Colossians: Rest to Work

Thanks be to God.

You may be seated.

So we're going through the book of Colossians.

We're nearing the end.

I think we'll have three messages this week and two more weeks in the book of Colossians before we head into something else.

So a review for those of you guys who are new this week or you've missed a few weeks, a reminder.

So the first two chapters in the book of Colossians, what we see is we see Paul writing, and it's just, it is promise after promise after promise about who Jesus is, what God has done for us, how you become a child of God, how you become a Christian.

And it's just it's an onslaught of promises.

Chapters 1 and 2.

And these are called the Indicatives, correct.

Two of you.

These are called the Okay, four of you.

Great.

All right.

So the indicatives is what's indicated to us.

This is indicated to us.

It's given to us.

And then we see at the end of chapter two, going into chapter three, there's a very clear shift that occurs.

And this shift uh moves from indicatives into all these things we should do.

Like what the Christian life should be like, what our lives should be like.

And so these are called the imperatives.

Very good.

So you have the indicatives in chapters one and two, and then you get all these imperatives in chapters three and four.

And what we see in the book of Colossians is we see how Christian life should work.

That the imperatives, what we should do, always come out of the promises of who we are and who we are securely, and it is finished, and it is over, and out of that comes behaviors.

Now, if we flip this around, things get messed up, we become moralistic, we become legalistic, uh, you can go into perfectionism, you go into judgment towards other people, you're prideful, you're in despair, you're all over the place.

Or if you just sort of like leave chapter one and two, and you go, oh, well, that that got me into the family.

Like uh that's how I became a Christian, but that was, you know, that was like that was three years ago, or that was 13 years ago, or that was 20 years ago, and now I'm just sort of like, I'm uh now I'm working.

So we never leave chapters one and two, we never leave the promises to move into what we should be doing.

Now, this morning's passage, uh, there's sort of a couple things going on in it.

And for us to address it and go at it, I think first we have to look at the context for the passage to get to the content.

So we've got to understand the context of slavery in order for us to get anything out of the content of what this might say for us today in a democracy that is free.

So uh first, the context.

So this passage is about work, is what it's about.

But it's about work in the context of the Greco-Roman world, which had slavery.

And so obviously, if it's about work in the Greco-Roman world, it's gonna have be about slavery.

Now, nobody can defend slavery, nobody should defend slavery, but what we can understand is that uh Greco-Roman slavery is not the same thing and was not the same thing as New World slavery.

Like we we think slavery, we think African slave trade, new world slavery, we think kidnapping, we think abuse, uh, we think race-based, we think uh lifelong, and this is not what Greco-Roman slavery was.

So uh here's how it would work in um in the in the biblical context here.

So slaves, they lived normal lives.

They got paid a wage, uh, but they weren't allowed to quit, and they couldn't change employers.

Um and a lot of times the the average slave might only be in slavery for ten years.

And now they might be a slave because they were a prisoner of war, and then their condition might not be as good as, say, somebody who uh they didn't have bankruptcy.

So say somebody had a whole bunch of debt, uh they couldn't file bankruptcy, so they might sell themselves to a family to work off the debt, and they'd be a slave for a period of time until they worked the debt off.

And so you you you could have very well-educated professionals become slaves.

So, in some regard, and it's not making light of Greco-Roman slavery, I mean, it's not good.

There's a lot better systems out there, right?

Uh, but uh in some ways it's more um indentured servanthood than it is slavery, how we tend to think about slavery.

Now, still, right, we've all heard and we wonder and we read this passage, and you go, how can the Bible talk about slavery and not blast it?

I mean, how how can this, how can Paul write about this and not just disintegrate it?

It's a pretty good question.

I mean, I think I think every time I read the passage, that kind of comes up in my mind.

He does, he doesn't denounce slavery.

But see, he speaks to the heart of individuals that are in slavery.

And what we see over and over again is we see Paul calls for a kind of treatment of individuals that erodes slavery.

Like the death of slavery comes by the very way that Paul asks people to treat and view each other.

So he asked in Colossians and Ephesians 6 and 1 Corinthians 7, Paul is always and regularly calling slave owners to a different way of viewing their slaves.

And here's the point the Bible never calls for abolishing slavery, yet it's biblical theology that actually destroys the heart of slavery.

Maybe you don't like that answer, but that's the answer.

So that's the context.

There's the context.

Now, what does that mean to us?

What does this mean to us today working in this world?

