As Pastor Jason mentioned, AWANA will be starting this week on the 14th and quickly I would like to have all of our AWANA leaders stand, all those who are going to be involved in AWANA this year, if you could just stand quickly, just look around and see how many people it takes to run our AWANA program. Let's pray for them real quick, but be aware that that's starting this week, and it's always a lot of fun. Father, we thank you for this morning, and I thank you for each one of these individuals who have committed themselves to Awana. What a great program it is, as our young people learn the truth of your word, learn scripture, and learn how to apply it to their lives. And so I pray for each one of these leaders, Father, that you might direct them and give them sensitivity to the hearts and the lives of the young people that you'll bring across their paths starting this week. And we thank you, Father, for the privilege of being able to share the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ with some who have never heard. And so Father, just bless this year. We thank you for all the dedication of all of these workers. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you very much. As we continue on in our study in the book of Ephesians, we are reminded of how we have progressed along the way. We started off in those first three chapters with our theology and the understanding that we are in Christ because of that relationship that we have with him. We are joint heirs with Christ. If God would ever choose, and he never would, to break up housekeeping and divide his inheritance amongst all of us, we would receive the same portion as Jesus Christ. Just think about that. He'll never do that. But if he did, we are joint heirs. We have the hope of eternal life. We are in Christ. And this morning, as we come to this table, we are reminded of what Christ has done for us through his son, Jesus Christ. All of us are sinners. All of us are separated from God because of that sin. We walk into these doors with the same need, and that is the need of a Savior. We are eternally bound for hell without Jesus Christ. All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, as Paul tells us in Romans. And as he walks us through Romans, he says that the wages of sin is death. And we will all face death apart from Jesus Christ. We have a world around us that is lost and dying and on their way to hell. And without a testimony of the church of Jesus Christ being bold in their testimony, we lose effectiveness, don't we? And we need to be bold in our testimony for Jesus Christ. And as we gather together, and as we sit in these pews, I pray that the Spirit of God might work in our hearts and in our lives, and do that transforming work that needs to take place, so that when we leave this place, there is a different scene in us because of what Christ is doing, and what Christ is doing, and how Christ is doing us. It's very easy to get caught up in self. It's very easy to get bogged down in my life. But the reality is that we need to be about the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I pray and I hope that our church is marked by that. Not only prayer, but that we are sharing the message of Jesus Christ. And I appreciate Pastor Jason and his emphasis on just getting the message of the gospel out. And we are gonna do everything that we can to make sure people are hearing the message. And as we celebrate this table this morning, it's a vivid picture of that message. that apart from the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus Christ, we are without hope. And so this morning, if you are here, maybe you've been in these pews for who knows how long, and you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, I pray that this morning might be your day of salvation. And I pray that we as believers in Jesus Christ would be energized and revived with the idea that God did so much for us through his son Jesus Christ. He sacrificed everything for us that we would this morning consecrate ourselves to that truth and that message and allow it to permeate our lives and transform us into the image of Jesus Christ. We've been talking through the book of Ephesians and Paul continually reminds us of that, doesn't he? We are in Christ as we accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior. And our goal in life is to reflect the image of Jesus Christ in everything that we do. And those first three chapters lays that out for us. This is how and who we are. Then starting in chapter four, we are reminded that Paul says, now this is how this works out in your life. You don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, and then nothing happens. You don't change. You come to church, we sit in the pews, and there's nothing different about the time we walk in and the time we walk out of here. Paul says there is a walk that should be demonstrated in the life of a believer that is different than anything that the world sees out there. And that walk starts in holiness. That we separate ourselves from the things of the world that hinder us from following after Christ with our whole heart. And I don't know what that is in your life. But there are times that we just need to sit down and take inventory of our lives and say, God, what is it that's hindering you from doing your work in my life? Because I wanna walk in holiness. I wanna walk, and I want to reflect your son's image. Then Paul talks about the fact that we are to walk in light, and that we're to walk in God's love, and then we are to walk in wisdom. And then we are to walk in the Holy Spirit, allowing the Holy Spirit to do his work in our lives. And Paul gives us his well-rounded approach to the Christian life and how we are to live in light of the fact that we are believers in Jesus Christ and we are in Christ. This just isn't a random set of chapters in a book that have no connection. All