Ephesians 6 (Part 2) | Wade Branch

Good morning everyone. We have a wonderful crowd today.

We have some visitors, we have some friends visiting from other

places. If we do not know you yet, we

hope to sometime soon, hopefully today get to know you and make

you feel welcome here because you are your honoured guest

today. I have the privilege of choosing

what we study through today and we are finishing up in

Ephesians. We'll we will have at least one

more lesson after this. So there'll be there'll be 3

parts in Ephesians 6, but we're covering the section after

obviously what we covered last time, if you weren't here.

We talked about children obeying parents and honoring our fathers

and mothers. Today we're getting into what it

means to be a Christian worker. So we're only going to cover

about 5 verses or so. You can have your bibles in

front of you. We will be working through those

verses and elaborating on those, but that's the plan for today.

It is a great day and I'm happy to be here.

So far the PowerPoint hasn't given up on me.

The the laptop is not restarting so it's a better than last time

already. So just a quick reminder, this

letter split into two sections. First section was reminding

Christians of their spiritual blessings in Christ and that

should motivate us knowing where we stand, knowing we have

heavenly riches and heavenly places.

Seated with the Father. That should motivate us to Part

2, which is where we are right now, exhorting Christians to

have a walk that is worthy of the calling that you've been

called by. We need to stand up.

We need to act when we hear these wonderful blessings that

we are privileged to. I'm not going to review the

outline because we've done that probably 12 times at this point.

But we are now getting into that call to walk in victory and that

call to walk in purity. So let's just get some running.

Start from where we were last time we read.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment

with promise. What is the promise?

That it will be well with you, and you may live long on the

earth. And you fathers, do not provoke

your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training

and the admonition of the Lord. So, so far we've introduced

God's systems of authority. God has an interest in keeping

things in a system of of respect and reverence in the proper

place while we're while we're here on earth, and these

relationships should ultimately teach us the dynamics that it

should exist with us. With God, we learn reverence as

a child for parents and to honor and respect them so that we know

how to Revere God later, so that it becomes more naturally when

we cry out to a loving father and how we respond to him in in

obedience. But then it also reminds us that

we are all humans, that we are not the Supreme, that even

Fathers, the authority structures that exist and that

God ordained, still have a responsibility to to take care

and their responsibility to wield their power or their

authority in a way that would honor God and build up the

people who they are responsible for.

And this is the same tenor that carries into this section on

bondservants. So He's he doesn't take a lot of

time to say these things, but there's a lot that we said last

time. There's a lot that could be said

to kind of unpack these concepts, what it means to honor

a father and mother, what it means to be a good worker.

And we're going to try to do that today with bondservants.

So the first thing that often come comes up when we look at

bondservants is, wait, servants. You know that that that's a whoa

hold up kind of subject and I want to kind of get this off the

table. Yes, they're probably worth

systems of servitude then that were unethical, immoral, and

should have and did get done away with in time.

But that does not take away from the fact that this is still

applies to us today. And I'm going to explain why in

just a second. But the reason that doesn't

matter is we have to remember who these letters were written

to. These letters weren't written to

governments. These what letters weren't

written to politicians and lawmakers.

These weren't social change documents.

These were written to poor old Christians who were just trying

to survive and spread the gospel in their local area, in their

local church. So it makes sense why God

wouldn't be trying to write up some manifesto of a Christian

takeover, because that's not the plan.

The plan is you in your circle doing your work to honor and

glorify God and teach others about him.

In your circle. The purpose is not to create

heaven on earth, because ultimately it wouldn't work.

God tried that in the old law. He tried not to make heaven on

earth, but he had a system that was to be respected and honored

and the people turned away from it.

So God kind of tried that already.

So yes, there were servitude systems that were immoral.

But. This is just labor management.

We're covering labor Management Today, whether it's from the

workers perspective. We're also going to talk about,

from the boss's perspective, how to respond to an authority

structure that you're placed in and I believe this could apply

for. Kids at school, too.

There might not be hey kids in your first grade classroom, but

that's authority. That's respecting and working

for someone who is placed over you, who has a responsibility

over you, to direct you and to teach you and lead you, I think

that. Absolutely applies here.

