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Well, I hope you guys are excited about going to Black Mountain.
I'm excited for you.
And anytime we're talking about deadly implements that you're going to use to do work, it's more exciting, right?
So, again, some of you parents may be excited about that.
My kids are going, I'm a little bit excited.
Hopefully they'll make it back in one piece, but they'll serve either way.
And there'll be a lot of joy going into it.
There'll be a lot of excitement.
And then it'll be hot about, I don't know, up there, like here about 09:00 in the morning, it already be hot.
And then all the luster of, look what we're doing.
Isn't this a great thing?
That will all wear off real quickly, right?
You already have not slept the night before.
You all may be angry at each other, right?
And it'll feel like arduous difficult work.
Because guess what?
It is.
And the worst thing about that is you don't have a lot of breathing room to rethink the work, right?
Because you're already primed and ready to think.
Work is negative.
Work's bad.
I mean, think about it.
Somebody asks you, hey, what you do for a living where you work?
Hit a hard pause before you answer that question.
Do you have positive notes in your mind?
I don't mean you like the place you work or you like the people you work around or you may own your own business.
Do you think joy and happiness when people bring up work?
Is it the first thought in your mind?
Of course it's not.
And the reason it's not, because the Beatles told us it's a hard day's night, right?
The Bengals don't like it.
That it's a manic Monday.
This is their day.
It's Sunday.
That's their fun day.
I don't have to run so that or if you're a little bit more like dirt under your fingernails, like me, in terms of music, like Merle Haggard Working Man Blues, what do you do?
You try to get through each day.
And for that guy he portrays in that song, you drink a little bit at night and you sing the blues and you get up and you do it all over again.
My question is, is that what work is supposed to be?
Is that the intention of work?
Is that how we should feel about work?
Or should we reconsider the way we tend to think about work, to execute our work, to look on our work, and even by the time we get to retirement age, reflect back on our work, would there be a different way that the Lord want us to see the reality of what we spend a lion's share of our time doing?
Whether you work in the home among your family.
You work in the home because you're remote.
You work in an office complex or on a job site or in a shop.
Is there a way that we could re envision what work is about?
I think we can.
The difficulty is, we are where we are historically, right?
This might shock you, but when God creates all things and he fashions the garden, he puts man and woman there.
They worked pretty much all day, every day they worked, but they didn't have the notion of this is negative, this is bad.
This is difficult.
This is invasive.
I want to go get on a lake.
That wasn't a notion in their head, but as soon as they did the very thing God told them not to do, they ushered in.
What you and I experience works hard, and it ain't made easier because you got to work with other human beings and you're difficult to get along with, and so are they.
So now you compound just the difficulty of the work with the difficulty of the coworkers or the supervisor or the employees or the people you contract with in your business.
That compounds the frustration and the difficulty and the stress and all the unknowns of having to navigate that.
And you can't hit stop, can you?
We're about to end vacation season, right?
Some of you yet to go on vacation.
Don't rub that in that you still got that out in front of you.
For most of us, it's ending this week.
Some of y'all are crazy enough you can go a mission trip with your vacation time.
You're the people that need a badge of honor, right?
How could we look at what we're doing?
And I don't mean in a pie in the sky way.
I mean in the gritty, real world and say, when that alarm clock goes off tomorrow morning, god, what do you want me to think of what I'm about to get out of bed and do?
God, how do you want me to navigate this day beyond just suck it up and get through it?
Could there be more that you want me to have?
And that's exactly what Jesus has come to do to our work after the garden.
There is hardship in our work.
But Jesus came to give us life that seizes joy in everything we do.
And part of that is he came to redeem our work in the way we think about it.
He doesn't want us to look at that and think only hardship.
And here's how we know that.
Because all of our wrong notions about heaven are just that they're wrong.
When he establishes ultimately it's the culmination of all his work a new heaven and a new Earth.
Guess what we're going to do again?
Work.
There's work in heaven.
There's work in the new earth.
We will labor.
The difference is, he came that we might have rest in our work.
