Avoid Idleness

We are moving our way through a series. We've got one more week after this one. We're in the book of, it's almost hard to call it a book, it's so short, 2 Thessalonians, a letter actually, 2 Thessalonians, and I'm gonna ask you to join me in chapter three, and before you get too crazy

and mad at me, I'm gonna do things a little different today, and I'll explain why in a minute. You can see on the screen that we're gonna take the middle portion of the passage today, and I'll explain that in just a minute, but before I do, I got a new driver in the family who hasn't driven that much yet.

Any of you ever had a new driver in the family? For some of you, you need to think back a few years. Maybe others of you are saying, like, that time has not yet come for us.

New drivers, one of the most surprising, and I think, I don't know how to say it, surprising things about getting behind the wheel of a car, if you're a brand new driver, is that the car will go if you simply take your foot off the brake.

You turn on the engine, the engine's idling, and you can idle a few mile per hour. Some cars are even faster than that. And whether the car's in drive or in park, experts actually say that even in park, if you let a car idle too long,

that's not actually good for the engine, is it? Remember that when it comes wintertime, or when you're sitting in your car, and it's 98 degrees with a heat index of 107, or whatever it is, and you're in the air conditioning.

Remember that. Well, ironically enough, the Apostle Paul is gonna talk today about idling, and I'm making a little bit of a stretch, but there is a parallel.

Because in the same way that an idling car, whether it's in park, and you're just wearing out the engine, or worse yet, you have shifted into gear, and you just take your foot off the brake, it can be dangerous.

You can run into things. You can run into people. And the Apostle Paul this morning, although talking about a very different kind of idling, there is a parallel.

The same thing is true. Idling can be dangerous. 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 is the very last chapter of this short letter, and we've come to a point here in this chapter, these last 18 verses, Paul's going to touch on several different points.

2 Thessalonians 3 · chapter mention

He's gonna touch on a variety of different things, as he often does when he closes out a letter. And yet here in the middle of this chapter, it's like he kind of pauses for a minute, and he devotes a little more significant time, and attention to this subject of idling.

Idling in the Christian life, idling in life itself, is not good. Sure, there are times where we need rest and Sabbath, those are necessary, but to idle about day after day is not good for us.

So we're gonna slip past the first five verses here in our chapter. We'll take those along with the last five or six verses, verses 13 through 18.

So stay tuned on that. Today what I wanna do is camp out in the middle. So join me as we pick up our reading in verse 6, and you can follow along with me as I read for us to verse 12.

Now we commend 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 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 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. 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. Will you pray with me once more?

Father, will you take these words that you have inspired, Lord, on this topic, and will you teach us, will you build us as your church today?

We know that as redeemed in the blood of your Son that you have called us toward a purpose. And so, Lord, let us hear these words and let them have the effect upon us that you intend.

And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now there's some things to unpack here. Some things are pretty straightforward, like when Paul says, if you don't work, you don't get to eat, right?

Other things are a little bit less clear. And quite frankly, there are some things here that are a little bit of a mystery to us, being that we are 2,000 years and about 6,000 miles removed from this part of the world.

So what I think might be the most helpful way for us to proceed today is if we simply unpack things here with a series of questions. I have four questions.

And these are questions that range from things like, what is idleness? We need to understand it first, definitionally, to asking ourselves why it's a particular temptation for the church.

We also want to look at why being idle is so dangerous. And then last of all, we're going to try to wrap our minds around these commands from Paul, very specific commands that he gives us about idleness.

So let's get started and we'll begin with our very basic question, most basic question first, and that's the definitional question. Question number one, what is the idleness that Paul rebukes?

Definitions first, what is this idleness that Paul has been hearing about, he says, and what does it actually mean to walk in idleness? It sounds almost like that's an active lifestyle.

And it's important that the first thing we clarify is that idleness is not identical with laziness, with complete inertia, with doing nothing.

To be idle is not simply to be lazy. It's a different Greek word that's used for laziness and it's not used here. Actually, this word has the connotation of disorderliness, literally meaning out of place or out of order.

