A Working Ethic

Amen.

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission.

My name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my joy and privilege to be able to bring God's word to you this morning.

Man, I love that last song we sang, Christ be magnified.

It just talks about really this life has nothing for us to gain.

Everything is to be gained in the life that is to come.

And we get hyper-focused on this life, this day, this moment, my needs being met, my desires being satisfied.

And we lose our focus on the beauty and goodness and joy of what is waiting for us, right?

An eternal satisfaction that will never fade or wane, that will never dim in its brilliance.

And so this morning, here's what I want us to do.

I want us to think about this.

I want us to lift our eyes off of whatever you walked in here with.

You walked in here with a week that just was tough, right?

A week of just gritty, grimy work that was difficult.

You walked in here with relational tension, right?

Where you feel unrelated to people that you're supposed to be deep intimacy with.

You walked in here with with news and announcements and things that happen in your life this week that's causing you to do one specific thing.

Eyes down, keep digging.

And I want us to lift our gaze to Jesus this morning because it's only in him that we're going to be able to endure this present age with a hope for what is to come in him.

And so we're going to be talking about work.

Work is, I don't like work.

Do you like work?

Some of us like work.

I don't, I did not like work.

Until I was about 32, I had more jobs than I was years old.

That's how much I didn't like work.

Actually, that's how much I was a little boy who needed to grow up and be a man.

That's what it really was.

But we'll just put it in like, I couldn't find my niche.

I don't know if I found it yet.

I don't know.

The verdict's still out.

But but here's the reality: if we live to 80 years, right?

The scriptures uh declare, the psalmist David says, Lord, teach me to number my days at the most 80 years.

So I'm kind of going Bible off of this, right?

If we live to 80 years, we will have lived 700,800 hours.

We will have lived that much of time.

Now, we'll have slept 233,600 hours of that, right?

Uh man, that that's painful for me.

Uh, but that's why I have a really nice mattress.

Uh because a third of my life is going to be spent sleeping.

Uh, what the Lord's trying to teach us in that, I still don't understand or know.

I don't want to submit to it.

I don't, but here it is.

But here's the reality, too.

We'll have worked an average of 90,000 hours in our life.

If we live to the ripe age of 80, we'll have worked an average of 90,000 hours.

And so this morning I have one question for you.

What are you working for?

What are you working for?

Out of not not just like, I've got to eat and I've got to pay bills, and I've got to make sure that my family's taking care, but what is driving you to give up 90,000 hours of time away from your children if you have them, away from your spouse if you have one, away from your hobbies if you have them, like away from things that bring you delight and pleasure, things that you love, things that are seemingly slipping out of your grasp.

What are you working for?

I think that we have to wrestle with that question.

And I believe that really the scriptures give us a vision for work.

Now, we're diving into this letter in 2 Thessalonians.

And Paul has been shepherding the church at Thessalonica for some time.

He already wrote in 1 Thessalonians to this church to encourage them.

But one of the things that he did already was that he already really kind of engaged with them on the ethic of work.

We can see this in 1 Thessalonians 4, 9 through 12.

Paul wrote these words.

He said, Now concerning brotherly love, I want I want that to stick in your mind.

Concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.

For that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia.

But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and to be dependent on no one.

So as Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, he already engaged with them on the issue of work.

But here's what I want us to see clearly.

Paul frames his ethic of work in brotherly love.

Right?

This was this one seamless uh charge and instruction that Paul gave.

If you want to live a life where you love your brother, if you want to be in community with other believers, brothers and sisters in Christ, there is an expectation of how you demonstrate that botherly love, and it's through an ethic of work.

And so what we can see first and foremost is that our work is ultimately not for ourselves.

You see, that's the thing that we get wrong, right?

And this is what the kingdom does to us.

We always think that all this stuff that we have is for ourselves, it's for our own satisfaction, it's for our own needs being met.

And the reality of what the kingdom shows us is that every aspect of our life is actually not for self, but for others.

If we want to go back down this route, right, all 613 commands of the Old Testament is distilled down into two.

And guess what?

Neither of them is about you.

Right?

The scriptures, there's nowhere with inside the Bible that it's going to believe you're gonna have a hard time being selfish.

Right?

Like you just need to love yourself.

