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Establish Work Our Hands
We are looking at more Proverbs (as a continuation of our previous study) to help us to understand our work and our attitude towards work. For the Christian, every moment of our lives is lived before the face of God. He is aware of our entire life and requires that we be accountable to Him for how we live our lives.
How should we look at our work. Proverbs has lots to say about our work, and how we should work! We will do well to read it and learn from it.
The idea that our identity is tied to our jobs is not a new one. In the past, people’s names were tied to their jobs like “Baker” or “Cook” or “Smith”.
In this study, we don’t want to think about ourselves from what we do. Through Colossians 3, we want to remind ourselves that the selves we bring to our jobs should be our new, resurrection selves. This is the new identity we have in Christ because of the gospel.
Our jobs play an important role in our lives. After all, our jobs and the work we do take up at least a third of our lives.
Thus, we need God to teach us how to work. Today, we want to ask ourselves about the work of Jesus, the carpenter and Saviour of the world.
Work that was once fruitful, is now in vain. Somewhere between our last study and this Psalm something went very very wrong. Work that was perfect, is now anxious. And we know this all too well ourselves — how did your day go? How has 2024 been treating you? Genesis 3 holds the answer to that and we will look at the nature of sin, its impact on work, and what hope we have for an otherwise hopeless situation.
This passage — Genesis 2 — might be a familiar passage, especially when we resolved to start Bible reading plans at the start of the year. But have we thought about what God’s word says about work? As we begin this study on work, it is important for us to understand how God designed work! Otherwise we will be shaped by other voices!
We will begin this series on work by thinking about the God who works. All our ideas about work come from the Bible but are grounded in God Himself as He is revealed in the Bible. The Old Testament speaks of God as a gardener and in the New Testament, Jesus is a carpenter. This is the God who works.