It means unruly, disruptive, in that there are people who are disruptive in the community, in this case, the church at Thessalonica. In many ways, we could go back to that analogy of a car idling.

It's not in gear, it's not using the RPMs created by the engine for anything productive. It's just sitting there idling out of order or out of gear.

In many ways, we could go back not only to the idling of the engine, but to the church itself here in Thessalonica. There were problems with people getting out of order.

Paul talks about the importance of behaving orderly, properly. He says that the believer's life, personally, is to be well-ordered and not idle or disruptive.

But there's actually another letter we could go to where Paul mentions idling, uses the same Greek word, and it's over in his letter to Timothy.

Let me share with you a passage from 1 Timothy 5, verse 13. Here's what he says, and then we'll set the context. He says, besides that, they, and he's talking about widows, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips

1 Timothy 5:13

and busybodies saying what they should not. Now again, over here in this letter to Timothy, Paul's addressing this issue of a very vulnerable group of people, the widows of the ancient world.

You and I have to understand that if you're a widow today, you probably have, if you're old enough, you have Social Security, you probably qualify for Medicare, Medicaid maybe, and so you have these social programs that offer some measure of protection for widows today.

I'm not saying it's a high life. I'm saying there is a safety net. They did not have that in the ancient world. There is no Jewish Medicare.

There is no Social Security of Palestine. So if you're a widow, and if you have a deadbeat family that doesn't care about you, or if you were barren and never had children, you could be in a very vulnerable condition.

And so Paul writes about this situation, and he actually instructs the early church, you might want to make a list of widows. Make an official list and enroll widows kind of in the service of the church.

And the deal will be that they will perform certain functions in the church, they will be there to do things, and they will be supported by the church.

But in that, Paul offers a caution specifically about the younger women who become widows. The first thing he says is, don't put them on the list too quickly, because if they're younger, they may very likely choose to remarry.

And that's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. And then he goes on to say this, another reason you don't want to enlist another, a young widow too quickly, is because they have a tendency, this is Paul saying this, not me, be cautious about enlisting them, because many of them have a tendency to become idlers,

to become gossips, and what he calls busybodies. So right away, we see Paul is connecting idling with other sins like gossip and being a busybody, running around from, as he says, house to house, engaging in chit-chat, conversation that spreads,

unflattering stuff. He puts idling in the same pack of sins as busybodying, which we'll get to in just a minute. But there's another dynamic to this idleness that Paul is warning the church about here, in Thessalonica, and to really grasp it, we've got to say a word about the culture,

the first century culture. As we know, letters are timeless, but they're also written into situations. And in the situation of Thessalonica and many other parts of the Roman Empire, you had this system called patronage, the Greco-Roman system of patronage.

Patron, client, or in many cases, clients. The patronage system was a relationship between wealthy patrons, sometimes called benefactors, wealthy patrons, where they might enlist a client or several clients who are from the poor classes of people

to support them and their reputation. They didn't need any other kind of support. They were rich. So the deal was that the patron pays their client a salary and then takes care of all the material needs that they have.

And the client, their job, is to go represent how great of a person their patron is. Imagine that. It's almost like, you know, today in Washington, D.C., we have all these lobbyists that represent businesses and corporations.

It's almost like someone having their own kind of personal lobbyist. Someone whose full-time job, if you can call it a job, is to kind of run around every chance they get and talk about all the wonderful things about their patron.

Imagine if I did this for, say, Matt Kitsos. Imagine if Matt was a really wealthy guy, which of course he is, and he were to pay me to run around in every moment I had, every opportunity, Facebook post today, Instagram.

Matt's a wonderful guy. Matt is so intelligent. Matt loves to help people. I can't think of a better citizen than Matt Kitsos. That's patronage.

And so these people would run around to all the social places, the marketplace, the city gates, maybe the courts, the temple, local temple precincts, and at every turn, every chance they had, that was kind of their business, was to talk about how great their patron was.

Well, it's kind of a weird system to us today, but it was quite common in the ancient world. And apparently, as the gospel made its way into places like Thessalonica, people got converted who were a part of this system.

Stands to reason that we've got maybe some clients, maybe some patrons in the church here. And Paul is telling the clients that that's not really an honest living.