OK, so yes, it applies to the construction worker.

It applies to the stalker in a grocery store.

Now we as Christians are called to be different than the rest of

the world. We're told in Romans 12 to not

be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the

renewing of your mind. Work has a way of physically

exhausting us as a way of mentally exhausting us, maybe

emotionally exhausting us. Some people in this audience

work with people for a living who are struggling or or dealing

with things that are challenging.

You're exhausted by the end of your day in one way or another

by the sweat of your brow. That's why work leads us to a

place where it's easy to be conformed because we're weakened

sometimes in the state of exhaustion.

And that's why it's especially important to fight this.

It's kind of like a gravity. It's like we're sitting on a

slope and gravity wants to pull us down to a standard of

conformity. And he said don't let that

happen. Be transformed to be changed in

form by renewed minds. So we need to know that this is

absolutely applies to our work life.

You know, sometimes people talk about I here's my secular work,

but here's my spiritual work and I get what you're saying.

I get what we're saying when we say that, you know, we're we're

dipping up our responsibility for the Lord for work.

But really it should all be one thing.

We shouldn't have anything we do that is not for the Lord as

we'll learn later. So this governs everything we

do, especially our work. I was in an all staff.

Day. The other day we had an in

service day. Where all the staff goes

together in the cafeteria and we have meetings now.

It's not a great thing. People are not happy to be there

because it's more meetings, it's more policy review.

It's more, you know, you know how it goes.

It's meetings, it's it's things you should be doing.

It's it's the repetitive droning on and on sometimes and it's

easy to leave a meeting like that.

When I was preparing this lesson, it's so easy for people

to just always talk about the negative lying about what we're

doing today. Why about go to lunch break,

man? When's this going to be over?

That pressure to be negative is the 1st and easiest thing to do,

but we have to avoid that that pressure. 1st Corinthians 10,

verse 31 says whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it

all for the glory of God. So as we talk about work today,

he's talking about some very. Simple things here, eating and

drinking. But remember, work takes up the

majority of your life if you work I.

Think I had some. Numbers here.

If you work for let's say 40-50 hours a week, you might have 40

hour work week, but most people work at least 50 hours.

You work that for every year. That's 2500 hours.

You're talking in a lifetime you're going to rack up like

120,000 hours doing something. If that time is only secular and

that is not going to the glory of God, what a waste.

At that time is not being used to win somebody else.

What a waste. May we do what we do for the

glory of God. OK, let's get into these verses

now. He says, Bond servants, be

obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh

with fear and trembling. So First off, it wouldn't be a

command if it wasn't sometimes difficult.

He doesn't have to command us a lot of things in this life that

are easy. He has to command things that we

might go against. So Bond servants be obedient.

That's the simple command. We are to obey and to follow the

the orders of those who are above us.

Pretty simple to those who are your masters, according to the

flesh. There are other passages that

talk about our responsibilities through spiritual leadership,

spiritual government in the church, the elders, deacons,

maybe, but he's not talking about that here.

He makes sure he's clarifying according to the flesh.

These are people who, at work would lead us in our jobs now,

he says with fear and trembling. This is a phrase used in the

Bible. You might read this and go,

wait, what this is. This is kind of a common

biblical phrase to refer to reverence in the Bible.

It's not a faked thing. It's not, It's not eye service

as whether they're going to later going to see.

It's a deep reverence and respect for someone that you

would in a sense have fear and trembling.

Not faked. As we have an attitude toward

our bosses now, the first thing you might say is, does that this

have anything to do with whether they are a deserving boss or

not. You're going to find he doesn't

say anything about that here. Doesn't say anything about

whether your boss is a good boss, an evil boss, a Christian

boss. It will.

There's another places where it talks about having a Christian

boss and it's a good thing, but he's not saying anything about

that here. The sad thing is, our society

gets respect and it gets showing respect and feeling respect.

Confused. I might not feel respect for

someone who's not a good boss of mine.

