I want to start by doing something kind of interactive, kind of fun. A few years ago, my father-in-law turned me on to this game. I think he had like a mobile app, and it the game was really simple. It was very common logos, but but like with the words removed, and you had to guess what the logo was from. Which is easier than it, it's it's harder than it sounds. It depends on the logo, right? Like if I showed you all the Nike symbol, no one's gonna be like, oh my goodness, I can almost place it. I've like I'm right there. No, like some symbols, you don't need to see the the company name to know what it is. Others, it's a little bit more difficult. Now we didn't we didn't go for for difficulty. We're just wanting to see, you know, this basically connects to the message in a very minor way, but just go with me. It's fun. All right, so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna show you guys some logos. Yell it out if you know the answer. Yell it out if you know it. Don't be don't be shy. Let's participate together. Let's start with the first one. Here we go. What's that? Ford. All right, who knew that was Ford? Go ahead and put it up. Who was who did not instantly recognize that? People who drive Chevies. Okay, so here we go. How about this one? Hot Wheels. You're right. And not the skating rink in Cherokee County. No, no, no. No, no, the Hot Wheels. If you have kids, hot Oh! First off, I was in the middle of a joke and they advanced the slide. And that was one of my funnier jokes, but now you're not gonna get that one. So uh no, no, no, no, no, no, we've we've moved past that. That joke is gone. So some of you said Lays. I heard other people say Fritos, so you're in the same ballpark, but it is it is Lay's potato chips. There you go. Lays can't have just one. Next one. Ah. This is where the generations in the room break down. Right? Skype. You got it. That's the Skype logo right there. It's a horrible logo. I don't even know what it is. It's just a blob. As a cloud, maybe? It's a kind of maybe. I don't know. I've never seen a cloud. Whatever. Okay. Um, let's go to one more. Gotcha. And I lied. One more. After that. Let's see if you guys know this one. Yeah. Blockbuster video. Now here's what's really interesting. And guys, keep this one up for just a second. Um, I want to talk about this one. Because that one, first service was the same way. That was the most emphatic answer that we had was Blockbuster video. Even though no one has walked into a Blockbuster in many, many years. But back in the day, Blockbuster was like a staple of most of our lives. How many of us had a blockbuster membership? Yeah. How many of us paid more in late fees than we'd like to admit at Blockbuster? Yeah. Like a Blockbuster video, that's how you knew civilization had come to an area. Like if you're driving somewhere and they don't have a blockbuster, you're like, no, keep going. Keep going. You know? But if a blockbuster is being built, you're like, oh, this place is really on the up and up. You know, they've got a blockbuster. My first job ever was at Blockbuster Video. And I have shared this before, but it's been a while. Um, it's something that I'm proud of. I have a rare distinction. Very few people, very few people can say this. I was fired from a Blockbuster video for poor performance. It wasn't a layoff. It wasn't when, you know, Blockbuster, not known for their business sense. For example, Netflix approached Blockbuster in their early days and offered for Blockbuster to buy them for $50 million. And that's a lot of money, but Blockbuster said, nah. And uh we know how the story ends. Netflix doing great, worth over $150 billion. Uh Blockbuster, it's in our memories, you know, fond memories of Blockbuster, if you can call them that. But I I worked at a Blockbuster and I got I got fired. 16 years old. I was told by Blockbuster Video, you don't meet our standards. And uh if you worked at a Blockbuster, then I'm sure you'll agree with me. Standards were not very high. It's like, can you put things on a shelf in semi-alphabetical order? It wasn't even really perfectly alphabetical, just sort of alphabetical order. That's really all you had to do. But I was young, I was 16 years old, and I was kind of cocky and I didn't work that hard, and I kind of joked around, and my friends would come in and I would hang out with them and laugh and talk, and I just didn't take it very seriously. And so a few months in, the manager at Blockbuster calls me in and in between bites of nachos uh told me that it was time for me to go. And I was like, Am I being fired? I have my first job, I'm being fired. And here's the deal that was good for me. That was good. Go ahead and let's take that symbol of failure in my life down. Um no, it was actually really good for me. Because I got fired, and then I had like a life crisis. What am I gonna do with my life? So I went and worked at Kohl's and I folded pants for a couple of years. And when you fold pants, you have a lot of time to think. There's a lot of, you