Colossians: Who Do You Work For?
Elder Mark Schmeissing preaches from Colossians 3:22-4:1, read for us in Haitian Creole. Discussion points: We may have earthly “masters” but God is our ultimate boss, we work well and ethically because we work for the Lord, the Lord knows our hearts and we are already under his approval.
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Scripture reader: Our scripture reading today is taken from Colossians 3:22 and 4:1. I will be reading from Haitian Creole version, and you can follow along in the English version. When I finish reading, I will say, This is the world of the Lord, and we'll, I'll finish by saying thanks be to God together.
Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.
This the word of the Lord.
Preacher: Good morning. As Fletcher said, I'm an elder here at City on a Hill, and it's a privilege every time I get the opportunity to share God's word with you all. And I'm thankful to get to do that again today.
As a church, we've been going through Colossians over the summer, with a couple of different speakers and, and different schedules. At the end of last week, we ended on verse 17, then we made a little jump this week to verse 22. Some of you may have come this week expecting to hear verses 18 to 21 and something sort of spicy and challenging for you this week. But you're gonna have to come back in the next couple of weeks to get the the message on verses 18 to 21. As a consolation for you all, I'll do my best to make this as spicy and challenging as I can.
So I'm a lay pastor here at City on a Hill, and I have a full-time job as a finance director of a research institute in Cambridge. And if you're not sure what a finance director does, it's a lot of money and math and Microsoft Excel. And since I love numbers and math, I want to start off this morning with a few numbers for you all. First one we have is 4000. There's this really popular book, it's like a time management self-help book called 4000 Weeks. And the central premise of that book is about how the average human lifespan works out to about 4000 weeks of life. I'm not gonna kind of go into an overview of that book or, or some of its ideas, but it's an interesting exercise to really examine your priorities and values in light of the 4000 weeks of life, or hopefully 4000 weeks of life you have here on Earth.
Our second number this morning is 2032. I have been alive for 2032 weeks of life, and I'll let you all do the math on how old that makes me. A typical standard 40-year career eats up about 2000 of those weeks, but if you were to just calculate the time of like a 40 hour work week and you commuting back and forth, it equates to about 495 weeks of nonstop around the clock work time. And that's like in the office, in front of computers. And I'd say this was actually probably on the low end for most of the people in this room when I say 40 hour work weeks, for, for most of us here.
The next number is 11.5. If you do something for just 4 minutes every day, like if you brush your teeth twice a day for 2 minutes each, each time, it adds up to approximately 11.5 weeks of your life. So something kind of small and inconsequential, having very little truly eternal value, adds up to 11.5 weeks of your entire life.
Here's some more fun numbers related to something going on that I'm sure many of us are paying attention to the World Cup. This is from a survey across 8 countries, and they said 27% of employees expect to miss work by coming in late, leaving early, or taking the day off. About 11% of the workers admitted they might show up to work hungover after a big match. And I'm sure nearly all of us or most of us can relate to this one, about 22% expect to work while tired or exhausted during the tournament's run.
Now, some of these numbers don't apply to every one of us in the room this morning. Some of us are stay at home parents or job searching. Some are students. Some of us don't know who Flo Baligan or Jude Bellingham are or what they did this week. But I think these numbers and these stats give us a picture of how much of our lives are spent working and how much of ourselves either pour into it or don't. And there's a claim in the verses that we read this morning from Colossians 3 found in verse 24. You are serving the Lord Christ.
And this is the question I'd like us to consider this morning. Who do you work for? Who's the master that you're serving with your 4000 weeks, or hopefully 4000 weeks? And there's a quick and simple answer. Whenever the pastor up front asks a question, you just raise your hand and you say, Jesus. And that's typically correct, but I want you to stop and consider the question this morning as we go through this passage, not a question of who signs off on your paychecks or how do you spend your weekends, or, but really who do you serve with the entirety of the 4000 weeks of your life.
