In Christ - Working for The Man

If you’ve ever hummed along to 9 to 5 or Take This Job and Shove It and felt that knot in your stomach about Monday, Scott Wiens offers a different chorus. In this message from the In Christ series, Scott walks into Ephesians 6:5-9 with both honesty and hope, asking what it really means to work “as unto the Lord” when your boss is unfair, your efforts go unnoticed, or your attitude is fraying at the edges.

Scott begins with the hard question many avoid: why does the Bible talk about bondservants and masters? He slows down to explain the first-century context of doulos, how servitude functioned in the ancient world, and why the gospel never blesses exploitation. He names slavery as evil, connects the conversation to modern human trafficking, and points to Scripture’s wider witness that condemns enslavers (1 Timothy 1:8-11), levels status distinctions in Christ (Galatians 3:28), and sows seeds of liberation in relationships like Philemon and Onesimus. Far from endorsing oppression, the good news redefines power through the cross and insists that God shows no partiality.

Then the text gets close to home. Serving “with fear and trembling” becomes reverent seriousness before God, not terror of human bosses. Paul exposes “eye-service” and people-pleasing as counterfeit discipleship, calling for obedience, integrity, and sincere work that flows from a changed heart. Scott names the everyday compromises we’re tempted to excuse—gossip, disrespect, cutting corners, or stealing because we feel owed—and he shows how separating faith from work quietly silences our witness. The promise of reward in Ephesians 6 matters too: God sees unseen faithfulness now and will make it count in eternity, without turning work into a way to earn salvation.

Leaders don’t escape the mirror. “Masters, stop your threatening” confronts coercive management and invites servant leadership shaped by the truth that every person answers to the same Master in heaven. In Christ, authority is exercised with dignity, restraint, and care.

If your Mondays need meaning, Scott offers a path that is both spiritual and practical: ask the Spirit to renew your heart, choose words and habits that honor Jesus, and let your consistency at work become a credible testimony. Watch and share with a friend who could use a reset on the job, and consider what the hardest part of living out your faith at work looks like for you this week.

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Transcript

Work Songs And Shared Frustrations

Scott Wiens 0:02

I want to read off some song titles that were popular in their day. And as I raise them, or as I read them, I want you to raise your hand to see if you remember them. And this is the only part of the sermon that's audience participation. Okay, so take advantage of this. So the first one's really easy. Nine to five by Dolly Park. Yeah, everybody's heard that, right? Of course. I won't sing any of these, or it might just depends. Okay, so everybody's one for one. How about this one? Taking care of business. Yeah. My neighbor Sean here, he's like a musical guru. He knows all these. I'm I fully expecting you get seven for seven on this one. That's by the group Bachman Turner Overdrive or BTO, right? How about this one might be a challenge for some of you? Manic Monday by the Bengals. Oh yeah. Just another Manic Monday. Everybody go. Uh yeah, okay. Okay, for the country folks here. Big City by Merle Haggard. Oh yeah. Big City, yep. Um, okay, this one goes back to the early 80s. Working for a Living by Huey Lewis in the news. Yeah. I'm really proud of you guys. Now, this one's gonna be a stretch. You gotta be an old country fan for this one. This was sung by a guy named Tennessee Ernie Ford, 16 Tons. Yeah, Bobby, I told you you'd know this one. You load 16 tons. What do you get? Yeah, a lot of you know that. Man, further in debt. Yeah. Boy, we got some old people in this group. And the last one, I can't say the whole title, or else I'll get corrected by the elders on Tuesday. It's a song by Johnny Paycheck called Take This Job and Don't Fill It Out. Don't finish it out. Yeah. Okay, how many, how many knew all of them? Yeah, that's good. We got some music officiados.