You just need to care for yourself.

You just need to make sure that your needs are the scriptures assume one thing and they assume it rightly.

We will never have a difficult time being selfish people.

And so, what do the two commands point us to?

Love the Lord your God with everything that you've got.

And love your neighbor as yourself.

And so now, our money, our possessions, our time, our talents, our giftedness, our passions, our work.

Everything now, in light of that truth and beauty, reorients itself around this reality.

That we live a life for the love of God and the love of other people.

So I think that this is critical for us that Paul's gonna frame this ethic of work in relationship to brotherly love.

Now, if we get into 2 Thessalonians, our text for this morning, we see in verse 6 this really urgent command.

And he's giving this command not out of his own authority, right?

And we've seen this in other letters where Paul says, Paul, as an as an apostle of Jesus Christ, I command you or I'm urging you.

He's not doing this here.

He's elevating the urgency and the seriousness of this command as he's rooting it in the authority and name of Jesus Christ.

Verse 6.

Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from those who is walking in idleness and not accord with the tradition that you received from us.

So Paul gives this man this command for the church of Thessalonica to keep away from brothers who are walking in idleness.

And here's what we have to see.

Paul is not calling them, we'll see this at the end of the text.

He's not calling them to kind of shun them, he's not calling them to uh excommunicate them or cast them out, right?

But he's calling them to avoid them so that they may avoid becoming like them.

There's a reality within the scriptures that leaven tends to start to spread throughout a community, right?

Leaven is always uh uh in parallel to sin.

And so as you allow sin to fester and feed, what it does is it expands and grows and it starts to affect the people around.

This is why uh there's a huge emphasis within the side of the New Testament to cast out, to take a more aggressive posture than this, those who refuse to repent of sexual immorality, because that that that spirit, that that sin starts to spread throughout the church and it starts to take effect on other individuals.

And so, as pastors, right, what are the elders called to do?

The elders are called to, at their best ability, by the Spirit, root out sin so that we can care for the sheep, so that that doesn't take root inside of this community of faith and start to affect other people.

So Paul's saying, avoid this brother so that you avoid being like him, not casting him out, but refusing to be conformed to his sin.

That's what we have to look at.

With any sin that we see inside of the people around us, we have to be aware and on guard lest we start conforming to them.

Like you ever heard that rule, you kind of become the sum total of the five people around you, right?

You you like we all think we're the best person in our friend group.

You're not, you're the average person of your friend group.

Like you're in the middle of the road.

You might be a good middle of the road, but you're in the middle of the road nonetheless.

And so in this community of faith, we start to become like the people that we surround ourselves with.

There's a conformity reality that we need to be aware of.

And Paul's calling the church at Thessalonica to be aware of also.

And he's saying, don't become like him.

How?

In idleness.

In idleness.

Now, we might think of this word as uh lazy, right?

And there's a there's a right reality where we should view this word idleness as lazy, but its root meaning means disorderly.

This person who is bringing disorder to the community of faith there at Thessalonica.

Now, think about this for a moment.

There are rules, right?

There are governing principles that bring order to a community of people.

This is a natural thing that we should realize, we should be aware of, and we should seek to live our life in conformity to this orderliness that causes a community of people to flourish.

Right?

As we do our part, as we work together to bring order within community, uh, the community as a whole flourishes.

And the moment that one or more people bring disorder into community, what happens?

The community starts to collapse, it starts to fatigue, it starts to really uh become disorderly in itself.

It doesn't cause the flourishing that it's supposed to.

You see, their idleness was creating disorder through their unwillingness to work.

Now, let's just look at culture for one moment, right?

If we can be good missiologists where we're looking at culture to understand it and see how uh they they relate to God's word, truth, goodness, and beauty, how they're embracing sin.

I mean, we see a culture who is becoming idle, unwilling to work, and it's creating an extreme amount of disorder with inside of culture, right?

We see the reality of where uh people are getting fatigued and growing weary and trying to just do their job.

They can't get anybody to come in and actually do the job that's needed to be done.

They can't get people to work in the right ways.

They they right they're doing uh uh uh remote uh work and and like the person like has a mouse mover thing so they can keep taking naps.

I don't, you know, it's like what's going on here?