I've had bosses in the past who I I didn't feel a lot of respect

for. But showing respect and having a

respect for them that is comes from God is a totally different

perspective. It's a totally dead for

inclination to talk to them and listen to them and talk about

them when we're on our own time. So it doesn't have anything to

do with with their end of. This.

I was talking to a student pulled to the side the other day

because he was, he was kind of getting in a in a disrespectful

way toward one of my aides and and I was having a conversation.

I was like, dude, what? What good is this doing you?

And he's like, it's good. I was like, who's this helping?

He's like, it's helping me. I was like how?

You're you're calling, you know, you're being disrespectful

toward her. You're you're kind of showing

her up, but who's this doing good?

For and at. First he was like, no, it's me,

man. I got to be my own person.

I got to do my own thing. That's kind of a common

attitude. But pretty soon we were talking

about it's like he he got it to where he said he.

It's not helping anybody. And he softened to realize that

this just Why? Why would I show disrespect?

Who does it help? Even if the person is being

ridiculous or rude, our honour is intact.

Even if someone belittles us is disrespectful to us as their

employee or their superior. Whatever it is, our admiration

is irrelevant to this conversation.

But our respect we show toward them and we show talking about

them is important. He says doing this with fear and

trembling have an an attitude of honor and respect and sincerity

of heart as to Christ. So we need a mental edge to get

over some bad bosses, right? You need something that really

sets you off and gets you that edge that you need to overcome a

really hard emotion, which is anger towards someone who's rude

to you. And that edge you need is to

look at Christ. That edge I need to persevere

and give it. Everything I got is not because

I'm trying to just make their life so great, but because I am

a servant of Christ, and that's my perspective.

That's the edge we are to to approach this with.

The NIV says in singleness of heart as to Christ.

So sincerity of in sincerity of heart or in singleness of heart

as to Christ. So does this mean if you have a

terrible boss? You should just I'm just.

I want to make your life so enjoyable and that should be

your daily motivation. That's not the point here, but

what can we take away from this singleness of heart?

Frustrations are going to build on the job for both sides.

Your boss or my boss has their own stresses that's causing them

to respond in certain ways. And yet me and my

responsibilities on my job. Whether you're a a peon or

somewhere in the middle or high up, you have stresses in your

job. Frustration will build, but

having a singleness of mind tells us that we need to keep

our focus in a certain spot. What is that spot?

Well, number one, it's not revenge if a boss belittle as

you may be in front of other people.

Or treat you poorly. It can be.

It can be reasonable by the world's.

Standards and by what we might want to do to get revenge on

them somehow. To try to show them up, or to

try to just have an inclination about if I could, I'm going to

get back at them in some way. Maybe it's a small way, maybe

that's extreme. But revenge is is something that

we should not have in our singleness of heart, our

singular focus. This may be a more massively

common one. Gossip.

Like I said the other day, people walk away from those

meetings and they always have something to say about the boss.

Who does that do good for? Absolutely no one.

Gossip is something that would take take us away from a single

focus of getting glory to God and being good to others.

Or maybe it's to make self look good.

Maybe you go to work. Or maybe I go to work trying to

glorify myself, or to make people think man he's good at

his job. Or to make them think something

of me. That is not to be our focus.

Our focus should be to bring glory to God and to serve as we

were serving to Christ himself. And really that's based on

insecurity, right? Whether you feel belittled and

so you're trying to build back your own self esteem or you're

trying to look good because you feel like you're not quite

meeting it, those are selfish intentions at the end of the

day, Verse 6.

Not with eye service as men pleasers, but as bond servants

of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.

The NIV says to obey them not only to win their favor when

their eye is on you. I like, I like the way it

phrases that. How common is that for us to or

maybe you have. I have definitely my life and my

work life when the boss comes around and then on the job site

people would have like a whistle they did when the boss was

coming around and people just step to it, man.

And there's nothing wrong with that as long as once they leave,

you go back to continuing to work hard if they.

Leave. And you go back to kind of

moseying around like you were. We get, we get distracted, we

get a feeling lazy sometimes, but we should not just kind of

pep up when the boss is there and then kind of go back to what

we were doing when the boss. Leaves.