know, in the midst of khaki folding, you're like, what am I doing with my life and where am I going and what's going on? And uh, and it's okay, it worked out in the end. I ended up getting rehired by Blockbuster, but then they went under and life went on. And now I'm a pastor. That's the whole story. So uh, but but it's funny how how much of my life, and I'm sure many of us can relate, those of us who've had jobs of any kind at any point in time, how much of my life has been shaped by my work experiences. And how many of the moments that I've had either at work or or kind of attached to where I'm working have been pivotal moments in my life. Our work lives tend to bleed over into all of our life. Now, I know not all of us in the room are employed. Some of us, most of us, hopefully, that if we're seeking employment, we find that really fast, and we will pray for you by the way that that happens if that's where you're at. Some of us aren't employed by choice. We're in a stage of life where that's not something we need, or we have a spouse who's employed and we need to stay home to take care of kids or take care of the home. There's a variety of us in the room as far as our experiences go, but I'm sure that almost all of us either are or at some point have been or will be employed. That we will work for someone. In other words, we will be paid money to do something that we would not do unless someone was paying us to do it to some degree. Have any of us had that experience? We've had a job, we've worked somewhere, okay. Very few of us, wow. Um our work lives, it's a big part of life. If you work a full-time job, the average American who works full-time will spend over 90,000 hours of their life at work. It's about 25% of the hours you will be alive, you will spend at work. This is a big part of life, and it really shapes so much of our lives. And so the reality is God cares about our lives, and he cares about not just what happens on Sundays, not just what happens at home, but God cares about our work lives. And we've been in this series for the last few months called In Relation to, where we're exploring these three relationships that the Apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians and the New Testament goes into detail about, these three relationships that at some point in time touch virtually every single person. And Paul gives us God's perspective on those relationships and how to live them out. And the relationships are husbands and wives, children and parents, and then employees and employers. And so today we're shifting into that third relationship: employees and employers. What does that relationship look like? How should it be from God's perspective? How can we go about living in that relationship in a way that's healthy and good and right, a way that pleases God and works in our lives? And the reality is, this part of life, it just affects everything. It affects everything. I remember growing up, my dad was kind of climbing the corporate ladder, and he had some jobs at really big companies. And when my dad was at a company that he enjoyed being at, it was different at home. And when he was at a company where things were going rough and the environment wasn't good, you know, it it you could feel that. You could tell that dad had not had a good day. It's hard to like clock in and clock out and leave it all at work. And throughout this entire series, we've been talking about the fact that our lives are much more enmeshed than we happen to think they are, even spiritually. You know, I might be able to clock in and clock out of a job, but I cannot clock in and clock out of being a Jesus follower. That's every part of my life. It's all connected, it's all together. Jesus always connected, loving God and loving people. So these earthly relationships that we have, they affect and impact our relationship with God the Father. And the employee-employer relationship is no different. It's a tough one, though. It's a tough one because a lot is riding on this relationship. And sometimes it feels like a lot of it's not really in our control. So what I want to do is I just want to open up Ephesians and jump into what God's word says about being an employee. And that's what we're talking about today. So if you if you have this, by the way, I'm just reading from our mobile app. If you have that, you can read along. Ephesians 6, 5 through 8. Slaves obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. Try to please them all the time, not just when they're watching you. As slaves of Christ, do the will of God with all your heart. Work with enthusiasm as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free. Now, let's just address the elephant in the room. I've been saying for months, employees and employers, and this says slaves and masters, what gives? A few things we've got to talk about. Number one, some people have taken scriptures like this and tried to use them as some type of evidence that the Bible condones slavery, could not be further from the truth. The Bible