Well, good morning, everyone. They, they left my cage unlocked
and I got out. So that's why I'm here.
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Vance Furtado and
I'm a volunteer teaching pastor here at Resurrection Church.
And I have the privilege of bringing the last message on our
series, The Way of Wisdom. And we're going to be taking a
look momentarily in Proverbs chapter 24, and we're going to
be looking at verses 27 to 34. Now, I don't know about you, but
I have gotten a lot out of this series, and I hope you have as
well. Matter of fact, I was talking
with a friend just a few days ago and he would like to study
both of us doing it together, the book of Proverbs.
And I was telling him, I said, you know one thing you have to
remember when you read Proverbs, and that is you need to read it
slowly because if you read it fast, you miss the gems that are
in this book. All right, So we read it, we
ponder it, we ask God to teach us through it.
And that's especially going to be true in what we're looking at
today. Our topic is hard work and
savings. All right, now, before we get
into that, I want to tell you first of all, a true story.
It's about a woman. Her real name is Joanne, but her
friends call her Joe and Joe. Seven years after she graduated
from university, she really felt her life was a failure.
Her mom died of multiple sclerosis.
She had no relationship with her father.
She was divorced, being in a marriage with a very abusive
husband. She is now a single parent
raising a young daughter. Joe is barely surviving on a
part time job and public assistance.
She wrote about that time Rock bottom became the foundation on
which I rebuilt my life. For all her troubles, Joe did
have two things going for her. First of all, she loved to write
and she was very good at it. And secondly, a few years before
all of this was going on, she began imagining and writing
about a young orphan boy. A boy that was unloved, who had
survived certain death. A boy that had a scar like a
lightnings bolt right in the middle of his forehead.
The boy's name that she created was Harry Potter, and Harry
Potter made Joanne JK Rowling a very, very wealthy woman.
She became one of the most successful writers in modern
times, Rowling would later write.
It is our choices that show what we truly are more than our
abilities. OK, let me ask us throw a
question out there for all of us, all right?
What if Rowling had simply given up?
What if she refused to keep working?
She refused to keep trying at what she was really good at?
She could have chosen that. She could have made that choice.
You see, every one of us makes choices, choices that will
either help us or hurt us. Which will we choose?
Now? Again, this sermon is on hard
work and career, How we approach choices, what we choose to do.
That affects not just what we do for work.
It affects our opportunities. It affects our time.
It affects our resources. It affects our talents.
In short, it affects every single thing that God has
entrusted to all of us. Our main idea guys, is this.
We look like our choices. Now, in this passage, Solomon is
going to present three different choices that we all have to make
all the time, and we're going to again, focus this specifically
on the area of work and career. So the first choice that we're
going to see, and that's in Proverbs 24, verse 27, is choose
priorities wisely. Second choice is in verses 28
and 29. Choose integrity.
Third choice, that's the rest of the passage.
Choose to learn. All right, let's go ahead and
take a look now and read the passage starting at Proverbs 24,
verse 27. Read with me.
Please prepare your work outside.
Get everything ready in the field.
After that, build your own house.
Be not a witness against your neighbor without cause, and do
not deceive with your lips. Do not say I will give to him as
he has done to me. I will pay him back for what he
has done. I passed by the field of
sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense, and behold,
it was all overgrown with thorns.
The ground was covered with nettles, and the Stonewall was
broken down. Then I saw and considered it.
I looked and received instruction.
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the
hands to rest and poverty will come upon you like an armed
robber and want like an armed man.
OK, first choice, verse 27. Choose priorities wisely.
This picture that he's giving us, Solomon is giving us what?
They would have seen that all the time, because people live
very close to the land in the ancient world.
But the idea of seeing a field, a farmer's field with nothing
growing, but then seeing a very nice house in the middle of that
field, that made absolutely no sense.
Because what happened then was a person.
Whoever was the knucklehead who did this, they're putting their
home before their work. They're putting their comfort
before a way to earn a living. You know, Pastor Daniel was
telling me about this TV show that he really, really likes.
