Good morning everyone. We have a wonderful crowd today.
We have some visitors, we have some friends visiting from other
places. If we do not know you yet, we
hope to sometime soon, hopefully today get to know you and make
you feel welcome here because you are your honoured guest
today. I have the privilege of choosing
what we study through today and we are finishing up in
Ephesians. We'll we will have at least one
more lesson after this. So there'll be there'll be 3
parts in Ephesians 6, but we're covering the section after
obviously what we covered last time, if you weren't here.
We talked about children obeying parents and honoring our fathers
and mothers. Today we're getting into what it
means to be a Christian worker. So we're only going to cover
about 5 verses or so. You can have your bibles in
front of you. We will be working through those
verses and elaborating on those, but that's the plan for today.
It is a great day and I'm happy to be here.
So far the PowerPoint hasn't given up on me.
The the laptop is not restarting so it's a better than last time
already. So just a quick reminder, this
letter split into two sections. First section was reminding
Christians of their spiritual blessings in Christ and that
should motivate us knowing where we stand, knowing we have
heavenly riches and heavenly places.
Seated with the Father. That should motivate us to Part
2, which is where we are right now, exhorting Christians to
have a walk that is worthy of the calling that you've been
called by. We need to stand up.
We need to act when we hear these wonderful blessings that
we are privileged to. I'm not going to review the
outline because we've done that probably 12 times at this point.
But we are now getting into that call to walk in victory and that
call to walk in purity. So let's just get some running.
Start from where we were last time we read.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment
with promise. What is the promise?
That it will be well with you, and you may live long on the
earth. And you fathers, do not provoke
your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training
and the admonition of the Lord. So, so far we've introduced
God's systems of authority. God has an interest in keeping
things in a system of of respect and reverence in the proper
place while we're while we're here on earth, and these
relationships should ultimately teach us the dynamics that it
should exist with us. With God, we learn reverence as
a child for parents and to honor and respect them so that we know
how to Revere God later, so that it becomes more naturally when
we cry out to a loving father and how we respond to him in in
obedience. But then it also reminds us that
we are all humans, that we are not the Supreme, that even
Fathers, the authority structures that exist and that
God ordained, still have a responsibility to to take care
and their responsibility to wield their power or their
authority in a way that would honor God and build up the
people who they are responsible for.
And this is the same tenor that carries into this section on
bondservants. So He's he doesn't take a lot of
time to say these things, but there's a lot that we said last
time. There's a lot that could be said
to kind of unpack these concepts, what it means to honor
a father and mother, what it means to be a good worker.
And we're going to try to do that today with bondservants.
So the first thing that often come comes up when we look at
bondservants is, wait, servants. You know that that that's a whoa
hold up kind of subject and I want to kind of get this off the
table. Yes, they're probably worth
systems of servitude then that were unethical, immoral, and
should have and did get done away with in time.
But that does not take away from the fact that this is still
applies to us today. And I'm going to explain why in
just a second. But the reason that doesn't
matter is we have to remember who these letters were written
to. These letters weren't written to
governments. These what letters weren't
written to politicians and lawmakers.
These weren't social change documents.
These were written to poor old Christians who were just trying
to survive and spread the gospel in their local area, in their
local church. So it makes sense why God
wouldn't be trying to write up some manifesto of a Christian
takeover, because that's not the plan.
The plan is you in your circle doing your work to honor and
glorify God and teach others about him.
In your circle. The purpose is not to create
heaven on earth, because ultimately it wouldn't work.
God tried that in the old law. He tried not to make heaven on
earth, but he had a system that was to be respected and honored
and the people turned away from it.
So God kind of tried that already.
So yes, there were servitude systems that were immoral.
But. This is just labor management.
We're covering labor Management Today, whether it's from the
workers perspective. We're also going to talk about,
from the boss's perspective, how to respond to an authority
structure that you're placed in and I believe this could apply
for. Kids at school, too.
There might not be hey kids in your first grade classroom, but
that's authority. That's respecting and working
for someone who is placed over you, who has a responsibility
over you, to direct you and to teach you and lead you, I think
that. Absolutely applies here.
