In his sermon, 'Teach Them to Work,' Trent Moody explores the biblical doctrine of work, emphasizing that work is a blessing from God, not a curse. He begins by referencing Exodus 20:9, highlighting God's creation of work and rest. Moody identifies God as the first worker, as seen in Genesis, where God creates the heavens and the earth. He explains that work is part of God's purpose for humanity, as humans were created in God's image to have dominion over the earth. The sermon discusses several types of work given to humanity, including procreation, dominion, classification, and artistry. Moody points to Noah as a symbol of rest and the hope that comes from diligent work despite the sin-induced curse. He warns against societal trends that devalue work and promote laziness, encouraging parents to teach their children the value of work through example and responsibility. He argues that while work is challenging due to sin, it remains a fundamental part of God's plan that should be embraced and taught to future generations. The sermon concludes by urging Christians to view work as a means to glorify God and live out their faith in practical ways.

Turning your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20 and verse 9, very familiar passage of scripture, but we want to look at this in relation to teaching our children to work, teaching them to work. Exodus 20 verse 9, the Word of God says, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son nor your daughter nor your male servant nor your female servant nor your cattle nor your stranger who is within your gate. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Let's pray.

Our Father we want to thank you Lord for this time before your word yet again Lord what a wonderful weekend to spend with Bibles open Lord with hearts tuned in with what a great purpose we are here for and that is to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, to train them in the fear of the Lord, to teach them good things. So Lord, would you help us now as we open your Word and as we look into the Scriptures and Lord just pray that you would give us the diligence we need, give us the energy we need to train them well for the glory of God. And we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. So I want to take the first little bit of this message and just kind of establish the doctrine of work and then end with our responsibility to train our children to be diligent workers.

Most of you I think are familiar with a lot of this. This is nothing new that you're going to hear. In our church, we're very big on having our people work, being diligent in their labors, being good employees and employers. But let's look through this. And I wanna show you just a few things.

First and foremost is define for you who the first worker was. Who was the first worker? Well, God was the first worker. We see this in Genesis one in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth.

Also in Genesis 2, thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished. And on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. In John chapter 5, Jesus says this about himself and about his father. Jesus answered them, my father has been working until now and I have been working.

God is the first worker. Work is not a part of the curse. Okay, God created work for good. You imagine how bored we would be if we didn't have work. We would be miserable people.

God gave us this desire because it was his desires born out of him because he was the first worker, he was the creator. And then in Genesis 1 26 we find out that God actually created us, part of why he created us was to work. In Genesis 1 26, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And so God created man and placed him in a garden to tend that garden. One of the first things, one of the first works was a work of procreation.

God gives us this wonderful, amazing ability to procreate. This is a work that God has given us. Then God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." He next gives us the work of dominion taking. He wants us to take dominion over His creation And then in chapter 1 verse 28, then God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. This is the dominion mandate which is, we understand, is giving us our one of our great purposes as God's people created in his image is that we would rule over and take dominion over what God had created.

This is a diligent work that must be done and God created it in such a way that the work is never done. Have you ever felt that way? The work is never done. The work is never done. We're constantly taking dominion.

We see in Genesis 2.15, God gave man the work of tending the garden. Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and to keep it. This is before the fall. God wanted man to be working in the garden in which he had created. The work of classification.

This is a scientific study in which God wanted Adam to name the animals. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called them, each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field. What a work!

Think of all of the animals and all of the beasts and the birds and all of the creation which God had made and he's bringing them to Adam and Adam had this work of classification as part of the dominion mandate as well. When you name something, it's showing that you have authority over that, you have dominion over that. And so he's naming all of these creatures. The work of animal husbandry, he gives Adam and his offspring this great work. Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel.

And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. Also the work of art, music, and instrumentation. And Genesis 4 and Ada bore Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal.

He was the father of all those who play the harp and the flute. Next metallurgy. We have the work of metallurgy. Genesis 422, and as for Zillah, she also bore tubulcane, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron. Very early on, men are mining material out of the earth, taking dominion of that part of it and melting it down and becoming a worker in metallurgy, making things.

God gave man great imagination and great abilities to think and to be able to design and engineer things from very early on. But then, after this, we see in the scriptures, and there's other things that we could look at, but after this God gave man rest. God rested. He worked six days in creation and then we read just a moment ago that God rested from his work. And we see this interestingly in the life of Noah and even in his name.