Not working with your own hands is not good. Just being a part of a system that socially obligates you to run around like a busybody, looking for every angle to praise your patron, and we can imagine it's probably happening in the church gatherings too.

Paul says, no, that's not good. This is not the way. So that's a definition and maybe a little bit of a cultural understanding of what was giving rise to this idleness.

But let's get on to our second question because this one really gets at the why. Why idleness is such a temptation in the church particularly.

Question number two. Why might idleness be a particular temptation for God's people? So that system of patronage, it may have been behind a lot of the idleness in the church, but the truth is there are other factors too that might have encouraged idleness in the church.

And one of them happens to be, strangely enough, the doctrine of the second coming. Eschatology. The second coming of Jesus. The very topic Paul has just talked about only a chapter ago.

and told them to calm down and it hasn't happened yet. We know that the people in the first century and particularly here in this church are very much like it could happen at any point.

They were waiting for it. They were living very, what you could call, eschatologically. Probably doing a lot better than we are today where we're thinking like, I'm going to go and do this or that and I'm going to make some money and I'm going to have some lunch and I'm going to plan my vacation and my year.

They were living very eschatologically. However, they had a bit of a problem. You ever heard the expression that someone is so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good?

Yeah. That appears to be the problem. Heads in the clouds quite literally. They're saying things like, I mean, if Jesus really is due back any minute, why build my business?

If Jesus is coming again to take us to be with him like he said, then why do I need to maintain a house? Or a job? Why should I not just do church stuff and hang with church people every day?

Shouldn't I just spend my time constantly evangelizing my working neighbors? And meanwhile, what about those neighbors? Well, in the first century, businesses and trade and bartering, it was all interrelated.

And so your neighbors are thinking, well, that's fine for you to keep your head in the clouds, but I need to make some money. I need to put food on my table.

And so they began to resent this kind of heavenly mindedness that was no earthly good. They began to say things like, you really are bad for the local economy because you won't work.

And probably what was happening is that this idleness was making Christianity a lot less attractive to people who were unsaved outside of the church.

The fact is, Christians not working or working very little and being perceived as idle in society was not increasing the gospel's appeal. It actually was detracting from it.

Idleness, you could say, was a bad witness. And there were other ways the church people could be tempted to be idle. I mean, don't we know that from as early as Acts chapter 2 that when there's this big revival and a wave of thousands become Christians, we read that little paragraph at the end of Acts 2

Acts 2 · chapter mention

that talks about how they held things in common and met every day. And sometimes if we just kind of stop reading in the book of Acts right there, you almost get this picture of like Christian socialism, right?

I guess nobody went to work. Everybody just ate meals in each other's homes and did Bible studies. And that's not the picture that we see of the early church developing in the book of Acts.

This early snapshot often has been misunderstood as some kind of an endorsement for Christian socialism. where there's no private property. Probably doesn't help any that you have this guy Barnabas a couple chapters later who's a wealthy Levite from Cyprus selling real estate and making a big sizable gift to the church

to help take care of needs. So you can see the temptation for a person who maybe already has a dislike for work. What else fueled the temptation to be idle?

Well, how about the fact that you had various apostles composing letters that we now have in our New Testament that are filled with these admonitions and commands about one another?

Right? The one another commands. Care for one another. Love one another. Serve one another. Take care. Share with one another and practice hospitality.

We see these commands all over the New Testament. So what appears to be happening is that some within the church perhaps conditioned by the, yeah, cultural system of patronage all around them.

Maybe also conditioned by their own laziness and poor work ethic and probably even misapplying the commands about mutual care for one another.

They were starting to walk this path of idleness and were just presuming upon their other believers to take care of them. But that's not consistent with the gospel.

It's not consistent with the picture, the good picture, the positive picture of work that scripture actually gives us. We don't have time to unpack all of it.

This can't be a sermon on the goodness of work but God created us to work. I mean you can simply go back to Genesis chapter 2. Before the fall, before the work got cursed and was made more difficult and what did God do when he created the man?

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

We immediately read in Genesis 2 that he took him and he placed him in a garden to just gaze at its beauty and eat its fruit. No. To work it and keep it the text says.