OK, so yes, it applies to the construction worker.
It applies to the stalker in a grocery store.
Now we as Christians are called to be different than the rest of
the world. We're told in Romans 12 to not
be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Work has a way of physically
exhausting us as a way of mentally exhausting us, maybe
emotionally exhausting us. Some people in this audience
work with people for a living who are struggling or or dealing
with things that are challenging.
You're exhausted by the end of your day in one way or another
by the sweat of your brow. That's why work leads us to a
place where it's easy to be conformed because we're weakened
sometimes in the state of exhaustion.
And that's why it's especially important to fight this.
It's kind of like a gravity. It's like we're sitting on a
slope and gravity wants to pull us down to a standard of
conformity. And he said don't let that
happen. Be transformed to be changed in
form by renewed minds. So we need to know that this is
absolutely applies to our work life.
You know, sometimes people talk about I here's my secular work,
but here's my spiritual work and I get what you're saying.
I get what we're saying when we say that, you know, we're we're
dipping up our responsibility for the Lord for work.
But really it should all be one thing.
We shouldn't have anything we do that is not for the Lord as
we'll learn later. So this governs everything we
do, especially our work. I was in an all staff.
Day. The other day we had an in
service day. Where all the staff goes
together in the cafeteria and we have meetings now.
It's not a great thing. People are not happy to be there
because it's more meetings, it's more policy review.
It's more, you know, you know how it goes.
It's meetings, it's it's things you should be doing.
It's it's the repetitive droning on and on sometimes and it's
easy to leave a meeting like that.
When I was preparing this lesson, it's so easy for people
to just always talk about the negative lying about what we're
doing today. Why about go to lunch break,
man? When's this going to be over?
That pressure to be negative is the 1st and easiest thing to do,
but we have to avoid that that pressure. 1st Corinthians 10,
verse 31 says whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it
all for the glory of God. So as we talk about work today,
he's talking about some very. Simple things here, eating and
drinking. But remember, work takes up the
majority of your life if you work I.
Think I had some. Numbers here.
If you work for let's say 40-50 hours a week, you might have 40
hour work week, but most people work at least 50 hours.
You work that for every year. That's 2500 hours.
You're talking in a lifetime you're going to rack up like
120,000 hours doing something. If that time is only secular and
that is not going to the glory of God, what a waste.
At that time is not being used to win somebody else.
What a waste. May we do what we do for the
glory of God. OK, let's get into these verses
now. He says, Bond servants, be
obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh
with fear and trembling. So First off, it wouldn't be a
command if it wasn't sometimes difficult.
He doesn't have to command us a lot of things in this life that
are easy. He has to command things that we
might go against. So Bond servants be obedient.
That's the simple command. We are to obey and to follow the
the orders of those who are above us.
Pretty simple to those who are your masters, according to the
flesh. There are other passages that
talk about our responsibilities through spiritual leadership,
spiritual government in the church, the elders, deacons,
maybe, but he's not talking about that here.
He makes sure he's clarifying according to the flesh.
These are people who, at work would lead us in our jobs now,
he says with fear and trembling. This is a phrase used in the
Bible. You might read this and go,
wait, what this is. This is kind of a common
biblical phrase to refer to reverence in the Bible.
It's not a faked thing. It's not, It's not eye service
as whether they're going to later going to see.
It's a deep reverence and respect for someone that you
would in a sense have fear and trembling.
Not faked. As we have an attitude toward
our bosses now, the first thing you might say is, does that this
have anything to do with whether they are a deserving boss or
not. You're going to find he doesn't
say anything about that here. Doesn't say anything about
whether your boss is a good boss, an evil boss, a Christian
boss. It will.
There's another places where it talks about having a Christian
boss and it's a good thing, but he's not saying anything about
that here. The sad thing is, our society
gets respect and it gets showing respect and feeling respect.
Confused. I might not feel respect for
someone who's not a good boss of mine.
