Good morning, everyone. As we get started here today, would you pray with me? Lord, we just stand in awe that you would humble yourself and take on human flesh and come and dwell among us, that you would take on human flesh to serve us. Lord, to give us new life so that every tongue would confess and proclaim you as Lord. And as we open your word this morning, I pray that our hearts will be turned towards you. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them and turn to Ephesians chapter six. We're going to be looking at verses five through nine there this morning. And one of the first jobs that I ever had in high school was working at a garden center, one of those places that sells plants and mulch and flowers and watering cans and all this kind of stuff. I would collect shopping carts from the parking lot. I would put little price tags on everything. I would unpack deliveries. I would do deliveries. I would help people out to their car. I would water plants, do weeding. moved a crazy amount of much. I remember one time I literally was asked to move a pile of dirt from here to there. I still don't know what the point of that was. Now it wasn't prison, it wasn't a labor camp, even if it felt like that sometimes, especially the endless hours of watering and weeding and watering and weeding. So my favorite part of the day, of course, was break time. And during those breaks over a nice cup of tea and the sort of leftover biscuits, the cookies that they would let us eat that were out of date and they could no longer sell, we would spend those 10 minutes totally ripping on our manager. All the ways in which we thought he was incompetent or useless. or a bad leader, all the ways that we were frustrated with the work that he had assigned us to do or who he had assigned the work to do. We made fun of absolutely everything, his leadership style, his business acumen, the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he dressed. For 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon, and pretty much any other time that he wasn't looking, we would mock and belittle and otherwise grumble about our miserable lot in life. I was 17 years old, I was not a Christian, I was angry, I was apathetic about everything, and although I desperately needed the money, I deeply resented being told what to do, where to go, and when to do it. Honestly, I'm surprised it was never fired. I think I worked there three summers, which is astonishing. Now, you've been there, right? I'm sure you've all been there at one point or another. You know what I'm talking about. Perhaps that's even the way that you feel about your current position, right? Long hours, tedious, mind-numbing work, little to no positive feedback, low pay, no hope for change. Yeah. parented. Okay. It's not quite that bad, but I know how I want to respond in my flesh. I know how I have responded in the past in my flesh, but how does God want us to respond in those moments? How can I live out my calling as a follower of Jesus, even in a job that I may hate? And if I'm a boss or manage anyone, how does God expect me to treat those under my authority? What are my responsibilities to my employees? We're going to explore all these questions by looking at this next section in Ephesians 6 where Paul gives instructions to both slaves or bond servants, as he says in most of our translations, and masters. And what we're going to see is that God is less concerned with what you are doing than with how you are doing it. Whether you love your job or hate it, God wants you to do your duty as if it was for him and him alone. That's the central message of our passage today. Work unto the Lord, whatever your lot in life. So look with me here at Ephesians 6 verses 5 through 9. Paul says, bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart as you would Christ, not by the way of eye service as people pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a goodwill as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or free. 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. Now before we can even get to our first sort of main point in the sermon today we have to do some context because what on earth is a bond servant if you have the ESV or NKGV or something like that, it's going to say bond servant. But what is that? We don't have bond servants anymore. And how is that different from a regular servant or a slave? Now these are all different English words that we use to describe the one Greek word, doulos, that's up there on the screen. Now in Greek, that word doulos is really the opposite of the word for free. So it came to refer to anyone who was bound, obligated, or under the control of somebody else. In other words, someone who was not free, a slave. And in the ancient world, that was a lot of people. So close your eyes for a moment and imagine you're living in Rome at the time of Paul. You've got tall columns, white columns and beautiful buildings and white togas and sort of olive branches everywhere and the Colosseum, of course. And as you're walking around the city, you look around you and one in every three people around you is a slave, perhaps 60 million people in all. That's a lot of unfree people, more than we can really imagine today. But slavery was such a normal part of everyday life throughout the ancient world. And as such, few people, outside of probably the slaves themselves, really thought much about it. It was just an assumed way of life. Slaves drove the economy forward, not just through their work in mines and fields, but in businesses and homes as well. It was an all pervasive way of life. And it was so deeply