God watches the way we work
From an article by Crossway
Dr John Lennox is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, an author and an associate fellow of Oxford’s Said Business School. He comments on the goal of work:
Many years ago, I was in Hungary and met a man whose demeanour impressed me greatly. He was a humble man of great grace and warmth. I was eager to hear his story. In the communist era, he had been a village-school mathematics teacher, but he was also active in the local churches in the area, much in demand as a teacher of scripture. One day, he was summoned to the police station and questioned about his employment.
“You are a math teacher,” they said, “but you are also a Bible teacher, is not that so?”
“Yes, indeed,” he said, “I do that in my spare time.”
“And you get paid for it?” they asked.
“Not at all,” he said, “it is my contribution, completely freely given.”
“We do not believe you,” they replied. “You must therefore choose. Either you continue as a school teacher or as a Bible teacher, but not both, and you must give us your decision very soon.”
He went home that night to his family with a heavy heart. He had a large family, and it was not easy to feed them all, yet he decided to discuss the matter with them. He called them together and said, “I never want you children to be able to say that they were not consulted by their father in big decisions affecting family life.” So, he outlined to them the choice he faced. What should he do?
The youngest boy in the family said, “Dad, I cannot imagine you without a Bible in your hands.”
The decision was made, and he had to leave the school. Finding work was difficult, and in the end, he had to content himself with the backbreaking work of lifting and carrying heavy slates in a quarry. The slates had sharp edges, and his wife told me that many an evening she had to dress his hands with bandages so that the blood from his many abrasions would not drip onto the Bible he was using in the pulpit.
One day, he was called into the manager’s office. “I hear that you once taught mathematics?”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” said the foreman, “I am underqualified for my job, and under new regulations, we all need basic qualifications in mathematics. How would you like to teach me, instead of working in the quarry?” He jumped at it and discovered to his joy that his pay was more than he had received as a teacher in the school.
It was a magnificent example of what it means really to serve the Lord in daily work, and I was not surprised to discover that his influence was felt throughout the entire country.
This story illustrates that there is more to be considered in Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. He speaks of motivation, contrasting two attitudes: “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need." Matthew 6v31-33. This strikes us as strange at first. Surely we are all to seek food and clothing by working, as God has ordained. That is true, of course, which means that it is not the point Jesus is making.
Jesus is adding two further dimensions, the spiritual and the moral, to the quest for food and clothing, which is normally undertaken through our work. It is perhaps easiest understood when we think of it in the context of our motivation for doing that work.
One common motivation is simply to work in order to get money to live. On the other hand, Jesus says that the believer should “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” in the process of gaining the wherewithal to live. The things necessary for living will be added as well, and here is the point - they are no longer the main motive for doing the work.
For the believer, the main motive is to experience God’s kingdom, that is, his rule in our everyday lives. In practical terms, that will mean seeking his righteousness. Every job, every kind of work, whether paid or not, whether in a hospital, a factory, or a church, gives rise to moral problems, issues of personal and corporate probity.
The sad tragedy is that many people confuse the goal of work with the by-product of work. For them, the main goal of work is food, clothing, housing, and all the rest of an inexhaustible list of private possessions. Their prime motivation is to get these things. The danger is that their desire to possess them may overrule moral qualms, and they may give in to the temptation to acquire them by dishonesty, cheating, corruption, theft, and a thousand other different ways of manipulating the system.
God is interested in character far more than possessions. His intention is that our work becomes an integral part of the process of character development.
Read the full article here.
Retweet about this article:
From an article by Crossway, 10/12/2025