Ephesians 6:5-9: The Gospel in Our Work

The 2001 movie O Brother Where Art Thou opens with the song the Big Rock Candy Mountain. 

This song was written in 1928, just before the great depression. It paints a “unique” picture of paradise.

There are hens that lay soft boiled eggs, cigarette trees, policemen with wooden legs, watch dogs with rubber teeth. There are streams of alcohol, “a lake of stew and whiskey too.” There is a huge candy mountain.  There are no tools, no shovels, no axes, no picks. You get to sleep all day.

And the climactic line…they get to “hang the jerk that invented work!” 

But if they were really going to hang the jerk who invented work, whose neck would they put the noose around?

Genesis 1 paints a very different picture of paradise; and of work. And in Ephesians 6 we hear a very different song being sung about our work.

Here is our outline: