Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Made for Stewardship

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Something is going on with work in our culture. We’ve lost our rhythms of work and rest. And work is becoming a crisis issue.  In Genesis 1 and 2, work and rest come up in the very beginning of creation. This tells us that understanding work and rest is at the very essence of living a human life.  Let’s look at what this says about 1) what we’re called to do (which is work), 2) how we’re called to do it, and 3) what we need in order to do it. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 22, 2000. Series: Genesis – The Gospel According to God. Scripture: Genesis 1:26-2:2; 2:7-9, 15. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Thanks for listening to Gospel in Life. Today, Tim Keller is preaching through the Book of Genesis, an ancient book that answers many of the foundational questions we all have. Why did God make the world? What is the world for? And how are we supposed to live in it? After you listen, we invite you to go online to GospelinLife.com and sign up for our email updates. Now here's today's teaching from Dr. Keller. Today's scripture reading is from Genesis chapter one, verse 26, through chapter two, verse two, and chapter two, verses seven through nine and 15.

Then God said, let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him. Male and female, he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Then God said, I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it,

they will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the whole earth, and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, and all the creatures that move on the ground, everything that has the breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food. And it was so. God saw all that he had made and it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living

being. Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden

to work it and take care of it. This is the word of the Lord. What we're doing in this series of messages is looking at the book of Genesis. Book of Genesis is about creation and about how things began. It tells us that God began everything and it tells us why he began everything and it tells us why he began everything. And that means we get to some of the most foundational issues there are. In the book of Genesis we get down to the basic features and aspects of human existence.

We get at answers to the big why questions and the what for questions that have plagued us for centuries. And today what we want to look at is one of the things that keeps coming up, words that keep coming up in Genesis 1 and 2, work and rest. This morning one of my sons came in and said, dad, what are you preaching on today? And I said, work. And it was his pause. And I said, it's more interesting than it sounds.

Because who wants to hear a sermon on work? But you know what? That's an awfully relevant subject, especially to people in this room, especially if you live or work in New York. Early on in my, when we first got here, early on in our time in New York, and I don't remember who I was talking to, I just remember the words, I don't remember the speaker, but I remember I was complaining about the fact that, oh, you know, I'm working so hard. I'm just working much harder than I ever worked in any other ministry anywhere else. And I just remember that I

think it was a man. He looked at me and he said, well, nobody comes to New York to get a life. If you come to New York, you come to work. If you don't come to work, you might as well leave. And you know, there's a lot of, for at least 150 years, that's absolutely true. Immigrants come to New York and try to get into this whole new American society, and how do they do it? How do they enter into this new American society? Through an enormous amount of work. And then there's plenty, there's hundreds of thousands,

maybe not millions of immigrants, but hundreds of thousands of people who live in America, or already in American society, come to New York in order to make it into one of their professions. And make it in their career, and make it in their field. And of course that means everybody's working, but I'll tell you, somebody in the last five to ten years

has turned it up several notches, and not just in New York. Something's going on with work in this culture. Something's going on. The 40-hour work week, what was that? Do you remember that? Do you remember when we actually did have five days' shelter labor and two days off? We don't know what it is. And I mean, I'm reading all sorts of things. I'm reading it's the new economy. I'm reading it's technology, cell phones, email.

There's all sorts of villains. I don't know what the villains are, but something's going on. Probably the main villain we're going to talk about here today. It's not technological. It's not sociological. It's emotional and spiritual and theological. But something's going on. Work is becoming a personal spiritual crisis issue. Remember when you used to just eat when you ate? Is there anybody in New York that only eats when they eat? I never eat when I eat. I don't just eat when I eat.

I'm always doing something else. You would, you feel like you're wasting time if you just eat when you eat. You do something else when you eat. Do you remember the rhythms? There was rhythms of work and rest and work and rest. We worked in the day, we rested in the evening, we worked in the week, we rested on the weekends, and that's all gone. There's no rhythms left. Something's going on.

