Work From the Soul

[0:00] It is really good to be back. I took about four weeks off at the end of the summer because we had a baby and the church blessed me with some time just to go and be with my boys and our new little girl and to support Laura and to just kind of be around the house.

[0:22] So it was almost four weeks of doing that and it was absolutely wonderful and a rich, rich blessing. And as that sort of fourth week sort of drew near, I would be lying if I didn't say I was kind of itching to get back.

[0:40] I was missing work quite a bit and so I'm really happy to be back. But in that time away, it also struck me how odd it is to be in a place like D.C. around all the kinds of people that we interact with and not working.

[0:56] At least not outside of the responsibilities around the house. That felt very odd and I realized how work-centric our culture is, especially here in D.C. I meet very few people who say, you know, I moved to D.C. because I heard it's just a really great place to start a family.

[1:12] You just don't hear that that often. I mean, you hear, you know, what are you here? Why did you move to D.C.? I mean, if you didn't grow up here, well, I moved for school or for an internship or I got a job here.

[1:24] And you ask people, well, why are you staying in D.C.? You've been here a few years. Why? Well, I have a great job. I love my job. That's why I'm here. And then typically, you know, if people leave, it's because there's a job somewhere else, right?

[1:35] So we're very work-centric in our culture. And I began to wonder, how do people think about the relationship between the work that they spend probably the majority of their waking hours doing and their faith?

[1:47] You know, for generations, the implicit message in the church was, it's great that you have a job. It's great that you're doing all that.

[1:58] But the way that connects to your faith is you just need to make money that you can then give to the church, right? And so make money, give it to the church, and that's the faith-work connection. I want to go deeper than that today because one of our values in this church is what we talk about being missionary faithfulness.

[2:17] And that means that we want to live all of our lives in reference to the mission of God. All spheres of life lived in reference to God and His mission in the world, which very much includes our work, what we do on a daily basis.

[2:34] And so we're going to look at Colossians 3. We're going to come back to the end of Colossians. We did a series earlier in this year on Colossians. We're going to kind of come back to it now. And we're going to look at Colossians 3, verse 17, and then we'll jump down to verse 22, and we'll go all the way to chapter 4, verse 1.

[2:51] You just heard that read a moment ago. But at this place in Paul's letter to the Colossians, he's laid out the gospel. He's already made the point that Jesus has come, and through His death and resurrection, He's made forgiveness for sin possible.

[3:06] And that means that people have been grafted into His great renewal project. He's come to restore all of creation. And Christians are swept up into that death and resurrection and renewal.

[3:19] And so now we're at the part of the letter where he's essentially saying, so what? What does that mean for Christians? And this so what includes our work.

[3:29] And the claim Paul is making is essentially that the gospel, even though it talks about future renewal, it actually begins to change everything here and now. The transformation that the gospel brings is something that we can experience here and now.

[3:46] And that includes the transformation of our work. So this passage shows us what becomes possible in your work and in my work when the gospel becomes central.

[4:00] And three things become possible. It becomes possible to serve God by our work. So whatever you're doing, it becomes a way to serve God. It becomes possible to be able to pour out our hearts into our work fully, to pour our hearts fully into our work.

[4:16] And then lastly, it becomes possible to seek justice through our work. So serve God by our work, pour out our hearts into our work, and then seek justice through our work.

[4:27] And we're going to talk about each of those more and what they mean. Let's pray as we get started. Our Father, we thank you for the work of your hand. We thank you that at creation you didn't create human beings to lounge around.

[4:43] You didn't create human beings to meet your needs. You don't have any needs. But you created human beings and you blessed them with work. And you gave them a job to do in your creation.

[4:55] And all of the dignity and joy that comes with that. And we thank you for the work of Jesus restoring our vocation. Lord, help us to understand what it means to follow you in the specific ways that you wire us and gift us and equip us and call us.

[5:11] For your glory and your son's name. Amen. Amen. So through the gospel, it becomes possible for your day-to-day work to become a means by which you serve God directly.

