The Importance of Work: 2 Thess Lesson 15

The Importance of Work

2 Thessalonians 3:10-13

Read 2 Thessalonians 3

The emphasis of this chapter is the protection of the church from those who live undisciplined lives. Paul commands the Thessalonians to keep away from every brother who leads an unruly or undisciplined life. The church must be willing to take steps necessary to protect the purity and unity of the fellowship. The church that is not pure cannot be unified. The church that is not pure and united cannot claim any measure of integrity. It certainly will not be able to have a positive impact for the kingdom of God in the world.

In verse 6 Paul told the Thessalonians to take the steps necessary to deal with the brother whose life is inconsistent with the truth. Then, in verses 7-9 Paul does what a good leader should do. He calls them to follow his example. We looked last week at the things that made Paul a good and godly example after whom a leader can pattern his or her life.  Paul lived a consistent, disciplined life which was according to the traditions, or the truth he had taught. His life conformed to the message of his lips. He practiced what he preached.

Paul also demonstrated greater concern for others than he did for himself. He could have expected to receive support from the Thessalonians, but he would not even take bread for which he did not pay. He worked night and day so as to avoid being a burden to anyone. This was because he had a greater concern for others than for his own comfort and convenience.

Paul was a good and godly example also because he laid down his own rights for the rights of those he led. He had every right to receive support from the church. He had the support of the Scriptures. The other apostles were receiving support, not only for themselves but also their wives. He knew that a soldier did not serve at his own expense. He explained all these reasons to the Corinthians, and we looked at those, but he did not even make the case among the Thessalonians. He simply sat aside that right for the benefit of others.

These are not all the critical components of being a good and godly example others can follow, but as we saw last week, we will not be a good example if these three qualities cannot be found in us. They are certainly qualities we must possess if we are going to confront those whose lives are not consistent with the truth.

Should we then be expected to always show greater concern for all others? Is it necessary to always lay down our own rights for the benefit of others? Does showing greater concern for others than for myself mean that I should work myself day and night, not only to not be a burden to others, but so I can provide for them without concern for whether or not they are willing to work to support themselves? Does laying down my rights for the best interest of others mean that I should give up my resources if there is anyone around who might benefit from them? Should I give to them if they are unwilling to do anything to provide for themselves?

We finally get to the issue that is at the heart of the unruly behavior. There were people in Thessalonica who had attached themselves to the church who were refusing to work. It could have been that these people were deceived. They may have believed the return of Christ was going to happen any day. Our study of the second chapter revealed that there was some message concerning the Day of the Lord that had disturbed the Thessalonians. So it may have been that there were some who simply saw no point in working if it was only a few days until the Lord returned. The Lord did not return. These people were left to depend on others in the church to provide for them the very things they could have and should have provided for themselves if they had been living disciplined, responsible lives.

We are going to see four things from verses 10-13 this morning. We are going to see the biblical principle regarding work, the problem, the prescription, and the priority. It just happens to work out conveniently to have these four alliterated points from these four verses.

First we see the biblical principle. Look at verse 10. “For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat.” Let’s begin with the word “order.” The KJV translates it “commanded.” The word in the Greek means “to pass along an announcement, or advance a command.” Paul is not claiming to have come up with this. He was simply passing along something that was already clearly understood. This was an established principle that everyone knew and that Paul had reiterated while he was with them. It was a basic biblical principle. If anyone is not willing to work, he is not to eat either.

The expectation that man should work for his food was a principle established by God from the beginning. Work was God’s idea from the beginning. Work was part of God’s original design for mankind. Work is good for us. Work was not the result of the Fall of man into sin. It was the Fall that resulted in work being much more difficult because there were thorns and weeds to deal with as man worked to till the ground. Before the Fall into sin there was a beautiful, well balanced nutritious garden from which man could eat. But Genesis 2:15, which is before the Fall in Genesis 3 Moses tells us, “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and to keep it.” He went on to tell the man to eat freely from any tree of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

From the beginning, even in a perfect, sinless setting, God established this principle. There is work involved in cultivating and keeping. Man is to work for his food. This was God’s design and God hasn’t made His first mistake yet. So Paul, when he was with the Thessalonians, passed along this principle first established by God. Man is to work to be able to eat. It stands to reason that if a man is unwilling to work, then he is not to eat either. The word translated “not willing” indicates that this is a case where the people would not work.

