12 Nov 11/14/21 2 Thess. 3:6-15 “I’ve Got Bad News and Good News”
11/14/21 2 Thess. 3:6-15 “I’ve Got Bad News and Good News”
As many of you know, I have never had an original thought in my life, but I borrow liberally from others. So, I borrow this from Richard Tow as he compiled these figures. He says that I had worked about 90,000 hours when I retired. That is based on 45 years of 40 hours a week. My work life started on the farm when I was 12 years old. There wasn’t anything that I couldn’t drive at that time so I was on the tractor in the field for a major part of that summer. This really brings back some fond memories. For the most part I sat on a crawler with no cab or radio or much of anything. It was very loud and very dirty. It’s no wonder that my hearing isn’t that good today. Anyway, I will be 71 in a couple of months. I’ve been working during retirement but it has not seemed like work at all because it has been work for the Lord and I have loved every minute of it. I can’t really say that about working at the Post Office. Today, we are going to take a look at work as Paul presents this to the Thessalonians. It is not my intent today to accuse anyone of being lazy. But Paul really doesn’t pull any punches here, so neither will I. Let’s see if we can find ways to be productive Christians.
As we begin I would like to say that I have never considered myself to be a particularly ambitious man. There are many areas in my life where I would consider myself to be lazy. This is probably a pretty common feeling that many people have about themselves. Sharon has another perspective and she may say that I am driven in certain areas of life. This may be true but I have a tendency to dwell on the things that I don’t do or don’t do well. It is all a matter of perspective. Steve Shepherd tells of how John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, traveled over 250,000 miles on horseback preaching the Gospel. He preached over 40,000 sermons, wrote 400 books and knew 10 languages. At age 83 he was annoyed because he couldn’t write more than 15 hours a day without hurting his eyes. At age 86 he was ashamed that he couldn’t preach more than twice a day. He complained in his diary that he was having an increasing tendency to lie in bed until 5:30 AM. In other words he thought he was getting lazy. It is all a matter of perspective.
This is what the Thessalonians lacked. They lacked perspective. I hope you remember from last week how we talked about Paul telling them of the second coming of Christ and how this had created problems because they thought that they had missed it. There was another problem that this caused. Some Christian Thessalonians figured that Jesus was returning soon so they didn’t have to do anything. They could just sit back and relax. Jesus would take care of everything when He got there.
Guess what folks? It has been 2000 years and He still isn’t back. But take heart because I know that He will come back but it will be on His own time schedule. It will be done His way and not ours. We can take extra comfort because if He doesn’t come back while we are still here, then we will get to see Him in all His glory when we die and go to heaven. Praise the Lord for this wonderful plan.
Believe it or not, we still have this problem today in varying degrees. We need to find ways to make our work meaningful. The Thessalonians figured Jesus would be there any day. Therefore, according to their thinking, they lacked meaning for work. I would think that they would have to work just to survive but they didn’t seem to think so. Paul is telling the other Christians to stay away from these people, these idle Christians. This is pretty strong language but this is how Paul spoke. He addressed a problem directly.
We have to be careful here so we don’t misunderstand what is being said. Paul is not telling us to stay away from the needy, the crippled, or the widows. He is saying to stay away from the people who just plain won’t work. Stay away from lazy people. If a person is perfectly healthy and able, then they are capable of working for themselves and they don’t need our help.
Boy! is that against everything we do in this country or what! Our whole welfare system is based on things other than the ability to work. Much of our welfare is against Biblical teachings. If you are physically able to work, then there should be no welfare for you!
Now I would like to make a couple of observations here about lazy people before I move on. The first is that if you want to find the easiest and shortest way to do a job, have a lazy person do it. They may take their time but they will find the easiest way to do something. I have seen this many times with my own eyes.
The second observation comes from years at the Post Office. When I worked there, there were people who did not do their jobs and no one could make them. They were lazy and refused to work. There were also people who just didn’t bother to show up for work and no one did anything about it. The point I am trying to make here is that we have a major problem with laziness in this country, especially in government jobs. It is no wonder that I refuse to support government healthcare or welfare or any other government run program when I know for a fact that there are much, much better ways of doing things. Anything is better than the government way. Anything!
Laziness is a problem in our country and it is getting worse after this so-called pandemic. You can talk to any employer and they will tell you that they just cannot find workers, let alone good workers. It is a problem even in this area where we are considered to have a good work ethic. Paul is telling us to let them go hungry. Let them find their own shelter. These people are perfectly capable of living on their own so we should not subsidize them in any form. We are to keep on helping those who are needy but not those who can help themselves.
You might say this is pretty easy for you to say, Pastor John, but just how do we go about this? There is one good cure for laziness. There is one way to make work meaningful and that is through Jesus Christ. I worked for years at the Post Office and most people didn’t know that I really didn’t like my job. But sometime after I found Jesus, I changed my attitude to be more Christ like. I still did my job as well as I could but I also began to work for Jesus. I would try to tell everyone that I met about Jesus. This gave me a huge mission field to work. You can do this also, no matter what you are doing. You can concentrate on Jesus in a car or truck or tractor by listening to Christian radio or internet. If your work is more interacting with people, then practice being nice to them. Don’t be afraid to tell them that you love Jesus. Don’t be afraid to use the principles of the Bible in all of your everyday matters. It will help you tremendously and you can fight off being lazy. I guarantee that Satan will not like what you are doing.