[5:24] That's the first thing I want to focus on. But before we really get into that, we've got to address a kind of elephant in the room. And that is, if you look at this, if we can skip down to verse 22, the ESV says, Now, I like the ESV. It's a little nuanced. It says bond servants.

[5:45] But let's just be honest about this. What's it talking about? Slaves. Yeah. Slaves obey in everything those who are your earthly masters. Now, if you read this, it should strike you.

[5:58] You should be taken aback by that. Maybe even offended by it. How in the world can Paul, in good conscience, say, Jesus came, the gospel is true, therefore slaves, obey your masters.

[6:12] That doesn't make any sense. Didn't Jesus talk about liberation for the captives, right? Loosing the bonds of the oppressed. How in the world can Paul say this in good conscience?

[6:22] Why weren't early Christians going around fighting to abolish slavery at every turn? Why would they continue to put up with it? Is this just cultural blindness? So let's talk about this for just a couple of minutes.

[6:35] It helps to understand that slavery in the ancient world, in many ways, was very, very, very different than what we think of as slavery, the African slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries in the U.S. and in Europe and the Caribbean.

[6:48] Very, very, very different. I'll tell you why. A few key differences. First of all, slavery in Paul's day was not racially based at all. It didn't happen along racial lines.

[6:59] And along with that, there was no socioeconomic difference necessarily between slaves and free people. So you had slaves who could be very highly educated and wealthy and have a lot of privilege and political power.

[7:14] And so the socioeconomic differences were really not there. Another key difference is that slavery in Paul's day was not lifelong. The majority of people who became slaves had gained their freedom by the time they were around 30.

[7:29] And then lastly, many people, and this may be hard to understand, but many people actually voluntarily entered into bond servant status.

[7:42] And the reasons are many. In the ancient world, there was no guaranteed way to get an education, to get social connections, to get a good-paying job.

[7:53] And so many people would work just day to day. You would go out. You would try to find odd jobs to do. You never knew what you were going to be able to bring home that night. It was very unpredictable. But a bond servant status provided job security.

[8:05] You could go. And many times, if you found a good arrangement, you could have job security. You could have a guaranteed livelihood. You could get educated. You could make connections and meet people.

[8:15] And sort of climb the ladder, so to speak. And so a lot of people would do that. And so in many ways, these people were not slaves as we think of slaves in the U.S.

[8:28] So I just want to be as clear as I can on this point. Not only does the Bible not endorse slavery, but in fact, when that form of slavery did arise in the 18th and 19th centuries, the people who led the way in fighting slavery, fighting to abolish it, were actually Christians.

[8:46] Christians who read their Bibles realized that it's not possible for one human being to own another, the inherent dignity and worth of every human being. And they began to realize this is wrong. And they fought it. And they fought to abolish it. And that battle continues to this day.

[8:58] And God willing, Christians will continue to lead the charge. So these people were not slaves the way we think of it. So a call for slaves in the ancient time to kind of unify and fight for their freedom, that would not have made sense to people.

[9:13] Because many people did it voluntarily because it actually was seen as a beneficial strategic decision. So on the one hand, it's not the same. On the other hand, I do also want to make clear that these people probably had it worse than you and me.

[9:28] They didn't have rights. They couldn't go and complain to HR. They couldn't quit and find another job if they didn't like what they were doing. They didn't have a whole lot of control over how they spent their time.

[9:40] Right? They were very vulnerable to mistreatment and abuse and injustice. So they had it worse than most of us. And yet what I want to highlight is what Paul is saying to these Christian bond servants.

[9:53] Verse 23. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. You are serving the Lord Christ. So in other words, what's Paul saying?

[10:06] He's saying to these slaves, and some of whom did very menial work. You know, scrubbing toilets and washing dishes and, you know, thankless, menial work. He's saying to these people, no matter how menial, no matter how thankless, no matter how grueling your daily work is, you are in fact rendering service directly to God.

[10:29] You're serving God when you do that. In other words, serving God isn't just something reserved for monks and nuns and pastors. Right?

[10:39] You say, I'm going to go serve God. What do most people think when they hear that? They think, oh, he's going to leave his secular job, and he's going to go, and he's going to get a religious job.

