Calvary Chapel Staten Island

Max Lucado: In times like these, we all need a word of encouragement. From pastor and bestselling author Max Lucado comes the Max Lucado Encouraging Word Podcast. With over 40 years of ministry and more than 145 million books sold in 50 languages, Max shares the greatest story ever told: the living Savior who brings hope for a lifetime. Through rich biblical insight and heartfelt storytelling, you'll be reminded that God is always near, always for you, and always in you. Listen to the Max Lucado Encouraging Word Podcast where hope meets your day. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

Guest (Female): Hello, and welcome to God in Our City, the daily edition. Your host and Bible teacher is Pastor Dave Watson. Pastor Dave has been the pastor of Calvary Chapel on Staten Island for 35 years. In addition, he is the co-founder and president of the New York Institute for Biblical Studies. To receive a special downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, please go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Now here's Pastor Dave and our show.

Pastor Dave Watson: Welcome again, everybody, to God in Our City, the daily edition. Hope you're well. Hope you're growing in the Lord. It's our intent to minister to you and help you along that process to become all that God would have you and me to be. I'll adjust my lights here a little bit for those of you who see us on Facebook and YouTube. Thanks for joining us on this day. It's going to be a great time of study. Yesterday was Resurrection Monday. This is Resurrection Tuesday. But we're going to get, I hope, deep into our study in Proverbs.

Hope that you are seeking ways to grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ. I mean, that's just important. I can't emphasize enough that if you don't have a daily walk with the Lord, a time with him that you're spending time with him in reading his word and prayer, if you're not part of a local church family, if you're not sharing your faith on a regular basis, I just encourage you to buckle down and do those things. Ask the Lord to help you do those things. Those four things—our Christian life begins with Christ at the center and then from that, the spokes of our Christian experience are spending time in the word, spending time in prayer, spending time in fellowship with other believers—and that's called church—and spending time sharing our faith. So please put that on your docket.

If you're looking for ways to grow in your faith and you don't know where to turn next, I mean, you can take a class at our Bible Institute. We just began our next semester. Nyibs.net. Nyibs.net. I'm sure we would make a way to get you in, but just studying with us in that regard will help you tremendously. Tremendously. We have classes both virtual and in person. They're designed to help you to grow in your faith. It's a tough thing when you've either plateaued or gone back spiritually speaking to regain your traction and, as it were, get some momentum. But I got to tell you, it's worth it.

So if you're in that state, if you're listening to me and you got the after-Easter blues, the after-resurrection blues—that's terrible. What do you do with that? Well, you buckle down and you start reading your Bible, you start praying on a regular basis. You make sure you're in a good local church. Don't be a two-timer. What do I mean by that? I mean, go on Christmas and Easter. That's not a good thing. You know, be someone who's in the word, in prayer, in church, and involved in sharing your faith. That's just very, very important.

I want to just emphasize to you some of the resources we have to help you in your journey. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening on a regular basis. I hope the program, as someone used to say, just blesses your socks off. I hope it's a huge blessing to you. We have a study guide for every single week as we study through the scriptures. You'll find that study guide at calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. In addition to that, because we're looking at the book of Proverbs right now, we always want to give away the book we're looking at.

We have the book of Proverbs in what's called the Journal Bible Series. It has the text of Proverbs on one side and a place to write on the other. We have our memory verses or—at my age, you don't memorize as well—you think about or you meditate on verses. These are free. You just have to request them from us. We will send them to you. We'll pay the postage and handling. We want you to have those. If you're just joining us, this is just how we do things. We're heard, of course, on Facebook and YouTube and OnePlace.com, on Spotify, on Apple Podcast. We're heard across the broadcast spectrum, so you may have just found us.

And I hope you did. We've got a lot of great stuff going on here, but you can get these resources from us, plus a free downloadable Proverbs 31-day study. 31 chapters in Proverbs. You can go through the whole book of Proverbs on key topics in 31 days. While you're there, please consider making a donation to God in Our City. We need folks who will commit to give monthly, but there's a place to click and you can—you'll be asked, do you want to do this on a reoccurring basis? You're certainly not obligated to, but it'll give you an opportunity to support us if you are blessed by this ministry. Please consider making a gift. A gift of any size makes a difference.

The book of Proverbs, where we're studying right now, is designed to help us as followers of the Lord to really, really become smart. In the Old Testament, the sons of God or the children of God were given Proverbs to live by. Solomon talked about a whole mess of them. We're studying them and for the first eight weeks of our time looking at the first nine chapters, our study was chapter by chapter. What turns now is our study becomes more topical. We have been talking about being iSmart in an eStupid world.

