Are You Working for Nothing?

‘Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?’

This is a great question to ask, but there are many confusing elements to it; How do I know if I am spending my money for bread, which is not really bread; How do I know what really satisfies; where do I find such things; what is this person talking about??

The fact of the matter is that the one speaking is talking to those who are spending their money on food, legitimate, physical, scrumptious meals! So the question put to them was strange to them as it is strange to you and I; as a result some of the same questions were perhaps forged in their own hearts just as in ours today. The obvious answer is, I am eating real bread, would you have me steal it, or are you suggesting that I not eat food? But the obvious answer is not the one the speaker is looking for. We get a better clue when he continues: ‘and your labor for that which does not satisfy?’

Well these words come from the mouth of a prophet in the Bible’s Old Testament, Isaiah is his name. His audience was the people of Israel, the people whom God had made into a nation and himself established. In the New Testament we find Jesus saying the same thing as Isaiah and to the same people: ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ Jesus points out that work and labor is not an end in itself.

Friend, do you find that life itself is wearisome, that your days are spent toiling and working but to no lasting end? Why do you work so hard and live for a job that one-day you will retire from? Work is a good and right thing, but only when it is not done to give meaning to life. Rest, you will find, does not come in your seventies when you have retired, no rest can be found at any moment! Jesus says, ‘I will give you rest.’ That offer is for now and for eternity. We strive to succeed and aim at something—anything!—that we can imagine will satisfy us that will give us pleasant thoughts as we lay our heads down at night to sleep, but nothing less than Jesus Christ will give your soul rest--for it is your soul that has kept your mind and body weary and tired. You are unsettled because your conscience knows that there is a God who demands worship, yet you find yourself resisting him. Friend, you will not rest until you have given up and seen your own striving at satisfaction in everything but God as sin before God. Jesus did the work that was needed, he paid for our sins by being unjustly murdered.

Isaiah goes on to say, ‘Seek the LORD while he may yet be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.’ Do you find that you are sinful and on a smaller scale even your thoughts are evil? No one can say that they have never wrongly thought about someone--maybe wishing that person driving slowly in front of you never existed--or have always been 100 percent honest in every situation--maybe not all of your sources for your paper are actual sources--or have wrongly wished that someone else’s possessions belonged to you--like their income, their children, their spouse. Let us joyfully acknowledge our sin, no one except God has ever lived and was perfect. But go to God for he will have compassion and even though we have sinned against him he will abundantly pardon.

Are you laboring for things, which will not satisfy you? Are you doing everything except the one thing that will give you rest? As you lay down to sleep are you still laboring because something is awry? You are in a good place then, no one is perfect; go to God with your sin.