How does I know Myron, I know what jersey he was wearing that was filmed early during the basketball playoffs. And I love that our camera people didn’t give it to him. They kept the camera right up here because Myron needs to know in Highlands Ranch, if it’s not the nuggets, it’s nothing. So good job team, one of our most energetic, I think the most energetic president of all time was President Teddy Roosevelt. He was famous for his levels of energy. And so when foreign dignitaries would visit instead of the normal coffee and danishes, they would actually work out together. One day he was visited by the French ambassador and so they began their visit with two sets of tennis and they said, well let’s, let’s go for a jog around the grounds. They got back from the jog and he said, well, we need to work out our arms.

Let’s pass around a medicine ball. And almost like a little kid, they get done with the medicine ball and he looks at the ambassador says, what would you like to do next? And the ambassador said, if it’s all the same to you, Mr. President, I would like to lie down and die. <Laugh> is probably what a lot of us would say. We all have different levels of energy, but we all have the same spiritual need to live industrious lives. If you’re getting everything else in your Christian life, right, but sloth is gradually working its way into your soul, not only will you not reach your potential, you’ll lose a lot of what you all ready have because sloth is to the soul. What rust is to the metal. It eats away what is already there. And I believe many of us, you know, we focus on this sin that sin.

What’s worse, what’s, you know, the awful us. I think a lot of us when we look back, we might be surprised that when we review our life, one of the sins that we wish we could cast off earliest and most often would be the sin of sloth. Knowing this God in his kindness and because he loves us directly warns us about it. So we’re gonna be in wisdom for dummies. Proverbs six, six through 11, if you’d please stand, we wanna read God’s word together. Please stand with me. We’re gonna start Proverbs six, beginning with verse six. Read with me. Go to the ant. You slugger consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there you slugger. When will you get up from your sleep?

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. And poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man. This is the word of the Lord. You can take your seats we’re created in the image of God. And what does that mean? In the first chapter of the Bible, as God reveals himself, one of the most amazing things he reveals about himself is how active he is. There are 38 active verbs. In the first chapter of Genesis alone, I’ve counted. He’s shaping, he’s forming, he’s speaking, he’s creating. God reveals himself to be a supremely active being. And it didn’t stop at creation. Jesus tells us in John five 17, my father is always at work to this very day and I too am working now. As soon as I start in a passage like this, I know someone’s gonna push back.

Well Gary, what about the Sabbath? The Sabbath is scriptural. It’s a wise principle. But let’s look at what the Sabbath commandment actually says. Exodus 20 verse eight. Here’s what it says. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. So even the Sabbath command reminds us we should spend most of our time working. We need time for rest, but work is essential to who we are. Now, this includes vocation, but we’re gonna apply it as well to our spiritual life. We’re gonna apply it to our relational life that we are called to live an industrious life. But I wanna make it clear at the very top, this isn’t about making money, it’s about making a difference. It’s about using the days that God has given us to have the biggest impact for God’s kingdom that we could have.

My father actually retired when he was younger than I am now. And for him I think it was the right choice. But he lived an industrious life in the midst of retirement. And that’s certainly possible. So let’s go through this verse by verse starting with verse six. Go to the ant, you sluggard consider its ways. I love this and be wise. Now you think, why would it call an ant wise? This is really a brilliant picture for us because of all creatures. Ant actually are pretty wise. They have in their little tiny bodies 250,000 brain cells. Now, before, that’s too impressive. A human has about a hundred billion brain cells. But here’s what’s fascinating. You have an average colony of ance, 40,000. You times that by 250,000. And a colony of ance has about the same size brain as one human. So they’re actually kind of freakishly smart given their size. In fact some ant species have 14 to 15% of their body mass devoted to their brain. So they’re, I mean it’s wise to make them look wise. Out of the 12,000 species of ants, only one species doesn’t move. Only one species is an industrious. You know what that species might be? It’s what we would call a dead ant. <Laugh>.

Verse seven. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler answer, unusual. There’s no queen bee, there’s no coach saying, Hey, you gotta run a couple more laps. There’s no parent saying, did you do your homework? There’s no spouse saying, Hey, how’s the job hunting going to be spiritually healthy is to be self-motivated. If we work only when somebody’s pushing us, we might not be hard workers, we might just be people pleasers. And that’s an entirely different thing. Verse eight. Yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. I mean, life just teaches us every occupation has seasons of particularly hard work. Try to get lunch or dinner with an accountant in April. Probably not going to happen. Teachers at the end of August are getting all their lessons plans ready. September through May is sort of their go time here at the church.