Why These Songs Matter For Us

Scott Wiens 2:10

Well, listen, why do I list all these songs? Well, if you haven't figured out, all these songs have something very much in common. And they're bemoaning the difficulties that people experience in their jobs, right? I mean, unfair bosses, being underpaid and overworked, right? Long hours, low appreciation, uh companies that have bosses that are taking advantage of you. I mean, it's, you know, people just talking about how much they hate their jobs, right? Now, if you can relate to any of these songs, this message might be for you, okay? In fact, I'll just expand it to everybody. If you've ever had any bad thoughts about your employer or people that worked for you, this message is for you. It sure was for me. So listen, we've been preaching through the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians since last fall, that we're in the second half of this right now, and we're currently in the middle

Reading Ephesians 6:5-9

Scott Wiens 3:03

of chapter six. Now, this section of Paul is addressing Christian bondservants and their masters. Okay, so let's go ahead and read this. We're beginning in verse five of chapter six. Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ, not by the way of I service as people pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord. Whether he is a bondservant or is free. Masters, do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours in heaven, is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him. Father, as we go before the come before you, and as we go through this passage of Scripture, I just pray that you would give us an open mind and an open heart, Father. Father, we know that your word is a lamp to our feet. And we know, Father, that as we look at your word, that there it will reflect back to us and it will show us things we need to change. And I pray that for all of us, myself included, God, that you do that with us this morning. And so we just place this in your hands in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So over the past two weeks in this mess in this series, we've been talking about Christian households. Paul has been addressing Christian households, and and um, Tyler really preached the last two of these messages, and the first one was on husbands and wives. In fact, I we were gone for that one, but we got to listen to it, and Amy did a great job on that. I think, I think you should have Amy preach more often, previously. No, but it was really good. That was, and that was a long passage of scripture. It was really good. And then last week, um, Tyler talked about parents and children. And so, this whole passage of this letter, this whole section of the letter, Paul is addressing Christian households. Um, so today, what I want to do is I want to talk about two different elements that this passage brings out.

