Work for the Lord

So we'll read from Ephesians 6 and from verses 5 to 9.

Bond servants, 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 bond servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.

Rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man.

Knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bond servant or is free.

May the masters do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours in heaven,

and that there is no partiality with him.

Let us pray.

Lord, we ask now that you would open our hearts to receive your word and that you would give us insight and understanding and most importantly, faith.

We ask for real change based on this passage in our lives.

So Holy Spirit, help us now, we ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

We're walking through the back half of the book of Ephesians week by week.

One way to summarize it all is to say that there is nothing more practical than the Christian faith.

And the headline article that we introduced last time, two weeks ago really, is verses 18 to 21 in the previous chapter,

which says,

Do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.

And then says,

Submit to one another.

And so he's talking to Christians.

Paul's talking to Christians.

People who are filled with the Holy Spirit.

And he's saying,

Submit to one another in every relationship you have.

And so the big headline that we're working our way through in this section is the gospel.

When you come to faith in Jesus and the gospel gets a hold of your life and the Spirit is a part of your life,

one way that you know you have the Holy Spirit and that you know God is at work in your life is when your relationships start to reorder and reorganize based on the facts of the gospel.

And so last week we looked at marriage and how the gospel changes the way we look at husbands and wives and dating.

We skipped children and parents because the family service is next week.

So I'll come back and be able to tell the kids next week in the service,

Obey your parents.

And parents, there'll be something for you too.

This week we're coming to Paul who says masters and slaves.

The slave-master dynamic.

He's talking about work and he's talking about employment and being an employer and an employee.

And we'll come to address this issue of slavery in just a second.

But work is what we spend most of our time on in our waking hours.

So the average human being, the average person in this room will spend 90,000 hours in employed work over the course of their lifetime.

That's the statistical average and if you're a high worker, an over worker, it's far more, right?

And so, boy, you got to believe that Christianity has something to say about work.

That which we spend most of our awake time doing.

And it does.

Christianity is so practical.

So let's think about that.

First, let's understand Paul in context and deal with this issue of slavery.

And then second, we can't ignore that.

And then secondly, I just want to give you the one big principle that Paul gives us for how to think about faith and work in this passage.

And of course, when I say one big principle, that means one big principle with lots of sub-principles underneath it, okay?

All right, so here we go.

First, what do we do about the context when we open the passage and read verse 1?

Slaves, obey your earthly masters.

The ESV U.S. actually says, bond servants, obey your masters.

So there's two different versions of the ESV, one for Americans, one for British people.

And in the American one, it says, bond servants, obey your masters.

And the reason for that is because the translators are trying to soften the language to distinguish Greco-Roman Mediterranean slavery from African chattel slavery.

And they want to soften the language to make a distinction there.

And there are many distinctions to be made there.

But the word is slaves.

Slaves, obey your masters.

Now, you may say, Paul says, slaves, obey your masters.

And you think, where I work, I am a slave.

So I don't need any contextualization here.

This is right on.

But here he's, of course, talking to first century people in the city of Ephesus.

And after William Wilberforce, after the Civil War, after the Jim Crow South, in the area where I grew up, after apartheid, some of us and lots of people in our city would come to a passage like this.

And they would struggle, struggle, struggle.

And maybe you do.

Because you say, Paul, where is the sentence that says, slaves, revolt against your masters and abolish slavery?

Where is that sentence?

All we read is, slaves, obey your earthly masters.

And what do we do with something like that?

And many, many, it's definitely true that many Christians in the past, at times, have come and used this passage to condone slavery.

And if you go back and read some of the sermons in the 1850s, where I come from, you'll see that sometimes, and that happened in the UK and Britain as well, that they used this passage to condone slavery.

And that is not what Paul is doing.

Not at all.

What is Paul doing?

He is writing to a little bitty church in this city called Ephesus.

And we realize it has to be the case that most of the people he's talking to are slaves.

So the historians will tell us that the estimates are as high as the population, first century population of the Roman Empire, being up to 75 million people in the first century.

And up to 60 million of them are slaves.

60 out of 75 slaves.

Slavery is so ingrained, so part of the normal fabric of the culture, that overwhelmingly, at least 80% of all the people in the Greco-Roman Empire are slaves.

And that means that when Paul writes this, he's talking to a little bitty church in Ephesus of people who have come to faith, discovering the gospel for the very first time.

And what they're trying to do is work out, what do I do with this thing called Christianity?