So how could that break in a little bit?
Tomorrow morning when you don't feel rested, the alarm clock goes off.
How could that reality break in a little bit to the day after day grind that we're all in trying to be faithful to the work that we have in front of us, we could go a lot of different places.
We're going to look at Colossians 322 through four one.
There's going to be a similar text in Ephesians.
I won't go there, but I may reference it a couple of times and I think that this passage helps us to get at the reality of our lives and how we can see work, perhaps the way God envisions us seeing it.
Colossians three, verse 22.
Bond servants obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.
Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.
You are serving the Lord Christ for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done and there is no partiality masters.
Treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.
Now, I want to give a couple of cautions before we launch into this because some of your translations don't use the word bond servant, they use the word slave and those terms are interchangeable.
That's not a bad translation of the term.
The difficulty for us is we are also historically where we are.
So the second I say the word slave to you, there are connotations that it makes sense, are in our mind and rattle our hearts a little bit, make us kind of recoil and step back and go, should we even be reading this?
Is there anything even applicable to us here?
Here are my cautions.
For us, for me.
For you.
This idea of slavery in this time in the first century is not one to one identical with 18th and 19th century transatlantic slave trade.
It's not identical to that at this point in time in history, throughout most of the world, there were exceptions to this by and large, and particularly where he's writing to this church.
These people were not property in the way that you and I would think about slavery, that we had to endure as a nation and other nations have endured, some still do.
These people were largely well educated people, many times bond servants in this household like this.
They would have been the mentors and educators of the children of their master, supervisor, boss.
And they were not transferable property one generation to another.
Instead, they were in this situation either because they were part of a group or a nation that had been conquered.
And so in order to make a living, they came into this arrangement, or if they owed outstanding debt and couldn't repay it, they would put themselves in an enslavement or bond servant position to try to pay that off over time.
So it's not identical to what happened there, and we can't think of it quite in that way.
Now, here's the caution on the other side.
You also can't directly relate this to your job.
My job?
You as a supervisor, me as a supervisor, you as an employee, me as an employee.
It's not one to one correlation there either.
This is written in a setting and a time where there was bond servanthood, there was slavery of this type.
And so the reality is that they were, in a sense, belonging to under the possession of their masters.
They didn't have freedom to punch a clock and go home.
This was their charge, not just during the workday, but during their lives until they were released from this service.
Also, there were times that they were mistreated that wasn't as widespread as it was during slavery that we're more familiar with, but it happened.
They were not given what they were owed.
They were not released from this contract when they were supposed to be released.
They were taken advantage of in other ways at times, and ultimately, at the end of the day, a bond servant, slave.
They were human tools for you to reach your economic goals.
But that begins to touch on why I think it's important for us to still read this passage of scripture and look to the Lord and say, what would you teach us?
Because particularly for those of you who own your own businesses or you're an upper management or executive level, are the employees human tools for your economic goals?
Is that how you see them every day?
Is that how you see deals with other contracted parties that serve your business?
Is that how you see other employees at the same level as you and your company, your corporation on the job site?
The reason I think this is important is because of what Paul does here.
This is usually called a household code.
This is very common in the ancient world.
Again, you see one in Ephesians, probably more familiar with that in five and six of his letter to Ephesus.
But in this and as in there, he does something that's unthinkable, usually in his household codes.
What you would have is you'd have instruction of how the official masters of the household, right, the parents and the children were supposed to relate and then how the servants or anybody contracted or employed or owned in the house had to relate to the master of the estate, the house or the network of houses.
And it was very clear the guys at the top, the woman better not violate what the guy wants, the children better not think to violate what either one of them want.
And you better sure understand that your position as a bond servant is to execute your charge you don't ask questions, you don't entertain notions of whether or not it's right for you to do your job.
You better be scared to death of the master and do what he says because he got no love for you.
That's normally how they would read.
I've updated the language slightly, okay?
But that's essentially the spirit of them.
What does Paul do here?
He's going to here, in just a moment, elevate servants to be spiritual equals with the master.