[10:50] Right? But a biblical view of work means understanding, actually, that there's no division between sacred work and secular work. There's no line there. That's a human way of thinking about work.

[11:04] So whether you lead a church or you work in retail, whether you build overseas orphanages or build spreadsheets all day, right? Whether you are out on street corners preaching or serving in a nonprofit somewhere, or you're washing dishes or waiting tables, any of that work that is done in the Lord's name is a means of worshiping the Lord himself.

[11:27] That's the biblical view of work. And you see this really clearly in this wonderful Hebrew word, Avodah. And Avodah is an Old Testament Hebrew word. It shows up a lot.

[11:38] And it's used a bunch of different ways. In Genesis 2, Avodah means farming or cultivation. And then in Exodus 1, Avodah is the work of brick making.

[11:49] And then in Exodus, later in Exodus 35, it refers to the artisanal work that was done to beautify the tabernacle. So, artistry. And then in 1 Chronicles, Avodah means fine craftsmanship.

[12:02] So, you see, Avodah means all these different kinds of work, right? Fine craftsmanship, artistic work, and also hard, back-breaking labor, cultivation. It's all work, all Avodah. But it's also used a bunch of other times to mean worship, right?

[12:17] It means work and worship. Same word. And what that shows us is, in the biblical understanding, there is a seamless flow between work and worship. From the very beginning, God created human beings to work.

[12:30] And when they worked, they were worshiping him in that labor. So, I want to stop and I want to just apply this in a couple of ways, just so you get the implications of this before we move on to the second point.

[12:44] So, I have a couple of implications of this idea that, because of the gospel, all of our work becomes worship. So what? Number one, this means that God values our work and your work work very differently than we do.

[13:01] God's economy is vastly different. You move to a place like D.C., it is very, very, very easy to start comparing yourself and what you do to other people.

[13:15] Right? So, you move here and you get a job and then you start going to parties and meeting and everybody starts asking, what do you do? Well, what do you do? Well, what do you do? And you start hearing about all these things that other people are doing and they're doing some amazing things and they're meeting all these people and making a difference and working for these amazing organizations.

[13:31] And then you look at what you do and you just kind of start, after a while, avoiding the question. You know? And you start to kind of feel like what you do is kind of lame. And then you get really insecure and you want to change jobs and you go, man, all these people are doing amazing things and I feel like I'm wasting my life.

[13:48] Right? So, it can make you really insecure living here. On the other hand, some of you who, you know, once you start to get jobs and ascend and get promoted and work for great organizations, it can also be kind of tempting to sort of look down on other people.

[14:06] You know? And say, well, I'm so glad I don't have to do that. I'm so glad I'm not stuck there. Right? And so, if we think like that, if we begin to compare our work and to rate our work in terms of what seems more important or more impressive, that's a very human way of thinking about work.

[14:24] God sees it differently. God says, how dare you doubt the significance of your work? How dare you doubt it? You know, especially people who, maybe you're unemployed or maybe you're the spouse in the marriage who has elected to stay home and take care of the kids.

[14:42] That can be incredibly, incredibly challenging. A lot of insecurity for some people. People making that hard choice. Who am I if I don't have a job? Who am I if all I'm doing all day is changing diapers and scrubbing dishes?

[14:55] God says, how dare you doubt the significance of that work? How dare you doubt the significance of other people's work? How dare you? You know, a dish washed or a toilet scrubbed in the name of the Lord glorifies God infinitely more than all of the orphanages and the churches and the non-profits in the world built in the name of human beings.

[15:24] That's God's economy. Radically different. That's the first implication. Second implication, God doesn't just value our work.

[15:35] Listen to this. God works through our work. God works through your work. Now, I really want you to understand this. Nobody said it better than Martin Luther. The Reformation theologian is really the one who got this vocational, the role that God plays in our vocation.

[15:55] And his term for it is, he says, vocations are the mask of God. Think about that. He's saying that behind human vocations, God is at work.