Well, maybe you're here and you feel like a slave, like you get in your Camry in the morning and you drive down 75, and you feel like you're just in a chain gang going down 75 into a little prison shop with your cubicle, and you've got low walls or high walls, or office with no windows or windows, and it just feels like you're working for the man the whole time, and then back into your chain gang headed back up 75.

That's what it feels like to you.

Or you're you're laboring, right?

Like you're just you're just doing fences.

You're putting fences in every day, or you're stocking shelves every day, or maybe you're at the top of the ladder, and you have that board that just constantly is putting pressure on you.

And then you have all those families, all those employees, all their families and their children and their schools and their college funds, and all of that is looking up at you and the decisions you need to make.

Right?

And it it can feel, it can feel heavy.

It can feel like a prison.

Well, uh, so what we see in this passage, we see in verse 3, 22, chapter 3, verse 22, we see uh where Paul's speaking to slaves or workers, and then we see in chapter 4, verse 1, we see where Paul speaks to masters or speaks to bosses.

All right, so let's read these two verses.

Uh 22.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, and do it, not only when their eyes on you, and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.

And then chapter 4, verse 1, masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a master in heaven.

So, bosses, what this means is your employee is no less important than you.

Right?

You're you're to provide for them what is right and fair, just like you want.

And you're not, you're not after constantly trying to squeeze every last little bit of life out of them for your gain.

So after college, I graduated uh with a business degree.

So after college, I knew I was gonna go to seminary.

Uh I had this great man come to me and said, hey, what if you if you you can come work for me, I'll pay for your seminary.

You work full-time, you'll go to seminary full-time.

It's gonna be heavy load for a few years, but that's sort of the deal I offer you.

And and so I went to work for an engineering and construction company.

I worked there for five years.

While I was there, I I managed to start dating and I married uh his daughter, right?

Dicey move, but it it worked out, it worked out pretty well.

Uh but a year into it, before I was even dating his daughter, uh, I I was just unhappy.

I I think I was unhappy because college was so free, and you know, you're with your friends and you're hanging out and you control all your schedule, and now all of a sudden I have to be somewhere at eight and I can't leave at five, and then I got seminary on top of that, and it was just I I I think I was probably depressed to some extent.

I just didn't feel like I could actually say that out loud.

And I I just I didn't know what to do.

I I just knew I didn't like my life.

And so at the time my boss lived in Florida, and I called him and I said, Hey, when next time you're up, can we have lunch?

Now you don't ask your boss to lunch unless it's a big deal.

At least in our company, you didn't.

And so uh he knew something was up, and we go to lunch and we sit down and you know, what's going on?

I just I just said, you know, um I think I'll I think I want to leave.

He said, Well, well, why would you why would you want to do that?

And I said, Well, you know, I just I just think there's some other stuff I want to do, and I'd start to get some like speaking engagements at camps and stuff, and I just wanted some freedom to be able to go do that, and I'm saying all this.

He said, Well, how are you gonna pay for seminary?

Pretty good question.

And I'm like, I I don't know.

Like, I mean, looking back on it, I was so irrational, but at the time I was just all I knew I was I was unhappy.

And I don't know.

I I'll have to figure that one out.

And he said, Well, let's do this.

Why don't you just scale back?

How many days do you want to work a week?

I'll keep paying for your seminary.

Why don't you why don't you go to two days a week?

And and you can take off the weeks and you need to go speak at camps, and I'll I'll give you that freedom.

And I I look back on it and I think, now every boss can't have that ability to do that, right?

But I look back on it, I think, man, how easy it would have been or could have been for him to be uh offended, right?

I mean, uh it was kind of a gutsy thing for me to say, right?

I mean, um him to be defensive.

But he didn't.

He he cared for me.

What he saw is he saw a 22-year-old who was getting a little uh antsy, and he kind of talked me back off the cliff.

And and here's here's what I saw him do repeatedly, and I've seen so many bosses do this.

If you're a boss, you're not just a manager, you're not just a supervisor, you're a pastor.

You're a pastor to the people who work for you.

That's what this is saying.

It's saying treat people right and fair.

Care for them.

Now, if you're an employee, you know what this means is your boss is no better than you, right?

No important, no more value, and you know that.

Maybe your boss doesn't know it, and you want to email them the link to the podcast for the sermon, I'm sure that's gonna go over really well.

You can try it.

Um, what Paul says for you, you're an employee.

And whether that lady above you or that man above you is fantastic and wonderful, or whether they're manipulative and they're miserable, it says, serve them.

Serve them.

Whether they're watching or not, do your best, serve them because your work is not just work.