We have to try to maintain that level of intensity or focus or

whatever it is at work that we would do if we knew they were

always watching us with the camera.

Because the real boss is always watching.

The reality is God is the one who sees all.

God cares about how we. Work.

God cares about how we are giving them glory.

If we just are working hard when the boss is there, that shows we

care about the consequences, not the character it shows.

We are worried about how it might affect us instead of how

we could bring glory to God in all circumstances, whether

they're looking or not. I'm amazed God has the perfect

wisdom because this is such a common area that we see it's,

it's, it's, it's such a common negative thing that happens in

the workplace that people would be focused for a time and be off

task. If you've ever.

Managed somebody. You know how frustrating that is

because not only is it bad that they're not great workers, you

really don't know who's the good worker because they're all

putting a face on when you're there.

God has amazing wisdom to know what we need guidance on and

redirection. And ultimately.

If we're not doing the will of God from the heart, who who is

it bad for? It's bad for us, ultimately,

because we go about our day feeling meaningless and and and

you don't have a lot of purpose and you're lazy because of that.

We are not made to be our own masters, our own servants.

It doesn't work well. Our minds don't work well like

that. But not to mention.

Everybody else around us is worse off with this mentality.

Verse seven with goodwill. Doing service.

OK, he's going to finish this verse off with a with important

piece of information, but he says goodwill.

A good person, a good Christian, has the best interest of others

in every situation they can. Find It's hard to do that, but

that's. The goal, right?

Jesus said. I did not come to be served.

But to serve. This is our purpose here on

earth that we would serve others and we have a chance to do that

every day we go to work. So if we have the right

attitude, that goodwill and we do it with service, this is the

standard and it's achievable. Every single day you go to work.

Now let's think about goodwill, doing service.

Every job has a list of people that you might call their

stakeholders or their constituents, whatever you might

say who have. An interest in the work you're

doing. For me, as an example, as a

teacher, they're very clear. They study this out.

They make it all. They have their triangles, their

graphs and everything I have. My stakeholders are the

community because I'm trying to build a community member that is

going to be productive and healthy and etcetera.

I'm serving my principal. My boss is my principal.

Ultimately, like we could say, bond servants.

That's my boss, my principal, or my.

Assistant principal. The two of them, I serve them

because their job is to get the school functioning well.

If I support their efforts, they're going to be better off.

And if I can have a mentality that I'm going to make my my

boss's life better off, then I'm going to give them a a person

working in their system that's going to do a good job, to make

their job easier and feel like it's working.

Because they get frustrated, they get tired, they get

whatever. And if I can give them someone

who, like you know, I got them on my side to help me, that's

going to be good. I think that brings honour to

God because they're just trying to do their job too.

So I serve the community I serve the my principal and the the the

assistant principals I. Serve the department chair who's

trying to make their department function well.

They don't want to have to manage a bunch of issues and

problems, they just want you to do your job well.

But maybe more importantly. I serve the families of the

people I work for. I serve the kids.

They might not care or want it, but I'm there to serve them.

So if I try to keep this mentality, I want to do good for

these people. I want to do a good job for

these kids. I want to do a good job for

their parents who've trusted me with their time and my bosses

who are trying to run a system that's difficult and full of a

lot of people's opinions. If I keep a goodwill mentality,

I will serve. Every one of them better.

Doing service is our job here on earth.

You could take any job and make a list like that, You might

think. Yeah, well, nobody cares about

my job. I could say the same thing with

my job. Trust me, I walk into work every

day. The principal's not there.

This system of principals have nothing to do with my room.

I they sometimes say the king of your castle.

I have. I don't see them hardly at all.

So I can say who. They don't even.

Care. They're not here.

The kids, they rolled in half asleep.

They don't want to do anything. They could care less.

Whether I do anything or or spend an hour prepping this this

this morning early, or grading it, they don't care.

I could say the community isn't involved, they just want to

throw rocks from afar and just make criticism.

They don't, really. Care their parents.

They're they're not even coming to back to school now.

I have 55 kids. Parents come.

I can make all these reasons why my job has no meaning.