What The Bible Teaches About Slavery

Scott Wiens 5:14

The first one is I need to briefly touch on what the Bible says about slavery. Okay? We need to we need to talk about that first. But then, secondly, I want to look at how Paul instructs both bondservants and their masters to approach their relationship with each other, and then we're going to apply that to how we should have an approach towards our employers and our jobs and maybe our employees as well. So let's first talk about what the Bible really teaches about slavery. And I said, really teaches about slavery. You know, this passage of scripture, unfortunately, has been misconstrued and misaligned throughout throughout Christianity. And it's been misaligned by both people in the church and people outside of the church as well. And it's it's been erroneously used to as a proof text that Christianity, and at minimum, the Apostle Paul was in favor of slavery, and that is um not really true. And so what I want to do is dispel this myth because we need to get some context in order to do that. You know, at that at the time that Paul wrote this letter about uh in the slavery during this time when he wrote this, was really a common thing. It was really common. Um back then, you know, countries would go to war, and the victor would take people from the you know the conquered nation and they would enslave them. A lot of times, of course, on the battlefield, they would take the warriors from the other side, the other country, and they would make them fight for them. Okay. And the Rome was really notorious for doing this, right? Some were made into soldiers, some were just called and brought in and enslaved to do manual labor. It happened all the time. And others were really turned into household bondservants, as it's called. And we're going to talk a little bit about what that means. Um, there was also a concept of people placing themselves into a bondservant role in the culture as well. If you were destitute, if you were, and by the way, they didn't have social programs back then. I mean, if if somebody's husband died, for instance, and they had no extended family, they literally would just fall, become destitute. And a lot of these people would place themselves into a bondservant role. Um, it was a reality. And a lot of the people that were in these roles um really had a pretty miserable life. They really did. They had no rights, no rights at all, and they were totally uh at the behest of their masters. So it was a pretty nasty thing that was back then. Now, um, one of the things that when people would place themselves into a bondservant role, a lot of times they could actually earn their freedom back. And there were some rights that these people would have, but not many, but there were some. The bottom line is that it was evil. In fact, even in America today, we've given it a different name, but it happens, of course, it's illegal, but it's happened. It's called human trafficking. And it happens all the time. And uh, you know, our church supports uh, you know, uh causes that actually help people come out of human trafficking. It's really a terrible thing. The bottom line is any type of exploitation of people that were forced to serve against their will is slavery. It's slavery and it's evil, and every principle of the word of God condemns it. Every principle. So, with this as context, I want to look quickly back at this passage. You know, Paul uses the term bondservant, which is often translated, depending on the version of the Bible, the translation of the Bible you're looking at, as slave. But a lot of you already understand that this word is the Greek word doulos. Doulos. It's one of the easier Greek words to pronounce, by the way. I was very proud of it. It's easy to pronounce. Basically, a doulos was a servant that was entirely under their master's authority. Entirely under their master's authority. They had almost no rights and they served at the behest of their of their masters. And as we said already in this culture, that could include anybody who was both voluntarily or involuntarily placed into that role. But Scott, you might say, um, why don't we read anything in the New Testament specifically decrying slavery? Well, to begin with, we need to remind ourselves of something. You don't look at a topic just with one verse, right? That's one of the by the way, you go to YouTube, you see this all the time. Somebody they they mention just a short part of a scripture, and then they rip it out of the context, and then they go ahead and they go off on their soapbox and they talk about how terrible it is. But they don't they ignore the preponderance of scripture. Because if we look honestly at scripture, we can see that Paul does indeed address slavery all through his writings, and some of the other uh authors of the New Testament do as well. I want to read something he wrote Timothy. Timothy was his son in the faith, right? And he wrote in 1 Timothy 1, verse 8 and 9, he says, now we need to know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners. And now he starts getting specific. He's saying, This is the law. The law shows these people that these things are wrong. He says, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, hmm, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. Verse 11, we have to read this. In accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. You know, he's clearly saying that all these actions were contrary to the gospel. Contrary. You know, the word enslavers literally means somebody who kidnaps somebody else and places and sells them into slavery. And if Paul's calling out this type of person specifically, why do we even think that he would condone slavery? He doesn't. The other thing I think that sometimes is overlooked when we look at this passage. Have you ever really wondered why the apostle Paul was writing an instruction to bond servants in a letter to the church? Sometimes we miss this, but the reality is it's because many of these servants were Christians. Remember the context, they didn't have churches like this, right? They had house churches. So what would happen is you would have someone come, and a bunch of them would be meeting, and they would be in somebody's household. And guess who else was there? The children were there, the bondservants were there, and they would begin to preach. Well, they would either preach or they would read letters like this. And guess what? God was calling everybody. And a lot of times the bondservants converted to Christianity. And that's why when he wrote to the church, he's writing directly to the believers who were bondservants at that time. It's pretty pretty obvious that if that's the case, then there's other things we need to understand about this relationship between the bondservants and their masters. You know, Paul never condemned condoned slavery. In fact, he says this in Galatians, and I love this. You know, Paul uses contrasts all the time, right? And he says in Galatians 3, 28 and 29, he says, Therefore there is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither what? There is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. He didn't have to use that slave or free thing. He didn't have to do that, but he did because he was proving a point. You see, he's saying that for those that are in Christ, there is no partiality in God's eyes, that they're all one. And that's what's so powerful about what we're gonna read. I really believe that the reality is that Paul and all the New Testament writers were addressing slavery through the truth of the gospel. You could not be a Christian and not get this. And even in sections like this, you're gonna see that come out. One of the most prominent examples is the book of Philemon. The book of Philemon is just one chapter, just book of Philemon. And it's really interesting because Paul is writing a specific person, a letter about a runaway slave. And some somehow between when he ran away and when he got to Paul, he converted. He became a Christian. And now Paul's writing Onesimus, or he's writing Philemon about Onesimus, and he says to him, What? He says, I could command you to release him. Remember, by the way, a runaway slave? Most of the time they would be severely punished or even killed. But he's appealing to Philemon, and he's he's appealing to Philemon specifically by saying, You and Anesimus are equal in the eyes of God. And he's saying, you should forgive him, and he's even asking him to release him. Wow. He says, I could command you to do that, but I won't. I want you to do it because you want to do it, because God's working on your heart. They were both the same people, they were both serving the same God. They were on the same level in God's eyes. Doesn't sound like someone who condones slavery to me, does it? And listen, there's a lot of other excellent teachings on this, a lot of great resources. We can share some of that with you. But because of time, I can't spend a lot of time on here, but I own a lot more time, but I just want to say that we all need to understand Paul was most definitely not in favor of slavery. He was planting seeds, in fact, to destroy slavery through passages just like this. And as we go through this, you're gonna see that even more clearly. So let's begin to look at the instruction Paul gives these bondservants and