[16:06] God is working through those vocations. His work is happening through your daily labor. Right? So Gene Veith summarizes Luther's thinking in this way.

[16:17] He says, when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And he does. The way he gives us our daily bread is through the vocations of farmers, millers, bakers.

[16:31] We might add truck drivers, factory workers, bankers, warehouse attendants, the lady at the checkout counter. Virtually every step of our whole economic system contributes to that piece of toast that you had for breakfast.

[16:47] And then he says, and when you thanked God for the food that he provided, you were right to do so. God, give me my daily bread. How does God do it? Through all of the different roles and vocations that make up our human economy.

[17:02] God works through those things. Can God heal people miraculously? Can I just say, boom, be healed. And Dan is healed. Absolutely. God can do that. Does God always do that?

[17:14] Tragically, no. How does God most often work works of healing? Through the vocations of all of the healthcare professionals, which I consider to be every bit as miraculous as an instantaneous healing.

[17:29] The fact that God conscripts and partners with and works through the hands of women and men all over the world and their training and their years of practice to bring healing. That's God's work happening through human hands.

[17:43] That's vocation as a mask for the work of the Lord. So all of our work is service rendered to God and God can and does work through our work. So that's the first point.

[17:56] Second point is this. the gospel frees us not only to serve God in our work, but to pour all of our hearts into what we do.

[18:08] Now you say, why would I need the gospel for that? I do that anyway. Let's think about it for a second. What are the reasons that you work? Now maybe you say, well, I have to.

[18:19] Okay, fair enough. But beyond that, what motivates you? What gets you up in the morning? What drives you? I think for most of us, our work is motivated by maybe some combination of three things.

[18:33] We work because we need to make money. We work because we want respect. We want to be, you know, to feel like we're doing something important in the world.

[18:44] Thirdly, we work because we want a sense of purpose and meaning. Right? And those are good reasons. Right? You need enough money to pay your bills and to have what you need and what you want. That's very important.

[18:56] It's important and right and good to want to be respected and to feel like what you're doing matters and that people affirm your contribution to society. And thirdly, it's important to have a sense of meaning.

[19:09] How great it is if you have a job that offers you a sense of fulfillment. Now if you're one of those rare people and you have all three in your job, hold on to that job. If you're making good money and everybody respects you and you find meaning and fulfillment in what you're doing, go you.

[19:27] Keep on keeping on. Most of us don't get that in our work. Most of us hopefully get one or two of those. At least if nobody likes you and nobody cares what you're doing, you're making good money.

[19:38] I hope that's true for you. Right? And some of you are stuck in jobs where none of that's happening and maybe you need to find another job. Right? These are good reasons.

[19:50] But here's where we go wrong. If you pour your whole heart into your job for any of those reasons, you're going to be in serious trouble.

[20:04] Here's why. If your primary motivation is to make money and you say, I'm going to pour my whole heart and soul into wealth building, then what happens?

[20:16] You begin to realize what many people have realized way too late in life. It's never enough. Right? You have in your mind that at some point you'll arrive. You'll hit that plateau and you'll finally, you'll say, I've made enough.

[20:31] I don't need to make anymore. But that rarely if ever actually happens. There's always more to be made. There's always another deal. There's always another commission. There's always another opportunity. And it's just around that next corner.

[20:41] And if you just keep trying and put in a few more weeks, put in a few more years, you'll get there. And you never get there. And people sacrifice their friends and their families and their health and their values.

[20:55] Chasing, chasing, chasing. You're going to be in trouble. You say, okay, I don't care about money, but I do want to do something that's important.

[21:07] You know? I mean, people will come to D.C. and work for 15,000 a year and pack eight people into a bedroom to work on the hill. And that's great. It feels good to be around that. It feels good to be in the place where decisions that affect the world are being made, the seat of power.

[21:23] You know, you will sleep, you know, five people in a bunk bed. You know, to do that. And that's amazing. And we need you there. The church needs you there. The world needs you there.

[21:36] But if you pour your whole heart into having a job that makes you feel important, where you have a sense of respect and have a sense of impact, if that's your thing, guess what?

