God's Word.
Sorry, I probably should bring my message up. I mean, yeah, I guess I could wing it, but that's never a good idea when you're talking about slavery. Open to Ephesians chapter 6, please. If you're new here, my name is Ricky. I'm one of the pastors here at the church, and if you don't have a Bible, we're going to be looking at that a whole lot over the next few minutes, so you can grab one on the back table.
If you want to and just take that as our gift to you. And as I mentioned, our text starts off with a topic that you maybe were not expecting to hear about walking into church today. You probably would be thinking, you know, this is a wonderful time of worship, Jake just led a great prayer for people in the workforce, and now what's next? It's slavery. But I want to start with a few preparatory comments before our text because I What we often have in mind when we think of slavery, especially in the American context, is not the situation at all that Paul is going to be addressing in our text today.
If you look, we're going to read the text as a whole in just a minute, but look down to verse 5, Ephesians 6:5, just for the opening of this. He says, "Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ. Now, maybe you're not a Christian, or maybe you don't normally go to church, and you walked in and you thought, okay, there it is, that's why I don't normally go to church, because the Bible is backwards, it's oppressive, it even condones slavery, right there in the headline. And you may be tempted to think that. Maybe as a Christian, maybe this makes you uncomfortable thinking, oh my gosh, you know, how are we going to wiggle our way out of this one today?
But that's not at all what we're doing. In fact, thinking in those categories often makes us realize we come to the Bible often from our culture to the Bible rather than from the Bible, the world of the Bible, back to our culture and often betrays our ignorance.
So, a few preparatory comments here. First, very clearly, the context Paul is addressing in Ephesians 6 is not the American South. We rightly grieve and decry what occurred in America with forcible perpetual enslavement and exploitations of ethnic an entire ethnic group of people or ethnic groups of people.
But Paul is not writing in that particular context as this would have been an issue that would have been commonplace in the churches Paul was writing to, as many as a third of those in the Roman Empire were bondservants or in some sort of indentured servitude. And by this time in the first century in the Roman Empire, many if not most bond servants had the most basic rights, the rights to not just be killed or things like that. They had some of the most basic rights. And the common practice was that there were a variety of ways that people ended up in as a bond servant. One common one though was being, placing yourself under a bond because you owed money.
You owed money you couldn't pay, and so you worked for that. Or you needed to, for some reason, have food and shelter and a place to stay, so you would kind of bond yourself to a particular group. Or you may have been an orphan. This is something that the orphans were cared for in a household, and then basically, hey, this is the deal. We'll care for you, but you've got to work off your— this sort of bond that has been placed on you.
Now, it is possible, though, that for many of them, that they could have saved or worked this bond off, which is very different than the American South. 1 Corinthians 7:21, Paul encourages those in bond service to save for and win their freedom whenever possible. And in fact, many of those who are bond servants continued working for their same household or masters after they finished their term of service. And so bond servants would have just been a part of the household. That's why they're included as husbands and wives and then parents of children.
And then you might think this is a weird place to talk about employment. Well, if you think of the Roman household, this would have been the household. There would have been a bunch bunch of people in the background working in various parts of the house and property. So that's the context that's being addressed here. Now, to be sure, exploitation did happen, uh, that we, that we would as Christians look back and say, man, that, that would— that was not right.
Um, Christians, however, were to treat this system differently. Now, the Bible's teaching— second, the Bible's teaching about slavery was radical and powerfully countercultural in the first century. In fact, even addressing the bondservants directly would have been unusual in this context. They would have been seen as people like, "Well, you know, you're not— come back and listen to the Bible when you're a freed person." But no, no, no, Paul says, "No, no, come in, come in. I want to talk to you from the Bible as well." And this continued, this is part of a continuing pattern where in Galatians 3 Paul says that for anyone who is in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, meaning that when you come to Christ, your identity is not being a Jewish person or a Greek person or a wealthy person or a poor person or being a freed person or a bondservant or slave.
None of those are your identity. Your identity is that you are in Christ and you are as much in Christ as an impoverished bondservant, as the brother who is wealthy, and as a Roman citizen. Right? That is the radical nature of the Christian teaching. And in fact, progressively, as Christians became a greater and greater percentage of the Roman Empire, this is one of the things that God used to kind of change this institution from the inside out in the Roman Empire.
More and more, this led to better treatment for bondservants and eventually the eradication in most cases of slavery and bond service. So, this is the reality. Every single person in the Scriptures is seen as someone full of dignity, value, and worth because they are made in the image of God, not because they're a Roman citizen, not because they're a freed person, not because they're a wealthy person, but simply because they are made in God's image and then doubly so as they are in Christ. And as we look back over the last 20 centuries of Christians receiving the Bible's teaching, about slavery. You might say, "Well, then why wasn't slavery just universally condemned from the first century up until the twentieth?" And Thielmann, who is a theologian, has a great comment here.
He says that the fact that Christians have not universally condemned every form of slavery throughout the last twenty centuries is not a failure of the Bible. It's not a failure of this particular passage. Rather, it is, quote, "the failure of those who received the passage to live out its radical implications. Meaning that if Christians had been doing what this passage calls them to do and lived out the implications of it, it would have been a very different story, a good warning for us all.