ingrained in both Greek and Roman culture that it would have been hard to imagine life without it. But now within that big picture view of slavery, there was a lot of variety. And so this is why we have these different English words used in the Bible. Many slaves became such because they were prisoners of war or they were kidnapped. Others were born into slavery. That's just all they ever knew. Others were forced into slavery through poverty. Yet others sold themselves into slavery to help pay off debts. Many slaves were trapped in lives of hard, brutal labor. They're the ones who built the roads and these viaducts and these enormous buildings that still stand today. But other slaves might get paid for their work. Some were educated and developed skills and even advanced in their role, gaining responsibility for other people under their care. They might even work alongside lawyers or businessmen, teachers, administrators. So the word slave encompasses a wide variety of meanings from a from a prisoner toiling away in a field all the way to someone working as a household administrator. Our different English words like servant, bond servant, and so on, try to capture some of these differences. But in the end, honestly, I think it's best just to use the word slave, someone who was not free and they were bound to their master. Because despite the fact that many slaves did work normal jobs and therefore might not look much different than anyone else around them, to be a doulos, to be a slave, meant you were actually significantly different than those around you. A slave was, by definition, not free. As a slave, you had no real rights at all. You were at the mercy of your master. So the Bible scholar, Cecil Spick says this, a slave is an article of personal property that one buys, sells, leases, gives, or bequeaths that one can possess jointly. A slave can serve as a pledge or a mortgage. A slave is a thing or a body that is grouped with the animals. And so as you can imagine, abuse, mistreatment, beatings, death were not uncommon. How do we know all this? Because we have dozens of inscriptions and documents and wills and testaments and letters explaining how slaves were bought and bartered and trade and sold and handed down through wills and testaments and otherwise used as possessions. So you can see there are many similarities to the more contemporary forms of slavery that we're familiar with, even the slavery of the 17 and 1800s in the South. But there were some key differences. First, slavery in the ancient world had little to no basis in race. It had nothing to do with the color of your skin. Now not to say there was no discrimination against Jews, Christians, and other groups, but this was different from the kind of race-based slavery that we're familiar with today, you couldn't tell who was a slave and who wasn't a slave simply by the color of their skin. Second, there was the possibility of social advancement, as I already noted, and also some form of even freedom. So slaves could be set free by their master or even work to buy their own freedom, and this seemed to happen quite frequently, in fact. That's a huge difference from the more recent forms of slavery that we learned about in school. Now, even having said that, being set free wasn't really the same as being free. A freed slave was a freed man, not a free man. and most entered into a third class of people who were still obligated in many ways to their previous masters. Nevertheless, they were no longer slaves, so that was good. But in the end, to be a slave, however common it was at the time, was to be ultimately on the lowest rung of society, at the very bottom of the totem pole. And these slaves of the people that Paul now addresses in Ephesians 6. Men and women with almost nothing. Men and women who are inextricably bound to their masters. Men and women who have no legal rights or privileges. Men and women who are completely at the mercy of their masters. These are the people making up the early church in Ephesus. Not the rich and powerful, although they were there somewhere, I'm sure, but the poor, the needy, the weak, the downtrodden, the nobodies. What will Paul's word be to them? Well, I want Paul to sound more like the British politician, William Wilberforce, who in 1805 said, called slavery, the most detestable system of oppression and cruelty that ever disgraced a civilized nation. But for a number of reasons, Paul's main point to slaves is actually simpler. And in many ways, though, still far more profound. He says in a nutshell, obey as you would Christ. That's our first main point today. Obey as you would Christ. This is a far cry from the kind of fiery dialogue that we're perhaps used to hearing from Paul or that we would want to hear from Paul. But first of all, this is a marvel that he even addresses slaves at all. As I already said, slaves were property, not people. And in this sense, although Paul lacks the kind of rhetorical zeal of William Wilberforce, Paul assigns them dignity, value, and worth by communicating to them publicly in the church like that. He says, you have value, you have significance. Secondly, Paul doesn't try to argue that slavery is or was an institution of God. He doesn't ground it in the creation narrative. He doesn't refer back to the Ten Commandments. He simply regulates the way in which people are to operate within that system. And third, Paul undermines the power dynamics by emphasizing that both slaves and their masters alike owe their true allegiance to God. But what does Paul actually tell the slaves that they are to do? Well, first he says they are to obey their