It's called Alone, and I've never seen it, but I understand
it's something like they take a bunch of people and they give
each of 1, I don't know, maybe a pocket knife and a paper clip, I
don't know. And then they send them out, out
into the the wilderness, the boonies somewhere, and they tell
them, survive. You don't get any help, You're
alone. They have to get their own food.
They have to prepare their own shelter.
The question is, who's going to make it?
Who's going to quit 1st? And I understand that the people
who make it, who survived the longest out there are the people
who prioritize getting the food. They're not worried about having
a shelter shoot. They can sleep underneath a tree
if they need to, but they work at getting the food.
The people who don't make it figure out, oh, I'm going to
build myself a nice place. And by the time they're halfway
through, they're starving. They quit.
You know, work has gotten a bad Rep.
And I can prove that to you. How many of us have been tempted
recently to buy a lottery ticket?
You know, by the way, it really is dumb, isn't it?
One chance in 292 million? Come on, you know, when we do
something like that, it's an attempt to avoid something that
we actually were created to do. And let me show you, OK, two
important facts about work. First fact about work is this.
We were created to work by God himself and I could prove that
in the book of Genesis, very first chapter of the Bible it
says this. So God created man in his own
image. He created them in the image of
God. He created them male and female.
God bless them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply.
Now catch this, fill the earth and subdue it.
Rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and over
every creature that crawls on the earth.
Subdue, rule. Then the next chapter, God is
now placed Adam and eventually Eve will be there too.
They're in this beautiful garden.
It says Genesis 215. The Lord God took the man Adam
and placed him in the garden to work in it and watch over it.
He's not in the garden laying around on the grass sticking
daisies in his ears. He's working, He's caring for
it. He's doing and enjoying what God
created him to do now. Yeah, we know what happens in
the next chapter, Genesis 3. That's when Eve and Adam both
sinned. They both basically bring sin
into the world. They disobey God.
They experience God's judgment, which we still struggle with
today. And one of those judgments was
the fact that the ground became much, much harder to grow food
in. But that does not change the
original mandate, the original purpose.
Work is good. Repeat that after me.
Work is good. I don't think some of you all
believe that, but it is. OK What's your attitude about
work? Yeah.
I'm retired now. OK.
But for decades, you know, Sunday night rolls around.
Am I looking forward to going back and teaching my students?
AM I looking forward to returning back to interact with
my kiddos for another school year?
You know, some of you all know this story, but I'll, I'll go
ahead and share it. I was originally trained to be a
pastor. I wasn't trained to be a
teacher, although that's what I spent over 30 years of my life
doing. So I came back, along with my
wife. We came back to Bakersfield and
I began pastoring a small church over in the northwest part of
town. I ended up having to resign.
I felt like a failure. We also lost the house that we
were staying at because the house that the church was
renting was the Parsonage. No pastor, no Parsonage.
We had to move in with my parents.
Linda was seven months pregnant with our first child.
I had to work. I had to work at whatever jobs
God brought my way. I worked in a diesel shop on
34th St. for a while, sweeping, cleaning, taking care of their
tools. I've worked for a while at at
office and classroom furniture place, fixing up stuff and
delivering it and making contacts with customer.
After that I went back to school.
I had to get a teacher's credential and I started working
as a sub. By the way, I hated being a sub,
but let me tell you, family and friends helped, but ultimately
God took care of us. About a year after that, the
Lord gave me another job working in the previous church that used
to be here. He gave us another place to
live, an apartment that we were able to rent.
He took care of us. And you know, I learned some
valuable lessons in doing jobs I didn't really want to do, but
nevertheless, those were the jobs that God provided for me,
for my family. Are you honoring God by how you
approach work? Are you honoring your family by
how you do your work? You see, there's 2 problems we
often have when it comes to work and career.
First problem, we overdo it. We basically make the job, We
make the career our idol. We sacrifice our home, we
sacrifice our kids, we sacrifice our marriage to this job.
Wrapping up all of our identity in that job, putting in 607080
hours plus and then wondering why our life and our family
falls apart because we created and made that job an idol and
God hates idols. So we overdo work.
The other mistake that we make is we underdo it.
God brings an opportunity our way.
We need the job, and for whatever excuse we don't take
it. You see, to overwork is sin.