This was interesting to me in studying this part of scripture in Genesis 5 29. It says, And He called his name Noah, saying, This one, his father called him this name, this one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands because the ground which the Lord has cursed. We understand that the work was not the curse. The curse was thorns and thistles and the sweat of the brow. It's going to be difficult.

The earth is not going to give forth its power or its ability to produce all that it did and could have. And so now it's going to be difficult and man must be diligent in those labors. And that brings us back to the book of Exodus in chapter 20 in verse 11, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that was in them and rested on the seventh day. This root word for rested here goes and correlates right along with the name for Noah. I just thought that was interesting that Noah was a picture that his father had given him that he would be one who would give us rest in all of our labors regarding the curse of the land.

So I don't know, different commentators think that Noah was a man that perhaps created tools for plowing and for digging up the ground and for tilling the land. But let's look at a few of these things in just a moment here. So throughout Scripture, what we see mankind doing is working. I'm not real sure and I'd be open to discussion from anyone about this as well. I didn't have the time to go into all of it, but I'm wondering, did man work seven days a week up until these times?

Was there actually a Sabbath? We know that God created worship, He created sacrifice, but was there an actual day before this that man rested from his labors? And I'm wondering if Noah here is actually a prefigure, a foretelling, if you will, of the rest that God would give to his people. Because that was his father's hope, that this son of mine, this Noah, would comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands because the ground which the Lord had cursed. So there's a ton of labor going into man's life from the time he was born until the time he died.

But work specifically, again, not part of the curse, but it was actually a blessing that God gives man work to do. He's put us here to do that. But in Genesis 529, we find this verse of hope that overarchs the curse over the ground, in which the ground would not give forth. And God gives us hope in the name of Noah. This one will comfort us.

He will in a sense give us rest or at least give us some advantage over this difficulty. God blessed mankind with this rest and ultimately we know that God destroyed the wicked in this world and destroyed the world to the deluge and God sustained Noah and his family and they procreated and filled the earth yet again with mankind. But I wonder here if this is God giving us a picture and foretelling of the true rest that will be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. So I want you to have this balanced view and balanced understanding of work. Work is a good thing.

You're typically going to have, especially men, but women can fall into this as well, you're going to have men who are either all work or they're looking to try to get out of work. There's kind of this, both sides of this thing, and where God wants us to be is in in the middle where we need to walk in the middle of word neither the left or to the right. We don't want to be people who are workaholics and neglect our other responsibilities like worship and like family, nor do we want to be that man who's the lazy man who is like smoke to the eyes and vinegar to the teeth. We don't want that one either. We want to be faithful men and women of God who understand God's doctrine of work.

Some information on Noah here that I found interesting. So terriological use of this word Noah and it establishes the theology regarding the Sabbath day. In Genesis two and three, two through three, it speaks of the same root word, speaks of a cessation of labor, describing God's rest, as I mentioned before. And it's really man not only ceasing from labor, but ceasing from his worldly pursuits. He goes on, Matthew Poole comments on this as well.

He says, and he, his dad, called his name Noah, which signifies rest, saying, by the spirit of prophecy, this same shall comfort us concerning the hard labor and manifold troubles to which they were sentenced because of the curse. He has a couple things here that he mentions regarding this and what he meant was in the resting part of that. By the invention of instruments of husbandry, whereby the tillage of the ground was made easier. That's a possible meaning of this through Noah. Number two, by removing in some part the curse inflicted upon the earth and reconciling God into mankind.

Remember, Noah was a preacher of righteousness. He was one who was proclaiming the truth of God's Word to that generation and yet also diligent. Think about how long it took him to build the ark. He was diligent in this labor for many years, decades and decades. I believe it was over a hundred years that he was building this ark in labor and he was a man that was given to diligent work.

We see this as pointing to even the Messiah or the promised seed and the Savior of a world that was really in shambles because of sin and the curse. And it was frequent with the ancient fathers, he goes, this is Matthew Poulsteel, through their earnest desire of the Messiah to expect him long before he came and to mistake other persons for him. We see that even in John the Baptist. Are you the one or are we looking for another? And so John clearly said, no, it is another.