Kurt’s made it very clear, nobody’s asking for time off around Easter, Christmas, VBS, that’s all hands on deck. Any occupation, whatever you’re in, you know there are some seasons where if you wanna have a successful life, you really gotta hunker down and make that season count. If there are any people here, 16 to 28, I want you to raise your hand ’cause I think you’re in a particularly important season. I want you to know I’m speaking to you for the next five minutes on this because this is a season of your planning where you really want to make this decade count. Proverbs ten five says this, A wise youth harvest in the summer, but one who sleeps during harvest is a disgrace. And this is as true to modern life, that there is this decade where you are laying in the planning, this is your time to work.

And if you are thoughtful and industrious as the ants are in this season of life, you set yourself up literally for the rest of your life. If you sleep through this harvest, it’s like putting a ceiling over your head that you’ll be hitting up against for the rest of your life. Well into your forties, fifties, or sixties. It’s a farming analogy. Work hard to plant when you need to plant so that you can harvest when you need to harvest and harvest when you need to harvest so that you can eat. It’s a philosophy with which I raised my children. I remember a conversation with my son when he was 14. We knew he was pretty smart. We were trying to get him in all of these opportunities. And there was this math competition in eastern Washington. They called it the Math Olympiad. The Math Olympics, something like that.

And he qualified for it. So he was gonna go out with his mom to eastern Washington to compete in this. Earlier that week, a new version of a video game had come out. I don’t know what it was. And all of his friends were talking about it, said, Graham, we’re all getting together on Saturday. It’s gonna be so fun. And Graham says like, I can’t, I gotta go do the math Olympics. And they’re like, are you serious, Graham? You realize what you’re saying. You’re gonna drive with your mom to eastern Washington and take a math test. That’s how you’re gonna spend your Saturday. And I, I could see Graham’s resolve. Am I being stupid? ’cause We weren’t gonna force him to do it. And I pulled him aside and I said, bud, God has given you some gifts and you can really maximize this season.

And I promise you, if you will work really hard and make the most of those gifts and help ’em come to life 20 years from now, these kids that are mocking you about taking a math test, they’re gonna be the kind of kids that have to come to you to ask for a job. I know that sounds kind of elitist in some cases it could be seen that way, but can I just say 20 some years later, it’s, it’s proven true. He got into the right schools, he had incredible offers from companies. He does a great work in New York City with private equity firm, but yet he’s working with companies that are bringing in employee ownership. So really helping to financially benefit a lot of factory workers that don’t usually see benefits like that. I mean, it’s a great life. And he was telling me this last year, they had him hire somebody to work with him.

And he goes, dad, it was surreal because I’m going through these resumes and these people had graduated from Wharton or Harvard Business School or Stanford or Duke said, who am I? I said, Graham, that’s your world. And I wanted to remind him of the conversation I had when he was 14 years old. If you do this, this could happen. And it was coming true. And I know it seems young 14 Gary’s that too much. But if, if grades matter to your life plan, they start counting in ninth grade and 10th grade. I don’t write the rules. They just do. I’ve talked to kids, they get serious as juniors or seniors and then they’ve already shut some doors when they start getting serious at that point. So grandma’s worked hard. He’s got this meaningful job that he loves, but he gets to enjoy the harvest. That’s what I wanna encourage you.

They get to play like Lisa and I never got to play at that age. A little granddaughter when she was four years old, was at a school where they were doing things for Mother’s Day, said, what do you like most about your mom? They had all these questions. One of the questions was, what’s your favorite thing to do with your mom? And my little Anna wrote, go to Turks and Caicos, which I don’t even know where Turks and Caicos is, right? That’s a it’s a different world from mine. But he proved Proverbs six True. You work hard and there are these opportunities. Now lemme be clear. Academics aren’t the only route to, to have a successful life. Vocationally, maybe academics aren’t your thing. And you wanna develop a vocational skill, which could be really wise. Not to go to college sometimes, but to get great training and work hard.

