God Cares About How We Earn Our Livings

Ephesians 4:28; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12; Isaiah 58:1-14

From the time that God took Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it, to cultivate it and to guard it, to worship and to obey, it has been clear that material and spiritual concerns are not separate, that in a good material creation, obedient children in the image of the Creator are concerned about the material well-being of the creation and of our fellow children of God. Specifically, it has been clear that God cares about how we human beings earn our livings. In Genesis 4, the first chapter after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden, we see mention of farming the ground, of raising livestock, of building cities, of making music, of metalworking. The list grows as we move on from there. Any morally upright work, ordinary or extraordinary, can be carried out with honor and can be a means of glorifying God.

It is clear from the Sabbath and festival laws that God expected his people to work hard and productively six days a week, most weeks of the year. Sabbath and the religious festivals were interruptions in the constant work that were designed to help us keep perspective on our work and our lives. The breaks remind us that not all is up to us, that God is the provider, and that glorifying God by representing God’s character and values is the highest purpose of all work.

The laws of the Old Testament people of God were designed to encourage helping people who were down on their luck in earning their livings and to give them periodic renewals of opportunity to work meaningfully and productively. No forced servitude in payment of debts could legally be for longer than seven years, and no use of the land could be sold for longer than fifty years.

As the economic lives of God’s covenant people became more diversified and complex, as wealth and power became increasingly concentrated in certain privileged families, problems of social injustice had to be addressed. This was one of the most important reasons for the ministries of the Old Testament prophets. Prophets such as Amos, Micah, and Isaiah raged against the false religiosity of powerful and privileged people who praised God while underpaying, betraying, and otherwise abusing their employees, protecting themselves in the courts by means of bribes, exchanges of favors, and other improper influences such as their common interest with similarly corrupt people. The prophets said that God was appalled by such false worship, disguising lives that were directed completely against God’s honoring of honest labor. Such perverse powerful people could not expect God’s blessings.

J. Alec Motyer shows the structure of one of the best known of these prophetic passages. I have adapted this from Motyer’s book, The Prophecy of Isaiah:

A1 The Voice of Rebuke 1 “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.

B1. A Fast without a Blessing 2 Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. 3 ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. 4 Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. 5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?

C. The Lord’s Chosen Fast and Its Blessings

a 1 social actions 6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

b1 spiritual rewards 8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

a2 social actions If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

b2 spiritual and social rewards then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday. 11 And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.

B2. A Feast with a Blessing 13 “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;

A2. The Voice of Promise14 then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”


The people of God were complaining that they were carrying out all their religious duties, but were not being blessed. On behalf of the Lord, Isaiah answers their complaints, saying that their observances of religious duties such as Sabbath-keeping and fasting showed that they were carrying out their religious activities for the gain they assumed that it would bring them rather than for God. Fasting and Sabbath-keeping are both designed to suspend our agendas so that we can pay attention to God’s character and purposes. Isaiah says that the Lord cares about how we treat our family, neighbors, workers who serve our needs, and other fellow human beings. If we want to be doing God’s purposes, then we should be showing concern for the well-being of those around us.

While Isaiah’s message recommends charitable deeds, he goes beyond that to speak of justice and dignity for workers. He accuses his audience of using their fasts and Sabbaths to cover their real activities which are about manipulating their social influence and power, their good-ol’-boy networks, to the disadvantage of those who have less power and influence, for putting down their employees and other powerless persons, keeping them in vulnerable, impoverished, indebted, victimized conditions.
Isaiah’s message does not come from a naïve God. God knows that there are some people at the bottom of the social pyramid who are inclined to be lazy leeches, sucking every benefit they can for as little work in return as possible. God just does not want those leeches at the top of the social pyramid, pretending to be religious and upstanding while sucking the last drops of blood out of their employees. Not all, probably not even most, at top or bottom of the heap, are leeches, but it is not what God wants for his people.

Isaiah suggests that, if these complaining worshipers want to be blessed in their spiritual lives, then they need to stop acting against and to start acting on behalf of the weak and dependent, opening up opportunities of dignified living for them. If they will help their workers, God will help them.

It is important to see that there is more to this text than the scolding of religious hypocrites who oppress their workers. There is a positive message about God’s valuing all kinds of honest and productive human labor and valuing efforts to spread well-being through the whole society.

For those of us who live in rural or small town America, areas that have taken a harder and harder hit over the past four decades, there is an encouragement that God cares about how we earn our livings and that the people of God are encouraged to devote worship time and prayer time, Sabbath time and fasting time, to seeking ways to improve matters for the disadvantaged.

This year, we have a new Community Development Ministry dedicated toward that end. Community gardening and leasing space to the Literacy Council may not seem big things, but they are capable of making a positive difference. There are families here in Carroll County earning decent livings through gardening, and there are many other who are supplementing their livings in that way. That is not to mention the number who are eating more healthily because of gardening; I have heard more than one person say that their tastes have changed due to gardening. Our church garden may plant the idea in the minds of some and help others get their beginning experiences in gardening. Plus, we are improving the nutritional quality of food distributed at the Loaves and Fishes food pantry. Of course, there is no adequate way to measure how important literacy is to gainful employment, but it is clearly a major factor. We are making a difference. I am confident that what we are now doing is just the beginning of the kinds of efforts that could help our congregation become a major difference maker in our community.

March 20 and 27, we are in the process of receiving our annual offering for Week of Compassion. Last year, we had record level contributions because the Haiti earthquake touched so many hearts. Make no mistake, disaster relief is an important and indispensable part of our Christian witness, and church agencies are the best way to get the most on-the-ground aid, with the least waste, corruption, and administrative cost for your money. But I am even more excited about the less known development aid offered through church agencies. By providing assistance for local people to improve their own water supplies, health care, appropriate technologies, and marketing infrastructures, by encouraging family-size animal husbandry, gardening, and cottage industries, by efforts to keep children in school longer, we are making major differences in quality of life for many people.

The Apostle Paul reminds us that work is not just about improving our own incomes to satisfy our own desires, but that it is also about carrying our own weight within the community of faith, about helping support our extended families, and about having something left to give to those in need.

When we are contemplating how to spend our money, and whether to buy the latest, greatest, biggest, and best to serve our own pleasures, we need to consider what our faith shows us to be the source of the deepest and most lasting satisfaction, pouring ourselves out for the hungry and the afflicted. In the end, it is a spiritual issue, which is to say that it has to do with who we are as children of a just and loving God.

God promises that, if we will expend our energies and resources toward building a more just and compassionate world, then he will cause his light to break forth upon us and his healing to spring up amongst us. God promises that, if we will not involve ourselves in false accusations and oppressive actions against the weak, but instead will seek to satisfy the basic human needs of the impoverished, then he will turn our darkness and gloom to noonday brightness, that he will cause springs of unfailing waters to rise up for us, and our lives will be fruitful and beautiful, like watered gardens.

What God is really seeking here is a change in the way we view life and what makes our lives good, rich, and satisfying.

We can follow the easy, worldly path and get more of the strife and the stress that the world offers. Or, we can turn that way of looking at things inside out and upside down so that we see things as God does, and we can receive the rich promises of God. Which will it be?

That was the question God was raising through Amos, Micah, and Isaiah. That was the question God was raising through Jesus, Peter, John, James, Paul, Luke, and their fellow missionary leaders. That is the question that God is raising for us today. There is the worldly path, and there is the godly path. Which will we choose?