And we see culture just becoming rapidly disordered, and what is that?

It's that there's the we've thought, well, we can pursue our own self-interest, and everyone around us is gonna be fine.

We've lost sight, we've lost vision, that it actually takes my active participation and the good and flourishing of everyone around me, even for myself to flourish.

And we're seeing the collapse of it at breakneck speed.

I'll tell you how devastating it is.

I was in Gatlinburg.

Don't ask me why.

I don't like going, I do not like going to Gatlin.

Please hold me accountable.

If you're gonna hold me accountable to sin or hold me accountable, not go to Gatlinburg.

But there was we walked into this magician's shop, and there was this uh dude in his 60s uh doing some magic, and uh my kids were amazed.

I was amazed.

I don't know how he did this, uh, but he even talked about how he's had to close his shop down.

He can't get anybody to just work, to get, you know, X amount of money per hour, to be able to be there present, and he's had to close it down for more days.

He's had to work more hours, he's had to do it, but but his story, as I was sitting there listening, like, man, we we as a culture have grown idle.

We have grown so idle.

His story isn't unique.

I I've heard this story from general contractors, I've heard this story from labor workers, I've heard this story from, see, I've seen where billboards on the side of the highway.

If you'll just come work, we'll give you all these bonuses and all these upfront, you know, it's like, what is going on?

We've allowed this notion of the pursuit of self-interest at any cost to consume us, and it is creating a destructive disorder within side culture.

But but here's the here's the warning, here's the caution.

That can creep its way in here.

That can creep that mindset, that that work ethic, right?

Uh a foul a failing one, it can creep itself even with inside the church.

You see, in their disorderly conduct, they failed to follow the rule for healthy community.

And their idleness was creating an unhealthy community.

They were handed a tradition, Paul says.

They were handed a tradition that was contrary to the way that they were living their life.

You kind of hear like your great-grandpa in this, right?

Like when I was a boy, I worked sunup, sundown, heard the rooster crow, walked uphill twice, both ways to school.

Like, these boys, they don't need they don't get it no more.

Uh and you hear this kind of in the language of Paul.

Like, I I taught you better than this.

Not only did I teach you better than this, I showed you better than I handed something to you that was a working ethic.

And I did it so that this church would flourish, so that this church would be all that God had called it to be.

But not only this internal benefit, so that the watching world would be able to look inwardly at this community of faith and see the kingdom of Jesus expressed on this earth.

I handed you something better than this.

And he's wondering what went wrong.

He says in verse 7, for you yourselves know 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.

Now, I love what Paul does here.

He he's handed them a tradition, right?

This is how we lived our lives, and he's calling them to imitation.

Now live this way.

This is what we did when we were among you.

See, he didn't just give them a letter, he gave them something to observe, he gave them something to interact with, he gave them something to experience its benefit.

Like when we're here in the church, are we living lives like that?

Are we living lives where others can observe our work ethic?

Where others can observe the way that we use all of our life as an altar for the glory of God?

Are we inviting others to experience the way that we're living our life?

That we are doing it all for the glory of God and the good of those around us?

And are we creating spaces where people are experiencing the benefit of that work?

Are people blessed by it?

Are people wrecked by it when they see the way that you laid everything down for their good when they experience the generosity that you extended to the loving kindness that you've shown to them?

Are they being impacted by the way that you're living your life?

And are you handing something off for them to imitate?

Like we should all strive to be people like Paul here.

We should strive to be people who live our life in such a way that others desire to imitate it.

I want to be like that.

I want to be like that because I see the beauty of the kingdom.

I see the richness of Jesus.

I see the presence of the Spirit.

I see this in their life.

I want to be like that.

You see, Paul was not idle.

He didn't create his presence in that community did not create disorder, it created a flourishing order of all things.

And that's how we need to see ourselves as we step into a community of faith, also.

You see, Paul modeled individual life in the context of community.

You don't step into this place as just you.

You're not here for your own self-interest, your own self-gain.

Hey man, I'm just here to drink mediocre coffee and hear a weak sermon.

I'm I'm just if I get fed to some measure, I give you a snack, then I'm good.

I'm gonna walk out and do my thing Monday through Saturday, and I'll come in.

That's not why you're here.