The rhythms are gone of work and rest. The neighborhoods are gone. Nobody ever sees anyone else. Families in many senses are gone. Something is going on with work. And yet here in Genesis 1 and 2, I told you it's more interesting than it sounds at first. Genesis 1 and 2 is saying because work and rest come up in the very beginning of things. Genesis is saying that getting and understanding work and rest is at the very heart of things. Genesis is saying that getting and understanding work and rest is at the very heart of things. It's at the very essence of living a human life. Understanding work and rest is a life and death issue. So what do we learn here about

work and rest? And here's, let's lay it out like this. The text is teaching us, first of all, what we're called to do, which is work, and how we're called to do it, but then lastly, what we've got, what we need in order to do it, what we're called to do, and how we're called to do it, but what we desperately need in order to do it, and the answer to that, of course, is rest. You're never going to work unless you get rest, but it's a much more profound statement in Genesis and in the Bible than it sounds the way I just put it. Let's look at these three things. What we're called to do, how we're called to do it, and what we need in order to get it done. Number one,

what we're called to do. First thing we see here is that when we're made, in the very beginning, we're called to work. Again, I had to apologize to my son this morning by saying, I know that doesn't sound all that exciting, but actually there is something radically stunning and exciting and positive about what this text tells us about work. First thing we see, look at verse 2, 2, it says, when God, this is the very seventh day, by the seventh day God had finished the work he'd been doing. Do you know how radical that is? Do you know, as one of my, one of the commentaries I was reading said, do you realize what an intellectually radical

statement this was when this was written? If you look to Eastern accounts of creation, I mentioned I think last week the Enuma Elish, that's a famous Babylonian account of creation, and in that account there's a battle of the gods, and Marduk, the king of the victorious group, creates the world as a kind of monument to his victory. And Marduk is creating the world by slitting open the body of the god that he destroyed, and he creates the heavens and the earth.

And all the other gods come in and he says, now we're gonna live in this. We can come and go into this new world, this universe I'm creating, and they say, do you realize what it'll take to keep that up? We're afraid if we go in there, we're gonna end up, you know, having to keeping up the world.

It'll be an awful lot of work. And Marduk says, oh I know it, and this is what he says in the Enuma Lish, he says, I will bring into being a lowly primitive creature called man, man shall be his name and to him shall be charged the labor so that the gods may have rest. So you see in the Enuma Elish, in the Eastern mytholog, accounts of creation, work is completely bad. God's don't do work. Let humans do work so we can rest. Completely different than this, but let's go on the other side. On the other side, let's look at Western ancient accounts. Look at the Greeks and the

Romans. There's a number of great myths the Greeks have about origins, and one of the most famous is Pandora's Box. You know that Zeus gives Pandora this jar actually, this box we call it today, and says, don't you open it, and she opens it and what comes out? All the bad things, everything that's wrong, death, disease, decay, and work. See in the Greek myth, work is in Pandora's box. Work comes out with death and disease and everything else. Now, what is going on here? Genesis 1 is almost deliberately going in the teeth, right in the teeth of what both western and eastern, what everybody else ever thought about work. It's saying work is something God does. Work is something good. In fact, what's really astounding is look at chapter 2 verse 7. The Lord formed

God, the man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. Now, we all know, do we not? Let me remind you of what you learned in school. The Greeks and the Romans understood the soil as being bad. The physical as being bad. The soul is good. You see, the soul is good, the soil is bad. Listen carefully. The soul is good, the body is bad. The body is the prison house of the soul. And Xenophon and Cicero and Socrates and everybody taught

that manual work therefore was demeaning. Work was bad as it was. It was a curse. It was in Pandora's box. It was not something good. It was a curse. It was a punishment. But if you have to work, stay out of the dirt. You don't do manual work. Even, by the way, Socrates said, even retail is demeaning. He says what you want to do is avoid work completely or else be a teacher or be a philosopher. Get into the information industry basically is what Socrates said. And here what we have is almost deliberately the book of Genesis shows us God with dirt under his fingernails.

God digging a ditch in order to create us. And then, of course, in 2.15, God plants a garden, God has his hands dirty, and then he puts us and says, you be a gardener. Now all this is so radical. All this is unbelievably radical. Genesis going out of his way to say, look how good work is. Work is in the paradise. Here's paradise, the Garden of Eden, paradise.

And what's in there? Great food, you see that? Beautiful things for the eye to look at. So you have food and you have beauty and you have, as we're gonna see, you have spirituality, they walk with God in the cool of the garden. And you had sexuality and you had friendship and work.

