2 Thessalonians 3

We are in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 this morning.

2 Thessalonians 3 · chapter mention

We're wrapping up our march through 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

We want to close this series out by making three observations from chapter 3.

I'm going to begin to read chapter 3, beginning again, 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, beginning of verse 1.

2 Thessalonians 3 · chapter mention

Finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you, and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men.

For not all have faith, but the Lord is faithful.

He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things that we command.

May the Lord direct your hearts to love the God, to love, excuse me, may the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God in the steadfastness of Christ.

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.

For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat any b 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 did not have the 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.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

So Paul's wrapping up this letter.

And in chapter three, there's again three things that I want us to notice: confidence, work, and peace.

These are character traits that all Christians should have.

Confidence in the Lord, not in yourselves or your family or your name or your reputation or even your work ethic, but confidence in the Lord.

Christians should be hardworking people, a good work ethic.

This doesn't mean you have to do the most manual labor job there is out there, but we are to be a hardworking people, faithful to the vocation, the calling that God has placed us in.

And we're to be a people of peace, who are rest in God.

Another way to say this is God is sovereign and he's all powerful.

And so whatever comes, whatever happens, we're to trust him and rest in him.

People of peace, to be at peace.

Now remember, Paul and Silas and Timothy, they helped plant this church, right?

And they were only there for a few weeks.

We read about this in Acts 17.

They were only there for a few weeks and they torn away, kicked out of Thessalonica, and the church is there fledgling.

And so Paul writes these letters, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, to encourage the church and to build them up in their faith.

They're suffering heavy persecution.

They're trying to figure out what happens when you die.

Is there an afterlife?

What's all that mean?

And then they're just trying to figure out, man, how do we faithfully follow God?

That in and of itself is challenging enough.

And Paul writes to them to tell them that he loves them, that he's praying for them, that they would stay the course.

Then he concludes with this encouragement to have confidence in God, to be people of work, not idle people, and to be people of peace.

So he begins again with this confidence in the Lord.

We see this in the first few verses.

Brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you.

He didn't say, brothers, hopefully we can we can do a great work here.

We can kind of get a lot done and really show up and things will go well for us.

He's not saying, be confident in us.

My name's Paul, I kind of have a reputation these days.

He's not saying, hey, there's three of us, we're kind of a we're kind of a powerhouse, we're gonna get things done.

He says, pray for us.

We need the strength of God.

In order that his word may be effective and working, just like it was in the city of Thessalonica.

And that the Lord may be del that the Lord may deliver them from wicked and evil men.

This is their prayer to the brothers, their petition.

They've been kicked out of the city, they've suffered persecution.

Hey, brothers, pray for us that the Lord would deliver us.

Not our own creativity, our own wit, but that the Lord would deliver us.

Because not all have faith.

But the Lord is faithful.

He is faithful, verse 3 says.

He goes on to say, He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

The Lord does the work of establishing.

The Lord does the work of guarding.

This doesn't mean that we can walk around through our days not thinking about what we're looking at or watching or what we're doing on our phone or how we're talking to people.

But if we think that we in ourselves have the capacity to guard it and to fight the enemy, to fight Satan, to fight demons, we are foolish.

We turn to the Lord.

Our confidence is in the Lord.

Paul then says, we're confident that you're going to obey the commands that we've taught you.

You've seen the Lord at work, you've suffered well, you're answering these questions, you're striving to live as a church.

We're confident that you will continue to obey.

Confidence in obedience.

The thing about obedience is you don't always believe the outcome.

Right?

You're not sure.

That's why it's a step of faith.

It's an obedience.

Lord, I'm not sure how you're going to work this out.

Because this is what I want, or this is the desire I have, or this thing, I mean, this is kind of calling to me.

I want to give myself to that.

But God calls us to obedience.

We're going to have confidence.

Okay, Lord, if I'm going to follow you, if I'm going to be obedient to you, then you will sustain me.

You will set up, you will, you will satisfy me.

I'll have rest in you.

I'm confident that when I obey the Lord, my life will be better.

And there is life in obedience.

There is confidence because the Lord directs the heart.

Verse 5.

May the Lord direct your hearts to love, to the love of God, and to the steadfastness of Christ.

What a prayer.

May the Lord direct your heart.