When you were brought into the kingdom of God by the Spirit who saved you, who gave you a new heart, who caused you to be united with Christ Jesus in his body, when you were brought into that, your self was lost.

Your self was lost, and you no longer have the freedom or liberty to live individual lives.

You have the gospel obligation to live in community.

We talk about this all the time at sacred mission.

A healthy disciple is not just someone who is reconciled to God through Jesus, it's not just you and Jesus, you and your personal relationship with him.

Hey, hey, me, I'm just it's my prayer closet.

I got me and him, we're all good.

That's not what this is about.

You're also healthy discipleship, you're reconciled to his people, the church.

You cannot be reconciled to Jesus and not be reconciled to his people also.

And not only that, but you're also reconciled to his mission, to see the glory of his name be spread throughout all of creation, and those who are lost and distant from him because of their sin and rebellion, called to come home to the Father by grace through faith.

We are called to do all three reconciled to God, reconciled to his people, reconciled to his mission.

So when we come into faith in Jesus, self is gone.

We got to stop thinking that way.

We got to stop thinking about me, me, me.

We have to think about the people.

Of who Christ has united us with.

And it's an eternal unity in Christ, in him, that we have been brought into by the power of the Spirit.

Paul says, I was not idle when I was among you, nor did I eat anyone's bread without paying for it.

Here's what Paul's saying I did not expect my needs to be met at the expense of others.

That'll preach.

Here, let me listen.

This is what he's saying.

Some of us come into this place.

We expect our needs to be met at the expense of the people around us.

At the expense of the hours somebody who stands behind this pulpit puts into developing the sermon.

Of the time and energy that volunteers went into scheduling people, making sure coffee was ordered, making sure that it got brewed up and delivered, making sure the kids' curriculum was all set up and developed and able to be taught, making sure that there was glue without glitter for God's sake.

Making sure that everything was right.

There was labor and sweat and energy that went into making sure this Sunday morning happened good and faithfully.

Let's not even go into mission groups and the people who open their homes to your like rowdy children every week, right?

It's like we sometimes we just take a break because we just don't want our stuff to be broken anymore.

We love you, but but can we do something about this?

And they read over the text and they pray for your soul and they try to make sure that they're available for you when you're hurting and broke.

Can we talk about the times that we come in expecting our needs to be met at the expense of others?

Church, we gotta wake up.

We can't live that life anymore.

We can't live in such a way where we come here expecting our needs to be met at the weary expense of other people.

It makes them grow tired.

We're gonna get to that in a minute.

But Paul said, I demonstrated a better way for you to live.

And it's a way to live in community where self is not after self-interest, but self is emptied out for the flourishing of the whole.

This is what I handed to you.

Right?

A way in which his work was for the benefit of the whole community, that we might not be a burden to any of you.

Paul was going to make sure that they got the God.

And he said, We labored day and night.

Can you imagine?

Like, here's Paul, right?

Preaching, teaching hours on end throughout the day.

And what's he doing at night?

He's picking up whatever tools he needed to make tents so that he could labor in this bivocational reality that he wanted to make sure.

No, no, no.

You you're you're gonna get one thing from me, and that and and that's it.

You're gonna get the gospel of Jesus.

I'm not gonna let anything else be in the way of you receiving the beautiful good news of Christ's finished work for you.

And so I'm going to do everything it takes.

I'll labor all day, I'll labor all night to make sure that you get this.

This is the way that we are being called to work here.

He says, verse 9, it was not because we do not have that right.

Man, think about this.

Paul's saying, we had every right to come in and demand being cared for.

We had every right to come in and say, you're gonna provide meals for us, you're gonna provide a place for us to live, you're you're gonna do the.

He's saying, we didn't, it's not that we didn't have the right to do that.

It's that we love you so much we were going to offer a better way to live.

But to give you in ourselves an example, we've talked about this already a little bit, but demonstration is always superior to demanding.

Demonstration is always superior to demanding.

Even with your kids, right?

You can you have the right to demand your kids live a certain way.

Obedience, right?

Do their chores, get good grades.

Like you have the right, as their parents, you have an authority to demand.

But but you know what's so much better?

When your kids are able to observe that life in you, when they're able to be called into participation in that life with you, when they experience the benefit of that life with you, that's a culture-shaping reality.