does not condone everything it records. In fact, if you want to read the entire story of the Bible, so much of it is the story of freedom. The Old Testament is very much defined by this major story where God frees this group of people called the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and teaches them how to live as free people. And the New Testament is very much about Jesus freeing us from the slavery that we have to sin and to death. So our God is a God of freedom. And if you study the history of the world and you look at the nations where at some point in their history, even if they've moved in a different direction, but at some point in their history, the message of Jesus has taken root in that culture and has become a major part of that culture's history, those just so happen to be the nations where the people are the most free. Where the people are the most free regardless of their race, regardless of their gender, their socioeconomic status. Freedom follows Jesus always. And our God is a God of freedom. But you have to understand that when Paul wrote this, he's writing to the people of his day. And he's writing to them, trying to help them live out their faith in Jesus in their everyday lives. And in that part of the world, in Paul's time, slavery was as commonplace, more so than we could even possibly imagine. But it worked very, very differently than it works in our nation's history, or worked in our nation's history. Not the same thing. Now let me just say this right off the bat: slavery is horrific and awful. Completely, one of the most horrific aspects of human history. Not just American history, but all of human history. Slavery has existed in some form or another in virtually every part of the world. And in Paul's day, the time the New Testament was written in the Roman Empire, slavery was like the bedrock of their civilization. In the entire history of our nation's time with slavery being part of what was going on here, about 200 years or so of that, we had a little over 10 million slaves. When Paul wrote this, 60 million slaves in the Roman Empire. Over a third of the entire population lived as slaves. But it wasn't the kind of slavery that we might think of because of our history. Number one, slavery was not based on race whatsoever in the Roman Empire. People were slaves no matter their race. Slavery was was even something that many people opted into. Which sounds crazy to us, right? Like, what do you mean people opted into slavery? Well, there's this word that we don't really have in our vernacular, but it's called bondservant. And oftentimes that word gets translated in the New Testament as slave. So, for example, in Romans chapter 1, verse 1, Paul says this letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, chosen by God to be an apostle and sent out to preach the good news. Some translations will say bondservant. And the reality is, in the Roman Empire, for all intents and purposes, they were basically the same thing. If you were a bondservant, you were a slave. Your master had rights over your life. But the idea of a bondservant is someone who has chosen this. That they have decided willingly to step into this slave master relationship for a time and for a purpose. And so in the Roman Empire, there were no banks. There wasn't a thing. There's no such thing as a bank. So if you wanted to do something, to start a business, to take care of a debt, there was no way to go get a loan and then pay that back incrementally. Everything was private. And so the only option you had would be to find someone who would take on your debt, who would pay it off, find someone who would take you in and teach you a trade. And that always ended up being what was considered a bondservant master relationship. People didn't really have employees. That wasn't like a thing in the Roman Empire. There were no corporations. It was pretty much all private. And so you wouldn't have an employee, you would have bondservants. And these would be people who've said, I am choosing, and choosing because of their options being limited, but choosing to become a bondservant of this person for a time. Now in the Roman Empire, people who were who were bondservants or slaves, they held high positions in public office. They were doctors, they held high positions. It was just a normal part of their culture. You were almost always a bondservant for a small period of time. In fact, over 50% of all the slaves in the Roman Empire were freed before they were 30 years old. It was a very different situation. Now, again, I'm not saying, hey, being a slave in the Roman Empire was like, hey, okay, it wasn't that bad. No, it was. Our God is a God of freedom, and it's good that that's gone. But the reason I'm talking about this is because it's very easy for us to read something like Ephesians 6, 5 through 8, which was written over 2,000 years ago to a completely different culture. And as soon as we read that whole slaves masters thing, we just check out. We're like, that doesn't apply to us, that's