And if, Paul, you're telling me that the gospel, Ephesians 1 to 3, frees me in Christ, the gospel says you are now free in Christ, what does that mean when I go to work on Monday as a slave who is not free?

And that is Paul's biggest concern, right?

And so, in Greco-Roman Mediterranean slavery, you had some really, really brutal forms.

People, masters separating families, men from their wives and children sometimes.

You had torture sometimes happening.

But in many forms of Greco-Roman slavery, you also had a paid job where you were housed, fed, well-educated.

It was not race-based.

Most of the people who were slaves were conquered peoples.

And lots of people would sell themselves into slavery because it was a really, really steady thing.

You knew that you could be fed, clothed.

So, for instance, some of the most well-educated people in the whole of the Roman Empire were slaves, like the doctors in Caesar's household.

They would have been slaves in the Roman Empire.

It was the normal pattern to be a slave.

And there were some horrible forms and some not-so-horrible forms.

And what Paul's doing is he's not completely dismissing the institution.

The principles of the Bible will ultimately lead to the abolishment of slavery one day.

Yeah?

But what he's doing here is he's looking out and he's being a pastor.

And he's talking to people who have just come to faith in Christ and saying,

Now, what does Jesus mean for Monday?

I'm a slave.

And boy, if he would have told this little band of slaves in the middle of a metropolis like Ephesus,

Go out Monday morning and be an activist, you know, and protest on the royal mile against slavery,

they would have all been dead before lunch.

Okay?

And so it would have been very foolish.

And instead, what is he doing?

He's trying to pastor them.

Think about 1 Corinthians 7.

Paul's got this list in 1 Corinthians 7 where he's going through,

What does it mean to be a Christian in your normal life?

And one of the issues he addresses is,

If you've become a Christian but you're married to a non-Christian, do you leave your spouse?

And Paul says, No.

Stay with them.

Be for them.

Right?

Because they just don't know.

They're trying to figure it out.

They don't know the ethics of following Jesus.

And that's what he's doing.

He's pastoring them.

He's pastoring us.

And he's saying, What does Jesus have to do with your Monday, with your employment, with your work?

He's getting right down to it.

That's his big goal.

Now, does Paul care about the abolition of slavery?

Absolutely he does.

Does Christianity matter for the social conditions of a city?

Absolutely it does.

But the principle in the Bible is not revolution but always reformation.

The biblical idea is never revolution but always reformation.

In other words, what he's telling us is something absolutely revolutionary that leads not to revolutions but reformations.

And just like last week, if you were here, I mentioned that when Paul turns to men in the Greco-Roman Empire and says,

Men, you husbands, you cherish your wives as if she is your own body.

In a society where men would get married and then have any relationship they wanted on the side

and could care less about their wife except for status,

He says, You nourish and cherish her like it's your very body.

Boy, that was an equality, a plane of equality in the Greco-Roman world that had never existed.

And when he turns in this passage in verse 8 and 9 and he says,

You cannot look at your slave and think, I'm greater than my slave.

Instead, when you know that you're standing before the Lord, you're equal with them before God.

That is a revolution that will lead to a reformation.

And you can think about William Wilberforce here in this country in the 19th century.

William Wilberforce, who really led the movement towards abolition of the slave trade here,

he was an aristocrat of aristocrats.

He was as ostentatious as it gets.

So he was a character in a Jane Austen novel.

A pretentious, snobby, very, very wealthy man.

And he found Jesus.

Jesus found him.

He came to Christ.

It changed his life.

It reordered all of his relationships.

And what did he do?

He spent his entire life slowly trying to be leaven in a society that still had the slave trade

by slowly, slowly, slowly drip-feeding parliament with biblical principles

until parliament abolished the slave trade.

The principle in the Bible is to care about social conditions,

but not through the lens of revolution, through the lens of reformation.

Drip-feeding the gospel principles over and over and over again until change starts to happen.

And God calls us at all different levels to care about the social conditions we may have been dropped into.

So some of us might become William Wilberforce.

Others of us, most of us, will not in tiny little small ways in whatever community workplace that we've been put in.

But the Bible calls us to care about that.

But let me give you the biggest takeaway here.

And the biggest takeaway to see is that Paul is saying to us the most important thing is to care in this fleeting life about what does Jesus have to do with me in my life today.

So the social conditions may change, I hope so, for the better.

But this life is fleeting.