God created us to be workers.

Third question worth considering today. We've talked about what idleness was. We've talked about what might have tempted the church to become idle.

Let's talk about why it's so dangerous to church health. Question number three. Why is idleness so dangerous to church health? You see the reality is and we get this sense as we've read this Paul has already addressed this issue with this church before.

He did it in person many times. It's what it says in verse 10. He says even when we were with you verse 10 we would give you this command about not being idle.

The way that the phrase the tense is given is that we would give you we did it repeatedly more than once. We would tell you things like work with your hands.

Don't be idle. We would say things like you should admonish the idle. And even now here in this second letter the reality is that of all the topics Paul writes about the two topics he spends the most time spills the most ink talking about are first the second coming and second this one right here

the topic of idleness. And Paul spent time on it because he knew what a danger it was to the church's health. And I think he actually gives us several reasons why idleness is so dangerous.

Let me name let me name a few. I'll give you three. Letter A idleness is apparently not so easy to weed out. Not so easy to weed out. Again if you're familiar at all with Paul's writings in the New Testament you know he talks a lot about false teaching right?

The danger of false teaching. And one of his favorite metaphors about false teaching and how it can spread is gangrene. Remember he talks about that?

Gangrene. It's not really been a huge problem for us in recent years. We have antibiotics and ways to treat wounds and injuries. But in the ancient world gangrene was like cancer.

You know what's the big problem today? Seems like cancer spreading. In the ancient world it was gangrene. But the two are parallel because whether it's cancer which is a problem for us now or gangrene which was a huge problem for them back then we know that if you don't get it all if you don't get every last occurrence

of it every last trace gets eliminated that it can spread. It can come back. And hence Paul gave them these instructions back in his first letter.

He said in 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 11 he said this I want you to aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent

1 Thessalonians 4:11

on no one. Mind your own affairs mind your own business work with your hands sounds like maybe patronage really is in the background. this is how you're going to walk properly before outsiders who don't yet know Jesus

by being dependent on no one. No one's impressed with you being a leech and just to be extra sure they got it he went on and he said this just a chapter later 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 14 and we urge you brothers admonish the idle

1 Thessalonians 5:14

encourage the faint hearted help the weak be patient with them all and yet somehow as we come now here to the second letter to the third chapter it would appear that the time for this great patience is over because idleness has apparently not been so easy to weed out

and Paul now writes with an urgency here that's the first reason why idleness is such a danger to church health because it spreads and it's not easy to weed out here's a second one letter B letter B idleness breeds busybodying I just made that term up as a verb

busybodying the activity of being a busybody verse 11 take a look it hits it right on the nose verse 11 for we hear that some among you walk in idleness not busy at work but busy bodies you know

it's not often that you see a play on words in the Greek language that actually translates pretty well to English and this is one of those times busy busybody in the Greek the Greek word for busybody is the word periurgazomai say that ten times fast

periurgazomai and it literally comes from two words mashed up put together peri means to get around peri to get around ergazomai means work to get around work that's what a busybody is definitionally any of you ever

have a family member who had this knack this gift to get around work they say there's always one in the family or you know four or five of them the ability to get around doing work that's what a busybody is and in Greek culture there were yeah a few instances where the term we find it

used in a positive context but by far and large it's mostly negative busybody has very negative connotations in the Bible and even outside of the Bible having no work of your own to do having gotten around doing it or needing to do it is not good

because you go off and you make trouble for others being unoccupied there's this funny dynamic that happens when you got nothing to do yourself you tend to go pester and bother other people any any kindergarten or first grade teachers here you know what I'm talking about if they don't have anything

to do they'll sit quietly not usually do you realize the human nature in first graders and kindergartners is human nature even in adults you don't have enough to do and you go bother other people there's a word for this it's called meddling

you become meddlesome in other people's affairs so that this sin really compounds itself not only are you idle and out of order by not working to support yourself like everyone else by being a leech on others you're also behaving actively in an unruly manner you are

busying yourself by meddling in other people's affairs you've probably heard the phrase again probably from a teacher give them something to do if the class finishes the project early and it's still 20 minutes before the bell even the high schoolers give them something to do

