Introduction
Many of us in here have seen the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou?”
In it there is a song that many will know too. It is “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” The lyrics speak of handouts that grow on bushes, trees that sprout cigarettes, and bulldogs that have rubber teeth so their watchdog bites are harmless. This song has an idyllic landscape that includes streams of alcohol beside a lake of stew, and whiskey too, because the song writers and singers want to escape reality by means of intoxication. They also want to be fed though they have not worked. They want mountains made of rock candy. They want no tools such as shovels, axes, saws, or picks. They want to sleep all day, and they want to hang the jerk that invented work.
It is a great song and one I sing now and then. But the lyrics speak of a tendency that many have themselves, they do not want to work. They will work and say we need to work but they do not want to work. They think work is a form of punishment. That it is bad and not good.
They want all the joys and benefits of work without having to work for it.
Many people think like Kevin Fowler and his song J.O.B
In this song he sings:
I don’t want no J.O.B. Bringin’ me Down like a dog to my knees All work and no play ain’t no way for me to live My day’s too short, I ain’t got no time Got one life, it’s gonna be mine Livin’ wild and free, don’t want no J.O.B.
This is like the other song. People want to have and do things but they do not want to work for it.
Yet, we are to work. God has ordained work for us. We must work because we are not working for the people who are paying us.
No, we are working for God and we need to work in a certain manner for Him.
Let us today look at Eph. 6:5-9.
Respectful and Honest Work (5-6a)
How many of you think that your work is phenomenal?
Do you go to work daily with joy knowing that you get to work?
Work is what has been instituted for all of us.
It is what we are to do and we are to do it with joy, but even more than joy. We are to do it with respect/reverence, humility/trembling, and with honesty.
This is what Paul is telling us in these first two verses.
Don’t let the bondservant/slave and master concept make you think this is to slaves and slave owners. In the context this is just as well translated as employer and employee.
When Paul says we are to be obedient he is saying we need to do what we are supposed to do when we are supposed to do it.
I want you to think about this concept for a minute.
Not one of us is in a job that we did not want. Everyone in here is doing a job they sought out.
You may have had it offered to you, you may have sent your resume in, or you may have been promoted up to what you have. The key factor in all of these situations is that you had to accept the job when they said they wanted you.
Now, if this section is speaking to slaves who had no choice but to serve in a situation they were in, Paul is telling them to do so with obedience, respect, humility, and honesty.
When we work this way we are serving as we are supposed to. If you are grouchy and bitter all the time about the work you are doing what good are you doing for the Lord?
None, is the answer. When we complain and are bitter in what we do, we are acting just like the world. We are no different than they are.
Let me tell a story about a man who was forced into service he did not want. He was removed from his family and placed into forced servitude.
His brothers cast him into a well then sold him into slavery because they were bitter towards him. He was sold into a house in Egypt that was a pagan religion. He had no choice in the matter. But God was with Him.
But he was a diligent worker and he did what was to be done when it needed to be and maybe even before.
He found favor in the sight of the one who owned him. He did so until the owners wife tried to seduce him. He fled and was then cast into prison.
He served faithfully there and did what he was supposed to. God was with him and he became the boss of the prisoners. He worked diligently and was forgotten in there for several years.
But he kept working and doing what was needed even though he was not only sold as a slave but also falsely imprisoned.
God was with him and he was after a few years placed into the second highest position in the kingdom. He worked diligently there and saved many peoples lives.
He worked everyday for the Lord and gave his all for the Lord, not the people around him but the Lord.
This was Joseph. He served the Lord not for pleasing of the bosses or to look good as the eyeservice and men-pleasers here speak of. No he worked for the Lord in circumstances that were not good or happy.
He did his:
Work to Please God (6b-8)
When we serve in this way we are doing the will of God for us in work.
We are doing the work we do for the Lord and not people. It does not matter what your job is, you are in it for a reason. God has not placed you in the area of work you are in to make you miserable.
No, you are there as a servant of His for a purpose and reason.
We must serve happily and do the work with joy because we are evangelists at all times. If you are not working with joy and God honoring actions, we are sending bad symbols to the world.
This is why in Col. 3:23 Paul says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,”
When you have this attitude in you at your work, you will work for the Lord and strive to please Him. When you strive to please Him in your work ethic, you will please the bosses and those over you.
You will because you are not working for the glory they will give you, but for the Lord and what He will give you.
You see we were created to work. Work is not punishment as some see it. It is what we were created for.
We see in Gen. 2: 7-8 that God created man and placed him in the garden. Then in Gen. 2:15 we see that, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
Man was created to work and tend the Garden of Eden before the fall occured. What happened at the fall is that work became harder not that we were cursed with work.
