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OLD SCHOOL WISDOM | Week 4 | Full Service · Rewind

Rock Point Church

69 min

Pastor Scott Rodgers · Jun 26, 2023 · 4 min read · 69 min listen

The big idea

God invites every person into both a relationship with Him and a partnership with Him — including in the everyday work we do Monday through Friday.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 6Proverbs contrasts the path of the diligent with the path of the sluggard, and the outcomes are predictable over time.
Point 2 of 6Work is part of God's original blessing, not a result of the curse.

Point 3 of 6As followers of Jesus, we're called to be diligent and work as if for the Lord, not just for a paycheck.
Point 4 of 6Being diligent also requires being resilient when the work gets hard.
Point 5 of 6Faithfulness over the long haul, even in small or slow places, is what God calls well done.
Point 6 of 6Rock Point's own story shows what God does through diligent, resilient people over time.
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Proverbs 13:4
Genesis 2:15
Colossians 3:23
Colossians 3:24
Matthew 25:14-30
Romans 3:23

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Scott Rodgers · Jun 26, 2023 · 69 min watch · 2 min read

OLD SCHOOL WISDOM | Week 4 | Full Service

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Proverbs 13:4
Genesis 2:15
Colossians 3:23
Colossians 3:24
Matthew 25:14-30
Romans 3:23

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

God invites every person into both a relationship with Him and a partnership with Him — including in the everyday work we do Monday through Friday.

Our day jobs are not a curse to endure but part of God's original blessing and invitation to partner with Him in caring for His world. Pastor Scott shows from Proverbs and Genesis that God wants us to bring diligence and resilience to our work, trusting Him with the results, whatever our vocation is.

Key points

1
1Proverbs contrasts the path of the diligent with the path of the sluggard, and the outcomes are predictable over time.
Pastor Scott reads Proverbs 13:4 in two translations, noting that a sluggard still has an appetite and desires but never gets filled, while the diligent are fully satisfied. He explains that proverbs describe a predictable, though not instant, result of consistently following wisdom versus foolishness.
2
2Work is part of God's original blessing, not a result of the curse.
Walking through Genesis 1:26-28 and Genesis 2:15, Pastor Scott shows God inviting Adam and Eve to be fruitful, rule over creation, and work and care for the garden before sin entered the world. He notes that naming the animals was the first act of partnership God gave Adam, showing work was baked into creation as a blessing, not a punishment.
3
3As followers of Jesus, we're called to be diligent and work as if for the Lord, not just for a paycheck.
Pastor Scott reads Colossians 3:23-24 and challenges listeners to bring hard work back into fashion, working at whatever they do with all their heart as service to Christ rather than to human masters. He unpacks Jim Collins's three hedgehog principle questions — what are you passionate about, what could you be the best in the world at, and what drives your economic engine — applying them to a seventh-grade teacher as an example of pursuing excellence for God's glory.
4
4Being diligent also requires being resilient when the work gets hard.
Pastor Scott walks through the parable of the bags of gold in Matthew 25:14-30, explaining that God entrusts each person with gifts according to their ability and rewards faithfulness with what's given, however small. He voices the fearful servant as Eeyore, showing that fear of failure led him to bury his gift and do nothing rather than risk something.
5
5Faithfulness over the long haul, even in small or slow places, is what God calls well done.
Pastor Scott shares a phone call with his pastor friend Carlos in Houston, who has discipled just three men over twelve years of starting and stopping a church in an under-resourced community. He also recounts meeting four pastors in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, who simply asked to be encouraged, tying both stories to the master's words, well done, good and faithful servant.
6
6Rock Point's own story shows what God does through diligent, resilient people over time.
Pastor Scott recalls first visiting Rock Point around 2006 at Higley High School with about 100 people, hearing Bill Bush challenge the small crowd to serve and give sacrificially. He connects that faithfulness sixteen years ago to the baptisms celebrated that weekend, asking what God might do in the next sixteen years if the church stays humble, diligent, and resilient.

Application

Pastor Scott frames the charge as living out a partnership with God through diligence and resilience in the work already in front of you.

Be diligent in your work
Whatever your day job is, put in the work as if working for the Lord and not for human masters, as Colossians 3:23-24 says.
Ask what you're most passionate about
Use Jim Collins's questions to consider what you love, what you could be great at, and how it connects to your work, then bring your best effort to it for God's glory.
Don't tie your passion to your paycheck
Recognize your calling and your income may come from different places; live out your passion even if it isn't what pays the bills.
Stay resilient when the work gets hard
Like the servants in Matthew 25, take risks with what God has entrusted to you rather than burying it out of fear, and keep showing up when it's discouraging.
Pray to make a difference, not to change the world
Shift from an audacious desire for big impact to a daily, humble prayer that God would use you to make a difference right where you are.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“if you are in Proverbs chapter 13, I want you to look at verse four. Proverbs thirteen:four. They're gonna put it up here on the screen for us. Let me just read it from here”
Read the whole chapter →
From the transcript
“And then we see in Genesis chapter two, in fact, let's put the verse up on the screen here in verse 15. Here's what it says. It says, The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work”
From the transcript
“let's go. Look at Colossians three. Allow me to read this to you, and let's just let this speak to us for a moment. Colossians chapter three verse 23. It says, Whatever you”
From the transcript
“As working for the Lord and not for human masters. Look at verse 24. Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It's tied to the work that we do”
From the transcript
“So Matthew 25 verse 14 through 30. He calls it the bible, the heading says, the parables of the bags of gold. Okay, so here's what he says”
From the transcript
“Scripture says in many ways throughout the book of Romans that we're all the same. We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None of us are without sin”
From the transcript
“But it goes on to say that God demonstrates his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”
From the transcript
“And that if we were to confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord, we'll be saved. Saved from the penalty of our sin, saved from separation from God, brought into relationship with Him”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