I've had bosses in the past who I I didn't feel a lot of respect
for. But showing respect and having a
respect for them that is comes from God is a totally different
perspective. It's a totally dead for
inclination to talk to them and listen to them and talk about
them when we're on our own time. So it doesn't have anything to
do with with their end of. This.
I was talking to a student pulled to the side the other day
because he was, he was kind of getting in a in a disrespectful
way toward one of my aides and and I was having a conversation.
I was like, dude, what? What good is this doing you?
And he's like, it's good. I was like, who's this helping?
He's like, it's helping me. I was like how?
You're you're calling, you know, you're being disrespectful
toward her. You're you're kind of showing
her up, but who's this doing good?
For and at. First he was like, no, it's me,
man. I got to be my own person.
I got to do my own thing. That's kind of a common
attitude. But pretty soon we were talking
about it's like he he got it to where he said he.
It's not helping anybody. And he softened to realize that
this just Why? Why would I show disrespect?
Who does it help? Even if the person is being
ridiculous or rude, our honour is intact.
Even if someone belittles us is disrespectful to us as their
employee or their superior. Whatever it is, our admiration
is irrelevant to this conversation.
But our respect we show toward them and we show talking about
them is important. He says doing this with fear and
trembling have an an attitude of honor and respect and sincerity
of heart as to Christ. So we need a mental edge to get
over some bad bosses, right? You need something that really
sets you off and gets you that edge that you need to overcome a
really hard emotion, which is anger towards someone who's rude
to you. And that edge you need is to
look at Christ. That edge I need to persevere
and give it. Everything I got is not because
I'm trying to just make their life so great, but because I am
a servant of Christ, and that's my perspective.
That's the edge we are to to approach this with.
The NIV says in singleness of heart as to Christ.
So sincerity of in sincerity of heart or in singleness of heart
as to Christ. So does this mean if you have a
terrible boss? You should just I'm just.
I want to make your life so enjoyable and that should be
your daily motivation. That's not the point here, but
what can we take away from this singleness of heart?
Frustrations are going to build on the job for both sides.
Your boss or my boss has their own stresses that's causing them
to respond in certain ways. And yet me and my
responsibilities on my job. Whether you're a a peon or
somewhere in the middle or high up, you have stresses in your
job. Frustration will build, but
having a singleness of mind tells us that we need to keep
our focus in a certain spot. What is that spot?
Well, number one, it's not revenge if a boss belittle as
you may be in front of other people.
Or treat you poorly. It can be.
It can be reasonable by the world's.
Standards and by what we might want to do to get revenge on
them somehow. To try to show them up, or to
try to just have an inclination about if I could, I'm going to
get back at them in some way. Maybe it's a small way, maybe
that's extreme. But revenge is is something that
we should not have in our singleness of heart, our
singular focus. This may be a more massively
common one. Gossip.
Like I said the other day, people walk away from those
meetings and they always have something to say about the boss.
Who does that do good for? Absolutely no one.
Gossip is something that would take take us away from a single
focus of getting glory to God and being good to others.
Or maybe it's to make self look good.
Maybe you go to work. Or maybe I go to work trying to
glorify myself, or to make people think man he's good at
his job. Or to make them think something
of me. That is not to be our focus.
Our focus should be to bring glory to God and to serve as we
were serving to Christ himself. And really that's based on
insecurity, right? Whether you feel belittled and
so you're trying to build back your own self esteem or you're
trying to look good because you feel like you're not quite
meeting it, those are selfish intentions at the end of the
day, Verse 6.
Not with eye service as men pleasers, but as bond servants
of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.
The NIV says to obey them not only to win their favor when
their eye is on you. I like, I like the way it
phrases that. How common is that for us to or
maybe you have. I have definitely my life and my
work life when the boss comes around and then on the job site
people would have like a whistle they did when the boss was
coming around and people just step to it, man.
And there's nothing wrong with that as long as once they leave,
you go back to continuing to work hard if they.
Leave. And you go back to kind of
moseying around like you were. We get, we get distracted, we
get a feeling lazy sometimes, but we should not just kind of
pep up when the boss is there and then kind of go back to what
we were doing when the boss. Leaves.
