The Problem with Work (Genesis 3:1-7)

Kootenai Church

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Well, the last few sheep are coming into the pen here, so we'll wait for that.

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Latecomers need to sit up front. Let's begin with a word of prayer.

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Our Father, we are once again very grateful to be able to be here this morning together. How we treasure the fellowship and the spirit that we have.

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It has been made a certainty through the work of Christ on our behalf in the indwelling of your spirit.

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Our Father, we open the word together this morning, and we desire to hear from you. Help us to be alert and attentive.

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I pray, Father, that you would guide and govern my speech, that all that is said in this place would bring honor and glory to Christ, in whose name we pray.

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Amen. All right. So we are session three in biblical theology of work, and we are looking this morning at the problem of work, the problem of work.

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So last week we spoke about work being a glorious thing. A legitimate job done well is glorifying to God and satisfying to the soul.

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We said that last week, and some of you were very encouraged. Some of you came and spoke to me personally, just saying that you've been encouraged by that kind of renewed vision for work that is available to us there in the second chapter of Genesis.

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So that was a delight to my soul, to just hear and see that the word of God was doing its work in you, and you were delighting in it.

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But then Monday morning came. Then Monday morning came, and all of your optimism encountered the practical realities of work.

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All right. Work is hard. Work is frequently frustrating. Work seems a long way, often a very long way, from providing the kind of soul -satisfying joy that is outlined and promised there in Genesis chapter two.

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So what happened? What happened to the glorious vision of Genesis two?

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Well, I think you know the answer to that, right? The answer to that is found in chapter three, and that is the fall.

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It is the fall. Like everything else, work has been spoiled by the fall.

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So what I want to do this morning with you is to look briefly at the fall and its consequences.

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So to look briefly with you at the fall and its consequences, so that we can understand what happened to that glorious gift and begin to understand what to do with it now that it is broken.

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What do we do with it now, right? It's still the reality.

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It is just a broken reality, a twisted reality, a reality spoiled by sin.

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What do we do? So here we go. We've got a lot to cover this morning. So let's just begin with the fall.

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We'll begin with the fall. You can turn there to Genesis chapter three if you like. But God created a perfect world, a world of beauty and harmony, in which he set

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Adam and Eve as king and queen over his creation. That's the message of Genesis chapters one and two.

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But it didn't take long, did there, before there was trouble brewing in paradise. In fact, as chapter two draws to a close there, the tone of the text becomes ominous, and soon the unthinkable becomes a reality, and Adam and Eve turn their back on their creator, and they plunge themselves and their posterity into the darkness of sin.

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Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

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And he said to the woman, Indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? The woman said to the serpent,

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From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden

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God has said you shall not eat from it, or touch it, or you will die. The serpent said to the woman,

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You surely will not die. For God knows that in the day that you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

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When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

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Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

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Although their eyes were opened, they saw only their nakedness and their shame.

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They found out that even though they had denied the truth of God, in the end God be found true, though every man be found a liar, right?

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They ate and they died, just like God said. And in that event the

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King of creation fell from his throne, and a thick cloud of disease and death and darkness and despair descended upon the whole realm, a cloud that remains to this very day.

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Remains to this very day. Let your eyes slip ahead to verse 17.

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Then to Adam he said, he being Yahweh, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which

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I commanded you, saying you shall not eat from it, cursed is the ground because of you, in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

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I want you to notice there, by the way, the emphasis on the second person, the use of the word you and your, five times

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I believe I counted it correctly in that one verse. It's used repetitively. God's addressing him in the second person, the you and your, you, your, you, your.

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What's the point? Well, the point is that this is God's direct focus on Adam as the culpable party in what has occurred here.

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It is a result of you eating. It is a result of your eating that the ruination has come.

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God is ultimately pinning the blame directly where it belongs, and it falls upon Adam.

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Falls upon for the ensuing penalty here, where we read in verse 18, both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

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By the sweat of your face you will eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken.

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You were dust, and to dust you shall return. The ultimate reason that God gives is because Adam listened to his wife rather than God, and willfully rebelled against his creator.

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That's the short and harsh reality of it all. God's repetition of that original prohibition there, you shall not eat from it, right?

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You see it there in verse 17. Because you've eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat from it,

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God's repetition of that just reinforces the severity of the crime. Toil.

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In toil, verse 17, you will eat from it. That Hebrew word translated there, toil, is also, by the way, the same word that is translated in verse 16 as pain in childbirth for Eve.