Work is put in paradise. There has, not only work is put in paradise, not only is work not a punishment, but all work is held up. Even what we call today menial work, manual work. No matter how high and lofty your position is in society today, your ancestor was a groundskeeper. In other words, if you have this huge house at the Hamptons, you know those people you

don't even know their names who take care of your grounds? That's your cousin, that's your ancestor, that's your father. There has never been, except for one person I know, there's never been another major thinker, there's never been another major thinker, there's never been another major thought form that had this high view not only of work, but of all work and all workers. So that even the gardener, even the menial ditch digger

is held up like this. The only person had this high view of work was Karl Marx. Karl Marx says the worker, the common worker, he held him up. But you see, here's the problem. Marxism is deeply discredited today, is it not? Completely out. Why? I would suggest it's because Marx didn't ground his high view of work in a God who loves to get his hands dirty, and a God with his hands in the dirt. He didn't ground this high view of work in the love of a God whose son came, not as the Greeks would expect him to come as a philosopher or as the Romans would expect him to come

as a noble statesman or as the Jews wanted him to come as a great general, but as a carpenter. A union guy, okay? Marx didn't ground it in that. Marx basically grounded his high view of work in atheism. And you know, one of his contemporaries, Dostoevsky, who was a little more philosophically astute, said if there is no God, everything is permitted. If there's just evolution, what's wrong with oppression? And there's no warrant for saying there's anything wrong with oppressing the workers. But you see, now that Marxism is pretty much passe, what, where is the source of social healing in this world? Where is it?

Look at Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1 and 2 says ditch digging lifts it up. Music, because Genesis 1 we looked at this last week was a song. Genesis 1 and 2 is theology and philosophy. Don't you remember in the killing fields when the workers got in charge in Cambodia? What did they do? They took the professionals and they killed them. They marched them out. Remember the killing fields? In our global capitalistic economy now it's the unskilled manual workers who are disdained. Professionals are disdained in communism and manual workers are disdained in capitalism, but in the Bible all work has dignity because God does it. There's nothing more socially healing than to believe what the Bible tells us and that is we are called to work and we're called to all work. All

work is a calling of God. All work has dignity. All work is satisfying to something God put in us. Well, let's get to that. And by the way, is there anybody who right now has a job that's considered menial? Is there anybody, for example, are any of you parents that are spending an awful lot of times at home with your fingers in baby poop? And have you imbibed what the new economy tells you, and that is this is not a job for anybody but a boob?

Remember the God with dirt under his fingernails who dignifies all work. And by the way, especially that work. But anyway, so the first thing is we're called to work. We're called to all kinds of work. Very radical. But then secondly, there's, I'm going to give you briefly three things in here, three practical guidelines for how we should do our work. We're not only called, what are we called to do work? How are we called to do it? There are three guidelines here for working happily, for grounding our work in what the Bible tells us

the nature of things is. There's three guidelines, and I'll just tell them to you quickly and then go through them quickly. This also works, by the way, for being happy in the job you choose, and also works, by the way, for being happy in the job you choose and also works in being happy in working the job you've chosen or the job you have. There's three things we're told here. Look in, look out, and look up. Look in at what you're gifted to do. Look out at what people need and look up to the one who's called you.

Look in, work because of who you are or what you're gifted to do. Number two, look out, look at the world around you and give the world what it needs to have. And look up, look at the one who's called you and realize you have to realize what you're destined to be. You need all three of those things. Those are your three guidelines for work. Let me show you how quickly that goes. Number one, look in. Chapter one, verse 26. God said, let us make man in our image, in our likeness,

let them rule. Now why? He's a ruler. He makes us in his image, and he makes us rulers. Now what's this mean? We are all made in the image of a creator and therefore we need to create. Now this doesn't mean we all have to be artists. And as a matter of fact, listen carefully. We said last week that the Hebrew word create,

which means to create out of nothing, is a word that's only used three times in the book in Genesis 1 and 2, and it's only ever used in the Bible of God but there's a lot of other words like form and make and shape and separate that are not only used of God but of us because creation proper is making something totally new out of no matter at all. Only God can do that. But sub-creation, that's the word that JRR Tolkien came up with, sub-creation means making something relatively new out of existing material. Sub-creation is doing what the spirit does in chapter one verse two, which we looked at last week. The spirit hovers over the empty void matter. And what

is the spirit doing? The spirit's bringing order out of chaos. The spirit hovers over the empty void matter. And what is the spirit doing? The spirit's bringing order out of chaos. The spirit is bringing newness out of undeveloped material. And every human being has a deep desire in some way to image or reflect that. You were made in the image of a creator and you've got to do it. What do I mean? For example, if you create a business, you're taking disparate elements, human elements, and you're creating a business that wasn't there before, or a product that wasn't there before.

