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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Second
Thessalonians chapter three, verses
six through 18.
Now we command you, brothers,
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that you keep away from any brother
who is walking in idleness,
and not in accord with the tradition
that you receive from us.
For you yourselves know how you ought to
imitate us, because we were not idle
when we were with you, nor did
we eat anyone's bread without paying for it.
But with toil and labor
we worked night and day
that we might not be a burden to any of you.
It was not because we do not have that right,
but to give you in ourselves
an example to imitate.
For even when we were with you,
we would give you this command.
If anyone is not willing to work,
let him not eat.
For we hear that
some among you walk in idleness,
not busy at work, but busy bodies.
Now such persons
we command and encourage in the Lord
Jesus Christ to do their work quietly
and to earn their own living.
As for you, brothers,
do not grow weary in doing good.
If anyone does not obey what we say
in this letter, take note of that person
and have nothing to do with him,
that he may be ashamed.
Do not regard him as an enemy,
but warn him as a brother.
Now may the Lord of peace
himself give you peace at all
times, in every way.
The Lord be with you all.
I, Paul,
write this greeting with my own hand.
This is a sign of genuineness
in every letter of mine.
It is the way I write.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all.
Hey, everybody,
welcome to Christ Community Chapel.
Really, really glad that you are here.
Thanks for coming.
All right.
We have been in a ten week series.
We've been looking at two letters
that the apostle Paul
wrote to a church
in a city called Thessalonica.
Now, we have other letters
that Paul wrote to other churches.
And not all of them are positive, but
these two letters are very, very positive.
And that's why we have called this series
The Church God Calls Good.
And we've been trying
to, learn from the Thessalonians,
because we want to be a church.
God calls. Good.
And we're at the last week of the ten week
series.
I get to bat clean up, and we've made it
all the way to the end of the second letter.
So if you have your Bibles, you can turn
to Second Thessalonians chapter three.
Second Thessalonians chapter three.
If you're going to use one of our Bibles,
in the pew or in the back of East
Hall, it's on page 931, page 931
if you want to follow through.
Oh, and by the way,
if you, do not have a Bible,
we would love to give you your first Bible.
All you have to do is
go to the Next Steps area out in the atrium,
and we'd be glad to give you a Bible.
All right.
All right.
I know we just had it read to us.
I'm going to read it again
because I want it fresh in your mind.
And then I'm going to give you
the three points that I want to cover
and pull out of this passage.
This is what Paul says.
Now, I command you, brothers,
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that you keep away from any brother
who is walking in idleness
and not in accord with the tradition
you received from us.
For you yourselves know how you ought to
imitate us, because we were not idle
when we were with you,
nor did we eat anyone's bread
without paying for it.
But with toil and labor we work night and day
that we might not be a burden to any of you.
It was not because we do not have that right,
but to give you in ourselves
an example to imitate.
For even when we were with you,
we would give you this command.
If anyone is not willing to work,
let him not eat.
But we hear that some among
you walk in idleness,
not busy at work, but busy bodies.
Now such persons we command and encourage
in the Lord Jesus Christ
to do their work quietly
and to earn their own living.
As for you, brothers,
do not grow weary in doing good.
If anyone does not obey what we say
in this letter, take note of that person
and have nothing to do with him,
that he may be ashamed.
Do not regard him as an enemy,
but warn him as a brother.
Now may the Lord of Peace himself
give you peace at all times, in every way.
The Lord be with you all.
I, Paul,
write this greeting with my own hand.
This is the sign of genuineness
in every letter of mine.
It is the way I write.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all.
All right.
Here are the three points
that I want to pull out of this passage.
If you want to know where I'm going.
If you're a note taker,
you want to write these down.
But a good in a good church, everyone works.
That's the first point.
In a good church,
everyone works in a good church.
Everyone imitates someone, everyone
imitates someone.
And in a good church,
everyone gets grace and peace.
Everyone works everyone to imitate someone.
Everyone gets grace and peace first.
Everyone works.