Here's what Paul was trying to do.

Paul was trying to build culture.

You cannot build culture through demands.

You can only build culture through demonstration.

That was one thing that I got from my old prosperity gospel days.

I remember sitting in some conference, and the pastor was up there talking about how this hallway needed painted.

And he he was he was so proud of himself, of how he told these volunteers to repaint this hallway like six different times because he didn't like the color of it.

And he he was sitting in this place of demanding, uh, of being self-served, right?

And all this other and I just, and in his whole language, there wasn't one moment where he's like, Yeah, and I picked up a brush and I started painting with him.

And I I set in my mind in that moment, I will never call the church to do something that I'm unwilling to do myself.

So when we call you to be in a mission group, guess what?

I'm leading a mission group.

My house is open all the time.

I don't have to do this thing.

I want to model for you what it means to be in community with other people, to be in the mess and thick of each other's lives.

When we call you to volunteer, my wife, my family, we volunteer in this church because we want to see it flourish.

We want to see our hard work be fruitful in what we do.

When we call you to giving, we partner financially with this church because we believe in what God.

When we call you to do things, I want you to understand it's never through demanding.

Not that I don't have the right, not that the elders don't have the right to call you to certain things, but we want to demonstrate it for you because that's gonna build a culture.

That's why I stand out front and greet everybody every morning.

I want to be out there.

I want to be in the thick of who you are and what you're bound.

I want to try to get your name right, even though I'm gonna get it wrong the first three or four times.

Some of you still get it wrong, right?

And that's okay.

I'm trying.

I at least get the first letter about 99% of the time.

But but why am I doing that?

Because I want to demonstrate for you a better way to live.

We have to get this in our minds and hearts.

Paul's work ethic embodied the very command that he would deliver.

A work ethic that served the community rather than expecting to be served by the community.

And he says, if if anyone's unwilling to work, that brother shouldn't eat.

Think about this for some of us.

Like if you're feeling uh shame in this, if you're feeling guilt, man, I pray it's godly grief, I pray it's godly shame that that drives you to Jesus.

I'm not, I'm not trying to put a burden on you that you feel you can't get out from under this morning.

I'm trying to paint this more uh beautiful portrait of what the community of God's people is supposed to look like.

And so for us, man, do we come into this place?

Do we have conversations with other people who are here?

Do we just stick with our couple, two, three friends every are we getting out of our way to welcome and demonstrate hospitality to people who are here who we haven't met yet or gotten to know their name?

Are we going out of our way to, hey, I'm not scheduled for hospitality this morning, but I'm gonna be hospitable.

I'm not scheduled for facilities, but I'm gonna work to make sure that the facilities are careful.

I'm not scheduled for these things, but doesn't mean I'm off.

Right?

Am I coming into this place expecting to be served by the community?

Or am I coming here expecting to serve this community so that it might flourish?

Because of the order I'm bringing in with me.

If anyone's unwilling to work, if if you're sitting here this morning, and I think there's a parallel that I'm not I'm not too scared of making in this text, if you're coming to feast at the table of our hard work, and you've been in a posture of unwilling to work yourself, you you shouldn't come here and eat.

We lay a table week in and week out of what I think is beautiful gospel feast.

If you're unwilling to work, the Bible is telling us you should not come and eat.

But the good news is we got a ton of volunteer spots open today.

You can jump in any point, right?

We don't put hurdles and barriers.

You can do all kinds of cool stuff, like go to different countries or uh uh help change kids' diapers.

They're amazing.

All right, I'm gonna move on.

Verse 11 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.

What's so funny about this is so we relate the word idle to lazy.

Paul's not doing that.

Paul actually uses this wordplay.

These idle people were busy at something.

And he gives two kind of qualifying things.

They walked in idleness, meaning that that was an active lifestyle they were participating in.

Walk in idleness.

You hear that wordplay, right?

And they were busy at work.

Not busy at work, but busy bodies.

Their disorderly conduct was affecting others around them.

Their disorderly conduct was affecting others around them.

And verse 12 gives us two commands that combat this disorderly lifestyle.

If we are walking in idleness, that's an active laziness in certain ways.

It's creating disorder.

