2 Thessalonians 3:6-15
If you’re into bumper-sticker philosophy, you’ve probably seen the axiom, "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go." For a vast portion of the workforce, that’s the best reason they can muster for going to the job each day. According to one poll, only 43 percent of American office workers are satisfied with their jobs. In Japan, the figure dips to 17 percent.
The Greeks of Paul’s day had a warped view of work. They believed work to be demeaning. The famous poet, Homer, said that “the gods hated men and the way they demonstrated their hatred was to invent work and punish men by making them work(4).” That philosophy has subtly crept into many Christian’s thinking.
Some think that work is part of the curse—and it is true that God said that because of Man’s sin he would work by the sweat of His brow and because of sin it became more difficult—but work was part of the original design of creation –God modeled the 6-1 work rest pattern in his creation and the scripture says plainly that before the fall work was part of God’s design.
Gen 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
Today’s passage gives us a solid biblical view of what work is—there are four things we need to understand about work to have a proper view of it.
Work is:
Prescription
6In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.
11-12 We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.
Work is God’s command to us and as such we are to engage in it as service not to man and not just to pay the bills and fill the belly but as service to our king:
Colossians 3:22-24Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. 23Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
Preacher H A Ironside recalls an incident working as a boy for a Christian Shoe maker named Dan Mackay. He was a devout Christian and his little shop was a real testimony for Christ in the neighborhood.
On the little counter in front of the bench on which the owner of the shop sat, was a Bible, generally open, and a pile of gospel tracts. No package went out of that shop without a printed message wrapped inside. And whenever opportunity offered, the customers were spoken to kindly and tactfully about the importance of being born again and the blessedness of knowing that the soul is saved through faith in Christ. Many came back to ask for more literature or to inquire more particularly as to how they might find peace with God, with the blessed results that men and women were saved, frequently right in the shoe shop.
It was Harry’s chief responsibility to pound leather for shoe soles. A piece of cowhide would be cut to suite, then soaked in water. He had a flat piece of iron over my knees and, with a flat-headed hammer, I pounded these soles until they were hard and dry. It seemed an endless operation, and He wearied of it many times.
What made the task worse was the fact that, a block away, there was another shop that I passed going and coming to or from my home, and in it sat a jolly, godless cobbler who gathered the boys of the neighborhood about him and regaled them with dirty stories that made him dreaded by respectable parents as a menace to the community. Yet, somehow, he seemed to thrive. As Harry looked in his window, He often noticed that he never pounded the soles at all, but took them from the water, nailed them on, damp as they were, and with the water splashing from them as he drove each nail in.
One day Harry ventured inside, something I had been warned never to do. Timidly, I said, "I notice you put the soles on while still wet. Are they just as good as if they were pounded?" He gave me a wicked leer as he answered, "They come back all the quicker this way, my boy!"
"Feeling I had learned something, I related the instance to my boss and suggested that I was perhaps wasting time in drying out the leather so carefully. Mr. Mackay stopped his work and opened his Bible to the passage that reads, "Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of god."
"Harry," he said, "I do not cobble shoes just for the four bits and six bits (50c or 75c) that I get from my customers. I am doing this for the glory of God. I expect to see every shoe I have ever repaired in a big pile at the judgment seat of Christ, and I do not want the Lord to say to me in that day, ’Dan, this was a poor job. You did not do your best here.’ I want Him to be able to say, ’Well done, good and faithful servant.’"
Then he went on to explain that just as some men are called to preach, so he was called to fix shoes, and that only as he did this well would his testimony count for God. It was a lesson I have never been able to forget. Often when I have been tempted to carelessness, and to slipshod effort, I have thought of dear, devoted Dan Mackay, and it has stirred me up to seek to do all as for Him who died to redeem me.H. A. Ironside, Illustrations of Bible Truth, Moody Press, 1945, pp. 37-39.
Provision
10For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."
Jesus said that God gives the birds their food, and that’s true but He doesn’t throw it into their nests.
God has designed the world so that by our labor we are fed. That is a built in motivation—though we are a sad and miserable crew if it is our only motivation, nevertheless it is a valid motivation
Prov 19:15 “Laziness brings on deep sleep, and the shiftless man goes hungry.” NIV
Prov 28:19 “He who works his land will have abundant food, but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty.” NIV
Work is the honorable way to get our needs met. That’s what Jesus did the first thirty years of his life. If he didn’t consider himself to good, too important to work, God forbid any of us would. Work is God’s design for man in the rhythm of life, and how he designed for us to provide for our material needs.