Verse six and then verse 11,
Paul says, now we command you, brothers,
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that you keep away from any brother
who is walking in idleness,
and not in accord with the tradition
that you received from us.
And then verse 11, for
we hear that some among you walk
in idleness,
not busy at work, but busy bodies.
What had happened
in Thessalonica
is that some of the people in the church
had misunderstood Paul's
teaching about the second coming of Jesus.
One of the great hopes that we have as
Christians is that one day Jesus will return.
And when he returns, he returns as King
and heaven, all of heaven comes with him.
There's a common misunderstanding.
I think that, people think
that our home is in heaven up there.
But that's not what the Bible teaches.
The Bible teaches
that our home is here on earth.
It is right now.
It will be for all of eternity.
Because what happens
is that haven't actually descends
with Jesus as King,
and the world is remade into everything
that you always wanted it to be hoped
it would be.
There's a Greek word for that.
The Greek word is Palin Genesee.
It's one of my favorite Greek words,
and it means the renewal of all things,
that everything becomes pristine
just the way God intended it to be.
Now, some of the people in testimony
in Thessalonica
thought that when Paul talked
about the second coming of Jesus,
that Jesus was going to come right
away, like within weeks.
And so they quit doing everything.
They quit working, they quit serving,
they quit everything.
And they became what Paul says is idle
now, in some ways,
that shows faith because they really believe
Jesus was coming back.
But Paul was not pleased. In fact,
he was really upset.
And the question, of course, is why?
Why did that upset him so much?
And the reason is because Christians
have a unique relationship with work.
It's different than virtually everyone else.
Because there there are normally a couple
of different ways that people approach work.
And one,
I will call the Bruce Springsteen approach,
and the other,
I will call the Bolivian taxi driver approach
first. The,
the first one, right.
Bruce Springsteen
I was watching TV a couple of weeks ago,
and a commercial came on for Bruce
Springsteen's world tour,
and they were showing a concert,
and you hear his voice
and his voice, and Bruce Springsteen says,
I have been playing music for 50 years.
It's the way I justify my existence on earth.
It's the way I justify my existence on Earth.
That's one way to approach work,
where work becomes your very identity.
It's the way that you justify yourself.
It's the way it's success
becomes that justification.
And really, you don't know how important work
has become to you.
Sometimes until you lose your job
or until you retire, there are all kinds of
stories of people who retire
and then die very quickly
because they've lost their purpose.
That's one way people approach work.
The polar opposite of that is what I call
the Bolivian taxi drivers in Bolivia.
Years ago, I got into a taxi
and I started a conversation
with the taxi driver and asked him
how much he made driving a taxi,
and he said, if I if I drive for a day,
I can live for three days.
If I drive for two days,
I can live for a week.
If I drive six days in a row,
I take the rest of the month off.
I didn't know
whether I should respect that or,
you know, not.
But that's what he said.
And that's the opposite.
That's, like one is to live, to work.
The other is, work is a necessary evil
to actually, live.
But Christians are unique for a Christian,
work is an extension of worship.
Work is an extension of worship.
This is what I mean in Matthew chapter 22,
somebody asked Jesus a question.
And the question they asked Jesus is what
commandment is the greatest commandment?
And I think they might have expected Jesus
to choose one of the Ten Commandments.
Jesus goes a different direction
and he says, the greatest commandment
is this love the Lord
your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
And the second is like unto it
love your neighbor as yourself.
And then Jesus said that all the law
and the prophets are contained
in those two commands.
What he was saying
is, those are the two things
that are not only the most important things,
they include everything.
This is all that God wants
is for us to love him and love each other.
All right.
So for a Christian, work
is a way that we love other people.
I heard a pastor named John Ortberg,
some years ago,
say that he was giving his toddlers
a bath one night.
It's why he's kneeling by the bath tub.
There's suds and water all over the place.
If you've ever bathed the toddler, you know,
they're like slippery little salamanders.
And so he's trying to give them a bath.
And he looks up and his wife is leaning up
against the doorjamb,
just looking at him and smiling.
And he says to
what?