And they were not being busy at work, but they were busy bodies creating disorder.

He says, here's the two responses, here's the two corrections to that reality.

Do your work quietly, charge them to do that.

The Bible all throughout calls us to do, to live a quiet life.

To live a quiet life.

This is so critically important, especially in today's age and the culture that we find ourselves in.

Our life should not be disruptive for the wrong reasons.

Our life should be disruptive for kingdom purposes.

The way that we radically love other people, the way that we are unselfish in our generosity, the way that we welcome the outsider as if they were a part of our family, the way in which we preach the gospel of Jesus to our name.

These are the things, these are the disruptive things we're supposed to do with inside of culture.

And that's done in this quiet life of which we live.

They had every reason to protest, they had every reason to take up arms, they had every reason to live these loud, disruptive, ungospeled lives and the oppression in the culture that they find themselves in.

But Paul says that's not what we're called to.

We're called to live a quiet life.

One of order, one of peacefulness.

One that the way we live our life in sacrificial love toward others.

That's the disruption we're called to in the gospel.

That's the disruption we're called to in the gospel.

And then he says, and then earn your own living.

Don't expect your needs to be met at the expense of others.

Earn your own living.

Take care of yourself and it comes to your physical needs.

If you want to eat, work.

You see, to live a life redeemed is to live a life in a redeemed community.

Like we said, if we're reconciled to God through Jesus, we are reconciled to his people through the church also.

And this means that we then work for the good of the community of which we live in.

So if we're living a redeemed life, that means we live in a redemptive community, which means that our work is for that redemptive end.

We cannot expect to exist within a community of people where their hard work is seen for our own self-gain.

We cannot allow the community to suffer because of our unwillingness to work for its good.

Now, here's what I think for us.

We're an amazing church, right?

If I if I if you hear me like railing against you, I don't know what's wrong with me.

You guys are an amazing church.

The amount of people that volunteer, the amount of people that open their homes for mission groups, the amount of stuff I see on the app where you're caring for one another and you're helping one another and you're loving one another.

Like, man, I am so proud to be your lead pastor.

I think our elders are proud to serve this church.

You are, in all intents and purposes, a beautiful portrait of gospel community.

But can I say this?

Here's where I think there's a command in this passage that I think is really the one we need to listen to.

And all of you probably like have these, you know, pretty good jobs.

I think you probably work, you probably pay your bills, you probably put in some savings, you probably do have a 401k, you probably do all these things.

Like, I don't think I'm speaking to a bunch of people who are panhandling on the side of 75 to make sure that they just, you know, get they can be lazy and other people pay for their stuff.

I don't think that's the heart of what we're gonna wrestle with.

Here's where I think the command we need to listen to is this do not grow weary in doing good.

Do not grow weary in doing good.

Here's the reality, church.

Our community may not struggle with idleness, but I think that we will struggle with indifference.

We may not struggle with idleness, but I think the temptation for us is we're gonna struggle with indifference, where the idleness of other people around us causes us to grow weary, and it has this effect on us as his people.

It starts to spread.

And you can imagine when you have to carry the load of other people, when you have to make sure you pick up the slack over and over again, when you're the one who sees idle people prosper, and you're here just grinding away, and you're not seeing fruit, you know what that's gonna cause us to do?

We're gonna grow weary.

We're gonna grow weary in doing good work.

You see, this is the command we need to hear.

As for you, brothers, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good.

Here's what Paul's saying do not let the idleness of others cause you to become indifferent about the good work that you are doing.

This is what he's saying.

Don't don't remember the first charge, avoid him so that you might avoid becoming like him.

Avoid him so that you might become, avoid becoming like him.

You see, we're called to good work.

And and and I pray that we're able to lay everything down on the altar of our life.

We're exhausting ourselves for the good of others because we're going to have that eternal rest of glory.

That's where our hope is.

That's where our eyes are fixed on, right?

That's why we can work in such a way here and now.

Heaven isn't here yet.

Church, we still have good work to do.

We have good work in the maturing and equipping and discipling of other believers.

We've got work to do in this.

That these brothers and sisters around us might mature in their love for Christ, mature in their love for one another, that they may be discipled in all truth, that they may be able to discern the culture of which they reside in, that they may be steadfast in their faithfulness, that they may white knuckle the hope of the gospel.

