Sermon Recap: Emmanuel Labor Pt. 1
Speaker: Pastor Josh Jansen
Read: Genesis 1:26-28, 31, 3:16-19; 1 Corinthians 15:21-22
Work is a reality for many of us today, whether we work at home or go into a job at some other location. With a 40-hour work-week, we spent half our lives working and sleeping. We work for different reasons: some to get and have certain things in life, some for achievement or to get ahead in life, and some for fulfillment or to have a sense of accomplishment. We may also have different feelings about work. Some dread going to work and see it as a curse, others experience anxiety, frustration, sleepless nights and burn-out. But God’s perspective of work differs from ours. Scripture tells us that God established work when He placed humanity in the Garden of Eden. He had created everything in perfect balance and gave man the responsibility to manage His creation. His original design was for man to love his work and to prosper in it. Yet when Adam disobeyed God by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for the first time the ground was cursed and his work became a toil, fruitless and frustrating. He would now eat by the sweat of his brow.
God designed work to be a service to humanity and a form of worship, not as a means to an end. It was never His intention for anxiety or frustration to steal our joy for work, as work is intended to be a blessing and not a curse. Whereas because of his fall, Adam lost his identity and intimacy with God, Jesus, the last Adam re-established the garden relationship with humanity. Through our relationship with Christ, we can live out God’s true purposes for work. We can find work to be a joy as we carry out our given abilities; We can seek to understand how our work serves humanity, and we can view work as worship while we carry out our respective responsibilities as if we are doing them unto the Lord.
GROUP QUESTIONS:
1. What resonated with you as you listened to this sermon and reviewed it?
2. What are your true feelings about your job/work?
3. When have you lost sleep because of your job? Looking back, what do you attribute that to?
4. When was the last time you viewed your work with joy? What about it brought joy to you?
5. How can your job/work be a service to humanity?
6. How do you think your work can be a form of worship?
7. It was said that work is bigger than we are. What does this mean to you?
8. It was said that Jesus, the last Adam, re-established the garden relationship with humanity. What does this mean to you?