It's selfishness. God expects us to take care of
folks around us, and we're basically treating this job as
an idol. Underwork is also selfishness.
Our comfort is more important to us than doing the right thing.
And you know what? Selfishness is sin, pure and
simple. Something else we need to
realize about work is this. Our ultimate boss is the Lord
Himself. Before the 1st service, bunch of
us were over in the side room and Justin was taking us through
how the service was going to work and how things were going
to flow. And a certain somebody in that
room, Pastor Daniel at one point mentioned that well, maybe we
could use this particular song and the song was take this job
and shove it. Of course, somebody had
mentioned that to him, but thankfully Justin said no.
Justin has more sense than us. OK guys.
But the idea is, is that our ultimate boss is the Lord
Himself. We're told that in the Bible.
So here's what it says in Colossians 3.
Whatever you do, work heartily As for the Lord and not for men.
Knowing that it's from the Lord Himself, you receive the
inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
See what we can sometimes do. And I, I made this mistake too.
We all have. We have the job.
We don't really like the job very much.
And So what do we do? We slack off on the job.
We piddle. We know what we're supposed to
do, but we're not doing it with our whole heart.
We're just going through the motions.
Our ultimate boss is the Lord Himself.
Not the boss. The human boss we may not like,
not the manager we may not get along with.
We're a Christian. We work for Jesus.
Regardless of whether we get a paycheck from the church or some
other place, we work for Jesus. You know what's kind of cool is
that the Lord Jesus told this parable.
It's called the parable of the talents.
It's in Matthew chapter 25. I'll let you read it on your
own, but the parable is about these three servants, each of
which was given a task. They were given some money and
the idea of the master told them was invest this, use it.
So two of the servants did exactly what they were supposed
to do. They doubled the masters money,
they worked one, went away and hit it, did absolutely nothing
and then tried to pass that off as basically the master was a
hard man, why work hard for him. But the two who did exactly what
they were supposed to do, when the master came back and found
out what they did, he said to both of them, Well done.
Good and faithful servant, you've been faithful in a
little. I will entrust you with much.
Enter into the joy of your master one day.
Scripture is absolutely clear about this.
We will give an account before Jesus for what we have done.
Do we want to hear him say well done, good and faithful servant?
He is our ultimate boss. He's the one who really signs
the check. Who are you really working for?
Who's your real boss? Again, first priority choose or
excuse me, first choice, choose priorities wisely and that
includes how we approach work. All right, let's move on to our
second choice. That's in verses 28 and 29, it
says choose integrity. That's I bring up the idea of
integrity, even though it's not mentioned here in these two
verses, but I think you'll see where I'm going on this.
All right. So just kind of bear with me.
Let me first of all give you a good definition of integrity.
Here it is. It's what we do when we think no
one is going to catch us. Run that past you one more time.
Integrity is what we do when we think no one's going to catch
us. Now I need to confess something
to you all. I have an addiction.
It's to peanut butter. I'm sure peanut butter is in
heaven. It has to be ten, 11:00 at
night. The peanut butter jar is
calling. Nobody else is in the kitchen.
I slip out, take a piece of bread, maybe 2 pieces of bread,
put a bit on it, chew it up, eat it before anybody catches me,
and then I go back to bed. The sad thing is I always get
caught and what always catches me is the scale.
You see, I really was not practicing integrity because
integrity, it includes not doing a wrong choice.
And what we have here in these two verses, verses 28 and 29,
Solomon who wrote Proverbs, he's given us 2 examples of a wrong
choice. So verse 28, that's the first
one, and that is don't be a false witness.
Be not a witness against your neighbor without cause.
Do not deceive him with your lips.
In other words, don't lie. Don't slander another person.
You know, it's interesting in earlier in this book, Solomon
writes first he says 6 things and then he says, no, wait a
minute. It's seven things that God
absolutely despises and one of them is a false witness, a liar.
And then the next verse do not say I will do to him as he has
done to me. I will pay back the man for what
he has done. The second example of a wrong
choice is a vengeful person, a person who refuses to leave
justice with God, a person that wants to kind of forget that the
Lord says justice is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.
