Happy Labour Day!
Labour Day is a holiday that seeks to celebrate and commemorate the people who fought hard for the rights we enjoy today as employees, such as eight-hour workdays, minimum wage, workplace safety standards, overtime pay, parental leave, and many more.
Today, in my hope and desire to bless and encourage you, I would like to share with you some biblical and spiritual truths about labour.
Labour, or work, is inherently good. God ordained for man to work, as we can see in Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” After creating everything, God commanded Adam to work. Therefore, work, in itself, is good. In fact God does not want us to be lazy as 2 Thessalonians 3:10 puts forward, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” God had meant for man to work and to be diligent at his work.
But why is work laboursome? Why is there so much hardship and struggle associated with work? Why is work not the answer to our happiness and fulfillment?
The answer is simply, sin.
In Genesis 3:17, God pronounced against Adam the following curse after he sinned:
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
In Genesis 2:15, God puts Adam to work an uncursed ground. With the ground free from curse, Adam did not need to do “painful toil.” The ground did not produce “thorns and thistles” that made his work labourious. His work was hazard-free. There was no need to compete with others. But because of the curse, his sustenance would now be made possible only by the sweat of his brow, with much exertion due to an aging body and a hostile workfield.
Indeed, aside from the cursed land, there it was, the mortality that befell upon the body of Adam. He now had to battle human exhaustion, illnesses, and other physical limitations that ultimately lead to physical death. God did warn him, however, : “If you disobey me, you shall surely die.”
Then there’s the corrupted heart that compounds the curse. The sinfulness of man’s heart is the reason for unfair compensation, greed, cut-throat mentality, and all sorts of evil that permeates the workplace. Doing work with fellow fallen humans is not always a recipe for a happy, easy labouring.
Because of sin the land was cursed., not work per se, but the land (in the industrial and post-industrial age, the factory, the office, the workplace in general). Work remains to be noble, but now there is curse due to sin that is manifested in the heart of man, in man’s limitations leading to mortality – all working in complexity to cause hardship in life.
There’s also the hedonic cycle, the harsh lie that as you work and work you’ll eventually come to a point where you feel satisfied and, therefore, feel content. But the truth is that this is a vicious cycle – there’s never enough amount of work that can truly enable a man to have everything he wants and be happy. The evil that penetrated into the heart caused dissatisfaction from what was laboured, the feeling of always wanting, always looking, always running after stuff.
So man is doomed to this brutal reality. Going back to Genesis 3:19, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Under a curse, man is no better than the beast of burden, who works endlessly under a master until he dies (Ecclesiastes 3:18-19).
Oh, the sad and painful reality, no, fateful and cruel cycle of life we humans inescapably doomed to, had it not been for the grace of God!
Oh, His mercy and grace, indeed! By His mercy and love right after the Fall God proclaimed that there will be a way of escape! Genesis 3:15 is what we call protoevangelion, the first ever proclamation of the gospel, the good news, the love of God! It reads,
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring[a] and hers; he will crush[b] your head, and you will strike his heel.”
God, through His Son Jesus Christ, saved us from the curse of endless, fateful, vicious labouring for nothing but only to perish in the end. He defeated the serpent (Satan) by inflicting a fatal blow unto him through His resurrection from the dead!
And now we have been set free from the curse of sin and our freedom extends even in the area of our labouring!
First, as children of God, as God’s saved, we now have a different heart. God transformed our hearts and our minds that our work is now being used to not simply feed endless selfish desires and ambitions, but to bless, advance, lift up, and glorify the name of God. Through our financial partnership with the gospel, we are being used to win souls so that they may also be freed from the curse of sin and from the lies of the enemy. Through our giving, congregations are being built, houses of worship are being established or are being rented so that the people of God may be gathered together in one place to worship, to fellowship, and to grow in Christ.
Secondly, we have hope that our ailing bodies are going to be renewed, in fact resurrected, even if we die. We have a glorious hope that our labouring body and mind will one day have their rest in the eternal kingdom of God one day, where there will be no more hardship.
Furthermore, since our eyes are now set on the things above, we no longer labour just to futilely run after the things of the world. We find joy and contentment in what we have, since Christ is our satisfaction, joy, and fulfillment. John 6:27 says, we do not labour for food that spoils, but for food that is eternal.
Although we have yet to endure all sorts of struggle as we work (difficult bosses, challenging colleagues, hard working conditions or hours), we have hope in Christ that our labour will not be for nothing. For we are saving treasures not on earth but in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21). And God will be the One to vindicate us in the end.
So I just want to encourage you to put your hope in Christ, and also to see work as a means to serve God. Honour God with your work. Be a tither. Be a generous giver.
This Anniversary Thanksgiving Day, give your very best sacrifice to the Lord. Don’t you know that our faithfulness in giving is an indication that we have been set free from the curse of sin.
As you do this, God, who is ever loving, generous, and mindful of us, will take care of us and our loved ones. He shall continue to save us from all harm and provide for all our needs. He proved this to us by providing a way of escape for us even right after the Fall.
On this Labour Day, think about these things, and I pray that God’s will and plan for you be made even more evident. I pray that as you labour, you labour for the Lord. Paise the Lord!
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