The Gospel at Work: How We Work
Daniel 1: 1-21
1. Introduction
a. After Easter reflection, we turn to something deeply practical: work
b. What is work? Why is it so important to discuss?
i. Work includes all of our pursuits (parenting, jobs, school, etc.)
ii. Work is central to our lives
1. Terkel: “This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about
violence—to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as
accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous
breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath
all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the
walking wounded among the great many of us”
iii. Work consumes us and we have a difficult time reconciling our faith with our
work
1. Is there an intersection of faith and work? If so, where is it?
2. How is being a Christian in my job make me any different than anyone else?
3. What does the gospel message tell me about how and why I do my job,
how I view truth, what I strive for, what I should or should not fear?
c. The book of Daniel gives us the best blueprint for living faithfully in our jobs and culture
as a whole
i. Daniel and the intelligent, capable, well-educated and promising Jews were taken
off into exile to live and work in a pagan, foreign culture as political assistants in a
place that would have challenged their particular faith-based worldviews
d. How do we live and work in a culture like this? How does our faith impact our work and
transform our perspective on work? Daniel helps to give us some of these answers and
the Gospel helps us to round out the answers with a new lens through which to see our
work
2. The Good of Work
a. The Lord “delivered” them to work in a pagan, political structure (being a political aid)
i. There is no perfect place—only where you’re perfectly placed
ii. God intended them to work within a foreign, pagan workplace
iii. They had to learn the language, learn the skills of a foreign, hostile culture—and
all because it was God’s intention
b. Why would God do this? Perhaps to demonstrate to Daniel (and us) that all work is good
inherently and part of God’s overall work
i. God is a worker and so were Adam and Eve even before the fall (gardeners)
ii. God creates and builds and says “it is good”
iii. There’s something in work that fulfills us because it connects us to our maker and
the work he was doing in creation
1. Sayers: What is the Christian understanding of work? [It] is that work is
not, primarily, a thing that one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It
is, or should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties...the medium in
which he offers himself to God.
c. Do you feel this connection in your work? If not, it’s because you’ve either disengaged or
overly engaged
3. The Bad of Work
a. They were given two names as a means to assimilate them to the culture (previous
names were honoring God, new names honored the Babylonian culture)
b. Babylon knew that assimilation was the best way to render Daniel ineffective
i. The attempt here is to make Daniel and the others forget their distinctiveness by
bringing them into the cultural norms
c. You know you’ve assimilated when you’ve had two names
i. You do your work in the exact same way as your co-workers
ii. You strive for recognition, achievement, acclaim, reputation just as everyone else
around you does
4. The How of Work
a. But Daniel does something interesting to combat this assimilation—he retains his
distinctiveness
i. He neither separates (Christian escapism) nor does he assimilate
ii. Rather, he excels at his work—more than any other—but he does so in a
distinctive way
iii. He refuses to eat the meat and wine like everyone else
1. He’s basically saying “I will risk everything—my reputation, my
advancement, my resume, even my life to do this job differently but just as
well as anyone else
b. How the gospel helps us be free enough to do this?
i. How does Daniel have the strength to pull off this risk?
ii. “What would you do if you were sure you couldn’t fail?” The question assumes the
inherent fear of failure
iii. This is what keeps us from being distinct in our lives
iv. But the gospel points out that the ultimate failure, the ultimate fear has already
been dealt with once and for all
1. And the resurrection shows us that God has already started the process of
fixing this world
v. The gospel says “your job is important, but it’s not ultimate---you’re special, but
you’re not significant”
c. How can you take a risk like Daniel? How can you begin to be free from your job to excel
at it yet in a radically different manner than your co-workers? By accepting the reality
that God tells you “your job is important, but it’s not ultimate---you’re special, but you’re
not significant”