Now before we deal with this passage, I'd like to look at the way that it opens. and let me show you where we are. Last week, Alex preached verse 17. Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. And our passage this morning is Paul taking this, whatever you do, and getting specific with it. And that's the main point, we'll get there. But first, let's start with the first word that we see in our English Standard Version translation in verse 22. Bond servants. Some of you may have your Bibles open looking at a different translation, maybe the NIV or the NLT and you see the word slaves.
The Book of Colossians was originally written in Greek, like much of the New Testament, and Bible translation is this really challenging work where words or concepts may not have equivalent one-to-one translations in the English language as we use it in 2026. If we're not thoughtful about understanding the context and the text, and then the culture, and then the time period, we may miss the point of what's being said. Now, as I'm sure many of us have experience with any verse in the Bible can and likely has in some situation or another, be taken out of context, pulled out and used to push an agenda or a purpose beyond what the author and what God had intended.
Here at City on a Hill Somerville, we believe that every word was inspired by God through human authors, so that the Bible as originally given is in its entirety the word of God without error and fully reliable. I've taken that directly from our statement of faith here at at CoaH. So how do we deal with this passage and what it's trying to say? Here in this country, with these verses specifically, there's a dark and evil history of abuse of God's word, where slave owners used it to oppress slaves and instructed them to obey us as masters and everything. And then didn't continue on to verse 41 certainly. Because of this history and a lack of context, a lot of people use this specific text and these verses to discredit the Bible and believe it promotes the institution of slavery and is a tool of oppression.
And to address this misuse of this passage, I think we need to understand a few things clearly. Slavery in the first century didn't typically look like the American form of slavery we're all familiar with. In Roman times, the term bond servant or slave could refer to someone who voluntarily served others, and often it was a situation of debt that led them to that position in life. There were different cases where people could earn freedom or property or own property, but it wasn't always the case, and there's, there's a variety of situations. But this is in contrast to the slavery we're familiar with. Which involves subjecting people against their will, taking them from their homes, typically based on race, and treating them as the property of others. And scripture has never ever been OK with that.
You know, I think we flip all the way back to early in our Bibles in Exodus. Exodus 21 at the giving of the law, where God says whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death. Man-stealing was a capital offense under the law of Moses. And Paul carries that idea through the New Testament. In 1 Timothy 1 and a list of the lawless and disobedient, the ungodly and sinners, Paul specifically calls out enslavers as this particular form of evil. The word he uses is literally translated man-stealers. He's drawing the straight line back to Exodus. The kind of slavery practiced in this country was condemned by scripture from the very beginning, and it was punishable by death in Exodus.
You also don't have to go far from our passage this morning to understand how Paul thought about slaves. Throughout Colossians, he makes the point that slave and free are united in Christ before God and equal as fellow heirs of eternal life. In Colossians 3:11, he says, here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarians, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. And if you keep reading past Colossians and past a few other letters from Paul, you'll get to the Book of Philemon. It's an entire letter about Paul's relationship with a runaway slave named Onesimus, who becomes a believer.
The broken and sinful world that we live in puts people into these different positions in this life, but in the family of God, those distinctions don't exist. Now you may be going through these passages and come to this spot in Colossians 3 and ask the question, why doesn't Paul just condemn slavery and move on? Why doesn't he just say this is abhorrent, stop it. And, and kind of carry on with the other points that he wants to make. And I don't 100% know the answer to that question, but I have an idea on why he didn't do that here in Colossians 3. I think he didn't think it was the most important message that was needed for the people of the Colossian Church at that time. It's not unlike the moment in Matthew 22 when the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with a question about paying taxes to Caesar, and Jesus refused their political framing entirely and redirected it to an allegiance question. Whose image is on the coin? Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. And whose image is on you?
Paul's doing the same thing here, refusing sort of this framing of the institution and redirecting it to a question of the heart. Now to a lot of our brains in 2026, many of us might be shocked or surprised at that statement. Think of how much we value personal autonomy and self-realization, and how can these people possibly become the best humans that God made them to be if they're kind of in this state of property. And we'll come back to some of these questions as we consider the messages Paul has for these Colossian believers. But I want you to sit with that discomfort and unease for a few minutes.