Solomon's point is if you want to practice integrity, don't do
what it says in verse 28 and 29. Now let's flip this.
Integrity begins with obedience. Obedience to what Jesus tells us
to do. Of course, Jesus tells us a lot
of things, but let me just focus on one passage in particular,
OK? Choosing integrity means
obedience, especially to those things that are extremely
important. Let me show you.
This is from Matthew 22, verses 34 and 40.
The words are partly by Jesus. Hearing that Jesus had silenced
the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.
One of them, an expert in law, tested him with the question,
Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
Jesus replied. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is
like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.
All the law and prophets hang on these two commandments.
So practicing integrity means obedience.
It means trying to live out those two ideas, loving God with
everything that's that's within us and loving people around us
just like we love ourselves. Does it mean we're going to be
perfect? No, certainly not.
But it means that as we trust God for the strength and
ability, we keep striving, we pick up, we keep moving, we keep
working out, we keep practicing. You know my daughter Kathleen,
we call her cat. Several years ago, she ran a
marathon. And if that wasn't crazy enough,
she went away and she ran another marathon.
I don't understand my daughter, but that second marathon I
distinctly remember. She did the same thing in the
first, but also I remember better about the second because
she knew what that first marathon was like.
So when she decided to run a second, her and her husband
Weston set up a schedule. She trained for months,
practicing, practicing, practicing to run 26 miles in
one day. That's what the Lord is calling
us to do. It's not like, hey, somebody
like me, I'm going to go run a marathon.
I won't even make it out of the parking lot.
But the Lord expects us, if we practice integrity, to keep
pushing and obeying Jesus. By the way, something else 2nd
choosing integrity means we love people just as Jesus loves us. 2
quick facts about that kind of love that Jesus gives us.
Here's the first one. His love drew people to him
despite their sin, so we're told in Luke 15.
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to
hear him, and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled.
They did that a lot, saying this man receives sinners and eats
with them. In other words, these people
didn't avoid Jesus. They sought him out.
They wanted to be with him. There was something about Jesus
and it was at least his love that was drawing these people to
him. So the question for us, are we
drawing people to or are we repelling people away from
Jesus? Let me put it to you this way.
Are we a doughnut or are we a yam?
OK, No, I haven't gone crazy. Just bear with me on this, OK?
What's a yam? A yam is something about this
big that's masquerading as a potato, and it's the grossest
thing you could ever possibly eat.
There's a lot of things I used to be able to eat in East Africa
when I was teaching at the seminary there in Uganda.
But I do the lot of two things. Number one, no flying termites
and #2 no yams. They're repulsive.
Now, if you like yams, I'll pray for you.
OK? Contrast that with a doughnut.
Somebody walks into the office, has a box of doughnuts.
Woo. Everybody comes to the box.
All right? And other than the weird people
who just want yams, but everybody else comes to the
doughnuts. Why?
Because they're drawn to them. OK, then, 2 miles of this
church, There must be at least half a dozen doughnut shops.
Do you know a yam shop anywhere? The point is that I'm.
I know I'm being silly, but the point is simply this.
Are we demonstrating Jesus in such a way to the people around
us that people want to know Jesus by what they hear from us
and by what they see in us? That's what we're called to do.
That's practicing integrity. Secondly, his love.
He gave us an example to follow. OK, so Jesus says in John 15, he
says to his disciples and to us, my command is this love others
as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than
this, that he laid down his life for his friends.
And of course, less than a day after he said this, that's
exactly what He did. He laid down his life.
He died on that cross for his disciples, and he died on that
cross for us. He gave them personally an
example of his love that cost him everything.
But by the way, before he did that, he gave them another
example of his love. In that same room where Jesus
said what we just read earlier, the disciples had all sat down
for a meal together. It's called the Passover.
It's really a big deal with the Jewish people, still is today.
But the deal is you want to clean yourself up to celebrate
the Passover. And part of that involved
washing your feet because every place they walked in the ancient
world, they wore sandals and their feet got super gross.
Well, the deal is why having to wash other people's feet?
It's like the lowest or the lowest kind of job.