And Paul is saying the most important thing is to ask, in the first century, what does it mean for me to be a slave tomorrow at 8 a.m., 7 a.m. when I wake up?

What does it mean for you as a Christian to be an employee or an employer tomorrow?

Tomorrow.

So the workplace may be really unhealthy.

And what you've got to think about is slow drip-feeding permeation of change.

But the most important thing is to say, how do I follow Jesus in that tomorrow?

Even if the social conditions never change.

So a Christian is willing to suffer in bad conditions and pray that they get changed.

But in the meantime, witness to the gospel the whole way, all along the way.

All right?

So what does that mean?

What does that look like?

How?

Secondly, the one principle I want to give you with lots of sub-principles.

Here we go.

Secondly, what is Paul teaching us here about work, about employees and employers and how to think about it?

He's telling us one main thing.

And that is, if you're a human being, you work.

And if you work and you're a Christian, you work for the Lord.

God is your ultimate boss.

God is your boss.

That's how a Christian works.

That's what he teaches here.

And that means, good news for all you employees in the room,

your earthly boss, as he puts it in verse 1, is relative, not final.

And for all the employers in the room, you work for the Lord, Paul says.

And that means that you have to think about your workspace, your employees, the people who work under you,

who work for you, as entirely equal before God.

God shows no partiality to masters, to employers.

You work for the Lord.

That's the big lesson that we learn here in this passage.

Now, what is Paul doing?

He's bringing us back to Genesis 1 and 2.

And he's reminding us that when the gospel comes into your life,

it has the power to reorder your relationships,

to make them what they should have been if Genesis 3 would have never happened.

So the goal is to realize, hey, this is for Christians,

but it's also the gospel so permeating our lives that we live as if Genesis 3 never happened.

That's the big goal.

Now, of course, we won't do that perfectly,

but we want to reorder marriage to look like Genesis 2 again.

We want to reorder work to look like the Garden of Eden.

That's what he's talking about here.

And so look how he puts it.

If you just scan your eyes across the passage,

you can see all the times he takes you back to realizing,

I work for the Lord.

God is my big boss.

That's what really matters.

So he says in verse 5,

Slaves obey, and then there's the clause at the end,

as you would obey Christ.

In other words, as you're obeying your employer,

as you're serving them,

do it as if because you are serving Christ.

That's what he's suggesting.

Keep going.

Not through eye service, but as servant of Christ.

So in every sphere of work, whether you work at home,

you work in an office,

you work as an employer or an employer,

work as if you are serving Christ in that moment.

That's his suggestion.

Doing the will of God from your heart,

wholeheartedly for God,

all the way down to the bottom when he says to masters,

knowing that when you work as an employer

and give orders to people,

God is your master.

You should do it as if you've been mastered

by Jesus Christ himself.

All right, so you can see all throughout the way

how clear it is.

The main idea, you work for the Lord

if you're a Christian.

He is your boss,

and everything's about relating ultimately to him.

Now, he gives you three ways to do that.

Here's the sub-principles.

Practically, just the little words

that he chooses to use here.

Number one, he tells you something every time,

negative and then positive.

So the normal way that people do it

in the city apart from the gospel

and then how the gospel really can change your life at work.

And so the first one he gives you is in verse one.

And he says, obey your earthly masters

with fear and trembling.

That's the first one, with fear and trembling.

By the way, if you look down at verse nine,

you'll see that he says, masters do the same thing.

So every one of this list, these three principles,

he's saying to both employers and employees.

So most of us in this room are both probably,

a lot of us will be, where you will be an employee,

but you'll also be a boss of somebody else at the same time.

And so a lot of us have to figure out,

with wisdom, how this works out in your life.

So all we can do today is give the principles

from the Bible.

And every single one of us has to say,

how does this very particularly work in my workplace,

according to my job, my rhythms,

depending on if I'm an employee or an employer.

So the first one he says is,

obey your employer with fear and trembling.

All right, does that mean going to work

and everything your boss says,

saying, yes, sir, doing it, yes, ma'am,

doing it as a scaredy cat.

Fear and trembling.

No, okay, the Greek word fear and trembling

is an idiom in Greek for honor and respect.

So it's using a Greek idiom to say,

serve at work, serve your boss with honor and respect.

And remember, who's he talking to?

He's talking to slaves.

He's saying, slaves, serve your master.

Employees, serve your boss with honor and respect,

therefore, even if they are bad.