Now there was a popular TV show that ran for over a decade, I think, called Undercover Boss. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with the premise, it's pretty simple that a lot of businesses and companies have grown large. They're these large organizations and there's this big disconnect between the people at the top, the executives, the founders, with all the authority and decision-making power and the day to day employees at the bottom of the sort of corporate ladder who keep things running. So this show put owners or CEOs in disguises. They gave them fake mustaches and frosted tips. And they put them on the front lines of whatever business they were running. To give them sort of a better insight into how things are running, who works hard, who cheats the system, what types of challenges people are facing, and in many cases, what the frontline employees thought of them. It's even been parodied on SNL with a Star Wars rendition of Kylo Ren visiting employees on Star Killer Base and things like that.
But each show, including the, the parodies, all have this reveal moment in the show where someone who seemed like just another worker, like a delivery driver or the line cook turns out to be this person who holds all of the authority and decision-making power in the room, and everyone else realizes that the way that they had been interacting and relating to this person had been wrong the whole time. And Paul has a similar reveal moment for us in this passage, where the one with ultimate authority over our work and over our 4000 weeks isn't who we've been assuming it is. God is our true boss, and that transforms how and why we work.
And here's the thing, this isn't me just sort of imposing a metaphor onto the text. It's built into the Greek. The overarching thing that needs to be clarified and something John Piper points out in this passage, is that the word for master and the word for lord are actually the exact same word in Greek, and it affects the, the way the entire paragraph sounds. So let's read the passage again that way, and I think we'll get the point.
Bond servants, obey in everything those who are your earthly lords. Not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Lords, earthly lords, treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Lord in heaven.
So what's the point here? The point is that the earthly lords and earthly slaves in Christ are supposed to shape their lives, their attitudes, their behaviors by the supreme lordship of Jesus over both of them. There's a subordinate earthly lordship that's not final. And the not is really important. If we look at Colossians 3:23 in the middle of the passage here. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not, not for men. Work not for your earthly lord. It's almost as if the earthly lord doesn't exist. So the earthly lord, or your earthly manager, your earthly boss says, put together a PowerPoint presentation or take care of this patient or draft this report, and the earthly servant from hearty sincerity, not people pleasing, gladly runs off and does the task at hand. And Paul says he's doing this not for the earthly lord.
It means that someone so profoundly shaped and governed by the superior lordship of Christ over all the details of his life, that his compliance with earthly lords is as if it were compliance with Jesus and not with man. It's a description of all of us as Christians. We all live in these authority structures, whether it's a child-parent relationship, citizen government, student teacher, employee, employer, player, coach, church member, elders, and so on. And this text is summoning us all to magnify the supreme lordship of Christ by the way that we serve our earthly lords.
So our first point this morning is that everything we do serves a master. Everything we do serves a master. Paul says, whatever you do. And he means it. No one escapes this, no one is exempt. There's an idea of kind of a weekend warrior, and it's an idea that kinda sort of vaguely sounds a little bit Christian, right? I go to work, I do my regular job. But my heart lies in what I do after 5 p.m. or on the weekends. My work doesn't have any truly redeeming or eternal value, except what it allows me to do outside of my work. It's my private time, it's my money, and those are the things that really matter in life.
And what does that say about our values and our priorities, and what does that say about the 495 weeks of our lives that we spend in an office or in front of a computer? Tim Mackey, the Bible Project, he poses it this way. If I were to set up a panel up here of stools, and we had a stage, or we had a discussion with a pastor, a doctor, a lab tech, a car mechanic, a missionary. And I said, which one of these people does the work of the Lord? Our quick and simple answer might be, well, that's easy. It's the religious professional Christians, right? The people who are paid Christians, the pastor and the missionary. And so somehow, one degree or another, we've, we've bought into the idea that there's a part of my life that's a secular part. And unless I work at church, or I become a missionary, I just do it to kind of earn money or something else like that. And then there's the Jesus part of my life that I do a community group. I help out with the kids at church and I attend Sunday service each week, and that's the Jesus part.