You are the same.
God has no partiality.
He's going to judge rightly.
And it's not going to matter if you're a C suite executive or you mop the floor.
He's going to judge without partiality based on how you act and how you treat one another in this arrangement and in this relationship.
But also, too, he does lower the masters to help them understand that you may have those in your charge and in your responsibility, but you also have a master.
Not only does that master judge fairly and rightly, he does it in such a way that the care for all will be his concern.
And the reason that this is so incredible is because now, whether we're employed or we are the employer, we are equally needy of whatever God's going to tell us about this work relationship and what he's going to tell us really about the nature of what we do in our jobs and any work that we do.
And so first I want us to see work is meant to be worship because we exalt Jesus through our work.
That's what it's designed to do.
And so let's look at verse 22 quickly again.
Bond servants obey in everything those who are your earthly masters that do your work how not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but instead with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord sincerity of heart, singularity of heart, if you want to say it that way.
It just means be faithful.
Like whatever your job is, do your job and do it faithfully and fully.
Don't shortchange it.
Don't check Facebook or Tweet ten times when you're supposed to be working on a brief to somebody.
You're supposed to be slinging a hammer and getting this thing framed out, then frame it out.
And don't take an extra 45 minutes for lunch just because the foreman ain't around.
Like, actually do your job, but do it in such a way that you understand that in the Lord's care, he's given you this today.
This is not outside of what he wills for you.
He wills for you to labor and through that to actually exalt Christ, not simply grin and bear it.
But also the way that we do that really has a lot of implications.
For some of us, it's easier to do our job than it is for others because we agree with the direction that the company is headed.
For others, you don't agree.
You don't like what's going on there's been a new hire that oversees your area, your region, or your department.
You don't like it, you got a new manager, and you're trying to just get your job done.
They're breathing down your neck.
It's interesting that Paul doesn't really start to draw out all those contingencies and keep in mind that he's talking to someone that isn't with the entirety and the completeness of freedom that you and I have, in most cases, where it is real bad, then quit and go get another job.
They didn't have that release valve to hit.
They were in a contractual obligation where they had to complete the work day in, day out.
And he's telling them, the best thing you can do is with sincerity of heart, be faithful, because ultimately you're serving the Lord.
And then he kind of puts the exclamation point on it.
How would you do this, fearing the Lord?
Sometimes people will say, and it's inaccurate, they'll say, well, the fear of God, we're supposed to be without fear.
Now the fear of God's.
An Old Testament notion.
Well, I mean, this is exhibit A here.
It is square in the center of the New Testament.
What should you be doing fearing the Lord?
Jesus is adamant, don't fear man, but you should fear God, right?
It's very clear that even Revelation Twelve and 19, we will continue to fear the Lord.
So the big question is not should we fear the Lord?
We're called and mandated to fear the Lord as New Testament believing people.
The more important question is, what does that mean?
How do we do that?
There's two types of fear the Bible talks about.
One is the one that we commonly think about.
We call it church.
Historians call it servile fear.
That's usually how we term that.
But the whole notion is when you and I are scared of something, we want to run away.
That's the bad fear.
Don't fear, man.
Don't run away.
Don't cower.
Don't not speak up when you're asked to.
Don't not stand on conviction when you know you should, by the work of the Spirit in and through your heart and life.
Don't do that.
That's fear that runs away.
God's not calling you to run away from him.
Right.
In union with Jesus by faith, he says, you're here forever.
So it can't mean that that we fear the Lord.
What it instead means is if you and I are drowning because of the rip current in myrtle beach and we're being taken out and somebody comes out there and they're strong enough and powerful enough to grab us by the neck and hold us above the water, I'm going to be scared to death to let go of them.
I'm not going to try to swim away from them.
Why?
Because I recognize in that moment they can rescue me, they can save me.
They're here for my good.
You ain't gonna pull my hands off of them.
The fear of the Lord means being in awe of his greatness and goodness that he would rescue us, that he is our God and we are his people by faith in Jesus.
