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In this sermon, Pastor Aaron Shamp continues the series on the book of Ephesians and focuses on the implications of the gospel for our work. He emphasizes that work is a divine calling and a source of purpose. He challenges listeners to work with excellence, integrity, and a good attitude as if they were serving Christ directly. He also addresses the historical context of slavery in the Roman Empire and how Paul's teachings on work undermined the institution itself. Ultimately, the gospel has far-reaching implications for all aspects of our lives, including our work.
Takeaways
Takeaways
- Work is a divine calling and a way to serve the Lord.
- Our work should be done with excellence, integrity, and a good attitude.
- The gospel has far-reaching implications for our work and all aspects of our lives.
- Paul's teachings on work undermined the institution of slavery in the Roman Empire.
Creators & Guests
What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?
Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.
Aaron Shamp (00:00)
Do God's will from your heart. Serve with a good attitude as to the Lord and not to people, knowing that whatever good each one does, slave or free, he will receive this back from the Lord. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way without threatening them because you know that both their master and yours is in heaven and there's no favoritism with him.
So we're continuing here in our series going through the book of Ephesians and what we've been doing here in the second half is looking at how Paul draws out all the ways that the gospel changes our life. In the first half of the book of Ephesians he lays out the gospel for us. He shows us how God in His infinite wisdom and in His plan for salvation sent His Son to the world to die on the cross right to open up a way of salvation so that we might
be delivered from our sins and redeemed from the punishment for our sins and how he makes a new people out of us. And so what he does is he shows how God through the gospel saves us and then brings us together as a new people. In other words, how God makes his own new family, his own new household, we might say, in the world. And then in the second half of Ephesians, he shows us
That gospel and what God has done has radical and far reaching implications for our lives. We talked about this in chapter four and five looking at the unity that we have because of being bound together in the gospel, how the gospel changes us as individuals and how there is a new lifestyle that comes along with being someone who believes in the gospel and who follows Christ. And then we start getting into Paul's instructions for
He has instructions for marriages, what the marriage is supposed to be like, how is it supposed to be structured. Last week we saw Paul's instructions to children and to parents. Now this isn't disconnected from what Paul had written on before. It's not as though he said, you know, we're going to get the theology out of the way and then get down to the practical stuff, right? Instead, what he's writing about here, even as he gets into marriage and he gets into parenting and here today gets
to work, these are things that all still flow out of what he taught us about the gospel because what he wants us to see is that the way that God has established and ordered his household, which is the kingdom, which is his family in the gospel, it shapes the way that we have our households ordered as well, right?
That's what he's doing here. And so we're seeing here over these couple of weeks how the gospel has major, major implications for our whole lives. And today we're looking at work and what Paul has to say about work in this passage here. And so we're going to look at that by, we're going to look at three things, points about work. This passage, just like all the others in Ephesians, is dense. We could spend a good amount of time here looking at each one of these phrases and pulling meaning out of them.
But we're looking at this in the big picture, because I want us to keep in mind the big picture of Ephesians and what Paul is teaching us here. So we're going to be looking at 5 through 9 as a whole. And so we're to have three points on work, which is that we're going to see work as calling, work as purpose, and work as obligation.
Work is calling, work is purpose, and work as obligation. Before that, we're to talk about slavery because Paul says that, he says slaves obey your human masters. So let's talk about the slavery issue first because it's hard for us as 21st century Americans to read that word slaves and to read about a slave and a master without us imagining 19th century slavery in America, in the antebellum
It's really hard for us to read anything in scripture or in history without having that image come to our mind and that image then kind of coloring what Paul is saying to us here that this is the context that he was speaking into, which is not the case. It was not exactly the case. And so I want us to consider that for a moment before we move on, just because I know that for a lot of us that's going to be kind of a stumbling block in our minds.