So here's how the gospel can reshape

your relationship to work.

It gives you a new reason, a new power,

a new impetus to going to work and saying,

I don't have a good boss,

but because I work for the Lord,

God calls me to honor and respect

the authority above me,

even when they're not doing a good job,

even when they're not doing what they should be.

Now, does that mean being walked all over?

No, because the paradigm we've already had

in Ephesians is always speak the truth

and love in your relationships.

And so what does it mean to honor and respect,

fear and tremble?

It means that you have the confidence

because you work for Jesus,

to stand up sometimes to a bad boss and say,

I respect you, but I disagree,

and I don't think that's the right course of action.

Truth in love, right?

And at the same time, you've got the humility

to then go to the water cooler

and kill the water cooler gossip

about how bad your boss is.

That's the humble confidence the gospel gives you.

So what's the first thing we learn here?

One of the first things we learn,

the first thing we learn here

is the way to go to work and serve the Lord.

How do you serve the Lord at work?

You serve God at work.

You work for the Lord by bearing with a bad boss

in ways that other people will not bear with them.

Forbearance with them, no matter what.

Bearing with a bad boss.

And it goes the same for masters.

He turns and says, the same for you, you employers.

Stop your threats.

And so in the ancient world,

in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean society,

masters would oftentimes be brutal to their slaves.

And imagine, boy, masters and slaves.

When he's speaking, when Paul is writing this,

it's being read out loud in church.

And who is there in church?

Masters and slaves sitting next to each other

and saying, you employers, you look across the room

and know that in all the ways that you continue to be harsh,

the gospel has to mortify that and kill that.

And you've got to respect your employers,

your slaves in this first century

because Jesus Christ came to die for them

just like he came to die for you.

The gospel has got to reorder that.

And then he turns to employees in this room

and he says, look over and respect that person

even when they don't do a good job.

The gospel changes everything.

The gospel reorders our relationships from top to bottom.

The second thing he gives us here is in verse six and seven.

So he says in verse six and seven,

here's the negative, not by eye service and people pleasing,

but instead serving God wholeheartedly,

rendering service from the heart.

So not eye service, not people pleasing,

but serving the Lord at work wholeheartedly.

Now boy, this is where it really comes down to the practical.

I remember in high school,

my dad made me work a lot in high school.

And when I grew up, it was big on you work, work, work

as young as possible so that you learn to work.

You learn how to really work, right?

So I did construction and all sorts of other things.

To learn hard work, no matter what I thought about it.

And I remember when you're 17, when you're 16,

maybe when you're 26, maybe when you're 36,

maybe when you're 46 or 56,

maybe you still are with your pals at work.

And you, you know, once I had a desk job,

a computer job when I was about 16, 17,

and we had it worked out pretty well

where you could put your hands on the keyboard, right?

And close your eyes like this.

And we had code words, you know,

and people would be designated, okay,

if the boss is coming, you know,

cry out like an eagle or, right?

And immediately you pop up and just start typing, right?

Now this is the word Paul uses, eye service,

meaning you only work when the master,

in the first century, when the master shows up.

And the rest of the time you are doing as much as you can

to do as little as possible, right?

And then he turns and he says,

and also not as men pleasers in the text

or people pleasers, it's translated.

And it's the same idea, but in eye service,

the idea is that you only appear to be doing work

when the boss is around.

People pleasing is you are only working

so that the boss would see you.

So maybe you work as hard as you can,

but the only reason is because you want to get promoted,

promoted, promoted.

Success, success, success.

So I'll do whatever work I need to do

in order to be seen by my boss

so that I can go up, up, up in the business

or whatever hierarchy you're a part of.

And he says, the gospel changes that.

Why?

Because now you work for the Lord.

He's your big boss.

And so now when you go to work every day,

you gotta say, why am I doing this?

Even in a job that maybe you don't like,

and he says, you've gotta wake up

and you gotta say, because I'm doing it,

I'm gonna work, I'm gonna do what I signed up to do

because I'm working for the glory of God.

In order that by my good work,

even when all the other guys are asleep

with their hands on the keyboards,

they might see my work and give glory one day

to my father who's in heaven.

Maybe I'll get a chance to say,

look, the reason I'm not gonna do it

is because I work for the Lord.

I wanna give glory to God.

And so I'm committed to doing exactly

what I signed up to do.

Boy, if you think about all of our lives,

we have a natural heart disposition

to care so much about what people think about us.