and this is really the sense in the Christian life too you and I even as redeemed in Jesus Christ we are still works in progress who struggle with the carnal nature and we were not created to be do nothings either in our personal lives at home or heaven forbid

at your job you'll get fired and certainly not in the life of the church the Bible teaches us that we are all members of one body different parts different functions but we all need to have a function we all need something to do so that's the second reason idleness

is dangerous is because it leads to busy bodying and let me finish with a third reason letter C third reason it's dangerous letter C idleness de-incentivizes others from actually working and being productive idleness

de-incentivizes other people from wanting to work and be productive productive see when someone's idle and other people around them see that idleness it kind of has this effect the effect of de-incentivizing of discouraging other people from actually working and

being productive this is one of the many reasons that socialism doesn't work because it de-incentivizes people from wanting to work if I work hard and the person next to me doesn't work hard and we got to share the same why am I working hard Paul knew this principle to be true and that's

why he took extra pains to make sure that he did the exact opposite look what he says starting in verse 7 he devotes a couple of verses to this verse 7 for you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us he says that frequently imitate us

because we were not idle when we were with you verse 8 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 you see Paul knew the example

the power of the example he knew the principle of I guess you could call it monkey see monkey do right Paul knew that his personal example would be powerful he knew that people tend to imitate what they see around them especially if it comes from somebody claiming to be a leader which Paul

actually was and so he took these extra pains the words he uses night and day he's not exaggerating he worked night and day doing ministry presumably all day long or I don't know maybe people were more available for teaching in the evening and he did tent making during the day but he was a tent maker by trade

that was his skill and he used this skill to earn money for himself and his companions he employed those skills worked extra hard worked you would say today worked over time to show this church a positive example that would counter all the poor

ones they were seeing and he is a single man of course and a unique apostle did this in other places too such as over in Corinth it's interesting for Corinth for the Corinthian church he did it for slightly different reasons it was because he didn't want to be seen as anyone's pocket apostle I'm not in anyone's pocket

but here's the thing here's the irony and Paul makes this very clear in the next verse in verse nine the irony is that he went this extra mile even though he says I had the right verse nine it was not because we do not have that right

right

of the gospel but he's saying it would have been perfectly legitimate for him to preach and teach as his work it was work but he forwent his right by not taking the fruits of his labor because elsewhere Paul is actually very clear that it's good and healthy

for a church to support its full-time workers or part-time workers Jesus in Matthew 10 10 even said the laborer deserves his food he told his apostles don't take anything with you you're going to do labor in these villages and they're going to take care of you and it's it's like your wages first Corinthians

nine Paul taught that it was right to reap material things he says from the people you've sown into spiritually such workers are he says employed in spiritual service it's right for a gospel worker to share in the fruits of the gospel by receiving a salary to pay your bills

I receive one and I'm grateful for it but I don't necessarily feel like it's your charity I work for it and that's the whole point here Paul is foregoing what should have been his right it was his right the situation here in Thessalonica is so dangerous so fraught

with the challenge of this idleness creeping up popping up like gangrene everywhere that Paul ever the extraordinaire bypassed his rights to leave them a powerful example work for a living people be busy in ministry not a busy

body so all of this is a long answer to the third question about why idleness is so dangerous in the church because again it's not easy to weed out because it breeds busy bodying and because it de-incentivize others from wanting to work now before we wrap up let's consider

what are the commands that Paul gives here in this passage because he does issue a couple of commands in fact he says command no less than three different times question number four what are Paul's commands regarding persistently idle people okay so he's

already warned like you know admonish the idle now we're at a point where it's not working and Paul's issuing specific commands about those who are persistently they're persisting in their idleness what are those commands well again as he said in the first letter you admonish him first

with great patience tell him about the pitfalls and dangers tell him to get moving and get working again but when you've got people who are defiant Paul has two commands one of those are for those who are being persistently idle and his other command is for everybody else

for the persistently idle take a look at verse 12 verse 12 now such persons if this is you if you're an idler we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living