Obey With A Sincere Heart

Scott Wiens 16:18

their masters. So he starts by addressing the bondservants directly. In fact, most of this is towards the bondservants, but you're gonna find that even as he's addressing the bondservants, he's actually addressing the masters too, and you'll you'll see how this comes out. So at verse 5, bondservants obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ. I'm sorry, but this is probably the mic drop part of the whole passage. In fact, I almost wanted to grab a mic and drop it. The guys in the booth are like, okay, he's gone. By the way, I was already sabotaged. The batteries in my pack were put in, one was put in backwards. I know what they think of me. I caught you guys, though I fixed it. No, it's a mic drop moment for a very, very specific reason. In one sentence, Paul changes their whole perspective, their whole reality. If, by the way, it hadn't already been changed. Maybe it already was. These were already believers. And as I said before, this letter would have been read in a house church where there's both masters and bondservants listening, right? Okay. So let's just break this down a little bit. Uh, because of course the masters knew that these bondservants were Christians as well. The masters may even have been teaching their bondservants about Christ. You know, again, that relationship was there. He says, obey your masters with fear and trembling. Okay, we need to talk about this. Let me ask you guys a question. Do you fear Christ like you would fear somebody who's gonna hurt you? I don't fear Christ that way. But I have a reverent fear of Christ. He is God, he is my Lord and Savior, I am his bondservant. Everything I do is serving to him, but I don't fear him like he's gonna hurt me. In fact, he loved me so much he gave himself for me. So if we understand that Paul's talking to Christian masters and Christian bondservants, it puts this whole fear and trembling into the right perspective. He's not telling these slaves to be fearful of their masters like they're gonna hurt them. He's saying, be fearful and reverent, and he says this as you would Christ. If you didn't have that, it would totally change the meaning of this. He says, as you would Christ. I believe this fear and trembling statement was really meant for the Christian masters. I really do. Can you imagine the person's up there reading this, the master of the households there, or maybe other masters, I mean, because remember, all a bunch of households would come together and he reads this. You imagine what you would think if you were a master and you had bondservants present? He's not so subtly telling the masters that they needed to treat their bondservants the way Christ would treat them. And that would result in fear and trembling in the right context and in the right way. As he tells the bondservants to do this with sincere heart, as you would Christ, because he knows that their masters are being convicted to treat their bondservants with respect and dignity in all the ways that Christians should treat one another. We cannot separate the fact that both of these people, the bondservants and the masters, are believers. They're Christians. It's very important. They're all serving the same master, which we'll see here in just a little bit more. Let's move to verse six. Not by the way of I service as people pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. This is a second mic drop moment, by the way. He's now contrasting this sincere heart he mentioned in the previous verse with this I service people pleaser attitude. Now, I love this phrase and I looked it up and it's it's attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but nobody really knows if it was Abe that said this. He says, You can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can fool all of the people all of the time. And by the way, you can see Timothy said probably, maybe. I like that. He put that on there. Just to prove our our tech people have a sense of humor back there. Listen, what does this mean though? It really what he's saying is you can fool people. You can come here every Sunday, you can fool people, Andy, you can fool people for a couple hours. But he was saying, don't do that. You need to be sincere about that. That's what he's saying. He's telling them not to fake it, but to truly carry out their acts of service as if they were serving Christ Himself. To emphasize this, he makes another mic drop statement and he says, Doing the will of God from the heart. Wait a second. Being a bond servant is doing the will of God. If you've been kicking around the kingdom for any length of time, one of the things you'll understand is you're going to be in all different types of situations. And in every one of those situations, if you believe in the sovereignty of God, guess what? You will believe and trust that God has placed you there at that time. And if he has, it's his will. And if that's the case, That you need to do and follow him through that situation. I've been in some difficult times before, difficult situations. I didn't like it, but I knew that if God brought me there, he was going to bring me through it. He was saying that to these bondservants. He's saying that it's God's will that they serve their masters as if they're serving Christ and to do it from the heart. The reality is Paul is telling them they are serving God when they're serving their masters. They are serving him. And let's just be honest here, this would have to have been a hard thing for the bondservants to listen to. Because remember the culture. Bondservants had no right. Maybe in the house next to them that were not believers, they could hear the bondservants being punished. Maybe they even heard about one of the bondservants down the street that was actually, you know, even killed because of doing something wrong. Because they really didn't have a lot of, they didn't have a lot of rights, right? So there would be easy for them to fall into this whole, be just totally fearful all the time. But the reality is God can change that heart. And especially if he was changing the heart of their masters, right? How would they be able to change their hearts to truly obey this instruction by God? By the way, Tyler's sermon last week on child rearing, it was really good. Um, I love when you talked about the whole thing about your dad saying, Change your attitude. I'll give you five minutes or 15 minutes to change your attitude. I almost wish you'd put your hand up. A lot of us have experienced that. I'm punching the clock, and you've got 15 minutes to change your attitude. The reality is, by the way, that changing your attitude, the only way to really do that is to have Christ in you. That's the only way to do it. The reality is that without the transformational power of the Holy Spirit, enabling them to have that genuine heart of spirit and spirit of service, they would not be able to do that. Because it's not the natural behavior for an unsaved person to do this. He is telling them to do something that they've been equipped to do through the Holy Spirit. Because otherwise it doesn't make sense. It was an adversarial relationship in that culture. Bond servants served their masters, but they were served them resentfully because one was evil, one was, you know, the person getting, you know, abused. But in a Christian household, it was different. Now, the next, let's continue on through the