I’m telling you, like I I’m sort of on the other side of vocation now. The happiest guys in my class, the most contented guys in my class and women that worked in vocational trades were their own boss. They worked hard. They learned a skill, they figured out a service. They created a project when they could control their schedule when they called the shots. Took a lot of work to get there. They might have to work under someone else, an apprentice, but they took it seriously. I I’m just telling you, they have the most content lives of any people I know. And maybe you’re not so into academics or even vo-tech, but you’re the creative type. You know how you wanna sing your songs or write your novels or what. That can be a great career. But talent alone isn’t enough. I think the greatest musical group of all time by far the Beatles that we don’t need to debate it. I, I was talking, I I do this sermon to smaller group of people to get it critiqued before I do it. We had a young staff member, she’s 23 I’ll call her Mackenzie ’cause that’s her name. And I, I was starting to use this. She goes, you know, I don’t know if our age really listens to the Beatles. Maybe, maybe you wanna use One Direction.

Yeah, not, not gonna do that. Different universes, I think. And so it, a lot of people laugh because they clearly became the most commercially successful group of, of all time. And they were passed over by executives in 1960 and 1961. People say, how stupid are the music executives? The executives weren’t stupid. The reason they passed over the Beatles is they weren’t that good in 1960 and 61. It wasn’t until they went to Hamburg, Germany and they got this gig where they were working six to eight hour sets every night. They’re playing. Imagine keeping a crowd engaged six to eight hours. How good you get playing that long, how you develop your sound. After they came out of that, they had the iconic sound that will never grow old long when NSYNC is singing to one direction. Bye bye bye. The the Beatles are putting out great hits like this.

Let it,

They’re speaking words of wisdom. Right? All right. They got Proverbs six down pat, which tells us you can be enormously talented as those four men were. But it takes the hard work for that talent to make the effect that they had. And that’s the message of the ant. Don’t sleep through one of the most important decades of your life. I, I would say to young people, have you ever noticed that about 90% of the most typical sins of young people are sins to put your soul to sleep, get high, get drunk, have hookups instead of make real relationships, excessive video gaming, streaming porn, whatever it is, what’s going on there? Satan is saying, be entertained. Go to sleep. Don’t build real relationships. Don’t understand your gifts. Don’t develop your gifts. Just pass through this whole decade so that you wake up and you’re 30 and you have to start over when it’s so much more difficult to do.

Don’t let Satan do that. Why does he do that? Because he knows how impactful a woman or a man who knows their gifts filled with the Holy Spirit, they’ve developed those gifts. What a difference they could make in this world. I, I just live with so much expectation about how God can use the young people in this church. If you’ll take this decade seriously, if you’ll be like the ant. The ant focuses on what he needs to do. The sluggard fantasizes about what he wishes he had. And I think that’s the description of most people that I see. One or the other. They’ve worked hard because they focus, this is what I need to do to be able to get this harvest. And then there’s the slugger that, well, this is what I wish I had done. This is what I wish I had. And that’s the curse of the slugger.

They spend more time wanting than having. They spend more time dreaming and living. They’ve made things so miserable. They just daydream their life away. Proverbs 13, four, lazy people want much, but yet little. But those who work hard will prosper Verses nine through 10, how long will you lie there you sluggard. When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. And poverty will come on you like a thief. And scarcity, like an armed man is saying, you’ll live a popper’s life. Sloth will take away the riches of your life, not just financially. This is true relationally. It’s true of our spiritual life. And so I’ve been talking to young people. Let me go up a generation or two, I’ll make everybody angry today. This is tough. Last weekend I was, I was speaking out in Texas and the assigned text, Psalm 17, seven through eight, which is Show me the wonders of your great love. How much God loves us. Everybody loves me in spring, Texas. They said it was so encouraging, it’s so uplifting. And I thought this morning, nobody’s gonna like me in Highlands Ranch. But when you preach expositionally, you just go where the text goes. And this calls us to be industrious in every aspect of life because it’s possible to be a workaholic who’s a sluggard.

It’s possible to be a workaholic who’s a sluggard. How does that work? You might work 80 hours a week, but if you’ve made marital vows to be true to your marriage and you’re putting your marriage on a lower shelf, if you have children and they’re just sort of an afterthought, you’re not dedicated to raising them. You’re just doing what you like to do. You’re not working where you’re supposed to work. And that’s the difference of the aunt. The sluggard always does what he likes to do. Maybe you just like to be in the office. The aunt does what it’s supposed to do. I’ve made this commitment. This is where I need to work. Whether I feel like working here or not. Now, maybe you’re not married, maybe you don’t have kids. Part of your work if you wanna get married is finding a spouse. I think one of the greatest mistakes I see in younger generations is, well, God will just bring the right person at the right time.

