From Toil to Tending
God’s not asking you to PRODUCE it… He’s asking you to tend it.
We were created for rest… but we live in TOIL
Jesus doesn’t just GIVE rest. He IS our rest.
Genesis 1:26-27
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Genesis 1:31
Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Genesis 2:1-3
Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. 2 And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
Ephesians 2:10
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Genesis 2:15
Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
Genesis 3:17-19
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In TOIL you shall eat of it All the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. 19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.”
Tending became Toiling
Before sin: work was worship
After sin: work became survival
Psalm 127:1
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Revelation 13:8
…the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world
Exodus 6
go tell the Israelites that I have heard their cries and have come to deliver them and to bring them into the land of Promise…Let My people go so they can Worship me…
They weren’t freed just from something, They were freed for something.
Then He brings them to The Promised Land, but it was not about a place. It was about restored purpose.
Joshua 21:44
‘The Lord gave them rest on every side.’
Rest is not a day, Rest is a Person.
Matthew 11:28
‘Come to Me… and I will give you rest.’