We've been talking about being iSmart in an eStupid world and we're moving ourselves now a little bit further on to not just chapter 10, but themes that we will find throughout the entire book of Proverbs. So let me see if I can explain. For the next couple weeks, we will be looking at some very, very, very specific topics. We've looked at Smart Start, we've looked at Smart Priorities, Smart Heart, Smart Fidelity, Smart Escape, Smart Choices, Smart View, Smart RSVP. That has taken us through chapter nine.

Now, we're going to talk about Smart Work, Smart Matter—the fact that you matter—Smart Recovery, and Smart Giving or Smart Generosity. Our memory verse this week is found in the book of Proverbs, the 10th chapter and the fourth verse. It says, "A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich." A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. The text we want to look at today to read beyond our memory verse, Proverbs 24:30 through 34. We're going to be talking about work. "I work" is the theme.

Let's read together Proverbs chapter 24, verses 30 through 34. "I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense. And behold, it was all overgrown with thorns. The ground was covered with nettles and its stone wall was broken down. Its stone wall was broken down. Then I saw and I considered it. I looked and I received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man."

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this very succinct warning, a warning about how we live, a warning about how we are supposed to live, and how work plays such an important role in our success. And how just a little bit of laziness can really mess us up. Can really mess up what we claim to want to do. And Lord, just a little pulling back can cause a big problem. So help us, Lord, to consider what is being said to us and help us, Lord, to not just listen to it, but apply it. We thank you, God. We thank you, God, for all that you have done for us. In Jesus' name, amen.

So we are looking at "I Work." And we're going to pick this up through selected passages here in the book of Proverbs. It's very important that we understand that work is God's idea. God's idea. And we have an obligation to work. But a slack hand will cause poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. It is our desire, I think all of us, not to kill ourselves at work. But having said that, if I'm not willing to lift my hand to work, I'm going to be someone who experiences poverty. I'm going to be someone who can't have riches because riches come for the most part from diligent work.

Someone putting themselves into whatever the task at hand and actually doing it. You know, in our world, we almost envy people like this. We almost think like, "Oh, good for them. They must have got a huge break or mommy and daddy must have left them a lot of money. Why didn't mommy and daddy leave me a lot of money? Oh, they must have won the lotto. Oh, they must have." You know, somewhere near 80 percent of the millionaires that are walking around today are self-made. It's not with old money. It's new money. They have worked, worked, worked, and the product has been they have done well.

And there's nothing wrong with that. And please do not get all highfalutin about the system is stacked against me, the this and this and this and this. Don't be a victim. We are victors in Christ. And remember we said about Proverbs that the verses we read, the truths that we have in front of us, are things that are generally true. They are principles more than promises. Principles more than promises. Well, let's move now to "I Work." And we need to have an overview of the words for work in the book of Proverbs.

The Hebrew word *malakah*, that which is done with some focus on the energy expended, also the craftsmanship involved. So it's a skill, a specific trade. It's an occupation one has—work. The word *abad* means to labor, to do, to expend considerable energy and intensity in a task or function. Toil, the Hebrew word *atseb*, means to work hard, the act of giving hard labor to a task and so expending considerable effort. And then labor, the Hebrew word *mas*, it's forced labor. It's a forced laborer. And the Hebrew word *asnas* means to make or manufacture.

That first word, though, talks about forced labor and I don't think any of us want that to be the case. But we do have an obligation to work and we'll talk more about that. But Proverbs 12 verse 24 says to us about this. It says, "The hand of the diligent will rule while the slothful will be put to forced labor." Again the idea of the diligent person actually ruling, but the lazy person being in a world of hurt, being forced into a labor they don't want. Why? Because they've been lazy. In Proverbs 21:25 says, "The desire of the sluggard kills him for his hands refuse to work." Wow.

There is also the word diligent that we've already seen here a couple of times. The Hebrew word *charuts*. It's pertaining to being persistently industrious. What we want to be is persistently industrious. We want to work but not be in a situation where we don't work so we get forced to work. We want to be diligent at the jobs that are available to us. We want to be persistently diligent. Now the first principle I want us to talk about here—and it is going to be a hard one for us to accept—and that is our work is a God-designed matter.

Perhaps you're retired. You're 70 years old. Okay, I understand that. Please don't be hating on me. I'm not saying that you need to get back to a full-time job. But I am saying that work, the work that we often despise, is God-designed. So if you're home right now and you just don't feel like going to work—you called out today—and you're catching *God in Our City*, let me just say that it's not a matter whether you feel like working or not. Our work is a God-designed matter.