of this pertains to our lives and how we are to live because of what and who we are in Jesus Christ. And it only happens as we allow the Holy Spirit to rake us over the coals and knock off those edges and beat us soundly. and knock all that junk out of our lives that is hindering us from truly following after Jesus Christ. And that's when revival happens. That's when we are broken before Him. That's when we come in confession of sin. And that's when we come and we say, I don't care what anybody else thinks about me. I need to surrender my life wholly and completely to Jesus Christ. And we are on our faces before Him. Just think about the illustrations that we have throughout scripture. Isaiah chapter 6. We read about Isaiah standing in the very throne room of God, and as he's standing there, and he realizes the holiness of God and who it is that is calling his name. He is flat on his face before a holy God. I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and I am going to die because I am in the presence of a holy God. When was the last time we as a church got to that point? I pray we get there. I pray we take the message of this book and allow it to transform us. It's very easy to walk into a service and take notes and sing songs and have it had no effect on our hearts and lives. May God do an amazing work in us. So as Paul takes us through each one of those steps, He concludes it all in chapter five, verse 21, where he says, we need to submit to one another. Husbands to wives, wives to husbands. children to parents. He takes us now to this practical application in our everyday life. We have these experiences. We have these interpersonal relationships that are affected by what Paul has already instructed us with. Those imperatives that he gave us. Walk, walk, walk, walk. Your manner of life, the way you live your life, the way you conduct yourself. It comes down to first submitting to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit's work in our lives, and then it happens as we start to submit ourselves and our families. It starts to happen as Paul takes us now to this point where every other aspect of our lives outside of the church and outside of family relationships. He takes us to verse 5 of chapter 6 and he says now in these other relationships there's this matter of submission that needs to occur. So we start in verse 5 of chapter 6. bond servants obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling with a sincere heart as you would christ not by the way of eye service as people pleasers but as bond servants in christ doing the will of god from the heart rendering service with a good will as to the lord and not to man knowing that whatever Good, anyone does. This he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him. Paul hits us again. And he says, as we are about these relationships outside of family, outside of the church, we still need to walk as God would have us to walk. As we think about who and to the culture in which Paul is writing, we remember that Paul is in prison at this point. He's writing to individuals who the majority of the, a good portion, not the majority maybe, but the good portion of the Roman Empire are slaves. The Romans were importing, and at one point had imported a million slaves into the empire to do the work that needed to happen so that the empire would expand. And so there were a number of people who were slaves, and slaves were different than what we think of slavery. We have our period of history and our thought of what slavery is. But during this period of time, individuals could work. There were a variety of levels of slavery, and people could work. If you remember Felix, who Paul talks to in the book of Acts, he was a slave at one time, and he had bought his freedom, and he had now risen. He had the opportunity to rise within the ranks, and he was in a position of authority. But at one point, he was a slave. And so this idea of slavery would probably best relate to us as employee and employer. That's what we should think about when we think of this passage of scripture. And what Paul is doing for us is he's taking what we've already learned in the first five chapters. It says, let me now apply it to these relationships. So we're not mistaken in how we should respond. And again, there's a variety of individuals and how they were slaves under other people. Some were bought. Some were bond slaves who willingly placed themselves after they repaid a debt. They were then released, but they chose to remain as a worker under the care of that master. And so there's a variety of different individuals that Paul was writing to, but within the church of Jesus Christ during this period of time, there were those who owned slaves, or had employees, and the employees of those masters. If we think a little bit further into the New Testament, we're reminded of Philemon. Remember that scenario. where Philemon was an extremely wealthy man who owned some slaves, Onesimus being one of those. There was something that happened whether Onesimus stole something from Philemon or he just bolted and left. But somewhere along the line, through God's miraculous intervention, Paul and Onesimus meet. Paul has the privilege of leading Onesimus to Christ. Paul writes to Philemon and says, here, I am sending this brother back to you. Now treat him as you would a brother in Christ. Again, we come back to Ephesians and Paul is talking about the exact same thing here. So Paul is talking to slaves in his time, but I think we could all say that he is talking to employees of our day. We may think we're slaves at times, you know, slaves to the clock, slaves to that boss that you have, you know, whatever, but how do we respond in those situations? John MacArthur wrote this, New Testament teaching does not focus, some of the thought is why didn't Paul, the reformer, stand up for slavery and try to abolish