Let's begin reading in Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 1, reading from verse 26. And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed, To you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made. And behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Amen. May God bless His Word to us. Let's unite our hearts in prayer. Great God of order, we confess that sin has brought disorder, confusion and chaos into thy world and into our lives. We confess that our lives often show forth the fruits of that lawlessness. We pray for Thy help to glorify Thee by seeking Thy re-creating work in us, bringing order where there is chaos, bringing law where there is lawlessness. We pray for help to bring every area of our lives under Thy dominion and Thy control. In Jesus' name, Amen. Does your desk glorify God? You may want to substitute in that question for desk, kitchen, cupboards, or garage, as you say, or garden, yard, as you say. You can bring many things into this question. You might be asking yourself, well really, is this a topic for a Sunday? Is this a topic for Bible study? And to that I might reply, well, is there any area of life that we can say to God, no entry? Is there any area of our lives that we can say the Bible is not relevant to? My father, when he visits people in his pastoral work, one of the questions he sometimes says, especially if it's a non-Christian home, he'll say, Name one subject, any subject, any topic, and I'll find a Bible verse that has something to say about that subject. And people usually think, oh, that's easy, I can find anything. Many things in this world, especially this modern world, that the Bible says nothing about. And yet, to this day, as far as I know, my father hasn't been stumped. because the Bible does have something to say, something to say about every area of life, every topic. Now, the Bible isn't exhaustive about every area of life, but it gives us sufficient truth, principles, teaching to enable us to apply that to every area of life. You take, for example, clothing. You can't go anywhere in the Bible and find out what colour of clothes we have to wear, what length of clothes we have to wear, what style of clothes we have to wear, but we are given basic principles such as modesty and humility and not being extravagant and many others and we apply that and work it out with the help of God. And so it is in this area also. Of course we can't go anywhere in the Bible and find out how we should organize our desk, our home office, our home administration. We can't go anywhere in the Bible and find a list of things, how to organize a garage for example. But there are sufficient principles in the Bible to get us started to keep us on the right track and avoid error. But also the Bible gives us, as it were, spectacles with which we can view this world. Biblical spectacles and learn from the world. That was one of Calvin's great points. He spoke of the Bible giving us spectacles that enable us to see God's wisdom not just in his word, but also in many areas of life. And so, he says, if we are biblically taught, we can look at areas that the world has excelled in, and done well in, and researched in, and using biblical spectacles, take God's wisdom as they have discovered it, and use it for our benefit. This might apply, for example, in areas of medicine. But anyway, back to the desk. I'd like to look, first of all, at the beauty of organisation. Genesis 1 shows us this very clearly. We see, first of all, the example of God. God could have spoken everything in the world into existence out of nothing perfectly. But he didn't. You remember the Bible opens with the earth without form and void. It was empty and it was formless. God made that. He started by making something that was without form and that was void. And then from that he created this world into existence, the trees and the grass and the animals and so on. He started with without form and void and shaped that, formed that, spoke that into perfect organisation. Now why did God do this? Partly, of course, to give us an example of what he does in conversion. He comes into our formlessness, our emptiness, and he speaks the word of life into our souls and so creates order again. He takes our lawlessness, our anarchy, and speaks to create in us a love of law and a love of order. And also, of course, this is an example, not just of salvation, but of how we are to live in this now, sadly, once again, disordered, fallen world because of sin. We are to find formlessness and emptiness and to reshape it and form it into orderliness and fullness. So we have the example of God. Secondly, we have the image of God. Also in Genesis chapter 1, we're told God created man in his own image, and the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. In other words, we are to be God's image bearers. We are to be like God in this world. We are to show forth the character of God in our daily living. Just as he took what was formless and empty and filled it and organised it as image bearers, so our lives should be. And to the extent that we are not organised, that we are chaotic, then we are not showing forth the image of God. And then thirdly, there's the mandate of God. You notice straight after verse 27, God says, Be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea. He's saying, here's your mandate. Whatever you do in life, it's to reflect this mandate, this general order. Be fruitful, multiply, replenish and subdue. Have dominion. There's to be a ruling. There's to be man, woman coming and bringing what is chaotic and disorganized under their control. So, there's the mandate of God. And then, there's the pleasure of God when God looked at this world that He filled and organized. By the word of His power, we read in verse 31, God saw everything that He had made and behold, it was very good. God takes pleasure in what is filled and in what is organized. He looks at it all and He says, very good. And wherever God sees that in the world, in our lives, He says, very good. Then lastly, in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, This is speaking of worship, but the same principle applies in every area of life. 1 Corinthians 14, 33, God is not the author of confusion. Wherever there is confusion, chaos, disorganization, He's saying God is not there. That's not what God wants it to be left like. And then also in verse 40, let all things be done decently and in order. So I hope you can see from Genesis and also 1 Corinthians 14, and there are other verses, the beauty, in God's eyes, the beauty of organization, of order, of things in their right place, of things not being formless and empty, but being shaped and filled and put in their