We have to try to maintain that level of intensity or focus or
whatever it is at work that we would do if we knew they were
always watching us with the camera.
Because the real boss is always watching.
The reality is God is the one who sees all.
God cares about how we. Work.
God cares about how we are giving them glory.
If we just are working hard when the boss is there, that shows we
care about the consequences, not the character it shows.
We are worried about how it might affect us instead of how
we could bring glory to God in all circumstances, whether
they're looking or not. I'm amazed God has the perfect
wisdom because this is such a common area that we see it's,
it's, it's, it's such a common negative thing that happens in
the workplace that people would be focused for a time and be off
task. If you've ever.
Managed somebody. You know how frustrating that is
because not only is it bad that they're not great workers, you
really don't know who's the good worker because they're all
putting a face on when you're there.
God has amazing wisdom to know what we need guidance on and
redirection. And ultimately.
If we're not doing the will of God from the heart, who who is
it bad for? It's bad for us, ultimately,
because we go about our day feeling meaningless and and and
you don't have a lot of purpose and you're lazy because of that.
We are not made to be our own masters, our own servants.
It doesn't work well. Our minds don't work well like
that. But not to mention.
Everybody else around us is worse off with this mentality.
Verse seven with goodwill. Doing service.
OK, he's going to finish this verse off with a with important
piece of information, but he says goodwill.
A good person, a good Christian, has the best interest of others
in every situation they can. Find It's hard to do that, but
that's. The goal, right?
Jesus said. I did not come to be served.
But to serve. This is our purpose here on
earth that we would serve others and we have a chance to do that
every day we go to work. So if we have the right
attitude, that goodwill and we do it with service, this is the
standard and it's achievable. Every single day you go to work.
Now let's think about goodwill, doing service.
Every job has a list of people that you might call their
stakeholders or their constituents, whatever you might
say who have. An interest in the work you're
doing. For me, as an example, as a
teacher, they're very clear. They study this out.
They make it all. They have their triangles, their
graphs and everything I have. My stakeholders are the
community because I'm trying to build a community member that is
going to be productive and healthy and etcetera.
I'm serving my principal. My boss is my principal.
Ultimately, like we could say, bond servants.
That's my boss, my principal, or my.
Assistant principal. The two of them, I serve them
because their job is to get the school functioning well.
If I support their efforts, they're going to be better off.
And if I can have a mentality that I'm going to make my my
boss's life better off, then I'm going to give them a a person
working in their system that's going to do a good job, to make
their job easier and feel like it's working.
Because they get frustrated, they get tired, they get
whatever. And if I can give them someone
who, like you know, I got them on my side to help me, that's
going to be good. I think that brings honour to
God because they're just trying to do their job too.
So I serve the community I serve the my principal and the the the
assistant principals I. Serve the department chair who's
trying to make their department function well.
They don't want to have to manage a bunch of issues and
problems, they just want you to do your job well.
But maybe more importantly. I serve the families of the
people I work for. I serve the kids.
They might not care or want it, but I'm there to serve them.
So if I try to keep this mentality, I want to do good for
these people. I want to do a good job for
these kids. I want to do a good job for
their parents who've trusted me with their time and my bosses
who are trying to run a system that's difficult and full of a
lot of people's opinions. If I keep a goodwill mentality,
I will serve. Every one of them better.
Doing service is our job here on earth.
You could take any job and make a list like that, You might
think. Yeah, well, nobody cares about
my job. I could say the same thing with
my job. Trust me, I walk into work every
day. The principal's not there.
This system of principals have nothing to do with my room.
I they sometimes say the king of your castle.
I have. I don't see them hardly at all.
So I can say who. They don't even.
Care. They're not here.
The kids, they rolled in half asleep.
They don't want to do anything. They could care less.
Whether I do anything or or spend an hour prepping this this
this morning early, or grading it, they don't care.
I could say the community isn't involved, they just want to
throw rocks from afar and just make criticism.
They don't, really. Care their parents.
They're they're not even coming to back to school now.
I have 55 kids. Parents come.
I can make all these reasons why my job has no meaning.
