Beginnings: The Beginning of Work
For Meditation
In our last message of this four week series, we are looking at the Beginning of Work. As we’ve been saying throughout this month, we were all made for four key relationships: our relationship with God, self, others and creation. In this final message, we will learn about how God has called us to be cultivators and co-creators with him in our relationship to the created order.
Most people think of work as a consequence of the fall. We live for the weekends and thank God it’s Friday, when the work is done. But in the biblical story, work is a part of the way we bear the image of God. Why? Because we were made like God, and God is the one who works. He plants and cultivates a garden, and then he invites humanity into his work of cultivation- and even more, to extend and continue his work beyond the garden to all the earth.
This work is not just for our own satisfaction, although it certainly includes that. It is also for the ordering of creation and the blessing of culture. Christians have a conflicted relationship with the “culture”- most often a combative or avoidant. But throughout Scripture, we see that God gifts his people to be contributors and creators in the culture, shaping every arena of work and culture around the values of his Kingdom. We are called to be those who are embedded within every sphere of culture, partnering with God in the renewal all things.
Our preacher this Sunday is David Bailey, founder of Arrabon. We are excited to learn from him as he leads many around the country in this work of culture care.
Our worship guide can be downloaded here.
Genesis 1:26-28
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Genesis 2:15
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
Revelation 22:1-2
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