And she says to him,
you are never more attractive to me
than you when you're bathing our kids.
And then John Ortberg said, we
now have the cleanest kids in all of Chicago.
Okay, that was a great line.
Oh, what was she saying
to John Ortberg?
What she was saying
is, when you are serving me
by bathing our children,
I feel loved.
That's the way Christians approach work.
That work is a way that we love other people
serve other people,
and it's a way that we ultimately love
God because those two things go together.
When Paul talks about idleness,
he's not talking about just being lazy.
He's not talking about rest.
He's talking about a refusal
to love someone else, to love others.
Listen, I know this is a big church.
I know it's easy to come in
and think everything's being done
and everything's being paid for, so
I don't need to serve anywhere,
and I don't need to give at all.
But you're wrong.
You're wrong on two accounts.
One is that we really do need you
to serve needs you to give.
Otherwise God would not have brought you here
to this place.
But the second thing is
that you need to do it
as a part of your worship.
And that's the first point in a good church,
everyone works
because everyone is participating in worship
and loving each other and loving God
in a very tangible way.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is that
everyone is imitating someone.
Everyone is imitating someone good.
Verses seven through ten
Paul says, for
you yourselves know how you ought to
imitate us, because we were not idle
when we were with you, nor do we eat anyone's
bread without paying for it.
But with toil and labor
we worked night and day
that we might not be a burden to any of you.
It was not because we do not have that right,
but to give you in ourselves
an example to imitate.
For even when we were with you,
we would give you this command.
If anyone is not willing to work,
let him not eat.
About three weeks ago,
we had all my family over our three kids.
Our six grandkids.
I was one of those,
crisp, cool fall evenings.
One of the reasons
why people flock to Northeast Ohio.
Or at least they should.
And I was sitting there,
we had a bonfire going.
I was watching the cousins, play a game.
They're playing a game called,
ghosts in the graveyard.
And, I really didn't know
much about the game, but I was just enjoying
watching the cousins,
and they spanned and age from 3 to 13.
The ones who were playing.
And I watched the three year old
and the three year old
was watching his eight year old cousin.
He was taking his cues from his eight year
old cousin.
And when the eight year old cousin
would cover his eyes to count,
then the three year old would cover his eye.
He didn't know why he was covering his eyes,
but he just did it
because the eight year old was there.
The eight year old was taking his cues
from the 13 year old.
He would run
wherever the 13 year old would run.
He couldn't keep up, but he tried that
because everybody was imitating.
They learned how to play that game,
not by reading some kind of instruction book,
but they learned how to play that game
by watching and by imitating.
That's true in church
that the way you learn,
it's really how you learn to be a Christian
is you watch and you imitate.
You know, when Paul says,
imitate me, which he says,
not just here twice,
but he says it in other letters.
He's not being egotistical.
He's he's not being an egotist.
He's being a realist because he knows
that people watch and that people imitate.
You know, if if it struck me that if,
if you've only been coming
the last, let's say,
three weeks here to seek,
you would think in order
to be a part of this church
that you needed at Thanksgiving time
to grab a big tub, go out,
fill it up with things
to get with the Thanksgiving meal,
and bring it back at a certain time.
Because if you came in the last three weeks
when you were walking
in, everyone seemed like
they were walking out with a tub
with a Thanksgiving basket to fill it.
And in some ways, you'd be right.
That is our
tradition here at KCC
to be a part of this church.
That is something you will probably do.
Everyone imitates y'all.
I was watching an NFL game.
Last week and commercial came on.
It was one of the commercials
that the NFL puts on,
just really about how to become a fan.
And there was this little clip
and I, I loved it.
I'm going to play it for you now.
And it's so short and quick.
I'm going to play it twice back to back
just because you'll want to see it twice.
But show the clip.
Yeah.
Oh. Oh.
Yeah.
Oh oh.
You know, the greatest clip?
Everybody imitates someone.
Here's the question.
If someone watches you,
they're going to look at how you talk,
how you worship,
how you respond when something doesn't go
your way.
