The Work

Paul says in Ephesians 2, verse 10, for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. The Christian faith is not let go and let God.

You've heard that one many times, I'm sure. Rather, it's by grace you've been saved through faith and now get to work. We don't work for salvation, we've been saved, and now we get to work. We have work to do. And there's an authority that God has placed under which we will do this work.

Now, I want to read something to you. This is from John Murray, who was a former professor at Westminster Seminary, and he says this, there are few things more distasteful to modern man than subjection to authority and the demand for obedience to authority. Obedience to God or man, keeping the commandments of God or man, run completely against his conception of freedom. It's because man has lost touch with integrity and honesty. He's out to do the least he can for the most he can get. He does not love his work. He has come to believe he's very miserable because of the work he has to do. Labor is a burden rather than a pleasure.

And I'm not saying this is universal, but is there any possibility of denying its prevalence? What do you think? I don't think so. Think about when businesses started to reopen during the pandemic. Were people coming back to work? Businesses shut down. My daughter's employer, the restaurant she was working at shut down because people didn't come back to work. Which you might not know, and I just found this out this week or last week, that there's something called an anti-work movement.

Let me read this to you. This is an article from the BBC. Two years into the pandemic, employees across the globe are tired. Record numbers of workers are leaving jobs in search of better options. These people are part of the anti-work movement which seeks to do away with economic order that underpins the modern workplace. Supporters of the anti-work movement believe people should self-organize and work only as much as needed rather than work in longer hours to create excess capital or goods. Anti-work movement. Hopefully none of you are members of the anti-work movement.

But in short, they don't want to work, and they don't want to be told what to do. You know, from the very beginning, God commanded man to work. God put the man in the garden and said, work it and keep it. And the order in which God did these things was good.

He looked and he saw that it was good. Things were the way they were supposed to be. But then the serpent spoke, and everything became twisted and corrupted and disordered.

Absolutely everything. The earth, the man, the woman, their relationship with each other, their relationship to God, with God, and their work. Their work became burdensome. That which was perfect turned into chaos, and evil people and evil work was their work was hard.

Evil was there and work was hard. In effect, the serpent said, you want to be free? Take a bite. You want your eyes to be open?

Take a bite. You'll be released from this bondage. You don't have to obey the Lord. This happened, this fall happened because man did not submit to God's authority.

Remember what I just read from Murray. He said, obedience to God or man run completely against man's conception of freedom. We don't want to be told what to do, and many times we don't want to work, and that's the truth. But Scripture is clear that there is an authority which is of divine origin. That's God Himself, and God Himself tells us that we are to submit to His authority. Christ commands us to be obedient, and submitting to God and His authority also means submitting to those He's put in positions of authority.

Pastor Monroe mentioned it this morning. The government let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there's no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. The Lord Himself was subject to the Roman government. Then there's church authority, leaders in the church. Obey your leaders, Hebrews says, and submit to them, for they are watching over your souls. And then husbands and wives, we heard that this morning. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, and wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. Parents and children, children, obey your parents. This is good.

This is right. And now tonight we're going to talk about slaves and masters. Bond servants, slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ. Now, not much of this, not much of the way we're supposed to live, much less our faith, makes sense to an unbelieving world. Obedience, and submission, and humility, and even suffering, none of it makes sense.

The cross does not make sense. The gospel and gospel living is foolishness in the eyes of the world. But remember what Paul said in Ephesians. He said, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might be now made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. In other words, the powers and the principalities see that Christ Himself is Lord, and He is reconciling to Himself a people. And He has given order to this new people, this new society, this royal priesthood. He's establishing order among His people, yes, even in the midst of a fallen and evil world.

So, in Christ's plan of reconciling all things to Himself, there is a place for authority, even human authority, and there's work that you and I have to do. So, in this passage, Paul is going to deal with masters and slaves, and he's going to deal with their relationships. And let me say a few things about slavery first. Slavery is part of a fallen and evil world.

We know this. Murder, genocide, racism, poverty, slavery, all of it is because of the fall. And people have suffered from these things from the very beginning. Slavery was a reality in the Old Testament.

Remember Egypt was in bondage, or Israel was in bondage in Egypt. And slavery was a reality in Paul's day. And it's a reality in one form or another today. But during the first century in the Roman Empire, slavery was a part of life.

It was an accepted reality. Now it didn't generally carry the same stigma that's associated with 18th century slave trade. It was rather, it was part of the social structure in the Roman Empire. It wasn't based on race.

It was based on circumstance and social standing. In other words, prisoners of war would be slaves. Poverty would get you into slavery.

Being born into slavery, you would be a slave. Some slaves were treated well. Some were educated. Some served as doctors. Some served as teachers. And often they could earn their freedom.