So we want to follow Him.
We want to do what pleases Him, not because he's going to make us his.
We're already his, and as his sons and daughters, we act like it.
We love being near to Him, close to Him, repenting when we're not, and draw near to Him again.
And so the charge here is to fear the Lord.
The interesting thing again is most of the time these household codes, they would say the opposite.
This whole section wouldn't even speak to a bond servant at all except to say, hey, for you Masters, make sure you scare these people to death.
Make sure they know and are intimidated by your presence, and make sure they don't think for a minute they shouldn't do everything you tell them to do day in and day out.
Paul here shifts the attention to say, your principal concern is, yes, faithfulness, because you fear and want to honor and cling to the Lord.
That's why.
Not because you fear punishment, but because you've been drawn into relationship with God.
I think it's interesting that if you look at what we're being called to do, think for a minute about what we've been given by faith in Jesus, you are completely forgiven and drawn in as his children forever.
That will never change, ever.
So guess what that means compared to your coworkers, your employees, your supervisors that don't know the Lord.
If you and I think about what we're trying to achieve in life and with work outside of Jesus, like if we don't know Him, we're usually trying to get some sense of stability and peace, right?
We have friends that they're finding some degree, although it's not complete.
They want to try to find some contentment and concrete nature of their self worth, so they find it in their work or their work relationship or who they know or who that provides connection with the idea that if I work hard enough, I have a clear conscience.
At least I didn't mail it in today.
At least my kids aren't going to starve.
I got a clear conscience now.
Yeah, but you just told me you can't stand your kids.
Like, you hate that they're even born, but you have a clear conscience because you made paycheck this week, so you can pay for their stuff, but in your heart, you detest them.
You see how incomplete all that is?
Man, if I can just work hard enough, I'll be financially stable enough, I'll be secure enough, insulated enough, then I'll be content.
If I climb high enough, quickly enough, advance my career, I'll have a sense of worth.
If I can just do the right things and enough people pat me on the back and finally hand me a goal, watch at the end of this thing in 30 years, then I'll feel like at least I've done something.
And in the place of those pursuits, we are given glory and joy in Jesus presence without end.
So all those pursuits we don't have to pursue, we don't have to do that.
We've been given peace.
Absolutely.
We have been given joy and identity in Jesus.
That's unshakable.
We've been given a clear conscience because the Lord has granted us his righteousness.
And again, that's not at risk of being downsized or force terminated.
Christ is our all in all and will be forever.
That will never change.
So how much does that alter the way we can show up and think about our work and do our work?
I'm not trying to make sure that the supervisor thinks the best of me, because everything's hanging on this career notch up one, notch up one, notch up one.
You should want to advance in your career.
I'm not knocking that at all.
But I talk to people all the time, and there's a distinct difference between a desire to exalt Christ, worship Him, have their joy stirred because they can serve more people, provide more leadership.
I just got to get this thing done, because I am incomplete, in and of myself, and if I don't make it above middle management, I feel like I'm going to rot.
That's a completely different conversation, and it's based on a different perspective.
They're not looking at work as worship.
They're not trying to think, how can I exalt Jesus through this?
So how do we think about faithfulness and work, sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord, making sure that we're doing this in such a way that we're actually trying to serve Christ and know that we're doing that?
Paul writes to Titus and he actually gives this statement to him.
He says, you know what?
When you do your work, understand this and help bond servants understand this.
They should be submissive to their own masters.
They should be well pleasing, not argumentative.
They shouldn't pilfer, take things, steal, but they should show good faith.
Why?
Why should they do that?
I mean, if you're in a job that you hate, if you're in a job that people are nice to you.
So when you say, this is what I do for a living, they don't make eye contact because they realize that's a job nobody wants.
If you're in that kind of job.
This is the kind of job these people were in most of the time.
They weren't looked upon favorably.
They didn't have status.
What are you supposed to do?
Do this in an honorable way?
Do it in a way that's devoted and dedicated.
