Various Passages

Below is a sermon manuscript from September 21, 2025. Watch the sermon here.

Introduction

Sometimes you are trying to be faithful to your calling, and an email hits, and you are just frustrated. You are reminded of the difficulty of it all. This was the case for my wife this week. She was working late, getting things done, when she received an email from an annoying parent. Ok, the annoying parent was me. She is teaching our third-grade son, and I love to bust on her when she sends her weekly emails. She wrote an email about an upcoming parade where the kids will participate in a Star Wars-themed float. Here was my reply

Mrs. B. I am happy to hear that my child will be participating in a Star Wars-themed float for homecoming. I am assuming, in addition to the attire, you also desire them to have accompanying sound effects? I will make sure my son starts practicing his Chewbacca noises in the car rides to and from school. I know that you aim for excellence in the classroom and details matter, so I will have his mom verify his improvements throughout the week as well.

         Have an excellent evening, and may the force be with you.

Maybe you didn’t get an email like this, but you did have real work frustrations this week. The talk about the goodness of work last week didn’t exactly come to fruition from Monday to Friday this week. This is what we will address this week.

Transition/Read Text

As we look at Genesis 3, we do so with an eye to Genesis 1 and 2. Too often in our approach to the Christian life, we assume or at least act like this is our starting place. But, before Genesis 3, it was good. There was goodness in paradise. Then sin entered the world, and everything changed. Let’s read what happened to that original goodness and apply it to the area of our work. If you have your Bible, we are going to start in verse 1 of chapter 3.

1. The Fall Disorders Our Work

Because sin has entered into the world, it has affected work in a myriad of ways. Every time we talk about sin and its effects on a Sunday morning, in Bible studies, or Life Groups, you could probably make an application for how it would spill over into the arena of work. But there are specific aspects that we can point out as well.

God’s instruction and the institution of work in Genesis 1-2 point to all kinds of work. Gardening could be a stand-in for everything that we do. As image-bearers, we reflect God through our work as His representatives. One of the things we see in this passage is that the work becomes difficult. That is part of the curse that God brings to Adam. There is pain and toil associated with work. The Fall and its curse disorders our work; it results in both fruitlessness and futility.

Work Becomes Fruitless

Fruitlessness and the Fall

One way that it affects our work is the toil and hardship that it brings to our work. Our work no longer produces as it should. Instead of pushing the garden’s prosperity to the edges of the world, Adam and Eve find themselves outside the garden, unable to return. Now, they are met with difficulty in labor and work.

Age and Fruitlessness

Perhaps this is you. You have desires and dreams to do things in your work that you are simply incapable of achieving. This tends to happen to a lot of people. Many careers take a period to learn and master. Once you get to a level of optimal competence and ability, the clock starts ticking. Your mind breaks down, and you forget things. Or, you have the knowledge but lack the physical ability to perform at the highest level. If you watch sports, an example is Tony Romo. He is an announcer who can call a play before it happens, his mind is sharper than it’s ever been, but he is physically limited.

Fruitless Occupations

The Fall has made some occupations necessary that highlight the fruitless effects of the Fall—Doctors/nurses, police officers, correctional officers, attorneys, etc. Medical experts perform surgeries, reset bones, but people still get sick. There is temporal relief, but bodies continue to break down. Police seek to maintain peace and civility, but there will never be true peace on this side of the new earth.

Idol of Fruitfulness

There is another way that the fruitlessness of work can gnaw at us. This is when we are placing hope in work and in its outcomes that it cannot bear. In other words, we want our work to be a monument of success – because we need that success! This twists fruitfulness inward. Like those building the tower of Babel, we want a name for ourselves, even if it is against God’s purposes and intentions. A test for this is if fruitlessness and frustration lead us to prayer or self-pity.

In our fallen world, work frustrations can be an opportunity for closeness to God. God can use it to reorder our hearts, to redirect our loves. What might look like the same on the outside, two people going to work facing frustrations, can be an opportunity for faith and prayer for a Christian and complete frustration and meaningless for someone else.

Work Becomes Futile

Even when work is fruitful, and things are going well, it can be futile. It can seem pointless in both the work itself and in its aim. It can seem that no matter how much progress we make, there is nothing that lasts.

