Husbands, I can tell the wives: TV makes the guys out to be the bad guys; but I can tell you this: there is tremendous pressure on men to provide even more. It's inside the heart of every man, to feel his success or his failure, based on: how well his family eats. When he has to look at his wife and say: I'm sorry, you're going to have to work for us to live - something happens inside of him, that starts to destroy him. Why? Because, in a way, his worth is defined by: how many bricks he does, or does not, produce.
I would say to you tonight, that our society in fact is not much different than theirs. We don't actually have a Pharaoh standing over us, but we have: our conscience; the TV – Oprah and Dr Phil. We have people telling us, day in and day out - that our worth is defined by: how well we achieve. Our worth is defined by: how many bricks we do, or do not, make.
I think if we're honest, we will find ourselves in this truth - that we actually are no different than the people who got up every day, and when they went to bed at night, their worth was defined by: how well they produced bricks.
The job of every slave-driver is to take your dignity away.
The first slave-driver was the serpent. The lie of the serpent to the woman: “if you eat of this fruit, you will be like God”. That was a bad plan. Eve was already perfectly one with God; but she traded ‘oneness’, for a chance to ‘be like’. She traded: oneness, for likeness. She traded: perfect oneness with God; for a chance to have her life defined by how well she could navigate good and evil.
Bad plan, because: if you make 100 decisions in a day, and if 98 of them are good but 2 of them are bad - you go to bed thinking about those two. Any time you have your life defined by: how well you produce; or how well you navigate good and evil, it's a bad plan; because no matter what side of the tree of knowledge and good and evil you pick from, it's the wrong side.
The first lie of the enemy, to the first woman was this: it is a better plan to have your life defined by how well you produce things (and we're no different now).
Genesis 1, the creation story. God produces stuff - stuff that advances itself, which is a great leadership and business lesson. When you invest in something that makes money in and of itself; it's a better deal than you having to put your hand to it all the time. So Gods way of making things, was a way that advanced itself.
Genesis 1:31 – “and God saw everything that He made, and behold it was good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day, and the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work, which He had made, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made; and He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all of His work, which God created to make”.
For six days God creates - He achieves, He produces, He makes bricks; and then for one day, God rests.
If God rests, then God is not creating. Is God still the creator, even when He's resting? Is He still who He is, regardless of what He is producing? Is God any less God, when He's resting, than when He's producing?
There should be a sense inside of us, that God is God, no matter what He's doing; that God’s divinity is not dependent upon what He's doing at the time.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego: “Our God will deliver us, but even if He doesn't, He's still God”.