"Redeemed in Chains" Ephesians 6:5-8 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Ephesians 6, verse 5.

Ephesians 6:5

Slaves obey your masters, your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ.

Not by the way of I service, as people pleasers, but as 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, he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is slave or free.

Now there has obviously been a revolution in our world over the last two years concerning the nature of work, what it means to work, a restructuring of work itself.

Some of this might be good, some of it might be bad.

I've shared a study with you from England a few months ago a couple times, but it just continues to fascinate me.

A study of workers in offices in England through COVID.

This is people, there's a massive study, thousands of people.

People who generally worked eight to five or nine to five kind of jobs.

And what the study discovered is that most people that are working from home now are much more productive than they were when they were at work.

Moreover, they work way less hours.

You know, the a four-hour work day for someone who's working from home, they're producing more for their company than they were in an eight or nine-hour workday going to the office.

And if you have had to work in an office before, you might understand why.

And what the study discovered is that in a typical eight-hour or nine-hour workday, most people are spending just hours surfing the internet, on social media, looking for new jobs.

But so much of their time when they're not on the computer is spent in meetings about meetings, in training sessions about how to run training sessions for those that run training sessions.

A total cyclical endeavor.

I remember reading uh George Bush's kind of autobiography, Decision Points, and he lamented that after Hurricane Katrina, he was trying to send uh government contractors and people down to New Orleans.

He was rapidly expanding the government workforce, but for those people to go down there and work in the rescue effort and the relief effort, they had to complete a week of anti-harassment, anti-discrimination training in Atlanta before they could go to New Orleans, making it impossible to actually do work.

They had to go to training about training, so they can train other people about what not to do, rather than going and doing their jobs.

And so much of the work world is like that.

And that gets, I think, to an attitude in the American culture that is hostile towards work.

Work is often pitted in our American culture as, you know, an affront, an offense or an affront to the family.

There's been decades in kind of American uh self-esteem, um psychology outlook on work that views work as hostile towards the family, that guilt men for being at work, that you know, makes a man who is devoted to his work seem antagonistic towards his family rather than the other way around.

That someone who ignores work would really be antagonistic to his family.

Certainly there are people that spend too much time at work, and certainly there's people that don't spend enough time there.

That's not the point.

The point is that our culture has managed to craft this kind of psychological outlook that views a person who's devoted to work as someone who must be indifferent to family.

The biblical perception of work is different than that.

The biblical perception of work is that God designed work so that you can be productive so that you can provide for your family.

I had this experience when I was in Rwanda a couple years ago.

I spent almost a month there teaching at Pastor Charles's church and at their seminary.

And uh my class at the seminary was in the early afternoon, and I would spend the rest of the evening at the seminary library studying, and um, the seminary library was at the church.

It was about a 10-minute walk from the library to the house that I was staying at.

Uh, and yet the church had provided me a driver who would drive me there.

And it was not because it was a dangerous walk.

You know, this is like a nice part of Rwanda.

It was a safer walk from the library to my house than it would be in some parts of Northern Virginia.

But I had a driver who would spend hours sitting in the parking lot.

I find out that he has three kids, or three or four kids, I forget, at home, a wife at home, but he's not at home because he's hanging out in the parking lot outside the library until 10 o'clock at night when the library closes to take me home.

And so I started to feel guilty about this.

And I told him one day, like, look, man, I can walk home.

If you're spending six hours waiting for me, why not you just go home and spend time with your kids and I can walk home?

And he got super offended by that.

Like, he said, he tells me, My kids would think that my job is not important if I was at home instead of doing my job.

Then he asked me, Do you think my job's important?

Eject, eject, eject.

No, man, I definitely need to ride home tomorrow.

You better be here.

I realized that I had kind of corrupted a view of work and was importing it on his family and on him.

And you think the ways this is expressing itself now in our kind of post-COVID American culture are totally a class division, you know, between the laptop class and the working class.

You know, those that work from home when there's computers and those that are out actually working in the world.

It becomes like the new class divide.

You know, those that are behind their computers telling everybody to stay home while ordering things on Amazon, having, you know, not drones deliver them, not automated cars deliver them, but workers deliver them.

It's totally a new kind of class division in our world on the basis of work.

What does it mean to work?

I think some of those changes will probably be good in the long run, some of them will be bad, but it's worth comparing those to what the Bible describes as work.

The Bible has a lot to say about work.

It's a called the doctrine of vocation.

