Ecclesiastes 1:3 (NKJV) — "What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun?"
The answer this sermon gives. Under the sun, none — Qoheleth did the accounting honestly and there is nothing left over at the end of it. But the man is not going to stay under the sun. Work was given before the fall and was never withdrawn; what the fall added was futility, not labour; and Scripture closes with the same two activities Eden assigned, service and rule, named as the content of eternity. The profit is real, and it is on the other side of a resurrection.
Key Scripture Passages
Ecclesiastes 1:3; 2:22–24 — The complaint, stated inside the canon rather than against it. Yitron, “profit,” is a merchant’s word for what remains after the accounts are settled.
Genesis 1:26–28; 2:15 — Work is assigned before the fall, and the two verbs used for it are the verbs later used of priests serving in the tabernacle.
Genesis 3:17–19 — The curse falls on the ground, not on the working of it. What is added is itstsavon, painful toil.
Genesis 5:29; Romans 8:20–22 — Lamech names his son in hope of relief from exactly that word; Paul hears the same groan in the whole creation, and calls it labour pains rather than a death rattle.
Genesis 11:3–4; Exodus 1:13–14 — The same commission, running without God, builds a tower and then builds an empire. Scripture marks the turn with building materials, then puts Eden’s own verb in the mouths of the taskmasters.
Exodus 15:17–18; Deuteronomy 5:12–15 — God establishes the work of His own hands, and legislates rest on behalf of people who were once not permitted any.
1 Samuel 8:11–18; 1 Kings 5:13; 12:4; Amos 5:11, 18 — Israel becomes what it was delivered from, and the day of the LORD arrives as the answer to stolen labour rather than as national vindication.
Deuteronomy 8:11–18 — The characteristic sin of successful work: my power and the might of my hand.
Mark 6:3; Galatians 3:13; Colossians 3:22–4:1 — God became a man with a trade, took the curse in the place of the cursed, and then addressed the servant and the master in a single breath.
1 Corinthians 3:11–15; 15:58 — The Day assays work rather than annihilating it, and the labour is not in vain because the body rises.
Revelation 22:3–5 — “His servants shall serve Him… and they shall reign.” Eden’s verb, in the sentence that announces the curse is gone.
Work in Three States
In the Garden
Under the Curse
Restored
The assignment
Tend and keep; be fruitful, fill, subdue
Unchanged — restated to Noah after the flood
Serve and reign
The ground
Yields to the hand that works it
Cursed; thorns and thistles
No more curse
What it costs
Nothing a person cannot spare
Sweat, painful toil, a lifetime of it
Nothing a person cannot spare
What it yields
Communion with God in the working
Bread today, and nothing that remains
Everything it should
Text
Genesis 1:26–28; 2:15
Genesis 3:17–19; Ecclesiastes 2:22–23
Revelation 22:3–5
Dangers to Avoid
Treating work itself as the curse. Read Genesis 3 closely: God curses the ground. The working of it was given two chapters earlier, in a world He had just called very good. A theology that treats Monday as punishment has misread which of the two things God actually condemned — and it leaves nothing to hope for except escape.
Treating work as the thing that makes a person matter. Babel and Deuteronomy 8:17 are the same sin at two scales: let us make a name for ourselves, and my power and the might of my hand. Work is a gift given to a creature, not a case a creature makes for himself. The person who cannot work — through age, illness, or a market that has no place for them — is no less what God made.
Over-claiming what survives. Scripture promises that labour in the Lord is not in vain and that the nations bring their glory into the city. It does not promise that the particular thing you built will stand there in the form you built it. Say the promise, and do not say more than the promise says.
Turning the sermon into labour politics. Exodus, Amos and 1 Kings carry a sharp economic judgment on their own terms, and they carry it further than most political programs would. Let the texts speak and stay out of their way.
Gospel Foundation
None of this is a call to work harder. The sermon’s whole argument runs the other direction: the futility is real, it is not the worker’s fault, and it is not the worker’s to fix. The one who lifts it is a carpenter — a man with a trade and calloused hands who was hung on a tree, which is where the curse of Genesis 3 finally landed, and who came out of the grave three days later with the work of God finished in His hands.
Already true, for anyone in Christ:
The curse has been borne, and not by you (Galatians 3:13).
Your standing before God does not rest on the quality of your output; the worker is saved even where the work burns (1 Corinthians 3:15).
Ordinary work, done for Him, is received by Him — including work you did not choose and cannot leave (Colossians 3:23–24).
Your labour in the Lord is not in vain, because the body rises (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Closing
“And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him.” — Revelation 22:3 (NKJV)
The last picture Scripture gives of redeemed humanity is not a picture of rest from work. It is a picture of work without want — service offered to God and received by Him, and a world that no longer fights back. Whatever a person aches for on a Monday morning, it was never less work. It was this.
