WORKER: Do Your Job

– All right, this is Pastor Mark here welcoming you to join me for Real Men Wednesday Nights live here at Trendy Church in Scottsdale or online at RealFaith.com. We’ll try and post it elsewhere, but they’re gonna ban me because I’m in the middle of a special sermon series called Act Like a Man. If you are offended by that, you need to watch it twice because you need a lot of work. In each sermon, I’ll go through the reasons why God made men, why it’s good to be a man, and how to be a man that is a blessing to women and children, like Jesus Christ, the God-man, who is our perfect example. This is gonna be a fun time, it’s gonna be super-theological, super-practical, and as always you’ll get a bit of comedy. So dudes, grab a Bible, grab a notebook, put your belt on, show up, get it together. See you on Wednesday. All right, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, man. Can we welcome the new guys to Real Men? If you’re new, you’re in the best place for the best guys. Hey, we’re gonna talk about work. I wanted to thank you, most of you just came from work, so I was just gonna ask, who’s got the weirdest job? I just wanna know. Give it a shot, shout it out. Who’s got the weirdest job?

– Facilities director.

– Facilities director, so you’re a toilet guy, that’s what you are, and you’re swinging a hammer. Who else have a weird job?

– Stay at home husband.

– Stay at home husband. You’re in the wrong room. Okay. This is gonna be a painful sermon for you, but it’ll be helpful. Tell your wife to tune in. So who else, who else has got a weird job?

– Bible teacher.

– You’re a Bible teacher, that’s not a weird job, brother, that’s the best job. My first job, I lied about my age, I falsified my birth certificate, I got a job at a 7-Eleven behind a strip club selling lotto tickets, cigarettes, and alcohol, and I was 15, and I had a beard and this voice, so I never got in trouble, but that was before I met Jesus. I had some weird jobs, I worked as a longshoreman for awhile, I joined Laborers’ Union, lied about my age again when I was in high school, I worked at a hotel, I’ve had a couple of weird jobs. And now I’m sort of preaching full-time, and if it doesn’t work out I’m gonna go back to the 7-Eleven. So where we find ourselves is we’re gonna talk about work, and you think about it, most guys work at least 40 hours a week, and if you work 40 hours a week, you’re probably working less than most guys. So average guy, let’s say, he works 40 years of his life, 40 hours a week, 80, a 100,000 hours of your life at work, not to mention all the work that you bring home and emails and texts and responsibilities. And so I wanna talk about your job. And so most of you left your job and then you came to church, we’re glad to have you, but how do you connect God, not just with church, but with work? And I want you to know that what you do matters, and it’s significant, but the way you view work really depends on the way you view God. Once you get God, then it helps interpret the rest of life. In the days of the New Testament, the prominent culture was Greek,