I think it's an important Christian doctrine, the doctrine of work, that God calls people to work.

Vocation is just a word for calling, that God has a calling on people's lives for them to be productive.

This is what we encountered this morning in Ephesians 6, as Paul is going through the normal household interactions, the normal way that godliness is played out in life.

Remember in Ephesians 5, Paul brings this home.

He's talking about being filled with the Holy Spirit.

So you put off drunkenness, you put on, this is the transition phrase, you put off drunkenness, you put on being filled with the Spirit, so you can speak truth to one another, you can sing to one another, you can lead the spirit-filled life.

And there's a transition there to what does a spirit-filled life look like?

And that's where he goes in Ephesians 5 and Ephesians 6, the very practical outworking of the spirit-filled life.

And Paul explains it first in the home, like the normal interactions.

If you're a godly man, the place your godliness is going to be seen more than any other place is in marriage, how you're a husband.

If you're a godly wife, the place your godliness is going to be seen more than anywhere else is in the marriage, how you're a wife.

And then it goes to the kids.

If you're a godly child, you're going to be obedient to your parents.

If you're a godly parent, you're going to be raising your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

That's what we looked at at that last week.

So Paul's dealing here with the very basics of godliness.

The normal outworking of the spirit-filled life is seen in the home, and then he transitions from there to in the workplace.

Now it says here, slaves obey your masters, and he describes in verses five through nine this economic activity where most people are experiencing provision for their family.

Most people are earning a living in the rubric or the fabric of slavery.

This is different than our culture, of course.

In the Roman world, slavery was the primary economic engine.

In some of the Roman cities, there's estimates that up to 90% of the population were slaves.

This was the typical way the Roman Empire functioned was on this kind of slavery.

Slavery in the Roman Empire was not like American slavery.

There were elements of it that were worse than American slavery, elements of it that were certainly better.

It was just different.

And so it I understand why the word is translated as slaves.

It means slaves.

It's somebody whose labor is owned by someone else.

They're considered property.

They have a uh uh diminutive human rights, they're they're they're they're owned by their master.

So the word slave is a good word for that.

But it's potentially confusing if you import American slavery onto that image, because there's some significant differences.

First of all, people slaves in the Roman Empire were usually received manumission around age 30.

They would be slaves for a couple decades, perhaps, and they would be granted their freedom.

When they got their freedom, many of them would stay as slaves because of the relationship that had developed, it was how they provided their families, it was a workable solution.

But if they didn't stay slaves, they could leave their slavery and they'd have the kind of the social status of their previous master.

The person who was their master, they'd enter society than the slave would at that level of society.

I've often thought that this is kind of how the military can function in American culture.

Now, work with me.

I'm not comparing soldiers to slavery, although you might think that.

But in the American culture, it doesn't matter what your economic background is, it doesn't matter what your education was, it doesn't matter, you know, what jobs your parents had, regardless of the income that you were raised in or the quality of your high school or whatever, you can enter the military, you can rise to the ranks according more or less the capability and ambition.

I know there's exceptions to that, but generally speaking, and then you leave the military at a certain point and you enter in culture kind of at that status where you left the military, with that pay scale, that clearance that you might have, the ability to earn an income commensurate with how you rose to the ranks in the military.

It's kind of a social equalizer.

Slavery was like that in the Roman Empire.

Now, this doesn't mean that all slavery was good in the Roman Empire.

Of course not.

There was man stealing going on.

There were, some people were slaves because they were kidnapped and brought into slavery against their wills.

And that's an ungodly and sinful approach to the image of God.

Paul condemns it in 1 Timothy 1, verse 10.

1 Timothy 1:10

He says that man stealers have no part in the kingdom of God, that if you participate in that kind of slavery, Paul says you can't call yourself a Christian.

And you're if you're involved in the kidnap and forcible enslavement of individuals, you cannot call yourself a Christian.

Paul says that's 1 Timothy 1, verse 10.

1 Timothy 1:10

Your very conduct is hostile towards the Ten Commandments, toss out to the Eighth Commandment, the uh commandment that forbids stealing, you're stealing someone's labor, including themselves.

It's condemned in the Old Testament.

A man stealer or anyone found in possession of a stolen person should be put to death.

And it is certainly condemned in the New Testament church life as well.

But that was not all slavery in the Roman Empire, is the point.

Some slavery in the Roman Empire was beneficial.

The fire departments in most Roman cities were made up of slaves.

