Because of Adam

Genesis 3:17

“…Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.”

It seems like all around us we have a work problem. There are help wanted signs in every other business window.  Yet there are also programs that are designed to help the misfortunate that seem to breed a type of individual that thrives on handouts.  We all have been at a place where we need a helping hand.  That is just it, a “helping hand” not a “handout hand”.  Lately, most of us in the good-old USA got a stimulus check to help things out on the financial side.  While this “help” was needed in so many situations it has ballooned into a “handout.”  Businesses cannot find people that will work. One owner said that he interviews an applicant and gave them the job. But then the person never came back even though they would have been hired. Work is a God thing yet so many want to avoid it.  

In Genesis chapter 3, we find God handing out a punishment to a couple of well-known disobedient creations, Adam and Eve. God tells Eve that she will have pain in childbirth and He tells Adam, “You will have to work for your food.”  This is surprising because it shows that Adam did not have to work the ground before, food was at every turn in the garden.  Verse 18 tells us that the ground will produce thorns and thistles for us and it goes on to say that we will have sweat to eat.  Sounds familiar to all of us working stiffs. 

While we often don’t like the work, it is from God. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 that if a man does not work let him not eat.  Plain as day. We must work if we want to eat.  Finding and searching for ways to get out of work seems like a direct opposite move away from God.  The Bible also says in Colossians 3:23 that “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” It does not say that we should sit and do nothing as unto the Lord.  We are cursed into working all of our lives because of Adam. However, praise the Lord for Jesus who came to redeem us from our sins and give a way back to the Lord to spend eternity with Him. What Adam and Eve messed up Jesus fixed. 

So then why is work still something we have to do?  Because once Adam and Eve were disobedient, they were cast out of the garden. Gone were days of ‘I don’t have to work food’ and ‘the ground does not need working’.  Therefore, if you see someone not working on purpose and perpetually mooching off others, they are not following the plan of the Lord.  While God gave a punishment for Adam and Eve and it became a lifestyle we live under until we go to meet Jesus in heaven.  Work is here to stay and it is what the Lord told us to do.  Today, make a choice to start working and be accountable to someone for your actions.  Work is not a four-letter word but rather a gift from the Lord that we can magnify Him in.  Do everything as unto the Lord. In the in-between, we work, provide, and produce all for the glory of the Lord.  Believe it or not, when Jesus called the disciples fishers of men, He was calling them to the “WORK” of the gospel.  Embrace your work because God blesses those who are doers, not just hearers only.