Poured Out: Thorns and Thistles - Audio
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Well, welcome to week two poured out a life of work and worship Last week we talked about how good work is that work is built into the creator order that God is a worker And that that we can too by our imitation of him is to pour ourselves out in work But it was a very positive uppity. Yes work is good work is great But at the end of the message we we found out that it's not all You know roses and rainbows and so let's take a look at the very last verse We we hit last week on this is Solomon and Ecclesiastes. He's saying I did not myself nothing I refused my heart no pleasure and he I took the light in my labor labor was good This was a great reward for all my work to see all the amazing things that I had done, but wait when I surveyed all that my hands had done and What I had toiled to achieve everything was heavy meaningless the the Hebrew there is like Just it was a chasing after the winds nothing was gained under the Sun the idea is that no matter what we do eventually It's gone Eventually, it's gone like the aquamarine pews that we used to have right here No matter how good your pews might be at a certain point. They're gonna be gone We're gonna find out that it actually gets even worse work, we're gonna pour ourselves out into it, but but it's not as Cheerian and hopeful as we might have fought and so let's look at today's Text and what we're gonna try to do is we're gonna try to be honest in our theology of work What is work? What's it like? But then ultimately we're gonna try and and build back and say even though this is a reality about work There is there is hope and and here's how we can push back against the curse So let's look at the Genesis 3 together The set it up for you if you're not familiar. This is right after Adam and Eve have eaten the the apricot or the apple or whatever it is and they followed the advice of the serpent Who was sort of channeling the enemies desire and so as a result? They're going to be expelled from Eden And I want to be really careful about how we think about this text because typically we think that God's Going after human beings and really making things hard for them and bad for them But that's not exactly what's happening So let's read it together and then we're gonna take very we're gonna be very careful about how we see it and we're gonna understand why work sucks All right, so the woman he said I will make your pains and childbearing very severe with pain for labor You will give birth to children your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you To Adam he said because you listen to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you shouldn't eat from it Curse it is the ground because of you through painful toil. You will eat food from it all the days of your life He goes on 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 are taken you are dust and to dust you will return This is obviously very bad news, okay, but I don't want it to be I want you to understand Exactly how bad it is and how bad it's not okay So the first thing we need to recognize is that God's actually not doing a whole lot of stuff to us In fact, you'll notice God doesn't curse Eve doesn't curse Adam The only cursing that goes around is to the snake and to the ground Okay, and more than that. It's not as though God's There's a certain amount of God's Expelling people from paradise and here are the realities of life when you are no longer a part of the garden the Place that I made for you. This is it's not so much God's doing stuff to people It's us having to come to grips come to the reality of what happens when we we stray outside of the place
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Because of the curse we learn that work is not all roses and rainbows.