This does not say that if anyone is not able to work he is not to eat. This would be a compassionless approach inconsistent with the Christian life. The context requires us to draw the conclusion that Paul has written this to address those who had decided not to work, probably because they believed the return of Christ could happen any day. What had happened is that the hunger pains had arrived before the Lord and these irresponsible, unruly brothers were just mooching off those who were still working. Paul lets them know that this stands in direct contradiction to the principles outlined by God Himself.

It is not a heartless, compassionless approach to take, to let a person go hungry who can work but will not. In fact, by giving them food or money we may be doing the very worst thing we can do. We can do things that we think are helping when, in fact, they are contributing to the problem. It can be very tempting to help someone even when we should not.

You see it more in Tulsa than here, but you see it in Muskogee also. There are people standing at busy intersections holding up signs asking for help. It can be hard to pull up to that intersection and resist the temptation to roll down the window and give them a couple dollars. A couple weeks ago it was fairly cold outside and we saw a woman who was barefoot. A barefoot woman with a haggard look on her face and a sign saying she is hungry is enough to make you want to pull out your wallet. At the very least you want to go buy her a burger. Is this the right thing to do?

It has always been a struggle because if you give them money you don’t know what they are going to spend that money on. You don’t want to give money they are going to spend on liquor or drugs. I used to office here at the church. I often had people pull in off the highway and ask for help. They had great stories. I once followed someone to the gas pump a mile up the road and proceeded to fill up their tank. Their story was that they were out of gas and had to get to a sick family member in Tulsa. The pump ran less than a gallon in their tank before shutting off. They were exposed. They hoped I would just pull out my wallet and give them cash.

When Ryan was in the hospital Donna and I pulled into a restaurant to eat and a guy in a wheelchair was going from car to car asking for money to help pay his rent in the apartments nearby. He said he was hungry so I went in and ordered a burger to go. The waitress asked me if it was for the man outside in the wheelchair. When I told her it was she said she would have to check with the manager. He was out there every day and his story was the same every day. He was only $20 short on his rent money. I took the burger out to him and confronted him for lying. He got honest and said he didn’t need the money for rent. It was just a story that he had developed. I used the opportunity to urge him to get some real help, and told him he would give an account to God for deceiving people. He claimed to be a Christian but things didn’t add up in my mind.

Rich Schaus helped me see the problem with giving these people money, or even food. When we give them the help they are asking for, we are preventing them from seeking the help they really need. When people roll down the window and hand money out to people panhandling on the corner, they are not only enabling them to continue in a destructive lifestyle, they are encouraging it. Those people do that because it works. If it didn’t work, and no one ever handed them money or food, their hunger pains would reach the point to where they would go somewhere like GRM and seek help. They need to go to somewhere where they are held accountable and where they can get the help they need to get free from their addiction and learn skills to be able to work.

Before Rich came to GRM there were no real requirements or expectations for people to stay. People could stay for as long as they wanted and they didn’t have to seek help. They were required to attend a chapel service but that was about it. Now they have to show some initiative. They are evaluated and their issues assessed and they must agree to a plan and show a commitment to receiving the help they need. It is not a perfect system, there is not a perfect system. It isn’t run by perfect people. Those are too hard to afford. While it isn’t a perfect system, it is designed to comply with this biblical principle. If a man is not willing to work, he is not to eat either.

You know who gives Rich the most flack for taking this approach to helping the homeless? He has told me that his greatest opposition comes from the church. The church people are the ones who criticize him for requiring people to do something. The church needs to open the Bible to 2 Thessalonians 3.

Most of your biblically based missions are requiring people to do something if they want to continue to stay in the shelter and receive help. Rich isn’t the first mission director to see the need to expect something in return for the food and shelter. Because many shelters require something of those they help, now, there are low-barrier shelters popping up, usually run by those who claim to be Christians. “Low-barrier” means we will take you in and house you and feed you and we won’t ask any questions about what you are doing that is destroying your life. They will continue to feed you in the name of Christ and let you keep doing the very thing that will send you into an eternal hell. Does anyone besides me see a problem with that? This is a clear violation of a simple biblical principle.