not our world today. But what we have to understand is the dynamic between slaves and their masters in the Roman Empire has a lot of similarities to dynamics between employers and employees today. It really does, because an employee is someone who, like a bondservant in the Roman Empire, chooses to give up some freedom. Like how many of us are less free because we have a job, right? Yes. You're less free. You gotta be somewhere at a certain time, you gotta do, you have to follow someone's lead that you may not follow otherwise. You give up some of your freedom willingly because of the benefits that it will provide you. And in your mind, this is a short-term thing, this isn't the rest of my life, this is for a season of life, and the hope is that when it's all done, you're in a very different position in life. And that is the way it worked in the Roman Empire. In fact, one of the biggest deals in the Roman world was to be a citizen. You were not automatically a citizen of Rome. Citizens had very, very different privileges, different legal status, and there were a few ways to become a citizen. Number one, be in the military, fight a war, survive. And eventually, soldiers would become citizens. But another way was to become the bondservant of a citizen. And if you were the bondservant of a Roman citizen and you fulfilled your agreement with that person and they freed you, you became a citizen yourself. And so this was a path to citizenship. So it's kind of like being an employee in a way that you're saying, hey, I'm stepping into this, I may not like it, it may not be great all the time, but I'm doing this for a purpose, for a benefit, for ultimately life change. So again, slavery, horrific, awful, horrible. And Paul did not condone slavery whatsoever. But when he wrote this, he was writing this to help people in their everyday lives live out their yes to Jesus in a way that worked. And the truth is, the message of Jesus spread first among the poorest of the poor. And so the majority of the early church would have been slaves. And he's writing them saying, hey, this is your situation. Well, how can you live in your situation in a way that honors God? And so, with that in mind, let's read this one more time and understand that this actually applies to us. That we can kind of sub out in our minds the word slave for employee and master for employer. And I'm not saying it's it's apples to apples, but the principles really relate. So here's what he says: slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. Try to please them all the time, not just when they're watching you. As slaves of Christ, do the will of God with all of your heart. Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free. Now, in this section, we have these two really obvious principles that if we could, could each of us who who work a job, each of us who have a job, we we have someone that we work for, if that's your situation, if if each of us could master these two things, success would would probably find us pretty quickly. Neither of these are earth-shattering, neither of these are gonna be like, whoa, you're the first person that's ever thought of that. And I'm not, because it's it's here. But these these two principles are more rare than they they maybe ought to be in combination. And here's what they are if you want to find success, if you want to be blessed in your job, in your work life, do a really good job and be a joy to work with. Do a really good job and be a joy to work with. That that's essentially what Paul is saying to the bondservants that he was he was writing to. Remember, in the Roman Empire, there's no such thing as an employee. If you're a person doing work, you are a bondservant. You're a slave. That's the way their whole culture worked. So he's saying, hey, if you want to succeed, if you want to earn your freedom faster, if you want to be be blessed and released and set out into the world, if you want to be blessed, whatever our goals might be in our work lives, do a really good job and be a joy to work with. And it's it's kind of hard to do that sometimes. It's hard to do a really good job when you don't always love your job. Like, I I I love my job here. I really do. I'm I'm uniquely blessed. I don't love all the aspects of my job, but I do love this job. And there are certain things about this job that I love like a lot, and I'm like, yes, let's do this. I can't wait for this. There's other aspects of the job that I'm like, is there anyone else who would like to do this at all? No? Okay. I have to do, okay, I guess I have to. So it's hard sometimes to do a really good job when there's things about your job you don't you don't like. And some of us maybe have jobs that we just don't like the whole thing. It's hard to do a really good job in that situation, and it's hard to be a joy to work with when you don't always enjoy working, right? But what he's telling us here is that if if we could A, do a really good job on a consistent basis and B, be a joy to work with, then we will