I don’t have to work to find that person. And I’ve got a whole sermon on that. I think that’s a lazy approach. I think marriage matters so much. It’s so impactful. If you’re gonna get married, I think you do a lot of work to make the best marital choice you can. And if you’re working 80 hours and you don’t have time to meet people, you’re not doing the work to meet someone, I think that’s gonna come back and bite you. What I think this passage is trying to do is to give us a vision of what life could be. If you ever thought about what God could do through you, if you just let him use you with all the gifts that he might give you. One of the saddest sight I’ve ever seen is this piece of music that’s coming up behind me is written by Johan Sebastian Bach.

You’ve all heard of his name. The piece is called The Art of Fugue. And I see this, it’s handwritten. This is Bach’s on writing. And you know, a mind like mine, I, I can’t even imagine the genius of somebody like Bach. How you write the melody, the harmony you bring in the percussion, you bring in the wind instruments, the string instrument. I mean, I just can’t even imagine how you put that all together. ’cause I don’t have 1% of the musical talent that would be required to do that. But you notice it ends, it’s furious. It’s just filled with energy and then it ends. And there’s just some notations there. And it’s why that’s when Bach died unexpectedly. He didn’t know he was gonna die. He’s riding along and the peace was never finished. And I wonder if you went to Bach, if he knew he was gonna die when he died, what would he not do the year before his death so that he could finish this masterpiece?

What is more important to you, Johann, than completing this great work that you’ve started, that you’re inspired to do? What did you do instead of this? And it makes me think for us today, how many acts of genius today are unfinished? Not because we die physically, but because we’re dying spiritually. Sloth is stealing our life. We’re just giving it away. We’re not physically dead, but spiritually we’re dead. We’re not creating, we’re not working as God has called us to do. And so the message of Proverbs six is use the days. Don’t lose the days. Use them. Make them count. God has called you to something special. He’s given you unique gifts. I’ve just read this morning in my devo is reading one Corinthians 12 about how God has given every person in the church, every part of the body, a particular gift. We all matter.

We all need to be doing the work God has called us to do. Now, it’s not just about a vocation, it’s an industrious view of life in general. One of the things I hear now that I just didn’t hear 25 years ago as a pastor is younger couples saying, Gary, do we have to have kids? I know the Bible says be fruitful and multiply, but we kinda like our life and we know it’s a lot of work with kids and we might not be able to go on vacation. We can’t sleep in. Do we have to have kids? Let me, let me just say, when you think that kids will make us tired, you don’t know the half of it. They’ll make you a thousand times more tired than you have ever imagined. If you have a baby while you have toddlers, you’ll explore levels of weariness and sleeplessness you never knew existed before.

Three kids and two grandkids. All I can say is worth it a thousand times worth it on the other end. It’s a lot of work and it’s so worth it. What I think it means to be relating to my adult kids. Then to have our grandkids. About three years ago when my granddaughter was three, she’s really into art. And we were at her house and we’re playing around. She got a piece of cardboard. She goes, Papa, I want you to outline my hand. And so I’ve got it here behind me. And then after we did that, she goes, now put your hand on here. She goes, now we’re gonna outline your hand. And so I traced my hand and then I pulled away. Go see my hand fits in yours. Now this is crayon and cardboard. It’s worth nothing to anybody else. It is one of the most precious things I own.

If our house was burning down, I would look for this for, I don’t know why, I don’t know why. It makes me wanna cry every time I see it. But there’s just something about passing on those generations. I see my granddaughters in that somehow and it just, it moves me like nothing else really moves me. And the fun times. A month or two ago, Lisa and I were asked to watch our grandkids for four days, four glorious days when my son and his wife were off on vacation, celebrating their anniversary. There was one morning Lisa sent me out to get her cold brew. And my son’s family eats as healthy as Lisa does. He and his wife, they, they got that from Lisa. Very healthy eaters, which I appreciate just as the papa, I feel like my job is to bring a little bit of balance, right?