Serving Christ At Work, Not People

Scott Wiens 24:43

next two verses. Verse 7, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. Now, what's significant about this passage is that Paul's not just repeating what he just said before. Now, he does emphasize once again that the attitude of serving their masters was something that they were doing when they're serving Jesus while they're doing that. He emphasized that again. So he says that twice. But he adds two things. He adds the concept of reward. And that's interesting. He says that when someone serves his master as if he was serving the Lord, the bondservant would receive it back from the Lord. That was the phrase he uses. Receive it back from the Lord. Now, what do you we don't really know specifically what that reward was, but I can I can simply move forward because and kind of postulate forward what that reward was because it's the same reward that we receive, right? There was both a future reward and a present reward. The future reward, obviously, is when he would be rewarded when we stand before God. We're gonna be rewarded for our behaviors and the things we did. By the way, those behaviors don't earn us salvation. Let's make that clear. God didn't have some scale there. And when you die, he's gonna look at the scale and go, ah, you didn't do quite enough. He doesn't do that. We're saved by grace. Totally saved by grace. But we will be rewarded based upon our actions. So I think he's saying that to these same bondservants because they're Christians, right? But he also, I believe, is talking about a present reward. And I do believe that a lot of times that present reward is when they serve their masters as they were served, as if they were serving Christ. I believe that they received what you would expect. They probably received more favor from the masters. And some of them may have even, and again, based upon what we read in Philemon, they probably even were set free from their bonds and their service. I mean, I can only naturally assume that's part of what would happen again. Christian masters, Christian bondservants, right? In addition to this, he also expands the command in a really significant way. And this is pretty powerful. He says that reward will come back to any person who serves a master, or even if they serve others as a free man. He's addressing bondservants, but he's saying to the bondservants, even if you're free, you should have this same attitude, which is what we're going to talk about when it comes to our jobs. The New Living Translation says it this way, and I think it's really well written. Remember that the Lord will reward each of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free. Amen. Yeah. He says it right here. How much more are we going to understand that Paul was saying that you're all equal in Christ? You're all equal in Christ. The significance of this is that Paul is saying that having an attitude of service to others, as if one were serving the Lord, wasn't just for bondservants, it was for all. All. And let me just say this: all of us serve somebody. Now we could we're going to talk about our jobs here in a minute, but we all serve somebody. In fact, somewhere in the Bible, I seem to read that we're supposed to submit one to another. You know who came down from heaven and became the suffering servant? We're supposed to be servants. That's one of the things I love about the way Trinity is set up. One of the things is elders, we we serve. We're supposed to serve. Yes, we're responsible for teaching and leading and stuff, but that doesn't mean we don't serve. And frankly, sometimes I love serving. It's just getting there with everybody and just serving alongside. It's a wonderful thing. We're here to serve together. This is yet another way I believe Paul's sowing the seeds to rid the church of slavery. Now, the final verse really builds on this expansion of the service, whether you're a bondservant or a free, because now he's talking to the masters. And by the way, he only has one verse for the masters, but it's really powerful. It's really powerful. He says, Masters, do the same to them and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven and there is no partiality with him. Now, Paul tells the masters they need to stop threatening their bondservants. By the way, parents, worst thing you can do is threaten your children. Don't threaten your children. I'm gonna, you do that, I'm don't threaten your children. Tell them the consequence of their action, and if their action is that way, give them the consequence. We've seen this all before where people just constantly threaten their children, but the children hear it all the time, so they don't, you know, there's no consequence, it's just a threat. But this obviously was happening a lot. Paul wouldn't have brought it up if it wasn't an