30 Bible Verses about Useless Labour

If I am guilty, why then weary myself in vain?

In all your dwellings, the cities will be laid waste and the high places ruined so that your altars will be laid waste and ruined, your idols will be shattered and demolished, your incense altars will be broken down, and your works wiped out.

Be sure of this! The Lord who commands armies has decreed: The nations' efforts will go up in smoke; their exhausting work will be for nothing.

Now David had been thinking, "In vain I guarded everything that belonged to this man in the desert. I didn't take anything from him. But he has repaid my good with evil.

(Ayin) Our eyes continually failed us as we looked in vain for help. From our watchtowers we watched for a nation that could not rescue us.

Your strength will be used up in vain, your land will not give its yield, and the trees of the land will not produce their fruit.

This is what the Lord who rules over all says, "Babylon's thick wall will be completely demolished. Her high gates will be set on fire. The peoples strive for what does not satisfy. The nations grow weary trying to get what will be destroyed."

It is vain for you to rise early, come home late, and work so hard for your food. Yes, he can provide for those whom he loves even when they sleep.

I for my part will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it.

Surely it is futile to spread a net in plain sight of any bird,

The fiery bellows of judgment burn fiercely. But there is too much dross to be removed. The process of refining them has proved useless. The wicked have not been purged.

And you, Zion, city doomed to destruction, you accomplish nothing by wearing a beautiful dress, decking yourself out in jewels of gold, and putting on eye shadow! You are making yourself beautiful for nothing. Your lovers spurn you. They want to kill you.

I fear for you that my work for you may have been in vain.

But I thought, "I have worked in vain; I have expended my energy for absolutely nothing." But the Lord will vindicate me; my God will reward me.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls and will give an account for their work. Let them do this with joy and not with complaints, for this would be no advantage for you.

Egypt is totally incapable of helping. For this reason I call her 'Proud one who is silenced.'"

"It did no good for me to punish your people. They did not respond to such correction. You slaughtered your prophets like a voracious lion."

and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm and eat well," but you do not give them what the body needs, what good is it?

He must rededicate to the Lord the days of his separation and bring a male lamb in its first year as a reparation offering, but the former days will not be counted because his separation was defiled.

They will console you when you see their behavior and their deeds, because you will know that it was not without reason that I have done everything which I have done in it, declares the sovereign Lord."

They will know that I am the Lord; my threats to bring this catastrophe on them were not empty.'

I went there because of a revelation and presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did so only in a private meeting with the influential people, to make sure that I was not running -- or had not run -- in vain.

So when I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter somehow tempted you and our toil had proven useless.

Have you suffered so many things for nothing? -- if indeed it was for nothing.

They will not work in vain, or give birth to children that will experience disaster. For the Lord will bless their children and their descendants.

But I am sending these brothers so that our boasting about you may not be empty in this case, so that you may be ready just as I kept telling them.

by holding on to the word of life so that on the day of Christ I will have a reason to boast that I did not run in vain nor labor in vain.

So I do not run uncertainly or box like one who hits only air.

So then, dear brothers and sisters, be firm. Do not be moved! Always be outstanding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

For you yourselves know, brothers and sisters, about our coming to you -- it has not proven to be purposeless.