Most household workers were slaves.

A lot of the government workers were slaves to the government.

I mean, so there's there's a lot that can be extrapolated to our world.

Now, our world, the American culture, we don't have legalized slavery right now.

You don't interact economically on the basis of slavery.

And so I think it is right to jump from slavery to the world of employment, to take Paul's points here.

So I'm justifying my jump.

I'm gonna take the rest of the sermon this morning and talk about employment, how God wants you to, through your normal employment, to glorify and honor Him.

It's gonna be a sermon on work, on the doctrine of vocation, on working as an employee, from a passage about slavery, because I think in Ephesians 6, Paul is using slavery, not based on anything inherent in slavery, but more based upon the premise that's how most of his readers interacted economically in the world.

That's his point.

There's other passages about slavery in the New Testament.

Philemon, I preached a whole series on Philemon about the nature of slavery and freedom in Christ.

1 Corinthians 7, where Paul says, if you're saved as a slave, stay as a slave.

But if you get an opportunity for freedom, take your freedom.

As I mentioned earlier, 1 Timothy 1.10.

There's lots of the New Testament teaches that's specific to slavery.

But I think this passage here is not specific to slavery, rather, it is more broad towards being an employee and how you earn your income, how you experience God's vocational calling on your life.

So that's what I'm doing this morning.

I want you to be employees that honor the Lord.

I want you to be good employees that magnify God's glory at work.

And I'm going to give you an outline that accomplishes that, namely, this outline, how to be employee of the month.

That's my goal.

I want you guys to be employee of the month.

And I preface this about slavery because I hope you don't think I'm making light of slavery with this kind of outline here.

I'm not making light of slavery.

As I mentioned, the kind of Americanized slavery is condemned by the New Testament.

I'm merely extrapolating Paul's economic principles from this about God's calling in your life to your own workplace, how you experience God's calling in your own life.

I want you to do it well in a way that glorifies the Lord.

The idiom for that is being employee of the month, and here's how you can get that special parking spot.

Number one, work like God is your boss.

Work like God is your boss.

You're working for the Lord.

You see this in verse 5.

Slaves obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling.

That phrase fear and trembling is a phrase that is used often in the Bible for your approach of the Lord.

The foundation of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, of course.

Hebrews 12, Paul uses the same kind of language.

We serve the Lord with fear and trembling, because our God is a consuming fire.

Paul is extrapolating here from that principle that you serve the Lord with a trepidation.

You don't approach the Lord flippantly.

You approach the Lord with fear.

You approach the Lord with humility.

You approach the Lord recognizing that he has the power, as Jesus says, to not just destroy the body, but to cast the soul into hell.

You fear that person.

Well, Paul says here that you approach your earthly master with that kind of approach.

Not because your earthly master can destroy your soul, not because your workplace is compared to slavery, not because it's so, you know, drudgery, you feel like you don't have your own volition.

You know, you think of the high school kid, you're like, go study for your math.

And you're like, I thought slavery was illegal.

That's not the comparison here.

The comparison is that you, in your normal structure of authority, recognize that there is a boss to your boss.

And the boss of all, the one who rules all, the one to whom all will give an account is the Lord, is Christ.

That's the point here.

And so you work in whatever context you find yourself in, knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ is watching you.

He is the one that has called you to work.

Do you know that God designed work?

God invented work.

And God invented work before sin entered the world.

Work is not a result of sin.

Work precedes sin.

God worked for six days when he made the heavens and the earth.

And when you see that God worked, sometimes you're tempted to think like, was it hard for him?

Like, did he sweat?

Did he need a lemonade at the end of day three?

Like when the Bible describes God as working, it's not capturing that sense of labor.

It doesn't mean that he was tired or took his energy and now he needs to rest at day seven.

When the Bible describes work related to God, what it means is that God is producing something external to himself.

So God is a perfect being, he is a complete being, he lacks nothing between the Father, Son, and Spirit, they share each other's essence.

The essence of one fills all the others.

The Trinity lacks nothing.

The Trinity doesn't make anything internal to itself.

So when God works, it's the first time that the Trinity is making something external to itself.

When God creates the heavens, the earth, that's what it means by working.

Now God is exerting, God is pure light, pure action, pure life.

God exudes energy, he's perfect energy.

When he creates the earth, he's channeling his effort, his radiance to making something outside of himself.

That's what work means.