issue even in the church. Remember this we're all influenced by our culture. And these masters would be no exception. They came out, most of these were Gentile converts. They came out of a culture where this was the status quo and this was something you did. You threatened your bondservants. And this obviously was a behavior that needed to change. And again, he already was addressing this all the way through, but he says it specifically: stop threatening them. Stop threatening them. And he just doesn't tell them to stop it, or they're gonna get punished by God. He reminds the masters that both they and their Christian bondservants are both bondservants to Christ. Whoa. Whoa. He literally does this. He just levels it just like that. Because that's what they needed to understand in their mind for them to grasp this whole concept. The concept of being a bondservant of Jesus was used by Paul all through his writings in the New Testament. Um, he actually identified himself as a doulos or a bondservant all through his writings. Um, here's some examples. Romans, he does this a lot of times in the salutations, right? But it's interesting, he's starting the whole letter by saying, I'm a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Look at what he says in Romans. Paul,

Masters Must Stop Threatening

Scott Wiens 31:48

a servant, bondservant of Christ Jesus. To the Philippians, Timothy and Paul, bondservants of Christ Jesus. Titus, he says, Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. Isn't it interesting? He said, I'm a bondservant first, and I'm an apostle second. He identified as a bondservant. And he also used this doulos term to address who we are in Christ. In Romans 6, beginning in verse 16, he says, Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey? Again, when I say slaves, the word is doolos, bondservant, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. How many of you were at one time a bondservant to sin? Should be pretty much everybody. We were all enslaved by sin at some time. And we served it. And by the way, the biggest lie Satan is telling you is that, well, I'm not a slave to anybody. I'm just doing my own thing. And well, guess what? You are a servant, you are a slave to sin. But but the enemy tries to fool us to like, no, no, no, no, you're not serving anybody. Yeah, you're serving the wrong master. It's as simple as that. Then he goes on, he says, But thanks be to God, this is the hopeful part, that you were once slaves to sin, have become obedient from the heart, here's that heart thing again, to the standard of teaching by to which you were committed. And verse 18, so powerful he says, and having been set free from sin, you have become slaves again of righteousness. I tell you what, I love being a slave to Jesus Christ. I love it. Marshall, I appreciate what you had to say during the worship service. I'll tell you what, he said is something everybody needs to rehearse. In the mornings when I pray, I spend time thanking God that I am his doulos, that I am his bondservant. It's not chains to me, it's joy. I love Marshall's getting choked up. I was getting choked up because when I talk about this, this is my whole life. I don't have to worry about my life, guys. If I get laid off, I don't have to worry about that. God's got me. If I get a diagnosis from the doctor I don't like, I don't have to worry about God's got me. There's nothing like listening to a saint who's struggling with something physically. Maybe they even got a really bad report. And they just say, that's okay. I'm in God's grace. Because we don't live for this life. We don't live for this life. If we look at the totality of all these things Paul says about being a bondservant to Jesus Christ, we can better understand what he's trying to get across to the masters. In essence, Paul is saying that the faith that both the master and the bondservants have in Christ is that great equalizer. And could you now imagine how that would change the mind of the master? He would go, yeah. Onesimus over there, he and I are going to be in the kingdom of God forever. And by the way, Onesimus might actually be Onesimus' rewards might even be better and greater, right? It's just, it's just so beautiful. Masters need to remember that although they hold the culturally given authority over their bondservants, in the eyes of God, the master and the bondservants are equal. And God has no partiality in how he looks at that. This is one of the reasons why, as a pastor, I would rather people just call me Scott. I appreciate when people call me pastor. That's an honoring thing. I appreciate that. But in reality, I'm constantly reminding myself that first and foremost, I am a child of God, just like everybody else. That's who we are. That's who we are. So, with that as the background, what is the application for us today?