find that to be blessed by God Himself. So let's talk about this really, really quickly. What does it mean to do a really good job? One of the things that that Paul writes here is to serve with sincerity. To serve with sincerity as you would work for Christ. So number one, he says, if you want to do a really good job, just pretend like Jesus is your boss. Now, how many of us have bosses? We would say, Man, this person reminds me so much of Jesus all the time. Some at least one person? Is there not one person who has a Christ-like boss in the room? Some of you work here. Come on. Elon didn't raise her hand, and I took note of that. So it's fine. It's all good. Like just imagine that your boss is Jesus. Now, some of us are like, oh man, I don't think my imagination is that good. My imagination is not sharp enough to picture my job, my boss is Jesus, right? But he says, hey, if you want to do a really good job, just pretend like your boss is Jesus himself and you work for Jesus. So let's say you're an accountant. That just picture that you work for Holy Messiah Accounting Services, and Jesus Christ, He's the one who owns your company. So when you're working, you're working directly for the Messiah himself, for Jesus. And the thing is, if we really believe that, then we would understand that the work that we do will reflect ultimately on Jesus himself. Because when you do a job, the job you do and the way you do it, it reflects on the organization you work for, right? That's the way it works. That is why, just to be honest with you, I'm not sure if it's a good idea for us to have. This happens, but people ask about this from time to time. And I want you to know we're considering it, but people will say, hey, you know how some churches have their logo as a bumper sticker on the car? And some churches do. If you see an R or a W as you drive around, that's those are church logos. And we've got a great logo with the tree and the hands and all that. And people are like, this would be a great bumper sticker. And I'm like, I know, I just don't know if I want all of our people driving around with our, you know, I don't know if I want that pressure on the back of my car. Because I'm not always like, I'm not always driving as a Jesus follower, you know. I'm driving in a different mindset. And I don't know about you, and I just don't, I don't, I don't know, I don't know if we're ready for that as a church for there yet, maybe one day. But the reality is, like, our reputation, the way we do things, it affects the reputation of whatever we're part of, right? And so if you work for an organization and you do a poor job and you cut corners and you don't do well and you're wearing that uniform, or or people know you work there, they're gonna associate your the way you work with that place. And what Paul is saying is that you should work as if you work directly for Jesus, and the kind of job you do reflects on Jesus' reputation. And that's not just like a stretch of the imagination to say that. That's not me trying to connect dots that aren't there. In 2 Corinthians 5 20. We are Christ's ambassadors. God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, come back to God. He's saying that we as Jesus followers, we are Christ's ambassadors. Those of you who are Jesus followers, I know not all of us have made that decision, but if you are, please understand that when you go to work, the person you work alongside, you work next to, you work under or over, you might be the clearest picture of Jesus they ever get. That's a big deal. And so what he's saying is, hey, if you love the Lord, if you love Jesus, then pretend like he's your boss and work like that. What does that mean? It means that you'll work honest. You will work honestly. Proverbs chapter 11, verse 1. The Lord detests the use of dishonest scales, but he delights in accurate weights. The Lord loves honesty. And so if you're gonna work as if you work for Jesus, then you're gonna be honest in your work. Honest with your expense reports, honest with the kind of job that you're doing. You're not gonna, you're not gonna like tell half truths. I'm sure we've all had those times where we're tempted to tell a half-truth, which is also just called a lie, you know? I remember once um I had a MacBook Pro, which is a really nice computer. It's a nice laptop. And this was a company-issued computer. And I was working at home on this computer, and Megan and I got in an argument because we're married, and that happens. And uh, and I got frustrated with something, and so I sh I slammed the laptop shut like very forcefully to make a point to Megan, like, well, fine. And then I walked upstairs, and when I opened the laptop back up, the whole screen was like shattered. And I was like, I have been working out. That's good. And then I was like, oh no, what am I gonna do? You know, like I didn't know I slammed it that hard, and I gotta figure out what am I gonna say to my boss, because this is not mine, and this was expensive. And so I had like Satan's really