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[ Intro ]
Happy Labor Day weekend everyone. Hopefully everyone gets some extra time to spend with family or friends or maybe just get some peace and quiet.
I’m going to read a real brief history of the holiday, why we celebrate it, and when it started being recognized as a holiday. This is directly from the government Department of Labor website, dol.gov.
“Observed the first Monday in September, Labor Day is an annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers. The holiday is rooted in the late nineteenth century, when labor activists pushed for a federal holiday to recognize the many contributions workers have made to America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being.
Before it was a federal holiday, Labor Day was recognized by labor activists and individual states. After municipal ordinances were passed in 1885 and 1886, a movement developed to secure state legislation. New York was the first state to introduce a bill, but Oregon was the first to pass a law recognizing Labor Day, on February 21, 1887. During 1887, four more states – Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York – passed laws creating a Labor Day holiday. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.”
Being a holiday that highlights work, I wanted to focus on that topic today. I think it’s an interesting biblical topic. When I was younger I used to always think of work as just being a part of “the fall”. Hard work can bring satisfaction, fulfillment, and a sense of accomplishment. But for a long time I didn’t think too much about it, but more-so focused on some of the stress and burdens that are involved in work and thought, how could work be a part of God’s perfect world, before sin entered it.
[ Body ]
To talk about work, we have to go all the way back to the beginning, in Genesis.
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
We won’t read all the verses about creation, we know God created everything in six days and rested on the seventh. Now some argue what a “day” is referring to in genesis. The Hebrew word for day is Yom, “y-o-m”, Yom. In scripture it almost always refers to a literal day as we know it, a 24-hour period of time. And Genesis is pretty explicit about evening passing, and morning coming, marking the next day. So the common interpretation is that it is referring to a 24-hour period of time.
Now about work, was God creating the Heaven’s and the earth work? After all he’s God, everything obeys his command and when creating everything he said “let it be” and it came about just as he commanded. let’s hop to Genesis 2:1-4
1 So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. 2 On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work.
God creating the world was work. So is work a part of the fall? No, it’s not. Sin had not entered the world and God cannot undergo any sort of punishment, or do anything wrong anyways. He is Perfect in every way, and so we can rightly say work in itself is not punishment. It is not a part of the fall. It was part of God’s perfect design, before sin even entered the World.
Let’s take that and now look at what God told Adam and Eve.
In Genesis 1, where we get the more general account of creation, after creating Adam and Eve
28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”
And then in Chapter 2 where we get more details of the sequence of the creation events, after creating Adam, Genesis 2:15 reads
15 The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.
God established the Garden of Eden for him in the preceding verses, and then assigned him to tend and watch over it. And in Genesis 2:19
19 So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one.
And then later on in chapter 2 God provides Adam with a helper and companion, Eve.
Now I wanted to go through those verses to show all that God did and what he commanded of mankind before sin had ever entered the world.
He commanded mankind to be fruitful and multiply, and as we fill the earth we should govern it, we need to tend to whatever needs taken care of (Garden of Eden in Adam’s case), we have dominion over all the animals and creation, and God even had Adam name all of the animals. God didn’t create them and say this is what they’re called, He let Adam decide. So in everything, he gave mankind, work to do through physical labor, responsibility to govern and have dominion over creation, and to decide on something through creativity, naming the animals.
Physical labor, responsibility to govern, and decisions through creativity all before sin entered the world.
We were not made to do nothing and just receive everything with no output of work. God provided everything Adam and Eve needed in the garden of Eden, but he didn’t say eat of the fruit and go take a nap. There was work to be done.
God is a worker and we being made in his image, are also workers. We are blessed with talents from God that enable us to perform good work.
Now the main reason why anyone would ever think that work was a part of the fall, is probably because of the stress and burdens that can come from work. And that part, was because of the fall. Our bodies can be wounded and broken. Then you throw in lying, stealing, bitterness, jealousy, lust, pride in the mix of our emotions and dealing with people. It makes any kind of work a little bit more challenging.
After Adam and Eve first sinned, God laid out some of the challenges they would now face. After informing Eve on a few things woman will encounter, God then spoke to Adam.
17 And to the man he said,
“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you,
though you will eat of its grains.
19 By the sweat of your brow
will you have food to eat
until you return to the ground
from which you were made.
For you were made from dust,
and to dust you will return.”
Because of sin, it’s not just mankind that was cursed. The earth was also cursed. The weeds we see growing next to the plants we actually want to grow, is from the curse. Weeds will grow where you didn’t think it was possible for anything to grow. Yet you stop taking care of something you actually want to grow for just a little bit, and it might die. It’s not a light curse.
We know thorns and thistles are things that come out of the ground and cause problems, but thorns are also used in the Bible as symbolism. Always used in a negative way, which makes sense because of how it originated. One place where it is used is in the Parable of the Sower. Talking about the different people or soil in this parable, that the Good News was told to and what happened afterwards.
In one example given from Matthew 13:7
7 Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants.
Sin prevents or hinders us from producing good fruit.
Now when it comes to work, even if we don’t have a job where we are directly working with the ground, I think we can all agree that in a symbolic sense, we all deal with thorns and thistles in any work that we do. And this is where some of the distaste for work can come from at times. Now sometimes the thorn is the struggle with laziness. Because that’s a thing to. Some people have no desire to work just because of laziness.
We have all sorts of thorns to deal with when trying to do work, whether it’s ministry work, our regular 9-5 work, work that we do to help other people, or just doing a hobby. They all have challenges. There’s always some sort of resistance. But no matter the challenge that we’re facing, whether it’s a battle within ourselves, struggles with the Job, or struggles with the people we work with. One thing we have to remember is that we are ultimately serving God in our work. It is an act of worship when we acknowledge who gave us our gifts and put our best effort forward for him.
23 Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.
Do your work as though you are working for the Lord. There’s many great examples from the Bible, but I think a good one is Daniel, who Don talked about a couple weeks ago. He clearly was dealing with many people that were not believers in the one true God. He was definitely dealing with a lot of thorns. However because of his God-given abilities and the effort he put into the work given to him, he was highly favored by the King.
One other thing about work, is that God designed there to be rest. God rested on the seventh day, not because God couldn’t go on without rest, but He provided a model for mankind to live by. Now this would also lead into the topic of the Sabath, however that is a topic that would require an entire sermon or multiple sermons to go through. Some believe we still need to follow it, some don’t. My point in mentioning it isn’t to say whether or not you have to rest on the Sabath day specifically, my point is rest is definitely a part of God’s plan. So as we go into labor day, don’t feel bad for taking time to recover, it doesn’t mean you’re being lazy. Rest was a part of God’s design before sin even entered the world.
In closing I want to mention one other point of symbolism that God may have been giving when mentioning the punishment of sin to Adam and what Christ endured on the cross.
God said “By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat”, and he also mentioned the thorns and thistles, which we mentioned as symbolism earlier in Matthew in the parable of the sower. Leading up to Christ’s death on the cross, while praying in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus sweat blood.
And while being tortured he had a crown of thorns jammed into his head. So the very thing that came from the cursed ground because of sin which was specifically mentioned to Adam, was also what was used to torture Jesus on his way to taking on the sin of the world and providing freedom for all of us from the bondage of sin.
When we use the gifts that He has given us, just remember to use them for good work, and do it with your best effort. For His name and glory.