Or I could have goodwill toward everyone I'm supposed to serve.
You could take a Carpenter. A Carpenter is serving the
people he's building that building for.
Those people are paying money and trusting they're going to
get a quality structure without the corners cut, without making
kind of janky fixes here and there.
They want to know they're buying a quality product for the market
value they're getting. And if we cut corners, if we
short things out and give them a, you know, something they're
going to uncover later and go. Oh, who built this?
Is that doing goodwill service? Is that doing going to make them
glorify God if someone sees good things the way God designed it
to be done? In a good system and good
effort, everybody's better. That Carpenter can see their
foreman. Their foreman is just trying to
keep people together and keep the job site running smoothly.
The Superintendent is trying to not make it go over budget and
past time. These people have their own
stresses, their own worries. If they look at everybody, they
can serve. Everybody will be better off.
That's our job. You could take it to the.
Stalker. I don't.
I don't want to go through a whole nother list.
The stalker has his own people, they might seem like.
Well, it's. Just it's just this.
But we all have purpose, and when the small functions in a
bigger system don't go well, people notice it.
When aisles are thrown all over the place, you notice it.
And there your shift manager notices it because your shift
manager had people. Before you who weren't.
Doing their job and so they're stressed out and they're running
behind and customers are frustrated.
You can make everybody's life better by doing your job well.
And I think this is a Christian concept.
I don't think it is secular alone because we can bring glory
to God. And whatever we do, OK, we get
the idea. And first Peter, it says that we
without a word could win. You know, it's talking about the
wives trying to convert their unbelieving husbands.
He says that they, without a word, could win them with their
action. I think that applies to our
work, that we have a chance to influence people by showing them
somebody who is diligent. In many ways we're going to talk
about in a minute, that we, without a word, could influence
them. OK, the second very important
part of this verse, he says with goodwill, doing service.
At the end of the day, it's not about the people around you who
are the most important. At the end of the day, it is
about serving the Lord and not men.
So don't let. Don't get discouraged that your
work is valueless. Yes, you want to do good for
people, but that's not the great goal.
That's not the higher calling. Higher calling is to serve the
Lord in all areas of life. Verse 8 Knowing that whatever
good anyone does, whatever good anyone does, he will receive the
same from the Lord whether he is a slave or free.
Your work may not earn you a lot of.
Money. A slave might not have gotten
much at all, or maybe anything, but their pay is real good
because the Lord is going to give.
The Lord is going to return the work we do.
If the things we've said aren't enough for you already, the fact
that it's going to come back to you maybe a little selfishly,
but. I mean that's that's God's,
that's the glory of God's plan. It it is good for everyone and
it's good for us. When we do his will, it's going
to come back to us in some way. I believe that's maybe an
eternal thing. That we're going to get
everything you could ever possibly imagine giving your
effort to. You're going to get.
You're going to get paid for it. Eternity is beyond what we could
ever purchase or earn for ourselves.
God's blessings in eternity are going to be worth it all.
The Lord. We'll give back to the one for
every good thing he does. That's insane.
Those little things that nobody else is watching.
God sees it, and God's going to reward it if that doesn't fire
you up. People talk about the grind
like, I'm doing all this for what?
To fill up my boss's pockets. I get paid too.
I work too hard where you get paid too little.
And for what? If you're a Christian, that's
for what? A quality worker?
OK, So what are some attributes of a quality worker?
I just put together a couple real quick thinking about things
I've talked to different bosses about, or people I knew ran
other employees. What are some things that makes
up a quality worker? Or maybe key areas that make a
bad work? The first area I chose to bring
up is initiative. So how can I be a quality worker
in the area of showing initiative?
And this is a great rule of thumb that I've heard one time
that I've tried to carry with me.
And it applies to the work at the church, it applies to work
for a for employer, whatever you might say.
First, an average worker. I didn't say a bad worker.
I said average because the average is not necessarily good.
As we're going to find out throughout this process.
A normal or average person does what they do, what they're told
to do, when they're told to do it.
That's average, right? That's the bare minimum.