and Greek culture was dualistic. You have physical and spiritual, and they basically say the physical is bad, the spiritual is good. So the whole goal was to live a life where you didn’t get your hands dirty. You didn’t do any really manual labor or hard work, that was for the poor people, the peasants and the slaves. The goal was to devote your life to art and to study and to philosophy and to contemplation in the world of ideas. This became the foundation for Western education, and as a result, most people who go to college don’t know how to work. They don’t know how to do things, they’re not ready for a career because they’ve just sort of lived in this pontificating life of the mind. So they’re studying philosophy and sociology, and all of these ideologies, but they don’t know how to get their hands dirty and do anything. Well, as well how you view work is really dependent on how you view God. And what’s really dominant right now or a growing dominance in Western culture is atheistic Marxism. And Marx was an atheist, and socialism and communism come out. And some of you, what’s the difference? Well, socialism is the half step to communism, and it always ends up the full step. But Marx basically said there is no God, and we’re not here on an assignment from God to give glory to God, we’re not gonna give an account to God. And what we could do, we could create heaven on earth without God. He had this concept of a utopian society. And the key is that if anything is hard or difficult, or if we are poor and not succeeding, it’s because we’re victims and oppressed. And as a result, we need to have the government reallocate wealth, we need to have the government take from people who are succeeding and give it to those of us who are struggling. This is the primary ideology of young emerging generations, and most of them wanna live kind of a Greek life of college and study and pontificating, and they don’t wanna get their hands dirty. And if they don’t have as much as they think they should have, then they believe that they’re victims, and the government needs to redistribute wealth. If you’re a young guy, that’s the brainwashing you’ve had from your birth through your educational process. Going to Christianity, and there’s Catholics and Protestants. I was raised Catholic, I love Catholics, there are Catholics that love Jesus, but part of the problem with work in Catholicism, especially for men, the leader is the priest, and the priest is committed to poverty and chastity. Just so you know, that’s my un-bucket list. My un-bucket list is poverty and chastity. I don’t wanna die a broke virgin at the church, in fact I promise you that’s not how I’m going out. And so, but within that, it doesn’t bring the healthiest men, and it doesn’t encourage and inspire men because if the leader is, well, he doesn’t have a wife, he doesn’t have kids, he doesn’t own anything, he’s not building anything, and he’s not responsible for anyone, it’s really hard to admire that guy. It’s really hard to say, “I wanna be like that guy.” No, I don’t wanna be like that guy, I wanna get married, I wanna have kids, I wanna build a company, I wanna generate some revenue, I wanna leave a legacy. The only thing that makes sense and makes work meaningful would be the view of the Protestant Reformation. And so I’ll tell you a little bit historically, there was a French sociologist named Alexis de Tocqueville, and he looked at the greatness of America. Why is America prosperous? Why is it succeeding? And he did this massive sociological work in the 1800s, and he wrote a book called “Democracy in America”. And it sort of explained from outside of American history the genius of America. And he said that American capitalistic success was entirely because of religious commitment. And he said, those who are Bible-believing protestants, especially the men, number one, they believe that work is a good thing; number two, they believe that debt is bad, and God’s resources should be stewarded; and number three, that men are responsible for

the wellbeing of their family, and they’re going to take care of their wife and kids. He said, those convictions from God’s word created the success of western capitalism. He also sort of gave a prophetic word, he worried that, quote, “A taste for physical gratification would become so great” that we would become so prosperous, that we would get addicted to pleasure, and we would forget to work. And he said that his concern was that we would be carried away and lose all self-restraint. And that the success of the Protestant work ethic would lead to people who were so prosperous that they became addicted, and they no longer worked hard, and that would undermine democracy and also financial success. That’s exactly where we find ourselves today. Our greatest threat as a society is not an attack from the outside, but just self-destruction from the inside: Obesity, pornography, addictions, alcoholism, opioid crisis. People don’t have to go to work, and they end up self-destructing because they’re so prosperous. In addition, 75 years later, there was a German sociologist, Max Weber, he wrote a book called “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” and he came up with this phrase, he called it the Protestant work ethic, the Protestant work ethic. And he looked at the success of the most prosperous nation, the most powerful and prominent nation is to the world, he said, it’s because of the Protestant work ethic. The men know how to work, they don’t go into debt, they take responsibility for themselves and their families. And he came to the conclusion that if you build your life upon the Bible, you work hard for six days, you take your day of Sabbath rest, you invest in your wife and your children as your first responsibility, that’s how you get a flourishing society. And so in the Bible, there’s a lot of jobs mentioned, I made a list: Carpentry, tentmaking, fishing, medicine, teaching, farming, politics, metalwork, music, investing, labor, construction, law, consulting, cooking, architecture, athletics, entertainment, banking, military service, real estate, clothing, mothering, fathering, sales are all God-honoring roles that people take in service to God. So what I wanna talk about, I wanna talk about your job, I wanna talk about work, and I want to talk about it as a Protestant who believes the Bible, and thinks that the Protestant work ethic is the only thing that is going to make your life successful, valuable, and purposeful, give you a legacy for your family, and contribute to a healthy society. So I wanna talk about work. First thing is, God works six days and rested the seventh day. So our God, guess what our God does? He works, he works. In the beginning, God created, that’s where the Bible starts, the word for created, it’s work. And so what God does, our God works and he set up the world for us to work. Atheistic countries have tried to do something other than a seven-day workweek. And guess what, it doesn’t work because God built a natural rhythm into history. The reason that we have a two-day weekend, in the history of America there was a debate, do we take the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday or the Christian Sabbath of Sunday? We ended up getting both, which means the average American actually works less than God tells us to. Not more, less than God tells us to. God told us to work six days a week and to take our day off. And then God made men to work. So if you’re a man, you’re made to work. Genesis 1:28, “God blessed them, God said to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion.'” That’s work. Dominion is the area of responsibility and authority that God has given to you. If you’ve got a house, that’s your domain, you have dominion; you got a company, that’s your domain, that’s your dominion. And the word there for subdue is a strong one, it means you’re gonna be sweating and working. That things don’t just naturally come together, that to have a family and a flourishing society, men need to exercise dominion, and they need to subdue some things that are needing to be

