How Do We Do EVERYTHING in the Name of Jesus?

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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

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.

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

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

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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.

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

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

I actually missed a book.

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.

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.

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

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.

So please forgive me.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

It was a lot of fun.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I was doing the work in the name of Christ.

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

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

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

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.

Think about that for a moment.

Let that sink in.

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

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

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.

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

The candy was, it was Christian candy.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

That's how you represent Christ in your business.

Should you tell people about Christ? Yes.

Should you be an evangelist? Always.

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

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.

That's what this passage tells us.

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

That is important.

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

I love evangelism and sharing Christ.

We have to do that.

That's absolutely true.

But here's something that's important.

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.

Think about that.

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.

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

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

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.

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

You are representing Christ.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Thank you for watching, and may God bless you.

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