I don't care if you're slinging freight on a trucking dock that did that for years.
I don't care if you're flipping burgers.
I don't care if you're signing invoices for a multibillion dollar company.
I don't actually care what you're doing here's.
What I want to do, and I hope you will hold me accountable to do in my job do this.
That they may adorn the doctrine of God, our savior.
You're like, what does that mean?
We don't use that kind of language, right?
We don't talk about adorning something, but we do it all the time.
So I'm in two different cosmetic stores yesterday because I have a 14 year old daughter, and my children have varied talents.
I could focus on, like, one thing when I was their age, and I wasn't even good at that right?
At a time.
But they have, like, ten different things they're concerned with.
But my daughter, she knows about skincare and cosmetics.
I mean, she knows she knows stuff that I'm not sure even needs to exist, but they make money off people with it, so they sell it, right?
So we're walking through there, and I'm always the consummate dad of a 14 year old daughter, right?
I don't know what any of this stuff is, and I'm walking through, looking at it, and it's all got weird names, and I can't tell lipstick from eyeshadow from I mean, the boxes all look the same even, right?
So it through there, and she knows.
She knows where everything is.
She knows what it does.
She knows the spectrum of, well, this is higher quality than this is.
So this is a good deal because this is on sale and all that.
You know what I've never thought to do?
When she puts the makeup on, it's never occurred to me to go, that makeup is incredible.
Can you show me the container of makeup?
Like, I just want to look at the contain good.
This is amazing.
Look at this container of lipstick.
Look at this eyeshadow.
I've never seen it's so incredible looking.
That's not what it's made to do.
It is made for her to put it on and for us to do what you look really pretty.
It draws attention to her beauty.
That's what cosmetics do.
That's what jewelry does.
That's what adornment does.
It doesn't change the nature of something.
It draws our attention to the features and the beauty and the brilliance of that person or that thing.
When you and I are faithful to our jobs, when you and I show up and give it everything we got, when you and I are honest and respectful people enough to say, I didn't today.
I didn't give it everything I got, I need to put in some extra time over the weekend to make up for that.
We're honest.
We're people of integrity.
You know what that does?
It accentuates the features of the gospel that we say we believe.
That's why I'm saying to us, to me, preaching to myself, my work is designed to be worship and for the exaltation of Christ, there are a lot of things that are achieved by it income, stability, a sense of achievement.
None of those things are bad.
They're all good, but it will revolutionize pursuing those things.
If ultimately I'm doing out of fear of the Lord and adoration of Jesus because I'm going to just shoot straight with you.
If you cuss less than the other guys you work around, big deal.
Like, I appreciate that you do that.
I think it's an undignified way to talk personally, but that's fine.
But I also live in the real world and I'm just going to tell you in 2023, your lower percentage of profanity does not draw a straight line to the gospel for people.
They just think, well, you're a little prudish.
You don't cuss like we do.
There is not a connection made there when they ask you about that and you say, you know what, I just want to treat you with dignity and our customers with dignity.
And you can use a lot of words like, I'm not judging you on that, but I will say, like, I think it's probably a little better that I speak to you in an honorable way.
I'm going to call you names.
I'm not going to be a coward and call somebody else names while they're not around to you.
I'm just not going to do that, man.
That doesn't honor the Lord.
It doesn't honor other human beings.
And I think that we're called to love God and love our neighbor.
So I'm loving you by that.
I'm loving our customers by that I'm loving our company and the people it represents and the families it feeds and provides health care for and all that.
Like I'm doing that through doing that.
Okay, now we're talking.
Now we've been able to demonstrate something that people are curious about and they want to know why is this a difference maker?
Not just in certain moral choices you make, which are important, but in the core of the engine that drives you forward in life, that Christ is our life and because of that I want to see attention brought to him.
So work is worship, right?
So we exalt Christ through our work, but it's also important whether employee, supervisor Christ is our master.
So we serve Jesus through our work.
Let's read 23 through four, one really quickly.
Again, whatever you do, work heartily it's for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.