because that would draw a lot of questions, right? So three quick little points here. First of all is this. First, consider the historical context. Okay, consider the historical context. Like I said, we
Paul talked here about slaves obeying their human masters and how they treat their slaves. our mind immediately goes to the image of the Antebellum South or of the African slave trade and what we had in our nation a few hundred years ago, right? Our minds immediately go to that. But in the context that Paul is speaking, it doesn't look exactly like that. In fact, it was very, very different from the slave trade that we had here in the West in
in the
through like 19th century here. It was very, very different. Very different in many ways. The first one that's kind of, I would say, most, or the biggest difference is that slavery in the Roman Empire was not race -based like the African slave trade was. Now, very early on in colonial America, there were other slaves that were of different races. Very infrequent, but as we know in history, it came to be purely based
slavery as a right that some people had over other people purely based upon skin color, right, or birth or birthplace, right? Slavery in the Roman Empire was not race -based at all.
people from anywhere, including Roman citizens, could be slaves. It was not based upon one group of people from one place or one ethnicity over another.
So was very different in that way. It was also very different in that slaves had many more freedoms than slaves in the antebellum South did. First of all, no one was ever born into slavery. And here in America, in the South, people were, whenever slaves could get married and have children, because often they were not allowed to, but whenever they could, those children who were born to them were born into their slavery.
They were not born into a free life. Even the, well, I won't go into too much more detail on that, but in the Roman Empire was in the same way. No one was born into slavery. It was something that you entered into in a few different ways. One of the most common ways was that you sold yourself.
You sold yourself into some kind of extended servitude because you could do that for a few reasons. One would be many people did it simply out of job security. If you were a tradesman, if you had a skill or some of the kind and you were living just job to job, an easy way to find job security for yourself would be to find a patron that you could sell your services to for an extended period of time and then for out that time of servitude,
you were their slave, but you had a steady income and so on, right? So I was one of the very frequently...
What was the right word I'm looking for there? That was one of the common ways that people found themselves selling themselves into slavery was for job security. Another one was because they had a debt that they could not pay back. They had an enormous debt that they had racked And so one way that they could get their debt paid would be by having someone else, once again a patron, who would pay the debt on their behalf and then exchange. They would then be their slave for a certain amount of time, however much time was necessary to pay that debt back.
Another way that was really common was someone who was captured as a prisoner of war. Whenever Rome was in its various different battles and skirmishes and wars, and they would capture those prisoners of war, wherever those people were from, very often they would be brought back to the empire or to somewhere and they would be sold into some kind of servitude.
Slaves during this time were also far more than just people who did manual labor on behalf of the empire, but there was a very wide variety of jobs that slaves during this time could have done. They could have had very high positions, such as being administrators, doctors, treasurers, accountants for very large estates or even for the government.
and so on. And so there's a very, very different historical context that Paul is speaking into here. It was not the same thing that we know from our history. And so it's something for us to keep in mind whenever Paul is writing here about slaves and masters and the relationship between them. There's a lot more that we can go into, I'll leave it there for now. The second thing, consider Paul's intention.
Paul's intention here was not to attack that.
economic institution that they had. That is not what he was going after here because the slavery in this time made up an incredibly, incredibly large portion of their workforce and their economy in the Roman Empire. Some scholars estimate that there were around 60 million people who were working in some kind of slavery or indentured servitude, if you want to call it that, during this time.
They were an incredibly, incredibly large portion of the workforce in the Roman Empire. And so for Paul to try to say, or take the intention of, I'm going to attack that institution itself and demand its abolition, which is something that I think many of us reading this would have maybe liked for him to have done, either here or in some place in the New Testament to say, it's time to abolish this. People shouldn't own another person no matter how good the arrangement is,
But that was not Paul's intention. Paul's intention here was to mold the relationship that existed there between the master and the servant in a way that would undermine the institution itself.