That's business. Number two, you take disparate physical elements and you create a work of art, a painting or sculpture or something like that. What have you done? Number three, you take over a terrible organization or an awful department which is sinking and losing money and you turn into something stable and productive again and the jobs are saved. What have you done? Number four, you're a teacher and you're bringing the kids potential out.

Because you're such a good teacher, you're bringing the kids greatest potential out. You're giving them a vision. You're giving, you're bringing out their abilities. You're showing them what they can do. What are you doing potential out. You're giving them a vision, you're bringing out their abilities, you're showing them what they can do. What are you doing? Okay, you see? Number five, you're a medical professional, and you take a disordered body and you make it orderly.

A body that's sinking and falling apart and you bring it together. Or you're a therapist or a counselor and you take a disorderly life and you bring order out of it, you see? Or what if you just love cleaning up the yard? What if you love hairstyling, which is, what is it, combing the hair? What are you doing when you're bringing the comb through? You are doing what the Spirit did.

The Spirit brings order out of chaos and you need to do that. Why is it so satisfying to get a job done well? Whether it's business or whether it's teaching or whether it's counseling or whether it's medicine or whether it's management or whether it's grounds keeping or whether it's domestic engineering, whether it's cleaning up your own house, whether it's running a comb through somebody's hair. What are you doing? Exactly what the Spirit did.

Bringing order out of chaos, bringing something new, and you need that. And everybody has gifts to do that. And you've got to look inside, you've got to find out what your gifts are, and you've got to work. You've got to do it or you won't feel human. There's been a number of really interesting articles in the New York Times recently. Just last week there was one in the New York Times magazine about affluenza. Do you know what affluenza is? Sudden Wealth Syndrome. There was an article in the, there was an article in the,

during the summertime about the kids whose parents worked for the money and then they inherited. And what all the articles are trying to say is this. If you have the Pandora Box view of work, that it's a curse, and you say, finally I don't have to work it won't be long before you'll feel this deep disorientation to your very humanity you'll feel you'll feel like your own uselessness is just choking you most people think Christianity is either incredibly inclusive or unbelievably

exclusive but the fact is Christianity is both radically inclusive and radically exclusive. How can this be? In his short book, The Gospel on the Move, How the Cross Transcends Cultural Differences, Tim Keller shows us how we can make sense of this apparent paradox. Through the New Testament story of Philip and the Ethiopian, we learn how the gospel allows us to humbly critique our own cultural biases while becoming a united people of God. This month we have an exclusive resource only available through Gospel in Life that we want

you to share. When you give to Gospel in Life in October, we'll send you three copies of Dr. Keller's short book, The Gospel on the Move, as our thanks for your gift. This short book is a great way to present the gospel to a friend or loved one. We hope you'll prayerfully consider who you could give each copy to and that it helps you live more missionally. To receive your three copies of this short book, just visit gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with the gospel.

and thank you for your generosity, which helps us reach more people with the gospel. You've got gifts, you're made in the image of a creator, and you've got to create. You've got to make. So look inside and find a job that fits. Your gifts, your talents, those things, which you, those ways in which you image the spirit, which you image the creator. That's number one, look in. Number two the Spirit, which you image the Creator.

That's number one, look in. Number two, though, look out. Because look at verse 15 of chapter 2. It says, the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Not just work it. Not just use it. Take care of it.

And this is the issue of stewardship. Now I know that a lot of you, because you're modern, you live in a modern or maybe postmodern, individualistic, contemporary Western society, you really grooved on the first of these guidelines, didn't you? You said, yes, find work that fits my gifts, find work that fits my heart. I have been, something's been put in me that needs to create, needs to produce, needs to... I get into that, I like that. I want to do that.

