Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Our Work and Our Character

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

The gospel affects how you do your work, how you do your job, and how you pursue your vocation. How does that affect your work?  If we’re going to understand what Paul says in this passage, we need to look at 1) some background work and historical context, 2) practical principle number one, 3) practical principle number two, and 4) the power to carry them out.  This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 17, 2010. Series: The Gospel and the World. Scripture: Ephesians 5:21, 6:5-9. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

We want to share a special free resource with you during the season of Lent. For the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday, Gospel and Life would like to send you a daily devotional. Sign up to receive this daily email at gospelandlife.com slash lent. Now here's Dr. Keller with today's teaching. The Scripture reading is taken from Ephesians 5, verse 21, and 6 verses 5 through 9. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you,

but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven. And there is no favoritism with him. This is God's Word. The sermons this fall have to do with the gospel in the world. The sermons this fall have to do with the gospel in the world. What we're asking is what happens when you take the gospel out of the private life and out of the church into the world?

What happens? And one of the answers, which we're looking at last week and this week, is that the gospel affects how you do your work, how you do your job, how you pursue your vocation. In this passage, we have Paul saying, if you are a believer in Christ, how does that affect your work? How does that affect your work, if you're a worker, how does that affect your work, if you're manager, how does that affect your work? And that's what we're going to explore tonight. This particular passage is not so much a high lofty preaching. It's more of a down to earth practical teaching. It's not inspirational, it's more practical, and has resulted it's incredibly useful.

But if we're going to understand it, I think we need to do a little background work. Once we do a little bit of background work to understand to help us, I think put what is being said here into historical context, then we're going to see two principles and a power. In other words, background work, practical principle one, practical principle two, and the power to carry them out. Background, principal, principal power, okay? Background.

Why do we do background? Well, when the modern reader starts a text and it says, slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, that raises a few red flags. And they, of course, there are plenty of people who look at passage like that today and say, see the Bible condone slavery.

It was just an op-ed piece in the New York Times a week or so ago, in which it said, well, of course, the New Testament condone slavery. Look, it says, slaves will pay your masters. And even worse than that, back in the mid-1800s in the South, particularly in America, these texts were used to support slavery. They said, well, of course, look, it says, it's a pleasure to be your master, so it's okay. There can't be anything wrong with it. So, we have to do a little bit of background work really quickly to even read this and get

anything out of it. And any commentary you ever read, and commentaries are trying to help you understand a text of the Bible and they try to put it in the historical cultural context of the time. So you understand who ever was writing it, what that person was saying, and it just helps you understand it better. Every commentary says, when you read this passage, you need to keep two things in mind. The first is that Paul, and if you read all of Ephesians, you'll see that Paul wrote this letter to address a group of Christians on Sunday morning when they're gathered for worship.

And they were gathered in households. In fact, what you have in Ephesians 5 and 6 is what is called a household code because it first describes it in the around Ephesians 5, 22. It talks about husbands and wives, lived like this. Then it says parents and children lived like this. And now it says slaves and masters lived like this. And the reason Paul was doing that was because that was a household. Households were large and they had in them spouses, children, and domestic servants who lived in the household. And so what Paul was actually doing was he was addressing households. He was addressing the extended family households of the day. And you can tell by reading the text that Paul was not saying this.

He wasn't saying, let's get together as Christians and decide, what do we think of first century Greco-Roman cultural institutions? What do we think of a church, as a church, about the social structures of society? No, he wasn't doing that. What he was actually saying is, tomorrow morning, on Monday, how will you live in those institutions in a way that's distinctive because you believe the gospel? He was here to talk about how do you live in these in this society, not, or what are we going to do about the institutions? That's just not what he's talking about. There's plenty of

places in the Bible that talk about how do we look at social structures and how do we look at injustices and social institutions, but this is one of the places, which Paul's not condoning slavery but he's not criticizing and he's talking to people, how are you going to live tomorrow now that you're Christians? So he's actually just not, he's not condoning slavery, he's really not addressing the institution, but here's the other thing, it's very important. One of the questions always comes up. I'm reading a book by Princeton professor, an African Princeton professor about moral revolutions and is a long chapter on the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in the 1830s.

