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“The Lord’s work”
“Kingdom work”
“Church work”
When you hear those phrases what types of things come to mind? Take a moment to think about it.
Now, I’d be willing to bet your list most likely consisted of things like:
- professional ministry / preaching
- evangelizing / making converts
- planting church organizations
- mission work
- earning some sort of ministry degree
- attending (or leading) worship services
- running church programs
- hosting bible studies
- teaching bible classes
And don’t get me wrong, those aren’t bad things….but the question I had for myself, and the one I’d offer to you is: Are those things a full and accurate representation of God’s idea of kingdom work?
To begin that exploration I’ll ask you another question: Did that list stir in your heart feelings of exhilaration? Adventure? Passion? Creativity? Freedom? Joy? Pleasure? Wonder? Sensuality? (And no, that last one wasn’t a typo)
I’m be willing to bet that for most people the answer would be “no” on most accounts.
So, you have to ask yourself: “Is the work God has in mind for His people supposed to stir up those feelings? Does He really expect His work to be exhilarating, freeing, empowering, and bursting with creativity??”
Well, that’s precisely what we’re here to explore in this writing. And to answer the question, we’re going to go back to the beginning. Back to the garden — back to the clearest picture (short of Jesus himself) of what real work looks like under God’s rule. This means we’ll be taking a fresh walk through the parts of Genesis 1 & 2 that directly relate to the human experience and draw out some insights to see the work that God had in mind when He created us.
With the preamble out of the way, let’s dive in!
The Work of The Garden
Genesis 1
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
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So, God creates man and woman, blesses them both, and the very first command/expectation gives them is to “be fruitful and increase in number”. Quick question: Any ideas as to what’s involved in the process of humans “being fruitful” and “increasing in number”?
Uh huh. Yeah. That was part of God’s first command to mankind.
Have you ever noticed that? God welcomed humans into a supremely pleasurable world and the first thing he did was invite them into an even deeper exploration of the delicacies of his creation.
But don’t stop there with that command, go even deeper. Because the implications are more profound than the physical…
God creates a world (and universe) that is literally beyond our wildest dreams — and every molecule of it is good. He then places a single man and woman in the garden, breathing life into them for the very purpose of them experiencing and enjoying Him through interacting with Him and His world — but He didn’t want it to stay that way…
What God was communicating in His “be fruitful and increase in number” command was that He desired more people so they could enjoy Him and the world He’d made!
These first commands reveal the heart of a generous and excited father who is eager to share Himself and His world with us! And His goodness is further reinforced by his subsequent command to rule the world He created and the creatures He put in it. Talk about a gift!
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Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.”
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As a follow-up, God blesses humanity (as well as the other creatures) with an unimaginable variety of fine foods on which to dine and enjoy.
And make sure you don’t miss an important word there: gave. God gave every tree and their fruit to them — they didn’t have to work and provide it for themselves.
Keep that in mind, because God freely giving will be a recurring theme.
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Genesis 2
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
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Here we have yet another example of God’s lavish provision. He creates the garden and puts man in it to tend it and take care of it. It’s almost like God’s saying: “I’ve done the hard work, now partner with me in — not only keeping all this — but making it better.”
But then God finally gives man a prohibition — let’s quickly explore that prohibition.
God warns man not to eat from a certain tree; this forbidden tree being one out of out of who-knows-how-many thousands of types of trees. So, not only is this restriction not restrictive at all, but the “why” behind the restriction is important for us to note. God didn’t prohibit man from eating the one tree because to eat from it would make Him angry, or because doing so would cause him to take back some reward that He’d been dangling out in front of man as motivation. Also, notice God didn’t say “for when you eat from it I will surely kill you“. No, He didn’t threaten them with His wrath, he was simply communicating the natural consequences that choice would bring. You see, God didn’t want man to eat the fruit of that particular tree because He knew it would result in the death of His children (more on this later). And like any good parent, death was the last thing that He wanted for His children.
So, the one restriction that we see so far in the garden experience was purely for our protection and out of concern for our well-being — not for us to prove anything, earn anything, or avoid God’s punishment.
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The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
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This is the type of God we serve. All of the things He’s already provided and He’s still looking out for what we need.
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Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
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This whole situation is incredible to me.
No doubt, man’s first days had been a staggering and awe-inducing experience; Man was brought from non-existence to existence — he’s now seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and hearing all the never-before-seen/smelled/tasted/felt/heard things that God put in His world. Surely man’s experience to this point had been incredible enough already, but God ups the ante (again) by personally parading the full array of His creatures in front of man….but did you catch why God did this?
He wanted to see what man would name them! And He said that whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name!
Are you kidding me?! How empowering is that??
This doesn’t paint a picture of a distant, cold deity who’s lobbing wearisome, uninspiring religious commands from on high with the hopes that feeble humanity wouldn’t disappoint Him…no…this is the picture of an excited, doting father! A present and deeply engaged father who is excited to:
1) Show His amazing world off to his son
2) Witness ,and encourage, His son’s budding creativity (one of the many traits he inherited from his Father) and
3) Work in partnership with his child (“See, I’ve created them, now I want you to name them!)
Man’s “work” here was to essentially explore and marvel at all the wonderful things God had made, enjoy them, and begin to — with his father’s blessing — take ownership of them.
Wow, guys.
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But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
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Here, God acts on His earlier observation of man’s lack of companionship and (again) provides him with what he needs.
Despite all of the amazing things man had been given by God in this place, man was still missing something significant. A true peer. Someone just like him on whom he could pour out his passions. While man surely felt that something was missing in his beautiful experience, he was still new to this whole “life” thing. So, how was he supposed to know what his feelings of longing meant or how to address them? The answer is that he wouldn’t.