slavery? It would have been an economic disaster at that point, but here's a thought by John MacArthur. New Testament teaching does not focus on reformation and restructuring. human systems, which are never the root cause of human problems, the issue is always the heart. Which, when wicked, will corrupt the best systems, and when righteous, will improve the worst? How do we respond when we go to work? How do we demonstrate Christ when we go to work? Well, Paul gives us some instruction here. He says, employees, obey your earthly masters. We've had that word before. We saw it when we were looking at children. Obey your parents in the Lord, chapter six, verse one. And basically what Paul is saying, do what is required of you. Before I went into ministry, I had the opportunity to work in a factory, I've worked in a warehouse, and it's amazing to see how hard people work at not doing work. It's amazing, and you think, where is their work ethic? Where in the world do we, where did they come up with this? Our sons are both managers in the food service and they both say, we just can't get good people to work anymore. They have no idea what it means to put in eight hours of work. and be content with what you've done. Or you're out searching for them because they're trying to avoid the work that you gave them to do. So Paul says as a bondservant, as one who is a believer in Jesus Christ, and we remember Paul is writing specifically to believers here, what you do is you obey your master. You obey your boss. If he tells you to do something that doesn't violate scripture, obviously, you just do it. And you work at it with all your might. Paul goes on to expand in that a little bit where he says, with fear and trembling. Now, what's Paul talking about here? Well, we got an idea of the word, and it's a similar word that Paul uses here as he did in chapter 5, verse 21, and then also in chapter 5, verse 33. And it comes down to this idea of reverence and respect. I work and I obey, not because I am fearful of what's going to come down if I don't, I do it because I reverence and I respect that one who is an authority over me. And again, we live in a culture and we live in a society where respect of authority is lacking. And so as we look at this passage of scripture, we see that Paul is directing these individuals, bond slaves, no matter what, and he doesn't qualify the circumstance, does he? Doesn't matter who your boss is. It doesn't matter how you're being treated. As a believer in Jesus Christ, excuse me, there is one way to respond, and that is to obey out of respect. You do what you're told. and you do it with all your might. Paul goes on to say that we should do it with trembling, and this isn't that we sit over in a corner and we are scared to death and we're just trembling, oh, what's gonna happen now? What he is saying here, this trembling is humility. This trembling is a nervousness that we might disappoint the one we are serving. Think about that. I want to make sure that I do the best job that I could possibly do for that one who has employed me, that one to whom I'm serving, so that they're not disappointed in me. Paul uses the same phrase in Philippians chapter two, verse 12, where he says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. That same thought, I want to live out my salvation in such a way that I don't disappoint Jesus Christ, that I don't disappoint God in the way that I'm living my life. And Paul uses that same term and that same thought here as he says, do it because you don't want to disappoint. that one that is an employer of yours. You can compare that. There's another verse there in 2 Corinthians 7, verse 15. We're not gonna go there, but the same idea that Paul uses here, that it's out of humility. It is out of humility. Humility, why? Ultimately, ultimately as a believer in Jesus Christ, we are submitting to who? We are submitting to Jesus Christ. You see how Paul established all that before he gets to these practical applications? And so in humility I serve that I might not disappoint the one we are serving. The fourth thing that Paul says here is that we also should come with a sincere heart. It is our relationship with Christ that lies behind all of this. What is there behind all of this is the fact that we are a child of the king. And that should be our reflection. Paul is basically saying to us we ought to work hard, pouring ourselves into our jobs, treating our employers with respect. They should see a difference in us because of our faith in Jesus Christ. The reasons why, Paul gives us in verses 6 and 7 as we move quickly. In verses 6 and 7, first of all, we are bondservants of Christ. Ultimately, we serve Jesus Christ. We have placed ourselves under His authority as we have come to know Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. And so as we yield to him, we place ourselves under his authority, which means that we submit to one another as Paul has already shared with us. And we are reminded of that, that we are bond servants of Jesus Christ. Second thing that we have in verses six and seven is that we are doing the very will of God. God has placed us in that job or in that position for a specific purpose. And are we fulfilling God's will when we go to our jobs every day? Our son-in-law played professional soccer, and one of the things that he wanted to do is he wanted to use his job as an opportunity to share Christ. Every team that he was on, he had an opportunity to lead men to Christ. On every team, he was instrumental in bringing in a chaplaincy program, because he felt it was that important. And his testimony for Christ, and he realized that this is, I wanna do God's will, I wanna be a testimony, I want my life to be different, even to the point that it became a detriment to him, that he was standing for Christ, and instead of backing down, he became stronger and had a firmer resolve in his