There is something quietly honest about the way Proverbs describes the sluggard: he wants the reward without the work. 'A sluggard's appetite is never filled, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.' That contrast isn't meant to shame anyone — it's meant to show us something true about how life works and how God designed us. Desire alone doesn't produce anything. Diligence does. Pastor Scott opened the sermon right here, and it's a good place for us to begin the week too. Before we can talk about calling or purpose or impact, we have to be honest about the role of consistent, faithful effort. The Proverbs writer isn't describing a workhorse grinding joylessly through life. He's describing someone whose desires are actually met — someone who experiences the deep satisfaction of having worked well. That kind of satisfaction is available to you, whatever your job looks like right now. It doesn't require a prestigious title or a dramatic purpose statement. It requires showing up, bringing your heart, and doing the next thing in front of you with care. That's where the week begins — not with grand vision, but with the quiet faithfulness that makes vision possible over time.

For reflection

Where in your current work or responsibilities do you most notice the gap between what you want and what you are actually putting effort toward?

Pray

Pray for honesty about where desire and effort are out of alignment in your daily work.

Day 2

One of the most freeing things Pastor Scott said in this sermon is worth sitting with today: work was not part of the curse. Before sin. Before the fall. Before anything went wrong — God placed the man in the garden 'to tend and watch over it.' Work was already there, woven into the goodness of creation itself. That changes everything about how we think about Monday morning. If work entered the story as blessing, not punishment, then the frustration and exhaustion we feel aren't signs that something is fundamentally wrong with work — they're signs that something went wrong with the world, and that we are living between the original design and its full restoration. But the design itself is still good. God, the first worker, made humanity in His image and immediately invited them into meaningful participation with Him. Tending a garden isn't glamorous work, but it was holy work — done in partnership with a God who called the whole creation very good. Whatever your hands are doing this week, that same invitation is still open. Your work, done faithfully, is participation in something God cares about. You are not just filling hours. You are joining Him in caring for a world He loves.

For reflection

How does knowing that work existed before the fall change the way you think about your own vocation or daily responsibilities?

Pray

Pray for a renewed sense of God's presence in the ordinary, everyday work in front of you.

Day 3

Paul writes to people who, in many cases, are doing hard, unglamorous, even painful work. And his instruction isn't 'find more meaningful employment' — it's 'work at everything you do with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.' That's a radical reframe. Not a slight upgrade in motivation, but a complete change in audience. If Jesus is the one you are ultimately working for, then the quality of your effort is no longer dependent on whether your boss notices, whether your work is recognized, or whether the task itself feels significant. It's determined by who you are doing it for. Pastor Scott anchored his whole call to diligence right here — bringing your whole heart, as though working for the Lord Himself. That phrase 'whole heart' matters. Not a distracted heart. Not a begrudging heart. Not a heart that is already somewhere else. The full weight of your attention and care, offered to ordinary work as an act of worship. This doesn't mean every moment will feel inspiring. It means the meaning is already there, baked into the relationship between you and Jesus, regardless of how the day feels.

For reflection

What would change in how you approach your work tomorrow if you treated each task as something done directly for Jesus rather than for a paycheck or a performance review?

Pray

Pray for the kind of whole-hearted focus today that treats ordinary work as genuine worship.

Day 4

The Parable of the Bags of Gold opens with a master who distributes resources not equally, but 'according to each person's abilities.' That detail is easy to skip past, but it's worth pausing on. God is not distributing the same gifts to every person and then grading everyone on the same curve. He sees you specifically — your capacity, your wiring, your particular shape — and He entrusts you accordingly. That's not pressure; that's personal. Pastor Scott described this as God's invitation to partner with Him. The gifts you carry aren't yours to hoard or hide or compare against someone else's. They are entrusted goods, given for a purpose larger than your own comfort or security. The two servants who received more and less didn't receive the same amount, but they both received the same call: put it to work. The faithfulness expected of you is proportionate to what you've been given, not to what someone else has been given. What you have — your skills, your passion, your access, your relationships — is exactly what God has chosen to work through. The question this part of the parable raises is simply: am I putting it to work?

For reflection

What gifts, skills, or passions do you sense God has specifically entrusted to you — and are you actively putting them to work?

Pray

Pray for clarity about the specific gifts God has entrusted to you and courage to invest them rather than protect them.