[21:49] You're never going to get there. You're never going to get there. Because there's always going to be somebody out there who's better than you, who's more important than you, who's more accomplished than you.

[22:00] You move to D.C. and maybe you move from kind of like a smaller place and you were like the valedictorian and all of that and then you move here and everybody's a valedictorian. Everybody. I mean, I'm not, but most people are.

[22:14] Most people here, you know, people, they've succeeded. They're impressive. Their resumes are incredible. There's always somebody better out there. There's this great play by Peter Schaeffer called Amadeus.

[22:25] And in Amadeus, the play, there's a man named Antonio Salieri. And Salieri is a court composer for the Habsburg Emperor. And he's wealthy and he's accomplished and he's a successful writer of operas and he's very well known.

[22:41] But inside, he's painfully aware that all of his work is mediocre. And he struggles with that. And then one day, he hears a relatively unknown, impoverished man named Mozart.

[23:00] Mozart. And he hears the beauty of his music. And in that instant, he knows that no matter how hard he works, he will never be able to produce anything close to that.

[23:13] And it crushes him. Welcome to D.C. That's what it's like to live here. Your parents raised you and said, you can be the best.

[23:24] They were lying to you. You're never going to be the best. Uplifting sermon? Maybe. You're never going to be the best. You're never going to be the best.

[23:35] It's impossible. There will always be somebody out there better than you at whatever it is you do. Do you know how you be the best? Don't ever have any friends or ever talk to anybody.

[23:46] Live by yourself in an isolated shack in the middle of the wilderness. You can be the best there. But the minute you start meeting other people, eventually you will meet somebody who's better than you. And if you've poured your whole heart into that, being the best, being the most impressive, you meet that person, you're going to be like Salieri.

[24:06] It's going to crush you. You won't survive it if you've put your whole heart into that. So you say, okay, I don't care about money. I don't even care about being the best. I know that.

[24:16] I don't care about being the best. But I want a job that is meaningful. I want a job that fulfills me. That's a good reason, right? Yeah, that's a good reason. But don't pour your whole heart into it.

[24:28] Why? Because sooner or later you will realize that no job can provide the kind of fulfillment that you're looking for. No job can. I recently heard this great panel discussion and this guy was sort of talking very honestly about the fact that he had had this really lucrative, amazing job, made a lot of money, but he really wanted to leave and do something meaningful, a more fulfilling job.

[24:54] And so he left and he started a non-profit. And he said he very soon came to realize that this kind of Christian non-profit work wasn't really nearly as fulfilling as he thought it would be. And you know what he called it?

[25:06] He said, listen to this. I love, so brilliant. I wrote it down. He said, we had bought into the emotional prosperity gospel. Isn't that awesome? You know what the prosperity gospel is?

[25:17] It's this way of thinking. It's kind of a strain or thinking that says, I give money and pray to God and give money to God and then God will bless me even more abundantly. I'll get ten times the money that I give to God back, right?

[25:29] God wants me to have lots of money and nice cars and all that. So if I give my ten dollars to God, God will give me a hundred back. It's kind of the basics of the prosperity gospel. This guy said, I bought into an emotional version of that.

[25:41] You know, I leave my secular job and my secular world and I go and I work for God and then God's going to bless me with emotional fulfillment. And I'm going to feel fulfilled and meaningful and happy and my job is going to, I'm going to have purpose and identity.

[25:55] He realized, it's a prosperity gospel. It's fake. It doesn't happen that way. See, a lot of people quit, you know, great jobs because they want to go into a helping profession or go into ministry or go do something that, you know, makes a difference.

[26:09] And then they get there and they realize, there's not a whole lot of fulfillment here. Nothing like what I thought there would be. Right? And if you work in the helping professions or the non-profit world, which a lot of you do, you know people like this and you know the truth that many of those people flame out really quickly.

[26:26] They flame out because they, you know, once the fulfillment's not there, so you've got to check your motives, right? It's good to want a fulfilling job and we can have partially fulfilling jobs, but if you pour your whole heart into that, you're going to be very disappointed.

