The Boss

So we've had 2 weeks of hearing about work at church on a Sunday evening... So this is the third week running.  So how's it been for you? And now you're sat here about to hear another sermon about work, how are you feeling?  Most of you have probably been off work this weekend so its back to work in the morning.  How do you feel about that?

Maybe you're one of the positive two people here.  Maybe you're actually genuinely excited about the challenges tomorrow's work will bring, and you'll be up early and off to work with a tune on your lips and a spring in your step.

Or, I guess, you might be feeling great because you've got this week off, and even now you're trying your best to hide that smug glow as you look at the rest of us dragging ourselves towards tomorrow!

More likely, if you're anything like me, you're wishing I didn't have to mention work.  You've got that Sunday-evening feeling - that deep seated dread because you know Monday's coming and there's no escape.  A friend of mine actually used to especially spend time praying that Jesus would come back every Sunday evening, in the hope that he wouldn't have to go to work the next day!

But seriously, it's a real problem isn't it?  If we're honest with ourselves we do often feel really negative about our work.  At its worst we're like snoopy here - hating every minute of the working week and living entirely for the weekend.  But it's such a massive part of life.  As Rob so cheerily reminded us last week, the average person spends 97464 hours at work during their lives...

That's over 4000 days.  Over 11 years spent at work.  And that's just working 9-5 5 days a week.  Lots of people here work more than that, some a lot more, whether that's doing night shifts, working weekends, or staying on at work late in the evenings. And what if you never really leave your work at all? I mean - my wife works as a full time mum, so I reckon she must spend almost all her waking hours working at looking after our daughters.

But if it's such a massive part of our lives - why do we feel so rubbish about it so much of the time?

Well in tonight's passage in Colossians, that X read for us earlier, Paul is keen to help us see that we needn't feel like that about work.  In fact work is amazing, and can bring real joy as we bring glory to God through it.  So if you haven't already, turn to page X in the Bibles - Colossians chapter 3, and we're focusing on verses 23-24.

And as you do that let me pray...

Now, as we look at these verses, I've got 2 headings to try help us get to grips with them, and they are: Work for your boss and How to work for your boss.  Work for your boss and How to work for your boss.

So, let's get started... Work for your boss

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

Now, you may have noticed that these verses fall in the middle of a section talking to slaves and masters - from verse 22 to chapter 4 verse 1.  People can get pretty uncomfortable about that, because Paul doesn't condemn slavery.  But surely its unbiblical and wrong isn't it?  Yes.  It is.  And the entire anti-slave-trade movement was started by and got its greatest momentum from Christians who were acting in line with the clear teaching of the Bible that rules out slavery.  But before we put a line through these verses, we need to see that Paul is addressing a bigger point here.  Here, in Colossians chapter 3 Paul is focussing on different specific areas of life, and how the gospel affects them - and that includes how the gospel affects the Christian slaves and slave-masters among those receiving the letter.

We're not slaves today, although we might feel like it, but these verses still have a lot of important things to say to us as workers.

Although it's only a couple of verses Paul makes it very clear who we should be working for.  In the space of 40 odd words he repeats it 3 times.  It's not the company boss or your supervisor, the ward sister or the head teacher.  It's not even the council or local government authority.  No.  We are to "work for the Lord."

Now, this might sound like a silly question but, why?  Why should we work for the Lord?  After all, it's our employers who pay us, so we owe them our work don't we?  Isn't it just being over-spiritual to suggest that we should work for God?  Can't we just accept that there are some things like work, which we just have to get on with so that we can serve God with the spiritual parts of life, when we come to church, or whatever?

Well, it won't surprise you to hear that Paul's answer to that question is 'No'!  And there are two reasons for that.

The first is this:

We should work for the Lord, precisely because he's the Lord.  

Have a look back a page to Colossians 1, verse 15:

He (that's Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him...

This is the Lord.  He's the creator of everything.  He made you.  He made your boss.  All authorities were created not only by him but for him.  There'd be no such thing as your boss if it weren't for the way Jesus ordered things, and the reason he created any boss was for his glory.  Which means he's miles above any other authorities we might think we serve.  He's the real boss, and we owe him our alliegance.  So that's the first reason: work for the Lord because he truly is the Lord.

But that's not all.  The second reason Paul gives is this:

We should work for the Lord because, as Christians, he is our Lord.

Have a look at chapter 1 verse 19:

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.  Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because ofyour evil behavior.  But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

There is a default position, says Paul, where far from serving the Lord, we're alienated from him.  Far from having him as boss we're his enemies.  We rebel against him and, as Paul puts it in Romans 1, worship and serve created things.  In other words, we make other things boss, where only Jesus deserves to be.

Now, imagine for a minute that you're the managing director of BP.  There's a bit of an issue in the gulf of Mexico with an oil slick you need to get sorted.  So you put hundreds of your best people to work on it.   But they're just not doing what you ask.  They're just sitting around chatting, or updating their facebook page.  Rather than following your instructions they do the complete opposite, which means that the situation, and your company are going downhill fast.

Imagine you have a chat with a friend and ask his advice.  He says, "You really need to put your foot down - maybe even sack a few people - really show them who's boss.  That's the only way they'll recognise your authority."

So how did Jesus deal with our rebellion against his authority.  How did he "show them who's boss"? 

By dying for us.  He reconciled us to God through his death.

Just stop and drink that in for a minute.

The Lord - the all powerful creator to whom we owe all alliegance, stooped to become one of his creatures as a baby born in some obscure backwater town in Israel.  He grew up to become a man who died in shame, naked on a cross, and then he rose again in power.  That's how the Lord of the universe showed us he's boss.  And he did that to reconcile us - that is, to restore the relationship we're supposed to be in - with him as Lord, serving him in all of life.  So, says Paul, work for the Lord, not just because he's Lord, but because if you trust in his death to forgive your rejection of him, he's back where he's supposed to be - He's your Lord.