May the Lord be working to direct your attention and your affections and your energy and your desires to God and to love God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

I don't know how it goes from you from week to week, but for me, I battle sin every day.

Every day I have to fight sin and try to honor the Lord and be obedient.

And I'm fledgling and I'm weak and I'm tired.

I feel beat down.

What a great thing that we can look to Christ.

The steadfastness, the unwaveringness, the consistency of Christ.

He does not waver.

He empowers us.

He sustains us.

He is steadfast.

Therefore, we have confidence in the Lord.

Confidence in the Lord.

The next thing that Paul addresses is the work ethic.

Now there's obviously some issues of idleness happening, and it keeps coming up.

Paul has instructed this church several times.

He instructs them when he's there.

We know that from verse 6 and verse 10.

We know at the end of the first letter, in chapter 5, verse 14, he was dealing with this, telling them not to be idle.

And now at the end of this second letter, he kind of gives a bigger chunk to this and says, listen, don't be idle.

Don't be kind of loafing around.

Now this was an issue for the church.

It wasn't an issue for everyone in the church.

It probably wasn't an issue for the majority of the people in the church.

But obviously there was an issue here.

There's a laziness.

An idleness and laziness, it begins to affect your doctrine and what you believe.

What I mean by that is it's it's possible that you can be lazy and be idle and have good doctrine, but you're not living it out.

And you're deceiving yourself, thinking, well, I believe the right things about God, and so I know those things, and I'm good in that sense, but you're not walking these things out.

So Paul and Timothy and Silas are an example to these brothers and sisters.

They work night and day, they're they're working to provide for themselves.

Not because they don't have a right to be beneficiaries to the people, but rather because they want to just be an example to them, because this is a group who are struggling with idleness.

Now, when you when you start talking about work ethic, you start talking about how much should people work and you know what kind of what's hard work and what's kind of all those things, it's a sensitive topic, right?

You know, it's just sensitive because people are sensitive, because man, some people, man, they take a lot of pride in like I'm I'm a hard worker, I work all these hours, I do all these things, and for some people, they're like, yeah, you know, I don't want to talk about that because I'm not a hard worker, I wish I was.

But there's also there's just different kinds of people.

There are people who just have boundless energy.

I mean, they just go and they go and they go and they go and then they stop and they just keep going.

You're just thinking, uh, you know, I can't keep up with that.

And then there are other people who just have low energy.

This is by God's providence.

They just don't have boundless energy.

They get worn out quickly, they're tired quickly.

And so the question isn't, hey, is everyone, you know, are you are you pulling in 12, 14, 16 hour days?

You know, are you hitting the bed just exhausted every night?

Well, good for you, then you're then you're a hard worker.

But rather, it's a question of faithfulness.

Are we being faithful to what God has called us to and what he's given us, with the amount of energy he's given us, with the amount of time he's given us.

It's the same thing with our finances.

We talk about this, and especially you know, with the church.

We don't we don't ask people, hey, you have to give this much money or do these things.

We say, be faithful with what God has given you.

Be faithful, steward it well, be sacrificial with that.

Same with your energy and kind of your work ethic.

Be faithful with that.

Work hard.

That's gonna look different for different people, but you know when you're being faithful, right?

You know when you're working hard.

So be faithful to those things and trust the Lord.

Because that's what God has called us to.

Now, I just want to want to kind of work through because Paul's talking about this, these idle people.

And we all, if we're honest, have tendencies to be idle.

Now, here's the thing, for some people, even their idleness can, it looks busy.

And here's what I mean by that.

So I spend a good chunk of my hours on my, like on a sitting down, writing, typing on a computer, reading a lot of things, preparing to preach, preparing to teach, all these things.

I spend a good chunk of time sitting.

Which is not the greatest thing for me.

But I can sit and I can read all kinds of things.

I can read wonderful articles, I can get on desiring God, and just man, just I can spend an hour a day, two hours a day, just reading all these wonderful things.

And that's not bad.

But am I am I wasting my time because I'm not being diligent with the work that's been entrusted to me?

So this is what I mean by people can still be busy, but they're still being kind of idle because they're not working hard, they're not being focused on the work before them, they're not being faithful to what's been entrusted to them.

So there's kind of different kinds of idleness.

But here's just three.

There's more, but here's three.