Just, just a little bit of balance to their life. And so when I went out to get Lisa’s cold brew, I brought back what I called kids’ coffee, which is just hot chocolate with whipped cream, right? Kid size. I came back and I told Anna and James what I had at first, they were surprised. Their eyes lit up ’cause they never would get hot chocolate for breakfast. My little grandson took a couple sips, then he looks up at me, he goes, Papa. I go, yeah, bud, this is the best surprise I’ve ever received. <Laugh>. Yes, this is great. I’m telling you. Yeah, I I don’t wanna deny it. Family life is more work than you could imagine. As someone who’s put in the work, it’s like you’re planning. I’m just telling you, the harvest is richer than you could imagine. It is worth it. I I I don’t wanna guilt you into having kids.

I just want you to realize what you may be missing out on if you’re not willing to put in the work. But it’s not just about that, it’s spiritual things. Are we working hard at leading others to Christ? What better gift could we give anyone than the message of Jesus for this life and the hope of eternity with Jesus in the next? A good friend of mine is Kevin Harney. He’s been pastoring for decades now. Heads up the organic outreach ministry. My go-to book for evangelism is organic outreach for ordinary people. And the stories that Kevin writes about and just being around him personally inspires me, like few other people I know, he’s always, and he makes it sound so practical about how we share the gospel. And I was thinking of Kevin this week because some of you may not know this, it’s the 50th anniversary of Jaws, the movie that was released this last week.

So I had to watch it, right? And so there’s that iconic scene where Chief Brody is putting chum into the ocean and it’s the first time you see the shark. And, and he comes up and he just goes back. He’s got this fearful look. And he finally says to the other two guys, we’re gonna need a bigger boat. I think of that when I think of Kevin. ’cause I could imagine there’s gonna be a reunion in heaven. I can imagine. He’s say, Hey, let’s get together everybody that Kevin led to the Lord to meet here. And then we’re gonna have all the people that they led to the Lord. So Kevin can see what is industrious, how an industrious life spiritually has created such an incredible harvest. And if the angels are on, they’re gonna be calculating it and they’re gonna say, we need a bigger hall.

We need a bigger plate. We might need a city to contain all of the people that that, that God has used to, has used Kevin to bring into the kingdom of God. What better thing could we give our life to than that out of all the things we choose to do? What is more meaningful than that brothers and sisters? Just because our salvation is secure in the finished work of Jesus Christ, may we not sleep in the need to invite others to enter the kingdom. And I’m grateful for Kurt’s leadership in reminding us of that. Or I think in another way to give another bigger vision of a member of our church, Dr. Harold Hunt. He’s an orthopedic surgeon. The reason my heart moves when I think of Dr. Hunt is he gave my wife her life back. She was born with a pretty messed up hit. And if you know Lisa whole food, naturopathic everything, she’s trying to treat this hip with elderberry juice and you know, eat this or that and everything.

And finally it just, she, her life was so limited in what she could do. Dr. Hunt goes in there and it was a long surgery, but he fixed it up. I I’m married to a new woman that she can be as active as she was before what she can do with a hiking and biking fact. About nine months after the surgery, Lisa was on a hike with one of my daughters, <laugh> and the daughter’s protesting mom. She goes, yeah, I want your old hip back. All right, can I just hike with your old hip? Now, I did the research on this to become an orthopedic surgeon like Dr. Hunt is, requires at least 12 to 15 years of school after high school. I mean, it is a lot of work. You graduate from high school and it’s like you’re starting over on day one. And then Dr. Hunt spent time, 11 years in the military treating victims of war and and soldiers in Iraq.

And, and I just think of Lisa, the one operation I thought, how many thousands of these has he done where he has literally given people their lives back? How would it be at the end of your life? Younger people you think of all the things I could have devoted myself to, it’s gonna take a ton of work. It’s gonna take another 15 years of my life to be able to do that. But at the end of my life, I could look back and say, you are a soldier. You gave your knee, you gave your hip for your country. We can give you life, your life back. Other people, yeah, you feel like your life is limited. We can give you another 20 to 30 years of active life. He planted, he worked hard, and now he can experience the harvest of giving people the gift of active lives.

You see, the spiritually immature says, well, work is hard. It makes me feel bad. I wanna stop. The aunt says, work leads to good things. So let’s get started. And that will determine your life. If it’s, this makes me feel bad right now, I’m gonna stop. Or it might be difficult right now, but it can lead to good things. So I’m gonna keep doing it. I’m gonna keep planning so that I can enjoy the harvest. I know this isn’t necessarily a popular message these days ’cause frankly, I think our government incentivizes sloth. It really does. And I don’t think it’s doing anybody a favor when it does that. I’m seeing a growing number of able bodied women and men in their twenties and thirties that I find out are on lifetime disability. Some people need to be, I’m not faulting that and we’ll talk about some that need to be, but, but you talk to them, they could do all that.