You are serving the Lord Christ for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done.
And there is no partiality masters.
Treat your slaves or bond servants justly and fairly knowing that you also have a master in heaven.
This would have been particularly shocking when read at the church in Colosse when the people who owned households, right, or managed them, oversaw them.
Are there hearing this read aloud with people who were under the care of that household, these bond servants that were there.
And the statement is, you're serving Christ.
He's going to.
Give you an inheritance bond.
Servants didn't have an inheritance.
There was nothing coming to them.
The children would get an inheritance.
They got whatever agreement and the end of the agreement that was there, and then they better manufacture some more stuff somewhere.
They better find something to do.
There was nothing given to them.
And Paul says, this is not pie in the sky.
This is not for end of life.
So you feel better about meeting your death.
This is real time right now, day in, day out.
You're not working for your master principally.
You're working for the master principally.
That's who you're working for.
And if you're going to compare the earning power and potential, the prowess of someone to how they're going to be able to provide an inheritance for you, I think he's got it covered.
I think he can grant you the inheritance that your soul longs for, even when it doesn't realize it, and it's yours by faith in Jesus.
So when you're having to sweat it out day in, day out, when you're having to labor in a role that you wish you weren't in, when you're having to show up because your family depends on you, there is a greater reward than whatever Christmas bonus you get.
There's a greater reward than whatever relative or diminished fanfare you get at the retirement ceremony.
And God is literally saying to us in the whole of Scripture, but particularly right here, that's the inheritance you work for and everything else will actually be amplified by that.
If that's the reward, you work for the goodness and greatness of the Lord established in your life and my life forever.
It's interesting.
Sometimes people will look at texts like these, and I hear them read sometimes, and people will say, I want to do this.
I want to serve the Lord Christ, not just as an employee, but as a leader, a manager, a supervisor, business owner.
But I want to do that.
What I really want to do is be a servant leader.
Let me give you a little bit of just armchair trivia.
Servant leadership, not initially coined as a Christian concept.
1970, Robert Greenleaf wrote a book called Servant Leadership, and his intention behind that book was to create an environment where leadership would be taken on differently, so you would be a little bit more benevolent and grant dignity to the people who worked within your department, your area, your company.
There's a lot of people who study leadership.
That's a bad word to them.
They think it's manipulative.
You're not really serving those people.
That just makes you feel better because you say you're a servant leader.
Well, I'm okay with all that theoretical stuff, but here's the practical side that grates on me a little bit.
I interact with all kinds of leaders all the time.
Most of them are believers, and they'll say, I'm a servant leader.
Man, that's fantastic.
So describe that to me.
Well, I don't have certain conversations around my employees.
I make sure that they're paid adequately, given what industry we're in, and I make sure that I show up as much as they show up.
That's just called having a job.
That's just being a competent person to show up to work and be a leader or a business.
There's nothing exceptional about what was just said.
Nothing.
Here's what's exceptional.
You start digging in here where Paul is describing how we ought to show up if we're in those types of roles where people are depending on us for leadership or direction or management.
And he does point to, again, these servants.
But it's interesting in verse 25, it's almost like a hinge point, because four, one is just about the master, the earthly master, it's just targeted toward them.
But 25, I think, applies to both parties.
For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done.
And there is no partiality.
So if you withhold from your job, if you don't do your job fully, if you kind of mail it in, that's wrongdoing.
And God's going to judge that, that's not okay.
And if you mistreat your employees, you don't care for them and you don't treat them with dignity, that's not okay.
Both of those are wrongdoing.
And the point here by Paul is God's not going to be partial and go, well, you had a lot on you.
I mean, you own your own business.
That was mean.
This person just had to show up and do what you told them.
That's not going to be the get out of jail free card.
And hey, you were under a lot of stress because look at what you were having to endure.
So you get a pass.
No.
Why?
Because work is designed for the good of our souls and for the glory of God.
So we can't mail it in, we can't treat it like an irritant.
It's actually what he means for us to do.
So how we navigate it is something we have to think through.