Or I could have goodwill toward everyone I'm supposed to serve.

You could take a Carpenter. A Carpenter is serving the

people he's building that building for.

Those people are paying money and trusting they're going to

get a quality structure without the corners cut, without making

kind of janky fixes here and there.

They want to know they're buying a quality product for the market

value they're getting. And if we cut corners, if we

short things out and give them a, you know, something they're

going to uncover later and go. Oh, who built this?

Is that doing goodwill service? Is that doing going to make them

glorify God if someone sees good things the way God designed it

to be done? In a good system and good

effort, everybody's better. That Carpenter can see their

foreman. Their foreman is just trying to

keep people together and keep the job site running smoothly.

The Superintendent is trying to not make it go over budget and

past time. These people have their own

stresses, their own worries. If they look at everybody, they

can serve. Everybody will be better off.

That's our job. You could take it to the.

Stalker. I don't.

I don't want to go through a whole nother list.

The stalker has his own people, they might seem like.

Well, it's. Just it's just this.

But we all have purpose, and when the small functions in a

bigger system don't go well, people notice it.

When aisles are thrown all over the place, you notice it.

And there your shift manager notices it because your shift

manager had people. Before you who weren't.

Doing their job and so they're stressed out and they're running

behind and customers are frustrated.

You can make everybody's life better by doing your job well.

And I think this is a Christian concept.

I don't think it is secular alone because we can bring glory

to God. And whatever we do, OK, we get

the idea. And first Peter, it says that we

without a word could win. You know, it's talking about the

wives trying to convert their unbelieving husbands.

He says that they, without a word, could win them with their

action. I think that applies to our

work, that we have a chance to influence people by showing them

somebody who is diligent. In many ways we're going to talk

about in a minute, that we, without a word, could influence

them. OK, the second very important

part of this verse, he says with goodwill, doing service.

At the end of the day, it's not about the people around you who

are the most important. At the end of the day, it is

about serving the Lord and not men.

So don't let. Don't get discouraged that your

work is valueless. Yes, you want to do good for

people, but that's not the great goal.

That's not the higher calling. Higher calling is to serve the

Lord in all areas of life. Verse 8 Knowing that whatever

good anyone does, whatever good anyone does, he will receive the

same from the Lord whether he is a slave or free.

Your work may not earn you a lot of.

Money. A slave might not have gotten

much at all, or maybe anything, but their pay is real good

because the Lord is going to give.

The Lord is going to return the work we do.

If the things we've said aren't enough for you already, the fact

that it's going to come back to you maybe a little selfishly,

but. I mean that's that's God's,

that's the glory of God's plan. It it is good for everyone and

it's good for us. When we do his will, it's going

to come back to us in some way. I believe that's maybe an

eternal thing. That we're going to get

everything you could ever possibly imagine giving your

effort to. You're going to get.

You're going to get paid for it. Eternity is beyond what we could

ever purchase or earn for ourselves.

God's blessings in eternity are going to be worth it all.

The Lord. We'll give back to the one for

every good thing he does. That's insane.

Those little things that nobody else is watching.

God sees it, and God's going to reward it if that doesn't fire

you up. People talk about the grind

like, I'm doing all this for what?

To fill up my boss's pockets. I get paid too.

I work too hard where you get paid too little.

And for what? If you're a Christian, that's

for what? A quality worker?

OK, So what are some attributes of a quality worker?

I just put together a couple real quick thinking about things

I've talked to different bosses about, or people I knew ran

other employees. What are some things that makes

up a quality worker? Or maybe key areas that make a

bad work? The first area I chose to bring

up is initiative. So how can I be a quality worker

in the area of showing initiative?

And this is a great rule of thumb that I've heard one time

that I've tried to carry with me.

And it applies to the work at the church, it applies to work

for a for employer, whatever you might say.

First, an average worker. I didn't say a bad worker.

I said average because the average is not necessarily good.

As we're going to find out throughout this process.

A normal or average person does what they do, what they're told

to do, when they're told to do it.

That's average, right? That's the bare minimum.