right places. The beauty of organisation. Briefly, secondly, the benefits of organisation One benefit, of course, is we get more time on our hands. Though it takes time to get organised, we gain time because we're not looking for things all the time. We're a lot more efficient. We gain time. It's one of the ways we redeem time. Secondly, we gain peace. Is it not incredibly stressful to live in the midst of chaos and disorganization, to not know where things are, to be always looking for them, to be losing things, to have things broken and damaged because they're not properly looked after. It just adds to the stress and strain of life. God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, it says. It's saying where there is order, there is a lot more peace. And thirdly, there's the benefit of an increased witness, a better witness. I'm not saying that if your desk, your home office, your home administration is efficient and effective that that's going to convert anyone. What I am saying is though that if it's the opposite, it can have a damaging effect on your witness. A chaotic life, a chaotic home, a chaotic anything really does not commend you to people. It can really damage your credibility as a Christian, especially if the result of your disorganization is you're failing to keep appointments, you're failing to return letters and correspondence and phone calls and so on. The consequences are quite great, the benefits of being organised are great, even in terms of our Christian witness. Thirdly, there are admittedly many barriers to organisation, many problems and obstacles that we face as we try and go about the business of getting organised. If it was so easy, we would all be perfect at it and we're far from it. I would say there are three categories of barriers to organisation. There are first of all physical barriers or physical problems. For example, you have no storage. either in terms of a large area or in terms of containers and things like that to put it in. Or you have inconvenient storage. I remember one time in my own life I had quite a small office and where I was keeping my files and other things, letters, was in another part, it was actually in another building. And the result was my office became just a heap of paper, all mounted up, because it was just so inconvenient to actually get organized, get going, get up, get out into the cold, and go back into the house and get things put in the right place. And so that inconvenience was a great barrier to being organized. Then you might have too complicated a storage system. We're such creatures of extreme, we go from none to just to the nth degree, super, hyper, organized. But then instead of having ten files, you've got a hundred files with one piece of paper in each. And so you've made no progress really, you've organized your chaos into organized chaos. So over-complexity also can have the impact of making you inefficient and disorganized. Then, of course, the classic is just simply too much stuff for your storage. You've got 100 units of storage, but you've got 200 units of stuff, and you just can't put it all together. So there are physical barriers that you have to think through and work through, how I'm going to overcome these. Then there are external difficulties we face. One of them is our workload can be too great. We all have a capacity, but when we exceed it, one of the results is we just get far too much stuff in our lives, and in our desks, and on our floors, and on our shelves, and it just overflows. We've just taken on too much, or too much has been put on us. oftentimes, so we are overloaded. Transition, change, change of job, change of family circumstances, another child, change of home, all these things, external factors, tend to disorganise us, at least for a time. Technology, we get a new computer, and we think it's going to make us even more efficient and effective, but There's such a learning curve that actually things go backwards for a long time. Or you might have an uncooperative partner. You might be super organized but your wife or your husband isn't and you're living in a relatively confined space. You can have great frustrations maybe. in trying to maintain the beauty of organisation when somebody sees no beauty in it at all, or at least not a beauty worth pursuing. So, there are physical problems, there are external problems. Thirdly, there are psychological problems. What do I mean by that? Well, there are some people, I kind of describe them as kings of chaos. kings of chaos. There is chaos but they are the king of it. They rule in the midst of it. I remember going into a minister's study once. It was actually the largest room in the house and I now know why. It was like walking into the Starship Enterprise. There were computers and machines banked around the walls There were shelves up to the ceiling, there were filing cabinets all over the place, piles of papers, a few desks, not just one, but the man thrived in it. It was chaos, but it was his chaos, and it gave him a sense of importance, actually. You know, I am so busy, I've got so much going on, I've got so much paper, it was like You know, I'm really something. So he had this sense of power. Nobody else knew a thing that was going on in that office. Nobody could find anything in it. But he could, and he kind of thrived in it. That's a psychological problem, obviously. Another psychological problem? is the sense of these creative people, they think, if I get too clinical and organized, I'll lose my creativity. I'll no longer be inspired. So you go into most artists' workshops or galleries, whatever, and it's like that, isn't it? If I get too organized, then I'll lose the muse, or I'll lose the ability to create. That's a psychological problem, isn't it? And then there's the sense of sentimental attachment. You get attached to things. You've absolutely no use for them whatsoever. You've not used them for years and you're not going to, but you're attached to them. They've just always been there. They give you a sense of, well, it's me, but it's actually not doing anything for me. It's just there. But, you know, you're sentimentally attached to it. That's a psychological problem. You've got the idea of, well, organization is boring. I mean, it's much more exciting. I mean, who likes doing it? Well, there are some. But, you know, on the whole, there are much better things you can be doing. And it's boring to just get down and get filing and organizing and boxing. And, of course, procrastination. I'll do it tomorrow, or I'll do it next week, or I'll wait till the piles get higher. These are all great barriers, and we must face them, and we must be honest with ourselves, and say, yep, these are