Protection
11We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies.
Charles Colson and Jack Eckerd (who leads the Eckerd Drug store chain) wrote a book entitled Why America Doesn’t Work. They talk about how the decline of the work ethic is hurting your family and future(6). We are a generation who is borrowing from the past and borrowing from the future when we should be earning our way. And the result of that is--all kinds of social ills.
In the early 1800’s Americans didn’t have time for pornography. They were too exhausted to cause social unrest. Their work kept them from all kinds of iniquity.
Im convinced that idleness is a large part of the problem in our inner cities, not all of it but part of it. Work is a protection. Most of us can’t handle very much idleness without getting ourselves into trouble.
Remember David’s failure with Bathsheba? What was the set up? He was idle. He was not doing his job as the leader. He should have been out leading the armies of Israel. Instead he let others do his job while he lounged around in the palace. He was not about his Father’s business so he got into the devil’s business.
Paul says those who were idle weren’t busy but busybodies. Busybodies often turn into gossips according to
1 Timothy 5:13: “they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.” It’s easy to get into the habit of being idle. When that happens, being a busybody and passing along gossip can easily become a vocation in itself.
In the church at Thessalonica there were people not working. How did they fill the vacuum of time? As busy bodies getting into other people’s business, gossiping, stirring up trouble. Paul gave those people a cure for their problem—Go to Work!
Privilege
13And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right.
In the first century, Christian slaves had even less reason to be enthusiastic about their work. But Paul gave them a way to grasp a glimpse of glory amid the grind., to show the beauty of their faith in Christ by how they work (Titus. 2:9-10).
9Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, 10and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.
A significant and often overlooked way that we serve God is in our everyday tasks. Martin Luther understood this when he wrote, "The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays -- not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors. The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship."Our Daily Bread, September 5, 1994.
In the light of the monumental task that Christ took upon himself in dying to pay the price for our sins so that by trusting in His work we might have eternal life without having to work for it, seeing our work as a way to honor him and shine His light in our world seems not only a small thing to ask but a privilege.
Eccl 5:18-20 “Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him-for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work-this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart.”
In 1981 Popular Christian Women’s Speaker, and star of the movie “The Hiding Place,” was speaking at a luncheon held in the civic auditorium of a city in Oklahoma. I settled myself at my place at the head table. I picked up my fork and noticed that two rose-petaled radishes adorned my salad plate. Someone had take the time to pretty up two radishes, just for me. Then I noticed that each salad at the head table had two neatly curled radishes. I turned to the lady sitting to my right. "I’m impressed by the radishes, " I said. "You’re impressed by what?" she asked. "The radishes," I said. "Look, each salad plate at our table has curled radishes." "Yes," she said, exercising a questioning smile. "They’re pretty." "They’re more than pretty," I said. Someone took special care to do these." "Don’t they all have them?" she asked, gazing out at the tables. I looked and was astonished. Each salad plate was adorned with two curled radishes! "They are curled! That took a lot of time!"
"Oh, Marietta does those." "All of them?" I knew the head count in the room and was astonished. "That’s almost eight hundred radishes!" "Yes, but Marietta wants to do it. Would you like to meet her? She’s in the kitchen." So Gertrude and I went into the kitchen, and there I met Marietta, the lady of the radishes. "Gertrude tells me you curled all those radishes. They’re lovely. Each salad looks so...festive." "I don’t mind doing it. It just takes time," Marietta replied. I didn’t know what more to say so I left.
Later, I spoke, and there was an encouraging response. Afterward, ladies scurried past me with murmured greetings, and a few lingered to speak of God in their lives. When we finished, it was raining heavily so we hurried across the parking lot to the car. Through the rain, I could see a lady, carrying a large polka-dot umbrella that had collapsed on one side waiting by our car. It was Marietta! She was smiling as though we had found her on a sunny day in an especially delightful garden. "I had to see you. I heard your speech. It was good!" she said. "I have to go home now."
I slipped inside the car. Marietta crouched down close to the window and called to me, "Just remember this. You keep telling people about Jesus, and I’ll keep curling the radishes." The rain and my tears splattered the picture of her face as we started to back out of the driveway. Ah, dear Marietta, I haven’t forgotten. We are to do our jobs in the love of him who does all things well.
Jeanette Clift George, Travel Tips From A Reluctant Traveler, 1987.
