“Faith On Sunday – Work On Monday”
Ephesians 6:5-9
OPEN: Every week as I’m preparing for Sunday, I get excited about what I’m studying, and I think to myself, “If only people could get a hold of the principles here - what a difference it would make in their lives and our world.” Now that’s a weekly kind of thing with me – God’s word constantly gets me excited. And that’s especially true about today. – If only people could get a hold of what’s really here – what a difference it would make in their lives. We come to the section in Ephesians 6:5, that speaks about how we ought to relate to God and others through our job. Some of you may think the Bible is just an old book of religious stories, but the Bible is more up-to-date than tomorrow’s newspaper. It is extremely practical. It speaks to us where we are right now. This book not only tells you how to have a good family life, it tells you how you ought to perform in your job 9 to 5, five or six days during the week.
If you work just 40 hours a week from age 18 to age 65 you will log in 97,760 hours of your life – that’s literally 1/3 of your life spent at work. How do you feel about the 98,000 hours you are putting in? A survey conducted by USA Today reports that 65% of Americans really don’t enjoy their work. Only 10% reported that they did. It’s not a joy; it’s a job. It’s not a delight; it’s a drudgery. Sixty five percent said they don’t really like their work. That’s why the whole attitude of America is, “T.G.I.F” “Thank God It’s Friday.” Most people aren’t happy with their jobs. Most people go to work simply because they have no other choice. “I owe, I owe, so it’s off to work I go.” For the overwhelming majority work is dull and meaningless. There was a book that came out several years ago called, “The Day America Told the Truth” it said only one in four employees gives his or her best effort on the job. And that about 20% of the average worker’s time is wasted, this producing in effect, a four-day-week. Ill. – I’ve worked with people whose primary goal each day was to see how much time they could waste every day. They would take pride in the fact that they could find a place to hide and jip the company out of work. It was their daily entertainment.
Like it or not, the Bible is a book that opens with the topic of work.
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Verse two of Gen. 1 says the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. To paraphrase this in modern language, “things were an absolute mess and the Spirit of God recognized there was a lot of work to be done” And that’s exactly what happens – In Gen. 1:3 through Gen 2:2 God is at work. That entire section is a log of God’s work ending with the statement that upon completion:
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. (Gen 2:2)
Note this: Our Creator is very concerned about the quality of His work. Finishing a job was not enough – The Lord was concerned that it was a job well done. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Gen 1:31) God apparently took pride in his work. Excellence - God is committed to excellence – “God saw all that he had made and it was very good.” Christians should always do good work. Christians ought to be the best workers wherever they are. They ought to have the best attitudes – the best integrity, and be the best when it comes to dependability.
Part of the work of God was to create man – being made in the image of man,
what is the very first thing God wants man to do?
Be a worker.
The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (Gen 2:15)
Most people think that the first thing God says to Adam is the warning that he can eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They are wrong. Literally the very first thing that God says to Adam is “Son it’s time you got a job. It’s been three days since I created you and you’re still lolly-gagging around the garden not doing much of anything. It’s time to get to work. I want you to go out and tend to the garden. And when you’re done with that, I want you to name all the animals. Now that’s a paraphrase, but the conversation went pretty much just like that. Now after those two tasks were finished God doesn’t assign any other jobs to Adam. God didn’t have to tell Adam what to do from that point on. Why is that? Because at that point, God created woman. And woman was designed by God to take over the task of telling man what to do from that point on. – But the point of all this is that work is good because it was given to man before the fall.
Now granted after the fall things changed dramatically. “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Gen 3:17-19) The first thing that sin brought to this earth was a curse that work would become painful.
Jesus spent a good amount of time talking about His work.
Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” (John 5:17)
As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. (John 9:4) I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. (John 17:4)
The Work of God is Creative:
thereby proving that He alone is God. Thereby proving that He is different and other than creation. Through His work of creation God reveals His loves, his wisdom, his omniscience, his omnipotence. God alone is God. He is worthy of worship and honor and all glory for there si not like him.
The Work of Christ is Restorative.
Reversing the results of the Fall. Bringing life back to what God had intended life to be.
The Work of the Christian is Imitative.
We are to follow the example of the one who modeled for us how to live. “I have set an example for you to follow.” Would it make any sense that the work of the students would be different than the work of the teacher?
God Is Very Concerned About His Children’s Work Ethic
– Evidently the Thessalonian church had some brothers who ostensibly were not taking their work as serious as they should – Paul gives this advice The Bible commands us not to be lazy.