So, third and last, the Bible deals with the situation as it existed in the first century.
So, Paul is not writing a sort of pro-democracy revolutionary pamphlet in first-century Roman Empire. Partially because when he was writing, Christianity was a small, a really tiny sect in the context of the entire Roman cultural system. And so Paul has to address the situation as it exists. I mean, imagine being a bondservant. You hear the gospel, somebody shares the gospel with you, you begin going to church, you begin hearing about your freedom in Christ, but then all of a sudden, after you hear about your freedom in Christ, you have to go back to your master and work in bondservice all week.
How do you reconcile those things? Well, that's one of the things that Paul is addressing. So, again, it's not condoning, but rather helping Christians live as Christians in whatever state they would find themselves.
So then, how do we apply such a text to ourselves today? I don't know anyone necessarily in formal bond service.
If you have a bond servant, I'd love to talk to you after the meeting. 'cause there are probably some American employment laws that should be brought to bear there. But this passage still has much to teach us because we can move from the greater, kind of the most extreme situation to all the situations that are much less extreme. Meaning all of us will find ourselves in authority and all of us will find ourselves under authority. And so the question is, how do we then live out our faith when we are under someone's authority and usually in the context of work and employment?
And then how do we live this out when we are in authority, maybe in a managerial role or something like that in a position in a company? How do we apply this to our own lives? And Paul himself, I think, indicates that the principles here apply, quote, "whether he is a bondservant or is free." Meaning, he knows that he's addressing specifically bondservants, but he's broadening the application intentionally to say, listen, These principles will apply even if you're a freed person, even if you're working for a master, maybe you've been freed, you're continuing to work in that household, these still apply.
6 · The pastor reads the full text of Ephesians 6:5-9 and offers a brief prayer asking God to transform how the congregation views work and authority in light of the passage
So, with the ground somewhat cleared, hopefully, let's then read into— read through this section of Scripture remembering that it is God's holy and authoritative Word. Ephesians 6:5, "Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service as people-pleasers, but as bondservants 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 bondservant 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. This is God's Word, and Lord, I pray you give us ears to hear and eyes to see. May we view the work we do in the places of authority in our lives where we are under or in authority very differently. In light of the way Your Word calls us to live. In Jesus' name, amen.
7 · The pastor uses the ubiquitous American conversation starter—'What do you do?'—to illustrate how deeply work is tied to identity in American culture
Well, when you meet somebody at a party, maybe at a wedding, usually the first question you ask is, "What's your name?" Second question is, "How did you end up here? Do you know the bride? Do you know the groom?" And inevitably, what's one of the next questions that you ask after that? What's the most common American question probably? "What do you do?" You guys have gotten it.
The first service got it. It really is so ingrained in American culture. I gave you almost no information. And you just responded with, "What do you do?" Right? Everybody is programmed as tiny Americans to ask that question.
We're beginning to be programmed even from when we're kids, right? Well, my kids are 8 and 10 and 3, and the 8 and 10-year-olds especially, people are always asking them, "Now, what are you gonna be when you grow up?" Right? And this kid's 8 years old. He doesn't know what he's gonna be, you know? But he is— well, they're very ambitious, you know, but they have no idea what they want to be yet, but yet that is kind of ingrained from the beginning, or, If you are— I was talking to some high school seniors yesterday.
You as a high school senior are probably so tired of people asking you, "What are you going to do? What are you going to do next?" I remember I talked to one high school senior, they were like, "I don't know, okay? I'm figuring it out." Or if you're graduating from a vocational program or college, people are asking, "What are you going to do? Where are you going to work?" And so many of our questions about life in America center on our work, on our employment. Often define our identities based on that question, "What do you do?" And it tells us a lot about a person.
It may tell us if they are rich or poor, or smart or not smart, white collar, blue collar, no collar. Are they a boss that lots of people under them in the org chart, or they have lots— everybody's over them in the org chart. It tells us so much, we feel.
8 · The pastor contrasts the cultural preoccupation with 'what do you do' with the biblical preoccupation with 'who do you work for
But this text, which is all about work and all about authority, does not start with the what of work, it starts with the who of work. It does not start with what do you do, it starts rather with the important question, who do you work for?
And as we'll see, that simple question of who do you work for as the starting place transforms everything about our work.
9 · The pastor demonstrates from the text's own repetition that the central theme is the identity of the ultimate employer
So first, let's jump into the question, who do we work for? Now, in Scripture, when something is repeated, it is being emphasized. And this is, this one concept of who we work for the word "for" is repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated so that there be no mistake the main point Paul is desiring to make here. Look at verse 6, he talks about them as bondservants of Christ.
He talks about them serving the Lord. He talks about, in verse 8, "You will receive back from the Lord." And then even toward masters or those in authority, "You have a master in heaven." What is Paul seeking to get across here? He's seeking to get across not what they do, but rather who they do this work for. And he answers this question with the resounding kind of truth that we as Christians work for the Lord. We work for the Lord.