It is not me. I must decrease and he must increase. I believe, and Matthew Poole seems to think, that Noah's father was perhaps thinking, perhaps this is the one who's going to deliver us from the curse which we have been experiencing. And then thirdly, Matthew Poole mentions, by preserving a remnant of mankind from the deluge which he by the Spirit foresaw would come and re-peopling the empty earth with a new generation of men and by restoring and improving the art of husbandry." So that's kind of a theological picture there, if you will, of the work that God has called us to do through dominion taking and through all of the husbandry that God had given. Also a little piece of a doctrine of rest through the name of Noah and through Noah.

But I want you to understand again, work is not the result of the curse. Children, listen, work is not a result of the curse. Work is actually a blessing that God has given you. Now, the reason why you don't like work is because of the difficulty of it, the sweat of the brow. You have to make yourself do things.

Have you ever planted a garden? Can you just plant those seeds and just watch it grow? No, it takes diligent labor. It is a constant working to try to produce fruit. You understand if you do that, the difficulty and the constant tending that is required in order to get fruit.

But think of it this way, children, if you are thinking of work as a burden or a curse, I want you to instruct yourself. This is what Christians do, we instruct ourselves with the Word of God. And I want you to say this, all children say this with me, work is a blessing. Say it. There you go, work is a blessing.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth on the sixth day, God created man and then God, the Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and to keep it. It was a blessing from God. He gave them work to do. They didn't just sit there and just pull fruit from the trees and eat and do nothing all day long. How boring would that be?

He gave man work. And so parents, one of the most important things that we can teach our children is the doctrine of work. Most children, In fact, believe that work is the curse, that it is just so terrible. And our job is to teach them that actually God's creation is a beautiful thing that requires work. He wants us to build it up.

He wants us to make it better. He wants you to mow your yard. He wants you to get out the wheat eater and clean the hedges and make it look nice and neat. He wants you to take care of these things. God did not create man to sit on his backside and do nothing.

Rather, God created man to work, and that work begins by tending your own garden. And I'm just going to use that as an illustration. A garden could be whatever it is that you do, this sphere of influence that you have responsibility over. This will be your little garden. Guess what, parents?

You're here this weekend because you have a little garden you're wanting to tend. It's gonna take work, okay? And in doing that, you're gonna teach them that they must work as well. They're, they have some responsibilities. If your children don't have responsibilities, We call them in our house, last name's Moody, we call them Moody duties and you have to do certain things.

You have certain jurisdictions, certain duties that you need to do and so you need to make sure all of your children have something that they're responsible for and age appropriate but a little bit harder than they think they can do. Don't only give them jobs anybody can do. Give them something that they don't quite think they can do but you know they can. Okay, challenge them a little bit because when they meet that challenge, they feel a great sense of accomplishment. Wow, I was able to do that.

And then as our brother Alan and Sister Shelly said, you praise them for the good thing that they did and take notice of those things that they did. So God in this creation, this part of creation of work was very good. That's what God said. It was very good. And so part of our responsibilities is to teach them the goodness of labor.

However, there is a curse that goes along with our work, not the work, but goes with our work, and that, my friend, is because of sin. Sin caused work not to be as enjoyable as it should be. And that's true even now. You know why you don't enjoy work? Because it's difficult and because you have a sin nature and you have a lazy tendency.

Now there's a couple different ways to be lazy. You could be physically lazy and you just want to sit on the couch and play video games as Scott mentioned or you can be mentally lazy. I don't know which is worse both are bad. I've actually seen people who are who when they get to working physically man they go at it but put a book in their hand and say, tell me what you read. They're like, oh, it's too hard, I can't do it.

Typically, boys fall in that category. We have a hard time with wanting to sit still and learn. But I want you to understand in Genesis 3 17, Then to Adam he said, Because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for your sake, and toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field in the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken.

For dust you are, and to dust you shall return." So the burden of this work that so often accompanies our work is because of sin, not because of labor. It is our sin nature that brings us to that point. And you know, what a great object lesson every time we work with our children we actually have an object lesson of the fall of mankind. Use that opportunity when there's some difficulty that you run into. And let me just throw this out and we'll talk about this just a minute.

What is your response to work? Oh, be careful parents, what your response to work is, because you will teach that to your children. So we can teach them that work is difficult because of sin, and This curse causes man to groan under the load of labor. This is, again, the sweat of the brow. This is what makes it hard to continue to go out and to take dominion in a world where thorns and thistles, both physical and metaphorical and every other way that you can think of.