You actually work unto the Lord.

See, it's so much more profound than how the world shapes work.

Now, sandwich between these two roles of boss and employee are a few verses just on work.

What is work about?

And so, verse 23.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.

It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

Right?

So it's not just manipulative, um, miserable boss or great, fantastic boss.

Like there's a higher boss that you are actually working for.

Verse 25.

Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism.

So I think in these verses, there's there's some worldly principles going on here, just like how the world works.

Like you keep cutting work, you know, like you keep cheating a little here and cheating a little there, like it's gonna come back and bite you.

The people are gonna see it, bosses are gonna catch on, employees are gonna catch on, like that's gonna that's gonna catch up to you.

And and there's there's there's some reward and when you work for your boss, miserable or wonderful, you know, when you work for them as if you are working for the Lord Christ Himself, you can go home and be at peace.

There's a peace in that kind of work.

So nine years ago I left the family business and I went into a nonprofit ministry world and I started to work for churches.

My whole time in the business world, five years, it was very difficult for me.

I was just always, I was wrestling.

I couldn't, I couldn't see the connection between my work and like kingdom of God, what God is doing in the world, outside of us giving money to people who are doing those things.

Like I just kept wondering, you know, I'd be working on something, some construction ad or engineering conference, and just going like, does God care about this?

Does this mean anything?

And I think I I wish I had just heard a little, a little bit better teaching on work.

Because I have all these flashbacks of growing up with altar calls, right?

And it's like just one after the next of come on down, come on down, and nobody's going down, and you've heard, you've maybe some of you remember it, and you're sitting there like, I know Tommy always goes down, he's gonna go down eventually, and then we can leave.

Like, please, Tommy, hurry up.

You know, I mean, you know the feeling, right?

And you're just like, oh, would this be over?

And sing it again, choir, and you know, another round, another round, and you know, heightening the pressure, and and you know this feeling, and then there's within that sometimes there's the call to ministry.

I love a call to ministry, it's wonderful, right?

Like we should be called to ministry.

But what what gets what comes out of that, at least what I got out of that, was like, oh, these are special people.

Like these are the special people.

Everybody else, y'all just go work and give us your money.

Right?

Like your work doesn't really matter.

Y'all just go make money and send it in.

Our work matters.

And I don't think they meant that, but that's just kind of what you can feel over time.

It's what I felt over time.

Just kind of, I'm wondering if we can be the kind of church that celebrates, you know, Billy moves to Hollywood to be a writer, Cindy moves to New York to work on Wall Street, Johnny starts a business of some product none of us have ever heard of, but somehow it helps our society, right?

I mean, can we celebrate these things?

You know, somebody works at the school and somebody works somewhere.

Can we celebrate work, people being in our culture, and people working?

Tim Keller in his book, Every Good Endeavor, he's a pastor and author, he argues that all work, all work that brings structure and adds to the benefit of people and brings structure to the chaos of this world is good work.

See, we only understand these verses when we understand that work, the work itself, has value.

The actual task, the actual work.

I mean, these verses 23 and 24, they're pretty intense, right?

I mean, you read this work with all your heart, whoa, wow.

I mean, I'm not getting there.

You're probably not getting there.

Um, and Paul gives us this reason about having a different boss.

We see in the first story in Genesis, literally the first story, we see that work existed before man even rebelled and decided, you know what, I don't, God I don't need you.

I'm good.

Like, you're not gonna be savior, deliverer, my rest, my hope.

Like, I'm gonna do that on my own.

And before the fall of man, work existed.

God created.

Like God worked, right?

Like he put his hands in the dirt, a task.

He wasn't off contemplating, he was working, and then he creates Adam.

And what does Adam do?

He gets put into a garden to work, not to lounge, and a pool boy comes by to clean the sunglasses and a fruit kebab.

No, he's working, he's tending the garden, he's naming animals, he has tasks, he is working, and it's good.

This is life and perfection.

Work defined the very purpose of life.

See, work is a gift from God, yet the fall enabled us to be frustrated with it.

Us to be so frustrated with work because we come to work and we experience it differently now.

We experience it with fear, or we experience it with pride, or we experience it with shame.

So we we either undervalue work or we overvalue work.

So if we undervalue work, you just don't care.

Right?

Like it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter, so be done with it.

You know, just move on to hobbies.

And you're missing the core part of who you are, of what it means to be a created human being, to work.

Now, if we overvalue, what we see is work actually takes functional power over you.