That you do what you're told. And we are commanded that here

to obey. But what does a good worker do?

A good worker asks. What can be done?

They might show initiative and step out of the way and say, hey

man, what can I do here? I'd like to help and, you know,

take on some more work here, or I'm finished with my other task.

What can I do here to help? That they will be seeking an

opportunity to do better. But a great worker and I might

change this to a Christian worker.

The goal is to be someone who does without asking.

If someone is managing other people and they have to

constantly tell someone every little thing that has to be

done, they get tired of it. They get frustrated.

It's more work for them. But if you can be someone who

learns, how can I? How I can just step on to the

next thing without even having to be told what?

To be done, and I know that takes time.

That's not always easy because you have to learn sequences, you

have to learn quality levels, you have to learn when you

should be done. So I'm not saying.

This is start day one. You should be able to do this,

but that's what we should. Be working toward and showing

initiative and. Especially at church, if we

would give this kind of effort for our bosses, why wouldn't we

give the Lord this kind of effort?

Are we doing what we should be told?

The issues in the church? You don't always have someone

who's just going to tell you what to do.

Are you asking what you can do? And by the way, it's not always

easy because we don't have all the answers.

But are you someone who's looking?

For what can be done here, that's the key.

I know I don't have the answers. I'm doing my best to figure out

what I can do. And I'm not saying I'm here,

that's not what I'm getting at. I'm saying I don't have the

answers to to tell other people what should be done.

But can we do without asking that?

I would step in for a need. Do I do that and show

initiative? OK, area #2.

Attitude towards challenges. Because work by nature is going

to have challenges. An average worker gets

instructions and does it through complaints.

It's like we've talked about already.

They'll do it, but they're going to complain about it.

Maybe to the boss or to the person they're working

alongside. They're going to complain about

it. But Philippians 2, verse 14 says

Philippians 2:14

to do all things without complaining and disputing that

you may become blameless and harmless children of God.

Have you ever connected? Complaining to being a child of

God seems like a pretty big deal.

Now we're kind of spitting out aimless complaints.

I could show my identity in God by not complaining, but instead

taking on tasks with a positive attitude and a commitment to the

goals of the boss. If if I can or if you can, try

to. Figure out what your.

Boss's goals are if you could just keep this mindset like I'm

just doing this little isolated task right here and don't take

into account the bigger picture when he's trying to get done,

you won't be quite as helpful. But if I take on this

challenging task saying, you know what, I'm going to grind

through this because this is what we're trying to get done as

a whole and I'm just going to function, do my best as a part

of that system. Our bosses will will respect

that and appreciate that. And to do with the positive

attitude, because you got to do it anyway, right?

There's certain things you have to do anyway, and a negative

attitude only makes it worse. There's AI think it's a proverb.

I'm not going to remember it word for word, but if you know

the proverb, you know where I was going with that A.

A good attitude can can bring life to a situation.

OK, what about professional development?

So we've talked about challenging tasks now.

What about developing yourself as a professional as a?

Worker The average person says I get paid you the same for eight

hours as you, so why would I do any more than that?

Why would I care? A great worker or a Christian

worker should seek ways to be better at their job, knowing

self and the boss's explanations.

OK again, not to be better than somebody else, that's not what

I'm saying here, but to better them self.

How can I be a more effective worker?

How can I be more efficient or more productive for you, or more

effective in my job? And this is key I think, right

here. Knowing self, you have to think

about and know who you are as a worker.

Some people need to be told to do a more precise job or to take

more care with their work. As Frank will tell you after

work with me, that is not what I need.

I do not be need to be told to do a more precise job because I

will take too long doing a job that.

Needs to just be moved on from. I can be perfectionist in the

details and that's not going to make him money.

If I'm taking too long to do a job that it's good enough how it

is, it's great. Just move on.

So you have to know yourself. You have to know what you need

to work on, maybe with your personality, maybe in your

specific job and ways that you can be better.

Don't be afraid to ask the boss or a Co worker around you ways

you can be better and know the boss's expectations.

Integrity. We're getting toward the end of

our list here. Integrity.

What about this as it applies to us being good workers?