Nobody did that other than a slave who couldn't do anything
else. So they're all around the
Passover reclining in AU shaped table with dirty, stinking feet
because nobody wants to do that. So Jesus got up, took off his
robe, put on the garment of a slave, and lovingly went from
disciple to disciple, washing their dirty, stinking feet.
And by the way, he even washed the feet of Judas, the man who
was going to betray him. When he was done, he said this.
You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.
If I then your teacher and Lord have washed your feet, you also
ought to wash one another's feet, for I have given you an
example that you should do as I have done for you.
Now people get hung up on the idea of foot washing.
Should we do it? Should we not do it?
You know what? I've been in foot washing
things, ceremonies and services. Here's the deal.
Nobody ever goes to a foot washing service in dirty feet.
They always wash them ahead of time.
And then the debate back and forth.
It's even split churches as to whether you should do this or
whether you're not. You know what that's missing?
The point. The point that Jesus was putting
a cross and we need to get this is showing real love.
Showing real integrity is focused on others.
It's loving somebody and putting ourselves out to do something
that may be dirty, it may be stinky, but you know what?
It's what God wants us to do. That's integrity.
That's the love Jesus shows. You know, several weeks ago,
Linda and I went down to San Marcos to visit Beverly, our
granddaughter. Yeah, we're visiting the
parents, too. Yeah, whatever.
And we went to the beach, all of us, to Carlsbad Beach.
And this little toddler, I mean, she couldn't have got more dirty
on that sand in that beach if you had taken her and just
rolled her on the sand, OK, She was absolutely filthy with sand,
but very happy. Well, eventually they had.
Everybody had to go home. And so Kat and West and her
parents took her out of her seat, and before they put her in
her car seat, they lovingly, very carefully washed off as
much as that sand as they could. All the time she's fussing and
screaming. Not really, but she was some.
Why? Because that was showing love to
their child. None of us deserves the love
that Jesus gives us, but he loves us and he gives it to us
anyway. That's the same kind of love we
need to extend to others. So the second choice is to
choose integrity. Third choice, choose to learn.
Let's take a quick look at verses, beginning at verse 30 to
verse 34. I passed by the field of a
sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense, and behold,
it was all overgrown with with thorns.
The ground was covered with nettles, and the Stonewall was
broken down. Then I saw and considered it.
I looked and 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. Imagine you're coming down I5
from the top of the Grapevine into our valley, and you have we
have that long decline to the valley floor.
Do you speed on that decline? Don't try to tell me you don't
because you probably do, because I do.
But speed limit says 65. But when we're going too fast
and we see the CHP guy and he pulls someone over to give him a
ticket. And those are expensive, by the
way. Is it better for us or for the
other guy to get caught? Yeah.
OK. Yeah.
See, we can always learn from our stupidity.
Amen. But isn't it better to learn
from another person's stupidity? So let's focus on what we see in
this passage. OK, What's wrong with this guy?
He's called the sluggard. I'll call them lazy bones.
What? At least two things are wrong
with him. OK, first of all, he has a case
of the littles 3 times. Little Bit of folding his hands,
little bit of putting his head down, little bit of a nap.
Point is, is that the guy keeps choosing the soft choice the
easy way, over and over and over again until finally his
opportunities have gone and he's not even aware of it anymore.
Second problem, He lacks sense. Literally what Solomon wrote.
He lacks heart. Now remember Jesus said what we
have to do, the first and greatest commandment is we love
the Lord our God with all our will, with all our strength, and
with all of our heart. Lazy guy is heartless.
He sacrifices what he could have been because he chooses to take
the easy way. Here's the deal.
Physical laziness and spiritual laziness are both thieves.
They rob us of what we can experience.
Now guys, the key verse is actually verse 32 where it says
then I saw it and I considered it.
I looked and received instruction.
In other words, Solomon saying I chose to learn.
A fool never learns anything, partly because they're too
interested in expressing their own opinions and making excuses.
A fool never learns anything. A wise person learns from their
mistakes. The wisest person learns from
the mistakes of others. Is there something right now
that God wants you to choose to learn, but you're not listening?
