials ‘JC’ engraved on the chair leg.
Work is not God…
Work is not meant to be what we look to for our ultimate security and identity and meaning and glory. And that is one reason a good work-life balance is so important. We need rest. And it’s a statement that there’s more to life than work.
Jesus did his job as a carpenter, served his Father in it, earned money to support himself and the wider family. But work was not his god. In his work he wasn’t driven by love of money, trying to get as rich as possible. Or by the desire for security, trying to prove himself or fulfill his potential. He wasn’t driven by envy and competitiveness, trying to be better than everyone else. He was driven by love of the Father and a desire to serve him.
Work in an opportunity to share your lifestyle as a disciple…
Jesus would have had to deal with difficult customers, perhaps an unreasonable boss, or envious co-workers, long hours, tiredness, things going wrong, pressure of orders and too much work. He would have needed to rely on his heavenly Father in prayer, and to persevere – as do we.
Galatians 5 famously lists the fruit of the Spirit. Being Christian at work means displaying this fruit in the workplace. That should be our ambition at work - to be godly. And repenting of our sin when we’re not. And so for Jesus. Imagine how he would have behaved in his carpenter’s workshop. Being kind, loving, patient, self-controlled. Not flying off the handle when things went wrong. Not blaming others. Not gossiping or grumbling. Not flirting.
In Colossians 4:3, Paul prays ‘that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ’. It is a good workplace prayer. That at appropriate times and places, God would open a door for the message, and we would walk through it.
Don’t you think that Jesus would made the most of every opportunity to talk to colleagues and customers about his heavenly Father and their spiritual needs? Maybe the sort of conversation he had with the woman at the well in John 4 didn’t just suddenly begin when he started his public ministry? Maybe this was how he operated throughout his working life too, out of love for others.