Too many people have the mentality that work is something we must do because “I owe I owe, its off to work I go.”
Work is a necessary evil to many people and this is a sad misnomer in our culture.
Yes, Paul has said in 2 Thess. 3:10 “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”
Yes, we are to work to buy and pay for things so we can live. But work is not an evil that we must do until we die. It is what was planned from the beginning and it will be what is at the end. In eternity.
In Rev. 22:2 we see that there are, “through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
Not only this but we see that people will be ruling and reigning with Christ over the world. In this understanding there will be work and workers still then.
This is why we work for the Lord with joy an happiness. He is our boss and He is the one who gives us what we have. He is also the one who will reward us for what we do.
Verse 8 tells us that what good we do we will receive the same from the Lord.
When we get to glory and stand before Christ and receive our rewards, our work attitudes will be rewarded for the good they had.
We may even receive some rewards here from Him.
When we work hard and do it for the right reasons, we may receive a raise, better benefits, better hours, more vacation time, and many other things.
God does not guarantee these to us as I have seen many people work hard and with diligence and commitment never receive anything more than basic pay and nothing more.
But this is why we work with diligence for the Lord because He is the one to reward.
Remember Joseph. He not only was rewarded with becoming the second in command of the nation of Egypt, but God gave him his family back.
He is in the chapter of faith in Hebrews as one who was very faithful to God and stayed in the faith in front of insurmountable odds.
That is how we are to work and serve. We must serve God over man and do our work with the desire to hear God say well done good and faithful servant.
We must also do so as an example for those who are not believers.
But this goes for the bosses as much as the employees.
It does so because ultimately:
God is the Boss (9)
In verse nine we read Eph. 6:9 “Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.”
God does not have a partiality with us. The boss may have rank here, but with God we are the same.
Take this passage from Paul in Gal. 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
That is how God sees us that are His in Christ. We are His and as such one in the same because we are all part of the one body. Just because you are the boss does not mean you are to be rude and disrespectful to those working for you.
As the boss you need to demonstrate true leadership as Christ did. Christ came and emptied Himself of everything and Phil. 2:5-8 “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Much like this story from the revolutionary war:
During the American Revolution a man in civilian clothes rode past a group of soldiers repairing a small defensive barrier. their leader was shouting instructions, but making no attempt to help them. Asked why by the rider, he retorted with great dignity, “Sir, I am a corporal!” The stranger apologized, dismounted, and proceeded to help the exhausted soldiers. The job done, he turned to the corporal and said, “Mr. Corporal, next time you have a job like this and not enough men to do it, go to your commander-in-chief, and I will come and help you again.” It was none other than George Washington.
Washington got in there and went to work. The highest ranking man in the military at that time. He went to work like a grunt soldier. He did not have to do this but he did this. He served his men as he would wanted to be served.
This is how we all should be in our work. The boss should not take his position and abuse it and threaten the employees.
We all know what happens when a boss or anyone threatens and forces people to do work. We grumble and say I’ll show him. I won’t do a thing he says. If he doesn’t like this gear just wait til he sees the next one.
Threats only make it worse, not better.
As such, as a boss, one needs to know that we have only one boss and that is the boss in heaven, God the Father. He is the boss and we all need to work and serve in a manner that emulates what He has done for us.
That being self-sacrificial service. Not bossy and demanding, not lazy and only working to please and receive better positions, not for the glory it may bring us at the work place, but for the Lord and the glory it will bring Him and then the rewards He will give us then.
Conclusion
Self-righteous service comes through human effort. True service comes from a relationship with the divine Other deep inside. Self-righteous service is impressed with the “big deal.” True service finds it almost impossible to distinguish the small from the large service. Self-righteous service requires external rewards. True service rests contented in hiddenness. Self-righteous service is highly concerned about results. True service is free of the need to calculate results. Self-righteous service picks and chooses whom to serve. True service is indiscriminate in its ministry. Self-righteous service is affected by moods and whims. True service ministers simply and faithfully because there is a need. Self-righteous service is temporary. True service is a life-style. Self-righteous service is without sensitivity. It insists on meeting the need even when to do so would be destructive. True service can withhold the service as freely as perform it. Self-righteous service fractures community. True service, on the other hand, builds community.
(Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, “The Discipline of Service.”)
All this means is that we must do our work for the Lord because He is the Boss and as our boss He will bless the work we do for His glory.
That work is all your work in all you do. We serve God and work as if we are working for Him daily. When we do this people will see this in us and wonder what it is that makes us so able to be full of joy no matter what is happening.
