Working Together with God
Labor Day weekend is an appropriate time to talk about work. We have a complicated relationship with it. We complain about having too much work, but we worry when we do not have enough. We look forward to retirement, but we also fear feeling unnecessary. Work can give us satisfaction, but it can also drain us.
Work is not limited to a paid occupation. Raising children is work. Caring for an aging parent is work. Maintaining a home is work. Serving a church or community is work. And retirement may end a career, but it does not end our calling to contribute to the good of others.
The Bible’s story helps us understand both what is good about work and why work can be so difficult. In the story of the Bible, God created work as something good, but human sin brought frustration and futility into work. Christ rescues us from using work to establish our worth, and God renews our work as service offered to him and to others.
Three movements will guide us today: what work was, what work is now, and what work points to.
I. What Work Was
The Bible introduces work before it introduces sin. Work is not part of the curse; work is part of God’s good creation.
A. God is the first worker. Genesis 2 begins: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” The creation account presents God as purposeful and active. He creates, separates and orders, fills what was empty, brings forth life, and evaluates what he has made.
Genesis 2:2 speaks of “his work that he had done.” God didn’t create because He lacked something/needed to prove himself. He worked out of his abundant wisdom, goodness, love. So work, in its org form, reflects something abt God.
B. Human work reflects the work of the Creator. Notice the parallel between God and the man in Genesis 2. Verse 7 says God “formed the man of dust from the ground.” Verse 8 says God “planted a garden in Eden.” Verse 15 says God placed the man in the garden “to work it and keep it.” God forms and plants; the man is then commissioned to cultivate and preserve.
Last week we saw that human beings were made in God’s image to reflect His character and represent God’s rule. Work is one way we fulfill that calling. When we create, cultivate, organize, repair, protect, teach, and serve, our work can reflect the Creator’s own activity.
C. Work brings order and fruitfulness from God’s creation. God did not place Adam in a finished world in which nothing remained to be done. The garden was good, but it was also capable of further cultivation. Adam did not create the soil, plants, water, or potential for growth. God supplied those things. Adam’s responsibility was to work with what God had provided.
This remains true of our work. A farmer does not create seed, soil, sunlight, or rain; the farmer cultivates them. A teacher does not create a student’s mind; the teacher helps develop it. A builder does not create the raw materials; the builder orders them into something useful. A musician does not create sound; the musician arranges it into beauty. Human work receives what God has made and develops its possibilities for his glory and our neighbor’s good.
D. Work was never meant to be an isolated pursuit. Within this otherwise good creation, God says: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Human beings were not created to be self-sufficient. We need the abilities, perspectives, encouragement, and assistance of others. Work becomes distorted when we treat coworkers, employees, customers, or family members merely as tools for our advancement.
Application: Whatever legitimate work God has placed before you matters. You may not see dramatic results, but faithfulness has value because God sees it. You are not merely earning income or completing tasks. You are caring for a portion of God’s world and serving people made in his image.
Summary: Work was created as a good gift through which human beings reflect the Creator, cultivate his world, and contribute to the good of others. Transition: If work was created good, why does it so often leave us frustrated, exhausted, or unfulfilled? To answer that question, we must move from Genesis 2 into Genesis 3.
II. What Work Is Now
The original goodness of work has not disappeared, but something has happened to both our work and us.
A. Work remains good, but it has become toilsome. After the Fall: “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.” (Genesis 3:17–18)
Notice that God does not introduce work after the Fall. Adam was already working the garden. Sin introduces painful toil, resistance, frustration, and futility. The ground still produces fruit, but also thorns. That describes our experience of work: some efforts succeed, other efforts fail. Some plans bear fruit, others unravel. Equipment breaks. Organizations drift. People misunderstand. Bodies become tired. Achievements do not last forever. We still see vestiges of work’s original goodness, but we never experience that goodness without the effects of the Fall.
B. Work is performed under the shadow of mortality. God had warned Adam that disobedience would bring death. Adam and Eve did not fall to the ground physically dead on the day they sinned. Yet death immediately entered their experience. They were separated from God. Alienation entered their relationship. They were expelled from the garden. Their bodies began moving toward physical death.
Our mortality shapes all our work. No matter how hard we work, we cannot preserve everything indefinitely. Buildings deteriorate. Institutions decline. Technology becomes obsolete. People who once carried great responsibility lose strength.
When we are young, we may have energy but lack wisdom. When we have accumulated wisdom, we may discover that our energy is no longer what it once was. We are working in a world where things continually fall back into disorder.
C. The doctrines of creation and the Fall protect us from two errors. The doctrine of creation protects us from cynicism. Work is not inherently meaningless. The world remains God’s world. God still brings fruit from human effort. Our labor can still serve genuine good.
The doctrine of the Fall protects us from idealism. No job will be perfect. No career will completely fulfill us. No organization will function without conflict and disappointment. No human achievement can reverse death or restore paradise. If we forget creation, we will despise work. If we forget the Fall, we will expect work to save us. Biblical wisdom allows us to appreciate work without worshiping it and to endure its frustrations without surrendering to despair.