Day 5

The third servant's explanation for burying his talent is worth reading carefully, because it sounds almost reasonable: 'I was afraid.' He wasn't lazy in a cartoonish way — he was paralyzed by fear of failure, fear of the master, fear of getting it wrong. And in trying to avoid doing something wrong, he ended up doing nothing right. Pastor Scott named this directly and with real compassion: resilience means keeping going when the work gets hard, when results are slow, when fear whispers that it isn't worth it. Fear is human. It is not a character flaw to feel it. But the servant's mistake wasn't feeling afraid — it was letting fear make the final decision. The master's response isn't about cruelty; it's about the cost of a gift unused. When we bury what God has given us — out of comparison, discouragement, or the worry that our effort won't be enough — we lose the very thing the gift was for. You don't have to feel brave to be faithful. You just have to show up again tomorrow. Resilience, as Pastor Scott described it, is less about heroic endurance and more about the quiet refusal to let fear have the last word.

For reflection

Is there an area of work, calling, or gifting where fear has caused you to pull back or bury what God has given you? What would it look like to take one small step forward?

Pray

Pray for courage to take one faithful step in an area where fear has kept you from fully investing your gifts.

Day 6

Yesterday's verse told us how to work — with all our heart, as for the Lord. Today's picks up the why: 'Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ.' Paul is writing to people whose work may never be fully seen or celebrated in this life. The inheritance he is pointing to is not a bonus check or a promotion. It is the deep, lasting reward of faithfulness received by the One who misses nothing. This is exactly the kind of long-horizon thinking Pastor Scott called us toward. He said we tend to overestimate what God wants to do through us in a year and underestimate what He can do through a lifetime. A teacher who shaped a student's character. A pastor who faithfully discipled three people over twelve years. Someone who simply showed up to a hard job, day after day, and did it with integrity. The world may not measure those things as significant. But the inheritance Paul describes here is not measured by the world's metrics. It is given by a Master who sees the whole arc of a faithful life and calls it exactly what it is: good. The reward is real, even when the recognition is not.

For reflection

How does the promise of a lasting, God-given inheritance change your motivation for doing faithful, unrecognized work?

Pray

Pray for a long-horizon perspective — that God would help you trust Him with results you may not see for years.

Day 7

We end the week where the sermon ends its arc: at the words 'Well done, good and faithful servant.' All week we have been sitting with what it means to work as God designed — with diligence, with whole hearts, with resilience through difficulty, with eyes on Jesus rather than a paycheck or a performance review. Today is a day to hold all of that together and ask a simple question: what does a faithful life actually look like from here? Pastor Scott's final call wasn't 'pray for God to use you to change the world.' It was smaller and more honest than that: 'God, would you use me to make a difference today?' That prayer fits in a Tuesday morning, a grinding Wednesday afternoon, and a discouraging Friday just as much as it fits in a Sunday service. The scope of the impact you are called to may be small by the world's measure. But the parable is clear — the servant who doubled two talents received the exact same commendation as the one who doubled five. Faithfulness, not scale, is what the Master celebrates. Bring your passion. Bring your gifts. Bring your whole heart. And let God be the one who determines what it amounts to over a lifetime of partnership with Him.

For reflection

Looking back over this week, what is one concrete way you want to live out the invitation to partner with God in your everyday work going forward?

Pray

Pray the simple prayer Pastor Scott offered — not for world-changing impact, but for faithfulness to make a difference today.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

This message looked at work — not as something to endure, but as something God designed and invites us into. Before we jump in, what's one word that comes to mind when you hear the phrase 'go to work'?

Discussion questions

1
In Genesis 2:15, God places humanity in the garden to work and care for it — before sin ever enters the story. What does it tell us about work that God built it into the original blessing rather than adding it later as a consequence?
2
Proverbs 13:4 draws a sharp contrast between the person who works with diligence and the one who doesn't follow through. What picture does that contrast paint, and what does it suggest about what God values in the way we approach our everyday responsibilities?
3
In Colossians 3:23–24, Paul tells people to work at everything with all their heart, as though working for the Lord rather than for people. How might that reframe the way someone thinks about a job that feels ordinary, repetitive, or unnoticed?
4
In the Parable of the Bags of Gold in Matthew 25, the servant who buried his talent did so out of fear — and Jesus treats that as a real problem. What does the parable suggest about the relationship between fear and faithfulness when it comes to the gifts God entrusts to us?
5
Pastor Scott suggested we tend to overestimate what God wants to do through us in a year, but underestimate what He can do through a lifetime of faithful partnership. What does that perspective do to the pressure people often feel to have immediate, measurable impact?
6
Pastor Scott invited us to shift our prayer from 'God, use me to change the world' to 'God, would you use me to make a difference today?' What does that smaller, daily framing open up for how we might actually live out our work this week?

Pray together

Gratitude for the gifts God has entrusted to us, and courage to bring our whole hearts to the work He has placed in front of us today

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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OLD SCHOOL WISDOM

Week 4 · 4 messages

Where these passages are preached

Proverbs 13 Genesis 2 Colossians 3 Matthew 25

Explore related topics

Diligence and Excellence Faithfulness in Your Vocation Perseverance Through Difficulty Stewardship of Gifts Work as Calling

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