The biblical principles God established have always been in man’s best interest. We mess things up when we fail to understand or comply with His principles for life. Look at what our culture has done regarding God’s principles for marriage. Are we better off as a culture because we allow divorce for no reason or men to marry men or women to marry women? Listen, God’s ways are right. God’s ways are always right and God’s ways are always best for mankind.

That is why Paul addressed the problem. We find the problem addressed in verse 11. “We hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies.” As we have already learned, the meaning of undisciplined means disorderly, out of step. It is to live as one who is negligent regarding his or her duties. It is disobedient and insubordinate. These people were out of line because they would not work. The word “busybodies” literally means busy doing nothing. These people were everywhere staying busy doing nothing.

In the next verse Paul is going to tell these people to work and eat their own bread. Since this is the prescription it is safe to assume that the problem involved not only doing no work, but staying busy looking for someone who would give them something to eat. These people were probably very zealous about their views of Christ’s return and they were causing strife and dissention among the church. The idea of a busybody also conveys the idea of a gossip. Gossip may not be the worst sin you can commit against the church, but it can be among the most destructive.

This is a problem on a couple levels. On one level it is a problem because these undisciplined people were a burden to the very people Paul determined not to burden. This was the reason for his devotion to living as an example others could follow. He worked so others would see that even as an apostle of Christ he worked to support his ministry.

But it is a problem on another level because it may have come from a cultural conditioning that had created an unbiblical attitude toward work. Among both Jews and Greeks there was the idea that manual labor was beneath man. This was the work that slaves and lower classes were to perform. Work was beneath their dignity. This is an unbiblical view of work.

Even among mature Christians there is an attitude of disdain for working. If we hate our jobs I think it may be that we do so because we are looking at work from the perspective of the culture more than from God’s perspective. In the modern western world the goal of working is to achieve a certain level of financial success so that retirement is attainable. I saw an 86 year old man this week who is still working and does not want to quit. In my conversation we noted that retirement isn’t really a biblical concept. Those of you who retire don’t get to sit and do nothing. That isn’t good for us. Nor do you get to become busybodies. You need to find something to do that has purpose and accomplishes something. You will get into trouble if you sit around with too much idle time on your hands.

God created man is His own image, and guess what? God works. One aspect of being created in the image of God is that we were created to work. God worked in creation and on the seventh day He rested from His labor. He didn’t stop working forever. He still holds all things together. He works constantly exercising providence in the affairs of mankind. The Lord Jesus is working bringing redemption to mankind, building His church and interceding for the saints. We were created to work. The Bible does not tell us that God retired, or plans to retire.

The attitude of disdain regarding our jobs comes not from God but from the culture. If we look at it from only man’s perspective we can develop a level of cynicism toward work, maybe a little like Solomon had. Solomon asked in Ecc. 1:3, “What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun?” In Ecc. 2:2 he asks, “For what does a man get in all his labor and in his striving with which he labors under the sun?” While looking at life from only man’s perspective Solomon wrote in Ecc. 5:16, “This also is a grievous evil – exactly as man is born, thus he will die. So what is the advantage to him who toils for the wind?”

When Solomon viewed his work from God’s perspective he had a different attitude and drew completely different conclusions. He wrote in Ecc. 2:24, “There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God.” He also wrote in Ecc. 3:13, “Every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor – it is the gift of God.”

Perhaps a good way to view work is not as a job, but as a God-given avenue of ministry. No Christian is really engaged in secular employment. You are just on a mission field where you are being paid to represent your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Any refusal to work may be coming from an unbiblical view of work, and this is a problem.

Paul gave a prescription to address this problem. He gives it to us in verse 12. “Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in a quiet fashion and eat their own bread.” The prescription is fairly simple and straightforward. Those who will do no work at all, but are acting like busybodies, these people are to work in a quiet fashion and eat their own bread.

There is something interesting about Paul’s choice of words in this prescription. The word “command” is the same word in the Greek as we saw in verse 10 that was translated “order.” It was used there to describe the passing along of an order or to advance a command. Paul could have used a much stronger word often translated “command” which conveyed the idea of ordering someone to do something. Paul’s prescription to fix the problem is to just do what is obviously right. Work so you can eat.

