The Work God's Doing

The Work God Is Doing

I live in a very busy world. If I assume that our country, for example, has around 5% unemployment, that means that 95 percent of all the folks around me are gainfully employed and engaged in some kind of mental and/or physical labor for a sizable portion of their lives. This, combined with the other activity we engage in like housework, yard work, chauffeuring people to and fro, working out at the gym, sports and music practices, etc., I’d have to say that busy-ness is a definite constant in most of our lives.

But are most of us really enjoying this frenetic factor of over-occupation that we face every day of our week? Do we truly enter into these activities, this busy-ness, with a feeling of purpose and pleasure and joyful accomplishment? Am I ultimately satisfied with my vocation, my calling in life? Or do I see my jobs and duties as a dreaded drudgery?

Today I am considering the work performed by the absolutely BUSIEST Being in all the universe: God.

Think that building your deck or planning your last picnic was hard? God planned and designed and built an entire cosmos (earth, heaven, galaxies, the water cycle, subatomic particles, electro-magnetism, elephants, walruses and weasels all included) in a period of six days (see Genesis 1). Of course, He rested on day 7, but purely as an example for workaholic human beings who need to slow down a bit each week for worship and contemplation.

The Bible suggests that all three Persons of the Trinity, or Godhead, were involved in the creation of all that is. Paul’s New Testament letter to the Colossians tells us: “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible...all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:15-16). The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all involved in the work.

So, after the seventh day, did the Trinity merely stop working and take a permanent siesta, leaving the newly created universe to operate and run down like a cumbersome clock? Uh...no. Paul goes on to write about Christ that: “he is before all things, and in him all things hold  together” (verse 17). Think of it like the little Dutch boy with his finger stuck in the hole in the dike. If he were to remove his finger from that hole, the sea would cause the entire dike to collapse and the town would be destroyed. God the Son--the Lord Jesus Christ--is the very person we can thank for not only creating all that is, but for sustaining all that is (including our very selves) by the force of his powerful will and word.

This work of sustaining the very fabric of the cosmos is a work that is never over and God is engaged in it at all times. If by some whim he were to take a nap or a vacation, there would be no universe left when he got back on the job! God is the one who thought up the laws of motion and gravity and magnetism that keep planets and stars and molecules from flying apart...He got everything together and set them on their courses. He determines that they will continue to stay together and for how long. And, when it pleases Him, He will say the word and just as easily those things will pass away. “They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded” (Psalm 102:26).

So, knowing that God’s work is so awesome and powerful, knowing that nothing can ever thwart Him (Job 42:2), what kind of relationship should I desire to have with this very busy supreme Being who controls and sustains all things? Hopefully, I ought to seek a relationship of love, trust and obedience. But, if He is so great, and I’m so tiny and insignificant, how can my hope be realized? Many religions in the world teach that the best I can hope for is to cower in fear of my creator and just do my best to try and please him for the outside chance that he might at last accept me into his presence after I exit this life.

The testimony of the Bible, though, is so much better news than that! The gospel, the “good news” of Christianity, is that God Himself took the initiative to reach out to ungrateful creatures like me who actually did our best to ignore, reject and, in fact, despise our good and wise Creator. God the Son, the second Person of the Godhead Himself, took on a human nature just like mine, lived a life on this very planet during which He perfectly obeyed His Father’s moral demands, offered his life up as a substitution for sinners on Calvary’s cross, suffered the wrath of God my own guilt and rebellion had earned, died on that cross and was buried, rose triumphantly from the tomb in a glorified physical body, and returned to God the Father’s right hand in heaven. What a glorious work of love that was!

And did Jesus Christ end His work after He ascended to heaven? By no means! There is an activity of God called Providence that gets very little press in our day. Paul describes it in the book of Romans: “And God causes all things to work for the good of those who love Him, those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). It’s amazing, but true...those who love God and have found forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ--trusting in Him and His work alone to save them--receive this stunning promise that ALL things are being controlled by our Lord and Savior so as to lead ultimately to our good, our blessing. And it is His purpose--His good pleasure--to do this!

Philippians 1:6 tells me that God, “who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” When God begins to save a soul by His grace, He never leaves the job half done (as I so often do), or fails to complete it. He always sees it through. God is the consummate Workman. And even now, as I am learning to walk in His holy ways more and more each day of my Christian life, “it is God who is at work in [me] to will and to do according to His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

The physical and spiritual work God is engaged in moment by moment, day by day, year by year, century by century, is awesome to contemplate and ought to inspire our hearts to greater and greater heights of praise, devotion, affection and obedience. He is never inactive, yet He is ever purposeful and joyful in His work. And the most amazing thing of all is that our Lord invites you and me, sinners He chooses to redeem and glorify, to enter into His work along with Him! Like a little child learning to drive a tractor while sitting on his daddy’s lap, I am called to “work out [my] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), and to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).

Now that’s a kind of busy-ness that a forgiven rebel like me can find ultimate pleasure in...how about you?