Disaster or Death

Many may be feeling this way right now. After years of hard work, great toil, sweat, and tears, a virus comes and wipes out all they have worked hard for. The sickness and death that sin brought into the world undermine the good toil that takes place.

Even if a disaster does not come, there are people who build businesses leave them to others either in life or death, and it comes crashing down. Ecclesiastes 2:18-20 says this, “I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun.”

This is something that is brought up again and again in the book of Ecclesiastes. The book praises the virtue of work in places, but it also hammers home the futility of work.

Specialization

The modern world reinforces futility through the emphasis on specialization. In an effort for speed and efficiency, assembly lines can dehumanize our work. It does this by removing us from the end product of our work. We can feel there is no worth or value in the work because we don’t see how God uses us in our vocation.

I saw this while working in youth ministry. Investing in students for them to leave, go off to some college town like this one, and never see them again! 

Disordered Ends

Another way that work is futile is the disordered way that it is used. Some invent things to help others, only to see them used to hurt others. The gift of nuclear energy could promote human flourishing or decimate human populations, for instance. Technology that can save lives in a hospital room can be used in an abortion clinic to take lives. A camera lens that can capture a beautiful wedding day can be used to exploit children for depraved and perverted use.

Particular Callings Bring Particular Temptations

I came across this insight in my study this week and thought it was particularly thought-provoking as it relates to this concept. It relates to both this idea and the idea of our disordered work and us as disordered workers. Instead of work being a place to bring God glory, it becomes an occasion for sin and draws out particular sins. Sin is missing the mark. It is a deviation from the good. It is rebellion against God and his design. 

Abraham Kuyper said this,

We can say that each vocation brings with it, to varying degrees, a certain temptation to sin and a certain protection against sin. This generally has the effect that everyone is strongly opposed to the sin against which his vocation offers protection, but conversely considers less serious the sin that his vocation makes appealing.^[1]

An Engineer mentioned how his job always demanded him to be looking for problems in designs and constantly striving to make things better. This lends itself well to critical thinking and discernment. But, he commented, pointing out issues doesn’t translate so well at home! He could lack the necessary patience, gentleness, and forbearance.

Transition

Of course, in each of these things, we acknowledge that it is not just work itself that is disordered. Workers are also disordered. This is where we now turn. Let’s look back at Genesis 3 as we tease this out.

2. The Fall Disorders Workers

The Fall affected work, but did you notice what also changed? Before the Fall, Adam and Eve were in harmony; there was perfect peace and goodness on the earth. Afterward, they start pointing fingers at each other and at God himself. Relationships are shattered—people with one another, and people with God.

Working as a Sinful Person

We need to acknowledge that we come to work as people who have are affected by the Fall of Adam. Romans 5 tells us that, 12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”^[1]

Biblical Portrayal of Selfishness at Work

Sin has affected us all. It has turned us in on ourselves, seeking to elevate ourselves over God, as Romans 1 tells us. We align ourselves not with the good purposes of God but with the enemy of God, Satan. This difference is seen right away. Cain and Abel are working and bring sacrifices to God, but one brother is bent inward. When his sacrifice didn’t please the Lord, Cain was concerned about himself and not pleasing the Lord. Jim Hamilton writes, “Cain’s anger at the Lord’s displeasure seems to arise from Cain’s concern for Cain…Rather than working to please the Lord, and rather than using the fruit of his work to please the Lord, Cain was concerned about himself as he worked and as he decided what to do with the fruit of his work.”^[2]

Our Selfishness at Work

What does this mean for us and our work? Even if your work was perfect and nothing was affected by the Fall at all, the moment you show up, it’s all messed up. Here’s the problem. We can nod our heads about the difficulties of work, shake our fists at the fruitlessness, and never recognize that there are some big issues with us as well. This reminds me of the story about GK Chesterton. The Times sent out an inquiry to famous authors asking what was wrong with the world. Chesterton responded. “Dear Sir, I am,  Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”

It’s just not Chesterton who can say that; it’s all of us. We are sinful; we – just like Adam and Eve – place ourselves where God alone belongs. Instead of seeing good what he calls good, we redefine goodness to that which promotes ourselves. This is about this in our work. We can cover up our mistakes at work, pushing the consequences onto someone else. The customer pays the price for our laziness or lack of attention to detail. We call it good, not because it is, but because it is a way to elevate ourselves. We are centered not on God’s glory and human flourishing, but on our glory and promotion.