That you do what you're told. And we are commanded that here
to obey. But what does a good worker do?
A good worker asks. What can be done?
They might show initiative and step out of the way and say, hey
man, what can I do here? I'd like to help and, you know,
take on some more work here, or I'm finished with my other task.
What can I do here to help? That they will be seeking an
opportunity to do better. But a great worker and I might
change this to a Christian worker.
The goal is to be someone who does without asking.
If someone is managing other people and they have to
constantly tell someone every little thing that has to be
done, they get tired of it. They get frustrated.
It's more work for them. But if you can be someone who
learns, how can I? How I can just step on to the
next thing without even having to be told what?
To be done, and I know that takes time.
That's not always easy because you have to learn sequences, you
have to learn quality levels, you have to learn when you
should be done. So I'm not saying.
This is start day one. You should be able to do this,
but that's what we should. Be working toward and showing
initiative and. Especially at church, if we
would give this kind of effort for our bosses, why wouldn't we
give the Lord this kind of effort?
Are we doing what we should be told?
The issues in the church? You don't always have someone
who's just going to tell you what to do.
Are you asking what you can do? And by the way, it's not always
easy because we don't have all the answers.
But are you someone who's looking?
For what can be done here, that's the key.
I know I don't have the answers. I'm doing my best to figure out
what I can do. And I'm not saying I'm here,
that's not what I'm getting at. I'm saying I don't have the
answers to to tell other people what should be done.
But can we do without asking that?
I would step in for a need. Do I do that and show
initiative? OK, area #2.
Attitude towards challenges. Because work by nature is going
to have challenges. An average worker gets
instructions and does it through complaints.
It's like we've talked about already.
They'll do it, but they're going to complain about it.
Maybe to the boss or to the person they're working
alongside. They're going to complain about
it. But Philippians 2, verse 14 says
to do all things without complaining and disputing that
you may become blameless and harmless children of God.
Have you ever connected? Complaining to being a child of
God seems like a pretty big deal.
Now we're kind of spitting out aimless complaints.
I could show my identity in God by not complaining, but instead
taking on tasks with a positive attitude and a commitment to the
goals of the boss. If if I can or if you can, try
to. Figure out what your.
Boss's goals are if you could just keep this mindset like I'm
just doing this little isolated task right here and don't take
into account the bigger picture when he's trying to get done,
you won't be quite as helpful. But if I take on this
challenging task saying, you know what, I'm going to grind
through this because this is what we're trying to get done as
a whole and I'm just going to function, do my best as a part
of that system. Our bosses will will respect
that and appreciate that. And to do with the positive
attitude, because you got to do it anyway, right?
There's certain things you have to do anyway, and a negative
attitude only makes it worse. There's AI think it's a proverb.
I'm not going to remember it word for word, but if you know
the proverb, you know where I was going with that A.
A good attitude can can bring life to a situation.
OK, what about professional development?
So we've talked about challenging tasks now.
What about developing yourself as a professional as a?
Worker The average person says I get paid you the same for eight
hours as you, so why would I do any more than that?
Why would I care? A great worker or a Christian
worker should seek ways to be better at their job, knowing
self and the boss's explanations.
OK again, not to be better than somebody else, that's not what
I'm saying here, but to better them self.
How can I be a more effective worker?
How can I be more efficient or more productive for you, or more
effective in my job? And this is key I think, right
here. Knowing self, you have to think
about and know who you are as a worker.
Some people need to be told to do a more precise job or to take
more care with their work. As Frank will tell you after
work with me, that is not what I need.
I do not be need to be told to do a more precise job because I
will take too long doing a job that.
Needs to just be moved on from. I can be perfectionist in the
details and that's not going to make him money.
If I'm taking too long to do a job that it's good enough how it
is, it's great. Just move on.
So you have to know yourself. You have to know what you need
to work on, maybe with your personality, maybe in your
specific job and ways that you can be better.
Don't be afraid to ask the boss or a Co worker around you ways
you can be better and know the boss's expectations.
Integrity. We're getting toward the end of
our list here. Integrity.
What about this as it applies to us being good workers?