Thorns and thistles have come in and it makes it difficult but it it it reveals us just like in the other message it reveals our sin nature. But where the earth does not freely yield its fruit we can understand that God has given us such a gift of grace in Jesus Christ that even with a sin-cursed ground, He gives us the ability to be fruitful in His Son and in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's given us as Christians especially to be fruitful in everything that we set our hands to do. You know, I'm in the construction business, and I've noticed that houses do not keep themselves in order. Mothers, have you ever noticed that houses do not keep themselves in order.

You know, there's a little saying that my wife used to say, I don't know where she heard it, but she said, you know, cleaning my house with all the children is kind of like trying to brush your teeth while you're eating Oreo cookies. (*audience laughing*) It's difficult sometimes to keep order within the house, but it takes diligent work. Moms be diligent in your work. I have to be diligent in mine. Constant repairs have to be done, constant cleaning.

And again, the garden illustration, if you've ever grown a garden, you know it doesn't grow food by itself. Where do those weeds come from? Wow. It is constant. Take two days off and you think, what happened here?

This was beautiful two days ago. But what is the natural tendency of all children? Well, in some form or fashion is laziness, mental or physical. It just that's the way it is. And guess what?

It was the same way me. There were things that I was lazy in, things I was diligent in, but one of the most frustrating tasks in life is to try to teach a lazy person how to work. You know the scripture speaks as vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the lazy man to those that send him. But what does God give us? As we heard just earlier, the rod and rebuke give wisdom but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

Mothers, you do not want to grow old with shame. Teach them to work. Fathers, it's true for you as well, you don't want to grow old and have a child that brings reproach upon you or upon the Lord Jesus Christ. You know one of the most ugly things I'll just say, the ugliest thing I can think of is a person who proclaims themselves to be Christians and they are lazy. They don't do what what God's given them to do, whether whether they're an employee or an employer.

We need to be people who are diligent in our labors, But we need to understand the difficulty is that we have a lazy tendency. And we don't want to pass that kind of instruction along to our children because I promise you, they will learn more, as you've heard the statement, more is caught than taught. If you are lazy, they are gonna have a tendency as well to be lazy. So one of the most common problems with employers in our day and age is to find an employee who is dependable and a diligent worker. In fact, we're living in such a bad time that really an employer, all he wants is someone to show up and to Breathe in and out.

I mean, you do that and you're like ahead of like 50% of all the others so far. And it doesn't take much. The bar is so low, an ant could step over it. We however, as Christians, want to be those who are diligent in our labors. We want to shine as lights in this world, but unfortunately in our country, we reward laziness and often punish diligence.

The socialist and communist movements are fomenting the ideas of equality as being equal outcome instead of equal opportunity. What we need to be teaching our children is is that you will be blessed when you are diligent. You're not going to have equal outcomes, but I want you to know this, that if you are diligent in your labors, you will be blessed. And that doesn't always mean financial prosperity, but you will be blessed by God in a number of ways. Some of the most diligent workers are not rich men, but they are very satisfied men because they are doing what God has called them to do.

But this whole idea of equal opportunity or equal outcome is an unbiblical idea and it always leads to civil unrest because it cultivates envy and covetousness. This should not be a surprise because godless leaders are not a blessing to people. We're seeing this in some of the states and some of the areas in our country. Now the world fights against everything that God values. Even the work week, there was a time during the Fritz revolution where they wanted to go to a 10-day work week.

It did not work. It did not work because they were trying to go against what God had established. Even the concept, and you may disagree with this, but even the concept of minimum wage encourages workers to the lowest common denominator, being paid simply for time and not performance. Children, we should not be paid for existing. If I stand in this place and exist for eight hours, I shouldn't get paid for existing there.

I should get paid for performing some beneficial work that helps the employer and also helps the customer. That's what I should be paid for. You know, it just causes, when people wanna raise minimum wages so that they can supposedly make the poor rich, what they ended up doing is causing layoffs and causing everything else to cost more. I was just listening to one of the news programs the other day and they were saying that, I think it was a Big Mac or McDonald's meal or something like that. And one of the, I think New York, it was almost $20 for the value meal.