masters. Obedience is, despite everything else, still a non-negotiable. And slaves are not to use their newfound freedom in Christ as an excuse to ignore the commands of their masters. Slaves are supposed to do a job and they are to do it well. More importantly, Paul says that they should do their work with fear and trembling, meaning with reverence, with awe, with respect for their masters. Something I lacked completely as a teenager working in that garden center. Oh no, Paul doesn't say anything here about the masters earning their respect. He didn't say serve them with fear and trembling as long as they deserve it or earn it. Respect is owed to their masters because of their position. And the slaves are to perform their duties with a sincere heart, as Paul says, meaning they should be honest and forthright, genuine, not false. They shouldn't lie about their work or try to pretend they've done more than they actually have. They shouldn't cover up their mistakes or come up with lame excuses. In short, they should behave in the same way as they would behave towards Christ. You wouldn't lie to or steal from or try to cheat or deceive Jesus Christ. And so the same thing should be true of your earthly master also. Now, however bad your job may be today, you are not a slave, right? But these principles still apply to you. You should obey your boss, your manager, your teacher, your shift leader, your supervisor, whoever it is. Now you probably already do that to some extent, right? Because if you don't, you get suspended or you get fired, put on probation. But do you show them honor? Do you show them respect? Do you obey with sincerity? Students, do you do your schoolwork as if you were working for Christ? because that's what Paul calls you to do here. Look at verse six. Paul expands his thought further, warning slaves not to simply offer eye service, as he calls it, as people pleasers. how easy it would have been for slaves to obey when they were being watched and then to slack off when their master was no longer around. After all, they had no motivation, really, to do a good job. They're not gonna get promoted, usually. They're still gonna be a slave. But going through the motions isn't enough. It's like the kid who sort of cleans their room by just sweeping everything under the carpet or shoving it all in a cupboard. Or the student who pretends to be working hard while the teacher is looking, but the rest of the time is playing video games or texting. Instead, slaves and honestly all employees or students or workers should work, as Paul says, as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. I get it. You may feel no duty at all towards the company you work for or your teacher that you have to obey. Perhaps for you, they're simply a means to an end, a paycheck, a diploma, a degree, whatever it is. And working with all your heart and soul for a company that sees you as something little more than a cog in the machine may feel foolish and pointless at times. But imagine you were an actual slave. bound for some, most, or perhaps even all of your life to a master. Their situation was far worse than yours will likely ever be. And yet, still Paul challenged them to obey with sincerity and integrity and with all of their heart. You can quit any time that you want. You can seek out a different profession, a different career, a different industry, move to a different town, but whatever you end up doing should be done, as Paul says in verse seven, as to the Lord and not to man. This is the heart of his message. Your work is not your own, it belongs to Jesus. Look at the repetition in the first few verses. He says, obey your earthly masters as you would Christ, as bond servants of Christ, doing the will of God as to the Lord over and over again. Your work is about serving Christ, not your earthly master. In this way, Paul then does relativize the power of their earthly masters because he says slaves owe their ultimate allegiance not to some merely human authority, but to God himself. All their work is for God. Their best efforts are for God. Their time and energy is for God. Their integrity, their sincerity is all for God. And in a similar way, your work also is not about your earthly boss at all. The call to pursue excellence has nothing to do with the school motto or the company manual or your upcoming performance review. The call for Christians to pursue excellence at school or at work is first and foremost a way to bring honor and glory to your Lord and Savior. God wants your heart, your deepest level of commitment, not your lip service, because he sees all of it. It's sort of like those trucks, if you've seen them on the road, that have the sticker on the back saying, how's my driving? You've seen these, right? They're all over the place. If you're driving the company truck or van or whatever it is with the company logo emblazoned on it, you're representing that company to the world, right? So if you cut someone off in traffic or blow through a red light or or get caught speeding, that doesn't just reflect badly on you, that reflects poorly on the entire company. And so those stickers are intended to provide some accountability. Your boss may not be watching, but someone else is, always. And Paul's getting at the same idea here. Slaves, and by extension, all workers, represent not just their earthly master, but their heavenly father. And he is the one ultimately that is always watching, not just what you're doing, but how you're doing it. God sees the motivations of our hearts just as clearly as he sees the actions that we perform with our hands. So while we may easily be able to