Because it becomes this little God that it controls you because you're trying to get out of it meaning for your life, and it has no ability to give it.

So you get caught up in the toil.

Before starting this church, I worked at another church in the area down the road a little bit, and it was a great church, and great people, and it was a it was a very nice area, so it was a very fancy church.

I still can't figure out why they hired me, but they did, and I worked there for eight years.

And I've told you about my office before.

Y'all remember me talking about my office?

I mean, it was like being in a castle.

When I was in my office, I felt like I was like a little king.

I had these windows that looked like castle windows and you know, like mahogany desks, and I mean, I mean it was unbelievable.

I mean, our boardroom looked like a knight's at the round table like in a Ritz Carlton.

You know, so here's the thing.

I loved it.

Right?

I mean, I loved it.

It made me feel important.

Like it made me feel valued.

I I loved working somewhere.

When you said the name, people went, oh, oh, oh yeah.

Oh.

I loved having a big event, like big, huge, big.

And like it was packed.

You know.

Then you go home and you feel important.

Like overvalue of work.

And now I'm here.

Right?

And we're doing great things.

I mean, even uh two weeks ago we had a new membership round, and we had a group of probably about 25 people in my living room, and man, people just went around, like, why are you here at Redeemer?

Man, that was good.

Like, what's going on in your life for you to be here and want to stay here and be a part of building something?

That was good.

But we we don't have a we don't have a night set the round table yet.

Right?

There's no fancy building to feed me, my needy little soul.

And this week again, reading this and thinking about undervaluing and overvaluing work, I just, again, I just realized how much I use my occupation, like success within my occupation, to feel valuable.

And basically, I'm giving functional power over my heart and my mind and my life over to an idol.

I think if we're honest, we all know that we swing.

We swing between overvalue and undervalue.

And what's easy to say is if you're undervaluing, you say, well, I'm gonna work harder to value work more, and then all of a sudden you're overvaluing, right?

And then you're overvaluing, well, I'm the work harder for it not to mean as much.

So I'm not gonna care as much, and all of a sudden you're undervaluing, you're sort of swinging back and forth.

But the only way out of swinging back and forth is to receive.

Like to stop seeking love and acceptance out of work and to receive it from the creator of work.

Your creator, the only one that your heart was created for.

That's what Paul's saying here.

Paul's saying, only when your heart is filled with divine love can you extend service and love to your boss or to your employee.

That's why this passage is after chapters 1 and 2.

Only after you're receiving this divine love can you go and do this.

See, your heart should already be at rest in God's love for you in Jesus before you read these principles about how you as a boss should treat your employee, or you as an employee should work for your boss.

See, we find this paradox.

We have to be at rest in order to work.

So there's this story in Luke chapter 10, Mary and Martha, some of you heard the story, and Jesus comes to their house, these two sisters, and uh Mary sits down and she's at Jesus' feet listening, just adoring him, listening.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

You know, tell me, tell me about your travels, what's going on, what's going on with the disciples, what's going on?

You know, tell me more.

And Martha, you remember what Martha's doing?

She's up and she is busy, she's working, she's tidying, she's preparing, she's getting everything ready for a meal.

You know, she is up and she is busy and busy and busy, and then she sees sister over there just sitting, and you know how that works out.

And so she comes over to Jesus and says, Jesus, don't you care?

And my sister, she's not even helping.

Right?

And Jesus replies in Luke 10, 41 and 42.

Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things.

Right?

He's saying, Your heart's not at rest.

You are worried and upset about many things.

But only one thing is needed.

Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.

Jesus is not condemning productivity, he's not condemning us working hard, he's condemning having a busy heart.

He knows what we must know.

Only by coming to him can your heart be finally at rest.

When your identity is no longer seeking formation and justification in your work or in ladders and org charts and salaries and who reports to who and career placement, that's not where identity is formed and secured.

And Jesus is saying, I'm I'm I'm enough.

Like the love and acceptance I can give you can securely hold your identity and form you so that you can just go and work.

You don't have to be trying to get something out of work constantly.

You can just go work and serve people and love people.

So what Jesus is saying to the sisters, the same thing Paul's saying in the book of Colossians, you must rest in order to truly work.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you that we don't have to rely on our work to feel valuable or to feel important or to feel loved.

Forgive us for doing this.

Forgive us for treating work as a deliverer or a savior and not resting more in your sufficiency for us.

That in you our identities can be secured.

In you, we are forever righteous.

God, we pray that you would help us root into that deeper and deeper so we might be more and more free in Jesus' name.

Amen.