And we care about what people think of us as men.

We care about what people think of us as women.

We care about what people think of us as workers as well,

and in every sphere.

And we desperately care about

what our bosses think about us.

And when we live according to that gospel,

which is not gospel at all, it's bad news,

then our whole life becomes about being controlled

by what everybody thinks, everybody's opinion.

We're literally making all of our decisions

based on opinion formation.

And what we're reading about here says

that when you realize that you work for the true boss,

for Jesus Christ, when he really is your master at work,

we are freed from desiring the praise of people all the time.

It no longer becomes my ambition

to care as much about what everybody thinks about me.

And instead, what I really care about

is seeking the common good

and rendering service for the Lord

as much as I possibly can.

And sometimes that may even mean being fired for something,

going that far, because I care about the Lord.

I'm not gonna do that.

I'm not gonna sin when I'm asked to sin at work.

Because the Lord, I care about the glory of the Lord

in all that I do.

The third thing and final thing he gives us here

in verse seven and eight

is ultimately rendering service and goodwill,

doing all we do with goodwill to the Lord,

knowing, he says, you may not be rewarded

in this life for it.

So he's talking to slaves.

They're sure not gonna be rewarded

for their service before God in this life.

He says, but you will be rewarded one day.

The Lord sees.

Now, what is he saying?

Do you, he's asking you this.

Will you ask yourself this diagnostic question?

Do you go to work to make money?

Yes, that is a good thing.

Do you go to work to provide?

Yes, that is a good thing.

God has made work for that, to be able to provide.

But he's asking, do you have a heart

because of the gospel?

Because God looked out at the world and said,

I will not leave this world to die to itself.

I will save this place.

I love humans.

I love this world so much that I will redeem.

You look out at the world and you say,

look, yes, I come to work to make money.

Yes, I come to work to provide for my family or myself.

But boy, I come to work because God made me to be a worker.

And I'm made in his image.

And he's the great worker.

And I want to work to his glory.

And ultimately, I want to serve the common good

as much as I can to witness to the future kingdom of God

that God, the great craftsman, is building for us.

That's the real reason.

That's the real motivation.

That's what he's talking about here.

So let me put it simple.

The greatest lesson, I think, in this passage is

the most important way to serve God at work,

according to Paul,

is to go to work and do good work,

do excellent work.

That's what he's saying.

When you work for the Lord,

you go to work and you work excellently.

And you say, I work excellently to the glory of God.

Now, let me bring things to a conclusion.

I'll put it like this, even more simply.

You can say,

God doesn't make junk, so I don't make junk either.

Right?

Every morning you wake up and you say,

God doesn't make junk, so I don't make junk.

I work for the Lord.

I try to do my work skillfully, beautifully,

because it's all ultimately about his glory.

Now, the headline, remember, was verse 18 to 21,

be filled with the Spirit.

And look for the Spirit working out

sanctification in your life

by the way your relationship to work is changing.

Look for that.

Be aware of that.

Think about that.

Try to reorder your life and relationship to work

through that lens.

But what is he ultimately saying there?

He's saying that in order to see work like this,

you've got to get the gospel into your life.

And you've got to believe the good news of Jesus Christ.

And what is the good news?

We could spend a long time talking about it,

but let me just say it this way.

The gospel means

resting

in the voice of Jesus Christ

who says over you,

while you were my enemy,

while you were a sinner,

I came to love you

beyond and in spite of your performance.

The gospel says

that God loves you

despite your performance.

And you know what that means

when it comes to work?

It means that when you believe the gospel,

you are freed

from needing to create meaning

and your own existential meaning

and your own personal successes

merely through the workplace

because God has already told you,

I accept you

beyond your performance.

In other words,

it gets you,

it frees you,

it liberates you

from believing

my performance at work

and in every other arena of life

is my ultimate meaning.

The gospel frees you from that.

And you can go to work

and you can know

that you're freed,

you're freed from selfish ambition.

You're freed

from just pursuing higher levels

of success

and money all the time

because

you don't need to be somebody.

God has already said

you're a somebody to Him.

He loves you desperately

in Christ

and it frees you from thinking,

it frees you also from thinking

that working

with your hands

and working,

maybe you just,

maybe you clean,

maybe you work in the garden.

This says,

God is the ultimate gardener

and that means

you are free from thinking

that there's such a thing

as lesser work in this life.