good in those moments, right? He's quick. He shows up, he's talking to you, like, just tell your boss you dropped it, you know, because that's actually believable. What happened? You're gonna be-I I dropped it. Oh, well, accidents happened, you know. We'll get you another one, but be careful with this. Okay, boss, I'll do that, you know. Nope. What happened? Uh, well, my wife made me real mad. You know how wives can be. And uh, and so, you know, I just went ahead and said, forget it, and broke the computer that you bought me. Can I have another one? Like, that's a different conversation. And I didn't want to say that, but I had to, and it was humiliating and it was shameful. And my boss was like, Okay, well, don't do that. And I said, Yes, sir. And it was humiliating, but at least it was honest. And so the reality is, if you're gonna work as if Jesus is your boss, you're gonna be honest. You're just gonna be honest in everything you do. And it can be challenging sometimes to really ask yourself, am I completely honest in the way that I work? Am I really honest? Am I working when I say I'm working? Like little things like that. You're gonna work honestly. If you work as if Jesus is your boss, you're gonna do the little things. So often we want to be given more. We want more responsibility, we want more recognition, we want more pay. But if we want more, we better be willing to do the little things to get more, because that's how God works. There's a parable that Jesus tells in Matthew chapter 25, and it's this parable of these three servants, and they're each given a different amount of money from their master to invest. And the first two invest wisely and it grows, and the third one wastes it. He just does nothing. But those first two servants get to hear this amazing thing said to them by their master, and this kind of reflects the heart of God. Verse 21 the master was full of praise. Well done, my good and faithful servant. You've been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let's celebrate together. Let's have a party. I mean, come on, who wants to hear Jesus say that one day? Well done, my good and faithful servant. You are faithful with the small things that I gave you, therefore I'll give you more. God cares about the little things. And if you want big things, then do the little things really, really well, and you'll be trusted with more. You'll be trusted with the big things. If you work as if you work for the Lord, it means you'll be committed to the success of your employer. Are you as committed to the success of your employer, your boss, your organization, your company as you are to yourself? See, we live in a very individualistic culture. We are the most individualistic culture that has ever existed. We think more about ourselves, we care more about ourselves and our own needs, our own wants, our own dreams than any culture ever. And that's not necessarily a knock. We're probably the first culture in the history of the world that actually has the time and ability to say, what do I want? Because most cultures, you have to think we, not I. You have to think collectively. And so, in some ways, it's good that we get to be individualistic. It's good that we get to pursue our dreams. That's that's exciting, but sometimes that can be at the expense of dreaming about anyone else's success but our own. And the reality is that if you're only excited about your own success, then you're just not going to experience that much excitement in life. Like we've all had those moments where someone else is blessed and someone else succeeds, and we're like, good for them. I'm so happy for them. I'm not jealous or bitter at all that that didn't happen to me. You know what I mean? Have you ever seen someone else succeed and like live out your dream? Have you ever seen that? That's hard, right? Unless, of course, you have the ability to genuinely be excited about other people's success. And if you can do that, if you can be committed to the success of others, number one, you share God's heart because that's how He is. And number two, you'll be blessed because you'll be excited. You'll actually have joy. There's a book, by the way, called How to Win Friends and Influence People, which sounds like a very manipulative book, but it's awesome. It was written in the 1930s by a guy named Dale Carnegie. It's not the Bible, but he quotes a lot of scripture in it, even kind of indirectly. And there's this quote that I read in that book years ago where he said, if you will be someone genuinely interested in the success of others, you will succeed yourself for one main reason. You will have very little competition. Because most people just aren't that committed to other people's success. But if you work as if you work for the Lord, you will be committed to the success of your employer. Now, some of you might be thinking, you don't know my employer. And I don't want to be committed to their success. They don't need to succeed. And if that's true, two things. Number one, you always have the