And that way of thinking about our lives and the world is completely foreign to the New Testament. More than that, I believe it's damaging to have this split perspective on viewing our lives as Christians. The whole under the whole idea underneath of what Paul is saying here is that we belong to Jesus. If I've given my allegiance to the one who loved me and gave himself up for me. Who gave his life in place of mine, then I don't belong to myself. He says in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, you are not your own, for you are bought with a price, and that price was Jesus' life.
And there's a promise attached to that. Verse 24 of Colossians 3, it says, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You know what slaves couldn't receive from their earthly lords? An inheritance. Under Roman law, it was impossible. So when Paul says from the Lord, you will receive an inheritance, he's promising something that's legally impossible. But he's communicating to this audience of slaves and bond servants that your earthly master may pay you nothing. And the world may never recognize the work that you do. But you have a true Lord in heaven, who's named you in his will, and no one can disinherit you. And that's a dignity that no earthly position can either give or revoke from you.
Everything we do serves a master, no one is exempt. The only question is who, who are we going to serve? And thankfully, graciously, our heavenly master's assessment of our work is not the same as ours. And that's our second point. Christ's assessment of our work is not the same as our assessment.
Going back to Undercover boss, the whole reason that show works is because people behave differently when the boss is watching. That's kind of the whole twist and what, why the show was on for over a decade. Is the boss watching or not? And that's what Paul calls out in verse 22, not by way of eye service as people pleasers. But what if the boss is always in the room, always in your back office, always in your living room, wherever we are, and that's what Paul's describing here.
We're a room of really intelligent and ambitious people. In Boston, I looked up some stats that said over 51% of adults hold a bachelor's degree, and over 20% possess advanced degrees. And I would guess that actually in this room, those numbers are maybe even a little conservative. It's probably higher. I think we're people with strategic plans and career aspirations, often performing for the next person in the room who can help us with that kind of perfect job connection or maybe that little bit of life advice to help us make that next step in our lives. And some of us find it impossible to stop performing for someone else wanting approval, happiness, or a bigger paycheck or whatever extra leg up. People pleasing can be really insidious, and I think Christians can write it off as humility or kindness when the idol of our hearts is the approval of others, and it can be paralyzing.
And for a room like this, eye service may not look like slacking off when the boss is away, it may look like the opposite. Looks like answering emails at 11 at night. Right now. May look like never taking vacation days, grinding for that next performance review. Overwork can be a eye service too. It's just eye service that feels like it has that immediate gratification and reward. So that's the problem that we face.
But if you've been with us throughout this series on Colossians, we've said over and over again, the solution is not try harder. Solutions not just try to think less of others or care less about what they expect from us. A try harder message might kinda get you through this afternoon, maybe even through tomorrow morning, but by Monday afternoon, I think you're gonna hit back into your familiar patterns of life. No, the gospel message is not to just try harder. The gospel message is that we can stop performing by recognizing that we're already fully and completely seen and fully and completely loved by Christ who gave his life up for us.
Back in the Old Testament in First Samuel, lays out the story of Samuel making his way to Jesse's farm to anoint the new king of Israel. Samuel had been given this task by God and kind of looks at Jesse's sons that he, I'm assuming he kind of lined them all up. You can kind of see him in this passage in 1 Samuel 16, rubbing his hands together like, all right, all right, God, I got this. I know how to do this. This is easy. And he has so much confidence that you can hear it in the way that it, the way the things that he says. You can hear it in the way that he approaches the first son. He says, surely, surely this is the one God. And I'm sure internally he's thinking he's got his life put together. He's gotta be the one.