But there's work to do here.

But then there's work for every other person who's not here yet.

If we labor the rest of our lives for just one more person to be delivered out of hell and brought into the kingdom of heaven because we poured out our life as a sacrifice that we might live amongst culture in such a way that they see the beauty of the gospel.

It's worth it.

Do we believe that though?

That we can exhaust ourselves for just one more.

Are we like good?

Are we good here?

Are we comfortable?

Or is it like, hey, if we can just sustain this, like if this can kind of stay a status quo, we're good.

Man, I'm I I didn't we didn't plant a church for that purpose.

We planted a church that we might enter heaven's gates, dog tired, exhausted, saying, Jesus, I left everything on the line.

That one more person might come into this beautiful kingdom of your eternal reign.

I laid it all down.

I need to move on.

Here we go.

Here's our story.

The idleness of others causes us to be weary in good work.

The idleness of others causes us to be weary in good work.

This is our story.

Here's what happens.

Some of us we view our work as a misery.

Some of us we view our work as a misery.

Because here's what happens.

We begin to allow the disorderliness of others to cause us to not see the beauty and virtue of good work.

When you hear about people who are able to get by by having some robot shaky thing move their mouse and they're getting paid, you know, a beautiful salary, like benefits and all that, and you're just sitting here like, why am I doing what am I doing?

You know, honestly, man, when you see people like walk into a Walmart and just roll out with carts full of stuff, you're like, I don't know why I just don't do that.

No one stopped them.

No, no one was like, hey, sir, uh, pardon me, but you can't steal.

They're like, Well, uh, you're offending me.

I thought I could come on.

We're just saying, like, what the heck am I doing?

Why am I grinding away 40, 50, 60 hours a week to care for me, to pay for my bills, to do what's that doing?

It's causing us to lose sight of the beauty and virtue of good work.

And so, what's our response to that?

We see work as a misery.

And some some of us are gonna follow down that path.

We're gonna look for something where we can do the least amount of work for the most amount of self-gain, and and and we're not gonna see that our work is tied to the dignity of the image of which we bear, that we work for a working God who spent six days creating, and then on the seventh day he rested.

But no, we want a five-day weekend instead of a one-day weekend because we see our work as misery rather than it chained to the beauty and goodness of the God of which we were made in the image of.

There's beauty and virtue in good work.

A man who lays his head down at night, knowing that he gave everything for the good of those around him, that he labored for his wife and for his children and for his neighbor.

I was outside, I got it, I got home from Gatlinburg at like seven o'clock last night.

You know what I didn't want to do?

Mow my lawn.

You know what I did because I wanted to make sure that my neighbors understood I'm not here to create a situation where I make you grow weary with my presence.

I mowed my lawn.

That's what I did.

Weed whacked it, blew it out, I did everything.

I did not want to do that.

I went to bed tired that night.

But I went to bed knowing the beauty and virtue of good work.

Some of us, it's not that we're gonna see our work as misery.

To see our work as just a means.

And it's a means to selfish gain.

For some of us, we're going to see the disorderliness of other people, and it's going to cause us to grip tighter the things that we have.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone really needed help and you didn't extend generosity and charity to them because you've been burned by so many other people behind you?

Have you ever saw someone in need and you just assumed that they were going to use this whatever?

Money, gifts, for something unholy, something unfruitful, and so you just started to, what do you start to do?

You start to cinch up your possessions.

And you stop looking at your work for the good of others, and you solely look at it for the benefit and prosperity of yourself.

The disorderly culture we find ourselves in, right?

The idleness of the culture, it's gonna have us either work it look at our work as a misery, or it's gonna have us look at our work as a means.

But there's a better way.

But first, let's go to Jesus.

What do I got?

Okay.

Here's the beauty of the gospel.

Our sin did not weary Jesus in the good work of the cross.

Our sin did not weary Jesus in the good work of the cross.

Church, we can look at ourselves as unable to do the work that was necessary to make things right with God.

And we can rightly view ourselves as that.

We were unable to do what it took to make ourselves right with God.

But there's more to the story.

If we only see it that way, we only see it in partial view.

