selected passages
October 26, 2025
preached by Pastor Doug Cooper
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“We are by God’s creative decree shaped in His image and thus designed to reflect in all our endeavors the purposeful activity of God Himself. All Christians, therefore, should ideally embrace their ‘work’, however secular and uneventful it may appear, as a calling of God, a responsibility for which they have been uniquely endowed that is designed in its own way to glorify God.”

~ Sam Storms (1951-present), American pastor and writer

“Twentieth-century man needs to be reminded at times that work is not the result of the Fall. Man was made to work, because the God who made him was a “working God.” Man was made to be creative, with his mind and his hands. Work is part of the dignity of his existence.”

~ Sinclair Ferguson (1948-present), professor, author, minister

“The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.”

~ Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), English writer, translator, critic

“The shop, the barn, the scullery, and the smithy become temples when men and women do all to the glory of God!”

~ C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), English pastor and writer

“The given reality of the created order is such that it is possible to have schools and industry, printing and rocketry, needlepoint and chess. The creational law is crying out to be positivized in new and
amazing ways. The whole vast range of human civilization is … a display of the marvelous wisdom of God in creation and the profound meaningfulness of our task in the world.”

~ Albert M. Wolters (1942-present), Dutch philosopher, professor, writer

Sermon Passage

selected passages (NIV)

Genesis 1

²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

I Peter 2

⁹ But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

¹¹ Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. ¹² Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

Ephesians 2

⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Colossians 3

²³ Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, ²⁴ since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.