Three Applications For Modern Jobs

Scott Wiens 36:12

Now, I'm sure many of you have already been kind of thinking about this and, like, okay, he's gonna come hammer me about my job here in a minute. This is the hammer time. I will not dance, by the way. Because I can't. And I'd hear about that from the elders as well on Tuesday if I knew. Well, listen, I just want to draw out just a really quick few things about the application for us or job. The first point is you cannot separate your work from your faith. You cannot separate your work from your faith. Many people are Sunday morning Christians. The reason I know that is because I used to be one. Sunday morning Christians. When they go to their job, it's like they take off that Christian hat and they put on that other hat. And they're different people. I used to be that way. I was rather adamant. Oh, you can't cross both. God's over here. Wait a second. If you've been transformed from the inside out, guess what? Doesn't that follow you into your job? Yeah, it is, and it should. It's a lie the enemy wants you to believe because it's one of the best ways he can neutralize your testimony. Because when someone finds out you're a Christian, they go, Scott's a Christian? Really? He told the worst joke in the world the other day. I used to do that. I repented of that. It's we are Christians 24-7. 24-7. And by the way, I'm not going to lay the classic guilt trip on you by saying, you know, would you behave like that if Jesus was sitting in the cubicle beside you? Because if I did that, that's just using guilt and manipulation to change your behavior. And that's not what we're talking about. And that is most definitely not what Paul was talking about. You know, maybe you're guilty of acting very unchristian at your work. Maybe you still have this division in your mind. Maybe you're gossiping about others, maybe you're speaking bad about your boss. Maybe you're stealing from your job and justifying it. Well, they never paid me for those overtime hours, so this bucket of nails is coming home with me. It happens. It happens. And we can justify anything. And if that describes you, I'm just gonna ask that you take a really prayerful and honest look at that. And hopefully God will lead you to repentance. Because that's where it starts. You have to repent. I know I sure had to. And even that, sometimes I have to care, be careful. There's been times I have not agreed with things my company's doing. I, by the way, I'm not a full-time pastor, I work a full-time job. There's times something in my company does I don't agree with. But how do I then communicate back about that? It's easy for me to get on a Teams chat with somebody and just start. No, I can't do that. I can't do that. A true follower of Jesus cannot help but act like Jesus all the time. And those actions will be evident to all within their workplace. Secondly, when you do your job as if you're working for Jesus Christ, it will transform your work life. Can I get an amen from people who experience that? It really will. You're gonna first experience a sense of peace and contentment that you never experienced before. You'll quit striving. When I say striving, I'm talking about you'll quit striving and playing all the political stuff and whatever. You'll just be filled with joy. You'll be filled with joy. You'll no longer take that adversarial view towards your employer. And by the way, it will reduce stress as well. Here's another old song. I'm an old country soul. So Johnny Cash did a song called Get Rhythm. I could ask Bobby to come over here and grab a guitar, he could sing it. But it really goes, the little shoeshine boy, he never gets slowed down. He's got the dirtiest job in town, bending over at the people's feet on the windy corner of a dirty street. I asked him while he shined my shoes, how do you keep from getting the blues? He grinned and he's raised his little head and popped the shoe shang right. And he said, get rhythm. But I would say he should say, get Jesus. Get Jesus when you get the blues. But really, miserable job, miserable job, but he was filled with joy. And that's what we should be doing, by the way. When things get hard, we should be having joy coming out. And it will get noticed by people you work with. They'll notice there's something different. You have genuine care for them. I've had people before in my company that I worked with that were my friends that got let go from my company. I got a hold of them, I talked to them, I encouraged them, I prayed for them, and I asked them if there's anything I could do. And then I kept following up as time went on. I try to do that because that's the way, that's the way Christ would want me to do that, right? You can you can show that. And by the way, sometimes it gets noticed, and unfortunately, it might lead to alienation. It might lead to persecution, even sometimes. I experienced that when I came fully to Christ. Um but that's okay. I'm not out to please man, I'm out to please the Lord. And finally, the most important thing is working as if you're working for the Lord will please the Lord. And that's really what our motivation is as Christians to please God. Don't do it because you have to. If you go through it like you have to do it, welcome to land of the Pharisees. It's just legalism and it's it's it gets you nowhere, and you'll be miserable doing it. Do it because you want to please the Lord. That's the heart that we need to pray God will give. So listen, I'm gonna just finish with a just a quick reality check. You know, some of you are probably doing this already and have been doing this already. You've been believers for a long time. And uh you know, if you've been doing this for a while, you know it's really hard. And you know you're gonna mess up and you're gonna fail. Just like, you know, I consider myself a good husband, but there are times I mess up. We're all gonna mess up and make mistakes, okay? But that shouldn't give you the reason to stop. If you make a mistake, what's the pattern God tells us? You fail, you're convicted, you repent, you're forgiven, and then you move forward. It shouldn't stop you from continuing to work forward. And for those of you that are maybe hearing this for the first time and you're sitting there going and just struggling with this, and maybe you're being convicted that you need to do this. Well, I really am gonna encourage you that your life is gonna change. And your work life especially is gonna change. And your testimony is gonna change. Just know that you're not gonna do it perfectly, but God has grace for that. He has grace for that, and he'll walk you through that. Can you all stand with me, please?