You see, because what Paul was doing was he was teaching them first he was teaching slaves to work well, right. But then teaching masters to see the slave as someone who was no lower than them, someone who deserved equal treatment as they do, someone who was worthy of receiving all the good things that they would desire for themselves, someone who even as he writes in Philemon that they ought to see as a brother, as one with them.
just in Paul's writing, not here, but also in other places in the New Testament, what he does is he undermines the dynamics of the institution itself. Because even though, like I said, it wasn't in some degree, in many degrees, it wasn't necessarily as bad as what we saw here in the 19th century. In other ways, it was still problematic because it was
one person owning other people, which we recognize is not right. But if Paul would have come right out and say, it's time to abolish this, this gigantic institution that they had, writing this as a group of very small, a very small group of people in the midst of a very powerful empire that had no political freedom.
it would have meant that they would have immediately been stamped out, right? That the Romans would have come in and found up all these Christians who were trying to abolish slavery and they would have had them stamped out. So Paul's intention was not to do that at this point. But lastly, consider Paul's impact. The impact of what the New Testament does.
since Paul's writing in the New Testament undermined the institution itself through changing the dynamics of the relationship. What happened over time was is that in the Roman Empire, but then also in the West, even though it took centuries, we saw and there were certainly many failures. But eventually what happened is Christians took this teaching and they applied the implication to mean that
the institution itself was worthy of being abolished. It is a fact that without Christianity, slavery would have never been abolished. It was Christians who were leading the fight, especially in Great Britain, but also in America before the Civil War. was Christians who were leading the fight to have slavery abolished because they were reading what Paul said and applying it correctly. Okay.
So let's move on to, now that we kind of have that issue framed a little bit more correctly, let's consider what Paul has to say about work. So the first thing he says here, because once we understand, I think it's helpful for a few reasons, because it helps us to kind of answer those questions on why isn't Paul being a little bit more.
confrontational to the system itself. On the other hand, I think it helps us to see that for many slaves during this time, the day -to -day reality of their lives was not all that different from us who are like employees somewhere. Because that is the truth. And there are exceptions. There were some cases where there was brutal treatment, where there was mistreatment. And so there were certainly some of those cases. But for many slaves during this time,
the day to day reality of their lives and their job looked a lot like ours. So that means that we can pull some lessons from what Paul is saying to them and apply it to our lives. So the first one we see is this. We see that Paul teaches that work is a divine calling. Work is a divine calling. says to the slaves, he says, obey your human masters with fear and trembling as you would Christ.
He says, think of yourselves as slaves to human masters, in verse 6 he says, but think of yourselves as slaves of Christ. What he's saying here is that no matter what your job is, whether you are a doctor, whether you are a plumber, whether you are a teacher, whether you are a lawyer, it doesn't matter what your job is, you ought to see the job that you have as being given to you directly from the
You do not work primarily for this person or that person, but you work with Christ as your master.
Work is a divine calling is the first thing that we see here. Scholars read what Paul's writing in his teaching on marriage and his teaching on parenthood, his teaching here, and they recognize that it looks really similar to some other ancient writings that they have that are not biblical, that are not Christian resources. Because during this time,
There were these different little pamphlets or manuals that you could buy that were called household codes. A household code was something that the father of a family, the master of a household or estate would buy.
They'll be kind of like think that it's like a an ancient version of a business book and self -help book, I guess, where they could buy this book, you know, teach them how they should conduct their various relationships, their relationships with their wife, their relationships with their children, their relationships with their employees and slaves and whoever else. These were called the household codes. Paul is doing something that scholars have recognized in chapters five and six that sound really, really
familiar to the household codes because he's talking about how all of these different relationships are to be ordered. But Paul does something really different. In the household codes that they had back then, it only talked to the pater familiaris, the father of the household, the head of the household. It only addressed him. But Paul, when he writes about marriage, addresses wives and husbands. When he addresses...
the parenting, he talks to children and their parents. And then when he comes to work here, he doesn't just talk to the masters, but he addresses the slaves and the masters. He's doing a Christian version of the household codes, but in the Christian version of the household codes, he sees wives, children, employees, or slaves. He sees them as also
responsible moral individuals who have a calling from God. He gives focus to them as well.
You see, like I said, those slavery was different back then. There was one parallel and that slaves were often, not always, but often seen as lesser because of their status in society. Whereas, once again, in slavery in the 19th century, their rationale was that slaves were lesser because of the color of their skin. Here, slaves were seen as lesser, more just because of the status in society that they held. Because even if they were a more
high -ranking slave, someone who was a doctor or accountant or so on, they were still a slave, right? They were not free. Aristotle in one of his books said, a slave is a living tool, and that's it. But Paul doesn't see them that way.