The real question is this
what kind of church would this be
if everyone
imitated you?
Would it be a loving church?
Would it be a kind church?
Would it be a selfish church?
Would it be a complaining church?
Would it be a generous church?
Would we be able to keep the lights on?
What would the church be like
if everyone
imitated you?
So what Paul says here is that
in a church God calls good, everyone works.
In a church God calls good,
everyone is imitating someone.
And you should know
someone who's going to watch you
and someone is going to imitate you.
And then what kind of church do we become?
That's the second point.
The third point is everyone
gets grace and peace.
Everyone gets grace and peace.
Let me start with grace
in verse 18, the very last.
This is the last verse of the two letters.
This is the last thing
that Paul leaves them with.
He says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all.
The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you all.
Grace is the absolute
best quality that a human being can have.
I think I say that
because there is so many attributes
that are kind of wrapped around
grace here, that are part of grace.
If you have grace, that means you.
There is a certain amount of kindness
that you have
a gentleness, a love, an ability to forgive.
There are all kinds of things, right?
If someone says to you,
you have a lot of grace.
It is a wonderful compliment.
And usually when somebody says that,
what they're saying is that you are showing
more grace than they have
at that moment,
or that they would have if they were you.
Paul, in this
passage is, doing a little correcting.
I told you a few weeks ago,
that in a good church,
you treat the pastor like a coach.
And the word in that passage was the word
admonish, which means to encourage.
It also means to correct it.
And Paul is doing some of both
in this passage.
He is encouraging and he is correcting
the vast majority of the Thessalonians.
We're doing well. So he is encouraging them.
But there are some that are not doing well
and he is going to correct them.
Right.
So that's what this passage is about.
I remember when I was playing college
basketball, when,
we had a pre-season conditioning
kind of program
where
just at the very beginning of the program,
we were supposed to run to a bridge, touch
the bridge, run back.
No one was there to check and stuff.
And I remember running to the bridge,
I was an underclass man,
and I passed some of the upperclassmen
on the way to the bridge.
I was running faster than they were, and
I touched the bridge, and I was running back.
And I passed the same upperclassmen,
but they had turned around
and they were running the same direction
I was.
Which meant that they did not touch
the bridge, which meant they were cheating.
And even at 19 years old,
I knew they weren't just cheating themselves,
they were cheating me.
And sure
enough, we were not a very good team.
Paul is acting like a coach
with a team where the majority of the team
was doing well.
They were doing what they should do,
but there were some that were not.
And so Paul was he.
He does an interesting thing.
He starts with verse 13 and he says this.
As for you brothers,
do you not grow weary in doing good?
That's when he's talking to the ones
that are doing well, doing right.
And it's interesting that he should do that,
because I remember when I was running
as an underclassman, running the bridge
touch it, ran back, realized
that the upperclassmen were cheating.
The next time we ran,
I thought about turning around halfway
and running slower back just like they were,
because it's hard to continue
to do the right thing when some people around
you are doing the wrong thing.
And what Paul starts out saying
is, listen, don't do that.
If you're running to keep running,
keep doing good, keep serving,
keep working, keep loving,
keep doing what you're supposed to be doing.
And then he starts the correcting part.
Verse 14.
He says, if anyone does not obey what we say
in this letter, take note of that person
and have nothing to do with him
that he may be ashamed.
Okay, that's rough. Right?
That's he's going after them.
And then verse 15, he says,
do not regard him as an enemy,
but warn him as a brother.
And there it is,
grace, do
not regard him as an enemy,
but warn him as a brother.
Grace.
He's saying grace, grace enough
to go after them.
Grace enough to not give up on them.
Grace enough to welcome them back.
Grace as a brother.
Now, you should know
that grace doesn't come from nowhere
is very, very difficult
for a human being to manufacture.
Grace, if you try to manufacture grace
within yourself, you'll have like
a thin veneer of grace, and it will wear off
really quickly and then you'll get nasty.
I've seen it all right.
Grace has to go from come from the outside
in with the human
being before it goes from the inside out.