10 · The pastor develops the implications of working for the Lord by tracing the claim from those under authority to those in authority and then back to the foundational creational mandate in Genesis
Now, everyone in there— the first place to apply this is everyone has a place in their life they are under authority. That you don't get to decide what you want to do. Maybe that's your job who's, you know, they're scheduling you and they're like, "You're scheduled for Tuesday." And some jobs you can't go, "Oh, I don't know, Tuesday's not great for me. I'm staying up late watching movies the night before. Can I do Wednesday?" Right?
Yeah, it's not going to fly in most jobs, right? Or maybe a more extreme example. My father-in-law was a Marine and one time when he was on leave and his commanding officer told him, "Listen, "Son, you're reporting for duty at 7:00 AM at this location, come hell or high water, man. Like, I don't want any excuses. I don't want to know what you did this weekend.
I don't want to know what happened on the way. Don't care. 7:00 AM here." The only problem was the day before in Washington, D.C., there was a blizzard. And my father-in-law walked out to find that they had plowed early in the morning, but they hadn't, they had plowed like several hundred feet up from where his parents' house was. His car was down at the bottom of this hill.
And so he did what any good Marine would do. He called and explained like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm not gonna be able to come in today." No, he didn't. He did not do that. If you're a Marine, you're like, "No, you don't." Yeah, that's right, no, you don't. You don't do that.
Instead, he took a shovel and, and literally plowed out himself a, like, 5-foot— he measured how wide his car was and plowed that exact distance through 3 feet of snow up to the hill. And he, I think, if I remember the story right, he got to where he was supposed to be at, like, 6:00 AM, took a shower, and reported for duty at 7:00, right? Why? Because he was under authority. And that may be a more extreme example, but we all have places in our lives that we are under some authority.
That might be in school, that might be in medical rotations, that might be in the army, that might be with a particular boss or employer. But whoever we work for, whoever is above us on the org chart, Paul wants us to look way further up the org chart and see that rather than working for that person, we really are working for the Lord. And if you could get that truth, guys, in your heart today, it will begin to transform everything else about work. And amazingly, you might think, well, listen, I don't really— I'm higher up on the org chart. No, I don't work for people.
People work for me. No, no, no, Paul says, no, no, no, no, no. It says, stop your threatening knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in charge. Heaven. So you might be thinking, well, I have the highest boss.
I mean, I have the high— my boss— I mean, my office is the highest on the floor. There was this one office we saw that was a church that met in a converted office building. And so they had all of the employees working down on the first floor in cubicles. And literally the second floor was all the executive offices. And they had, like, a walkway and a railing so that the executives could come out and just stare down at the people in the cubicles.
Like, "That's right, you cubicle people," right? And you may be thinking, like, "Okay, that's me, man. I'm up there. My office is above the employees." Paul says—taps you on the shoulder and says, "Look up. Look up.
You know where his office is? In heaven. So I think he's going to be in charge." You're like, "Okay, yeah, I think he can be. He's going to be in charge." We all have these places, whether you are in the middle of the org chart, the top, the bottom. You are under authority.
So, this simple truth transforms the way that you view your work then, and it transforms the way you view being under authority. Because here's the reality: we may not like the way authority over us is always exercised. We may think it's silly. We may think it's inefficient. But it is not, according to Paul.
This is— I want you to get this. Your work, whoever it's done for, humanly speaking, your work is not meaningless. It is not pointless. It is not throwaway work. No, rather Paul says it is done unto the Lord.
You are working for the Lord, which means that any job you have is full of dignity and value and worth, and someone sees everything you do. The Lord himself. What could be more dignified than working for the Lord of heaven and earth? In fact, this is an echo in many ways of creation and the way that God created things to be in the Garden of Eden. God gives Adam this charge to cultivate the garden and keep the garden.
He was given this work by God. And so, what he was meant to do was essentially to care for the things around, to reorganize them, to to be for the good of creation and to guard and protect and put it back together if it got out of order. And in many ways, every one of our jobs is a reflection of that foundational creational work, whether you are pouring a concrete slab or organizing a budget or sending a whole pile of emails out, all of it is in a sense an echo of that work given to Adam in the beginning. That work to cultivate, to keep, to do good to the people and the things around you that the Lord has entrusted to you.
11 · The pastor draws three concrete implications from the theology of working for the Lord: (1) our identity comes from being made in God's image, not from our job; (2) all work has equal dignity regardless of cultural prestige; (3) working for the Lord should increase, not decrease, our ambition to do excellent work
So, some key implications here.
First, our identity— this is, you got to hear this, Americans, I'm one of us— our identity does not come from our relationship to our work, but our relationship to God. Who you are most fundamentally is not the job title that is on your door or on your badge. Who you are is someone made in the image of God, full of dignity, value, and worth, and that is where your worth comes from. That's where your dignity comes from. Not you achieving a certain thing, not you having a certain degree.
It comes from being made in the image of God and then sent out. To do, to image God by cultivating and keeping creation. And that's glorious. Second, our work is full of value and meaning regardless of whether it is white collar or blue collar or no collar, whether it is held up by our world as being kind of prized and everybody wants to do this and not held up or demeaned. Like I didn't know this, but we have a bunch of med students that I'm gonna go out on a limb here, I'm gonna throw some of the med students under the bus.