Paul addresses and writes to them as well, just as he addresses the wives and the children. He sees them as responsible moral agents. In the pagan household codes, they were just tools to be told what to do.
but not according to Paul, not in Christianity. He addresses them because they are responsible people too. They are people in the eyes of God and their work has a place in God's will too. He places their work in the context of serving the Lord.
You know, we often think that serving the Lord is something that we think of it in ministry or in mission context. Serving the Lord means going on a mission trip somewhere and serving. Serving the Lord means volunteering in some kind of mercy ministry. Serving the Lord means playing music at church or volunteering at kids. those are ways of serving the Lord and those are good, right? But serving the Lord extends beyond even the
context, quote unquote ministry context, or missionary context to whatever we do that God has given us to do. That's what Paul shows us here by placing work in the context of serving God. He says, do your work not as to your boss, but as to Christ. Do it for him.
This is the Lord's work. So no matter what you do, whether you are in the medical field, whether you're in education, whether you are in business, whether you are still in school, whether you are a stay -at -home mom, right? Whatever your job is that God has given you, whether it is a job with a salary or it's not.
Whatever the job the Lord has given you, it is a way to serve the Lord. It is a calling from God. Whatever work is good work is work from the Lord. He says that our work is a calling from God. So all good work is God's work.
Now that changes the way that we perceive ourselves whenever we are at our jobs, whether you work a nine to five or some other type of job, it changes the way that we view what we do. It changes it from being mundane, maybe, to feeling insignificant, to recognizing that we are following God's will in doing the work that he has given us to do. Whenever you are, if you're a stay -at -home mom and you are working on keeping your house orderly, on planning meals to prepare
your family, how to discipline and how to love and care for your children. These are all things that are more than just keeping up with the day -to -day mundane things of life, but they are ways of serving God because it is the job that the Lord has given you and it is God's work. So that's one of the first things we learn is that work
Whatever we do, whether it's in ministry or not, is a calling from God because Paul places it in that context. But the second thing that we see is that work is also a source of purpose. Work is a source of experiencing our God given purpose is the second thing that I want us to see. In verse six, Paul says, don't work only while being watched as people pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, do God's will from your heart.
He's talking there about something that I think we can all identify with. We all have probably, whether when we were children or maybe even now, slacked off when we weren't being watched and it worked extra hard when the pressure was on. Like I said, maybe you did this when you were a child and your parents told you to clean your room. If they weren't watching you, if they weren't checking, you may not have been working that hard. But then whenever they came and watched or they threatened to take away a treat to...
I've threatened to throw away toys. But then when they come in and they place some external pressure, then all of sudden you get to working hard. Now, I'm sure that none of y 'all do that in your jobs today, just for in case. In case you ever struggle with that. That's what Paul's addressing here. He's saying don't only work whenever there is an external pressure placed on you, but your motivation to work should come from your heart.
I think it's really big that Paul says that. He says, not based upon external pressure, but as a slave of Christ, do your work from your heart. What Paul is doing is he's taking the motivation for us to do our work and he's removing it from an external pressure or coercion to having an internal locus in our heart. Some of you guys have experienced that before. You know what it's like to work just because you have to.
or just because your boss is expecting you to show up, or just because you need that paycheck. But maybe you've experienced before a time where your work was meaningful. Whenever you were doing it, not because you had to, but because you wanted to. Because you saw that it was good work. You saw that it was fulfilling. It made you feel good to accomplish some project, or to have a win, or to get something done in the home, right?
That's the kind of difference that Paul is talking about here. He's saying, whenever we look for what is our motivation to work in whatever job we have, we should have an internal motivator, an internal locus for the motivator rather than external pressure. And whenever you see that your job and whatever it is was given to you by God and you work to serve not your boss, you work to serve not your children or your spouse, but you work to serve Christ,
And that because He has called you to it, it is meaningful. You are fulfilling His will and doing your job, no matter how mundane it seems. Then that removes that motivator from needing external pressures and forces on you to being something that comes from the heart, something that comes within. So you can have that motivation to work no matter how wonderful or how awful things are going at your job.
no matter how smoothly things have been going in the home, know, moms and dads, to how rough things have been going in the home. If that motivation is coming from within, because you know that your calling is from the Lord, and that it's bigger than any job or so on, then you're able to continue to fulfill the obligations of your job. You see, I'm not saying that your career should become your identity.