But here's the second part. The second part is, do not only find work that fulfills you, but find work that helps people. Find work for the common good. Find work that the world needs. You are stewards of the people around you. You've been given gifts for them. Now here's the way the average New Yorker

says, great, I'll find a job that fits my gifts and I'll make as much money as I possibly can and then I'll give it away. And of course that is, that's one way, that's the second way to do stewardship and that's important, very important. If you make a great deal of money you're still a steward, you're here to care for the world that God's given us and for the people around you and if you have the talents, by the way, which you did not ask for, you did not earn, you did not merit it. For example, today, if you live in a situation, if you've got math skills and it makes you incredibly, incredibly wealthy, because you know how to use those in a society that values

technology and values finance, rather than people skills, which means that you change bedpans and you become a therapist or a nurse or something and you make very little money, if you just happen to have the gifts that in this particular time and place, because you were born here and not on a mountain in Tibet in the 13th century, because you're born here, you get rich, don't you think that it came to you? Don't you think that you earned it? Of course you didn't earn it. Your talents just happen to work out in such a way that you make money. Then make sure that you're generous with that money, incredibly generous, because it was

given to you. But why wait till then to be a good steward? Why not take some jobs now that don't earn as much money but do an awful lot of good for people? Why not just use the garden? Not just use the garden but care for it. And the second thing you've got to do, you have to look in but then you have to look out. What do people need? What do people need? Am I producing something that helps society? Am I producing something that helps people? That's the second

thing. But lastly, look up. It's not enough just to look in and look out. It's not enough just to find a job that fits me and a job that helps people. Oh no. There has to be a sense that you're on a mission. John Coltrane was one of the great saxophonists of the 20th century and he was converted in 1957 and it transformed his view of work. He wrote some tremendous jazz which was like, for example, A Love Supreme, which was just an ecstatic outpouring of praise and thanks to Christ.

He was one of the great saxophonists. He played with Dizzy Gillespie, played with Miles Davis, and on the liner notes of A Love Supreme, back I think really in the 60s, he said this. He says, during the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time in gratitude I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through my music and I feel this has been granted through his grace. All praise to God. John Coltrane in the liner notes. And one day he played a love supreme, he was doing it himself as

a solo and it was the best solo, it was an incredible piece of music, it was an unbelievable rendition and when it was over he stepped off the podium and he put his sax down and for the people around him he heard him say, nonc dimittis. You know what nonc dimittis means? That's the first two Latin words in the famous prayer of Simeon in Luke chapter 2, where Simeon says, now let us thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. And here's what he's saying. He says, I can go now.

I was put on earth to do a certain amount of things, to write a certain amount of music, to play certain things. I was put on earth to do some things, and I've done it. See, where did he get that poise? Not just by looking inside saying, oh, you know, I've got the talent to be a musician. Not just by looking out and saying, in general, I want to make the world a better place. He was called. He knew he was called.

Ephesians 2 verse 8 and 9 and 10 is fascinating. Verse 10 says this, we are God's workmanship created by God to do good deeds which he has prepared beforehand for us to accomplish. John Coltrane says, I know that there's certain people I need to help. There's certain things I'm here to do. And at a certain point he realized he'd done them. He had a sense

of accomplishment. Do you see these three things? A, you look inside and realize God's given me something to do. B, you look outside and say, and I'm in the place where I need to find a job that'll be productive to other people. And if I offer up that job based on my gifts and based on the needs of others to to God I know whatever I choose, that God's going to use it. That I'm going to be like a fingerprint, I'm going to be as unique as a fingerprint. There are certain things I have to do and there are certain people I have to help and there are certain accomplishments I have to accomplish that only I can accomplish. And you know you're on a mission and you don't worry about whether you're on a mission or not. You just know, I've chosen a job that fits. I looked in, I looked out, and because I'm looking up, God's gonna use me.