harnessed for a potential. So Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden…” To what?

– To work.

– To work. You’re not a man if you don’t work, you’re not a man if you don’t work. God made men to work. God didn’t make men to vote for other men to tax men who do work, so they don’t have to work. God made men to work. This is before sin enters the world and before the curse, this is the perfect world before sin enters in. You and I are made to work. This is why the Protestant work ethic, it said that we are to work, so people worked, and this is why Protestants started giving our children, but especially our sons chores. As early as possible, you need to learn how to work. And by giving even a child chores, we’re giving them responsibility, we’re teaching them the value of work, and we’re preparing them to work. In addition then, our work now is cursed. Genesis 3, after sin enters the world, he came to Adam, God did, and he said, “Cursed is the ground because of you.” The man is not cursed, but the ground is. “In pain you shall eat of it all the days of life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth. By the sweat of your face you shall eat.” So God works, God made us as men to work, and once we sin, now our work is cursed. And what this means is, just as we rebel against God, everything that we’re supposed to have dominion over is now rebelling against us. So as we have rebelled against God, now everything is rebelling against us. True or false now, work is harder than it was before the curse. Here’s what it means. Everything you do is gonna constantly be in a state of trying to undo everything you’re trying to do. Everything is gonna, true or false, take longer because something is gonna go wrong. It’s gonna cost more because something is gonna go wrong. It’s gonna require more time and energy and effort because the work is now cursed. And as men we need to accept that. And what happens is people who don’t understand work and the curse, they think that it should be easy, so they show up to work, and they’re like, “This is so hard.” Yes, your job is cursed, you’re going to have to exert more time and effort and energy to accomplish your tasks. This is why people who don’t understand that we live in a cursed and fallen world, they expect work to be a lot easier. How many of you are employers? And you hire somebody, and 15 minutes into the job they quit, they’re like, “Oh, this is really hard.” You’re like, “Yeah, that’s why we pay you.” We don’t pay people to do things that are fun, like nobody ever got paid to take a nap. You just do that for free, we incentivize you with money because it’s gonna be hard. If you’re a young man, you need to know this, it doesn’t matter what job you take, what career you pursue, it is going to fight you every, every, every single day. There is no easy job, there is no easy career, there is no easy path. And as a man, you just accept that. You’re like, you know what, it’s gonna take some work, and I’m gonna have to put in some energy. Well, and what this means is, well, any of you men who are looking for a shortcut, an easy path, it’s a mirage in the desert, it’s a dead end. How many of you tried a job? You’re like, “It’s really hard, so I tried another job, it’s really hard.” All the jobs are hard. All the jobs are hard, there is no shortcut, you’re gonna have to push, you’re gonna have to sweat, you’re gonna have to put in the time. And the example of this, for us men is who? It’s Jesus. I mean, what’s amazing for us, this is the benefit for us. We are men, and we worship Jesus Christ who is a man, so he shows us exactly what a man is supposed to be and do. And Jesus worked. So it says in John 5:17, 36, “Jesus