And at one time they told me, like, you know, I'm trying to match and I hope I get a good match. And you have these specialties that are more desired and less desired. And I'm like, well, what happens if you don't make any of those specialties? And they were like, oh, then you become a podiatrist. I was like, whoa.
And the way they said it was like— I mean, listen, I've gone to the podiatrist. I am grateful for podiatrists. If you are a podiatrist, you've helped me out on a number of occasions. Props to you. But for the med school students, they're like, nope, that's worse.
You know, I'd rather do anything than be a podiatrist. And you're like, okay. And probably in your line of work, there is something like that. There's something that like, okay, I don't want to do that. I don't like that.
Or maybe you even do that line of work. Maybe you feel you work in a work uniform, not in a nice collared shirt, and you feel self-conscious about it. Look, this should mean that your work, you see your work as full of dignity and value and goodness. And you know that because you work for the Lord himself. Third, our ambition for our work then should be greater, not lesser, in light of who we work for.
It doesn't mean that we go, "Okay, God's our boss. I don't have to turn in my reports on time. The Lord's given me an extension." You know, you're trying to explain that to your boss. Please don't send your boss to me saying, "I heard a great message and the Lord's actually my boss now, and he said I could get it done later." You know, we're going to have some conversations. That should not be the effect of the passage.
In fact, we should go, listen, if we work for the Lord, we should have the most godly ambition on the earth, meaning that we're going to do our work to the best of our abilities regardless of who's watching us. Because it glorifies the Lord, right? That's the kind of workers we want to be.
12 · The pastor signals a structural shift from the first major point (who we work for) to the second major point (how we work)
So that's who we are working for. Second, how then do we work?
13 · The pastor expounds the first characteristic of how Christians should work: with respect ('fear and trembling')
If we're working for the Lord, how then do we work? Well, this string of commands that Paul gives to bondservants, we're going to walk through. And by the way, these are also all applied to the masters later, meaning in verse— what is it, 9? Masters, do the same to them. Meaning as the bondservants are supposed to work, those in authority are to also work that way toward the bondservants.
So, what are they to do? First, we are to work with respect. So, this reference to fear and trembling doesn't mean that bondservants should be afraid of those who are in authority. We see lots of examples of the apostles standing up to ungodly authority, So, we're not saying, "Oh, I'm afraid of you." That's not what this means. Rather, there should be a sober respect toward those in authority.
If we are working for the Lord, we reflect a measure of the sober respect toward God. We basically point that toward anyone that God has put into authority and treat them with sober respect. And this is where I've learned so much from my Army brothers and sisters because I came from, my family's from the business world, not from the military world, and so there's so many times in the business world, like if you don't like your boss, you're talking to them, and you don't last long, but you can get away with rolling your eyes or like, ugh, you know, like whatever, and yeah, yeah, I'll get to it when I get to it, right? Some of that goes on, but not in the military community, man. Even if you don't like your superior officer, you still gotta salute him, right?
You don't get away with like a quarter salute, you know? Like, yeah, nope, that's not going to work for them. That could work for anybody, right? There is a level, I think, in an appropriate way, there is a level of respect given, not on the basis of the merits of that person even necessarily, but on the merit of their position, the fact that they are in authority and have been delegated that authority. There's a measure of respect there.
So, I think that's what this is talking about.
14 · The pastor expounds the second characteristic of how Christians should work: wholeheartedly ('not by way of eye-service')
Second, we are to work wholeheartedly. I love that the scenario of the boss coming down the hall and then everybody scrambling to look busy has been going on for 2,000 years. Look at verse 6, "Not by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ." Meaning the boss comes in, "Everybody look busy," right? I remember I was in college, I worked for my pastor, my family's company, and my grandfather, who was kind of one of the founders, he was in his 70s by then, and he would love to sneak up on guys in the warehouse and see if everybody was working.
But the problem was, in his 70s, he developed kind of a shuffle, so he'd go ch-ch-ch-ch, right? And so, but it echoed in the warehouse, and so as soon as he opened the door from the office and started making his way, everybody could hear his distinctive ch-ch-ch-ch, and everybody in the warehouse would immediately leap to work. Now, it was a pretty hardworking warehouse, but even if guys were on like breaks that were okay, like, hey, we just unloaded this truck, why don't you take 5, you know, then we'll hit the next one. It didn't matter. They're throwing their coffee cups down.
They're like, you know, getting back in there. They're rubbing some dirt on their face because when Mr. Alcantara Senior came in, everybody wanted to look busy. And Paul is saying, look, that's universal. That's what the world does. When it seems like you can make an impression, you work hard.
And when there's no one looking, you don't work hard at all. But Christians are to work in a very different way. Instead, they are to work wholeheartedly as to the Lord, knowing that the Lord sees all of it. He sees the whole workday, not just that moment the boss came in. We are not to be going through the motions.
We're to do what the Lord has set in front of us in our work to the best of our abilities. With our whole hearts, regardless of who sees it. I remember as a kid, I would help my other granddad who was a general contractor and worked in facilities maintenance. And I remember I was helping him with some— I don't know, I was tightening something with a wrench as a kid. I remember this moment, tightening something with a wrench.