If you work like that, you'll be happy. If you take jobs that don't fit your gifts and don't help anybody else, but they just get you up the social ladder. If you take a job that fits you and even helps other people, but there's no sense that you're on a mission. In other words, if you have all three of these things, you'll be happy in choosing a job and you'll be happy in the job you've chosen. Now lastly, we're not only taught here what we're called to do and how we're called to do it, but now some of you are out there getting pretty grumpy maybe. And you're saying this is utopian. This is unrealistic. Now by the way, I know you're right. Here

I'll tell you why. I have the best job I know. Far better than any job I ever thought I'd ever get. And I know what you know. And that is even the very, very best jobs are unbelievably frustrating and sometimes terribly crushing and filled with all kinds of difficulty and anxiety. And you say, you haven't painted to me a realistic picture of how to work in this world. Work is, work has been nothing but frustrating to me, work has hurt me, work has destroyed me. I would do anything I could just to get out of work altogether or to get into a different kind of work. You're not being realistic, but the Bible is, maybe I haven't been so far, the

Bible is, because the Bible is utterly realistic and says, yes, yes, yes, yes, you're never going to do the work you're called to, you're never going to be able to do it in this way, unless you see what you've got to have in your heart of hearts in order to do work. What do you have to do? You have to rest. Now listen, God, chapter 2, verse 2, finished his work and then he rested. And then of course it goes on, though we don't have it printed here, he hallowed the seventh day. It means he set it apart for us.

And if you only had Genesis, Genesis 1 and 2, what you would be thinking is this. You say, God is saying, you can't do your work well unless you rest, and therefore work so much, and then rest, and have a rhythm of rest and work. And we say, well, that makes sense. Physically, you need a rhythm of rest and work. Society needs a rhythm of rest and work.

But the Bible tells us that there's more to that than meets the eye. If you really truly want to be able to work, the way I'm telling you, you need the real Sabbath rest. Psalm 95, you go to the end of Psalm 95, it's all about worship. It's the famous Psalm Vinite, come let us worship. And when you get to the very end, suddenly, shockingly, it says, so listen to God's voice and don't harden your heart as your fathers did in the wilderness when God said, you will never enter my rest. And if you go to Hebrews chapter three and four,

it says there still is a rest for the people of God. What does that mean? I'll tell you what it means. It has everything to do with work. There's a place in Psalm 3 where it says, even though there's 10,000 people on my left and my right, I lay myself down and sleep, and I awake for the Lord sustains me. Now, the scientists will tell you, it's not the amount of sleep you need, but the depth, right? What do they call that sleep that you've got to have? You know, you could sleep and sleep and sleep for hours, but if you don't get a certain kind of sleep, you'll just go nuts. You won't

be able to work, you won't be able to get anything done. What is it called? It's called REM sleep, rabbit eye movement sleep, right? But in Psalm 3, when he says, I've got all these things, all these pressures on me, I lay down and I awake for the Lord sustains me. He's talking about an REM of the soul. He's talking about a deep rest of the soul. Why does Rocky work? You know, Adrian, you know, he couldn't sleep the night before the big fight. Why did Rocky work? He says, I just gotta go the distance. I don't even need to win. I just wanna go the distance. Remember what he said to Adrian? Why? Then I'll know I'm not a bum.

Why does Madonna work? She tells us in Vogue magazine, which is really one of my favorite quotes that some of you know. I've used it before. And in Vogue magazine she says this. She says, every time I accomplish something, because every time I accomplish something I feel like a special human being, but after a little while I feel mediocre and uninteresting again. I find I have to get myself past this again and again. My drive in life is from the horrible fear of being mediocre. I have to prove I'm somebody. Why did Harold Abrams work?

Remember in Charites of Fire? Or at least maybe not the literal historical Harold Abrams, but the Harold Abrams that's depicted by the movie Charites of Fire. Why did he work? Why was he running that hundred yard dash in the Olympics? He says, I got ten seconds to justify my existence. Now what Rocky, Madonna, and Harold Abrams are showing us is there's a work under the work. Why are they working?

They're not just working for a living. They're not just working for money, are they? What are they working for? Stephen Jay Gould put it like this, and he was talking about the fact that there is no God, and this is what he says. He says, we are here simply because one odd group of fish had a peculiar anatomy that just happened to be able to transform itself into legs for terrestrial creatures. We are here just because comets struck the earth and wiped out dinosaurs and gave mammals

a chance. We are here just for those reasons. We yearn for a higher answer, but none exists. This explanation, he says, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating. We have to construct, therefore, any meaning ourselves. Now, he's right. If there is no God, or even if we don't have a relationship with God,

how do you know you mean anything? How do you know that you have any worth? How do you know who you are? How do you know that there's anything meaning, there's any meaning in life? You have to construct it, and how are you going to do it? With your work. And therefore, there's a work under the work. Rocky just needs to know he's not a bum. Madonna just needs to know that she's interesting and not mediocre, that she's somebody. Harold Abram has to justify his existence. That is what's making your work a mess. You realize what the burden is there?