fool our teacher, our boss, our supervisor, whoever it is, we may be so proud of ourselves, like we totally pulled one over on him or her. We will never be able to fool God. So Paul says, work hard and with integrity as to the Lord. Now you may be thinking, okay, fine, but what about the slaves whose work was often ignored or overlooked? What about the slaves who were never set free or whose good efforts amounted to nothing? And what about my work today? I see little return for my sincerity, my integrity, my honesty at work. In fact, my charity and honesty and good work and Christian behavior often allows others to simply step on me on their way up the ladder or take advantage of me. What then? Now there are obviously no easy answers to these questions and there are many injustices which will never be made right this side of heaven. Evil will often prevail in the short term, but God is still in control. He is always in control and ultimately your good works will be rewarded. Paul says this in verse eight, look at verse eight. Whatever good anyone does, this he or she will receive back from the Lord, whether a bondservant, a slave, or free. Free or not, the work that you do for God will be rewarded. Maybe not here now. You may not see that fruit here. You may not get the raise or the promotion or the affirmation, but eventually, Although the Bible never explains what exactly those rewards are, right? There is clear testimony throughout scripture that there are heavenly rewards for our earthly work, which may sound odd to us because we have such a strong emphasis and focus on salvation by grace alone, not through our works, right? But it's not our salvation here that is earned by our good work. It's these heavenly rewards. And even those rewards are all of grace because who enables you to do that good work to begin with? Is it not God himself and the Holy Spirit working within you? So whether you're in school or at work, keep working hard as unto the Lord because he sees your work and one day you will be rewarded for it. But Paul's encouragements here are not just directed towards slaves, but at masters also. And in many ways, he has some stronger words here for those who are in authority over others. Look at verse nine. Paul says, masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him. These are surprisingly frank and blunt words to be addressed to a class of people who are not used to being told how to treat their slaves. And Paul does this in a public setting in front of the entire church. Now school, it's fall, right? August schools are starting up for most people right now. And there's usually some kind of opening assembly at the beginning of the school year, right? Whether you're in elementary school or high school or homeschool or college or whatever it is, Even at Greenhouse, Mr. SpaceX is going to give some kind of special opening doors message to the students, right? A time to rally the troops and encourage them and get them all fired up for the year ahead. And, you know, you've got to work diligently and work hard and here's all the great things that you're going to do. And a time to go over new policies and procedures and all of that. But imagine if At that same assembly, after addressing all the students, the principal or headmaster then turned to the teachers. and said, you also, you also should have that same kind of hardworking and diligent attitude because you, teachers, you're also serving Christ. And so you should work without reservation, without holding anything back, not just when the students or parents or me, the principal is watching, but at all times. I'm not interested in you saying or trying to pretend to do the right thing or to please me. I want you to be focused on pleasing God. And moreover, while I'm at it, stop threatening and berating the students. Because God is watching, he is listening, and he will judge you according to what you do and how you act. Can you imagine the principal or the college president or whoever standing up and saying that? I mean, it'd be shocking. The students will be all, can you believe he's saying that? I mean, the teachers would presumably be getting like a little flushed, a little twisting awkwardly in their chairs, right? Because this doesn't happen. When you're the boss, you bark the orders and they follow, they obey. Everyone else jumps at your command. Rarely does anyone ever tell you what you should be doing. But that's what Paul does here. He turns everyone's gaze towards the slave owners and calls them to a higher standard of behavior than perhaps anything they had heard before. So first, and most surprising of all, Paul demands that masters do the slaying for their slaves. Not that they should obey the slaves, he never says that, but that they should, like the slaves, work as for Christ, meaning they should behave in such a way that demonstrates their faith in Christ, that Christ has truly changed their lives. They should do the will of God from their hearts. meaning it should be internal, Christ-centered motivation that drives their work and their leadership. Now this would have sounded extremely odd in a culture where slave owners thought only about increasing their revenue and maximizing their profit. If a slave was simply a tool, an object, a machine to help you get your work done, then what mattered most was how you maximize how much usefulness you could get out of that object. but to do the same meant to see and treat the slaves as brothers and sisters in Christ. There was a spiritual leveling of the playing field. We can see this at the end of verse eight when Paul says God rewards both slaves