option to leave that company and go somewhere else. It's a great thing that our in our culture we can say, hey, bye. But but if you believe that you shouldn't work hard, because the person you work for is not an honorable person, and that's an excuse for you not to do your best, I would just encourage you to read the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. And see the way that Joseph worked for Potiphar, an Egyptian official who bought him as a slave. And see the way that Joseph worked for Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who literally believed he was God. Joseph served those people faithfully, even though none of us would consider them to be honorable people. Or read the story of Daniel in the Old Testament with King Nebuchadnezzar. King Nebuchadnezzar, dude, was nuts. He was nuts. None of you have had a boss like Nebuchadnezzar, I promise you. One day Nebuchadnezzar had a great idea. He said, You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna have a statue, a giant statue built of me, made out of gold. And anyone who doesn't worship it will die. Like, imagine that going out in your company, you know, email. You know, hey, a few new rules at lunchtime, bow down to the statue of the boss or be killed, you know. Also, casual Fridays, that's a thing again. Like that would be a weird company memo, right? But Nebuchadnezzar, like, he did that. And Daniel served him so faithfully. Even though he was that kind of person, he served him so faithfully that in certain moments of his life, Nebuchadnezzar put his faith in God. Because he saw God in the way that Daniel served him. Read the story of King David serving King Saul. They weren't both kings at the same time, so this is King David pre-king time. David became the successor to Saul as king, but but for about 20 years before David was king, he served directly under Saul, and Saul was like the worst. Do you know that two times? Two times Saul tried to kill David by throwing a spear at him and pinning him to a wall. Can you imagine coming home from work with that story for your spouse? Like, how was work today, honey? Oh, it's another one of those days where my boss tried to kill me again? Yeah. It was a spear again, too. Same way. Oh, that's crazy. Oh well, you know, at least we get vacation weeks or what. No, like that's insane. And like twice Saul tries to kill David, and David serves him faithfully. I'm not saying that if you have a boss who's a tyrant and a jerk and is an is dishonest, that you have no grounds to ever leave and go work somewhere else. Obviously you do. And in those cultures, they didn't really have the ability to do that. But what I am saying is before you complain about how dishonorable your employer is and use that as an excuse not to work hard, you just can't find, you can't find an example in Scripture to base that off of. That's all I'm trying to say. So work as if you work for the Lord, do a really, really good job. We'll shift into the second one, and this is really quick. Be a joy to work with. Do people enjoy working with you? If they do, you will succeed. There's actually a book called The Likability Factor, and it has a very, you don't even have to read the book. It's a very, very basic thing. If people like you, they'll promote you more often. People like to work with people they like to work with. Does that make sense? It's kind of a rule that we have here is that we hire people we we like to work with. Like, why would I why why would we subject ourselves to that otherwise? Like, oh, I don't like working with the person, but I guess we should work with them. That doesn't make any sense. In fact, I have a really good friend who runs a business and he's had this partner for a long time. Um, and we were talking about it, and he said, you know, honestly, the main reason we're together is because as partners, like they work together, is that they just like working together. They work well together, they enjoy time. So if they have to have like an all-day intensive lock the doors meeting, they look forward to it. Maybe there's people that you've worked with before that if you had to spend two hours in a room locked, like you'd be like, I'd rather die. You know, like if you got stuck on an elevator with that person for like a day, you're like, that's it, that's it, that's the end. But if you're someone that's a joy to work with, then people will enjoy being locked in an elevator with you for a day. I don't know, that maybe doesn't hold, but whatever, you get the point. Are you a joy to work with? Go back to Ephesians chapter 6, verse 7. It says, work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people, with enthusiasm, with joy. With joy. You know, one of the ways you can tell if you're a joy to work with, and this is kind of challenging, is what kind of conversations do you attract wherever you work? Do you attract conversations where people want to share wins and exciting things, and they're wanting, oh, I'll tell you about this awesome thing that happened, or