That was because the minimum wages there have gone up. It doesn't change anything, you just make everything cost more. Not to get off in all of that, but God created man to work and people should be paid based upon how they are producing, how they are being diligent in those labors, we do not want to produce a depressed and mentally unstable generation because of all of these things. One of the things that you've heard of, I'm sure, is universal basic income, paying people to exist. And that is because of technological advancements where they think the people are not gonna have a job.

You want a miserable people in a world take away their meaningful work. And that will be the most miserable. You will increase drug addiction and every form of lawlessness because these people are gonna be bored. You're gonna have to keep them in rooms with video games and pills in order to keep them satisfied, if that comes about. Some nations have tried forms of this, and it never works.

It always produces instability. But there is a value that we must be teaching our children that in a free society good work will set the value of that work. If you do good work you'll be paid for that good work. Christian parents we are not to let the standards of the world be our guide in teaching our children. We need to teach children that God's Word says about work.

There is benefit in all labor. We must work to train laziness out of our children and ourselves and we must destroy the idea of an entitlement mentality. Recently, I was in the northern part of Alaska. My son and I went on a hunting trip in the Arctic Circle, which was fabulous. It was difficult, one of the hardest things we had ever done, but it was the most rewarding thing that we had ever done as far as activity like that.

But in this area, it's up where the oil fields are, and there's different companies that own it. It's vast, it's pretty fascinating just to look at it. But one of the things that struck me as I was hearing from some of the people there and our transporters that took us out is that the native population there is paid by the oil company an exorbitant amount of money weekly, every individual person, simply for being there because they are drilling it on their land. And what happened was these people began to adopt an entitlement mentality, and they began not taking care of the things which they possessed. We were actually 60 miles from the closest city, like there it was hardly even a city, but closest anything, and we were finding plastic water bottles on the ground.

We were finding trash out in the middle of nowhere and they didn't care enough just to pick up after themselves, just garbage out in different places. And it had taken root within them and their idea of meaningful work had been lost because of this entitlement mentality. Don't allow your children to have an entitlement mentality. You are not paid to exist, children. We love you, we're gonna take care of you, but we're not gonna pay you to breathe.

I'm sorry, we're just not gonna do that. We want you to understand the doctrine of labor. So teach your children that labor will also grant them sweet sleep. Have you ever had trouble sleeping? Occasionally I have, but not after I worked really hard.

That is always when sweet becomes sleep. Ecclesiastes says this, the sleep of the laboring man is sweet. Whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of the rich will not permit him to sleep. God gives his laborers sweet sleep. All right, next, parents.

Responsibility and example. That's where I want us to go. Responsibility and example. This was the method used by the Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 3, 6, but we command you, brethren, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the traditions which he received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you, nor did we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you.

Not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us for even when we were with you we commanded you this if anyone will not work neither shall he eat." That was my grandfather's favorite Bible verse. He quoted it to us all the time. That was it. If you don't work, you don't eat. And he proved that to me one time.

I was probably about six or seven years old. All of the family had been working. We had a campground and everything and all the family had been working except me. I was out playing. You know, little child, I should be out playing.

Not in his eyes. He grew up in a different generation. And when everybody showed up at his house to partake of the big family get-together meal, he says, Trent, where were you today? I didn't see you working. And I said, well, I was playing with my friends.

He said, you're not eating my food. And I didn't eat that day, that night. And I've worked every single day since then because I enjoy family meals. I enjoy to eat, almost without exception. But it taught me something.

He taught me the value of work. He taught me that, actually, I'm not just gonna be paid or fed just to exist. And my dad was teaching the same type things. They taught us not to be lazy, but to be diligent laborers. Parents, your example is essential, but it is not sufficient.

It is essential, but it's not sufficient, okay? What I mean by that is, Paul did not only lead by example, but he also marked the disorderly person and brought punishment to those who refused to work. He not only said, look, I'm working, I'm laboring, and he made tents, he did all the stuff, but he also brought discipline upon those who didn't work. And we must do that as parents. We must lead by example, but we also need to understand that just that example alone will not be enough.

We must instruct our children in labor and learning how to work diligently. Beware of your own bad example. One of the chief contributors to children's laziness is parents' laziness. This is not always the case, but it can be. Sometimes parents are very diligent, but they're not always instructive.