So God makes the world because it's not inside of himself, it's external to him.

That's the creature creation, a creator distinction.

God is not the creation, he's the creator.

He makes the create creation outside of himself in six days.

This is what work means.

Now he gives Adam and Eve the command that they too will work.

They'll work to keep the garden, they'll work in God's creation, they'll work to have children, they'll raise children.

That's their work.

They will be fruitful and multiply, and they will subdue the earth.

That's the work that Adam and Eve were called to do.

You see farming in there, you see parenting in there, it's all wrapped up.

That's work.

They are making something external to themselves.

The children that they will make are external to themselves, the apples they will grow, external to themselves.

They're making things of value to fill the earth.

That's work, just like God made something outside of himself to glorify himself.

So that's work.

You are being productive, making things external to yourself for the blessings of others to glorify God in all that you do.

Now, Calvin uses an analogy of all the world's a stage, and we are merely players or actors.

I know Shakespeare's one who worded it that way, but Shakespeare stole it from Calvin.

Calvin said it first.

Calvin, when he's describing the doctrine of vocation, describes the stage of the earth, and then all the people on the earth are the actors on the stage.

They all have a role to play.

The people on the stage are not the screenwriter, they don't write the script.

The people on the stage are not the star of the show, mind you.

You're not the star of this play, nor are you the audience.

God himself, when Calvin uses this analogy, he uses it to make the point that God is the audience.

God is the director, he's the producer, he's the writer, he's also the star, and he is the audience.

So everything that's happening in this world is happening for his pleasure, according to his will.

So you want to be a bad actor, act like you're the star of the show.

You want to be a bad actor, try to overthrow the director.

God is the director, he is the audience, so all of our work is done for the purpose of being pleasing to him.

He is the audience.

And Calvin doesn't go this far in his illustration, but I mean we can take it further and say that we all are bad actors because of sin in the world.

The stage is broken, the stage is corrupt.

The actors don't like each other, they're fighting, they're ad-libbing all over the place, saying things you're not supposed to, they're acting like they're the stars of the show, they're trying to overthrow the director, they're breaking the props.

I mean, we are bad actors.

Nevertheless, we're acting on the stage in a way that glorifies God.

He is the one who watches it for his glory.

So it is worth asking in your life how does your work glorify God?

That's why you're working.

How does it glorify God?

And God has called you to work in a way that is productive, that produces things.

And that's the nature of work.

And that doesn't mean that every job has to have a one-to-one correspondence with production.

But here's a great example.

Law enforcement.

Something that God designed, Genesis 9, to bear the sword, punish evildoers.

But law enforcement, you don't make something.

You know, a police officer goes to work, he doesn't make something at work and then come home.

What'd you do today?

Oh, I made a jail cell or whatever.

The police officer is not productive in that sense.

But the police officer is active in the world in such a way that allows other people to be productive.

By checking evil, it allows other people to be productive.

So uh somebody in law enforcement can have that attitude that they are productive, not by themselves directly being productive, but rather by working in the world in such a way that allows other people to be productive.

Or think of an Amazon driver.

What did an Amazon driver make today?

Well, he didn't make anything, he didn't write the book he delivered, or you can tell what kind of things I order from Amazon.

He didn't the Amazon driver didn't, you know, grow the groceries they're delivering or whatever, but he delivers it.

So the Amazon driver is delivering something that somebody else made so that you can be productive with it.

That's an important part of the chain.

So the Amazon driver recognizes that I am glorifying the Lord by adding to the world something that allows other people to glorify the Lord through their own productivity.

Now, if you're following me, you recognize that there's so much moral uh judgment that happens in there.

The Amazon driver is not morally responsible for everything that everybody orders, right?

Somebody orders something bad, something sinful, the Amazon driver doesn't take on that person's sin by delivering it to them unless the driver's job was entirely sinful, like if he only delivered to criminals.

Like that was part of his job description.

We're hiring a driver to only deliver to criminals, well, that job doesn't glorify the Lord.

So you have to think through in your mind how does your job glorify the Lord?

Because He is your boss, even if you have an earthly master.

And if you can't think in your mind how your job glorifies the Lord, I might present to you the possibility that your job is trafficking in sin, that your job is promoting sin in the world, and it is not a job that honors the Lord.

You have to be able to nail down in your mind how your own job brings glory to the Lord.

So, first point, God is your boss.

You see that in verse 5.

You're really working for Christ.

He is the one that judges you.