But first Samuel, like Colossians 3 is this reminder for us. That the Lord looks on the heart and not at outward appearances. And after going through all of Jesse's well put together sons, Samuel's instructed by God to anoint the shepherd boy, who was still out in the field at the time, a boy by the name of David as the next king of Israel. And this is the gospel itself. The only audience whose verdict ultimately matters has already rendered it in Christ. We're not working for approval, we're working from it. That should be the release valve for every people pleaser in the room. Myself included, that we're not working for approval, we're working from it.
I'll be honest about where this shows up for me. As I've gotten a little bit older in 2032 weeks. I care a little bit less about sort of the social situations where whether people like me or not, more comfortable with myself than I was maybe 10 to 15 years ago. But here's where it still gets me. I think being appreciated at work. I have this sense that God has gifted me in specific ways, and when I feel like those gifts aren't being seen or used or valued or maximized, discontentment can creep in fast. Should I leave this job? There are better things out there. Maybe somewhere else is actually gonna appreciate what I can bring to the table.
And I have to be reminded of this constantly. That I may not be in my job for the reasons that I think I am. I may not be there for my gifts at all. I might be there because the Lord wants to use me in someone else's life, or potentially work in my own heart in ways I never imagined. When he's really continuing to confront me is that I let my assessment of my gifts and others' assessments of my contributions determine my value. I've got this plan for how my skills should be recognized and where they should take me. And when that reality doesn't match up with the plan, I can feel disappointed, devalued, discontent.
But my value has never been in and should never be in that plan. It was settled at the cross, and I'm not working for that approval. I already have it. As we read on in verse 25, there's no partiality. There's no gaming the system. There's no position or status that can either elevate us or diminish our standing in Christ. Paul is writing a letter and talking to people who are considered owned property of other people, as well as people potentially in the same room who own other people. And he says, you are at the same place with the same standing before the Lord of heaven. We can't be diminished by a bad work situation. Or a boss that doesn't care.
People pleasing is a form of idolatry. It's a way of elevating how others consider me and my life above what God has already accomplished for me. It can run deep, but it doesn't have to. And I pray that you find rest in the one who has already accomplished far more than you can ask or imagine. And he's putting your name in his will.
Our last point for this morning is that our authority is not our own. Our authority is not our own. Paul spends the majority of this passage speaking to bond servants and slaves, and leaves just a final verse for masters or lords. I don't think that this balance speaks about his message, but more about the demographics of his audience and who he was talking to. In verse 41, he says, Masters, treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. Whether you're a manager, a team lead, parent, coach, community group leader. Or maybe just in a friend group, you are informally elevated as someone that people go to for guidance, advice and direction. I think all of us can find ourselves in positions of authority or leadership that carry a levels of responsibility. And the first thing that we see is that we are in our positions by grace.
As we talked about with King David, it's not through our impressive resumes that God has elevated us. He's using our positions as opportunities to demonstrate his grace and love for others. That can sound sort of ridiculous when we think, oh, of course it was my resume, my education and my background and my skills that got me this job. I'm not talking about our careers and our earthly lords or subordinates. I'm talking about the role we have in the kingdom. And I'm talking about how God's purpose for us in our positions, and in our careers, and in our families expands beyond our ambitious five-year plans. And we're called to do it excellently, as though working for the Lord of the universe.
It's by grace that you have been saved, not through works, so that no one may boast, as Paul writes in Ephesians. And if our position is grace, then our role in that position is to point those under us to their true master. Imagine how differently the institution of slavery would have looked if people saw their role as one appointing those under them. Toward their true master, the Lord Christ. Paul's message is one of upending slavery, as it was practiced and as we understand it. Cause if masters showed justice and fairness that mirrored the grace and mercy that they had been shown in Christ, it would look nothing like our textbooks experience of slavery.
Let's bring it to the present day. How many of us see our roles at work or at home or at school as pointing those around us to their true master. And how many of us cheapen that message by diving into gossip and slander of our co-workers? How many of us cheapen that by acting out of pride and ambition instead of humility and service?