answered them, ‘My father is working.'” Even in the Godhead, fathers and sons work. This is where one of the best things you can do is teach your sons how to work, and sometimes take them to work with you. My dad took me to the job site when he was hanging drywall, and I was growing up, I got to see my dad work. My grandpa was a diesel mechanic, I got to see him turn wrenches, I saw the men in my family work. Jesus says, “My Father is working until now, and I am working. The works that the Father has given me to accomplish are the very works that I am doing.” So Jesus’ whole life, he’s working. When he’s a little boy and he’s got chores, he’s working. He grew up in a peasant, rural family, he had work to do as a kid, and then he grew up working with his dad who was a carpenter. Jesus spent 90% of his life working a job. He spent the last three years preaching, teaching, healing, but that was three years, the previous 30 years he was just going to work with his dad, and he was obedient as a carpenter and also as a minister. And it is so wonderful because what we have is a God who was being worshiped by angels in heaven, came down and got a job. You got a job. So guys are like, “I wanna be like Jesus”, then get a freaking job.

– Come on!

– Then get a freaking job, and go to work. The guys who sit home all day, and they’re like, “I just wanna read my Bible and pray all day and pontificate.” No, no, that’s the Greek life, that’s the non-Christian Greek life, that’s not the Protestant work ethic, that’s not the example of Jesus. Some of you guys, you really need to, you young guys need to know this, you were made to work, and if you don’t work, you’re a problem. And God hasn’t created you to just sit around and pontificate and theologize and speculate, but to get some things done. And Jesus is your example. He did know the Bible, he did study, he did pray, but he went to work every single day. And so for us to be men of God, we have got to work, and we work for Jesus. Colossians 3, whatever you do: Plumber, electrician, HVAC guy, lawyer, engineer, doctor, pilot, whatever your job is: Counselor, therapist, whatever your job is, work heartily. What that means is, work hard. If you’re a Christian, you should work harder.

– Harder.

– “As for the Lord and not for men, from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.” Who are you serving? Serving Jesus. Jesus got off his throne, came down, went to work, then he went to the cross, died for us, did all the work for our salvation, rose from the dead to open heaven, and he does all the work for us to be saved. And then he sends us out, and he’s like, “I have some work for you guys to do.” We don’t work for our salvation, we work from our salvation. Jesus is like, “If you’re gonna be one of my men, you’re gonna be in my spiritual army, you gotta go to work, and you work for me.” What that means is, you don’t steal from your boss because you’re ultimately serving your Lord. You don’t bill people for hours you don’t work because ultimately you’re working for your Lord. Above your boss is your Lord, and it doesn’t matter how bad your boss is, your service isn’t predicated upon how good your boss is, but on how good your Lord is. And so ultimately it’s like, “I work for Jesus, so I’m gonna be honest, I’m gonna show up early, I’m gonna work hard, I’m gonna do my best. And whether or

not my boss honors that, my Lord will; whether or not my boss compensates that, my Lord will. And I’m trusting that the Lord is watching my work, and one way or another he’s gonna take care of me as I do a good job.” This is a very different mindset. We live in a day when most men are encouraged to work as little as possible, take on as few responsibilities as possible. God’s men need to think like Jesus, I need to go to work, and I work for the Lord. And then lastly, it says this in Ephesians 2:10, “We are his workmanship.” God worked for you, God is working in you, God will work through you, created in Christ Jesus for what?

– The work.

– Works. See, “Which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” One of the errors that we tell people is, give your life to Jesus and you go to heaven when you die. That’s true, but between receiving Jesus and going to heaven, you don’t just go to heaven, you go to work. He has work for you to do. Your life is meaningful, valuable, purposeful. You matter, your job matters, your company matters, our ministry matters, your family matters, you matter. There are some things that God could do without you, but he wants to do them through you, and he wants to do them with you. I’ll never forget, I’ll give you an example. When I was a little boy, my dad was a union drywaller, hung Sheetrock feeding his family until he literally broke his back. That’s my dad, my dad is a very hardworking man. My mom and dad married early, and my dad would sometimes sleep at the job site in his truck or he’d sleep on the Sheetrock and send the money home to our family during the lean times. My dad worked very hard. And I’ll never forget, my dad would get side jobs on the weekend, so he’d work five days a week, and then he would get a side job like on a Saturday, and so on the side jobs he would take me to work with him as a very little boy, and I got to see my dad work, and I really appreciated how hard my dad worked. It made me not wanna waste money, and to be grateful, it made me want to help around the house and do my part. I’ll never forget, I had my own little boots, and I had my own little hard hat, and I had my own little tools and my own little lunchbox, my own little thermos, and I would jump in my dad’s truck for the side jobs, and I’d go to work with my dad. So let me ask you this question, did my dad need me on the job site? Do you think a five-year-old kid is really a big help to a drywaller? No.