Number two, the way to be employee of the month, work like God is your boss.

Secondly, labor like a Protestant.

Labor like a Protestant.

You've all heard the phrase Protestant work ethic.

Protestant work ethic is the idea that salvation is a grace.

It is a gift that God has given you.

What you have is not yours by right or by merit, but it is a gift.

You now are a steward of it, and so you use what God has given you in a way that honors and glorifies him.

That's the Protestant work ethic.

I looked up this week the Protestant work ethic on Wikipedia.

What a mistake that was.

It was like the worst definition I've ever read on Wikipedia, which is saying something.

It was like written by a Catholic.

It had to have been.

It says, Protestants believe that you can't know if you're elect or not until after you die, so you worked really hard to find out if you're the elect, something like that.

It's like, oh my goodness, that's horrible.

It's like the opposite of a Protestant.

So the cool thing about Wikipedia is I rewrote it.

Um so if you look, if you look, and I don't know, I this is like a week ago, so I don't know how long that lasts before somebody else will swoop in, you know, some pope will rewrite it or something.

But if you look at it, don't look now, by the way, some put that away.

But if you look now and it's remotely Protestant, I did that.

I just want you to know.

I was productive in that moment of my time.

What the Protestant work ethic means is that you don't work for your salvation.

Okay, it was given to you as a grace gift by God.

In light of your salvation and everything else you have, you extrapolate that to everything else.

You have certain abilities and gifts in this world that are given to you by God.

That you don't deserve.

You were given them by God so that you can glorify God by being a blessing to others and being a good steward of them.

That's the Protestant work ethic.

It's in contrast with the Catholic doctrine of vocation.

Before the Protestant Reformation, I'm talking 140, even into the 1500s, the Catholic doctrine of vocation was that there's three vocations: marriage, singleness, and priesthood, or monkery.

That was it.

So you could see God's calling in your life to be a husband or a wife, you could see God's calling in your life to be single, or you could see God's calling in your life to be a priest or a monk.

And just think about that.

I mean, a monk means you leave the economic melu of society.

You leave being a contributing functioning member of society to go to a walled-off place.

You leave your family, you leave your job to go behind, you know, in the remote places, to cut yourself off from being a functioning member of society.

That's your calling in life.

Or to be a priest, you walk away from secular vocation to the one calling of God.

The one vocational calling of God in that Catholic doctrine of vocation is being a priest.

In contrast, Protestants don't buy into that.

Because in contrast, we say there's a priesthood of all believers.

And when it comes to our relationship with God, we understand that.

We recognize that Jesus is the high priest.

We all have access to God, not through earthly priests.

We call no man father, only God is our father.

We don't access God our Father through earthly priests called Father, but we are all priests, we all have access to God through the high priest Jesus Christ.

Through faith in him, we're in Christ.

We have access to God, we have forgiveness of sins, Jesus is the final sacrifice.

So we have a relationship with God that is true for all believers, that's the priesthood of all believers.

But that carries on in Protestant theology to the doctrine of vocation.

That all of your jobs, whether or not you are a pastor or a plumber, whether or not you are a lawyer, a doctor, an Amazon driver, a school teacher, whatever, all of your jobs are called by God.

As long as your job glorifies God, you have a calling by God to that job.

That's the Protestant work ethic.

That's the doctrine of vocation.

That God gifted you for a job and placed you in the world so that you can be productive with the gifting He gave you to be a blessing to others and to glorify him.

That is how God designed you to work.

You're not holier if you're a pastor than you are if you are a plumber.

That's the Protestant work ethic.

That God has gifted you.

You have to, to get there, to understand that, you have to believe in the sovereignty of God over all things.

This is a critical part of this.

You have to believe that God made you.

And God made you with your strengths, and God made you with your weaknesses, and you have to believe that God placed you in the world at the right time and the right place according to his will.

That God is sovereign over your failures, God is sovereign over your successes, he's sovereign over your opportunities, he is sovereign over your life.

Now, in light of that, God has given you a calling to work, to be productive.

So you have to believe that God gifted you for what He's called you to do.

Now, some of this is opportunity-oriented.

God is sovereign over your opportunities.

I think of you know a person who graduates with an education degree and says, I am going to be a third-grade teacher in a town of over a hundred thousand people for a salary of this much money.

That's what God's called me to do.

Okay?

But then no schools that match that offer that person a job.

And so over time, their hunger increases because they're not working.