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It's the same Hebrew word, so for her it's pain in childbirth, for Adam it is toil, or alternate translation, sorrow, and in both cases the judgments are directed at them at their point of highest fulfillment in both the life of the woman and the man.

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For the woman, it relates to her role as mother and helpmate. For the man, it relates to his role as breadwinner and leader.

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That which was once a source of great joy for him, chapter 2, verse 15, now becomes his great source of pain, his great source of pain.

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For both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

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Because the man's rule in his home was weak, his rule over the creation is now affected.

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The earth, in effect, becomes insubordinate to his rule. Instead of easily yielding itself to him, the creation now fights him every step of the way.

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Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you. The idea of the thorns and the thistles there just symbolize the perennial threat to Adam and his offspring.

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Thorns and thistles, I can identify, by the way, with that. They are deeply rooted in my yard, and the roots are very deep.

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And I've dug them out and they come back, and I dig them out and they come back, and I've poured horrible poisons upon the soil, creating a superfund site, and yet they come back.

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Thorns and thistles, right? Nobody cultivates them, and yet they come.

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You can be in downtown New York City walking down the sidewalk of an urban jungle, concrete everywhere, find a crack in the sidewalk, and you will find the weeds, right, the thorns and the thistles.

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This is the creation in rebellion against God, against Adam, his lawful ruler, and we as his descendants.

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Verse 19, by the sweat of your face you will eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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Even when the man sits down to eat, at the end of the day, the end of the expending the labor, the end of the day, the sweat will continue to drip from his face.

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That's the picture. He will never be free of the fatigue and the toil.

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Later, Lamech, his offspring, will name his son Noah, and the word means rest, and he will name him in hope that this one will finally bring rest from the devastation that Adam has wrought upon the creation.

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This wrestling with the earth, God says, will continue until the soil eventually overcomes him, and he returns to that from which he was taken.

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It's true for you and I. Adam's freedom and release only comes through the dark shadow of death, the fall.

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Well, fast forward a number of millennia, and we arrive at where we are.

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We are still living in the backwash of Adam's rebellion, Adam's insubordination that has brought with it the insubordination of the creation.

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So you and I are living with the effects of the fall right now, right here, in every aspect of our lives, and work is no different.

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It is no different. So what I want to do with you here for a bit is to look at the effects of the fall upon work today.

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And the reason I'm doing this, and I'm going to belabor this a bit, is so that nobody escapes from this room this morning under the illusion that somehow they have escaped its effect upon work for them.

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And the reason for that is that we are setting the stage for that beautiful diamond of the redemption of working

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Christ. So when you go to buy a jewelry, or, you know, a diamond ring or something for your sweet girl, and you go into the jewelry store, and they show you the various rings, of course they put them out on a piece of black velvet, don't they?

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The reason they put them on the black velvet is because it enhances and shows off the beauty of the ring.

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So a look at the darkness of sin and its effect sets the stage for the glory of the redemption of Christ.

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So the effects of the fall. The problem of work began there in the fall, and although for the most part we are not engaged in farming, right?

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So the idea that you'll eat your, you know, your bread by the sweat of your face, and you'll eat the plants of the field, and so forth.

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So there are some farmers who react directly to that, but for most that's not our direct experience.

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We are in the modern world. Few people do the farming, and the rest of us live off of it.

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But there are modern day thorns and thistles. Modern day thorns and thistles. As one commentator said in his commentary on Genesis, he said, quote, work now exists in a world sustained by God, but disordered by sin.

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I thought that was a good statement. Work now exists in a world sustained by God, but disordered by sin.

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And so when we go to work, it has been disordered by sin. So we experience the problems of, okay?

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See if you can't find yourself in one or more of these. We experience the problems of the unreasonable boss.

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The unreasonable boss. Most of us have had an experience with this at some point or another in our lives.

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We have a boss who thinks leadership and good management skills consist of criticizing, yelling, berating, threatening, undermining, playing favorites, insisting on their own opinions contrary to the facts, blame shifting, brown nosing, and assorted other sinful and anti -social behaviors and activities.

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Yes? Sure. In 1969, a

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Canadian researcher, Dr. Peter Lawrence, wrote a book entitled The Peter Principle.

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The Peter Principle. And in this book, the principle says in effect that people are always promoted one step beyond their competency.

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They're always promoted one step beyond their competency. And it's based upon the belief that good performance in one job guarantees similar results in another.

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The Peter Principle. Most of those promoted in this fashion end up in middle management.

