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As we continue in this section of Ephesians, Paul has been teaching us how we are suppose to glorify God within the family.
The key is to understand that God has set the family unit up with order and has assigned each person in the family roles they are to function in.
The heartbeat of it all is an understanding of submission.
He introduces this whole concept in Eph.
5:20
The husband submits to Christ by giving sacrificial, loving leadership to his wife.
He should model himself after Christ’s love for the church.
The wife submits to Christ by supporting her husband, loving him, encouraging him.
She models herself after the church’s love for Christ.
Children submit to Christ by submitting to their parents authority through obedience.
Parents submit to Christ by cherishing their children and bringing them up to love the Lord and obeying him.
If he was talking about the modern day family, that would pretty much be it.
But, there was another component to the first century family that he had to speak to.
Slaves.
Slaves were a major part of first century society.
They served the home and the society in integral.
Slaves would have made up around one-third of the population in a city like Ephesus that Paul was writing to .
Slavery no matter how you slice is horrible.
One person should never own another no matter what.
Paul never condoned slavery.
But to understand the direction that I am going to apply this, you need to understand something about the type of slavery that Paul was addressing.
First century slavery were different from the institution of slavery in North America during the 17th-19th centuries.
First century slaves generally were permitted to work for pay and to save enough to buy their freedom.
The type of slavery seen in North America were humans are trafficked is seen as sin in the New Testament.
Now, thankfully, we don’t have slave owners and slaves a members of the church.
Unfortunately, sex trafficking in America is far worse than it should be.
But, no form of slavery is condoned in society or in the church.
So, how does this apply to us?
When we look at what Paul says to the slaves and the masters, we begin to see how it applies.
He teaches each of them how to related to each other in a way glorifies God.
Remember that he is talking to believing slaves.
You can imagine that in their flesh they want to resent and rebel against their masters.
And, the Masters are believing slave owners.
You can imagine that in their flesh they want to take advantage of their authority and abuse it.
But, Paul calls both of that out and teaches them to honor God as they relate to each other.
That’s a similar kind of authority and submission to authority that we experience in the workplace today.
Bosses in their flesh will take advantage of employees as it serves their purposes.
And, employees often resent their bosses and resent their work.
They do it because they have to pay the mortgage, but not because they really believe in their jobs and want to help the boss or business prosper.
So, I’m going to apply this by asking of it, “How do we glorify God in our jobs?”
He first starts by speaking to believing slaves, so let’s think about that as it applies to believing employees.
I. Employee, approach your earthly job as a means to accomplish your Kingdom work.
(vv.5-8)
If you are a believer, God has a job for you to accomplish in his Kingdom.
You first and foremost have a Heavenly boss.
You have been saved to serve him.
As a matter of fact, the NT calls us now, not slaves to sin, but now we are slaves to God.
Why don’t we become bondservants of men? It’s because we no longer work first and foremost for any man.
We work for God to accomplish is work for us.
And he has work for us.
In Ephesians 2, if you remember, just as soon as Paul was finished explaining that we are saved by grace he tells us that God has prepared work for us to accomplish.
We all have work to do.
People ask me all the time, I just don’t know what that work is God wants me to do or I would do it.
Just like you should use your earthly role as a Father, Mother, Husband, Wife, or child to accomplish what God wants you to accomplish.
You can use your earthly work as a means to accomplish your heavenly assignments.
How do you do that?
A. Respect your boss in a way that marks you as a follower of Christ.
(v.5)
When you are working for your boss, you are to be mindful of your responsibilities to Christ.
You are ambassadors of Christ.
Your should serve your boss in a way that you look different than unbelieving employees.
You work different than unbelieving employees.
You work in a way that would cause your boss to notice that your faith makes you different than everyone else.
That glorifies God to your boss and in your profession.
What is the thing that makes the difference?
B. Work with a redeemed attitude.
(v.6)
1.
There is something we should do.
Work “with a sincere heart”- That means we are to work with a purity of intention.
We actually love doing our jobs.
We are not faking it.
He goes on to say in v.6
We shouldn’t just look like we care about our job, or for the business that we work for.
We should genuinely care about it.
When a believer has a job, they should give their very best to it all the time.
We should not put on facads that are there to please our boss, but secretly we are looking to do as little as possible and still keep our job.
Don’t be the person who rides the coat tales of other workers.
Certainly don’t be the employee who takes credit for other people’s work because it makes you look good in front of the boss.
That’s what Paul means when he calls us not to be people pleasers.
But, do your work “as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.”
(v.6) *There’s a saying that is used of employees when the boss is out, “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.”
We don’t want to just look like we care about our work.
We want to really care about it.
Why? because we realize that the big boss, the one we really care about pleasing is never is never away.
+If you think about it, Christians should be the very best employees any boss or business could hire.
-Some of you are saying, “Bradley, I hear what you are saying, but you don’t know my boss.
You don’t know how miserable they make it for me at work.
You work for a church where everyone are believers and never get upset about anything!”
Yeah, ok!
You can function in that environment when you understand you are not there simply to do a job for a boss.
You are there to do a job for your King.
Maybe it’s to make a difference in the life of your boss or the people beside you at work.
Believers have unique motivations for work.
Everyone else has lower motives for hard work than we do.
One person may need to make a paycheck.
They motivates their work.
Another person has grand goals of greater success and climbing the corporate latter.
That motives their work.
Anther person has dreams of untold wealth through the company.
That motivates their work.
What motivates our work?
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