HCC Core Values: Fight Mediocrity

Colossians 3:23

Colossians 3:23–24 NIV

23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

INTRODUCTION

Office Space Clip - Doing the bare minimum. “It’s not that I’m lazy - it’s that I just don’t care.”

I practically made an olympic sport out of ‘doing the bare minimum’ through school. Didn’t even read the source text for my English exams - but still passed. When my results came out my Dad said - "Well done son, now imagine what you could have got if you’d tried!”

The point is - our work ethic, our attitude towards work says a lot about us.

According to this text - the Christian work-ethic ought to outstrip and outperform all others, there ought to be no such thing as ‘a lazy Christian.’ A Christian is someone who will fight mediocrity wherever they come across it.

“When I first became a Christian the fellow that led me to Christ made a statement to me in the first two weeks, I said what does it mean to you to be a Christian? And he said “What it means to me to be a Christian is that I am going to out work you, I’m going to out fight you and I’m going to out love you.” He understood that to be a Christian meant a call to excellence, that went beyond the standards of what was acceptable in the world.” - RC Sproul

Now the text we have before us speaks about Christian duty in a variety of different relationships - duty is almost a dirty word in this day and age, but there are indeed Christian duties. Certain attitudes and behaviours that are obligatory for those who profess the name of Jesus Christ.

Wives are to be subject to their husbands, husbands are to love their wives, children are to obey their parents and slaves or bond servants are to work heartily for their masters.

We don’t have the time to dive into each of those relationships this morning - but there is a principle here in verse 23 and 24 that I think warrants a broader application than simply the setting of bond servants and masters. Why? Because the principle of excellence is borne out throughout the whole of scripture in a variety of different context.

Proverbs 22:29 ESV

29 Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.

Ecclesiastes 9:10 ESV

10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

We want to pursue excellence as a church, we do that by fighting mediocrity wherever we find it.

1. WORK FROM THE HEART

Colossians 3:23 NA28

23 ὃ ἐὰν ποιῆτε, ἐκ ψυχῆς ἐργάζεσθε ὡς τῷ κυρίῳ καὶ οὐκ ἀνθρώποις,

Ek Psyche - work out of the soul!

Work is spiritual - it isn’t carnal, it didn’t come with the fall! God gave Adam and Eve work to do in Eden. We shouldn’t view work as a curse, but as a blessing.

We are to engage our whole heart in our endeavors; whether our paid job, whether our housework, whether our parenting, whether at church, we are to work from the heart.

“It is one of the first and last qualifications of a good workman for God that he should put his heart into his work.” - Spurgeon

What does it mean to work from the heart? Does it have something to do with our feelings?

We’ve really lost a lot of the sense of what the Hebrews and Greeks meant by ‘from the heart’. We think of head vs heart, as if our head were the rational’logical side of us and the heart were the passionate/irrational side of us. But that’s not a definition used by the writers of scripture.

To the writers of scripture the heart meant:

The seat of your understanding - Mind/Knowledge

Your strength

The core of your being

Your will

Your moral character

The seat of your courage

The seat of your emotions and passions

The seat of your apetites

So to work with all your heart meant to work with all your mind, all your will, all your courage, all your strength, all your passion and all of yourself.

Proverbs 4:23 NIV

23 Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

2. WORK HARD AT WHATEVER YOU DO

And we are to work with all our heart at WHATEVER WE DO.

Not just the honourable things

Not just the things we get paid to do

Not just the things we like to do

But at WHATEVER we do we work hard

Story of AS showing up to that new church - He arrived 10 minutes early, the car park was empty. Then 5 minutes before 10:30 a car screeches into the car park and a man gets out and opens up, then another car arrives and the pastor piles out. They then set the PA up as my friend and his wife look on. That pastor probably worked hard at his sermon that week, but because he failed to bring his best work into the less attractive work like being punctual, like putting out chairs, like raising up a team, those new visitors were left feeling rather unwelcome.

3. WORK AS UNTO THE LORD

We work hard at whatever we do because we work as if unto the Lord Himself.

We often think of ‘worship’ as being that bit on Sundays where we sing together for 20-30 minutes. But what about the other 95% of our lives? Is that worship?

Romans 12:1 ESV

1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Your spiritual worship is your whole life! You will likely spend about half your waking week working - it’s a huuuge part of our lives. It’s an opportunity to worship God!

Story of work experience at Dowty aerospace literally watching the clock tick waiting for 5pm.

What if Instead of seeing all those hours as ‘secular’ we saw them as ‘sacred.’

What if instead of thinking you’re working for your boss, or your employer or for your church - you began to think ‘I am working for God.’

4. CHRIST IS OUR REWARDER

Because ultimately - Christ is our rewarder, not our boss, not our employer, not our clients but Christ.

People get their thinking all wrong on this - they think it’s their employer that rewards them for their work, it’s them that pays me, it’s my work that puts food on my table, it’s my paid job that pays the mortgage - well yes that’s true in an immediate sense. But Christ is the prime rewarder, He is the first cause of your reward, He is the one who keeps a roof over your head and food on your table.

He rewards those who work hard. He rewards those who go above and beyond, He rewards the work that goes unseen, He rewards those who fight mediocrity. Because He is a God of excellence, He is a God who spared nothing to save His people, He is the God who considered nothing as too hard for Him in the work of salvation.

“The best and the wisest thing in the world is to work as if it all depended upon you, and then trust in God, knowing that it all depends upon him. He will not fail us, but we are not therefore to fold our arms and sit still. He will not forsake us; we are not, therefore, to go upstairs to bed and expect that our daily bread will drop into our mouths…. Oh no, no, no, no, God does not pander to our laziness, and an, man who expects to get on in this world with anything that is good, without work, is a fool. Throw your whole soul into the service of God, and then you will get God’s blessing if you are resting upon him.” - Spurgeon