Daily Devotional – July 16, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

How are you doing in the workplace? Some of you may be retired and have left the workplace, and so that question doesn't really apply to you.

00:09

You have a different kind of workplace, don't you? You can clock in when you want to, clock out when you want to, and you pretty much do what you want to in your workplace, so blessings on you for that.

00:21

For the rest of us, we have a job to do, and we serve in the workplace. Speaking of work, have you seen the interview, the video?

00:30

It's a spoof, admittedly, but it's a video of a millennial job interview, a young girl in her early 20s, she's at a job interview, and the interviewer, potential employer, is an older man, like my age, old guy, and he starts off by telling her, you know,

00:54

I appreciate your resume, looks like a good resume, and he says, I notice here you say you're skilled with technology, and he asks her a bunch of questions.

01:03

Are you skilled with Excel? No. How about Microsoft Word?

01:09

No. Publisher? No. No, not at all.

01:15

Well, what areas of technology are you skilled in then? Her answer is, oh, you know, the big ones like Twitter and Snapchat and so on and so forth, and she gets done, he says, oh,

01:29

I thought maybe you would have said Facebook, and she laughs at him and says, no, no, no, no, Facebook, that's for old people, that's for old people, and then they go on in their interview, and he finally says to her, okay, so if I'm going to hire you, then

01:46

I'm going to need you to be here at work at 8 o 'clock in the morning, and she's like, what?

01:53

I'm sorry, that won't work for me, not 8 o 'clock in the morning, why, I'm on,

01:59

I'm Skyping with my boyfriend in Paris until 3 o 'clock in the morning, I don't even get up until 10 in the morning, and then

02:06

I have to stop at Starbucks and get my, and she rattles off what her drink is that she gets every day.

02:12

So, 10 .45 will work much better for me, thank you, and he says, well, no, that's not going to work for me, you want this job, you need to be here at 8 o 'clock in the morning, and she gets all flustered and says,

02:26

I need to talk to somebody from Human Resources, and he says, Human Resources, yes,

02:33

I need to take a mental health day, he says, well, I think her name was Amy, he says,

02:39

Amy, you don't even work here, and she says, what, you mean, you mean you're firing me?

02:47

And he finally just says, well, yeah, I guess so, I guess so, now, it's an extrapolation of an extreme exaggeration,

03:00

I should say, of the stereotype of the millennial in the workplace, but it's funny, and it's a stereotype for a reason, and that reason is that, well, too many employers have had interesting experiences working, trying to work with a generation that doesn't really know well how to work.

03:27

This past Lord's Day, we were in Ephesians chapter 6, and in that passage, the

03:33

Apostle Paul has much to say to workers, and then a little bit to say to employers.

03:41

Now, in that relationship in Ephesians 6, he's dealing with bond servants and their masters, which is a whole other subject, and I dealt with that last

03:53

Sunday night, but the application of the principles that Paul gives in those verses, it applies to us in our modern workplace setting.

04:03

The employee is not a bond servant as a first century bond servant was, but he does need to understand that he's under the authority of his employer and has responsibilities to that employer, and likewise, the employer is not a master in the sense of a first century master that has a bond servant, but that employer does have a responsibility to his employees as the master did to his bond servant.

04:33

I want to take a couple days and look at some of these things because I think they're very helpful to us to get a sense of what it means to be a

04:39

Christian in the workplace. When Paul writes to the bond servants or the employees, the first thing he says that they're to do is to obey their masters or their employers, to obey them.

04:55

In other words, they give you something to do while you carry it out. You do what you're asked to do.

05:01

You do what's expected of you. You do what's on the job description and more because we all understand that the job description is a description of the job.

05:11

It's not a detailed itemization of everything that's going to show up when doing a job. The employer comes and he says, here's what

05:18

I need you to do. I need you to do this for me today, and the employee, the Christian employee says, okay,

05:24

I will. And again, there's always the caveat there that you're not asked to do something that is illegal or immoral or unethical, and that's rarely ever occurring in the workplace.

05:36

You're asked to do something that is a reasonable request from your employer. You are to carry it out.

05:43

So he says, obey your earthly masters, but then he says to do it with fear and trembling. And what

05:49

Paul's getting at there is to do the work with a degree, a measure of diligence in the doing of it, where you do your work in such a way that you are demonstrating a concern for the standards of the workplace, for the quality controls of the products or whatever, for the quotas of the piece rate or whatever.

06:16

Whatever those standards are, whatever those requirements are, you are concerned about meeting those requirements.

06:24

You don't have a laissez -faire attitude that says, well, you know, those requirements are just suggestions.

06:31

If I want to do it, I will. If I don't, I won't. It's not a big deal. Now, that's not the attitude of a

06:36

Christian employee. A Christian employee takes those things seriously, and he wants to do what he can to help his employer and to fulfill what the employer has given him to do.

06:47

So he's to do so with diligence. And then the Christian employee also serves sincerely, sincerely.

06:58

He says, do so with a sincere heart, that is, without hypocrisy.

07:06

You've probably run across hypocrites in the workplace. These are the kind of people who give the impression to the boss that they're true blue, loyal employees to the company, and they're very dependable and reliable.

07:23

The boss can count on them. And they even give the impression to the boss that they like the boss.

07:29

But then the boss is out of earshot. And what they have to say is something completely different.

07:36

And they undermine, and they backstab, and they talk behind the back of the boss.

07:44

And a lot of the other employees know how they really feel about that. That's just sheer hypocrisy. There's no place for that in the

07:52

Christian employee. And then the third thing I want to mention today, and we'll pick this up again tomorrow, is that we need, as Christian employees, we need to serve with integrity, with integrity.

08:05

Paul goes on to say here in Ephesians 6, he says, not by way of eye service as men -pleasers, eye service as men -pleasers.

08:16

And he's getting at the idea of integrity here. Now, I'll share you a personal example of my failure in this regard.

08:24

Many, many years ago, shortly after my wife and I were married, I worked for a painting company. And another guy and I, we got to be pretty good friends.

08:34

And the boss sent us to a particular job, and it was actually going to become a new office area for the painting company.

08:44

And he gave us the job of painting the walls in this office. And we went there, and honestly, we goofed off way too much.

08:55

We spent way too long on the job. And even the job that we did was not done very well.

09:01

It was done rather poorly. And the problem is that the boss wasn't looking over our shoulder.

09:10

And we didn't have the idea that we need to do this work because it's valuable in itself, and we need to do the best that we can do because our boss is counting on us and so on.

09:22

We were more interested in goofing off and having a good time between ourselves.

09:28

Now, that was a failure. I'm not to be serving with eye service. I work one level of intensity and diligence when the boss is looking over my shoulder, and then slack off and slough off when he's not around.

09:46

And I don't work as a man pleaser. That is that I'm only interested in getting the accolades, the praise of the boss.

09:57

No, I need to work as unto the Lord. I need to work with integrity, doing my best whether or not the boss is looking, and whether or not he's there to be pleased.

10:11

I need to be a person of integrity as an employee in the workplace. Well, I don't know what your role is in the workplace.

10:20

If you're the boss, an employee, or self -employed. But whatever the case, there are principles to guide us as we do our jobs.

10:31

And I trust the Lord will encourage you to be a good, diligent employee in the workplace.

10:38

Let's pray and ask God to help us in that regard. So Father, we do realize we have a responsibility to you and to our employers.

10:48

Help us to be diligent and help us to be people of integrity and to serve without hypocrisy in the workplace.

10:57

Yes, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your day and join tomorrow.

11:04

We'll look at a few more ways in which we as employees need to serve effectively in the workplace.