And so their desires expand, and they find, okay, a third-grade teacher for less salary in a smaller town.

Suddenly I feel called to that because they're hiring me.

We understand that in relationship to marriage.

I think it's easier to get to vocation if you go through marriage.

So a guy might tell a girl, the Lord has called me to marry you.

And she would say, Huh, I didn't get that phone call.

Lord hadn't called me to say yes.

So how do you know who you're God called you to marry?

You might think the Lord called me to marry this person, but she keeps saying no all the time.

Well, how do you know God called you to marry her when she finally says yes?

I call this the ring part of God's providence.

You know, you know it's God's plan for your life when it happens.

When she says yes and you're married, God's called you to be married.

Perfect.

The same thing is true with vocation.

You might say, God called me to be a lawyer, but yeah, but you can't get into law school.

You keep flunking out of law school.

So maybe not.

Maybe you weren't called to be a lawyer.

God called me to be a president.

Yeah, well, nobody voted for you.

I mean, so that's limiting on God's call in your life.

You may feel convicted you're called to be a president, but maybe, you know, start with the PTA.

I don't know.

So eventually, your desire, if nobody's hiring you, your desires expand, and where your desires expand and they intersect with somebody who finally hires you, you found your calling in life.

Notice that it is not based on the warm fuzzies you get at five o'clock in your drive home.

You're driving home at the end of the day and you're like, ah, I don't like my job.

Well, that's not God's calling in your life.

He doesn't call you to like it.

He calls you to work and be productive in a way that's a blessing to others and provides for your family.

That's his calling in your life.

Certainly you can change jobs.

You know, you have one job and there's a better opportunity that's more in line with your skills and with your experience or pays more or whatever, it's fine for you to change jobs.

I would encourage you not to leave one job unless you have another one, though.

That's called daydreaming.

It's called being hungry.

I mean, California, all kinds of people move to LA to be actors.

You know, you meet like a 25-year-old.

Oh, why'd you move to LA?

I'm gonna be an actor.

So you work at Chile's now, right?

Yes.

So you have a job that God's hired you for?

Work there, enjoy it, delight in it.

Not because you love the work, but because you recognize how the work glorifies the Lord, it provides for your family, it lets you be a blessing to others.

God puts you in a place to be a blessing to others.

That's what you bring to work.

And so you should ask yourself, how does my work benefit others?

That's the Protestant work ethic.

Thirdly.

You want to be employed the month?

First, work like God is your boss.

Second, labor like a Protestant.

Third, consider the ant.

Consider the ant.

Proverbs 6, verse 6 through 8.

Proverbs 6:6–8

Look to the ant, O sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.

Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.

This is what it means to work diligently.

You have no one telling you what to do.

You know how to function in a way God made you in such a way that you can carry out what God has called you to do.

If that's true of an ant and you are more important to God than an ant, it should be true for you.

I mean, ants are remarkable creatures, aren't they?

Remarkable.

You get mad at them, but they're just incredible.

I go to war against ants in our house.

When the ants invade, it's like a call to arms.

I've I've you know, I've read blog posts on the different kinds of ants, so I consider myself a bit of an expert.

I'll like, do you like the different kinds of food?

Do I have like sweet ants or savory ants or you know, cornmeal ants?

Like, here's the menu.

Which way, oh, these ones like the sugar.

Okay, I know what trap to use.

Those guys are smart.

They don't see the weather report, they don't have the weather app, but when it rains, they come into the house.

They know right where to go.

Someone told them where the cat food is in our house.

I don't know how they figured it out.

It's all the way upstairs, but they found it.

So I'm mad at those ants.

Find new creative ways to annihilate them.

But while I'm doing it, I'm meditating on Proverbs 6.

I'm looking at those things, going, man, these guys are on it.

They don't have a boss, they don't have an alarm clock, but they all know what to do.

They all function in a way that is pleasing to the Lord.

This is how God made you.

You're working not for each other, but before the Lord.

You're doing, as verse 6 says, you're not acting in eye service as people pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.

That God, from your heart, your Christian saved heart, you have a desire to be productive, to work hard, and honor the Lord, not to get the pats on the head from your boss.

You're not doing it to get employee of the month, you're doing it to be pleasing to the Lord.

Now the pats in the head from your boss might come.

That seems to be the implication of verse six.

You're not doing this just so your boss sees you, and you've all worked with people like that, you know?

You've worked with people that want to look productive so they get rewarded without actually being productive.