But here's the thing. Slaves were regarded as property to the point in the eyes of the law, they were regarded as possessions, things. Not people, things. They were, some say, a living possession, a talking tool, a property with a soul. They were things, not people.

And this is it. If a person, if someone is not truly human, when you dehumanize someone, you can justify treating them any way you want to. Think about the Holocaust. Think about Hitler.

Let me tell you what John Stott writes. He says, slaves were sometimes whipped, mutilated, imprisoned in chains. Their teeth were knocked out, their eyes gorged out. They were even thrown to wild beasts or crucified, and sometimes for the most trivial offenses. The fact that some slaves ran away, risking if caught branding, flogging, and even execution, while some others committed suicide is sufficient evidence that cruelty towards them was widespread. Slavery is evil. These people, slaves, we're going to find out, are created in the image of God. The gospel of Jesus Christ changes things.

Paul is going to tell us that. Did it wipe out slavery? Not immediately, but it gave slaves and masters a new perspective. It redefined the relationship between the slave and the master in a way that's completely counter-cultural. The slave is not only a human being, master, but he's your brother. He's created in the image of God, in the image of God. He's created in the image of God, and in Christ, He is your brother.

Completely counter-cultural. Think of Philemon. He was a slave owner. Onesimus ran away.

Then he's converted to Christianity. What does Paul do? What does Paul tell Philemon? He's sending Onesimus back. Did he tell Onesimus to run away, go hide?

No. I'm going to send him back, no longer as a bond servant, but more than a bond servant, a beloved brother, especially to me, a brother to the apostle, a brother to you, Philemon. Paul sends him back, and Paul elevates this slave to that of a brother.

You're one in Christ. The relationship has transformed, even though the legal status remains the same. And this doctrine, by the way, eventually undermines slavery. The Gospel changes everything.

Now, there's not a one-to-one correlation between masters and slaves and employees and employers, but the principles that we're going to talk about will apply to any situation in your work in any day and age. So, as we read this, keep in mind that Paul is writing to the church in which there were slaves, and there were slave owners. So, he's addressing slaves and—masters and slaves as believers in Christ. And the Gospel, he's saying, changes their perspective.

So, let's read this. This is Ephesians 6, 5 through 9. Bond servants, that's slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with sincere heart as you would with Christ, not by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as bond servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bond servant or is free. Masters do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he, who is both their master and yours, is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.

So, what's the command to bond servants, to slaves? Rebel. Start a riot. Picket.

Get a lawyer. No, obey. Obey.

Something we do not like to do. It's the same word that Paul uses in verse one when he says, children, obey your parents in the Lord. But here, Paul uses that little phrase with fear and trembling. Parallel passage in Colossians 3 says bond servants, obey your earthly masters, fearing the Lord. So, here's the first point.

I've got four. First point is this. The Christian slave, I'm going to use employee, does his work in the fear of the Lord. Now, as Pastor Monroe said this morning, that does not mean being afraid or terrified, but there is a reverence and respect for the power and authority of your boss, of the manager. Paul knew, and Jesus taught himself, that Caesar had a measure of control under God, and that authority was to be respected and obeyed. Now imagine Jesus, the Lord of glory, standing before Pilate. And he says, you would have no authority unless it was granted to you from above. But there he stood, the Lord, before this holy man, unholy man who would judge him. A holy man, holy man, God almighty in front of this man. But that's where his father had him.

Now, I know that it's difficult sometimes to respect the person, especially when you're treated badly or if your boss is a bit shady or incompetent or other things. But remember this, this is the point. The Lord put the man there or the woman there. The Lord did that. Think, for example, of Daniel in Babylon. He's serving an evil king. Does Daniel try to escape? Does he try to rebel?

No. He serves this king so well that the king made him ruler over the whole providence of Babylon. He showed respect for the king, but he knew the ultimate authority was God himself.

And serving the Babylonian king well, he was serving the Lord well. That's the fact. And you say, well, you know, I get it. But I'm not Daniel, and you don't know my boss. I mean, I work for Satan. No, I used to work for Satan.

I never saw you all there. Yeah, I worked for Satan. But I understand it. I understand it. I understand that there are difficult people who manage other people. But consider this. Consider that God is working all things together for our good and for His glory.

And there is a reason why you report to this particular person, right? Let me tell you what Calvin says. Calvin said God put certain people in these positions.

He called them stations, roles, stations, so that no one would overstep his boundaries. In other words, there's a post, a position in life assigned to each person to keep people from rushing out and going over the cliff. And Calvin said these posts, these positions, the boss, the employee, are so important that we're going to be judged in relation to it. That's what Paul's going to say. We're going to be judged according to how we operate in the workplace.

So, here's the question. Do you work in the fear of the Lord? Think of Joseph in Egypt. Here's Joseph, sold into slavery, but later becomes this successful man. He's in the Egyptian, the house of this Egyptian master, Potiphar. And the woman, Potiphar's wife, comes and tries to seduce Joseph.