And if we're honest, we've probably all been this way, one of these three, or we've probably been all three of these things at different times, but we struggle with one.

One is the bare minimum.

This person, just bare minimum of life.

What I gotta do to get through the day.

You know, I gotta feed the kids and I gotta do some laundry.

I just bare minimum.

Listen, I have three boys, my wife takes care of the boys, they're all young boys.

Like, I get it.

Some days you're lucky if you get the bare minimum done.

All right?

But you're working at that.

That's the difference.

You're working at that rather than I'm just gonna do the bare minimum because I don't want to do anything else.

So this is whether it's with mom, with kids, you're at work, you're your vocation, you're in your office, or whatever it is, I'm doing the bare minimum.

That's the one.

The other kind is uh we just they work when they're watched.

So boss comes in and you're busy getting stuff done, you know?

Co-worker comes in, I'm busy.

I've got stuff to do.

You know, someone calls you, hey, I can't get to that right now, I'm just busy.

Hang up the phone, you go back to your phone phone, you hang up the work phone, you go back to your phone, you're scrolling social media, whatever.

You're busy when people are watching.

When people aren't watching, you're being slothful, idle.

And then the third kind is there's this like hustle and recover.

The hustle and recover.

So these are people who, man, like they just they hit it really hard for like an hour or a day or two, and then you know, don't call me for a month, right?

I'm just, I worked really hard and I'm just then they tell you what they've been doing.

Which I will say, usually, if you have to feel like you have to tell me all the work that you've done, I just question that.

Like, why do you feel like you have to tell me about all the work that you've done?

I don't know.

But these kind of people, they just they they hustle, then it takes like five times longer to recover.

And so it looks for a moment like they're just really working hard, but then they use that as an excuse to be idle for days.

These things reveal our hearts.

Are we working for the approval of man?

Are we working for no one's approval?

Are we working to just kind of make ourselves feel not as guilty?

And once we've done a little bit of work, we we we've satisfied that guilt and that shame, and we can relax.

We as Christians are to focus on the work that Christ has given us to do.

Ephesians 4 says that Christ has given us, he's put us on this earth to work.

Work is not a part of the curse.

It's not.

Toil is.

Toiling, the land, just working, you're not getting anywhere, just weeds, and that is a part of the curse.

But work is not.

Work is a blessing from the Lord.

In work, there is identity, there's value, not that it gives us value, but we're doing the thing that God has made us for.

We're glorifying Him by working unto Him for His glory.

And this applies to everyone.

Doesn't matter what your job is or your title is, you're to work unto the Lord for His glory.

That gives us life, that brings us life.

Part of the curse, and there's a lot of jobs, there's a lot of parts of our jobs that are rough, that nobody wants to do, that are not fun.

That doesn't mean we get to just kind of praise God for the good parts of the job we like and then just kind of bemoan and complain about the things that we don't like.

We are to honor the Lord in our work and to not be idle people.

I know that again, these are sensitive things because part of our broken nature is to do what we want to do.

I want to sit around, I don't want to work, or I just want to do the work I want to do.

So I'll just the work, I'll do whatever I want to do, the things I don't want to do, I'm not gonna do them.

Someone else can do those things.

I'm just gonna do the work I like or that I find fulfilling, or that people notice or recognize.

This is our broken nature, instead of saying, What has God entrusted me to, entrusted me with, and how can I glorify him with those things?

So we're to be people who are not idle, who are to work hard.

And this was the tradition, this was this is what Paul taught them.

Work hard, don't neglect these things.

And then he goes into this kind of passage about if there are those who aren't doing these things, or people who are ignoring or not listening to the commands that we've given.

Verse 14.

If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, have nothing to do with them, and that they that he may be ashamed.

Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.

So we see in verse 14 and 15, there's kind of there's a tension there.

Like, are we talking about shunning people?

Is this is this what Paul is saying?

Like, just shun them?

And just kind of shame them into obedience?

Well, the first thing we need to note is that this this person who is ignoring Paul's teachings, there is there is an indicator that they're they're wanting to do their own thing.

And this is this is what we call church discipline.

When you do not want to follow the things of the Lord, you do not want to heed the word and obey the word.

And you have brothers and sisters in Christ who love you, who've been praying for you.

We can't keep saying, oh, it's fine that you're living that way.