I remember working at a car dealership before, and it was like what we called a lot lizard.

That was the technical title, a lot lizard, took out trash and washed cars and you know, took out more trash.

And there was one lot lizard I worked with that this guy would get a dolly and put a trash can on it and walk around the lot all day long and never do anything.

He never did anything productive, but he always looked like he was working so hard.

You know, the boss season was like, hey, look at that guy.

I mean, he's working.

I'm like, no, he's not.

Consider the ant, oh slugger.

They don't just walk in circles.

They're productive in this world, not for eye service, but they're doing the will of God from the heart.

Or look at verse 7.

They're rendering service with a good will.

In other words, this is from their heart.

It's a good will as to the Lord and not to man.

God made you for work.

And the answer is hard working, so should you be.

Proverbs 13, verse 4.

Proverbs 13:4

Those who work hard, their land will have abundant food.

However, those who chase fantasies have no sense.

I think it is a pretty good principle to not leave one job until you know what job you're going to.

I grant that principle is different in the DC area, you know, because some of you have been in the government for 20 years or whatever, and you can retire and you have a top, you know, a clearance, and there's like 50 companies that want you, so it's not that big of a deal.

Like, this is the only area of the world where it's like that.

You know that, right?

Like here you'll meet somebody who's like, yeah, I left my job last month, but I'll start looking in a few months, no big deal.

The rest of the world's not like that.

Most of the world, you don't want to leave a job until you have a job to go to because God has called you to be productive.

Otherwise, the person who, I quit my job because I'm gonna go be a movie star, that's Proverbs 13, verse 4.

Proverbs 13:4

You're chasing fantasies and you have no sense, and soon you will have no food.

Proverbs 14, verse 23.

Proverbs 14:23

All hard work brings profit, but mere talk, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, leads to poverty.

You leads to poverty.

God has called you to work to be a blessing to society every stage of your life.

Every stage of your life.

You are young, you can work hard, you can work long hours.

You have children, you're working raising your children.

That's a calling of the Lord on your life.

He's placed those people in your house for a period of time.

You're working hard at raising your children.

Later in life, your career is going to look differently, even at the retirement end of your life.

You might leave the technical, technically speaking, workplace, but you still have the opportunity to use your time and use what God has given you to be a blessing to others.

You go from having, you know, a flowchart where other people are telling you what to do to be a blessing to others.

In retirement, you can more or less erase that.

Maybe work a few hours, and now you start with a blank chart and you think, how am I going to use what God has given me to be a blessing to the world?

Every stage of life, you're approaching with that attitude.

How can I labor?

That's the doctrine of vocation that God has called you at the place you are right now to be productive in society.

Your job does not exist to give you a paycheck.

Working is not, in that sense, a human right.

Your job exists as an outlet for you to contribute and be a blessing to other people, and then get your money, provide for your family, pay for missions, expand the gospel around the world, be a steward of what God has given you.

When you view your work that way, then you can pray Psalm 90, verse 17.

Psalms 90:17

May the favor of Yahweh our God rest on us, establish the work of our hands.

Yes, Yahweh, establish the work of our hands.

Only when you see how your work glorifies the Lord can you pray that.

And finally, to be employed the month.

First, work like God is your boss.

Second, labor like a Protestant.

Third, consider the aunt, and fourth, know that your boss will give you a promotion.

This happens in verse 8.

Knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive back from the Lord whether he is slave or free.

You know, there's some sense, kind of the proverbial sense, you work hard, things go well with you in this world.

But that's not what Paul is talking about here.

Paul has his eyes here on the next world.

That you work for your boss.

Now, in this analogy of slavery, if you're a slave, you might have a cruel master who's indifferent and doesn't care how hard you work.

He's obnoxious and he's indifferent.

He's not about to reward you.

He views you as a piece of property.

Some of the Romans said the difference between the difference between a slave and a uh a farm animal was the ability to speak, but not, I mean the capacity to speak, but not the ability.

In other words, certainly in concept, a slave could talk, whereas the cow could not, but neither should talk.

That's the way some masters viewed their slaves.

So think about how I guess countercultural is what Paul writes here, that hey, your masters may not see your hard work.

Your masters may not appreciate it.

But that's not who you're working for.

Your real boss in heaven, he sees, and he knows.

Paul, in writing this, is esteeming slavery, and Christian slaves in particular, in a way that would be totally countercultural.