First of all, timeliness. Maybe not.

In every culture, timeliness is a massive issue in some places.

Maybe showing up late is just like that's just what everybody

does and and everybody was OK with that.

I don't know about other cultures.

I know about here in the US and I know in the US it is a way to

communicate respect and value for the person you're serving

and the person you're doing the job for.

It is a way to communicate respect and honor and we should

be on time. I was told if you're not 10

minutes early, you're 5 minutes late.

I think those apply Well, what about theft as it deals with

integrity? I read these statistics and I

shared some of them recently with you guys in another lesson.

But I read a statistic that said 90% of all significant theft

losses come from employees. Significant theft losses will be

beyond just like the little small things that don't really

amount to much. That's scary.

That's the average. But I think maybe the more

common, the more common issue for most people because of some

of these statistics is time theft.

We've talked about this before, but I'm going to keep

reiterating it because it's something we have to be very

careful of. It's easy to slip into this

studied, I think it was the Bureau of Labour and Statistics

or something said 4 1/2 labours of time, theft per employee per

week. That's a lot of money being

thrown away. If you were to walk up to your

boss and steal, let's say minimum wage, that's like 90

bucks every week walking up to your boss and stealing 90 bucks

out of his pocket. You never do that, right?

But would we steal their time by not being productive on the job,

or being on our phones or just slacking off, whatever the case

may be, that's scary. That's a lot of time and money.

One in four people admit to lying on their time cards, and

in the US this was in 2021 or two.

I looked at this statistic. There was $400 billion

businesses lost in the US from time theft alone.

Average with theft or time management Average is steal from

your boss. Everybody else does it.

They're sitting over there on your phone.

Why won't you? That's not what we're called.

The bee. I don't know if I put the the

great, but the great would be obviously being productive on

time doing your work. It's kind of the opposite of all

those things. Colossians 3 verse 23 says and

Colossians 3:23

whatever. You do do it heartily.

The whole summation of this is you don't work just for your

boss. You work for the Lord at your

job, and we're going to spend 120,000 hours in our life

working. Why not take advantage of it and

use it heartily and to do our best?

And as I was thinking about this, our own work ethic and

what we're willing to do is so limited by our mind.

It's so limited by what we think we can do.

If you, as you think about these different great feats that

humans have accomplished, I don't say this to glorify

humans. I say this to glorify God and

that he has made us incredibly resilient, changeable, moldable.

You can change any part of yourself almost your your

physical endurance, your strength, your focus, your your

mental skills, your physical skills.

You can change almost anything about you.

That's a God giving gift to better yourself.

For the glory of God, people climb the tallest mountains in

the world all the time. They could have just said I

don't feel like it and a lot of people do, but it just shows

what we can accomplish if we'll take the time I follow this guy,

his name. 'S true Haynes.

He just he just broke the world pull up record and most of the

guys who are the pull up world record holders are real scrawny

skinny guys. So it was an amazing thing that

did this. He's a bigger guy.

He did 8100 pull ups in the day. It's an incredible feat.

What are we willing to work for? I'm not saying go out and do a

billion pull ups. I'm saying do you realize, do I

realize that I have so few limitations that God gave me?

I have so much potential that I have to grow and do.

That when I say. I don't really want to or can't.

That is a mentality I ran across the that that plane crash that

happened in the Andes mountains. There was these 16 people

survived 72 days and the Andes mountains in the snow with just

a plane. And we're not going to go into

the details of what happened there, but the thought of what

the human body is capable of and resilient through 72 days.

And we can complain about the tiny things we're capable of

more. This man, I'm not going to try

to pronounce his name, just ran a marathon in under 2 hours.

People thought it was impossible.

They thought the human body is it's incapable of it. 1900 years

into human history, the fastest we had was 3 hours and 45

minutes at the IT was one of the Olympic Games.

The first marathon races ran. To think that that was an

incredible human feat, and now it's been like, cut in half.

It just shows what we can do when we will put our mind to.

Something we can and and have the potential to do.

Things that are beyond what we might think right now, that's a

God-given ability to change and grow.