command we don't as a society like being commanded do we maybe if you're in the military you get used to it but this idea of being commanded and the sense here it does kind of have a military connotation scholars say Paul is not backing down he really means it

this is his apostolic authority from which he's speaking he is saying this you need to do this you must to do and I'm telling you this not just in my own name but in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ this is a command no small thing they should do their

work quietly meaning withdraw from the activity of running around being a busy body settle down literally quiet yourself down from such superfluous activity and earn your own living labor in some honest work

in line with my own example as your apostle I'm telling you earn and pay for your own bread toil and labor like me and sometimes it's just good for us to hear that right even today isn't isn't some work actually

good for us isn't doing something productive part of feeling good about yourself I mean there are also just some human benefits I know just in my own life you know a lot of us have jobs that require us to move around a lot and maybe lift things and fix things physically you're working with your

hands and so for you when you're not on the clock and you come home in the evening or on a day off you know maybe you don't want to go out and tackle a lot of physical projects maybe you're tired there are different ways to not be idle we can exercise our minds exercise your intellect and then there are others of

us that it feels like that's all we're doing is we're on those computers or working on documents or in classrooms and we're solving problems at work and talking to people and the last thing we want to do on a day off is sit down and read a book right I know for myself on my day off I like the manual labor

I like working in the yard I like organizing the garage which as I speak is not very organized the vocabulary Paul uses here is almost identical to the how he said it back in the last letter 1st Thessalonians 4 11 he advocates for the quote unquote quiet life

that doesn't mean monasticism it doesn't mean become a monk and work a garden and take a vow of silence the quiet life in contrast to the loud public blithering that the patronage system encouraged Peter talks about the peaceful and quiet life the Christian

should live it doesn't mean a life without any noise a life without any decibels it means a life without any kind of meddling a life where you don't run around and stir things up because you got nothing better to do Peter would say today hey on your cul-de-sac don't be the jerk family right

in your apartment complex don't be that resident that's always meddling into stuff and causing trouble because they don't go off to work like the rest of us if you are a persistently idle person the message is simple Paul commands you to stop and to do some work

quietly and earn your own living but you know that's not the only group he addresses here in this passage if we back up to verse 6 the very first verse there's another group that he addresses and that's the faithful those who have not fallen into idleness here's what he tells them

in verse 6 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 he says somebody's not in accord with the tradition we're giving the teaching we're giving here

somebody's out of alliance with the word of God very obviously you're supposed to keep away from them what does Paul mean we supposed to put some kind of a spiritual or ecclesial restraining order on people no

but he says they are to be warned he's really talking about a form of church discipline to pull away to put distance between and withdraw relationally from such a person because he says there are powerful things that happen

that need to happen and it might come as a shock and a surprise to us I know when I read this this week I was like wait a second did I read what I read in verse 14 I know it's a couple verses ahead of where we are right now but down in verse 14 the hope is that when we withdraw from someone withdraw from

that relationship the hope is that what they will feel ashamed you know our culture has come you know pendulum swing one way or the other and usually when we make mistakes we swing it back the other way and we usually swing it too far and I think shame is one of those topics you say shame's

bad right we're not about shame our shame is conquer we sing about it and that is true Jesus takes our shame he forgives our sins he cancels the debt but it seems that for the apostle for an inspired apostle like Paul in the New Testament that shame can be a tool

he says you want someone who's being disobedient to feel shame to be ashamed not just because we like shaming people but because appropriate biblical shame will incentivize people to change it will be restorative at least that's the hope

that you will drive someone to want to stop what they're doing that's so destructive to themselves and to others and repent that there will be a response to the correction and discipline of a loving community that moves away from an unrepentant sinner

again this is church discipline and we know that any form of church discipline is meant to be redemptive not condemnatory redemptive it's meant to bring the straying person back well I probably touched on a wasp's nest

and I don't even have time to talk much more about it but that's okay because we're going to come back to this next week for this morning let me let me try to wrap things up by just offering us a couple of practical takeaways on this topic of idleness and the warnings that we've heard about it so so very quickly what

should you remember what should you take away well first thing you should remember is that idleness is dangerous and it can spread idleness is dangerous and it can spread remember that it takes root all too easy and it is neither productive nor healthy for the

body of Christ when it does it's not productive or healthy in your home we should be orderly we should be intentional we should be productive in our lives and and in our churches don't be a disorderly person when the word of