I'm not saying that it should be your only source of purpose. But whenever you look at your life and you ask God, you know, what is my purpose in life? Why do you have me here? And we ask those big questions. I don't want you to overlook the day to day jobs and obligations that he is giving you, because even if they seem small and insignificant to you, that is a part of his answer. Ultimately, we find the answer in him. But then when we go to him, he sends us out into our work.
into our work in our homes, parents, in our work, in our workplaces, in our work in the church, in these things that seem so insignificant, so small, so mundane, in the day to day, it's in all these places that God has placed your purpose. Whenever you ask that question, it's all around you. Here's why he has you.
He has you even in Redeemer for a purpose. Not just to get something out of being here, but to contribute something by being here. And wherever you do that, not to please anyone here, not to impress anyone here, but to please him, then you're gonna experience some purpose. Same thing at your jobs. Same thing in your homes. This is our work, and whenever our work is done well,
It is one of the ways that God has created an avenue for us to experience the God given purpose that he has for us. Now the caveat there is when we do it well.
Work can be a blessing or a curse.
85 % of the time, whether it's a blessing or a curse, depends on us.
That other 15 % of the time it can be due to a terrible boss, supervisor, toxic workplace, or whatever else, but I really think that the majority of the time it depends on us. It depends on our perspective. Are we placing our work in the context of God's calling? And secondly, are we really giving it our best? Often our work feels insignificant. It feels like it lacks purpose because we're not giving it our best.
But when we work hard at our job, then I think that experience of purpose comes with it. So on top of that, our last point here is that work should be given our best effort. If there's any big thing that we take away from this, it is that Paul challenges our work ethic. He challenges how much we are willing to give whenever it comes to our jobs in your offices, in your classrooms.
in your homes and wherever else you might be. He challenges how much we are willing to give and how hard we are willing to work. Very often it's easy for us to start going with just getting by with the minimum.
Getting by with the minimum that is required of us, that is asked of us, maybe sometimes skirting just below the minimum because we know where the line is of what we can get away with and how much slacking off won't be noticed. We get away with knowing how much effort can I put into this and it still seem okay.
Paul challenges that. He says that we ought to work as we would for Christ. He says don't work as people pleasers but as slaves of Christ. He says serve with a good attitude as to the Lord and not to people knowing that whatever good each one does slave or free he will receive this back from the Lord. Serve with a good attitude as to the Lord.
He's giving us this perspective, which is that if I am a teacher, I am not teaching. I work not just as if I'm teaching students, but I work as if Christ will be sitting in one of the desks.
If you are in the medical field, you are working not just to treat this stranger patient, but you are working and giving them the attention as if you were Christ in the bed or if it was Christ on the table. If you are a parent, you work in the home, not just to serve those sweet little people, right, but you serve them with the same effort that you would give if you were serving Christ in your home.
And the same applies no matter where you are. He says we serve with a good attitude as if we were rendering our service directly to Christ. So let me ask, how much would your work ethic change, how much would your attitude change if you saw Christ being on the other side of whatever your job is? Versus just strangers or children or spreadsheets or whatever else. How much would our work ethic change?
I think the answer is for many of us, it will change to a pretty good degree. If all work is God's work, then that means that we should work with all of our heart, regardless of whether or not our workplaces deserve it. Sometimes we recognize our boss doesn't deserve us to work this hard. Or maybe our company doesn't deserve for us to work this hard. Our kids don't deserve for us to work this hard, right?
but because our motivation and because our calling and because we know that the one we will give an answer to is not ultimately our bosses, supervisors, children, principals, or anyone else, but it is the Lord, then we still give it our best effort because that is what Christ followers do. You see, this means that in whatever workplace you find yourself, since you are a Christian, you ought to stand out for your work.