However, there is something that the devil likes us to do. Paul tells us about a great hazard of being idle. He has heard of people who are not busy but are busybodies. He knows that when people are busy, they don’t have time for this kind of behavior. He knows that idleness is the devil’s workshop.
Let’s just think about this for a moment. Where are the biggest problems with drugs and alcohol? It is in areas of high unemployment where people are idle. A lot of our problems come from having too much time on our hands. It has been found that the best way to hasten your death is to retire and have nothing to do. Paul takes this a step farther saying that it is not only bad for us to be idle but it is also bad for the people around us, your loved ones.
If you remember in Genesis, we read that you were made to work. Working people are happier people. This is a fact of life. So, when you are not working, when you are idle, it is a natural tendency for you to try to do something. Unfortunately, that something is often prying into other people’s business. We seem to think that it is our job to know why you bought a Chevy over a Ford. It is our job to know that you have been talking to so and so about such and such. It is our job then make fun of people because they don’t do what we think is proper. This type of behavior is now being called a form of bullying. There is no good that can come from any type of bullying even if it is being a minor busybody. This is Satan’s work. Our business with other people is only to try to help them know Jesus Christ and work for the betterment of His kingdom. The point is to work and work for Jesus.
So now we finally get ourselves to the point where we can work at any job and be happy because our focus will be on Jesus. Sometimes we might find ourselves in the place where we have become weary of doing good work. This was such a huge problem that Paul was addressing it and it is here today. We often find it in places where most of the people don’t know Christ, like with the early Thessalonians and us in our modern United States. People got tired of others making fun of them. People got tired of things being thrown at them. People got tired of being treated like 2nd class citizens. And who can blame them for this?
It is the same way in our country. I have read statistics that tell us that 70-80% of the people in this country say that they are Christian. I disagree. I think that 70-80% of the people in this country don’t have a clue as to who Jesus Christ really is. These people and ideas are in our seminaries. They tell soon to be pastors that the Bible is based on myth and we really cannot believe it. I find that it is mind boggling some of the things they try to tell us in seminary. Then these new pastors go to churches all over the country with this new Satan based form of Christianity. I get weary when I go to a pastor’s meeting because I am in a minority most of the time.
We also get weary from being told when and where we can talk about Jesus Christ. We pretty much can only talk about Him in our churches and only on special occasions elsewhere. I am of the school of thought where we talk about Jesus anytime and anyplace that we feel the urge. We just observed Veteran’s Day. I am so happy that so many men and women have given so much so we can have freedom of religion. Then my question becomes, “Just how free are we?”
I would guess that we might have people here today who think I might be a little over the top because I support the Bible and God in saying that the behaviors that the Bible deems as wrong are wrong. I am considered to be out in left field because I know that following Jesus is the only right religion in the world. I feel that the teachings of the Bible are proper in a world that thinks that only worldly things are proper. It really gets tiring for me.
Paul is telling me, Paul is telling us not to get weary. I need to keep my focus on Jesus and the truth when these things start to collapse on me. You do too. This is another reason why a daily prayer life is so important. Jesus is our only contact with reality regardless of what anyone says. Jesus is our link to the eternal. Don’t be afraid to go to Him when these problems arise. He will always be glad to help you.
Paul finishes this off by saying that we are not to shun brothers and sisters who are idle, who are weary. They are not our enemy. Our job is to go to them and remind them they are idle. Our job is to talk to someone who is weary and help them get rest.
I can’t help but think how different things might be for a family in the area if the people surrounding her and her school had just practiced some basic Biblical principles. She might still be with us if people had told her how beautiful she was, or how smart she was, or how she was just a wonderful person. This is something to remember in your own community. Treat everyone as you want to be treated. I don’t know of any ugly people, dumb people or bad people. You are all worth every ounce of love that Jesus has for you. You are all beautiful beyond all comparison. Remember how important you really are.
This whole reading reminds me of a story told by Lou Nicholes of a farmer who went to his banker and announced that he had bad news and good news. The banker wanted the bad news first. “Well,” said the farmer, “I can’t make my mortgage payments. The crop loan I’ve taken out for the past 10 years—I can’t pay that off, either. Not only that, I won’t be able to pay you the couple of hundred thousand I still have outstanding on my tractors and other equipment. So I’m going to have to give up the farm and turn it all over to you for whatever you can salvage out of it.” There was a stunned silence for a moment and then the banker asked, “What is the good news?” The farmer replied, “The good news is that I’m going to keep on banking with you.”
This is the bottom line of this whole passage. We are going to get beat on and things are not going to go well for us. It may even get so bad that we lose our riches or our houses or our family and friends. But no matter what happens to us we will keep on banking with our same banker, Jesus Christ. After you have been flattened by this world, Jesus will help to pick you up and make you productive for Him once again. The only time that you can be productive is when you are working for Him. Jesus loves you so much that He will always be there to help, to direct and to care. When I think of the loving arms of Jesus Christ wrapped around me, I get a feeling that is indescribably good. You can have this also. Go to Him and go to Him often. He will never tire of you and never make fun of you. That is a promise. And thank you, Jesus, for always being there and first loving us. Let’s pray.
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