Mere menial work

instead of,

Martin Luther,

finish with this,

Martin Luther,

what did he say?

In the top of the Reformation,

he came up in Roman Catholicism

and he believed

that the only real way

to serve God

through our work

is to become a monk,

a priest,

or a nun.

And so he did that.

He became a monk

and a priest.

And he still really struggled

with God's call on his life.

And when he came

to read Paul correctly

and find out

about the bounty

of justification

that God pronounces

his love and grace

and forgiveness over you

despite your performance.

What did he turn around

and say about work?

He turned around

and said,

here's a quote,

the milkmaid

and the watchman on the wall

are the hands

and feet of the Lord.

He used to believe

the only way

to really serve God

in this life

is to be religious minister,

to be a monk

or a priest,

he thought.

And then he said,

no,

it's the milkmaid

and the watchman on the tower

that are the real hands

and feet of the Lord

week in and week out.

The gospel frees you

to realizing

God has called you to work

and so the number one thing

is just to work excellently

to God's glory.

Martin Lloyd-Jones

was a minister in London

in the middle

of the 20th century.

This week,

I read his six sermons

on this passage.

All right,

so listen,

maybe you're thinking,

when is this going to finish?

Martin Lloyd-Jones

preached six straight weeks

on Ephesians 6,

5 to 9.

We're only doing 30 minutes,

okay?

But let me give you

a couple examples

and I want to quote him

because they're strong,

I think.

He said,

if you're a university student,

a student in the room,

he said,

he talked about this happening

in his own church

in the middle of the 20th century.

A university student

came to me

and they said,

you know,

I failed my exams.

And he said,

okay,

sometimes that happens,

but why?

And they said,

well,

the reason I failed

was because I didn't study

because I was out

till 1 a.m.

every night this week

doing work

for the Christian Union.

And he said,

now that sounds pious,

but he said,

God called you

to be a student first.

And to work for the Lord

is not to replace

nightly evangelism

till 1 a.m.

with the primary calling

you have during exam week,

which is to study

and to do your job excellently.

He gave another example

to the office worker.

He said,

Paul's calling us here

to work for the Lord

wholeheartedly,

and that means

every morning

to wake up

and fight the,

what's the difference

in a Christian

when the gospel

gets a hold of your life

and you come to work?

You fight the drudgery

in the morning.

When you wake up

and you think,

oh boy,

not again.

He says,

a Christian says,

yes,

I do struggle with that.

I do feel that way.

But when you realize

I gotta go to work again,

he says,

do not do it

in a begrudging manner,

but from the heart

wholeheartedly

saying today

I get up

and this is hard,

but I'm called to work

and I'm gonna work

for the Lord

and I'm gonna work

for the glory of God.

God made me to work

where it pleases the Lord

and I'm gonna give

my whole heart to it

as much as I can

even in a difficult environment.

He says,

that's the application

of the text.

So here's the takeaway

and the final word

and I'll pray.

How do you serve

the Lord at work

this week?

Number one,

do a good job

especially when

nobody's watching you.

Number two,

the way to serve God

at work

is to bear

with a difficult

co-worker,

boss,

and relationship

in ways that other people

in the office

will not bear with them.

Number three,

the way to serve God

at work

is to seek

the common good

of society,

to make something

wonderful

if you're able,

to do something helpful

as far as you're able

in work,

to serve the common good.

Number four,

the way to serve

the Lord at work

is with public faith,

never allowing

this false dichotomy

in the modern world

between private faith

and a public sector

to go to work

as a Christian,

as a public witness,

using your wisdom

if you're able

to share the gospel

to somebody

in a wise way.

And the most important

of all

is to say,

I work for the Lord

so when I go to work

because God doesn't make junk,

I'm not gonna make junk.

I'm gonna work

as excellently

as I possibly can.

Let us ask God

to give us these hearts.

Let's pray.

Father,

we ask

that by the power

of the gospel

you would change

our relationship

to work.

Reorder us,

Lord,

reshape us,

give us

a reinvigorated spirit

to work for you.

Lord,

you are our true master.

And so I pray

for some today

maybe who have not yet

called upon you

to be their master

who have not yet

followed Jesus.

And we do pray for them

now for those

that might be pondering

that in their life

in this very room

and pray,

Lord,

that you would help them

see how practical

Christianity is

and how powerful

your acceptance

through the cross

is for them.

And we pray that now

in Jesus' name.

Amen.