But somehow the government decided, well, you don’t ever have to work again. We’ll pay you not to work. And it’s not just young people. I was on a plane one time with a woman, not too much younger than me. She’s asking what I do. I told her, I asked her, she goes, well, I used to work for the government, but I’m 80% disabled now. I said, well, how do you become 80% disabled? She goes, well, I have sleep apnea, so that’s 60%. And then they add this on to get 70. And then they added that on to get 80%. And I’m just thinking, I didn’t know. And perhaps Kurt and the elders didn’t know that when they hired me, they were hiring a guy who’s 60% disabled. Right? Nobody told me. Nobody told them. I’m kind of glad they did that. So many of us deal with that.

And it’s so easy to just say, you know, I, it, it, it doesn’t matter. We’re being kind, we’re being generous. But is it being generous to their souls? Paul says in two Thessalonians three 10, for even when we were with you, we gave you this rule. The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat. And Paul is saying, feeding someone who won’t work that’s different from can’t work. Okay? But feeding someone who can work and won’t work, Paul says, that’s ruin us to their souls. That’s not helping them, it’s hurting them. But if we don’t have this work ethic that comes from Proverbs, others are gonna try to tempt us to it. As out in Longmont, a couple weeks ago, I did a sacred marriage conference for a church out there. There’s a guy that was talking to my wife when she’s at the book table.

He had huge tore his rotator cuff. It was a really bad injury and it took him a surgery and two years of physical therapy. I mean, couple times a week he’s going in trying to work this. After just a few months, it was the insurance company that came back to him and said, Hey, you don’t have to do this. We’ll just put you on lifetime disability. We see how serious this is. We know it’s gonna take a while. We don’t, we just put you on lifetime disability. And he wouldn’t do that. He said, I’m too young. I still think I wanna make a contribution. It took him two years fighting against the system to get back to living a productive life. A good friend of mine who retired earlier, and I think he needed to, it was Darrell, he’d been a great athlete through his earlier days.

In fact, he could bench press 400 pounds when he got married. A couple years after his marriage, he was diagnosed with ms. And for him it progressed fairly quickly. Five or six years, he’s using a cane. And then five or six years after that, he’s using a walker. Then he’s in a wheelchair. Now he’s in a scooter. So every night he will scoot his chair up to the bed and he says, I can still lift my torso up onto the bed. I I can’t get my legs over. My wife has to do that. And one time he was feeling sorry for himself. What, what does it matter if I just lift myself up? Why don’t I just have Stacey do everything? I mean, who am I trying to kid? But Darryl told me, this is one of the most impactful things I’ve ever heard this talk about the wisdom of the ants.

A guy who lives that way. He said, Gary, and again, this is a great athlete speaking, I can only do about 20% physically of what I used to be able to do. I think compared to what I could do, I’m at 20%, but I have been convicted by God that I must do a hundred percent of the 20% I’m capable of doing. And I just love that life will take away some of what we’re able to do, our energy, our physical ability. But what the aunt tells us is we are responsible to do a hundred percent of the 80% or the 60% or the 20% that we’re left with. That’s what the aunt would do. That’s what we’re called to do. I have a friend who’s been on disability his entire life, and I don’t think anybody would fault it. His name is Scott. He was hit by a drunk driver two months before he graduated from high school, severely disabled.

He can’t walk, can’t really use one hand. He’s just got the other one eyesight. He’s just about out of the other eye. He’s tried to do some computer things. He’s just never worked. He’s been on disability and I, he was a good friend of mine. I would take him around to do errands, get groceries or go to the bank or whatnot. And, and, and one time I was there, I said he needed to get to the bank or something. I said, okay, I got Tuesday afternoon for you. I’ll come by Tuesday pick you up. He goes, oh no. I I I can’t on Tuesday. I said, why not? He goes, well, Tuesday’s my do nothing day now because I’m stupid. I said, Scott, every day is a do nothing day for me. You what? What are you talking about? Now? I knew him well enough, we could talk some act like that.