– No. Why did my dad take me to work? So that he and I could build a relationship to where he would let me see him work, so that I would grow up to work like my dad. God is a father, he has work for you to do, and sometimes that work is literally going to work, and he could do a lot of things without you, but he wants to do them with you in the same way that my father wanted to take me to his job site because my father wanted to build our relationship and my father wanted to grow me up as a man who could work. And so what we see in this is that ultimately working for Jesus makes everything meaningful, valuable, and purposeful. If you’re called to be a cook or a plumber or an electrician, there’s no such thing as a secular job and a sacred job. The difference is, are you working for your Lord, or not working for your Lord? If you’re working for your Lord, wherever you are, that’s holy, that’s righteous, that’s sanctified, that’s significant, that’s important. And people often times they’re like, “Were you called to ministry?” Every Christian is called to full-time ministry.

– Yeah.

– Sometimes your full-time ministry looks like being a dad or a mom or a plumber or an electrician, but that’s your full-time ministry, meaning God has sent you there to do good works. In addition, first and foremost, I wanna say this to the younger men, you need to work to provide for yourself. It says this. This is a punch in the mouth verse to weak, passive, indifferent, lazy guys. Second Thessalonians 3:10 through 12, “We give you this…” What?

– Command.

– Command. God doesn’t give suggestions, God gives commands. “If anyone is not willing to work…” Easy, what? Don’t eat. So some of you’re like, “That guy is gonna die.” Well, it probably at some point before he dies, he’s gonna go to work. Hunger is an incentive. “For we hear that some among you walk in idleness.” You’re just screwing around all day. “Not busy at work, but busybodies.” We call this the internet. Guys who are busy don’t have time to be a busy body. The guy who is trashing you on the internet, he’s unemployed. “Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ…” To what? “To do their work quietly.” And what? Earn your own living. So basic income is ungodly, redistribution of wealth is ungodly, giving money to people who aren’t working is ungodly. What that means is, when we sent checks to everybody during Covid, it was ungodly.

– Amen.

– When we just took a bunch of guys who weren’t gonna pay off their college loans and just gave them money, it was ungodly. If anything, we should have found a way to tell guys who have college debt, “Hey, why don’t you work? And then you can earn money.” Crazy idea, they didn’t teach you that at college. “And then you could pay off your debt.” But we live in a day when it’s like, you know what, we have men who are trying to remain in a childhood state of dependency on the government, and it’s ungodly. And ultimately the kind of government we have doesn’t redistribute wealth, it redistributes poverty, and it disincentivizes people from working. So there’s this entitlement mentality that leads to complete devolution of men and destruction of society. The Bible is like, hey, we hear some of you guys aren’t going to work. Well, don’t feed those guys. What about mercy and justice and compassion? What about going to work? Like I’ll be honest, I am… You see these guys out panhandling, “Give me money.” Like you’re standing in front of 27 businesses that are all hiring because nobody goes to work. Put this, you’re obvious, put the sign down, and go get a job. Right? And at some point, I would encourage you, read the Book of Proverbs, it’s gonna have a lot to say about work, you can read a chapter a day, but it’s gonna say a lot about the sluggard. The sluggard is the guy who basically is like a slug, he just sits there and just leaks puss, that’s what he does, right? He just leaks puss, that’s what he does. And the Bible has nothing good to say about the sluggard, the Bible has nothing good to say about a lazy, inactive man. Just doesn’t. So we got a whole generation, the guys are like, “Oh, we should have basic income and free college, free medical