The best illustration and example I can think of is to go back to Jesus in John 13 verse 3, it says, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands. Just sit with that for a moment. The father gave all things into his hands. And what does he do next? He laid aside his outer garments and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He has all of the authority in the universe, and he picks up a towel to serve. That's what it means to have power and authority. It's a stewardship, not some sort of achievement. Jesus embodies how we're to handle it. And what we're to do.
He says it plainly in Matthew 20. You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So what's that quote unquote, reward for power and authority? It's to lay down our lives for another, as Jesus did. Remembering that we are put into positions of power and authority by the grace of God, and to point others toward their heavenly Master, should completely reshape how we view our roles and responsibilities. It's not something that kind of turns on and off when we head out the door for work. It's ingrained into every aspect of our lives. Our authority is not our own. It came by grace. We hold it by stewardship, and it exist to point people to their true master.
Mackie proposes that we often view our work and our jobs like trash day. Here in Somerville, if you drive around for 5 to 10 minutes on trash day, you're bound to see people putting out like a broken mirror or a dresser that's kind of got a wonky looking drawer or a chair missing a leg. And I would say 95+% of us just kind of keep on driving, saying that is definitely trash, and we, we carry on. But there might be a few of you in the room that are like, oh, this looks sweet. This is an opportunity for me to take something. And make it something of value, something that'll last.
And I think that's what Jesus sees in our work and in those couple 1000 weeks of our lives. Remember that discomfort I asked you to sit with? Why isn't Paul call for the system to be torn down? And here's where his strategy comes into view. His message is not one of revolution and sort of upending the broken systems of the world in the traditional ways that we'd imagined. Nor does he say, look, it's OK, you're in a transition period. Just hang on for a bit while God sorts out the world around you. You're busy. It's fine. No, he says where we are and what we're doing right now, we're providing an opportunity to serve the Lord with everything in our being. It's these very principles of one lord over both master and slave, one standard, no partiality, that would eventually make slavery impossible to sustain wherever the gospel had taken hold.
Last week, Alex showed us that the new life in Christ is actually the dream life that we've all been chasing, better than any American dream. One of the things he pulled out of verse 17 was that this new life gives us worthwhile work. Whatever you do, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. And what does Paul do next? He takes those next verses. He says, whatever you do, and he gets very specific, and he says, this is what it looks like on the ground in the hardest possible case.
So let's not wait for that next step in life. The dream life isn't in kind of the next job that we get. Or once we get married, once we find that perfect partner. It's not in a few years when life gets a little less busy and starts to settle down. Alex said it perfectly last week, the best thing that will ever happen to us has already happened. Everything else, the promotions, the recognition, the perfect role. They're all fighting for second place.
And whether we find ourselves in positions of authority this week, or we find ourselves at the very bottom of a super long corporate ladder. You're called to serve the Lord above. And he offers us an inheritance that can never be taken away. It's a beautiful message that means so much more than simply coasting by Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. And you may not be able to have the eyes to see the beautiful dresser or the value in it, but the Lord wants to redeem your work, and it's not wasted. So this week, before you open up your laptop or scroll on Slack, before your first email, I encourage you to take 15 seconds and just say, Lord, this is for you. Remind yourself of who you work for. And start there this week.
I'll leave you with these words from 1 Corinthians 15:58. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain. Let's bow our heads as we approach the Lord's table.
Lord, idolatry of approval and people pleasing, Lord, is, is insidious and and affects many of us, Lord. I pray that we are reminded this morning of what you've done on the cross. We're reminded that we are not working for approval, but from it. I pray, Lord, that whatever position we find ourselves in. That we seek to serve you with the entirety of our being, Lord. That we don't discount this week, this day, this afternoon in our lives. But we say this is an opportunity to give it over to you. And that we die to ourselves as we wake up each day this week, Lord. Lord, we seek to serve you. And we ask that we are reminded that that labor is not in vain this week. We lift all this up to you. In Jesus' name.