As Christians, we should know that we are prone to this and desire to live differently. To come to Christ, we have confessed and turned from our sin and humbled ourselves before the true God. We have trusted in His way, not our own. His Way is Jesus. Jesus also shows us how to live. The one who deserves to be served by all became a servant. Reflecting Christ is not in a life of self-promotion but in a life of service. That doesn’t mean we can’t advance in positions, but it does mean that we see it as additional opportunities to serve others.

Multifaceted Sinners

The way this operates and affects work has as many facets as we have sin in our life. We can elevate one thing in our life to ultimate importance when it should never be. We can justify neglecting our family by saying that we are working to support them. We can justify being lazy at work by saying that we are prioritizing our families. We can pit things against each other that don’t need to be pitted because of our sin and selfishness. 

Working with Sinful People

Next, it is true that we are not the only sinners in the room. If you work with anyone else or do business with anyone else, you are dealing with other people who can be selfish, cut corners, and elevate themselves above others. That doesn’t devalue the good work they produce, but it complicates and makes work difficult. 

There are also complicating ethical factors when working with a team that desires an immoral business practice or aligns with un-Biblical values for the purpose of marketing strategy. Where does that leave you as an employee? What does that mean for your calling?  

Sinful people create unjust systems

Maybe you are thinking of other ways that sinful people corrupt work. While we could list many more, I believe that a good general category is “sinners working the system.” By this, we can put all those who use their work or their position in ungodly and unjust ways.

Some positions have more authority and, therefore, responsibility than others. To use a high position to serve oneself, rather than serving others, is a greater temptation and has more severe consequences. This has had disastrous consequences in our history as well, when systems are created that perpetuate evil intentions in work. Think of the slave trade. A system established to profit some while dehumanizing and stealing from others. Additional systems were put in place to make sure that it continues to benefit certain people over others. Another system like this could be something like human trafficking. The system, from start to finish, is evil, giving birth to more evil. 

Conclusion

There is not an aspect of work that the Fall does not touch, we might say. But, it can’t destroy the created goodness of work as designed by God. Sin complicates, mars, and covers, but it does not replace.

I don’t want us to leave here without hope. We have just discussed a multitude of ways that the Fall has affected our work. The Fall has indeed wreaked havoc on this earth. But, as we learned last week, part of what our work is doing is bringing order to chaos. This is true before the Fall, and it is true after the Fall. In fact, as Christians, we are people who have been redeemed by Christ. Our lives point backward to what God intended and forward to what life will be like. That’s part of what it means to be salt and light in this world. Al Wolters, who wrote a classic book on the Christian worldview, said it like this, “God doesn’t make junk, and he does not junk what he has made.” He is at work, redeeming all things to himself in Christ.

Romans 8:18-25 says, ¹⁸ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. ²³ And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

We are a part of the already/not yet. Christ has already come to this earth; he has risen as the first fruit of the new way of living. We are redeemed by Christ, but we still wait for the final restoration of all things. In the meantime, we participate in his work right now.

This relates to Isaac Watts’ song, Joy to the World. This song is often sung around Christmas, but could be better placed as talking about not the first coming but the second coming of Jesus. One of the lines in there says,

“No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found,

Far as, far as, the curse is found.”

One day, Jesus is coming back to set all things right. But, even now in the meantime, as we sing those words this Christmas season, we can have hope that even now we get to foreshadow that great day. Christ has come – he took the curse on himself to bring freedom – one day it will be fully realized. What a day of rejoicing that will be. Let’s pray.

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^[1] Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World: The Doctrinal Section, ed. Jordan J. Ballor, J. Daryl Charles, and Melvin Flikkema, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas, vol. 2, Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; Acton Institute, 2019), 259.

^[2] James M. Hamilton, Work and Our Labor in the Lord, Short Studies in Biblical Theology Series (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2017), 45.