And she even says now, no, I'm the boss now. Potiphar says I'm the boss. And what does Joseph do? He honors the Lord. Surely, he had a high regard for Potiphar, yes he did, but his higher authority was God Himself. He did well in the land of Egypt.

He honored those in Egypt. He worked hard, and above all, he honored the Lord. So, whether we serve godly leaders or unjust leaders, we obey as we would Christ in the fear of the Lord. The point is, there's a higher authority than your boss, than the master, and that higher authority is the Lord.

Second thing is this. A Christian employee is going to do his work as to the Lord and not to man. First, in the fear of the Lord. Second, as to the Lord.

Here's the parallel verse in Colossians 3. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. You and I represent the Lord in our work. Doesn't matter if you work at Calvary Church, if you work at Bank of America, you work at McDonald's.

It doesn't matter where you work. You and I work for the Lord. In that sense, all work is sacred. And to do anything else than to give a full day's work to your employer is to steal from that employer. All your work should be good enough to say, God, here it is.

There it is. Your primary responsibility is to serve the Lord Christ, and in doing so, your earthly masters will be served with excellence, and that's the truth. And ultimately, this is an issue of the heart. Paul says, obey with a sincere heart. Do the will of God from the heart. So, we're working unto the Lord from the heart. Now, think about this. Many on that day will say, Lord, Lord, didn't I do this?

Didn't I do that? And he's going to say, no. Depart from me.

I never knew you. So, the question is, where's your heart? Does your heart belong to the Lord? Are you doing it as unto the Lord? Do you work as unto the Lord?

Remember, apart from Him, you can do zero, nothing. So, we work as unto the Lord from a pure and sincere heart. That's the third point, and that is this. A Christian employee does his work from a sincere heart. Paul says, this means not by the way of eye service, not as people pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. No eye service, no lip service, no people pleasing, no showboating, no politics.

That's it. It's not uncommon, we've all seen this, for an employee to try to deceive their bosses into thinking they're something when they're not. They're working in front of the masters. They show great loyalty, great respect, but as soon as the master goes away, what do they do?

They slack off. They're good at playing office politics. I love you, boss. You're a wonderful boss.

You look nice today, nice suit. And they're charming the boss. They're good at self-promotion, and they're good at downplaying others like a Pharisee. They're operating under a pretense, and those who serve in this way are not single-minded.

They're double-minded, and it damages the Christian witness. And if that's you, let me tell you, everybody in the office knows you're doing it. I promise you, they know that. It's no secret. I can guarantee that people know what you're doing. You're not fooling people, and you're especially not fooling the Lord. And bosses and managers should be wary of such people, because with flattering lips and a double heart, they speak. Be careful. You and I, and every one of us here, should not be in the business of people pleasing.

No. The quality of our work is not based on whether the manager is watching or he's not watching. It's the same whether he's there or not. You and I serve the Lord. We have a higher calling. We serve Christ, and we're trying to do the will of God. So, if you do the will of the Lord, if you're serving Christ with your heart, everything's going to fall in line.

You want your boss's favor? You want the Lord's favor? Favor, fix your heart on Christ. And the purity of your heart will put away all of the hypocrisy, all the people pleasing, if your heart is right with the Lord. Serve Him with a pure heart. Serve Him with a pure and sincere heart.

This is the fourth point. A Christian employee knows that the Lord will reward him for good works. Nothing that you do good is done in vain.

Absolutely nothing. Now your supervisor may not think so. He may think not much of you. A bond servant, so to speak. And he may not even know you exist, but the Lord knows. The Lord knows. Nothing well done is ever done in vain. Boston may not thank you, and you may only get criticism and misunderstanding, but the Lord will reward you. Whoever gives a cup of water in my name will surely not lose his reward.

That's what Jesus says. I grew up in a small mill town, Eden, North Carolina. It was built by textile mills, really. And most of the adults in the town worked in the mills. We had a lot of mills. And most of them were not managers, but imagine this. These people for years, 30 and 40 years, go into these mills and doing the same job day after day after day.

Repetitive mill work. These are the same folks that used to sit in the pews at that little Baptist church I used to go to. And some of them were godly people. And now those mills are all gone. They're empty.

They're just shells, nobody in there. And the souls of most of these people are in eternity. And I have to wonder, in order to overcome the monotony of that work, I imagine that they would set their eyes on that day when Jesus would receive them into the Kingdom and wipe away every tear. They had their eyes, I believe, on the Lord, regardless of that work. And I remember, I knew many of these people.

I didn't hear them complain. I was young. I get it. But I just, I was mesmerized by the fact that these people worked like this. These people worked like that. And I can hear the Lord saying, well done, come. Come.