and…” No, you should have a job. If you want more, work more. And what happens is, once a guy gets hungry, he gets motivated. Once a guy reaches a point where he is like, “Well, I’m not gonna survive, well, then go to work.” How about this one? Work not only to care for yourself, but also for your family. Here’s another punch in the mouth verse. First Timothy 5:8, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, especially members of his household,” that’s your wife and kids, “he has denied the faith and is worse than…” What? An unbeliever. A Christian man who doesn’t work is worse than a non-Christian. Right? Now if you’re offended, you’re wrong. Okay? If you’re offended, you’re wrong. Right? Here’s what he says, there are non-Christians and there are Christians, and the Christians who have men in the family who don’t go to work to feed the women and children, those men are worse than the non-Christian men. Right? This is as strong as it could be. Right? And we live in a world, again, where men are not feeding women and children, we’re here to build men up to bless women and children. I was talking about it, when I was 45 I resigned my job, we moved out of state, I felt God was calling, and I didn’t know what was gonna happen. We had kids in elementary, middle school, high school, college, tree fell on my house, wrecked all my equity. Like, oh my gosh, man, I got myself in… I mean, it was a crisis situation. I was talking to Grace, recently we were going for a walk, I said, “Honey, during that time when I had no…” I’m unemployed, I’m in transition, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, my life is on fire, tree falls on our house, I can’t sell it, all our equity is tied up, I got five kids, I can’t… Our life went upside down, I asked her, I said, “So were you stressed?” She’s like, “No.” I was like, “Why?” She said, “It’s your responsibility.” Oh! Oh! Oh! Shouldn’t have taught that. I’m a Bible teacher, I should have skipped that part, it put a lot of pressure on me. She said, “It’s your job to feed this family, not mine.” She said, “So I don’t worry about it, that’s your job.” I was like, “Okay.” She’s like, “But I’m grateful, I appreciate it, thank you.” I mean, she’s very encouraging. I was like, “Well, I was feeling it.” She said, “Well, you should feel it, it’s your responsibility.” I said, “Did you ever think…?” I asked her this question, to be honest about my walks with Grace. I said, “Did you ever think, hey man, I should go get a job?” She’s like, “No, I got five kids, you need to go to work and you figure it out.” She’s like, “That’s your job. I don’t worry about it, that’s your job.” I was like, “Okay.” Her name is Grace, we don’t really roll that way, but her thought is like, “You are the man, you need to go to work.” It’s not a sin for a woman to work. I’m not saying that it’s a sin for a woman to generate revenue, but it is if she has a lazy husband, and it is if he is not willing to work, and then they have this role reversal where all of a sudden she treats him like one of the kids and she goes and takes care of the family, and leaves him home with a chore chart. Right? And there’s a lot of guys, some of you young guys, you’re trying to find a girl with a good job and load discernment, okay? A lot of single guys, that’s her end zone, you’re like, “She’s got a good job and low discernment. I think I could move into her place and eat her food.” No, get a…?

– Job.

– Get a job. I’ll tell you what women find really sexy, not your abs, not your subs, a guy with a job and a Bible. That’s what’s really sexy. Right? So here’s what he’s saying, if you don’t take care of your family, you have denied the Christian faith. You have denied it. You have denied it, because God made you to work to bless women and children starting at your house. There’s a

whole generation of young men, record number of vasectomies, guys in their 20s saying, “I don’t ever wanna have a wife or kids because I don’t wanna have to go to work, and I don’t wanna have any responsibilities.” We have literally cut off an entire generation of men from masculinity, dignity and responsibility. It is a cultural crisis. If you would rather get a vasectomy than a job, you are broken at the soul level. If you would rather have no responsibility than a family, there is something broken in you at the soul level. Some of you guys are here, and you’re gonna get a little shook up by this. The guys online, they’re already commenting, I’m sure. Because they’re, like I said, they’re at their mom’s house hacking the internet, drinking beer out of a sippy cup, and giving us their opinion like we care. But the reason that you men are here… It’s how we roll. I obviously don’t care. The reason we’re here is because if you are a man of God and you have the Holy Spirit in you, you’re like, I wanna be a man, not just a boy who can shave. I want people to be able to count on me and not just be constantly dependent on other people to rescue me. I want my wife and my kids to be blessed because of my work.

– Amen.