And, you know, as a kid, you know, you're like, eh, you know. And my granddad, he even in his 60s, he had huge biceps. I mean, these huge general contractor biceps, right? And I would kind of go, eh, and then I'd hand it to my granddad, 'cause I knew he could finish it. And I remember one day he looked back at me and he just goes, "Son, is that the best you can do?" And it wasn't like a mean, like, "Come on, son, what's wrong with you?" It was more like, "Did you do the best you could?" And so I thought about it and realized, nope.
So I went back with my little tiny 8-year-old muscle that I still have, and it just, Just went, eh, you know, I was able to tighten it just a little bit more. And in the same way, that's how the Lord calls us to work. I think that question is so helpful. Did you do the best you could do? Is that the best you could do?
When you're about to fire that email off to your boss, you're like, ah, kind of half did it. No, is that the best you could do? If you're turning something in that requires some craft, is that the best you could do? If you're rewiring electrical or HVAC, Is that the best you could do? Not so that the customer's opinion doesn't matter or your boss's opinion doesn't matter, but what matters way more than that is the opinion of your boss of bosses, the Lord of creation.
And you do the work wholeheartedly as unto him.
15 · The pastor expounds the third characteristic of how Christians should work: with goodwill
Third, we're to work with goodwill. We're to show goodwill to others. In this way, work is an extension of the great commandment to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. We're supposed to look at the people in front of us and look at the work in front of us and think, "How can I do them good?" We're to be oriented that way.
I was recently traveling back and trying to get home from a trip, and I was stuck in part of Los Angeles or part of the LA County area, and it didn't look like I was going to get to come home. And I— you know how when you walk up, if you've ever flown, you walk up to the ticket counter and you're hoping for a smiling person? But you walk up to the ticket counter asking for something and it's like one of these. "Can I help you, sir?" You're just like, "Oh, is there someone friendlier that I could talk to? Maybe in the back?
Could you go get them?" And so I talked to 2 or 3 people, no help, no help, no help. So I just think, it looks very obvious that I'm sleeping in LA or Phoenix that night. I'm not getting home. So I go up with reluctance to one more ticket counter and say, "Okay, I just need to figure out how the hotel thing works. Do you guys give me a meal?
How does this work?" I was like, what do I do? But the person on the other end, on the other side of the desk, heard my story. She's like, where are you trying to get to? And I was like, trying to get home. I was hoping to be back this afternoon.
I was hoping to take my kids to school in the morning. And she goes, she looks at me, it was almost like, rather I'm used to people looking through me, if you've ever experienced that. And she saw me and said, I wanna try to help you get home. And so she found me a flight at another airport across LA, got me in a taxi, sent me over there, I made the flight, got home, because she looked at me and thought, how can I do this person good? How can I do this person good?
Rather than looking through me like I'm just doing the job, how can I do this person good?
16 · The pastor expounds the fourth characteristic of how Christians should work: with reciprocity ('as you would have them work toward you')
Fourth, we're to work with others then as we would have them work toward us. By encouraging the masters of the bondservants to treat their bondservants the same way Paul is calling the bondservants to treat them, he's doing something radical. He's not saying, "Okay, there's one list of rules for bondservants, one list of rules for bondmasters." No, he's saying you both are called to the same things toward each other regardless of whether you're an employee or an employer, whether you're in authority or under authority. You are to work wholeheartedly toward others as you would have them work toward you.
It's so funny, whenever I see, like every once in a while, you know, you see these business-like things like, "This new principle will change everything." The ads are always like that on social media. And every once in a while, I'll be like, "Okay, what's the new principle that'll change everything?" And I literally saw one time, it was like, "An ancient proverb could change your workplace. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." "These ancient words will transform your workplace." And I'm like, "Does that sound familiar? I think I've heard that before." Right? Like, congratulations, you've just discovered the Bible.
Like, this is— but it's so powerful because it changes and transforms those relationships.
17 · The pastor adds a specific instruction for those in authority: they are not to misuse their position ('stop your threatening') and are to treat all people without partiality
And last thing I'll say here, specifically for those in authority, that actually it's not true that they have perfect parity. If you are in authority, the text here calls you never to misuse that authority. It says, "Masters, do the same to them," meaning treat them with respect, treat them with goodwill, treat them with working wholeheartedly for their good, "and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven." Meaning that when we forget that we are under someone else's authority, we are tempted to use authority for our own selfish gains. Now, what's in view here is not, you know, a boss writing somebody up for an employee violation or even having to fire somebody or put them in a discipline process.
The Bible, it doesn't say never fire anybody. Instead, it says to use your authority with respect, use it wholeheartedly for their good, use it to do them good. And sometimes that means you've got to let people go, but it means that you use that authority remembering that you are under authority and that you get an evaluation from Him about how you did there. And specifically, it speaks to partiality. There is no partiality with Him.
And I'm glad to know that American society is not the only society tempted toward partiality. Apparently, this is a very, very old problem. And so, we as Christians, we never dismiss people or demean people or overlook people. Based on whether that person in front of us is a man or a woman, whether they are our ethnicity, whether they are our preferred personality, whether we vibe with them, even some degrees like whether we're friends or have some relationship with them, we're to treat people without partiality, remembering that the Lord is our authority and will watch over how we do.