First of all, timeliness. Maybe not.
In every culture, timeliness is a massive issue in some places.
Maybe showing up late is just like that's just what everybody
does and and everybody was OK with that.
I don't know about other cultures.
I know about here in the US and I know in the US it is a way to
communicate respect and value for the person you're serving
and the person you're doing the job for.
It is a way to communicate respect and honor and we should
be on time. I was told if you're not 10
minutes early, you're 5 minutes late.
I think those apply Well, what about theft as it deals with
integrity? I read these statistics and I
shared some of them recently with you guys in another lesson.
But I read a statistic that said 90% of all significant theft
losses come from employees. Significant theft losses will be
beyond just like the little small things that don't really
amount to much. That's scary.
That's the average. But I think maybe the more
common, the more common issue for most people because of some
of these statistics is time theft.
We've talked about this before, but I'm going to keep
reiterating it because it's something we have to be very
careful of. It's easy to slip into this
studied, I think it was the Bureau of Labour and Statistics
or something said 4 1/2 labours of time, theft per employee per
week. That's a lot of money being
thrown away. If you were to walk up to your
boss and steal, let's say minimum wage, that's like 90
bucks every week walking up to your boss and stealing 90 bucks
out of his pocket. You never do that, right?
But would we steal their time by not being productive on the job,
or being on our phones or just slacking off, whatever the case
may be, that's scary. That's a lot of time and money.
One in four people admit to lying on their time cards, and
in the US this was in 2021 or two.
I looked at this statistic. There was $400 billion
businesses lost in the US from time theft alone.
Average with theft or time management Average is steal from
your boss. Everybody else does it.
They're sitting over there on your phone.
Why won't you? That's not what we're called.
The bee. I don't know if I put the the
great, but the great would be obviously being productive on
time doing your work. It's kind of the opposite of all
those things. Colossians 3 verse 23 says and
whatever. You do do it heartily.
The whole summation of this is you don't work just for your
boss. You work for the Lord at your
job, and we're going to spend 120,000 hours in our life
working. Why not take advantage of it and
use it heartily and to do our best?
And as I was thinking about this, our own work ethic and
what we're willing to do is so limited by our mind.
It's so limited by what we think we can do.
If you, as you think about these different great feats that
humans have accomplished, I don't say this to glorify
humans. I say this to glorify God and
that he has made us incredibly resilient, changeable, moldable.
You can change any part of yourself almost your your
physical endurance, your strength, your focus, your your
mental skills, your physical skills.
You can change almost anything about you.
That's a God giving gift to better yourself.
For the glory of God, people climb the tallest mountains in
the world all the time. They could have just said I
don't feel like it and a lot of people do, but it just shows
what we can accomplish if we'll take the time I follow this guy,
his name. 'S true Haynes.
He just he just broke the world pull up record and most of the
guys who are the pull up world record holders are real scrawny
skinny guys. So it was an amazing thing that
did this. He's a bigger guy.
He did 8100 pull ups in the day. It's an incredible feat.
What are we willing to work for? I'm not saying go out and do a
billion pull ups. I'm saying do you realize, do I
realize that I have so few limitations that God gave me?
I have so much potential that I have to grow and do.
That when I say. I don't really want to or can't.
That is a mentality I ran across the that that plane crash that
happened in the Andes mountains. There was these 16 people
survived 72 days and the Andes mountains in the snow with just
a plane. And we're not going to go into
the details of what happened there, but the thought of what
the human body is capable of and resilient through 72 days.
And we can complain about the tiny things we're capable of
more. This man, I'm not going to try
to pronounce his name, just ran a marathon in under 2 hours.
People thought it was impossible.
They thought the human body is it's incapable of it. 1900 years
into human history, the fastest we had was 3 hours and 45
minutes at the IT was one of the Olympic Games.
The first marathon races ran. To think that that was an
incredible human feat, and now it's been like, cut in half.
It just shows what we can do when we will put our mind to.
Something we can and and have the potential to do.
Things that are beyond what we might think right now, that's a
God-given ability to change and grow.