– There’s something that God puts in a man, and when you punch that button and you activate
it, that guy begins to change. And everything in our culture is literally discouraging that. Right? I mean, literally just… If you’re a young guy, you just need to know this. The government wants you dependent, the culture wants you addicted, and academia wants you castrated. Literally. And we’re here to say, “Hell no, that’s not what our Father says, that’s not what his sons do.” We’re here to be different guys. And if you’re a guy here and you’re like, “You know what, I need a job. I need a career.” Well, look around, there’s guys all over the room that own companies and businesses, and they would love to get you a job, they would love to get you a career, they would love to help you learn how to work hard and make money and take responsibility. And the guys in those companies, they are dying to find people who will go to work twice. So then my next point, work will continue in the kingdom. Let me… Revelation 5:10 says, “You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” When God created us in Genesis 1 and 2, he gave us a garden as a prototype, he gave us an uncultivated planet. God told us to be fruitful and multiply, have a lot of kids, and to exercise our God-given dominion to subdue and to create culture, and to make cities, and to start businesses, to chase dreams,
to go on adventures, and to get stuff done. That’s why he made us. And then sin entered the world, but here is the big idea, God does not deviate from his original plan because the plan was perfect. So our eternity is not like the Greeks think in some sort of nonphysical, spiritual, ethereal, eternal contemplation. Just as Jesus rose from the dead, you are going to rise from the dead, you’re gonna get your body back, and you’re gonna go right back to Genesis 1 and 2, right back to the original plan. And what that means is, you’re gonna have work to do for
eternity. We’re gonna explore, we’re gonna build companies, we’re gonna build cities, we’re gonna create culture. We’re gonna talk about this a little more next week, we’re probably gonna travel to all ends of creation. You’re never gonna die, you can learn and accrue knowledge, you can build and keep building. The curse will not be against you, it’ll be work, but not everything is gonna be in a deterioration process or a broken process. Satan and demons will be no more, and you are going to work. You’re gonna work creating, and making, and multiplying, forever.

– Yes.

– And I need you to get a vision of heaven is not stopping your work, heaven is where the work really gets interesting. And so the work we do today is to prepare us for the work that continues forever. Let me give you a few closing thoughts on all of this. Number one, the educational system is broken, and we are preparing victims and voters, not workers and worshipers. Victims. The whole goal in getting an education is to figure out who to blame that life is hard. And then vote for someone to make your life easier, so you don’t have to work so hard. You and I as men of God, we are not here to raise up victims and voters, but workers and worshipers.

– Amen

– That’s why we’re here. I raised my sons to work. Nothing wrong with work, it actually is really good for a man. Number two, young men are wasting their energy on fake reality and dumb dominion. Video games is dumb dominion. Guys are like, “I’m the king of the fake universe.” Well, congrats your fake relations, you’re the king of the fake universe. Or the metaverse. It’s like, you know what, we don’t need people to do less, we need people to do more, and joke jobs. Let me talk about joke jobs. Joke jobs are what guys do to pretend like they’re working. Whole generation of guys. It’s not a sin to work a joke job if you’re trying to find your career path, but a lot of guys are like, you know what, I’m gonna do Uber or Lyft or something like that. And what I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna work just a couple of hours to get enough money to screw around for the rest of the day. I’m not gonna build a career, not gonna build a portfolio, not gonna get a wife, not gonna get kids, not gonna develop anything, not gonna produce a thing, I’m gonna work as little as I can, so that I have lots of time for recreation, leisure, addiction, and screwing around. We’re encouraging young men, spend more time online, which means they’re getting less work done. Facebook is now trying to create a parallel universe, a metaverse, which is stupid, where people live rather than living in this world and working in this world that God made. And there’s a whole generation of young men that are just trying to find the least effort and least money, so that they have the least responsibility. Let me tell you young guys what I tell my own sons. Man, if you will just get your head on straight, get out of bed in the morning, go to work and work hard, you are getting a 10-year head start on every idiot in your generation. You get a 10-year… You don’t even have to be smart or skilled, if you’re just there, you’re there 10 years before the other guy.

– Yep.