You did this well. Did they stand in a pulpit and thunder away? No. Were they a president of a bank?

No. They worked in a mill. But I think they did it unto the Lord.

And I'm sure many of them heard those words, well done. It's a work that is seemingly insignificant. There's no hindrance to you getting a great Lord in heaven. Every work performed in obedience to the Lord, no matter how ordinary, no matter how common, is most valuable in the eyes of our Lord. Let's look at verse nine. Masters, do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that He who is both their master and yours in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.

Masters, bosses, managers, treat your people well. Paul says stop the threatening. There's no room in the kingdom of God. There's no room in the workplace for bullying, contempt, harassment, abuse, manipulation, demeaning somebody, not for a Christian. Francis Schaeffer says this, nothing is more ugly than orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion.

You can know your Bible. You can sit in the church pew, but if you belittle somebody, an employee, that is not good. That's ugly. That's sinful.

We cannot do that, but we see it time and time again, don't we? Somebody gets a promotion, and his ego goes right off the tracks, and he treats people poorly. His subordinates are treated rough. He's high and mighty now, and they are low.

No. Slave and master, employee and employer, if you're Christians, he's your brother. You are brothers. So, the masters, the bosses, they have to have the same respect and the awareness that the Lord is watching how they act and how they use that authority. Scripture says we will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what He's done in the body, whether good or evil.

Social status is not relevant when we stand before the Lord. Every single one of us will stand before Him and give an account to what we've done. And here's the warning for the Lord. Listen, bosses.

This is it. Matthew 24. But if the wicked servant says to himself, my master is delayed and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect them in an hour he does not know, and he will cut him into pieces and put him with the hypocrites in that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The wrongdoer, Paul says, will be paid back for the wrong he has done.

There is no partiality. So, every believer, this is it, whether he's a slave or a slave owner, he is a servant of the Lord. And this Lord of ours, He is impartial, and He is watching.

Bosses, managers, treat your employees well. So, the first three chapters in Ephesians are these rich theological doctrinal truths that Paul has given us. We've been seated in the heavenly places with Christ. We, by grace through faith, we've been saved. We're sealed with the Holy Spirit. Incredible things, but these truths cannot just sit in our mind. We have to put them to use.

We can't keep the faith in this room. We have to put into practice what we say we believe. Paul says we have to walk. We have to walk in a manner worthy of the call in which you've been called.

And so, here's the thing. The lordship of Jesus Christ covers all of life and all of life equally, not just when you're sitting in this sanctuary, not just on church on Sunday, in your home, in your places of work. Everywhere you go, your life and mine is to be a living sacrifice. He is our Lord, and we are followers of Him.

And guess what? We're slaves to Christ. We're slaves to Christ. We're not your own. You're not your own.

I'm not my own. We've been bought with a price. You've been purchased by the precious blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And the way we live our lives has to show that we belong to Him, and we submit to Him. And as we go through this world, this world that is absolutely not our home, you remember we're sojourners, and we're exiles. We can expect things to be hard.

We don't preach the prosperity gospel here. Things will be hard. Think of Paul. He says, I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. He was beaten.

He was stoned. He was whipped, just like a slave. And this is what you can expect as a slave to Christ in a fallen world, in a fallen world. The apostles expected it.

And in fact, they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for Christ. But here's what Paul is saying. Don't do this to each other. Don't mistreat each other.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. You are one in Christ. Treat each other well. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but treat others better than yourself.

That's it. Do good to everyone, and especially those who are of the household of faith. The world, you see, they need to see and they need to hear that we are different. We belong to Christ. We're members of His kingdom. We're kingdom citizens. Yes, we're in a world that is not our home.

We're passing through. They need to see the work that we do is unto the Lord in the fear of the Lord. And they need to see that the slave and the master are brothers in Christ, one in Christ, a new commandment I give you that you love one another. And by this, people will know you're my disciples if you have love for one another. How are you doing with that? How are you doing with living your faith out there?

You know, the abolition of slavery was greatly due to the influence of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And today, we're faced with a whole new set of challenges. Gender is being redefined. Marriage is being redefined. Sexuality is being redefined. The roles of men and women are changing. Our schools and our places of work are changing. Everything is turned upside down. But if we're bold enough, and if we're strong enough, like those who came before us, and we truly live out the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Lord's grace, in the Lord's grace, He can change that.

He can do it. People need to see, this is what Jesus said, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Let them see that we belong to Jesus Christ. Love one another. Serve one another.

Your brothers and sisters, treat one another well. We're one in Christ. So, that's my prayer for Calvary Church, that we are actively living out the gospel of Jesus Christ in this world that desperately needs it.

And I believe that that world out there, which is rotten and defiled, can change if we get out there and do what He's called us to do. Gracious Father, we thank you for this time. We thank you for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for the gospel, the one and only. We thank you for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,