Word of Salvation – Vol.38 No.42 – November 1993

 

Adam’s Curse and the Factory Floor

 

Sermon by Rev. M. Vanderree on 1Thessalonians 4:1-13

Reading: Ecclesiastes 2:17-26; 1Thessalonians 4:1-13

 

Beloved congregation of the Lord,

Work occupies the largest single block of time in our lives.  Yet we tend to look for meaningful living anywhere but on the job.

We do daily work for the pay cheque that is part of trying to get ahead a little bit, and provide us with enough leisure so that we can pursue what seems to give meaning to our existence.

We don’t quite work to eat, or eat just to work.  At least, we don’t want to.  But often it comes down to that, and time on the job is for too many of us time in the rat race.  As a result of this we have great emphasis on ‘leisure’; 36 hour weeks and RDO’s.  The attitude is often that our work is a necessary but painful intrusion into the real stuff of living.

It’s a pity that we can be so out of kilter with Scripture and God’s ideal.  The Bible teaches us that living gets meaning from our relationship to Christ.  It is an all-of-life thing.  That means that one of the first places where this applies is the job, because that’s the drain down which the best hours of every week dribble away.

The trouble is that Adam’s curse has made the factory floor a painful and frustrating place to be.  Therefore we need to hear that the Gospel also touches this area of our lives.

SOME BIBLICAL WINDOWS ON THE DRUDGERY AND BLESSEDNESS OF WORK.

Look with me at a small sample of the many things which God says about work.

1.  Psalm 90:17

‘Yes, establish the work of our hands.’  In this deep and moving Psalm, Moses talks about the ‘works of our hands’.  He is on about more than gainful employment.  He is talking about the entire effort of living as God’s people in God’s creation.

‘The work of our hands’, is a typical Hebrew expression.  It is used to call to mind the whole range of human activity.  A bit like the phrase in the Lord’s Prayer ‘daily bread’, which stands for all our needs as frail people.

It’s a beautiful expression.  It reminds us that a white collar job is not better than a blue collar job; that work done at home is no less work than what is done in a machine shop, and that the effort to love qualifies as work no less than does painting cars or nursing patients.

Moses asks God to pay attention to our work and involve Himself with it.  The reason?  He knows that since the fall work has been complex.  Our experience of work ranges from, punishment, escape, expression of envy, necessary evil, creative fulfilment, enslavement, and joy.

The work of our hands is blessable.

2.  Ecclesiastes 2:24

‘A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work.  This too, I see, is from the hand of God.’  He slaved from dawn to dusk and beyond, living on next to nothing.  He was always building for the future.  He did well too.  Though his marriage was sour and his kids never wrote, the house was paid for and he’d saved enough dollars to keep him in clover for the rest of his days.  Two weeks before retirement he crumpled to a heap on the floor.  He died before he gave himself a chance to live.

Extreme perhaps.  There was a wife who at the funeral of her husband and friend heard many people speak movingly about the good he had done for a number of organisations and individuals.  To this she replied: ‘I’m glad to hear about him, for my children and I did not get to know him that well.’

The preacher gives another perspective.  What an empty and hollow business, this straining after happiness through work.  We work our fingers to the bone to build up some joy in life.  When we think we almost have it, it disappears like a puff of air.  We strive after the wind.

If we study like mad, we’re rewarded with grief.  We taste the sharp pain of the discovery that the same meaningless fate awaits the wise and the fool (Eccl.2:1216).

If we try to live it up, we find that we never get enough of what we lust after.  (Eccl.2:1-11).

If we try to pile up a fortune in the bank, we will not be able to buy our way out of pain, loneliness or creeping old age.

And if illness or accident or failure does not do so earlier, death all too swiftly will rob us of all we’ve accomplished.  (Eccl.5:13-17).

But the preacher points us to something else.  He points us not to the results of our work, but the work itself.

This God-inspired wisdom frees us from the notion that the works of our hands somehow have to bring us happiness.  God gives work to enjoy, it is his gift.

That is what Paul is saying.

3.  1Thessalonians 4:11

‘Work with your hands’.  Paul echoes the praise for the work of human hands, hearts and minds.  Like Jesus he was immersed in a society of working people.  Work is part of God’s original intention in paradise.  So Paul criticised idleness.  He made no distinction between what we would think of ‘spiritual’ and ‘physical’ work.  For Paul, all work finds its origin in faith and is a service to God.

In 1Thessalonians he tells us that believers are…  ‘renewed, created in the image of God’ therefore he urges, ‘do honest work with your hands.’  Why?  To serve others, and to shape human life.

Congregation, it is important for us to recognise that God’s attitude to work is often very different from our own.

God has made us workers.  That’s what it means to be made in the image of God.

WORK IN PARADISE

In our closing moments, let’s look at the factory floor before Adam’s curse.

As we look at this remember that Jesus’ work of redemption is to take us back to paradise.  The paradise of Heaven.

1.  Work is man’s natural, purposeful activity in God’s world.

Man’s involvement in God’s world is modelled on God’s creative activity.

Man is called to rule over the earth, (to master, rule, have dominion).

Man is called to subdue the earth, (to knead, to tread, to work, to control).

Man is called to cultivate the garden and keep it, (to labour, to work, to till and tend).

Man is to name the animals, (and so be creatively involved in God’s world).

All of this gives us an insight into Adam and Eve’s involvement in the pre-fallen world.

2.  Man has a fundamental right to work as he was made to be a worker and work was made for him.

Work is part of man’s nature.  Psalm 8:3-8 states it unmistakably.  The object of work is to praise God.  Work is at the heart of man’s worth in society.  That is why unemployment is such a demoralising thing.

3.  Work was a spontaneous, joyful, meaningful activity.

There appears to be no necessary connection between work and wages, since God supplied his needs.  But now there are thorns and thistles.  To get enough sustenance becomes a battle.

Routine, drudgery, boredom, the mindless repetition of the factory floor, the hospital ward, the endless succession of exams and assignments, or the ongoing demands of nappies, ironing and children, have been that way since the fall and Adam’s curse.

God’s desire is that our work is not seen as a drain through which time dribbles or gushes away with no relevance to our walk with the Lord, but that this too is touched by the redemption of Christ.  But a biblical understanding of work requires an understanding of paradise; of Adam and Eve in the splendour of the garden.

Hear a word of the Lord:  Romans 11:36–12:2 (read it).  The Bible doesn’t leave us cliff-hanging.  Christ is Lord.  So don’t be conformed to the way of the world, which sees work as an intrusion into leisure time, or simply as a means to paying the bills.  Work is a gift of service because of God’s mercy.

May God give us such a radical perspective!

AMEN