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Middle management. The Peter Principle. Promoted one step above their competency.

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We run into them. The unreasonable boss. Well, another effect of the fall upon work in the modern world is the unfulfilling job.

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The unfulfilling job. This situation occurs for a number of reasons and can make work basically a slow motion death.

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A slow motion death. It may occur because we find our work mind numbingly boring.

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Mind numbingly boring. Because it's repetitive or it fails to engage us intellectually and creatively.

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It may be the result of career and employment decisions that too heavily are invested in financial remuneration rather than our own aptitudes, interests, and skills.

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In other words, we are in a particular vocation that pays well but is sucking our life little by little, day by day, week by week.

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As our money is continually debased, more and more people feel compelled to seek compensation as their highest goal in employment.

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That becomes their number one goal. Providing for your family.

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I've got to provide for my family. Providing for your family is a very flexible term. It's a very flexible term.

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If we're not careful, it can serve as a cover for greed or materialism or living above our means.

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I've got to provide for my job, right? I owe, I owe, so off to work I go. Let me add here that it appears to me that society pushes people to go to college who would be better off not going.

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And the reason for that is historically college has been seen as the path to a good job.

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Decades ago, it lost its connection with education and became about the sheepskin, the diploma, the handshake, and the entryway into a good job.

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Good schools, right career, you know, the right, the major choice guarantees you the good job.

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Now, we're going to circle back in a few more weeks to the whole topic of vocation and we will take this up again at that point.

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But we have the unreasonable boss. We have the unfulfilling job.

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We have the unjust wage. The unjust wage. Unjust wages arise when too much power is concentrated in the hands of the employer.

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The balance between labor and capital, if you will, becomes skewed to one side or another.

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In its extreme form, this unjust wage was reflected in the sweatshops of the late 19th century.

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Child labor, unsafe working conditions, horrendous working conditions.

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And unfortunately, that continues in many parts of the world even today. Even today.

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Unjust wages come about through monopolies, extended periods of high unemployment, discrimination, government corruption, collusion, and a multitude of other factors.

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You know, you think about discrimination. I'll just share a short story with you here. The home that I grew up in in Massachusetts was built in 1905.

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And in the process of building it, they used newspapers to insulate the walls in one of the rooms.

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And years ago, we were undergoing a remodel of the kitchen and they took the horsehair plaster down off the laths and got behind it and so forth.

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And they found the newspapers that had been used as insulation in the walls in that time. And intact there was a

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Help Wanted pages from the Boston newspaper. It was fascinating to kind of review and see back in 1905, you know, what the employment situation was.

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But here's the thing that stood out the most to me. It had a number of jobs and at the bottom of each job posting, it said this,

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Irish need not apply. Irish need not apply.

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It's ironic, isn't it? Because one could say now that Irish politicians rule

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Boston. But that was the discrimination at that time.

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It had nothing to do with skin color, by the way. But God cares about the wages of a working person.

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God cares about that. In James chapter 5 and verse 4, we read the following,

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Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you.

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And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. God cares about the wages of the working person, a working man.

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The unreasonable boss, the unfulfilling job, the unjust wage. We've got this one. How about the uncooperative co -worker?

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The uncooperative co -worker. There's another effect of the fall in which we as sinners have to work alongside sinners.

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This leads to jealousy, competition, backbiting, drama, selfishness, laziness, and a whole host of other evils.

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Sinners in close proximity with sinners. Sounds like marriage. And perhaps the most difficult thing about all this is to some degree, our success is related or tied into the fulfillment of other people doing their job, right?

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Holding up their end of the log, as it were. And as the saying goes, it's hard to soar with the eagles when you work with the turkeys.

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Yeah. Yep. The uncooperative co -worker.

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How about this one? The unhelpful product. The unhelpful product.

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This expression of the thorns and the thistles concerns itself with the reality that some of us are working hard to create, manufacture, and sell products of dubious social value.

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Dubious social value. Now, I do not mean something that is illegal or immoral.

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Those would be just out and out wrong. But I do mean those things that are destined in relatively short order to be consigned to the trash bin.

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Dubious social value. I share another quote with you by Dorothy Sayers in her article,

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Why Work? Commenting on this herself, she says, and I quote, a society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste.

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And such a society is a house built upon sand. The greatest insult which a commercial age has to offer to the worker has been to rob him of all interest in the end product of the work and to force him to dedicate his life to making badly things which were not worth making.

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70 % of the U .S. economy depends on consumption.