– And if you will be humble and ask your boss, “What do I need to do?” Just ask your boss things like, “I wanna go up in this company, someday I wanna make more money. How do I do that?” And then shut up and do it, you are a miracle. He’s never met that guy. Right? So this stupidity in our culture and the worthless work ethic is this amazing opportunity for God’s men to lead, to generate revenue, to build things, and to get things done. In addition, young men are like trucks, and they drive straighter with a load. And if you’ve driven a two-wheel drive in the

snow or in the rain, it’s squirrely, man. It’s hard to keep it straight. Young men are like trucks, a lot of energy, but unless you load them up with responsibility, they’re gonna end up in the ditch. Young men need more responsibility, not less. This is why the last few years, I’m just telling young men to… The way you’re a good citizen is you stay home in the couch and wait for the government to send you money. It took all of the responsibility off an entire generation of young men, now they’re struggling with mental health and depression and suicide, and it’s because they’re not going to work. You can’t be depressed if you’re at work, you gotta work. You can’t sit there all day and try and figure out what your gender is, if you gotta go to work. It’s very clear. Just look down, it should be obvious, go to work. This should be obvious. I mean, so much stupid time wasted rather than working. And then lastly, let me say this to all of you, men. There is something profoundly satisfying and masculine about working hard to bless women and children starting at your house.

– Amen, yes. – Amen?
– Amen.

– How many of you guys, you work hard, you come home, there is your wife, you’re like, you know what, she has a roof because I went to work. She says, “Hey, honey, let’s have dinner.” You’re like, “Oh, my kids are gonna eat because I went to work.” There’s something profoundly honoring, dignifying, satisfying-

– Yeah, come on.

– About going to work, putting into good hard day’s work, and coming home saying, “That’s my wife, those are my kids, and they don’t need the government, they got me.” They don’t need somebody else, they got me, and they can count on me, and I will take care of them. I really want you, men, to encourage one another. I want you, men, to honor one another. And I want you, men, to know that you are a vastly dying, shrinking minority in a culture of stupidity and insanity. And if you are one of these guys who is doing this kind of good work to care for your family, we honor you, we appreciate you, we salute you. Amen?

– Amen.

– And if you’re a young guy who wants to be that guy, you’re in the right place, these are the guys to help you get there. Let me just pray, and we’ll just leave it at that. Father, God, thank you that you are a God who works, and thank you that you set up the world, so that we can work hard for six days, and Sabbath and rest on the seventh. Lord Jesus, I thank you that you came down, and you didn’t just preach sermons and perform miracles, you went to work, you swung a hammer. The first 30 years you had calluses on your hand, and you were working with your dad. Jesus, thank you that you died on the cross and rose from the dead to do all the work

of salvation. Thank you, God, that we don’t just need to die and go to heaven. Before we go there, we have some good works to do. We’ve got some assignments from our heavenly Father and we can follow in the example of Jesus, our big brother. And, God, I pray, as we raise our sons, that we would raise them to know that work is a good thing and that this world is cursed, and work is gonna be hard, but that’s why you made us as men because it’s gonna take strength and we’re strong; it’s gonna take courage, we have courage; it’s gonna take fortitude, and we have fortitude, because we’re not just men, we’re the sons of God. And, God, I pray for a special anointing on the labors of all of these men. I pray that they would go up in their companies, I pray that their businesses would flourish, I pray that they would employ fellow men who love Jesus, that they would do good, honorable, noble, hard, daily work together. And, God, I pray that when we come home, our wives would be grateful, our children would be thankful. And that, God, we would live in that masculine dignity of doing our job. And Lord, God, I pray for all of the businesses, the ministries, the families, the opportunities that are before these men. And, God, I praise, we raise our sons, that we would raise them to be workers and worshipers. They wouldn’t just raise their hands at church, they would go to work, and they would put in a good, hard, honest day’s work with those same hands knowing God that they’re worshiping at work and they’re worshiping at church. And, God, I just thank you so much that we’ve got stuff to do, we got companies to build, we got ministry to grow, we’ve got opportunities to chase, we’ve got things to get done. And so, God, keep our heads on straight, keep our hearts pure, keep our hands busy. And I pray especially for the young men that they would learn this as soon as possible, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Love you, guys.