and free men for their good works. Well, there might be all kinds of different divisions in society and culture. There could be no distinction in God's eyes, which of course is a significant theme throughout the letter of Ephesians, right? God has broken down this dividing wall of hostility, not just between Jews and Gentiles, but between all similar divisions in society, even between slaves and their masters. Secondly, Paul says masters are to stop threatening their slaves. Just as fathers must not provoke their children, masters must not use angry threats to control their slaves. As Paul says earlier in his letter, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you. Along with all malice, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. as God in Christ forgave you. That sounds great in the abstract, but now here in this household code, Paul is pressing this down into the practical realities of their lives, right? In the specific relationships where anger was going to be an ever-present reality. In parenting, as we talked about last week, and now here in the master-slave relationship, And Paul upends the cultural norms by demanding that anger have no place in Christian community. And we've already talked extensively about anger throughout our series in Ephesians because we are sinful people. We are easily provoked. And anger is a perennial problem in the Christian church as it is throughout our culture. So this is yet another plea from Christ to humble yourself. If you have an anger problem, to seek the help that you need to get that anger under control. With Christ's help, it is possible. And we have some books on the resource table out there. The pastors are available to meet and talk with you and disciple and walk with you through this. But whatever you do, don't let anger define your leadership any longer. Whether you're a husband, a parent, a teacher, a manager, whatever role you have, anger destroys everything and achieves nothing. Now the reason Paul gives for these commands would continue to be surprising for any slave owners at the time, because Paul basically says here, you're not the top dog. Look at the text again, he says, He says, who is both their master and yours in heaven. And there is no partiality with him. In other words, Paul tells the slave owners, you have a master also, and you are accountable to him, not just for your actions, but for your intentions also. Your anger will be judged by God. Your leadership will be judged by God. Your use or abuse of power will be judged by God. Because we will all one day be judged by God. And he doesn't care what title is on your door, or what degrees are behind your name, or what honors you've received from other people. or how much money and success you've achieved here on earth, because before our Heavenly Father we are all on the same playing field. There is no distinction. And that should be the defining mark of our leadership. Masters, employers, teachers, bosses, supervisors, whatever the role, You are under the authority of God, and you are to serve in that role for the glory of God. And the people you lead are not tools to be used, but people of God to be valued as precious in his sights. We are all then ultimately, in the end, slaves of Christ. That's the conclusion of the matter here, even Paul. Over and over again, he says, Paul, a servant, a slave of Jesus Christ. We are bound to him in life and in death. We owe him our absolute allegiance, our everything. If you're a Christian, you're not really free in the sort of libertarian go and do whatever you want in life kind of way that we often hear about in the broader culture. Whatever your earthly status, however rich or poor, before Christ, you are all slaves to sin. That's Romans 6 20. Before Christ came into your life, you were all slaves to sin. It may not have looked that way, it may not have felt that way to you, but it was your true spiritual state. That continues to be the true spiritual state of many people around us. But when Christ came into your life, he died to set you free from those bonds. He rescued you from the domination, the rule of darkness. Not so that you could then go off and do whatever you want. but so that you could now serve Christ instead. So if you've been saved, your life now belongs completely to Christ. You are, to use Paul's language, a slave of Christ. You owe him everything. You are bound to him and to his service for life. But far from being some horrible burden or restrictive chain on your life, This is an incredible gift. This is a good thing, something we should celebrate. This is the path to holiness and happiness. It's a way of blessing and peace. And that gift is something that no earthly boss, however bad, can ever, ever take away from you. That gift, that fruit of your sanctification that leads to eternal life is yours, secured forever in Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit who enables you now to live for Him wherever you may serve, janitor or CEO. You can serve Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit as you live for Him. He is yours, but more importantly, you are now His and His forever. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that you would help us to obey our earthly masters whoever they are, with fear and with trembling, with sincere hearts as we would serve and obey you, recognizing that we have been bought with a price, that we are no longer our own, that we owe everything in our lives to you and that we serve now as slaves of Christ. Help us through your Holy Spirit to live in this way, bringing glory to you in all that we do. In Jesus' name, amen.