No matter what kind of job you have, yes, even stay at home moms, this applies to you as well. Once again, fathers, wherever you are doing your work in the house, this applies to your work in the house too. Working fathers and mothers, right, this applies to all of us. Wherever Christians are in a workplace, they should stand out for their work.
How often do we don't?
But if we followed what Paul said here, if we took it seriously, Christians would have exemplary performance wherever they are. The best attitudes, the best work, the greatest integrity.
Our work will be done with the best effort and not just skirting by. Secondly, our work will be done with integrity. We wouldn't lie, we wouldn't manipulate perceptions so that we can keep getting by with our less than best effort. It means that we wouldn't be stealing time.
for those of you who are hourly workers. We won't be stealing time at our job by wasting time when we're on the clock, ought to be working and so on, right? We will have integrity in our work. We will have the best effort, we will have integrity. Thirdly, our work will be conscientious and not people pleasing. We will do it because it was given to us by God to do. It is our obligation to the Lord, not ultimately to
human bosses or supervisors. So we work conscientiously whether we are being seen or not, whether we are being recognized or not, whether we are being rewarded for it or not. We do it to the best of our ability. The last one is this. In the ways that our work can be exemplary, our work can be done cheerfully. Christians should stand out in the workplace not only for your work, for the quality of your work, for the integrity of your performance, but also for your attitude.
This can be really simple. It doesn't mean preaching to everyone in your workplace. It doesn't mean becoming a tattletale in your workplace whenever others are not working as they should, talking behind others backs and so on. Sometimes it means just not participating in those things. I remember one time I was in a job where...
We had a few different supervisors over us and everyone that I worked with hated one of the supervisors. Now, honestly, to a certain degree, I didn't understand why in the first place. Maybe she didn't have the best people skills, but all she did was ask for everyone to give their best. And I think that's part of the reason that the other people that I worked with did not like her because she had standards that she held us to. And so they were constantly talking behind her back, saying awful things, seeking
ways to undermine her leadership whenever she was watching us. And all I did, not to make an amazing example of myself, all I did was just not participate in that kind of talk and do the things that she asked.
You should stand out in the performance of your work, the integrity of your work, but also in the attitude. Working cheerfully, doing a good job, not participating in the grumbling because this is what God calls us to do. In verse seven, Paul said, serve with a good attitude. How much could your workplace change if maybe you started to be a person of influence by working cheerfully?
if you start to work with a good attitude. Because just as how a bad attitude can be contagious in the workplace, so can a good one. Maybe this is a small way that you can start to be a witness in your workplace. Maybe God has a calling for you beyond just putting in your hours or getting your projects done. Maybe he has a calling for you to be a witness to how the gospel changes someone in your workplace with your good attitude and with your great work. Maybe you can start to change
there. Guys, here's another thing. Maybe you can start to change. If you are miserable, if you are begrudging in your work, if you start to take what Paul teaches us here and apply it to yourself wherever you go in tomorrow, how much would you begin to change? Would your work start to look a lot differently?
Are there some areas where you were lacking integrity that you would start to act with a little bit more integrity? Have there been some grumbling conversations, some gossip, some negativity in the workplace that you've been participating in that you would now step out of?
The gospel has far reaching implications. Paul is going at lengths to show us here's how the gospel transforms our lives. Because if you are a member of God's household, then that's gonna have a tangible, visible difference in our households, in our marriages, in our parenting, and yes, even in the work that we do. Let's pray.
Father, we come before you and we thank you that you give us these instructions that we might know how to please you. Lord, I ask that you would help us to see that we ultimately do not serve people. We ultimately do not serve supervisors or bosses or clients, but ultimately we serve you, So let our attitude be shaped by that, our perception of our work.
let the ethic of our work be shaped by that so that we would not work as people pleasers, so that we would not give less than our best effort.
but that we might know the satisfaction that comes from working hard, cheerfully, knowing that we are doing your will. Father, I ask that we would all get to experience that this week as we see the areas that we need to repent in our work and to follow you better. We pray this in your name, amen.