And he says what is pretty well known that who led the charge for abolition? Quakers and evangelical Christians. The evangelicals are the great awakenings of this 18th century and the Quakers led the way and said, we have to abolish slavery, it's absolutely wrong, we've got to stop it. So the question is, if Christians rose up, you know, the last couple hundred years and said, we have to stop slavery. Why didn't the early Christians rise up? And so we have to stop all slavery in the Greco-Roman world. And what the commentary says, the answer is,

you have to understand how different slavery was. It was a very different institution. I wasn't saying it was a good institution, it was very different. And let me just, what do you think of when you think of slavery? Let me tell you what the situation was at the time. At that time, the servants that Paul was talking about, slavery was not based on race.

Secondly, it was never permanent, it was about 10 or 15 years long. Thirdly, it wasn't based on kidnapping, systematic going out and capturing people, and then having them, you know, slaves for life. It was, most slaves were captives from the wars, and if your country lost, you were a soldier, you were brought into, be a slave for a number of years, and that's the way it was done. Or indentured servanthood. So it wasn't race-based, it wasn't permanent. It wasn't, it wasn't based on kidnapping, and slaves had rights. Did you know that at the time that Paul was talking, was writing, you could go to court against your master.

If you could make a complaint against your master for an injustice, slaves had rights. They actually could own property. They could actually own other slaves. And then you begin to realize that not that it was a great institution, but it was a very different institution. It was really quite more diverse and quite in some ways not as monolithic or as brutal as the slavery that Christians rose up and said, this has got to end.

And as a result, Paul, on a Sunday, is not saying, how do we abolish something, which isn't probably what you and I are thinking of when you think of slavery anyway. But he's saying, how can you live in it? You got that? And even though that institution, the Greco-Roman First Century slavery was nowhere near as monolithic and as brutal as the slavery became later. Even so, I want to show you what FF Bruce, the great 20th century Bible scholar, said, that when you read what Paul says to masters and to servants in Ephesians, in collotions, in Filimin and other places, FF Bruce says, Paul brings us into an atmosphere in which the institution of slavery could only wilt and die.

The attitudes that Paul demands of Christians, the attitudes that the gospel creates in Christians, means even that kind of very different sort of institution of slavery, inside the Christian community just couldn't last. Paul set it up for failure. Paul set it up to will and die, and by the way we know that it did. Having said that, one more thing by way of background, I'm sorry we have to do that, I hate to take five minutes like this, but there we are, because you can't get anything out of a text like this unless you deal with the historical and cultural difference. We're on the other side of the African slave trade,

and therefore we can't possibly read this text the way the original people read it. But I'm trying to help you. However, what if somebody out there says and you might say, okay, that's helpful. That was helpful. But what relevance is instructions to first century Greco-Roman slaves to me. If the distance is that great, you're right. 2,000 years, a very great distance. But Paul's instructions to the first century slaves

are not relevant to me, but I'm here to say, that's not true. Paul's instructions are relevant to you because they're the first century slaves. Back in the 70s, a man named Stud's Terkel, I like that for a name, wrote a great book called Working, it was a survey of work in America, it's way dated now, but it was really quite a well written book and in the introduction he just interviewed people and talked about what is it like to work in America? Listen to this. Stutt's Turkel said this in the introduction. He says this book, being about work, is by

its very nature about violence. To the spirit as well as to the body, it's about ulcers and accidents. It's about nervous breakdowns and kicking the dog. It's about above all daily humiliation. To survive the day is tramp enough for the walking wound to the mung the great many of us. What he's saying there, yeah, we don't have slavery in America. And yet, some people always experience work as humiliating, grinding drudgery. So some people, that's all their work is, and all people sometimes experience work is that. Work is still hard, work is terribly hard.