[26:43] Very disappointed. So the truth is, if you pour your heart out for any earthly reason, you're never going to find what you're looking for. And what you're going to do is you're going to try harder and harder and harder and harder to get that reward and you're never going to get it.

[27:00] And you're going to realize at the end of your life that you were just a hamster on a wheel. Another word for that would be bond servant. Slave. You live your life like a slave.

[27:11] So what's the answer? Well, here's what Paul says in verse 23. Whatever you do, work heartily. And you know what that literally says in the Greek?

[27:22] Work from the soul. Isn't that great? Work from the soul. Whatever you do, work from the soul as for the Lord and not for men.

[27:33] Here's the key. Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. So if you see your work as a way of serving the Lord rather than human bosses, then that frees you to pour your whole heart into your work.

[27:48] To work from the soul. Now why, what difference does it make? Here's the key. Because Christians do not work to seek a reward. We don't ultimately pour our hearts out because we're hoping to build wealth or to be important and respected or to find fulfillment.

[28:09] That doesn't motivate us. We don't pour our hearts out because we're seeking a reward. We pour our hearts out because we work in the security of an inheritance.

[28:21] What's the difference between a reward and an inheritance? Well, a reward is something you earn. It's that carrot out there and you strive and you strive and you strive and hopefully one day you're going to get that carrot.

[28:33] That's a reward. You can't earn an inheritance. You can't earn it. How do you get an inheritance? Well, you have very little say in the matter.

[28:44] You have to be born into it. You get an inheritance because of your family name. You get old enough and people say you've got an inheritance waiting for you and then eventually when you come of age that inheritance becomes yours.

[28:56] You claim it. Nobody can take it away because it's tied to your identity, your blood, who you are. It doesn't matter if you screw around all life. That inheritance is yours.

[29:07] It's unshakable. And so the gospel says that when we turn to Jesus and when we confess our sin and accept his forgiveness and begin to be followers of him when we're baptized that at that moment we are adopted into his family.

[29:22] We take on a new family name that his blood flows in our veins. We are literally born again and because of that we gain what the Bible says is an imperishable inheritance.

[29:33] everything that matters in eternity everything that really matters all the stuff that doesn't fade like the grass withers but all of the stuff that remains that all of that is ours.

[29:47] That in God's kingdom economy in the new world our inheritance is secure. We have absolutely nothing to worry about. The future is secure.

[30:00] So because of that we can pour our hearts out now and if we make money or we don't make money if we gain the respect and admiration of others or if nobody gives a rip right?

[30:12] If we have a fulfilling job or if it's menial and grueling we can still pour our hearts out because we know that there's no reward here that can hold a candle to the inheritance that is already ours.

[30:24] So we work and we pour our hearts out because we know that God sees everything we do like a father sees a child and he delights in it.

[30:37] You know I see Riley and I see Riley trying to learn to ride his bike and tie his shoes and fix his own breakfast and get dressed and put his laundry away and buy presents for his little brother and I see him doing all these things and that's the work of a child.

[30:52] I see him playing and learning how to build Legos and tracks for his marbles that's work for kids that's their job is to do all that stuff and when he spills Cheerios and messes up do I say God get it right what is your problem?

[31:06] No. No. Because I'm crazy about him and I almost love him more when he makes the mistakes. You know it's endearing those are the times when I just want to grab him in my arms and tell him how much I love him.

[31:18] That's how God views us. Scrubbing toilets or making spreadsheets or running a company God doesn't care God delights in us doing what he created us to do. That's what brings him great pleasure. So the gospel means that we serve God by our work and it means that we can pour our hearts into our work freely.

[31:37] The third way the gospel transforms our work is this and I realize we're out of time so just a couple of minutes on this. It compels us to seek justice through our work. I gotta say this we gotta hit this.

[31:51] This is amazing because the call to justice that we see in Colossians 3 and 4 is aimed both at bond servants and masters both employees and employers.

[32:05] So to Christian employees it says in verse 22 obey in everything those who are your earthly masters not by way of eye service as people pleasers but with sincerity of heart for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done and there is no partiality.