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It is the largest economic driver. Buying more and more stuff. Why is it that we buy stuff knowing we even adopted a terminology, planned obsolescence?

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We don't repair anything anymore because it's all fit for the trash heap. It cannot long last in that kind of an environment.

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And it is soul -sucking to be trapped in it. Oh, here's another one for you.

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It's called the unkind customer. I don't really need to elaborate on this one now, do

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I? Anyone who has any experience in either retail or fast food can fill in the blanks on that, and that's many of us.

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Many of us. The unkind customer. That is another set of thorns and thistles.

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Oh, we've got a few more. I worked hard at these, by the way. I hope you're noticing.

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The unappreciative owner. The unappreciative owner or slash the unrelenting pressure.

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The unappreciative owner slash the unrelenting pressure. This is best illustrated by the beginning of the year communication from headquarters.

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And it says something like this. Thank you for last year's hard work.

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Sales and earnings increased 20 % over the prior year. This year your new target is 25 % more.

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And by the way, we're making a headcount reduction of 10%. 10%. Have a great year.

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Have a great year. It's relentless. If you've worked in corporate

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America, you know it is relentless. It's never enough. Always more.

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Always more with less. The unappreciative owner.

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The unrelenting pressure. My last one.

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No, second to last one. Sorry. We've got the unyielding problem. The unyielding problem.

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This is the scenario whereby you pour yourself into the task and the solution seems just beyond your fingertips.

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Just beyond them. Work at it and work at it and work at it and you just can never get there.

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Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison tried 10 ,000 different substances before discovering the right filament for the incandescent electric light bulb.

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Can you imagine that? That is 9 ,999 failures before he hits on the solution.

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That is an expression of the thorns and thistles. The unproductive workplace.

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This is the last one. The unproductive workspace.

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Workplace. We can envision far more work than we are able to accomplish because of our own limitations or resistance in the workplace.

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Perhaps you have developed a solution to a vexing business problem and you find it blocked and stonewalled by other departments because it's going to change the way that they do their jobs and they don't want to change.

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To you the answer seems obvious. It's simple. But when you talk to somebody about it that you have to work with, that you need their cooperation, that they may have to something they're doing.

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It's like talking to a brick wall. They do not hear you. Beloved, we must remember this.

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We must remember this. That God cursed the ground, not the task of cultivating it.

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Okay. That is very important to hang on to in all of this. God cursed the ground, not the task of cultivating it.

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Work is still good. Work is still God glorifying.

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Work still emulates Him. It's just harder.

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And it's just loaded with futility. And this reality can lead us as workers really into one of two ditches when it comes to the topic of work.

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One of two. They're equally unbiblical. But we tend to veer in one direction or the other.

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It's either towards cynicism or idealism. Cynicism or idealism.

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They both fail to reflect a God -ordained theology of work.

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Faced with the overwhelming observational evidence that work is deeply flawed, the cynic says that the only way to approach work that makes any sense at all is just to focus on how much money am

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I going to make? How much does the job pay? That's all I need to know. How much does it pay?

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This cynic, be it he or her, would say something like, don't get your hopes up about changing the world.

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Nothing ever changes. Forget about job satisfaction. Go for the paycheck.

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Just go for the paycheck. You're going to hate your work no matter what you do. Just, you know what? You're going to hate it anyway.

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Just get paid a lot of money. Pay a lot of money. That's the cynic's approach.

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Conversely, the idealist approaches work with a passion that they're going to change things for the better.

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They're going to change things. It's going to be for the better. They're going to work to improve the world.

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They're going to invent and develop new products and technologies that will bring tremendous improvement to the world.

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That's why they work. And they say, no,

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I'm not going to get ground up in the meat grinder that pulverizes everybody else. Not me.

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Generally speaking, these conflicting approaches to work correlate with the relative age of the workers.

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The young tend to start out idealistically. They're going to change the world through whatever it is they're doing.

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And then eventually they get ground up and they become old and cynical.

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Is there no hope? Is that where we are? Is there just no hope? Is there no hope to finding any balance between working in a world infested with thorns and thistles?

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We spend the bulk of our waking hours doing this.

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Is it a prison sentence? We just put X's on the wall until we get out?

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Is that what it is? God forbid. God forbid.

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We can find hope. We can find hope. We find it in the pages of the often misunderstood book of Ecclesiastes.

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So I am going to turn you there. I'm going to turn you there to chapter two.

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In this book, the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon is exploring the futility of life lived under the sun.