“For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you.” “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”
The Bible says – there is no such thing as a free lunch. (2 Thess. 3:7,10)
1 Tim. 3:8 says: If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
There is no escaping that a sincere faith is associated with hard work. You cannot be lazy and be a godly employee. Laziness is epidemic in our culture – but so is the opposite extreme – overwork. For some, absolutely every aspect of life – family, leisure, friends, church all take a back seat to career. - we’re in big trouble if what the posters says is right – what they say is that there is literally no difference between the work ethics of Christians and non-Christians. If there is no difference – if large numbers of Christians have succumbed to either laziness or extreme overwork (as the world has) it means that huge numbers of believers are spiritually dysfunctional when it comes to impacting their primary mission fields.
Your Job Is About Something Greater Than Your Job
I don’t know how many people I talk to that say their job is meaningless. Or they have a dead-end job. Now they’re thankful for the paycheck, but as far as gaining any satisfaction from it – the needle is on empty. For the last several weeks we’ve been exploring how our faith in Christ shapes our lives in some of the most critical and most important areas of our lives. We’ve been talking about how our relationship with Christ changes how we view and interact in our marriages. We noted that the Bible teaches that our marriages are not just about our marriages – but that God has a higher purpose in the relationship between husband and wife. - These are the critical venues of your life. These are the areas that faith must impact – must be lived out. These arenas reflect the reality of the transformation of Jesus Christ.
The awareness of this lifts us out of the mundane routine existence of life. We’ve got something to live for that is transcendent to our immediate circumstances. Through Christ, God has given our lives purpose and meaning that goes beyond that which the eye can see today. Sometimes the reason that people get so depressed about their lives is that they feel they are not making a difference. We all ask the question of significance through out our lives. “What difference does my life make?” “Does my existence matter? Does my contribution make a difference?” You see that’s what Paul has been trying to teach us: Your marriage is not really about your marriage – It’s about the relationship and marriage between the Bride of Christ and Jesus. Your family life is not just about your family. It’s about revealing to the world that God wants you to be part of His family. Your work is not just about your work – it’s another venue God has provided to you that not only provides for the basic necessities for your home, but it’s also a platform from which you can play a part of God’s great plan to redeem the world through the grace of Jesus Christ.
Everything changes when you begin to see your life as God has planned it.
– So many people miss this. So many Christians miss this – The solution to the crisis people are facing in their life is coming to an understanding how much God has planned for them. The solution to the every crisis we are facing as a nation, as a culture, as a world is coming to an understanding of what God has prepared for those who love him. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Cor 2:9) You see that’s the issue – God has planned so much: life abundant, joy, peace, laughter, love, forgiveness, redemption, He’s planned a future – he’s planned a hope – he’s planned an eternity – And he’s planned that others come to an understanding of it all through you. Through your marriage – through your family – through your work. You see that’s what these passages are all about. The solutions that the world needs come from you and I living out these texts in our lives. And that means that our lives need to be changing as we interact with these texts. Our attitudes, our manners, our behaviors, our way of living must be brought into conformity to what God says. The norms you have established in your life might have enabled you to tolerate each other – but God doesn’t want you to tolerate each other. He wants your mind to be changed so that you can understand your purpose and he can accomplish His plan of using you as an advertisement of His love and grace. How God sees your marriage – how God sees your family – how God sees your work is the only real reality. – Not to have your thinking changed is to fall into the scheme of the enemy. Why do you think that the very next passage that follows the teaching on marriage, children, and work is a passage that teaches about spiritual battles? You see these are the areas that the enemy is working in. These are the areas the devil is attacking. Why? Precisely because these are the very areas that God has planned to use to change the world through.
The church has lost sight of how to do spiritual battle. Perhaps the reality is that you have been fighting on the wrong battlefields. Instead of battling with your spouse – how about battling your own pride so that you are not so argumentative with your spouse? Instead of battling with your children how battling with your refusal to keep the proper priorities in your life and love and discipline your children? Instead of hating your job, how about battling your negative attitudes about work and actually start loving those you work with?
That’s the context of the text isn’t it?
Who’s The Boss? Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, (Eph 6: 7)
The first thing that needs to be established is that you need to know who you work for. A lot of Christians have a problem in their jobs. Sometimes people will say to me, “I envy you. You get to be in full-time Christian service. I wish I could be in full time Christian service.”
“He has a spiritual job. I have a secular job.”
Do you know what the word “secular” means? It means “worldly – not religious” In other words, it means “leave your faith out of it – leave your spirituality – leave your religion out of it.” It means you go to church on Sunday, but you leave your faith there – and when you go to work on Monday – because of the change in your environment & change in your location – you live your life in a different way. You operate by a different set of rules. You act different. You talk different.