So then I wonder about this.
Can we think from both perspectives?
A lot of us may wear some version of both hats, right?
We're employees, but we have people that work with us or for us.
And some of us, you oversee your own business, so you oversee everybody.
You contract with people who are kind of at your same level.
But here's what I would say.
If the desire here is to walk with honor, dignity, trust, I think, first of all, you don't want to be like the guy another music reference.
I'm sorry.
I like thinking music categories.
All right, so you don't want to be the guy in the Oni song by Johnny Cash, right?
You don't want to work for 29 years in the shop and quitting times at 430 and you're about to get off and oni's, been bringing down your neck, getting more out of you, than he ought to take.
And he's been doing it day in, day out.
And 430, they're going to give you that goal watch, and you're going to give Oni something he ain't counting on, right?
I mean, he's going to lay him out at 430 that day because he's sick and tired of it.
Why?
Because Oni has not treated him in a way that pushed him.
That's fine.
That expected great things of him.
That's fine.
You don't dehumanize somebody.
That's a coward's way.
It's not a courageous way to treat a human being.
You don't do that.
What you also don't do is take vengeance into your own hands.
You don't store up wrath to unleash at the retirement ceremony.
Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
I'll repay.
He's storing up wrath against every injustice and wrong, and he will pour it out.
He is even now demonstrating it.
And the only ones sheltered from that are those who are in Christ, because in his righteousness, they won't endure it because he already did endure it for them.
So we don't want to be like the guy getting ready to give the knuckle sandwich to Oni, all right?
You don't want to be like that as an employee, but in a positive way, I think you want to be like old fezzywig, all right?
So I have many character flaws, and since we're all friends here, I'm going to confess one to you, okay?
This year, I'm somewhere around the 30th year of reading A Christmas Carol.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
You're like?
I knew I didn't like you.
Now you really don't like me, right?
But every year I do that.
That's just like my personal tradition.
My kids make fun of me because of it.
And that's just it.
That's one of many character flaws, all right?
So I just about have the story memorized, even down to some of the lines.
I'm not going to recite it for you.
It's okay, all right?
It's not Christmas in July.
I'm not going to do that to you.
But it is interesting when I read that book every year, there are different elements that kind of stick with me, and I think you read good literature.
I think the Lord uses even good stories outside of the Bible to emphasize some things to you.
And man, one of the most pressing moments is when the if you don't know about A Christmas Carol, spoiler alert, I hope everybody knows.
Anyway.
So ghost of Christmas past, right?
He goes back fezziwig was his supervisor when he was an apprentice, right?
Before scrooge turns into, like, Mr.
Evil miser, right?
So he's there and his Budy's there, and he's looking onto the scene, and all these people coming up to Fezziwig at the Christmas party going, thank you so much.
You're such a great man.
Thank you for everything you've done for us, this lavish party.
Oh, we're so grateful for you.
And the spirit looks at Scrooge and says, why are people making a big deal out of this?
It's a few pounds of your money.
It's a handful of dollars for this guy especially.
I mean, why are they going on and on about this?
This is what Scrooge says to him.
It isn't that.
And he's mad.
Scrooge is mad that the spirit would even question this, speaking unconsciously like his former and not his latter self.
So speaking almost like he's the younger version of himself.
It isn't that spirit.
He has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome a pleasure or a toil say that his power lies in words and looks and things so slight and insignificant that it's impossible to add and count them up.
What then?
The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.
And then his spirit looks at him because he starts to kind of look off.
He says, what is it?
Scrooge's like nothing.
Nothing.
And his spirit is a spirit, right?
It's fiction, right?
So the spirit's like, no, there's something what is just I'd like to say a few things to my clerk right now.
See, this is the hammer coming down on Scrooge.
And I've seen this happen in my own life and in the lives of others.
Scrooge had this amazing experience where the guy who kind of commanded his career was in charge of him, made his life joyful.
He worked hard.
He was going to make him work hard, but he didn't add burden on top of that, he cared about him, cared about the people that worked for him.