They don't require their children to do things. And you know, it's just like anything else. We must first start with ourselves. We must be honest with ourselves. Let's look at our own cells and say, Where am I lazy?

Where? Where am I trying to skip the task and not do what I'm supposed to do? We all have certain tasks that we don't really enjoy doing. I'm trying to get better at doing those first. Get them done.

Do those first and helping our children to understand that as well. When we put these things off or when we complain about them, we are actually teaching our children to do the same thing. Don't be a complainer about work. Be diligent in your labors. You know, As we heard from Scott earlier, a few things that lead towards laziness, too much screen time, social media news, movies, games, phone calls, texting.

One of my soap boxes is video games. Scott, thank you for introducing that earlier, video games. You know, the global gaming industry in 2024 was three billion players and $184 billion in revenue. But guess what, that's 2024. 2026 projection, it's gonna be up to 374 billion, doubling in two years.

Gaming. Doing nothing. You may think this is harsh. This is my view. It's not a thus saith the Lord, but thus saith Trent Moody, get a life.

Get a job. Do something besides playing video games and wasting your life. Do something. Work. And I'm not saying there are educational things that you can do, okay?

There's some school work that infiltrates some game and learning your math or learning stuff. I'm not against that. I'm just saying waste time wasting video games. Just be done with it. Quit you like men.

Be a man. Get up. Get rid of your games. Go outside. Work hard.

Do it with your children. I just don't... If you have a child, how do you have time for it? How do they have time for it? Peter says, therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

You know hobbies are great If hobbies are leading you to things that are beneficial, my hobby is I go to work and I preach and I spend time with my family and we hike and we do some other fun things, but I don't go play golf, I don't go do whatever. I don't have time for those things. I have a family. I have a responsibility before God. I'm not saying they're sinful.

Don't hear me saying that. But I am just saying, think about what you're spending your time doing. Use your time wisely. You know, at the end of my life, here's what I'm gonna say. I wish I could have spent more time with my children, talking with them, working with them, playing with them, investing in them.

No man said ever, I wish I'd have played more golf. I just don't think he would say that. Work, be diligent, teach your children to work. Physical work as well as mental work, we've touched on this, Proverbs 14, 23, and I'm gonna close up real quickly here. In all labor, there is profit, but idle chatter leads to poverty.

In our society, there are many people who labor in computer science. I'm not against that. That's a need that we have, obviously. There's computer work that needs to be done. But they are less physically laborous.

There's not, I would say there's, I don't know, maybe more jobs in desk work type stuff, computer work, than there are in physical labor. I don't know the statistics on that, but we're definitely trending in that way. And again, There's nothing wrong with this type of work, of studying work, mental work, but I just want you to understand that that type of work is detrimental for your health. If you're going to do that, do it well, but then you're gonna have to set aside time where you're also getting out and doing physical activity, And I would say this, incorporate your children into that. Hey, buy yourself a PhD and go outside.

And you're like, what are you talking about? PH, a post-hole digger. Go outside and buy, you know, dig a hole with your son or your daughter and teach them how to physically work. Dig a hole. I told my children this one of years ago.

I said they were wanting a treehouse. I said well we need a hole to put the pole in. I said you dig a hole right here and if you got a hole there when I get home I'm gonna put a telephone pole in we're gonna build a treehouse. And two hours later I came back and my sons, they had a hole, I came in and I looked, he was in the hole still digging. It was over his head.

I had to pull him up out of the hole. So he took that literally when I said, I want a big hole right here." He dug the hole, and I put the pole in, but unfortunately, we moved here before I finished the treehouse. But I have a treehouse where we are now, so I finally kept that promise. But my strong encouragement to you as we close is be a parent who not only mentally works, but physically works and teach your children to do it with you. Listen, it's not efficient.

Efficiency is not everything, Okay? For those of you who love efficiency, it's not everything. Sometimes you have to work with your little children and it'll end up making it twice as hard, but not forever. There will come a time where it'll make it three times as fast, because you're gonna be old and they're gonna be twice as fast as you, and they're going to get stuff done. So as you think about these things, teach your children to work.

And as Colossians says, and whatever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord and not to men. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank You for this word. We thank You, O God, that You have given us labor to do and work to do. We pray that You would help us to do it with all of our heart, give us strength for it, and help us to teach our children to do it to the glory of God and we ask it in Christ's name.

Amen.