The Blessing of Work 2018/12/02

The Blessing of Work

Genesis 2:8 – 15 

(We apologize for the video quality.  There was a hardware error we did not notice until after the recording)

Who likes work? If you’re retired, do you miss your job? If you’re working, what do you enjoy more, your work or your weekend? If you don’t have a job right now, do you wish you did so you could just jump out of bed in the morning and joyfully shout, “I get to go to work, today?” A very popular and ungodly song from 1981, “Working for the Weekend,” describes very well the way so many people live their lives. Sadly, far too many Christians live the same way, working to make enough money to pay their bills and have a good time on weekends and holidays. Again, most people dislike working and many hate their jobs, including Christians. Why do we hate work so much?

Perhaps the first hint is in that popular song. What the world loves is usually not what they should. Let’s see what the Bible says about work! (stand for the reading of the Word)

Genesis 2:8 -15

After God created the first man, he planted a beautiful, well-watered garden, where he put the man. Everything about the garden was pleasant and good. Everything needed for food was in the garden; furthermore, there was a great variety of food. Everything was beautiful and very good. Into this perfect setting, God placed the man and gave him a job to do. God created work for man! Interesting! If God created work, it must be good. If God created work for man, then work must be a blessing.

I Eden

  1. The name, Eden, is from a Hebrew word that means delight, or pleasure. Following the order as we have previously discovered, the use of the word, and, is not an overuse, but an indicator that what followed was done after the last thing mentioned.
    1. All the plant life was created before man was created.
    2. Then man was created.
    3. Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden
    4. Then he put the man in the garden.
  2. All of creation was perfect at the time God created the Garden of Eden. The word translated, garden, refers to an enclosed place, a park, a place that is special. Imagine how beautiful the Garden of Eden must have been!

II A Perfect Setting

  1. God put the man into the garden in Eden. It truly was a garden of delight.

    1. God had already created all the plant life on the Earth, the grass, the herbs and the trees. If this was simply a fence or walled around a particular area of forest, it would still have been perfect, because God had just created the world, and there was no sin in it, no corrupting force.

    2. But the garden, this setting into which God placed man was even more special. It was the perfect setting for man, carefully and specially designed as a place to live and flourish.

      1. God caused trees to grow in the garden that were pleasant to the sight. The word translated pleasant refers to something that is delightful, beautiful and desirable. God surrounded the man with beauty.

        1. Beauty is something that speaks of the perfect character of God. We see beauty in things that are harmonious in form.

2

    1. The garden was filled with beautiful trees, but they were also trees that grew fruit that was good for food.

      1. The Bible says that God made every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food to grow in the garden. Imagine that! Imagine if you could live in a beautiful garden where every kind of fruit on the planet was all available in the same garden!

      2. This truly was a perfect setting. There’s nothing like it, today. Not even in the most beautiful garden are you likely to find enough variety to get all the protein, minerals, vitamins and fat you need. Yet in the garden God put man in, it was all there, ready to eat, raw. The garden God planted grew everything needed to live a healthy life, year round.

        1. You might say at this point, “Wait a minute, Pastor! How do you know that? They didn’t even live in the garden that long!” Well, you’d be right about the fact that they didn’t live in the garden that long. However, we know that God created everything in perfection, and from that we can safely and accurately conclude that if they had continued to live in the garden, they would have continued to have a perfect, year round diet.

III The Trees of Life and Knowledge

      1. God also put two very important trees in the garden, the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The Bible says that God put them in the midst of the garden. This word, midst, means middle in this context.
        1. We are not told how big the garden was, but the record in Genesis following today’s passage tells us that they never did eat of the tree of life. It is an amazing fact that this tree, the tree of life, is now in heaven! Revelation 22:2 says, speaking of heaven, “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” Revelation 2:7 tells us specifically that the tree of life is in the middle of the paradise of God. We can safely understand from this, I believe, that Eden was truly paradise on Earth. Nothing like it exists in the world, today.

      2. These two trees, as becomes even more clear further in the Genesis account, represent Jesus Christ, who is life, and human wisdom, which is death. We have to make a choice between the two. If we fail to repent of making ourselves little gods by trusting in our own wisdom, we cannot partake of the tree of life.

        1. Note that we human beings love to blame others for our sin! It is not the devil who makes you sin! It is you who choose, trusting in your own wisdom, to believe the devil and sin! Your sin is your fault. Remember that.

IV Rivers

      1. A river watered the garden. This river came from a source in the land of Eden, and entered the garden to irrigate it. After it left the garden, it became four rivers.

        1. The land through which these four rivers ran is described in our account. There has been a lot of speculation about these rivers, but the fact remains that the entire planet was drastically changed by the flood. Pison is believed to now be a branch of the Tigris river. Gihon is even more uncertain. Ethiopia in Old Testament times is not the same as today. Hiddekel is today called the Tigris, and is mentioned in Daniel 10:4. The Euphrates also still exists, and is the longest river in western Asia, flowing from the Armenian mountains to the Persian Gulf.

3

          1. Today, the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates are very close to each other. However, considering the incredible upheaval and massive changes that occurred during the flood in the days of Noah, it is wild speculation to try to determine with any kind of certainty where the garden was located.

            1. Even though we still recognize the names of two of these rivers, today, we can’t be certain that they are flowing anywhere even close to where they flowed before the flood. They may have been moved vast distances in the chaos of flood geology. Even the names of the places from Moses’ time are uncertain now.

V The Blessing of Work

  1. God put the man in this perfect, beautiful, pleasant garden, to what? To work! The Bible says, “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” That’s work! Gardening is work!
    1. The word translated dress is the Hebrew word, abad aw-bad, meaning to work or serve, to labour, to do work. That’s not, “It’s bad, it’s ALL bad!” as some seem to translate it, today…
    2. The word translated, keep, is the Hebrew word, shaw-mar’, meaning to watch over.
  2. So, God put the man in this perfect setting and immediately gave him work to do. That tells us that work is a blessing, not a curse. The word that is translated as dress, or work, also means service and worship. So work was created as a service to God. It is a blessing to serve God.
    1. The Bible tells us to do our work with a good attitude as our service to God! “With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men.” Ephesians 6:7 That means we ought to cheerfully serve God in our work. Work is a blessing from God, not a curse.
    2. Colossians 3:23,24 instructs us, “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of your inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.“

  3. It is a blessing to serve Christ! We serve Him because we love Him. We love Him because He first loved us and died for us, even when we didn’t care about Him at all.

Conclusion

  1. What does your attitude toward your work say about your walk with Christ? Does it show that you love Him? Does it show that work is a blessing, because God created us and gave us work? People ought to know that there’s something different about us, as Christians. The ought to notice that there’s something different. Doing our tasks cheerfully and well, without complaining, glorifies our Lord. People do notice. We have been so blessed, and our attitude toward work ought to reflect that. We know that Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, and that he was buried and rose on the third day, according to the scriptures. We know, and we know that when we put our faith in Him, rather than in ourselves, to save us by His good work, we were cleansed of our sins and given eternal life, immediately. We now ought to show our gratitude and joy in our salvation by seeing work as a blessing, not as a curse. Finally, we are saved by grace, and by this same grace are we now able to do good works. Is your work good? Does your work and your face when you’re working reflect what has happened by God’s grace in your heart?