So miscellaneous. This one person went 15 days

without food or water. Someone else spent 41 minutes

without blinking. This person spent 48 hours in

virtual reality, this 122 minutes underwater with no air.

I think this guy was under ice too, Under ice water, 86 hours

running continuously, and someone else spent 264 hours

with no sleep. That's like 11 days.

Again, the only reason I bring this up is to remember that we

have more to give. And if you don't think you have

more to give, that's probably a product of not trying, because

you don't realize how much potential you have for the glory

of God to be better workers, To not think, I can't do this, you

can. And God can be glorified in

whatever situation we're in. Just finishing up real quick.

And you masters. So he's talking about the bosses

now. He's going to give direction to

them, and it's very short. Do the same things to them.

Now. Is he saying you have to obey

them like they were told to obey?

No, It's the same perspective. It's the same.

Attitude of I'm trying to follow God and I'm trying to work for

God. Bosses have their own role of

service, but they are to Revere God first and to show respect to

their employees and to have the same mentality in their work.

If you're a boss, do the same things to them.

Lost my birth year. Where you go?

Knowing that whatever good anyone does, well, see I messed

up my here we go. So he says, And you masters do

the same things to them, giving up threatening.

If you were a boss, he says, don't threaten your employees.

Maybe in this day and time this would have had a more direct

physical harm. Maybe threatening, physical

punishment or something might have been the case, but even

today, threatening should not be used.

Consequence, though, has to happen.

So there we're going to talk about difference between

threatening and consequence, but there's no place for

threatening. So threats versus consequences,

what's the difference If someone is not performing in a way you

can let them know, hey, I, as the manager of this situation of

this company I have, I can't keep you.

If you're going to continue to do this, and they're going to,

you're going to let them know the consequence of what they of

what will happen. But there's a difference between

letting them know and doing that, following up and say, OK,

this is what happened, So I have to catch you loose.

I'm sorry, that's a consequence. But threats do nobody any good.

If someone walks around giving threats, a lot of times they're

revealed as empty threats. And who does that really put

the? Stress on that puts stress on

the. Employee on the employer.

Because if they're throwing threats around, man, now I throw

all these threats and I have to back it up.

If I don't, I'm kind of lying. I'm kind of being dishonest and

they're not going to trust me anymore because I said I was

going to do this. I'm not.

Threats don't do any good. They make people angry and

bitter and they put stress on the manager because it's really

on them to follow through with all these threats, he says.

Give up threatening, we are all here.

To serve the best interest of others.

So giving up threatening, knowing that your own master

also is in heaven and there is no partiality with him.

May we keep the proper perspective on our roles of

authority to realize that we're not the top of the food chain

and it's not all about us and our goals aren't the greatest

goals in the universe. We have a master that we need to

handle other people in light of our relationship with our

master. And he says there is no

partiality with him. You're not going to be a special

treatment and God's not going to treat you specially because

you're a boss and you have had a lot of authority.

God is our Supreme leader. Whether we're boss or whether

we're employee. There's no partiality with him.

May we be humble enough to see that.

And that's we're going to close today.

We'll finish up Ephesians Chapter 6 next time.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

I hope we can give glory to God in the way we work today and

it'll. The process all starts with

becoming a Christian. And if you haven't already done

that, why not? It's a great life.

It's the best life you can live. If you hear the word, you have a

chance to believe that word. When you believe the word, you

can respond to it with a change, with a repentance that says God,

I'm ready to follow your will and not my will.

I want to turn and do what you ask.

I'm going to fight that gravity to sin and go conformity.

I'm going to be transformed. That's my goal moving forward.

And you can do have that repentance in your heart, and

you can confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that

there's salvation by none other, and be baptized to be added to

the church to be contacted with Jesus blood himself.

And you could be saved for the remission of your sins and you

can be added to the Church. And if you've already done that,

and you need prayers for forgiveness, for support, you

can do those things privately. But if it's of public nature and

you want to get it right, or if you just want the support of

everybody who's here together, we'd be happy to help you out

one of either class while we stand and while we sit.

We thank you for listening to our podcast put on by the Church

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