Last week, this last week, Pastor Daniel came into my study
and he did what we call on the staff, a hard conversation, and
I needed it because I had screwed up big time.
You see, we get feedback from other people on our teaching
team on these messages and I got some really good feedback, but I
was not in the right place to receive it.
Why? Because I was being a jerk and I
hurt some people. And so my pastor came in and
talked to me and we had this hard conversation and it was a
good thing, really good thing. When we are corrected, are we
going to choose to learn or are we going to let our pride get in
the way? That's the choice we always have
to make. If we don't choose to learn, you
know what happens? God brings things around and we
have to learn that lesson again. And if we still won't learn, He
brings things around and He challenges us again.
Why? Because He loves us.
So the third choice, choose to learn.
So the main idea again, is we look like our choices.
Now, maybe you've, this is perhaps your first time here at
Resurrection Church. And if so, we're glad you're
here. Maybe you've been here a number
of times before, but you're thinking I'm not a believer, I'm
not a Christian. What does this have to do with
me? Yeah, I know choices are
important, but what does it have to do with me?
Well, let me explain something. All right.
You see, Jesus chose to reach out to you.
Yeah, you didn't know it, but He did.
He chose to reach out to you to provide for you by His sacrifice
on the cross. The only way you can get to know
God and experience eternal life. The most important choice any of
us will ever make is what will we decide about Jesus?
Will you ask Him to be your Savior and Lord?
In a way that is a very easy choice.
You know why? Because He did all the work.
We can't save ourselves, so He reached out to help us, to save
us in another way. Choosing to accept Jesus can be
a hard choice. Why?
Because we have to admit we need Him, that we're a Sinner, that
we're separated from God, and that we absolutely have to have
what only Jesus offers. Will you choose now to follow
Jesus? All right, I'm going to ask us
all, please, to bow our heads, close our eyes, simply so that
there's not any distractions. If you want to choose to accept
Jesus, I'm going to ask you either out loud or in your heart
to pray this prayer with me. Jesus, I ask you to enter my
life, to enter my heart. I ask you, Lord, to save me,
take over my life, heal my heart, let me have a
relationship with you. If you prayed that prayer, would
you just raise your hand so I can see it?
Nobody else, but just me? Thank you.
You may put your hands down. Listening to Pastor Venus's
sermon today about good choices and I was just thinking about
all of the bad choices I have made.
Maybe you can relate to that. Maybe you, you listen to this
sermon and your only thought was, man, I wish I could make
good choices and I can, I can relate to that.
The beauty of the gospel was that all of the Bible is about
how many opportunities that humanity had to make good
choices and our inability to consistently make them.
To such an extent that God would send his only Son to die on a
cross to rise again. So that you and I would be
empowered with a spirit that would begin to change us from
the inside out. So that when God says that He
will give you the desires of your heart, it's not the desires
you had yesterday because He's changing the very desires of our
heart. The beauty of the gospel is that
we are incapable of making good choices and we needed a Savior.
And so maybe today, in the midst of just feeling some shame of
where you're at, you have a realization you need to throw
yourself desperately at the foot of the cross and remember that
God loves you and that he is here to change the very desires
that make you choose poor things so that you can choose well.
I want to pray for you as we leave here today and go out into
a dark and fallen world. And I want to remind you that if
you're new or you haven't had a chance to connect with any of
us, we're going to a group of us can be down here for meet the
team. And also going to remind you
that there are brownies. And should you not come and I
have to eat all of them, that will be yet another poor choice
I made in my life. Let me pray for you.
Father God, thank you so much for this people, those that are
here, those that are watching online and God just worshipping
with us. So I thank you that you love us
so much that you did not leave us where we were at, yet you
came for us. You clothed us in your
righteousness. You didn't die for us once.
And tell us, I hope you do better next time.
You didn't preach to us the gospel of self effort.
No, you came and filled us with your Spirit.
You gave us a calling to leave this place today to be on
mission, to be ministers of your gospel, to be ambassadors of
heaven. Like how would you fill us with
encouragement as we go out into this Dark World to lean on you?
It's all your Spirit to help us to choose well, to be learners,
to accept correction and to love others in Jesus name, Amen.