If anything goes wrong with your career, you don't have a self. If anything goes wrong with the money, you don't have a being, you don't have an identity, you don't have a meaning anymore. But you see, back in chapter two of Genesis, God cried out with joy, it is finished. Why? Because he'd finished the work of creation. Centuries later, essentially the same person cried out again, it is finished.

And essentially the same person cried out again, it is finished. The first time God got rest because creation was finished. The second time Jesus Christ on the cross cried out, it is finished so we could get rest. Do you get what I'm talking about? Hebrews chapter 4 verse 9 puts it like this, we who have believed enter that Sabbath rest now. There remains a rest then for the people of God, for anyone who enters God's rest through faith in Christ rests from his own work just as God did from his. Until you believe that because Jesus Christ died on the cross for you and did everything necessary to fulfill the law of God until

you believe, unlike Stephen Jay Gould, that the person whose approval you really need is God, that the significance you really need is to be significant in God's eyes, that security you really need is to be secure in God's arms, that the approval you really need is to be approved in God's heart. And then what you're doing in work is trying to get that. That's the work under the work that's crushing you and pulling you down until you understand that. Until you see him not only saying it is finished on the day of creation, but finished on the

day of redemption. Not only until you see that the work of creation is finished, which gives you a certain amount of rest, but the work of creation is finished, which gives you a certain amount of rest, but the work of redemption is finished. And until you rest in that, until you know you're not a bum, already before the fight, until you know your existence is justified, already before the race,

until you know that who cares if they think you're mediocre and uninteresting Madonna, if he doesn't? You're not driven anymore, you're not pushed into the ground anymore, and finally you can just work. Work is just about work. It's not about you. It's not about your existence.

Finally you can do things just for their own sake. Do you realize that if you are creating your own meaning in work, the work is never about the work. It's about you. It's never about the people you're helping. It's about you. See, John Coltrane and Madonna, no offense, maybe Madonna's changed her heart since the Vogue interview. I don't know, but John Coltrane said, when he realized that God loved him, it was now about the music and about the people whose pleasure he was giving, you know, through

the music. But Madonna actually says, my music's about me. And no wonder it's such a burden. You will never have really good work. You will never be able to work looking in, working out, working up. You'll never have this kind of incredible happiness in work until you realize the work under the work has to be borne by Jesus. Jesus said, come unto me. All ye who labor and are heavy-lad laid and I will give you rest. Why? He gives us rest because he took the burden, the work

under the work. He died on the cross for us. He was crushed for our iniquities. He shouldered them. Listen, how do you know if you've got the rest under the work? How do you know you have this deep rapid eye movement rest so that you can just work, you can choose jobs, not because they bring you up and give you a name, because they help people because they fit your gifts. How can you know that you've really rested

in the finished work of Christ, of redemption, not just the finished work of creation? I'll tell you how, you take your time off. What's so interesting is, if you don't take the physical rest, it proves that you don't have the spiritual rest. If you're just working all the time, do you know this rest? Jesus says, come unto me, all who are weak, weary and heavy laden, gentle am I, humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Let's pray. Give us, Father, this great Sabbath rest that has been promised to us. Help us to see it. Help us to know it. Father, there's a lot of great work to do. We look forward to the day that we can do

our art, we can do our teaching, we can do our counseling, we can do our business, we can do our work, and it be about the work, not about us. And it be about you, not about us. And it be about the people around us, and not about us. We look forward to a day in which work isn't crushing us into the ground. And we ask, Father, therefore, that you would give us this deep, deep, deep internal rest so that the work and the frustratingness of the work in this world will not any longer just crush us. We ask, Father, therefore, that you would help us to be

like your son who worked and rested in you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you found today's teaching helpful and something you'd like more people to hear, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people discover the hope and joy of Christ's love.

Just visit Gospelinlife.com slash partner to learn more. Today's sermon was recorded in 2000. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.