18 · The pastor pauses to invite personal application, naming several possible responses to the sermon: encouragement, conviction about half-heartedness, reorientation from seeing work as obligation to seeing it as stewardship, or sobriety about misusing authority
So let me just ask you, pause there and ask you, what is this?
Reveal about your own view of work? It may be encouraging. It may be profound. I talked to somebody in the first service, it was that it was profoundly encouraging to hear that so many of the ways he was trying to work, maybe, and he said imperfectly, but trying to work was the way God wanted him to work. And it encouraged him all the more, which is good.
Or maybe that some of this is new or convicting. Maybe there is with your work or your school assignments some half-hearted work. Revealing that you don't see the Lord as being your true boss. Or maybe you think work is just an unhappy obligation to get through until you can get to that period of life where you can decide what you want to do to fulfill yourself. And you need to be reoriented to see that, no, your work, whatever it is, has dignity and value and worth and has been given to you by God so that you steward it well.
Or maybe you're so focused on your task or you're so focused on success that you're tempted to get angry or sin against others or yell or or threaten in ungodly ways. And that this would sober you and remind you that you're under authority yourself.
19 · The pastor draws three additional implications: (1) for people under 40, God cares more about how you work than whether you've found the perfect job; (2) Christians should be known as the best employees and bosses; (3) these principles apply to unpaid work (household, church) just as much as paid work
All right, a couple implications here. I could do way more of these, but just a couple. First, I want to speak to just people my age and younger.
So that's like geriatric millennial on down to millennials to Gen Z, whatever the babies are after that. I think the Gen Zers are the babies. Whatever, I guess they're still making more people, so there's people behind them.
And often, I think I've found, for people under 40, let's say it that way, we're often preoccupied with whether we're in the perfect or ideal work role, where the Bible is often far more preoccupied with how we work than whether the work we're doing is the perfect fit for us. Meaning that rather than spending all of our time on all that angst of like, "Well, I don't know about this. Does it really unleash this part of my creativity? I really want to be able to do this and this and this." Okay, it's fine to be thinking long-term about your career, but wherever you are now, God is far more concerned with how you're working and whether you're being faithful with that. Second, the gospel should make us the best employees and bosses we know.
I mean, just imagine the two employees sitting in front of you ready to be hired. On one side, there's an employee who doesn't respect authority, who works half-heartedly, who is selfish, who doesn't care about others, and misuses any authority given to them. On the other side, there's someone who respects authority, who works wholeheartedly, who does good to others, who serves others, and is careful with their authority. Which one of those do you want working with you and for you? Right?
This is a picture of, man, these are the kind of people that we wanna be. And listen, I would love in the city of El Paso, if those who are followers of Jesus were just known as being the best employees and best bosses out there because of the way we work, being so informed by serving God. And last thing I'll say here is this doesn't just shape our 9 to 5 work. This also shapes our 5 to 9 work. If I could say it that way.
These principles that we apply in our work, also, that we get paid for, also apply to the work we don't get paid for. I'm still waiting for somebody to pay me to fold my own laundry. I feel like it's hard work and I feel like I do a good job and I've got a system and nobody sees it, nobody appreciates it, and my boss has never given me a raise, right? You could feel like, well, these, what about these other areas of parenting or household chores or even work we do in and through the church. Maybe you're setting up donuts and you're going, okay, do I— does anybody really care about how I set up the donuts?
Yes, the Lord cares, right? Does anyone care about whether you manage your household well? Yes, the Lord cares. This should be the way we approach all of our work.
20 · The pastor signals a structural shift from the second major point (how we work) to the third major point (why we work like this)
And last, third question: why do we work like this?
21 · The pastor addresses the problem of unrecognized work by appealing to Ephesians 6:8—the promise that God will repay every good deed
Now, up until this point, you might be wondering, okay, okay, okay, I hear what you're saying. But what if I end up working for a boss or in a situation who never rewards my hard work? See, and here's the difference, I think, between Christianity and some of these principles being applied outside the Christian world, because people will say, listen, you act like this, you do these things, you will get recognized, you will get rewarded, your boss will promote you, you will have more money and more stuff than you could ever dream, So be nice to people, right? What you end up with is a bunch of people trying to be nice, but they're just trying to get rich, right? Nicing their way to richness.
And yet that's not the way the world works. Sometimes you do have a job that is hard that you do, and you may do it for a number of years and never feel like you've been fully recognized. What do you do with that? Now, surely part of the answer is that, well, remember, we work for the Lord, and so anything we do, we do as unto the Lord. As an act of worship.
But verse 8 gives us an additional reason to do this well. Verse 8 says this: Knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord. That is powerful. Whatever good you do, you will receive back from the Lord. A number of years ago, one of our pastors, Tom, ended up on a jury, 'cause he's so nice.
If you know Tom, you're like, he's the guy you would pick on a jury. I'm the guy that's grumpy, and I'm like, we want that guy off the jury. Tom's the nice guy you want on the jury. And his particular case was about the exploitation of a particular restaurant and grocery worker. And so this worker was from the Middle East, and they had arrived in the United States to do this job and did not know that there was such a thing in the US as a minimum wage for the work that they were doing.