And he didn’t defend it. He said, well, I, I just, I don’t go anywhere on Tuesday. Well, whatever, fine, I can, I can do it. Thursday, a couple months later, I stopped by on a Tuesday unannounced. I didn’t tell him I needed to drop something off. I knock on the door. It took a long time for that door to be opened. And Scott opened up the door and I saw him and, and here where I was so ashamed of myself, I had no idea how much effort it takes a person that disabled to get ready. And I just started to thinking, what’s it like to put on a buttoned shirt when you have, you know, partial use of one hand and how you shave and comb your hair and put on your braces and get on your shoes. Of course, he has do nothing days.

And if you were to go back and look at the attendance rolls of Hillcrest Chapel in Bellingham, Washington, which is where he went, I guarantee you he would be at the very top. He was more faithful in attendance than probably anybody unpaid staff was, to be honest with you. And he would go to the early service. And only now I know how much time it took him to get ready. And it’d be so easy for him to blow off church. Well, I could watch it online. I, I’m just busy. I just don’t feel like getting ready today. But Scott’s like, no, I’m gonna be there. And he would do the work every Sunday to get there. He lived the life of an aunt even though he was on disability. And I know some of you may wanna push back on this ’cause this isn’t a popular message culturally, but I believe what this teaches us is that we are most like God when we’re working.

Say that again. I think we are most like God when we’re working. Now, I would include playing with your kids’ work in this sense, maybe dating your spouse is, or trying to find a spouse could be considered that way. But if I could just remind you of John five 17, Jesus says, my father is always at work to this very day and I too am working. If I wanna be like Jesus, I should be working. There’s a place to rest after work. So we could go on too strong and say, we forget rest. No, that will burn us out. That doesn’t honor God who took a Sabbath. But six days God worked before the Sabbath came. And I think work invites us into an experience of the Trinity and an aspect of worship that we don’t know any other way. Just this Wednesday, I was waking up and I was woken up with this song.

This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And I was just praying to the Lord. Lord, before I get up, let me use this day. You’ve given me this day. I’ve gotta work on this sermon. I gotta tweak this article. I’ve got this book. I’m working on somebody. I’m meeting with God. I just pray that you would help this day of work to be fruitful. Let me plant, let me do what you’ve called me to do. Here’s the thing. The only reason I could think of working for others is because of the work that Jesus has done. Because Jesus’ work was dying on the cross and rising from the dead. I don’t have to work for my salvation. You don’t have to work for your salvation. It’s a gift. We don’t have to think like we’re the monks where we’re crawling over glass or hitting ourselves or fasting so that we can be safe.

Jesus’ work secured our salvation so that we can work for others. And then my mind is free to work for others. I’ve done a lot of prayers. They haven’t all been answered, but I’m putting them in the hands of Jesus. Jesus I know if the Father is always at work and you are always at work, I don’t have to worry about that. I can focus on what you’ve called me to do. You’ll do your job. I put them in your hands. And then because of the Holy Spirit, I have the courage to work. Who am I? I’m not like my son. I grew up in Puyallup, Washington. I graduate from Western Washington University. But the Holy Spirit will give me gifts. The Holy Spirit will times by a thousand. What I could do naturally to be a Christian is to be like you have this huge ball at the edge of a cliff.

You just give it a little push. The Holy Spirit takes it from there. You have no idea how God can use you if you’ve never surrendered yourself to the inspiration and the empowerment and the gifting of the Holy Spirit. And because of the promise of my heavenly Father that he’s preparing a place for me that if I will work for him when it’s time to work, he says, you’ve got an eternity where you will be rewarded. It’s why I love a comment from John Maxwell when he said, the worst time to retire is when you can afford to. You may leave your work that pays you money, but now you have a time to do what you really want to do. You have courage to do it ’cause your job doesn’t depend on, on, on doing what you think you have to do. And it’s the hope of my fa that my father gives me of heaven that says, you know what?

It doesn’t have to be lived in this life. There might be a time to slow down. Sure you can take vacations, but we should still till our dying day live the life of the ant because of who God is. Because we are a people who worship. We can become who we’re meant to be. People made in the image of God who work hard, occasionally play hard, and at the end of these lives, produce a rich harvest and grapefruit. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for this reminder, Lord, whether it’s a young person that really needs to buckle down this decade, whether it’s middle age where we just started to slip, whether it’s with our job or with a spouse, or with our children, father, whether we’re at a situation where we don’t have to work to eat, but you want us to work for your kingdom, pray, Lord, you would give us the determination of the ant that we could live the most fruitful life possible in Jesus’ name. Amen.