problems for me, there are obstacles for me, there's something in my own psyche that I need to address here, or there's an external factor I need to address, or there's a physical area that I can do something about. But it's just like self-examination, we have to look around and see What is causing this problem? Barriers to organisation. I'd like to then give you a blueprint for organisation. A lot of this is common sense, I know, but sometimes, again, we just need to have it brought before us again. There's an acronym that I came across in a book called Effective Pastoring. I think that's what it's called. Trash. T-R-A-S-H. Each of these letters stand for T. Throw it away. R. I'll go over these in a bit more detail. Reroute it. A. Act on it. S. Save it. H. Halt it. First of all, T, throw it away. I don't think I need to expand on that, do I? R, reroute it, meaning delegate it. Sometimes in a home, one, the husband or the wife, may be carrying far too much of the administrative load, causing the disorganisation. and therefore it might be time to delegate it, to reroute at least some of the work in order to get some order back again. Thirdly, act upon it. Don't procrastinate. Do it. So for every piece of paper that comes into the office, or every email, you either trash it, you reroute it, you act upon it. I think there are There will be four areas that require constant action to keep our lives and our homes organized. One is our diaries, our calendars. Whenever, I've learned this through bitter experience, whenever you're given a date that you have to do something, enter it immediately. immediately. Secondly, sync your calendars and diaries with your wife, husband, children. Make sure you're all on the same calendar. And thirdly, check it every day. Don't assume, oh, I've got a free day today. I've done that as well to my costs and others. So, there's the diary, there's the to-do lists, a daily and a weekly. There's accounts. It's so easy to let things pile up in that way too, and you lose control, you don't know where you are financially, even to the nearest $100 or $1,000. If God was to look at your accounts, how you keep them, how you organise them, especially at this time of year, I think it comes home to us. filing tax returns. Does that glorify God? Does that show that I am the image of God? Can God come and look at that and say, very good? Can God look at that and say it's been done decently and in order? Or are we saying that's an area of my life that, well, you know, God's not interested in. I can say no entry to. So, diary, to-do lists, accounts, correspondence. Just to keep up with that, not to let it pile up and return phone calls, emails, letters and so on. So, throw it, reroute it, act upon it, save it. And that's really speaking of some kind of organized filing system for your administration. and H, halt it. How many things are coming in to us that we actually, well you put it alright, I'll read that, and then I'll read that, and then I'll read that, and then about a year later you think, well I'm never going to read that, so you just throw it. So why not halt it? Why allow it to pile up and intimidate you and threaten you and challenge you and make you feel guilty that you're not getting round to it, if you never are? it's time to halt it, to say, stop sending me this stuff, this junk, or even good stuff that you just can't get round to reading and dealing with. So, a blueprint for organisation, trash. But then finally, I'd like to speak of the balance of organisation. I hope you don't think if you came into my office you would find perfection, because you certainly wouldn't. There's something called clean desk syndrome, and those who suffer from it are superb organizers, but they actually do little or nothing. My father always told me, beware of anyone whose desk is too clean. And actually the only person I ever met like that, there aren't many in the world I don't think, but the only person I did meet who's every time you went in it was spotless, the pens were perfect and the paper weight and it was awesome, but he actually was very unproductive because he spent the whole time organizing but not actually doing. Sometimes you've got to accept a measure of disorganization. You can't achieve anything by keeping everything perfect all the time. If you're, for example, just now working on your tax return and you've got this pile of that and this pile of that and you know where everything is, there's no point in cleaning that up every night, is there? Just to put it all out again. Somebody told me a good rule that I've tried to follow At the end of every day, get your desk 50% tidy. At the end of every week, aim for about 90% tidy. And then at the end of every month, aim for a 100% tidy and get back to normality again. It's just part of living in this world, isn't it? A building site is the classic example, isn't it? There has to be a measure of everything seems to be out of place before anything is accomplished. And you might walk into somebody's office and I hope you won't conclude from this like this, like you see everything's a mess. This guy is not glorifying God or this woman is just a disaster. If you went in every day for every week for many years and it was like that, that's another question. We have to keep a balance of aiming for the beauty of organisation and yet also the beauty of productivity, of actually doing things that glorify God and that serve Him. As is so often the case with the Word of God, the truth is not at either extreme. And the truth is not at the same place for every person as well in this case. You can have somebody who, without going to real extremes, can do an awful lot in a mess, at least for a time. Then there's another person who just can't function without things being relatively clean and tidy. So, again, a balance not judging people by hour. standards of efficiency and organisation. But I'm sure most of us can at least to some extent identify an area in our lives that we can say is not beautiful, has not been beautiful for a long time and without intervention is not going to be beautiful either. So I would challenge you, whether it's a desk or a kitchen or a garage or a car trunk or whatever, work on it and aim for the beauty that shows forth the character and the nature of God. Let's pray. Lord, we would confess before Thee that so much of our lives is not reflective of who Thou art. Continue Thy re-creative work in us, moving us from formlessness and emptiness into organised and full lives. We pray for Thy help. Enable us not to tackle anything in our daily lives without seeking Thy help, Thy Holy Spirit, for truly without Thee we can do nothing. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.