maybe they want your help to solve a problem, like, hey, what do you think we should do about this? Or do you attract commiserating conversations? Or people want to come to you and be like, Can you believe that that happened? And you're like, I know. You don't want to be that person. Don't be that person. If you want to be like someone in scripture, be like Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a man who served a really terrible king. Most kings were, named Artaxerxes. Artaxerxes was a king of a kingdom that had conquered Nehemiah's nation, the nation of Israel. And Nehemiah works directly for the king. He's basically the king's butler, his servant. And one day Nehemiah gets news that his home city, Jerusalem, is in shambles, and the wall around the city is completely broken down, which in that day meant that you were open to attack at any given moment, and the people are just in terror, and he finds out about this, and he's he's brokenhearted, and he needs to do something about it. So check out what happens in Nehemiah chapter 2, verses 1 through 2. Early the following spring in the month of Nasan, during the 20th year of King Artaxerxes' reign, I was serving the king his wine, and I had never before appeared sad in his presence. So the king asks me, Why are you looking so sad? You don't look sick to me. And what follows is Nehemiah explaining why he's sad, and the king says, You know what, Nehemiah, go, fix your city. I'm gonna give you the authority and the money to take care of this problem. And all of that happened because the king had never seen Nehemiah sad. If your boss saw you sad, would it catch their attention? Would it be a rare thing for them to have seen, or would it just be like, oh, well, here we go again? Be a joy to work with. Be a joy to work with. Now, worship team, you guys can make your way out because we got four people that need to get baptized, so that's exciting. We need to move on to that. But here's what I want to say in closing. None of this is revolutionary. Work really hard, do a good job, be a joy to work with. It's kind of like, really? Duh. I had to I don't have to come to church for that. Maybe you don't have to read the Bible to know that that would work, but I will tell you this in my experience. You can try to do this on your own, and good luck. Or you can let the Holy Spirit do this through you. Because the reality is the Holy Spirit works hard. The Holy Spirit has done a really good job doing his job for thousands of years. And the Holy Spirit is full of joy. In fact, the fruit of the Spirit, the first one is love, the second one is joy. And so if you want to be a joy to work with, you want to do a really good job, I just I recommend to you daily, daily, before you go into your office, before you go to work, get on your knees in prayer and say, Lord, work through me today. Lord, give me the right mindset, the right attitude, the right work ethic. Lord, remind me that I'm working directly for you. Let God work through you. If you don't have a relationship with God, start one. Say, Jesus, I want you in my life. Maybe you're even thinking about your job and how you don't enjoy it, you don't like it, but you want to do better, or you have other career goals and you're realizing you can't do this on your own, but you don't have to do it on your own. You can have Jesus through you at any moment in time because you commit your life to him and you get the Holy Spirit and he works through you. So I highly recommend if you want to do a really good job and be a joy to work with, start by asking Jesus himself into your life and let the Holy Spirit produce this in you. That's the best way for it to work. Now we've got a few people who have made this decision and they want to get baptized right now. For us as a church, when you decide to follow Jesus, that's just a moment in your heart. You cross a line in your heart. It's as simple as that. And baptism is the first step of obedience that you take whenever you've made that decision. And so if you want to sign up to be baptized today, if you've made that decision, you haven't been baptized, sign up in the main lobby at the Connect Desk. But we've got four people who are about to do this. So what I want to do is I want to pray. We're just gonna turn it over to them. We're gonna celebrate this moment with them and end the morning together on a high note. Love you guys. Jesus cares, I'll finish it with this. Jesus cares about your job. So let him help you. Okay, let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for all you're teaching us and all you're doing in us and through us. Thank you for what you're doing in this church. And Lord, right now I pray that you would bless these four people going all in with you. Lord, remind them of how pleased you are with them and help us as a church celebrate this moment in their lives as we should. This is exciting stuff. And we know you're pleased by it, Lord. So we love you. Thank you for all you do for us. It's in your name we pray. Amen.