How Do We Do EVERYTHING in the Name of Jesus?

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the Word of God and the doctrines of grace.

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The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along.

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Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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It's good to have you with us today and I'd like for you to open your Bible and let's go to Colossians chapter 3 and verse 17.

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Now while you're turning there in your Bible, I want to make a quick announcement.

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It's a little bit more of a statement of a mistake that I made.

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I actually missed a book.

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You know, we are going through our New Testament Bible reading and I went straight from Philippians to Colossians and I was supposed to put in the middle of that the one chapter book of Philemon.

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Well, since I missed that book, I'm not going to stop now and go back and get it, but at the end of Colossians, which should be this week, we'll do Colossians 3 today, we'll do Colossians 4 tomorrow, and then where I missed the book of Philemon, I'll put that in afterwards and then that will keep us on track for the next book.

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So forgive me if you're going along with our New Testament Bible reading.

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That was my error and it was just simply something that I forgot to check before I went and did the videos and posted them.

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So please forgive me.

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Now we're going to be today in Colossians chapter 3 and we're going to look particularly at verse 17.

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There's a lot more that we could look at in this passage, but this is the one that we're going to focus on today.

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It says, And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

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Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.

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Several years ago, I opened my own small business on the side.

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Many of you know, as a pastor, I have had a few other side jobs that I've done to sort of help my income.

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It allows us to, as a family, to help me support my family and one of the things that I've done is substitute teach.

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I was a substitute teacher for eight years in Nassau County public schools and I've done work in security.

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I've done all kinds of things, but for a few years I had a t-shirt screen printing business.

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It was a lot of fun.

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I started it as a homeschool hobby with the kids and I learned how to do it and learned how to do it well.

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Happened to come across some equipment that was very inexpensive that gave me a very high production quality at very little cost.

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So I was able to make shirts really, really well and I ended up making thousands upon thousands of t-shirts for people in the Jacksonville area and even around people that would order from out of state and I had to send them out of state.

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So I did t-shirts professionally for about three years and in our screen printing shop, which was in our garage, I had a poster on the wall that I had printed and on that poster was this passage, Colossians 3 17, whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the father through him.

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Now why would I put that passage on the wall? Well, because even though screen printing was not the same as my job as a minister, my main vocation in life is ministering the word of God and ministering to people and being the pastor of Sovereign Grace Family Church.

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But even though screen printing was not the same as ministering the word of God, I still felt every time I printed a shirt, I was doing it for the glory of God and I was doing it as a representative of Christ.

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So every time I did business with anyone that I made shirts with, I would try to represent Christ well.

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And that doesn't mean that everybody got a gospel track or everybody, which they did, but that wasn't the only way to represent Christ to them.

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Because while I should be representing Christ with the gospel, and I was, I was also representing Christ with the quality of my work.

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I was doing the work in the name of Christ.

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I was inspired by a quote, which is often attributed to Martin Luther.

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However, there has been some debate as to whether or not he really said it, but I'd like to think that he did.

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He's a hero of mine, but either way, it's a quote that was said, and I think that it's true.

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And the quote goes like this, a Christian shoemaker does his duty, not by putting little crosses on the shoes that he makes, but a Christian shoemaker does his duty by making good shoes.

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Think about that for a moment.

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Let that sink in.

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A Christian shoemaker does his duty, not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes.

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I used to go to Lifeway Bible bookstore before it closed down.

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One of the things I always kind of made me laugh was there was everything that you could possibly put a cross on was being sold at Lifeway stores, whether it was pins or necklaces or earrings.

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And I remember there was candy up by the register, but the candy wasn't like Snickers bars or Reese cups.

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The candy was, it was Christian candy.

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One of them I remember specifically was called Testa mints and it were like mints, but they said testaments and it had a little cross on it.

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I remember thinking one, kind of how, how cheesy that is that we were sold by such cheesiness.

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But at the same time too, I was like, you know, is that really what it means to make a Christian product? Is that really what it means to do something in a Christian way that we have to slap a cross on it and say, well, there, now it's Christian.

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No, as Christians, how we represent Christ best is when we do our best at whatever it is Christ has called us to do.

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So if you're a, if you're a businessman and your job is to do business, then you are to do your business honestly, fairly and correctly and to treat people with nobility and to treat people well.

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That's how you represent Christ in your business.

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Should you tell people about Christ? Yes.

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Should you be an evangelist? Always.

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But how do you represent Christ best? You represent Christ best by always doing your best.

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If you're a policeman or you're a plumber or you're a firefighter, whatever you are, whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of Jesus Christ.

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That's what this passage tells us.

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And it reminds us being a Christian is more than just telling people about Jesus.

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That is important.

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And please don't for a minute think that I'm diminishing the concept of evangelism.

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I love evangelism and sharing Christ.

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We have to do that.

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That's absolutely true.

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But here's something that's important.

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If you share Christ with people and then you treat them poorly and you treat them unfairly and you don't do a good job whenever you have a job to do for them, that will call your entire testimony into question.

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Think about that.

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Now again, you're not going to be perfect, nobody's going to be perfect, and people might try to punch holes in what I'm saying here.

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This is not some kind of a way of me saying that you have to represent Christ by being perfect like Christ, no.

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But if you're a Christian businessman, you should be a fair and honorable businessman.

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If you're a Christian homemaker, then you should be a person that represents Christ to your children and to your neighbors and to your community.

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Whatever you are, whatever you do in thought or in word or deed, you're doing it in the name of Christ.

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You are representing Christ.

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You know, when we think about what it means to take the Lord's name in vain, oftentimes we think of somebody using a bad word.

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But isn't it also taking the Lord's name in vain when we bear the name of Christ, when we bear the name Christian, and yet we live in a way that dishonors Him, that we don't take into consideration how important it is that our words and our deeds match our confession.

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So again, Colossians 317 has meant a lot to me.

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I hope now it will mean a lot to you, and I hope that as you go about your day today, you think about that in every word and in every deed, your job is to honor the Lord Jesus Christ.

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As the Apostle Paul says in another passage, that whatever we do, even in eating and drinking, we do everything to the glory of God.

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Thank you for watching, and may God bless you.

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Thank you for watching this episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.

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On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for watching, and may God richly bless your day.