And so they were working for like $3 or $4 an hour for a year and a half to 2 years. Until one day, there was, I think at the YMCA or something, there was a seminar on basic employment laws. And so they went like, "Oh yeah, I should learn about my new country." So they go and find out that there is a minimum wage. And even after trying to get a minimum wage from their employer, that the employer was like, "No, no, no, no, no." Basically, they sued their employer only asking for their lost wages. The difference between the $3 or $4 an hour and the whatever, $5.75, $6, whatever it is.
They just wanted the difference. They just wanted the difference to be able to help their family, then be able to move on. And you never know going into those cases, like, are they going to get just saddled with lots of court fees in the end? Are they going to get beaten down? But probably because Tom was such a nice guy and on the jury, the jury not only awarded him, you know, what he asked for, unusually, they gave him more than he asked for as a punishment and a discipline kind of for this unethical business owner.
And so this, just think about this situation, this employee that he realizes suddenly that he has spent hours and hours and days and days of his life working for an employer that he suddenly realizes is exploiting him, and he thinks it's all for nothing and he's never going to see it again in his life. And maybe he worked as hard as he could in this new country only to find himself, "Okay, I'm never going to see that." And then yet he stands before this judge on that day and not only receives what he should have received, but receives more than he should have received. And I think, man, what a beautiful metaphor for sometimes the way that we think about our jobs here today. There may be times where you feel like, man, I'm working hard, but there is a gap. There's a gap between what I'm trying to do and what it seems like my compensation is, or how recognized I am, or how this is resulting in good.
And there's a gap. And look at, let me be honest with you, if you work in this Christian way, there will almost always be a gap. There will be things that you do for your employer that they don't see or recognize. That only the Lord will see. But here's the good news of Ephesians 6, the Lord does see them.
The Lord notes every single good that you do. Every customer that you help that nobody catches, every mistake you fix before it goes on to the next person, every person you have compassion on and spend time with more than is necessary for the fulfillment of your job, all of that stuff that it may just seem, okay, you're just throwing it into the air, you're never gonna get that back. The good news of Ephesians 6 is that the Lord himself will repay you for those things, which is extraordinary. The giver of gifts, he gives the absolute best gifts, and he has gifts waiting for you, brothers and sisters, as you have done your work unto the Lord and maybe not been recognized or not seen. The Lord has seen it, and he one day will reward you.
S.M. Bowles says this: "All who are in submission to proper authorities know that they and their selfless service, no matter how menial it appears in the world, are not ignored or forgotten by the Lord. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered." And brothers and sisters, if He numbers the very hairs on your head. He knows every hour, every effort as done unto Him.
22 · The pastor balances the promise of reward with the sobering reality of judgment—God will evaluate how we worked and how we used authority
Now, the sobering side of this is there in verse 9.
Verse 9, knowing that He who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him. There is a sobering aspect to this as well that Paul is pointing out. God is taking note of the way you do your job. And in the end, you will receive a final, capital F, performance evaluation from your boss. I remember years ago, I was taking a pre-law class, and the format of the class was unique.
The professor came in, he was very grumpy, kind of one of those curmudgeonly professors who I just loved. I love those guys. And he goes in and he goes, "Listen, there's no required reading for this class. I'm not taking attendance." There's gonna be no quizzes. There's gonna be no papers.
And somebody is like, well, do we get a grade? Yeah, you get a grade. The grade is the final. What does that mean? There's one assignment.
It's the final. Whatever grade you get on that is your grade for the class. Are there any questions? And so by the end of the day, and it's funny, rather than that just making people go, oh, cool, whatever, I'll see you on the final. Everybody was like, oh my gosh, I gotta be here.
I don't know what's gonna be on the final. So we worked harder in that class than I think any other college class. We're begging him for quizzes. We're like, can you give us a small quiz just so we can see how we're doing? No, it's the final, right?
And what about a paper? Can I write a paper and bring it to you? No, I'm not gonna look at a paper. It's the final. Like, you just, that was the way he did it.
But the whole semester, you felt that final evaluation hanging over you. And everything you did, you realize, "Okay, it's pointed there. I could slack off, but I've got the final comment." And in the same way, there is a very real final evaluation of our lives and of our work, of how we've used authority, how we've responded to authority that will come at the end of our lives. And it should sober us and cause us to consider honestly what will be revealed then on that last day.
23 · The pastor pivots from the sobering reality of evaluation to the hope of the gospel: our entry into eternal life is not based on our work performance but on receiving Christ's perfect record through faith
But Ephesians and the context of Ephesians would also call us to hope.
Because reality is this, if anybody had gone through just my work, just take that area of my life, have I always worked the way that Ephesians 6 calls me to work? Absolutely not. Have I respected every authority? No way, right? Have I worked wholeheartedly?
Not always. Have I done people good even when it was hard? Not always. So I would stand before the Lord with my with what would be an insufficient evaluation, right, at the end of time. That's why Ephesians is such good news.