Do you see the implications of that?  The only right response to the undeserved love of Jesus is to centre everything around him, and serve him first in all of life.  Including your work.

That's why Paul says, in chapter 3 verse 22, we should work for the Lord since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.

This isn't about payment for hard work.  No - Paul says we should work for Jesus because we already know we'll receive a reward.  The payment has already been made.  And if you're wondering exactly what Paul means by inheritance, have a quick look at chapter 1 verse 12, where he says that God has:

...qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.

In other words, Paul is saying, "look guys, Jesus has already done the real work - he's already paid the price that means your reward is certain.  Your inheritance is that you'll be members of his kingdom forever - so now go and live and work for your king."

Which brings me to my second heading:

How to work for your boss.

If our ultimate boss is Jesus, how should we approach our work for him? 

Well, turn back to chapter 3 with me and look up just a few verses earlier from verse 18:

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favour, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord...

It's clear isn't it?  Paul lists work as an integral part of our all of life service in response to the gospel.  That's how God sees it.

That's massively important, because if we get this right, it will completely transform the way we think and feel about work, which in turn, will transform the way we do it.

So the first step to approaching our work for our boss rightly is to recognise that God sees your work as just one part of your all-of-life service to him.  That's important, because we live in a culture, even within our church, that rightly praises hard work.  But if we get the emphasis wrong then we end up with nothing but hard work.  Have a look down that list of roles in those verses.  Wives.  Husbands.  Children.  Fathers.  Slaves.  Masters.  Paul encourages us to do them all in a way that is fitting, or pleasing, or out of reverence to the Lord.  But here's the thing:  How many people here can count themselves in only one of those categories?

Not many I'm guessing.

And that's the point.  Because none of those things is your primary role.  If you're a Christian, then Jesus is your Lord.  That means your role as a Christian comes before anything else. You're not a husband or wife, but a Christian husband or wife.  You're not a parent, but a Christian parent.  You're not a worker, be that plumber, teacher, secretary, engineer, doctor, minister, or whatever, but a Christian worker.  And so on.  We can't allow any of these secondary roles to stop us from doing any of the others for the Lord.  If you get to the point where you're struggling to be a husband or wife or parent, as is fitting to the Lord, because you're spending all your time at work then you need to reassess.

So that's the first thing Paul wants us to learn about how to work for your boss: God sees your work as just one part of your all of life service to him.

The second thing to say is that God sees your work as an equal part of your all-of-life service to him.  Whilst we musn't let work become everything, we also musn't let it become a less important area of life than others. 

We do that when we slip into seeing work as merely a means to an end.  Whether that's buying food or paying the mortgage, or supporting our family or even giving to church.  Now don't get me wrong, it's good to be working hard to buy food (as we heard in Thessalonians last week - if a man shall not work, then he shall not eat.)  Equally, it's good to pay your mortgage, or support your family, and God commands that we should be generous with our money and give cheerfully.  But the problem is that if we see work like that, then something else becomes Lord, do you see? If your primary reason for working becomes anything other than serving God in and through what you actually do each day, then they become the things you're really working for.  You're serving your stomach to buy food, or serving your possessions to pay your mortgage, or serving your family, or even serving your church.  They might even be good things to serve in themselves, but they should never be the ultimate thing we serve.  The amazing truth Paul's saying here is that the very things we do at work can and should be service to God.  In other words our work itself is worship.  So there's no difference in so called 'spirituality' between what we're doing here at church, and what you'll be doing tomorrow morning.  It's all service to our Lord in response to his grace in the gospel.

I know I sometimes feel frustrated at work because I feel I'm not serving God as I do it - even that it's stopping me from serving him properly.  And if you identify with that at all, I think it's because we can get our emphasis wrong on what serving God looks like.  If we think we only really serve God when we're doing 'spiritual' things like sharing the gospel, or reading the Bible or praying and then find ourselves having to spend a large part of the day working at a computer or something, then we feel we're not serving God.  Even if you're in a job where you do get to talk to actual people, the focus of conversation is work.  Far from serving God as we work, it just seems to get in the way.

But what Paul says here means that I am serving Jesus even as I work.  Whether that's teaching a child about the solar system, treating a patient with an infection, driving a delivery van, designing sewerage flood relief schemes or whatever.  God sees your work as an integral part of your all-of-life service to him.

We need to see that this also means that there's no such thing as a hierarchy of work.  In our middle classed minds we often think of it as church ministry at the top, then professions that involve working with people like medicine or teaching, then everything else (and maybe computing in fourth).  Well, have a look again at verse 22:

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favour, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord...

As far as work is concerned, Paul is talking most immediately to slaves.  That means he's picturing the most demeaning jobs you can imagine.  For example, there were slaves in Rome who were owned by the state to work in public latrines. There was no such thing as loo roll then, so they would be made to stand with a sponge on a stick in front or behind the toilets, and clean people up after they'd been.  Yet here Paul says "slaves - whatever you do - work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord." All work is valuable in God's sight, because all work is service to him.

And the amazing thing about this design of work, is that he places us next to people so that we can have opportunities to serve him by sharing the gospel with them, even whilst we serve him by doing our work.  And what's more, if you're in paid work, then you get paid for what you do to serve God, and can go and serve him more with that payment!

He's designed it so that in everything we can serve him as Lord.

If we really begin to see our work that way, then far from feeling frustrated or even despairing about monday morning, we'll begin to approach our work with joy.  As Paul says, we'll begin to work at it with all our heart. Rather than approaching work like snoopy, everything we do, from the most mundane task to the most exciting challenge will be part of our response of love to Jesus as it overflows from our heart.