Saying the Lord of heaven and earth sees what you're doing at your job, and he will reward you because you're really working for him.

Remember Peter in Matthew 19, Lord, oh, I left all of my stuff, I left my house, what do I get?

The rich young ruler, you know, he had power, he wouldn't leave anything.

He goes away sad.

Peter says, I left my house, Lord, what do I get?

And Jesus says, No one who left houses or lands or families for my sake will fail to receive blessings in this life and hundredfold more in the next life.

Like Jesus is trying to get Peter's eyes off of this world onto the next.

It doesn't matter if you're Peter and you have your own house and property, it doesn't matter if you're a slave and you don't.

Either way, the Lord sees your work and he will reward you in the next life.

Now, you can conflate this to be like, oh, so that's that's that's Catholicism again.

You're working for your salvation.

Not true.

There's a huge difference.

And the difference is that with the gospel, you are working for the Lord because of what he has granted you by grace through faith.

At the end of your life, you will be rewarded as a steward would be for how you use the resources he gave you.

Not the resources you earned.

It's not based on merit, it's based on stewardship.

It's fundamentally different than working for your salvation.

What's salvation is not in mind here.

What's in mind here is 2 Corinthians 5.

We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ to be rewarded for the deeds done in the flesh.

In your life, the Lord sees all that you do.

And when you make sacrifices or when you serve him well, he sees, he takes note, and he will reward you in the kingdom.

He will reward you in heaven.

You think of the end of the book of Revelation?

Remember, work didn't come from the fall.

Work predates the fall, and work will be there after the consummation of the heaven and the earth.

You see at the end of the book of Revelation, kings are bringing their commerce in and out of the heavenly city.

People are working in heaven.

It's incredible to think about.

People will have areas of responsibility in heaven.

How are those areas determined?

Based upon your faithfulness in this life.

You'll be rewarded in the next.

And this is the great reversal.

There are slaves in this world who are more faithful to Christ than the person who is the master of a thousand slaves.

Even though the world doesn't even know the slave's name.

And in the next life, there will be a great reversal.

The people who are elevated by our Lord in heaven may be those who the world knows not of them.

That's what Paul is saying here.

You'll receive back from the Lord, whether you're slave or whether you're free.

So this is where you have to order God's calling in your life.

You recognize the primary calling in your life is not to your work.

The primary calling in your life is a calling to the Lord.

This is the gospel call.

The word calling and vocation, it's the same word.

The word vocation just means calling.

Your primary vocation is to be a Christian, whether or not you're paid.

The gospel call goes into the world for you to bend your knee to Christ, for you to give your life to Christ, for you to believe that Christ died on the cross, bearing the penalty for your sin, bearing your punishment that you deserve.

Jesus bore that in his own body.

He rose from the grave on the third day, demonstrating there's eternal life and a victory over the grave for those that place their faith in Christ.

The primary calling on your life is for you to believe that message, for you to trust Christ for your salvation.

That's your primary calling.

But then after that, your calling is seen in the area of family.

Husbands call to their wives, wives call to their husbands, to the children, parents call to their children, going through Ephesians 5 and then to Ephesians 6.

Children call to their parents, and now to work.

God has a calling on your life, whether or not you're slave or free, whether you work for a minimum wage or a six-figure salary, God has a calling on your life.

He's gifted you for your job, he's placed you in it, and he's called you to serve Him and use your income and your resources to be a blessing to others and to expand the kingdom of God.

We'll finish the study next Lord's Day.

Lord, we're thankful that you have called us to serve you as our primary calling.

Not all are paid for serving you, but all who have your spirit have been gifted and set aside from the world for a holy service.

We think of the instruments in the temple in the Old Testament that were sanctified, set of set aside, purified for to be used among the holy things.

So this is our lives, Lord.

Through the indwelling of your spirit, you have sanctified us, you've set us apart from the world.

Now we certainly work in the world, we find our living in the world, we make money in the world, we are, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, in the world, but not of it.

And yet you've sanctified us to serve you through faith.

We're thankful for the gospel call above all else.

But in light of the gospel call, we seek to labor to be good stewards, not to earn our salvation because you've given it freely, but to be found good stewards so that when you return and you will find your stewards there, we'll be eager to share with you what they've done with your resources.

We're thankful this world belongs to you.

You built the stage, you're the director, you're the star of the show, Lord.

We yield our lives to you and pray that you be glorified in them.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.