Proverbs 8:22: "The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his"—watch this—"work, the first of his acts of old." He's talking here about wisdom and he says that God, the Lord, possessed wisdom, possessed wisdom personified—it's a personification, it's Jesus—at the beginning of his work. What is it called what God did when he created the universe? Work. Work. The Hebrew word *derek* means journey, what one does. So God provides an example for work in the creation.

Genesis 2:1 and 2: "Thus the heavens and earth were finished and the host of them, and on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done." God worked. And at the end of it, he rested. But please note, he actually worked six days and on the seventh day he rested. So God provides an example that we ought to work up to six days. Up to six days and on the seventh day you rest. That's the example God gives.

But then God provides an exhortation for work in creation. In Genesis 2:15 you find this amazing statement. It says, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it." That's right, Pastor Dave, the world fell because of that, we have sin and because we have that, we have work. No, no, no, no, no, no. Look at what the text says and look at where it is. It's before the fall of man. And before the fall of humankind, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to do two things: to work it and to keep it.

Work was God's idea. And it was God's idea for Adam. It was God's idea for Eve. They were to work the garden. It was not going to be the case that this was a bad thing. Genesis 1:31 says that after God saw everything, that it was very good. Work is part of God's plan before the fall. When God declared all the creation was very good, he's talking or he's including work. Work. Work became more difficult after the fall of Adam and Eve. Genesis 3:19 tells us, "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust and dust you shall return."

He's saying that it's going to be difficult. That there's going to be work and the work is going to be difficult. Now you may ask—I think it's a legitimate question—was the work that Adam did tiring? Before the fall when he's told to till the earth, was it difficult? Was it exhausting? I don't think it was that so much. I don't think it wore him out. But I do think it required energy and exertion. I think after the fall, by the sweat of your brow you'll do what you do and get what you get, I think in that case it was very hard and I think we concur that even to this day it's very hard.

Yet work is still beneficial. It's good for you, it's good for me to work. There's someone near you, please say, "It's good for you to work." Please, go out, get something going here. Listen to the words of Ecclesiastes 3:12 and 13: "I perceive that there is nothing better for them," that is the sons of men, "than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man." Work. Having pleasure in our toil is part and parcel of what God has planned for us.

So let's just talk about this quickly again. The fact that our work is a God-designed matter. That God sets the example of work in creation and even beyond that, that God provides an exhortation for work in creation, that is mankind is supposed to work. He works, that is God, mankind is called to work. It's what we're supposed to be doing. So it is God-designed. Our work is a God-designed matter. Secondly, our work is a God-guided matter. A God-guided matter.

We'll pick this up tomorrow as we continue this our series on living iSmart in an eStupid world, and we're looking at the concept of work. Father in heaven, thank you for your word. Thank you for its truths. Thank you for its life-changing impact. Thank you, Lord, that the book of Genesis and the book of Proverbs have impacted the world so greatly, especially in the matter of individuals working. Father in heaven, help us to resolve that we will not, we will not allow the world to mold us into its image on this point, in this area of work.

But rather, but rather we will with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength do what we do unto you. God changes where we are not right, work deeply in us where we are struggling, and most of all, God, help us to embrace the concepts of work that you lay out for us in your word. I pray this now in the mighty, awesome, precious name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, amen. Amen. Well hopefully you're thinking through this now, you're beginning to wonder about yourself and work—nothing wrong with that.

Please download the free study guides that are very useful in all the topics that we're going over. Beyond that, think about ordering and having come free of charge—and us paying the shipping and handling—the Proverbs journal and the memory verse that we're sending your way. And also the study guide, just download it. And while you're there, consider making a gift to God in Our City. We would greatly appreciate it. It would make a huge difference. So it's been good talking to you today. We're going to get a little deeper into the whole idea of work tomorrow so you won't want to miss it. Please continue to join us here on the daily edition of God in Our City.

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to God in Our City with your host Pastor Dave Watson. We hope the show was a blessing to you. Again, to receive a downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Please check out Pastor Dave's blog at nycshepherd.com. That's nycshepherd.com. Please invite a friend and join us every weekday for another edition of God in Our City.

Max Lucado: In times like these, we all need a word of encouragement. From pastor and bestselling author Max Lucado comes the Max Lucado Encouraging Word Podcast. With over 40 years of ministry and more than 145 million books sold in 50 languages, Max shares the greatest story ever told: the living Savior who brings hope for a lifetime. Through rich biblical insight and heartfelt storytelling, you'll be reminded that God is always near, always for you, and always in you. Listen to the Max Lucado Encouraging Word Podcast where hope meets your day. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.