So miscellaneous. This one person went 15 days
without food or water. Someone else spent 41 minutes
without blinking. This person spent 48 hours in
virtual reality, this 122 minutes underwater with no air.
I think this guy was under ice too, Under ice water, 86 hours
running continuously, and someone else spent 264 hours
with no sleep. That's like 11 days.
Again, the only reason I bring this up is to remember that we
have more to give. And if you don't think you have
more to give, that's probably a product of not trying, because
you don't realize how much potential you have for the glory
of God to be better workers, To not think, I can't do this, you
can. And God can be glorified in
whatever situation we're in. Just finishing up real quick.
And you masters. So he's talking about the bosses
now. He's going to give direction to
them, and it's very short. Do the same things to them.
Now. Is he saying you have to obey
them like they were told to obey?
No, It's the same perspective. It's the same.
Attitude of I'm trying to follow God and I'm trying to work for
God. Bosses have their own role of
service, but they are to Revere God first and to show respect to
their employees and to have the same mentality in their work.
If you're a boss, do the same things to them.
Lost my birth year. Where you go?
Knowing that whatever good anyone does, well, see I messed
up my here we go. So he says, And you masters do
the same things to them, giving up threatening.
If you were a boss, he says, don't threaten your employees.
Maybe in this day and time this would have had a more direct
physical harm. Maybe threatening, physical
punishment or something might have been the case, but even
today, threatening should not be used.
Consequence, though, has to happen.
So there we're going to talk about difference between
threatening and consequence, but there's no place for
threatening. So threats versus consequences,
what's the difference If someone is not performing in a way you
can let them know, hey, I, as the manager of this situation of
this company I have, I can't keep you.
If you're going to continue to do this, and they're going to,
you're going to let them know the consequence of what they of
what will happen. But there's a difference between
letting them know and doing that, following up and say, OK,
this is what happened, So I have to catch you loose.
I'm sorry, that's a consequence. But threats do nobody any good.
If someone walks around giving threats, a lot of times they're
revealed as empty threats. And who does that really put
the? Stress on that puts stress on
the. Employee on the employer.
Because if they're throwing threats around, man, now I throw
all these threats and I have to back it up.
If I don't, I'm kind of lying. I'm kind of being dishonest and
they're not going to trust me anymore because I said I was
going to do this. I'm not.
Threats don't do any good. They make people angry and
bitter and they put stress on the manager because it's really
on them to follow through with all these threats, he says.
Give up threatening, we are all here.
To serve the best interest of others.
So giving up threatening, knowing that your own master
also is in heaven and there is no partiality with him.
May we keep the proper perspective on our roles of
authority to realize that we're not the top of the food chain
and it's not all about us and our goals aren't the greatest
goals in the universe. We have a master that we need to
handle other people in light of our relationship with our
master. And he says there is no
partiality with him. You're not going to be a special
treatment and God's not going to treat you specially because
you're a boss and you have had a lot of authority.
God is our Supreme leader. Whether we're boss or whether
we're employee. There's no partiality with him.
May we be humble enough to see that.
And that's we're going to close today.
We'll finish up Ephesians Chapter 6 next time.
I hope we can give glory to God in the way we work today and
it'll. The process all starts with
becoming a Christian. And if you haven't already done
that, why not? It's a great life.
It's the best life you can live. If you hear the word, you have a
chance to believe that word. When you believe the word, you
can respond to it with a change, with a repentance that says God,
I'm ready to follow your will and not my will.
I want to turn and do what you ask.
I'm going to fight that gravity to sin and go conformity.
I'm going to be transformed. That's my goal moving forward.
And you can do have that repentance in your heart, and
you can confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that
there's salvation by none other, and be baptized to be added to
the church to be contacted with Jesus blood himself.
And you could be saved for the remission of your sins and you
can be added to the Church. And if you've already done that,
and you need prayers for forgiveness, for support, you
can do those things privately. But if it's of public nature and
you want to get it right, or if you just want the support of
everybody who's here together, we'd be happy to help you out
one of either class while we stand and while we sit.
We thank you for listening to our podcast put on by the Church
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