[32:22] So let's just look at what this is saying really quick. If you feel unappreciated think about your job. If you feel unappreciated boss doesn't care what you're doing.

[32:33] If you feel mistreated if you feel harassed if you feel like there's injustice if you feel overworked if you think that your boss is incompetent you know that's a hard one.

[32:47] If I took a poll which I'm not going to do and I said how many of you feel like your boss is pretty much incompetent I would say that probably at least half the hands in the room would go up. It's a pretty common complaint.

[32:58] I mean not for the Church of the Advent team but for most people this is a struggle. It's a struggle. It's a real struggle. And so if any of those things are true it is so easy to justify slacking off.

[33:10] My boss doesn't care. My boss doesn't know what they're doing. Why should I care? Right? It's easy to just start phoning it in because why? Who cares? Nobody cares. You know? My boss doesn't deserve any better from me.

[33:24] My boss isn't working half as hard as I am. Very easy to justify that. In other words it's easy to think that injustice committed toward us gives us license.

[33:35] Right? To work half-heartedly. Because we don't think our bosses deserve anything more. But what this is saying if I'm reading this correctly this is saying that there's no excuse for the Christian.

[33:46] That for the Christian you want to know what a Christian job is? Here's a Christian work ethic. For the Christian we always work our hardest and do our best not just when we're being watched but all the time.

[33:59] Now your boss may not deserve it. May not appreciate you. May overwork you. But you're not serving your boss. You're serving Jesus Christ.

[34:11] the one who gave everything up for you. That's the one you're serving. And he does deserve your best. He deserves everything that you can give him every day regardless of whether anyone else is watching.

[34:27] And then it turns around and it says to bosses in chapter 4 verse 1 Masters treat your bond servants justly and fairly knowing that you also have a master in heaven.

[34:38] So very clear here no matter how much authority you get no matter how much influence you get no matter how many people you are managing how many teams you oversee you are always under authority.

[34:51] You are always under authority. You have a boss. You have a master. And he has a heart of justice. He says remember that treat those under you justly and fairly.

[35:04] What does that mean? Well lots of things. Let's just take a few examples. Don't take credit for the work that people under you do. Give credit away.

[35:15] Give credit away as much as you can. Right? Show grace when people make mistakes. And take every opportunity to build people up when and wherever you can.

[35:29] If people under you mess up and make mistakes be willing to take the fall and take the blame. fight to ensure equal pay and equal opportunities especially for women and minorities to the best of your ability.

[35:46] Don't just hire from your own networks. If you actually have the ability to make a hire don't just hire an insider but take the extra time and energy to look outside your networks. Try to fund somebody maybe who doesn't have as much privilege as most of the people we know have but maybe has a lot of potential.

[36:04] Try to hire from outside your networks if at all possible. Be generous with your policies. If you can set policies about sick leave and parental leave and vacation be as generous as you can.

[36:16] Don't overwork your people but make sure they have time for friends and family. It could go on and on and on and on and on. But let's just ask this question because we've got to close. Why does God care about these things?

[36:28] Why is this in the Bible? Because God is a God of justice. And do you know what the kingdom is? The kingdom is all about the king and it's all about the coming of the king.

[36:39] And do you know what's going to happen when the king comes? Justice will fill the earth. It will roll down. And so if we seek to serve the Lord in our work and we know that about his heart then we work whether we are employers or employees with an eye toward that justice because we want to reflect his heart.

[37:03] That's what it means to do it in his name. To do it in ways that reflect his heart and his priorities and his values for human beings in this world. And by the way, if you're this kind of employee and you work this hard no matter if people are watching or not, everybody is going to want to hire you.

[37:23] Word will get around. It's a small town, D.C. Small town. Doesn't feel like it. Live here a few years. It's a small town. Everybody's going to want you. If you're this kind of boss, if you're this kind of team leader, everybody's going to want to be on your team.

[37:38] It'll go well for you. So this is how the gospel transforms our work and this is, I think, what a Christian job really is. It's a job done in service to the Lord with our whole heart and with an aim toward justice.

[37:52] Thank you. Thank you.