It's fine that you're kind of in that sin.

It's okay.

We have to address it.

And then if you address it and they want nothing to do with obeying or repenting or following, then you have to ask the question, well, what do you want to do with us?

We're God's people.

We're people of his word.

We're following Jesus.

If you don't want to do that, then why do you want to be with us?

It doesn't make sense.

We're not to treat them as an enemy, but to lovingly, kindly warn as a brother.

This is why church membership is so important.

Because when you become a member of Proclamation Church, we have this conversation.

That there is an expectation that if you start kind of shipwrecking your life and you start following into sin, then we're gonna lovingly gracious.

They say, brother, sister, like what are you doing?

Like, this is wrong.

You know this isn't what God has for you.

You know this brings destruction.

It's an invitation into one another's lives to spur one another on in holiness.

So we are to encourage them and to warn them.

Now, most of these things are just kind of one-off conversations.

This isn't like a formal church discipline.

Like most church discipline is when someone says, Hey, brother, I just see that, you know, you're talking in a way that doesn't glorify the Lord.

You know, what's going on there?

It's just conversations.

It's warning a brother.

It's not a formal council.

We all sit down, we have two sides, and there's a debate, and we, you know, we bring a judgment.

It's one brother saying to another brother, one sister saying to another sister, the Lord loves you.

He's calling you to holiness, pursue holiness.

But you think about when Paul's talking about the idol people among them, the I don't mean idle people among us, like to warn them.

Now that's an awkward conversation, right?

Hey, I see you're not really doing much.

What's up with that?

That's an awkward conversation.

And we also know contextually, we live very different lives than they did the first century, right?

We just live more scattered, we live miles apart, we see each other.

A few times a week at best.

And so there's not that same kind of connection or rhythm of being around one another.

But some people here work together.

You guys work at the same company or you interact with one another frequently throughout the week.

And we can kind of just want to encourage one another.

You see someone who's just being idle.

And then you talk to them about that, and they're this is the easiest, most simple way, is with humility and love and clarity.

Just be like, how are you, how are you, how are you doing with idleness?

Is that something you struggle with?

Is that something that bothers you?

Just a simple con just a simple question to get them thinking, man, how how am I doing with that?

That's my question to you.

Do you have a tendency to be idle?

Is that something you struggle with?

And remember, I don't mean just sitting down, twiddling your thumbs, or just zoning out.

It could be wasting your time doing other things so that you don't have to do the work that Christ has set before you.

Acknowledge and repent.

Verse 16, now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way.

The Lord be with you all.

He goes on to say, I wrote this greeting with my own hand.

This is a sign of genuineness in every letter of mine.

We know from uh historical accounts that one of the issues that Paul was combating with the church in Thessalonica were letters were coming into the church and they didn't know who they were from.

Or they were said to be from Paul, but they weren't from Paul.

So Paul's just like verifying, this is my letter to you.

Treat it as such.

But verse 16, the Lord of peace himself be with you at all times.

The Lord be with you all.

This is an encouragement that God is the Lord of peace.

And as his people, we are recipients of peace, partakers of peace.

Now, this doesn't mean that hard things won't come.

This doesn't mean that life doesn't get really messy at times and difficult.

It also doesn't mean that you'll know you've made the right decision in life when you just have peace about it.

Now it's nice to have peace about a decision, but that's not a promise from the Lord.

And it's actually pretty rare for most people just to have peace about everything in life.

Because we are faulty people.

We make mistakes.

We think we know God's will, we step out, and it's not God's will.

We make mistakes.

But God does not make mistakes.

So our peace is in him being God.

Because he is God.

And God is good and he is sovereign.

And we are his people.

You have peace because you belong to God.

Not because you figured life out or because all the it's because you belong to him.

He has saved you from a life of selfish, sinning emptiness.

He's brought you to a life of eternal joy and peace.

All because he came for you, to give his life for you, so that you would not walk in darkness and be dead in your sin.

He is an amazing God.

So we are to have confidence in him, in his work on the cross, not our work.

We're to be people at work, working hard, stirring well what God has given us, being faithful to the work he's placed before us, learning how to rest well, but how to work well.

And we are to be a people of peace because God is good and God is sovereign over all things.

And we trust him and we rest in him, in him alone.

Let's pray.