In fact, work is always frustrating to a degree, and a lot of work is incredibly frustrating, and humiliating, and brutalizing. Work is about violence, work is about accidents and ulcers, it's about frustration and kicking the dog. And we all know that and you know that. Work is about overwork and being pressed and not making enough money even though you're working like crazy. It's about humiliation, it's about frustration. Therefore, what is Paul going to say that will help us be have meaningful, satisfying work lives? But here it's a simple fact of history that the early church

was filled with slaves and servants. They flooded in, why? Because Paul and the gospel gave them something that enabled them, in spite inspired their humiliation, inspired their drudgery, inspired the grinding, crushing nature of their work. First century slaves, the gospel gave them something that made their work life meaningful

and satisfying and sustainable, bearable. And if he, what he had, if Paul's prescription can help them, why couldn't it help you? Of course it can help you. This, what Paul is saying here, is relevant to you because it was originally given to first century slaves and it worked. Okay, now what are those two things that Paul gives them? Two incredibly important things that enabled people even in that kind of work situation to experience meaningful satisfying, bearable work lives. And here's the first principle, verse 7, Servalheartedly as serving the Lord. I know the English says, serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord,

but actually in the Greek it says, serve wholeheartedly. When you're serving your masters, when you're at work, when you're working for your boss, it's actually working for the Lord. All work is a calling. All work is a calling from the Lord. All work serves the Lord. Now, a little background again. I told you, perhaps, that I just say something about this, that many Greek and Roman writers wrote household codes. That is, codes of conduct for spouses, for husbands and wives, for masters and

servants, for parents and children, household codes. And that's what Paul is doing here. He actually has them in Ephesians, he has them in Timothy, he has them in Colossians. They're very well known. But what the commentators will tell you is that most when the Greek and Roman people addressed members of the household, they didn't even talk to the slaves. They addressed the masters. What's amazing here is Paul addresses the slaves. In fact, he addresses them first.

In fact, he talks to them more than he talks to the masters. He's treating them with dignity. He's treating them as if they were responsible agents. See, the other writers said, well, what even talk to slaves? If you want to regulate what happens in the household, you talk to the masters because the slaves just do what they're told. That's not how Paul sees it. Paul treats the slaves with dignity, by even addressing them.

Secondly, look at what he says to the masters. Do you realize how revolutionary this was? He says, and masters, treat your slaves in the same way. In the same way? What do you mean the same way? Do you know what that means? And the most common thing is go crazy at that. Because the same way is what?

And you go back up into the verses before and what he's trying to say with fear and respect. You must respect them more than that. He says, do not threaten them. You know the Roman, the great Roman writer, Seneca said, always treat your slaves as enemies. That's all they know, power, fear, always treat your slaves as enemies. And Paul says, if you're a master and you're a Christian, don't you dare. Never threaten.

And then he says, since you know that you are a slave too. And from God's point of view, you are unequal. So that's what that all means. Look, it says, and know that he who is both their master and yours, view, you are unequal. So that's what that all means. Look, it says, and know that he who is both their master and yours, that's leveling the playing field. You've got a master, and that and your slave's got a master, and there is no favoritism with him. Literally, it says he is not a respecter of persons.

And that was the Greek, there was an idiom that said, in God's eyes, masters, you are absolute equals with your servants. Now, this is revolutionary, this is crazy. This is the reason why FF Bruce said that the gospel brought people into a situation in which even that kind of moderate form of slavery could only wilt and die. It is so far from Seneca saying treat your slaves as if they're enemies.

It's so far from Aristotle, by the way, who says some people deserve to be slaves. Some people are born to be slaves. It's absolutely different. But what does it mean? It's not just that people have dignity. It says, when you serve wholeheartedly, and don't forget how many of these jobs were, how dirty these jobs were, how humiliating

many of these jobs were, the drudgery of them, but you're serving the Lord. All work is a calling from God. Peter O'Brien, commentator on Ephesians says this, is, when Paul says, do your work serving the Lord, as is what the commentator says, ultimately then the distinction between the secular and the sacred breaks down. Every task, however, quote unquote secular, however quote unquote, mean-eal looks, it falls within the sphere of Christ's lordship. Martin Luther got a hold of this, and it was really the other principle of the

reformation. Some of you may, you know, if you know much about the reformation where Martin Luther and some other reformers said, we're going to reform the church, okay? What was the battle cry of the Reformation? Most of you probably have heard it was you're saved by faith and grace, not by works, not by good works. But that was only one of the battle cries. You know what the other battle cry was? It's what Luther called the priesthood of all believers, but what he meant was this.