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The futility of life lived under the sun. Douglas Wilson, in his,

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I commend it to you, excellent little book called Joy at the End of the Tether, defines the futility of life under the sun as this.

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The world as deformed by sin and ignorant and unaccepting of the sovereignty of its creator.

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The world in rebellion. The world as deformed by sin and ignorant and unaccepting of the sovereignty of its creator.

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The world in rebellion. This is life under the sun. Life under the sun.

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And when life and philosophy is shaped only in that realm, then it is indeed vanity of vanities.

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Vanity of vanities. But when it comes to the workplace, Solomon summarizes it this way in chapter two, beginning in verse 17.

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I love Ecclesiastes, by the way. This is the most clear -eyed view of what life is like.

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Verse 17, So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me, because everything is futility and striving after wind.

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Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me.

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And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool, yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which

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I have labored by acting wisely under the sun. This too is vanity.

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Therefore I completely despaired of all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun. When there is a man who has labored with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and then he gives his legacy to one who has not labored with them, this too is vanity and a great evil.

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For what does a man get in all his labor and in his striving with which he labors under the sun?

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Because all his days his task is painful and grievous, even at night his mind does not rest.

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This too is vanity. This too is living in a world, right, deformed by sin and ignorance, on accepting the sovereignty of God over it, a world in rebellion.

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If that is our mindset, if that's the plane that we're operating on, it is vanity of vanities.

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I hated my life, verse 17, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me because of the fall.

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Because of the fall, even while accomplishing many good things, work measured in simply human terms is ultimately vanity.

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It does not endure. It does not endure. But here now is where the wisdom of Solomon comes to bear, okay?

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He understands that work can still be fulfilling when we don't try to get more out of it than it can give.

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Let me say it again. Work can and will be satisfying when we don't try to get more out of it than it can give.

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Very important. God grants the capacity to his children to find enjoyment in a fallen world when we acknowledge his sovereignty over all matters, and that includes work.

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That includes work. Look at verses 24 to 26.

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There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good.

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This also I have seen, that it is from the hand of God. For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without him?

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For to a person who is good in his sight he has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, while to the sinner he has given the task of gathering and collecting so that he may give to one who is good in God's sight.

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This too is vanity and striving after win. It is the wisdom approach to work that brings stability to life, to our life of work.

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It is a wisdom approach that will get you up tomorrow morning and off to work you will go, and you will find a measure of enjoyment in it.

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You can't have all that is latent there because of Adam's rebellion, but you can still find joy.

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You can still find fulfillment. You can still experience a measure of the goodness that God has built into it all.

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Turn with me over to verses 12 and 13 of chapter 3. We see

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Solomon repeatedly. I'm going to show you just going to quickly go through a couple of sections here. You're going to see

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Solomon's approach to this. Verse 12, I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime.

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Moreover, every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor. It is the gift of God.

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It is the gift of God. Chapter 5, verse 18, here is what

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I have seen to be good and fitting to eat, to drink, and to enjoy oneself in all one's labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which

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God has given him, for this is his reward. Chapter 8, verse 15, so I come and did pleasure.

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Well, there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and drink and to be merry, and this will stand by him in his toils throughout the days of his life which

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God has given him under the sun. Chapter 9, and verse 9, enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which he has given to you under the sun, for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.

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In other words, enjoy your life. Don't be overly committed to work as if it's going to give you the fulfillment that you're searching for.

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It's not there. You can't get it. You can't have it. So learn to balance work and pleasure.

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Enjoy relationships, your wife, your husband, your children, your grandchildren, your neighbors, your friends, people in church together, relationships.

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Maybe we can just sum it up in conclusion this way. Get up tomorrow morning and work hard.

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By God's grace, you may accomplish something. You may accomplish something.

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But in the end, recognize that until Christ returns and restores his creation, work will always produce a mixture of fruit and thistles.

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So don't despair. Love God and take time to enjoy the life that he has given you.

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Let's pray. Our Father, may you help us to walk a path of wisdom, recognizing your sovereignty over every aspect of our lives, including work, and that we would recognize there is great joy that is latent within it because it is your creation and your gift to us.

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And yet it has been bent and twisted and defiled by sin. And so our

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Father, it'll never in this life give us all that we hope for, all that we desire, and it is a fool's errand to chase it.

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So help us to understand that, to work hard, to seek to honor

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Christ, but to recognize that when we need to close the lunchbox, as it were, and go home and enjoy the relationships that you have abundantly provided to us, for in that there is joy and those are eternal.