D. Sin has also created “the work beneath our work”. The Fall did not merely change the ground. It changed the worker. In the garden, Adam and Eve lived in God’s presence. They received their identity from him. Their value was secure because they bore his image. Their work flowed from God’s blessing.
After sin, they hid from God and began trying to cover themselves. We have been trying to cover ourselves ever since. Work becomes one of the primary ways we attempt to prove that we matter. Beneath the visible work, another kind of work may be taking place: trying to prove that we are successful, trying to earn another person’s approval, trying to establish that we are indispensable, trying to outrun feelings of failure, or trying to build an identity no one can take away. The problem is not necessarily the amount of work we are doing. The deeper problem may be what we are asking our work to do for us.
Examine yourself: If your work goes unnoticed, do you feel as though you no longer matter? If someone else succeeds, does it threaten your sense of worth? When you cannot work, do you struggle to know who you are? Are you serving through your work, or are you using work to prove yourself?
Summary: Work remains a good gift, but sin has made it frustrating and has tempted us to turn work into a source of identity and worth. Transition: We need more than a better job, improved working conditions, or a longer vacation. We need a kind of rest that reaches beneath our weariness and frees us from the need to prove ourselves.
III. What Work Points To
Genesis connects work with rest. To understand work properly, we must understand the rest God provides.
A. God’s rest is the rest of completed work. Genesis 2:2 says: “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested.” God did not rest because creation exhausted him. God rested because his work was complete. Nothing needed to be added to make creation “very good.” God’s rest is the satisfaction and enjoyment of completed work.
We ordinarily think we must work first to earn the right to rest. We accumulate vacation time through our service. We finish the project before taking a break. We rest only after everything has been completed. But the biblical pattern contains a surprising truth. Adam was created on the sixth day. His first complete day was God’s day of rest. Humanity began not by earning rest but by receiving it. Biblically speaking, we need the gift of rest in order to work properly.
B. God’s rest does not mean that we stop working. Hebrews 4:10 says: “Whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” Does that mean Christians no longer need jobs or responsibilities? Of course not. Scripture repeatedly calls believers to diligent, faithful work.
To rest from our works means that we stop treating our works as the basis of our acceptance before God. Gospel rest is the cessation of the need to prove ourselves. It is the settled confidence that our ultimate worth and standing do not rest upon our performance. When we possess that rest, we can actually work better. We can admit mistakes because failure does not destroy our identity. We can celebrate another person’s success because it does not diminish us. We can perform unnoticed tasks because God sees them. We can stop when it is time to stop because the world does not depend upon us. We can retire from a position without retiring from a meaningful life.
C. We enter God’s rest through Christ’s finished work. When God completed the work of creation, he rested because it was finished. At the cross, Jesus declared: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Hebrews 10:12 says that after Christ offered one sacrifice for sins, he “sat down at the right hand of God.”
What was finished? Jesus lived the faithful life we should have lived but did not. He fulfilled the obedience we owed to God. He died the death our sin deserved. He accomplished everything necessary to reconcile us to God.
We do not add to Christ’s finished work. We receive what he has accomplished by trusting him. That is the deepest rest our souls need. We no longer have to work our way into God’s presence, earn his love, or construct an identity that can survive death. In Christ, God receives us by grace.
E. Christ’s rest frees us to work with God. Gospel rest does not make us passive. It changes why and how we work. We do not work to become somebody. In Christ, we have been received by God; therefore, we are free to serve somebody. Our work no longer has to be primarily about us. We can work with God, joining in the good purposes he is accomplishing…
For God, offering our labor as an act of worship…Alongside others, recognizing that we were not created to work alone…For the good of others, rather than only for personal advancement.
This does not mean we contribute to Christ’s work of redemption. That work is finished. It means we participate in “the good works” God prepared for us to do as people saved by grace (Ephesians 2:10).
Application: The Christian may work hard, but does not have to be driven. The Christian may pursue excellence, but does not have to construct an identity from achievement. The Christian may experience failure, but failure does not have the final word. The Christian may grow weary, but our labor in the Lord is not in vain.
Summary: The finished work of Christ gives us the rest we could never earn, freeing us to work faithfully with God, for God, and for the good of others.
Conclusion: We can apply the story of the Bible to work. Creation: God made work good. Ruin: Sin made work toilsome and turned it into a way of proving ourselves. Rescue: Jesus completed the work necessary to reconcile us to God. Renewal: Secure in Christ, we can once again work as God intended—for his glory and our neighbor’s good.
What are you asking your work to prove about you? Have you become idealistic about work or cynical toward it? What would change if you approached this week’s work from the rest Christ has already provided?
We do not work in order to earn our worth. We work becuz, thr the finished work of JX, we’ve already been received by God. Resting n him, we are free to cultivate his world, serve our neighbors, and join faithfully n th work he has given us.