It prepares us for that final day, and its preparation is not, "Hey, work as hard as you can and hopefully God will let you into heaven." No, Ephesians lays out the great truth in Scripture of grace. Grace meaning God's undeserved favor towards sinners. And that grace comes to us through Jesus Christ who, his record was spotless, his record perfect, always respected authority, always worked wholeheartedly, always did good to others, always laid his life down for everyone. And yet he goes to the cross and on the cross, if you could say it this way, he exchanges evaluations with us. He takes our sorry evaluation for our lives and he goes to the cross to pay the debt that we owed.
He paid what would be coming to us and instead transfers his righteousness to us so that on that final day when we stand before the Father, we're not going to stand before just on the basis of, "Well, what did you do? What'd you not do? Well, here's my card. Does it get me into heaven?" No! We come with the record of Jesus and say, "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply "Like to thy cross I cling, naked come to thee for dress." Right?
This is what we bring to the Lord and we say, "This is all I have." And he will rejoice over it and by grace welcome us into eternal life. Right? That's what we look forward to. Now, there will— the Revelation is clear— there will also be an evaluation of our lives. How did we do?
That will be reviewed. But whether we get into heaven or not is not based on how well we kept Ephesians 6. Whether we get into heaven or not is based on whether we have through faith accepted the grace of God in our Lord Jesus Christ. That gift of grace then is what precedes this call to work hard. And this makes all the difference.
24 · The pastor concludes with a personal story contrasting two motivations for hard work: fear of the boss (warehouse workers) versus love for the boss (working for his grandfather)
One final story here. So my first job was for my grandfather, the shuffling one that I talked about earlier. He was great. And so my first job, At age 15, he saw me just sitting around watching TV on Sunday afternoon, and he said, "All right, mijo, you're coming to work with me this summer." He just sensed the weakness in me, and it was my little 8-year-old arms I still had at age 15. And he's like, "All right, you're gonna come work for me.
I need you to clean out a bunch of files." So I go to the office, and I worked in this super hot, like, upstairs room cleaning files out. And I remember he gives me the task, "Here's what you're gonna do." And I was basically like, "Well, how long will this take? Like a day or a week?" And he basically looks at me and he goes, "Until it's done." Like, "Okay, Grandpa. Okay." And I remember working as hard as I could on my first real job at age 15. But as I've thought about it, I don't think I worked hard 'cause I was afraid of my grandfather the way the warehouse guys did, right?
There's a difference. Those guys are like, "Ah, what can he do to me?" No, no, no, my status, my relationship to my grandfather was secure. I was his grandson. And I don't think I was working hard so that, you know, maybe I would do this task and then maybe my grandfather would love me. I think I was working hard because I knew that my grandfather did love me.
And because I knew that he did love me, I wanted to work as hard as I could for him. And in the same way, I think this is the way that Ephesians 6 should land on us as a Christian. Not that we are like the guys in the warehouse, "Ah, I hope I can bring enough to the Lord at the end of my life," but rather knowing we're loved, we're accepted, we're freed, we're forgiven by Jesus Christ. We know that the Lord loves us, therefore work as hard as you can.
25 · The pastor transitions to communion, framing the Lord's Supper as a reminder of God's love and an invitation to receive Christ by faith
So with that, let's— turn toward a reminder of the love of the Lord as we take the elements of communion.
So take the elements of the Lord's Supper in your hand, and if you are a Christian, we would welcome you to participate with us. And if you're not a Christian, I just want you to note and receive the invitation present in the Lord's Supper for you today. We'd ask you not to participate if you're not a Christian, but I would invite you to look at the elements that we're about to partake of. What we do in the Lord's Supper is we remember Jesus' body broken for us and Jesus' blood shed for us, and we receive by faith what Christ has done for us. Not that our evaluation is perfect, but that his was, and he went to the cross, bore our punishment so that he— so that, rather, our debts could be cleared and paid and we could be free.
And so today, if you're wondering what that final evaluation of you will be at the end of your life, you don't have to wonder. You can, through faith, take hold of Christ. And if that's you, I'll pray a prayer in a minute that you can follow along with. But, actually, let's just bow our heads and pray right now. Who knows what the Lord is doing?
And if you are not a Christian and you may be thinking, okay, at the end of that, my life, I don't know if I'll have done enough. Maybe your whole life you never know if you will have done enough, but you want to instead of trying to do enough, cling to Jesus. You just pray a simple prayer with me, which is, Lord, I know that I have not lived a perfect life. Lord, I know that I'm a sinner. Lord, I know that I haven't done enough to stand before you or make it into heaven.
Lord, I know I deserve justice. But, Lord, I also see what you've done through Jesus. Lord, I see that your Son lived the perfect life I couldn't live and died the death I deserved. Lord, I believe in faith in him as Savior, and I want to follow him as my Lord. Amen.
And if you prayed a prayer like that, we would love to talk with you after the service. Or if you're still considering praying a prayer like that, we'd love to talk to you. As well.
26 · The pastor leads the congregation in taking communion, reading the words of institution from 1 Corinthians 11 and framing the elements as a reminder of God's love that undergirds Christian obedience
And now for those of us who are in Christ, I want you to take the elements in your hand, and as we take these elements, let us receive the love of God for us that kind of undergirds anything else we do in terms of obedience. 1 Corinthians 11 says this, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is My body which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of Me." Please take the bread.
In the same way also He took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me." Please take the cup.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Would you please stand?