Prayer, Freedom, And Closing Charge

Scott Wiens 43:54

We can't do this without being filled with God's Spirit. Can't do this. And so I'm going to pray that God does that for us. That He fills us with a heart that no matter who we serve, whether it's our bosses, whether it's our colleagues, whether it's people our neighbors, whether it's people here at church, whoever, that he gives us that heart. Father, I want to thank you so much for this beautiful passage of scripture. I thank you, Father, that you are not the author of slavery. Rather, you are the offer, offer the author of freedom and you offer us freedom through Christ. Father, I pray that as we walk out of here, each one of us would be convicted of this, God, that we would look for ways that we could really just shine the light of Jesus in our workplace. And as we go forward, Father, I pray that you would give us the power to do that through the transformational work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Because we know God, without that, we can't do it. We can't do it. Fill us with your spirit, Father. Fill us with the heart of a servant. And may we do this to glorify and please you as the first and foremost thing in our lives. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Tyler Lynde 45:15

Amen.

Scott Wiens 45:16

We're gonna have the prayer team up here, by the way, to pray for for about this and anything.

Tyler Lynde 45:20

So thank you. Appreciate it, man. Yep. Okay, yeah. So one thing I just want to just to close out, just to make sure that we've said it out loud. Um, we as a church, just like Scott said, condemn every form of slavery, especially that which has been experienced here in our nation currently, but also historically. And we stand in opposition to that. And we believe the Word of God stands in opposition to that as well. And we believe that uh we believe in freedom and walking in freedom. But freedom itself comes with expectations, right? And that's what really what Scott was sharing with us this morning is when we are free, we get to live as servants of the Most High God. And sometimes that looks like doing a good job at work. And even when your boss tells you to do something you don't want to do that's not illegal or immoral, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, I will do that with a smile, right? So great job, Scott. I think you handled it extremely well.