Work Outside of Eden

Do you love your job?  Do you love to work?  Some people do love their jobs and some love to work, but most people would probably say a big “no” to both of those questions.  We have been talking about work in its ideal form in Genesis 1 and 2, but in Genesis 3, with the Fall, everything changed including work.  Work became toil.  As a result of the curse we will see today, work became more difficult, unpleasant and liable to failure and unintended consequences.  Men and women must still be fruitful, must still multiply, must still govern. But now, a second layer of work must also be accomplished - the work of healing, repairing, and restoring the things that go wrong and the evils that are committed.  Roughly speaking, there is twice as much work to do now than there was in the garden. Work is not less important to God’s plan, but more. Today, let’s look at the reality of work outside the garden.