Luther was a monk and for years he'd been told that monks and nuns and priests, people who took holy orders, they had a calling from God. They were called by God. Everybody else was just out there working. Everybody else was just doing profane kind of stuff. We are the ones who have been called by God. And then he read texts like this and he says, wait a minute. This text means Luther said in one of his famous passages, the milkmaid has his honorable calling, as the priest and the preacher. And why would that be? Now, I don't want to redo what we talked about last week. But last week we had a sermon on faith and work and we looked at the goodness of creation in Genesis 1 and we said this, all work, all work is necessary for human flourishing. Sure, some work is lower skill and doesn't get paid as much, some work is higher skill.

And of course, in our worldly pecking order, this is good work, this is bad work, but not in God's. There is no favoritism with him. He is not a respecter of persons. And so we said last week, put it another way, unless somebody cleans the countertops and your apartment, you're going to die. It's called hygiene. So either you have to sweep your floor,

either you have to sweep your floor, either you have to wash your sheets, either you have to clean the bathroom and clean, either you have to do all that nasty dirty, low-skilled domestic work, we have to pay somebody else to do it, but don't you know if it doesn't happen, you're going to die. Why? Because it's necessary for human thriving, for human life. And it doesn't pay very well, but it's crucial. See, all the work is crucial, and therefore all work is a calling by God, from God, because God made this material world,

and He made the human community, and He gave us our different gifts and abilities. And as a result, Luther said, all work is God's calling. Now, that's the first of the two practical principles, and I would say, I mean, it has very far reaching, very far reaching implications. Let me just give you a couple. One of them is this. When you start to think of your work, whatever it is, not just as a way to make money,

but as a calling by God, it makes you say, well, no, wait a minute. If it's really God calling me to do this, how am I going to do this? I'm going to do this differently. Am I not? Dorothy Sayers puts it like this, interestingly enough, in her little essay, Why Work, she says, in nothing has the church, so lost her hold on reality as in her failure to understand and respect the so-called secular vocation. The church has allowed, as a result, the secular work of the world, the church has allowed work in religion to become separate departments. And therefore, the church has astonished that work in the world has been turned to purely selfish and destructive ends.

And also, is astonished that many have become uninterested in religion, now listen to this. But is this astonishing? How can anyone remain interested in a religion or a faith, which has no concern for nine tenths of his or her life? There's a question. What good is a faith? What good is a church? What good is a faith? What good is a church? What good is a religion? They can't tell you anything about except, here's how you have to live in here.

What about the 9th tense of your life, which is your work? There's no relevance. Within the church, one is because the church says, what's important is you come in here and you work in here and you do things in here. And instead of saying, but you need to learn how to do your work and how to see your work, whatever it is has God's calling with dignity. And honestly, she's right about the church, by the way. She's right about the church.

One of the reasons we have the Center for Faith in Work is we're trying to change that in our community. Does the Bible, does the Christian faith have anything Center for Faith and Work is we're trying to change that in our community. Does the Bible, does the Christian faith have anything to say about nine tenths of your life? Yes, why? Because that's God's call. And when as soon as you start to conceive of it, it's God's call. You begin to think of it differently. It's estimated that most of us spend half of our waking hours at work. How does the wisdom of the Bible apply to our careers? In other words, how can our

work connect with God's work and help us make our vocations more emotional? In his book Every Good Endeavour, Tim Keller draws from decades of teaching on work and calling to show you how to find true joy in your work as you serve God and others. The book offers surprising insights into how the Christian view of work can provide the foundation of a thriving professional and balanced personal life. Every good endeavor is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share Christ's love with more people around the world. Just visit Gospel and Life.com slash give. That's Gospel and Life.com slash give.

Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. One other quick thing, though, by the way, is if you believe this first principle, that all work is God's call, watch how you treat people. R.C. Sproul, the minister wrote a book some years ago called In Search of Dignity, and he was wrestling with these passages. This passage says, all work is God's calling. Other passages say, everybody has made the image of God. Other passages say that God is a God who emptied himself of his glory to come down to earth and go to the cross. Other doctrine say, you're saved by grace not by work.