Even his use of the word translated “exhort” is a softer work than what is commonly used. The word translated “exhort” is “parakaleo.” It means “to beseech or encourage.” If Paul wanted to exercise the full weight of authority he could have used “noutheteo.” This means “to admonish.”

The point is that Paul doesn’t lean on the full weight of apostolic authority to order them to work or admonish them. Why? Because he knows if the faithful will do what they should do the problem will solve itself. The prescription is to let the biblical principle be your guide and let nature take its course. Don’t feed those who will not work and when they get hungry enough and they realize that busybody work doesn’t pay very well, or put food on the table, they will go to work. You won’t have to order them to go to work. You won’t have to command them to go to work. Their hunger pains, along with a little reminder of God’s plan should be enough to resolve the issue.

Notice that Paul writes this prescription “in the Lord Jesus Christ.” Is this what Christ would prescribe? This is an interesting question because Jesus was known to feed hungry people. Jesus feed five thousand hungry people at one time. On another occasion He fed four thousand. Jesus never fed those who would not work. He fed those who came to hear Him teach and who had traveled a distance to get there and had stayed for a long teaching session. 

If my memory serves me well enough, the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle, other than the Resurrection, recorded in all four gospels. Only John tells us what happened after this miraculous event. John 6:14 says, “Therefore when the people saw the sign which He had performed (feeding the multitude with only five loaves and two fish), they said, ‘This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.’” The next verse says, “So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.”

Why were the people going to come and take Jesus by force and make Him their king? Because He was their ticket to the dining car on the gravy train. He could feed them everyday. Jesus could have been accepted as the Prophet, the Messiah. Wasn’t this why He came? Not exactly. He would not be made king so that everyone could eat freely. Jesus would not usher in a kingdom that violated a biblical principle established by God from the foundation of the world. Jesus could have had instant acceptance and unlimited success just by letting the people have what they wanted. He refused. In verse 26 of John 6 Jesus confronted these crowds with the truth. He told them that the only reason they sought Him was because they ate the loaves and were filled.

When Paul wrote this prescription in the Lord Jesus Christ he knew he was writing what was the will of the Lord. It was an instruction for people to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread. If they won’t work, let them go hungry. 

Paul knew what a struggle this would be for kind-hearted, compassionate people. It is difficult to deny the request of a friend or family member or fellow church member who is in need of something to eat. Again I will say that we would never let someone go hungry who could not work. If they are unable to work, or willing to work but unable to get a job, we are going to help. Because it is a struggle for the faithful to say “no” to those who lead undisciplined lives, Paul reminds them of the priority. He writes in verse 13, “But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good.”

People can be relentless. People can be difficult. People can and do often know how to wear us down. People learn what to say to tug at our heartstrings. It is not easy to tell someone we love that we are not going to help them until they are willing to do what they can and should do to help themselves. We are not to grow weary of doing good. We are not to compromise on the principles of God’s word, no matter how much pressure comes from the culture. 

Sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest thing to do. We must not grow weary of doing that which is right and good, no matter how hard it is. Our strength to continue comes from trusting that what God has said is right. I have long appreciated the final words from the prophet Hosea. In Hosea 14:9 these words are written, “Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous will walk in them, but transgressors will stumble in them.”

When God designed the principle that a man should work for his food and if he won’t work he can go hungry, God knew what He was doing. The ways of the Lord are right. Work does so much more for us than just give us the chance to eat. Working allows us to fulfill God’s design. Work gives us the chance to be a witness for Christ. Work allows us to earn what we need to provide for ourselves and our families. Work provides the income we can support the mission of Christ here and around the world. Work is a gift from God. 

Work is not nearly so much our enemy as idleness. Show me a person with too much idle time on his or her hands and I will show you someone who is battling boredom and potentially depression. They will, far too often, fill the time with things they should not be involved with. It isn’t a quote of the Bible but it is true that idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

We are to do our work as unto the Lord, not just as a means of eye service. Whatever we do we do for the glory of God. This includes our work. We must not grow weary in doing good.

As we read in our Call to Worship in Mark 1, Jesus worked hard. He was not One given to laziness or idleness. Several years ago people were wearing bracelets with the letters WWJD. What would Jesus do? The implication was that whoever was wearing the bracelet would follow the example of Jesus. One thing Jesus would do is work. Work is God’s plan. Work is good.

Let’s pray.