The depravity caused us to be unwilling to do what it took to make things right with God.

Like let that sink in for a moment.

It's not that Jesus were unable to do what it took.

You were unwilling to do what it took.

And Jesus could have done something.

Jesus could have looked at that sin, that idleness.

Because what's idleness really mean?

Disorder.

Did sin create disorder?

This yes.

Yes, a lot of disorder.

You know what Jesus could have done?

He could have looked at that disorderliness with indifference.

Man, if they can't help themselves.

If they're unwilling to do what it takes to make themselves better, if they're not going to get busy and their hands dirty and the work that's going to take to make things right with God, hey, you know what?

It's on them.

It's on them.

Can you imagine the state we would be in if Jesus looked upon our disorderliness with indifference?

Man, we would be destitute and full of despair.

Jesus' finished work was to recreate all things, to reorder all things that our disorderliness created.

And he did it for your flourishing.

Jesus went to the cross.

He finished the work for your benefit.

So that you be brought into a greater story of what he's doing, where he's taking the disorderliness that our sin created, and he's bringing eternal, divine, flourishing order to it all.

The promise of Jesus to make all things new.

Can we look at Revelation 21, 5 for just a moment?

Revelation 21.

I'm going to skip over one of these texts.

But Revelation 21.

And he who is seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.

Also he said, Write this down.

Why?

For these words are trustworthy and true.

Why can we put our faith in Jesus?

Because Jesus is the only one who's trustworthy.

Jesus is the only one who we can put every word to the test, and it's going to come back with fruitfulness.

Right?

And he's saying, I'm making all things new.

The promise of Jesus to make all things new is a promise that his good work, his finished good work, will eternally last for his ultimate glory and the deep joy of his people.

He's reconciling all that we had lost.

Jesus' good work, his faithfulness is bringing order to the disorder that our sin created.

You want to know why we should work?

Because Jesus works.

Because we're made in the image of a God who works.

And he doesn't look at us with indifference when he sees our idleness and disorderliness of our sin.

He looks at us with love and compassion and he says, I'll lay everything down for your good.

Here's the last thing.

So the opposite of weariness is being enlivened.

The Spirit makes us alive.

And now we work by His power and might instead of our own.

And we do it in good work.

So here's what you have the option of.

You can continue to see your work as a misery.

You can continue to see your work as a means, or you can see your work rightly as mission.

Which one is it going to be?

Is it going to continue to be misery day in and day out?

And why am I doing this?

I'm just going to go be like these people who are getting paid to do nothing.

I'm just going to be idle in my life.

Or I'm going to start white-knuckling the things that I have because these other people, they can't help themselves, they won't help themselves.

I'm just going to see my work as a means to my own selfish gain.

Or are you going to work rightly, in line with the gospel, reoriented around the truth and beauty of Jesus' finished work?

And you're going to see your work as mission, tied to the glory of God and the good of other people.

That's the question you have to answer right now, in this moment.

How am I going to view my work?

Paul wrote to young Timothy, pastor at the Church of Ephesus, this Ephesians 4 28, he said, Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

That last phrase should wreck you.

Paul saying, Work so that you can be ready to share with anyone who has need.

Paul didn't say, work so that your IRA can be stacked when you retire.

Work so that you can have the house that you've always dreamed of as a kid.

Work so that you can have all the pleasures and pridefulness of your possession.

Work so that you can have recognition within culture and have some status in society.

Work so that you can have accolades and placards and awards tied to you when you go to the grave.

No, Paul said, work so that others benefit off of your labor.

Man, I want to see work as mission.

I want to see my work tied to the glory of God.

That I it doesn't matter if I'm standing behind this pulpit preaching or I'm drilling holes in the ground to try and find oil.

I don't know where that one even came from.

But whatever I'm doing, am I doing this for the glory of God?

And am I looking at the people around me and saying, yeah, this next paycheck, brother, if you got need, I'm here.

I'm balancing my spending, I'm balancing my balancing my quality of life so that if you need help, I'm ready for you.

I've got your back.

That would revolutionize the way we see work.

So I pray that we start to see it differently.

Because the gospel rightly demands, but not just demands, demonstrates through the finished work of Jesus for our good.

So let's live like King Jesus.

Amen.

Let's pray.