testimony for Christ. in a difficult circumstance. On the top of his game, he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated as Sportsman of the Year when he was in high school. Played on the U.S. national teams. He had everything going for him. But he said, far greater than recognition as a soccer player, I want to be known as one who is a follower of Jesus Christ. Have you ever thought about that as you walked into work on Monday morning? I want the recognition of my life and my accomplishments to be that I'm a follower of Jesus Christ in all that I do. Verse eight, Paul says the third reason is that there's a heavenly reward. Eventually we are gonna be rewarded in heaven for what we do. So Paul tells us as employees, here is how we are to work. This is what should be the testimony of our life. There should be something different about us because of our relationship with Christ and in our demeanor and the way we work and the efficiency in which we work. for the cause of Christ and for his testimony. And then Paul turns our attention to masters then, or employers if we'd like to put it that way. And basically what Paul is saying is, do the same thing to your employees. They should see something different in you because you are a believer in Jesus Christ. You shouldn't be like all the other managers. You shouldn't be like all the other bosses. There should be something different about your demeanor and the way that you care for those that's so different, so radically different, that it exposes who you are. And that being a follower of Jesus Christ. And so Paul says, masters, do the same to them. And stop your threatening. It must have been happening within the church. You do what you tell me or you're going to be out of here. Or whatever the case might be. You want a good beating today? Whatever that threatening was, Paul says, stop your threatening. It's an amazing statement, isn't it? Doesn't sugarcoat that at all. Knowing that he who is both their masters and yours is in heaven. That's a pretty heavy accountability partner, isn't it? Eventually you're going to give an account for all of this, that there is no partiality with him. He doesn't see your employee as a slave, and he doesn't see you as the master. He sees both of you as sinners in need of a Savior. And both of you have put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and both of you are on the same level at the foot of the cross. So treat your brother as you should. Paul's pretty direct. Let me just give you, for sake of time, let me just give you a couple thoughts from Proverbs, because God's wisdom is far greater than ours, isn't it? So in Proverbs chapter 11, verse 25, and in chapter 12, verse 14, and again in chapter 12 and verse 18, Solomon in his wisdom talks about these relationships and how masters should serve, or masters or employers should treat their workers. So what Paul is doing here for us is he's summing up these interpersonal relationships. He says, because of who you are in Jesus Christ, there's a walk that should be distinguishable in your life as a believer in Jesus Christ. And because you are walking as Christ has told you to walk, and as you are being motivated and led by the Holy Spirit, you are submitting to one another. And as you submit to one another, as you do to Christ, then you are going to work things out in your home. Husbands, you're going to love your wives. Wives, you're going to submit to your husbands. And there is going to be this unity and this bond that is so evident in your lives that people want your marriage. because of how you are living Christ in your marriage. And then Paul goes on to say, children, obey your parents in the Lord. God has placed them into your life. You obey them, you reverence them because you are submitting to Christ. Now you submit to that authority that is over you. And then Paul ends with this today, that as an employee and as an employer, There should be something different about you. The world doesn't watch us when we are at ABF or at Bible studies or in church. They see us 40 hours a week, 40 plus hours a week. So let's work. heartily as unto the Lord, as it says in Colossians chapter three, verse 23, so that Christ's saving grace and his love may be on display for everyone to see. We have an opportunity and we have the privilege of demonstrating Christ every day to a lost world for 40 hours. What are we demonstrating and what are they seeing? Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the privilege of being able to come this morning and spend this time together. Father, I pray that as we continue on in the service, as we come to this table, Father, prepare our hearts. Father, I pray that our lives might reflect the image of your Son. That people would be so aware of your presence in our lives because of what they see in us and how we are submitting to you and allowing you to do your work that they are drawn to you. Father, I pray that if there was someone here this morning that doesn't know you as their personal Savior, I pray that this morning might be their day of salvation. Father, I pray that you might sweep across this auditorium this morning, that your Holy Spirit might be at work in all of our hearts. Father, we've spent a lot of time in this book of Ephesians. And my prayer and my hope is that we have been challenged in such a way that we are ready to lay down our life for you. That we are willing to surrender ourselves, our lives to you. And Father, I pray that this altar this morning, these steps this morning, might be a place where we finally are broken and we are coming with a contrite heart before you. Surrendering ourselves. in total abandonment to your will for our lives. Father, we love you. We are so thankful for your grace, your undeserved grace in each of our lives. Please help us to live that out. For your honor and your glory, it's in Christ's name we pray, amen.