That was obvious.
But when Scrooge got to that point in his own life, and this is what I'm talking about, I've seen over and over again, he became the very thing he didn't want to be, the very things he didn't like in the person that supervised him.
He emulated those and the things that he took for granted.
He just said, well, you can't do that when you supervise people.
You can't do that when you own a business.
And Scrooge's realizing that moment, you can you can care for people.
The real charge in verse one there is exactly that.
You got to treat these people justly and fairly.
You got to treat them like they're human beings because we're called to love God and love our neighbor.
The people that work for you, they're your neighbors in a biblical sense.
They're people that desire and require your investment in them, your care for them.
You're working alongside them as well as employing them to whatever degree you can do that in your field.
Treat them justly and fairly.
Treat them with dignity.
Why would we do that?
He makes the point that all of us have a master in heaven.
And it's very clear the authority here is Christ.
We serve him, we exalt him.
We're under his authority.
So any authority you and I have or think we have it's under his authority.
And I think that's important because Jesus even addresses himself as servant and master.
Mark Ten is very clear.
I didn't come to serve to be served, but to serve and give my life as a ransom.
For many he served.
He's given his life.
So what do we do?
We work in service to Him because he's already done the work.
He's established the work that matters most, securing you and me by faith so we can know Him forever.
So that's the basis of every sphere of life you and I experience.
We didn't read the whole passage, but again, every significant and central relationship is right here.
Parents, one to another in marriage, parents to the children, children to the parents, fathers in particular, in the way you care for and are humble toward your children, those who oversee, those in the household who aren't blood related, how do you care for with humility, grant dignity to them and truly honor them.
All those relationships are there, and they're all rooted in Christ, who gains glory through that.
So regardless of your title, your job position, when you get up tomorrow morning, if you're going to work, if you're on vacation again, don't make eye contact.
You'll make the rest of us envious.
But if you go into work tomorrow, god means it as worship.
Means it as worship, absolutely.
And that's a fight to worship Him through it most days, but it means that.
So we would adorn the gospel.
We would draw attention to the beauty of the gospel for the sake of our own souls, for the people around us.
We treat with dignity the people who work for us or with us or among us, or we contract with.
Why?
Because it honors and brings glory to God when we do that.
So it'll be a little cheesy if you said it out loud when people ask you, but I'm going to tell you personally, here's what I do.
When somebody asks me, who do you work for and what do you do?
I don't say it out loud because it sounds cheesy, and then I got to give an explanation.
But internally, I honestly think to myself, I work for Jesus and I worship Him.
Because you know what that helps me do?
It helps me get the notions of work is negative and only negative out of my mind before I answer that question.
And it reframes my thinking to go, whatever I do in my job, it needs to honor Him because it's intended to be a means to honor Him, because my work will do that forever and ever by faith.
So I want to pray for us that the Lord will grant us grace to be countercultural in that way.
We talk about being countercultural in all kinds of ways.
You want to get people's attention for the sake of God's glory and not your own.
Think about and execute your work like this.
Think about it, and do it in a way that's utterly different than anybody else you work with among or works for you.
You do that in that way, and Jesus will be pleased.
And we'll pray that he'd bring more people to faith than Him.
So let's pray together.
God, we do thank you that at what's coming to be the end of summer, pretty quickly, You've given our students and parents and volunteers the opportunity to work and to work hard this week.
So we do pray again for them.
And we trust You, Lord, in Your faithfulness and goodness that you would bring some of them to faith in Christ as they're working, as they know that the difficulty in work.
You want to grant rest.
The charge to work will always be there.
But even the things that are most difficult in our lives, Lord, you provide peace by Your presence, so I pray you'd be with them.
I pray you would animate them, give them strength and energy to bring you glory as they work.
I pray that for every one of us, please grant us hope in You, God.
Please grant us the opportunity to serve you and worship you and in through our work that we would work for Jesus and that we would worship and bring honor to Him.
And we pray these things in Jesus name.
Amen.
Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willowridge Church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.