You are in full-time Christian service even if you are not in the vocational ministry. You are a full-time Christian servant if you work as a lawyer. You are a full-time Christian servant if you sell insurance, or cars. Whether you are a housewife, a nurse, a teacher, an apple picker, a construction worker or a cashier. You work in full-time Christian service in any job that is not illegal or immoral. You can do it to the honor and glory of God in a full-time sense. One of the biggest heresies still around today is the throwback from the Old Testament and even the Roman Catholic Church that maintains the clergy is on one level of spirituality everybody else is below them. There is no such thing as sacred work and secular work. The New Testament teaches what we call the “priesthood of all believers” meaning that because I am a pastor, that does not mean I am elevated above any of you. All it means is I am called and gifted to be a pastor to fulfill a role in His church, but we are all brothers and sisters together and are all priests before God, which means you do not have to go through me to get to God and I don’t have to go through you to get to God. The only one you have to go through to get to God is the Lord, Jesus Christ. He is our High Priest. So when you say, “I want to be in full time Christian service,” you don’t have to quit your job. You can serve the Lord full time in your job and if I understand Scripture, that’s exactly what you should be doing. You should see your job a full time Christian service. In fact you should make sure your faith saturates your work place. Your faith should permeate your workplace. You’re not working for boss – he or she is just the person God is using to provide the setting while you complete the job Jesus has given to you to do.
A great Old Testament example of somebody serving the Lord in his job is Daniel. Most of you know the story of Daniel in the lions’ den, but have you ever wondered what Daniel’s job was? What did he do all day, every day? He had a job, just like most of us. He was a government administrator.
Daniel 6:1-2 says, “It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel.”
So Daniel was a government worker. He never was out of work, because they didn’t have Republicans and Democrats. He was such a conscientious worker it says
“Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.” (Daniel 6:3)
So here was Daniel’s job: He got up and went to work every day and he was so good in his job that he kept getting promoted. Here was the problem: Some of the people he worked with were jealous of him so they devised a scenario by which he could be arrested. They made it a breach of the law for anybody to pray to anybody except the king. Daniel wasn’t going to obey that law! So he bowed down and prayed to the God of Israel. He was arrested and this is where the part of Daniel in the lions’ den occurs.
Can you just picture what it must have been like down there in the pit with all these hungry lions? But Daniel wasn’t afraid, because the Bible says his faith was in God. I don’t know about you but in my sanctified imagination I can just picture Daniel down there in that den of lions and they rolled the stone over the door and here he was with those hungry lions. Angels of God are there to close the mouths of the lions. I can just see old Daniel he pulls up one old fluffy lion on one side and pulls up another fluffy lion on the other side and he just lays down in the middle of them and he pulls out his old pocket Old Testament and is just laying there “reading between the lions” just taking it easy relaxing and resting. You wonder where that phrase came from, right? Meanwhile back in the palace, Darius can’t sleep. He is biting his fingernails and pacing the floor all night long. “Oh what have I done? How is Daniel doing?” Here’s Daniel down there, sound asleep in the lions’ den. The next morning the king goes down there and pulls the stone away.
And Daniel 6:20 records what happened next. “When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, ‘Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?’”
Wait a minute. Doesn’t the king say Daniel served the Lord full time? Doesn’t the king say Daniel “your God whom you serve full time” has he rescued you? Of course the answer to that question is “yes.” The thing I wanted you to see is that even his employer recognized that Daniel was serving the Lord full time. But what was his job? He was a government administrator. Whatever your job is if you are a salesman if you are an accountant whatever it is you do, you can serve the Lord full time in your job.
There Is No Such Thing As An Unspiritual Job.
Whatever you do work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Col. 3:23,24)
The way to be a Christian employee is to always imagine that you are working for Jesus instead of your boss. It is possible for the housewife to cook a meal as if Jesus Christ were going to eat it or to spring clean the house as if Jesus Christ were going to be the honored guest. It is possible for teachers to educate children, for doctors to treat patients, for nurses to care for patients, for lawyers to have clients, for shop assistants to have customers, for accountants to audit books, and secretaries to type letters as if in every case they were serving Jesus Christ. When you get up tomorrow morning and go to work, what kind of difference would it make in your job if when you arrive at your workplace you said to yourself, “Today I’m going to work for Jesus”? I’m going to treat my boss as if my boss is Jesus. I’m going to treat my company as if my company belongs to Jesus.” Your boss may not even be a Christian or your workplace may not even be a Christian-based company but your attitude can be, “I want to serve the Lord in my situation.” That will make a tremendous difference.
Check Your Attitudes Before You Punch The Time Clock
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. (Eph. 6:5-8)
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