So the doctrine that you're saved by grace not by work, the doctrine that all work is a calling, whether it's housekeeping, and domestic, or investment banking, or rocket science. All work is God's call. Everybody's just a sinner saved by grace. There's no respect to your persons. We're all slaves to him.

God himself does not hold on to his glory and his status, but empties himself and comes down and lives with the simple people. All these doctrine say, don't you dare think because you are a highly trained professional that somehow you're better than the doorman. Now you should treat them with less respect, like a piece of the furniture. Is your theology affecting the way in which you're understanding of all work being God's calling, affecting the way you work like that?

So our C-Sprull was wrestling with this, and he went to see somebody at a hospital, and he realized as he was sitting there for a fairly long time and looking around, he realized that there was a cast that's at the hospital, I'm not trying to pick on those of you in the medical profession, but here it is. He says there were the top doctors, and there were the next doctors, and there were the residents, and there were the nurses, and there were the, you know,

administrative, and then there were certain staff and finally there was housekeeping. And he realized there was a pecking order, and there was all sorts of ways in which people in the different cast let the people below them know they were below them At one point he remembers seeing a nurse that had been talking to some doctors and of course She was very ten of them very alert and one second later she walked down the hall and a man who was coming up from housekeeping He was pushing a cart filled with soiled linens and he was pretty cheerful and he looked at her He raised his head to look at her She lowered her fit her her eyes looked at the floor and walked right on by, of course, I'm not going to deal with you.

I know where you are. I'm in a different cast than you. And R.C. Sproul says, oh my word. This is America, right? This isn't the place where we have a cast system. This isn't the place where we have masters and servants. We're all equal here. That's not how the human heart works. The human heart is filled with self-justification. The human heart is always trying to find a way of getting a leg up unless the gospel of grace just bleaches that out of you. Have you taken to heart the fact that all work is dignity, all workers have dignity, all work is the calling

of God. Second practical principle. It's this one. Slaves Obey your earthly masters. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eyes on you but like slaves of Christ doing the will of God from your heart. Let me tell you how pinn- how radical that is. Here Paul is relativizing all human bosses, all human masters, all human careers. He's saying to the servants, I want you to show respect and I want you to do a good job for your master, but I don't want you to ever think that he's your real master. He's not your real master. He's only a earthly master. He's only a master in the earthly realm.

He's not your real master. Now how important is that? I'll tell you why. Look, when I was one of the things that I'm sorry, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I pity some of you younger people, you know what, I pity some of you, younger people, you know why? Because when you have summers off from your school, you have what they call unpaid internships.

When I was your age, we didn't have unpaid internships. If you were in school, which meant you were in a, or graduate school, you were in the white collar world, but in the summers, I worked in factories. That was the blue collar world. And it was good for me. Because I noticed something, the problem in the white collar world is overwork. Everybody is so anxious, everybody is career oriented, everybody is trying to make it

up, everybody is pushing, everybody is under such pressure, overwork, overwork. Why? Because career means everything, it is our identity, we want to do well. The problem in the factories is underwork. I remember one summer, I never forget this one summer, I spent two or three days really, the supervisor came and gave me something to do and I worked with all my might. Did a good job. Third day, one of the reggers came and put his arm around me and say, son, you know, if

you get the supervisor the impression that you can get that much work done in a day, it's going to make it very hard on those of us who are going to be here for 40 years. We're not going to let you do it like that. You know, when you're 24 years old, I was fair, say a call about it and I said, how dare you? What's a matter with you people? This is what's wrong with this country. When I think about it, it made a certain amount of sense.

But here's the problem. Paul is pointing this out. Is with blue-collar people, they don't particularly like the job as much. They very often despise their management. And the real problem is they only do what they have to do. They only work when they're eye of the managers upon them. And what Paul comes along with, and he gives a revolutionary principle that says, I want

you to work for Christ. I want you to work for the Lord. Those people are not your bosses. He's your boss. Now, what that does is two things. On the one hand, it destroys overwork. Oh, yes, it does. It destroys overwork. Oh, yes, it does. It destroys overwork.