Which is why Paul ends with that saying,
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all.
What he's saying is that
if I'm going to call you to be to be graceful
with others,
particularly those that are not doing right,
if I'm asking you to kind of thread
that needle of being,
of trying to correct them
while still being gracious to them,
you're going to need grace
to be constantly flowing into you
so it can flow out of you.
If you ever want to know
why we talked about the gospel so much,
why we take communion
every week is to remind ourselves
that we are recipients of grace.
That it's grace that called us out
of darkness into his marvelous light,
and his grace that we will use
to call one of our brothers or sisters
out of disobedience, out of
darkness, back into his marvelous light.
In a church, God calls good
everyone gets grace.
Everyone.
The second thing is peace is what he says.
It's verse 16.
He says, now may the Lord of peace himself
give you peace at all times in every way.
May the Lord of peace give you peace at all
times and every that is comprehensive.
And he's saying that to some people
that are going through some really
difficult times and the question is,
how do we get that kind of peace?
And the answer
is the next phrase of that verse
is this the Lord be with you
all, the Lord be with you all.
The Lord of peace
give you peace at all times,
in every way and every way.
The Lord be with you all.
I always think of a story in Matthew chapter
eight
where, the disciples get into a boat
and they head across the Sea of Galilee
and a storm hits.
And it must have been a fierce storm
because about
half of the disciples
were fishermen by trade.
And I always think a professional fisherman
has a higher capacity
for a storm than a landlubber like me.
But I always think that if you know,
if a wave got like this
high, I'd be saying, hey, you know,
maybe we should turn back.
And a fisherman, a professional fisherman
would say, this is nothing, right?
Well, this storm was something because
all of them thought they were going to die.
So they they wake
Jesus up with the fact that Jesus was asleep
is a whole nother thing.
But they wake him up and they say, don't
you care that we're about to die?
And Jesus stands
up, wipes the sleep from his eyes,
and calms the storm.
It's a great, great story.
But I always think,
I wonder what it was like the next time
that they were going
to cross the Sea of Galilee.
The next time they were going to cross
the Sea of Galilee, do you think they
they looked up with the sky to check,
or do you think they checked the weather app,
or do you think they just trade a watch
and see which boat Jesus got into
and then scrambled to get?
That's what I would have done.
I would have just knocked over
the other disciples just to get in the boat
with you, because I knew if I could
get in the boat with Jesus,
it didn't matter.
Didn't matter what kind of storm.
That's what Paul is saying.
Paul is saying, listen, I, I don't
I don't know what kind of storm
that you are going through right now
or that is on your horizon.
We will all go through storms in our lives,
whether it's a financial storm
or a relational storm, or a storm
involving physical sickness
or a storm of loss.
What Paul says
is that if Jesus
is in your boat.
Then you're going to be okay.
Then you can have peace
in the midst of whatever storm there is.
In a church God calls good,
everyone gets grace
and everyone gets peace.
Listen,
we come to the end of this series on first
and second Thessalonians.
I hope you have been with us through it all.
I hope that you have learned a lot,
and I hope all of us have learned a lot
about the kind of church God calls good.
But today
in a church, God calls good.
Everyone works
because it's our way of loving each other
and loving God.
Everyone is imitating someone.
It's the way you have learned.
To be a Christian is the way people will
learn to be a Christian if they watch you.
And of course, the question is
what kind of church will we be
if everyone imitates you?
And finally, everyone gets grace
and peace all the time, everywhere.
First, because Jesus gave grace to us.
And second, we get peace
because Jesus is in your boat.
Don't forget you.
Pray with me,
father in heaven,
we come to you and I am so grateful.
I'm grateful for your love for us.
I'm grateful for the church in Thessalonica
that was doing so well.
I pray that you would make us a church
that you call good,
that glorifies you, that when people
are in here, they sense something different,
that we are filled with people,
that whoever anyone watches,
that if they become just like them,
it will become better.
I pray that will happen.
Thanks.
Thanks for Jesus. We pray this in his name.
Amen.