But that gives us another insight into this King and His kingdom: He knows our needs better than we do (well before we do) and He is deeply concerned about them. And not only does He want to meet our needs…He wants to exceed our expectations! And that’s precisely what He did when He made woman.
The woman that God made for man both fully met his needs and totally exceeded his expectations. She was so incredible that all he could do was start speaking poetry! (See Gen. 2:23).
Now, I can guarantee you this…if man had been tasked with coming up with the thing that would best meet the indescribable need that was within him, his ideas would have fallen woefully short of what God ultimately provided.
But that’s precisely the kind of work that God does for us. He meets indescribable need with unfathomable provision.
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Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
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Man and woman existed in a state of complete vulnerability and openness. No shame. No condemnation. No insecurity. No hiding and no faking.
And there you have it, folks. Genesis 1 & 2 is an accounting of existence as God intended it to be. It’s the picture of His good kingdom and its work; and what we see is an existence that is bookended by humans “being fruitful and multiplying” *wink wink* on one end, and “being naked and feeling no shame” on the other.
At this point, if you’re thinking something along the lines of: “Man, this sounds so wild and free!”….You’d be right! Because it is! The life we’ve just gotten a glimpse of is anything but drudgery or fear-induced favor-earning.
And that’s precisely what God’s shown us work looks like in His kingdom. Work in His kingdom isn’t really work.
Work in God’s kingdom is exploration, exhilaration, recreation, refreshment, community, partnership, empowerment, freedom, intimacy, vulnerability, dignity, and sensuality — the work of the Kingdom powerfully engages all of the senses and stirs the deepest passions of our hearts!
Said differently: God’s work is nothing other than full and abundant life!
So When Did “Work” Change?
…because it definitely changed.
Well, it changed when we turned on God and His plan. We fell.
We fell for the lie that the One that had freely provided us with everything was still holding out on us, and that we would need to take hold of the reigns and start providing for ourselves to ensure that we wouldn’t miss out on anything.
The moment when man and woman fell for this sweet-tasting lie was the moment work became labor.
Look at God’s description of man and woman’s new existence as a result of their rebellion:
To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful 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 listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“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.”
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Did you notice that? Two things that weren’t a part of the human experience to this point have now been introduced: labor and toil.
Labor (n) – work, especially hard physical work
Toil (n) – exhausting physical labor
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And not just any labor and toil, but painful labor and toil.
Before, man and woman had it easy. While man and woman did work in God’s kingdom, we see that that work was neither exhausting nor dull. God did the hard work and man and woman simply worked with God in the beautiful creation that He provided — but now they would no longer work with His creation; instead, they would labor in it and against it. Woman would now experience excruciating pain in child labor, and man would experience the painstaking — and at times — unforgiving grind of soil labor.
And that is why God didn’t want us to eat from that one tree. Because that tree isn’t rooted Him, instead, it’s rooted in our self-sufficiency. And in His wisdom He knew its true fruit — a life of intense, excruciating, self-reliant, and anxiety-inducing labor where we have to make things happen by our own wisdom and effort.
Which, if we’re being honest, describes the religious experience as well — the burden ultimately being on us to make things happen by our own wisdom and effort, all-the-while being nagged by the fear that both may be insufficient.
Labor and Delivery
But there’s good news! We weren’t made for religion! It was never God’s desire for us!
We introduced labor and toil (the religious varieties included) when we ate of the forbidden fruit. But our gracious Father delivered us from our labor — granting us access again into the life of the garden — through a connection with His son, Jesus.
So, I leave you with this to think about:
“Are we, as the church — the ekklesia — abiding in an existence of fullness, abundance, freedom, joy, and empowerment like we see described in the garden? Or do we, as Christians, exist in a state of collective laboring for the purpose of gaining/maintaining our salvation?”
Because it should be the former. And if that isn’t what the church community is, then I can say confidently that we have lost sight of who and what we are.
The church is not supposed to be a collection of individual saved people that happen to gather together regularly to do their commanded list of duties. The church is a community of people who are given over to a King of a different, invading kingdom. And this kingdom is a radical, “upside down” kingdom that conquers with love and unity — a kingdom that exists in a state of freedom, joy, peace, humility, and abundance.
The church is supposed to be a present-day foreshadowing of the existence that is to come in full when its conquering King returns.
Question: When the King returns and fully re-establishes his kingdom, will things look more like the bullet list at the top of this writing? Or will it look more like the picture in Genesis 1 & 2 (and Revelation 21 & 22, for that matter)?
Follow-up question: Does our current existence ring with echoes of the garden? Or does is sound with the cymbals of the efforts of men?
We need to make sure that we have a clear view of the existence that God made us for, and not muddy that view with the existence that we “fell” into and have labored in since.
We’ve got a beautiful existence at our fingertips. And the enemy doesn’t want us to see the beauty of the LIFE that we have access to. Don’t let him fool you into thinking you are supposed to be a part of dull, dry, laborious religious existence.
God wants His people to LIVE.
And that LIFE starts and ends with HIM.
If you feel like you’ve been trapped in the hamster-wheel of “earning” God’s favor, then stop.
He never put you on that wheel, He doesn’t want you there.
Stop and sit with the Father. Tell Him that you’re tired and thirsty from your laboring and that you want rest — that you want Him.
You’ll begin to find Him and the refreshment that He freely gives.
Start your new LIFE there and begin your journey with Him. He will provide for you the things you will need to continue to find Him and kingdom.
Reverse the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in your life. Tell God you want to stop trusting in yourself and let Him know that you’re ready to rest in Him again. Tell Him that you’re ready for His work and His life.
Be blessed on your new journey.
Your brother in light work,
Alex