Down to verse 8, you know that the Lord will reward everyone for the good He does, whether it's He's flavor-free. What's that mean? If you do your work, you put in a good day's work, but people aren't noticing, or you're not having a breakthrough,

or you're not being successful, or you're not getting the job you want, or you're not getting into the school, you want, oh my goodness, who cares? All of what matters is the Christ thinks. He's the only boss who's going to be around a million years from now. All the rest of them will be gone. All the professors will be gone. All the boss will be gone. All the banks will be gone.

All the bank accounts will be gone. He's the only one who cares what they think. You see, all that matters is what Jesus thinks. Just do your best and relax. And it's a remedy for overwork, but on the other hand, what about underwork? What about the people who despise their job or despise their boss and they're just doing what's necessary?

You know what he's saying to them? He's saying, hey, your real supervisor is always watching. And therefore, you must always do a good job. You must always work with all your might. You must always work wholeheartedly. And so this second principle, and that is, don't look at your career as your real career, and don't look at your boss as your real boss. You remember the place where Jesus, it's in Luke chapter five, where he says

to the fisherman, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, leave your nets and follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And I remember when I, years ago, when I read that, I remember thinking, okay, so what does this teach us? Oh, what it teaches us is that everybody should leave their jobs and go into mission work. Once you believe in Jesus, I remember, there was a time which

I wondered was that, no, no, here's what he's saying. I think this is what he's saying. Of course, that's what happened to them, but I like you to read it like this. What he's saying is, I've got a fishing beyond fishing. He says to artists, I've got an art beyond art. He says to business people, I've got a business beyond business. He says, put your, I want you to rest your heart in real wealth. I want you to rest your heart in real beauty. I want you to rest your heart in, I want you to rest your heart in me and that will enable you to walk away sometimes from your nets. See, a lot of us, especially in the white collar world, we can't walk away

from our work to care for our families. We can't put our nets down in order to take time for our bodies and our souls. We can't, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we've got a catch fish. And Jesus was saying, yeah, go ahead and catch fish. But first I want you to see that I've got a, there's a fishing beyond your fishing. There's an art beyond your art. There's a wealth beyond your wealth. And if you set your heart in that, if you rest your heart in me and you see it in other, if I'm the real career, I'm the real master, I'm the real job, I'm the real supervisor, I'm the real manager, I'm the only master. Don't let anything else master you or define you or drive you.

Wow, revolutionary. It means that all Christians, blue collar to white color, you know, to most technically, you know, advance to the simplest, menial pushing of the broom, will always do work really hard and will always do work really well, but will not engage in overwork. I mean, if we understood this perfectly, and we would be the most valuable workers in the world, maybe we wouldn't be actually quite as productive, maybe not quite as productive. I tell you, but in the long run we would be by the way, John White, years ago I read a book by John White, who was a psychiatrist, and when he was studying to be a psychiatrist, he was a Christian, by the way, who wrote a book

and had it called the fight. And in the book, there was a chapter called Deliverance from Drudgery that had a big impact on me because he had his illustration. He said he realized when he was studying that he was under such pressure to get good grades so he could get into the next level. And partly as a result of the fact,

he was so frightened and it was so important to perform that he went into this cycle of procrastinate then cram, procrastinate then cram. And because he was so exhausted from the last cram, he just had to do something and to take off, you know, thank goodness he was, this is back before the Revideo games. I don't know what would have happened to him. But anyway, he had a takeoff, he had to do, you know, and then he would just take off and just not do anything until he got so far behind then he would cram and he would progress in a cram. One day he was reading this passage and he suddenly says, what, what if I studied not for the Marx but for the Lord. What if I stopped caring about my grades?

What if I said, you know, I'm just going to, I want to master this material, so I'll eventually be a good counselor for Christ. I'm not even gonna, I'm not gonna worry about it. And you know what, he said it transformed the way in which he studied. No more procrastination and cramming. You know, he didn't put it off, and he took more breaks,

and he says in the long run, he got worse grades. No, in the short run, he got worse grades, and in the long run, he got far better grades because he was rested, because he was happy, and because he was not reading for what he needed to come up with on the test, but what he needed to know as a person who is gonna function as a counselor in the world.

It transformed him, he said, he was ready for a breakdown. And I don't know how it's gonna apply to you, but it will. I don't care what kind of work, I don't care where you are, it does apply. Now lastly, very lastly. The Bible never actually tells you what to do without giving you the ability and power to do it. It's locked in that first verse which I had read.

Because before all the stuff about husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, it says submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Now, the word reverence does not help much because the word reverence, it sounds like hallmark reading card, reverence. The actual Greek word is fear, but that doesn't help much either because when you and I hear the word fear, we think being frightened. But in the Bible, the fear of God or the fear of Christ means joyful, astonished, awe, and wonder before Him. Psalm 130 verse 4 says,

Because you forgive me, I fear you. Did you hear that? When I read that verse years ago, suddenly I understood all the things the Bible was saying about the fear of God. And what it's saying is you need to be melted with spiritual understandings, joyful, astonished, wonder and awe before Him, but in particular how He what? Why would submitting to one another, serving one another, it's an amazing statement. Master, serve your servants. Servants serve your masters because you're all serving him out of joyful wonder for how he served you. And this is the key.

If you want to have your work transformed, you have to realize that Jesus Christ served you by going to the cross. He served you by going to the cross. He served you by dying. And if you are melted by an awareness, if you're moved to the depths by how he served you, by dying for you, that will make him truly your ultimate master, and it will change the way in which you work. Let me show you an example. Tomorrow, are you going to get up and go to work for somebody that you despise? Somebody that's a fool. Somebody that you said, you know, you just despise them,

you just think they're fools and it's very hard even going to work. How are you going to serve a fool? Easy. Think of what Jesus did. The Bible says, Christ died for us while we were still His enemies. We weren't just fools who were enemies. He served us. He worked for us. He died for us. Well, we're enemies. Now, if he could serve enemies, why in the world can't you go and serve a fool? Because you say, well, you know what? My master served a fool. Me. See, if you think the gospel, if you feel reverence for Christ, fear of Christ, joyful wonder before Christ submitting and Christ serving you,

you'll be able to serve at work in a different way. Or on the other hand, what if your problem is not, despising your job or despising, thinking your boss is a fool? What if your whole problem is needing to please, needing to do well, wanting to perform, wanting people to see. Look at Jesus Christ dying on the cross for you.

And just remember this, Jesus is the only master that will forgive you and die for you. Your career will not die for your sins. If you make your career master and you fill your career, it will kill you. It will make you hate yourself. Call no one master but Christ in the way to make sure your heart really sees Christ as your master and not your career is only to fill yourself with spiritual understandings of what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross. There it is. Think on these things. Let the gospel completely change your attitudes at work, your attitudes toward people under you, your attitudes toward people over you, your attitudes toward

good managers, the attitudes toward bad managers, your attitudes toward your career, it changes everything. Think on these things, but let's pray. Our father, this is a practical, almost simplistic set of principles that even a very simple person can understand. And yet we do find our work lives a brutal, difficult, difficult hard Even those of us who've got jobs we love where it's running us into the ground Many of us have jobs we can't stand working for people we can't stand and this tells us My goodness even if you're a first-century slave It's possible to serve you to have a work life of possible to serve you, to have a work life of meaningfulness and satisfaction. We pray, Lord, that you would teach us how to please you and not worry about anybody else.

And therefore, do good work, do excellent work, do whole-hearted work, but never do overwork. We pray that you would show us how we can apply this to our lives by your spirit. It's in Jesus' name we ask. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's Teaching by Tim Keller here at Gospel and Life. We want to share a special free resource with you during the season of Lent. For the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday, Gospel and Life would like to send you a daily devotional. Sign up to receive this daily email at gospelandlife.com slash lent.

That's gospelandlife.com slash lent. at gospelandlife.com-slash-lent. That's gospelandlife.com-slash-lent. This month's sermons were recorded in 2006 and 2007. The sermons and talks to you here on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. to your own church.