God is clear about something receive it sure test it make sure it's accurate but receive it be be receptive rather than argumentative be teachable rather than disagreeable be intentional rather than idle remember that idleness

is dangerous and it can spread number number two here's the second thing and this applies more to some of us than others teach your children teach your children about the dangers of idleness and do it from a young age teach them about the dangers of idleness and teach your kids about the value of

proper engagement and being orderly you say well my kids in my house have a chore list and great good for you that's probably a good idea but that's not exactly all that I'm talking about I'm talking about kids in the classroom talking about kids in your home or in your backyard or at your

dinner table or with their friends there's a proper time and place there is an order to society it doesn't always have to be about them the moment that they think it needs to be about them now I mean if your kids bleeding you know if somebody's you know

laying in the driveway and got hurt that's one thing I'm not saying don't respond to urgency but you and I both know don't we all know that everything a child thinks is urgent is not quite as urgent as they think it is and there is something to be taught here children don't always need to be piping up about whatever

it is they think they need to be piping up about scripture notice this scripture places a value on engaging in quieter ways now I'm not saying if you've got a talkative child that they're especially bad center not at all everyone's different some of us are much more verbal I would be

one of the more talkative people right I'm not saying that I'm talking about a quietness of heart a quietness of spirit where we don't always have to be the center of attention you say well don't you know the development stages of children I mean like a two they think they're the center of the world

and they still do by five and I get that I do I'm just saying parents keep this as a goal as your children are growing and progressing through the stages of life it's not all about them this is one of the joys of having siblings because it can't be all about just them right teach your children about the

dangers of a disordered life the dangers of idleness even as you equip them with a good work ethic and finally last of all this one's probably the the simplest number three labor and get to work right yes heaven's

coming yes Jesus is coming yes we should be eschatologically minded and be waiting for that and living in light of that but we have a meantime then we don't know how long it's going to go on 2,000 years ago they thought the coming of Christ was imminent it could happen at any

time I imagine they still thought that in the year 1,025 and here we are again another thousand years removed in 2,025 he may not come till 3,025 we just don't know and so in this meantime let's stay engaged in things that

are fruitful and productive it starts by caring for ourselves it's good for you to work and care for yourself to provide for yourself to have money to buy your own bread like Paul said that's a good thing it's a good thing for us to provide for our families whether they're really young or whether they're

really old sometimes there are elderly members that need our help and we want to help them and honestly if you have elderly people in your family and you're a believer they're your first responsibility and it's true that sometimes regular people younger people fall on

hard times we we see that here in our own church family and we yes do have a responsibility to care for them and to help them we have a benevolence fund that we use to help people with unexpected urge emergency circumstances but we never want to develop a system of

benevolence that comes at the expense of being productive in our lives we don't want to abuse the one another commands simply because some of the more well resourced among us are able we don't want to necessarily have others become leeches and dependent upon that that's

not what was happening in the early church and if it was Paul spoke up about it and we need to remember that we have a world that's watching a church are all around you that's watching too and we also have a God who is watching us and he's

the one who created us to work in the beginning created us to engage in things that are productive and remember just as he gave it to that very first couple it was good and it still is good so avoid idleness

in your life for the sake of the gospel let me ask you if you could stand with me let's let's pray as a team comes and then we'll have a chance to sing heavenly father lord we don't want to become

legalistic it's not our intention to beat up on ourselves or anyone here and lord we recognize that there are limitations all of us face sometimes it's physical sometimes it's circumstantial things happen and lord we want to care for one another we want to share with those in need we want to practice that

hospitality and be giving to one another so father may we protect that and even as we do will you guard us from this sin of idleness we've seen this morning from your apostle lord that it is dangerous to the church it is harmful to our

witness it's dangerous for our children to grow up and think that this kind of behavior is acceptable and so help us lord equip us in your spirit we want to do this with great patience however we can and lord at the end of the day we want to be able

to hear from you well done good and faithful servant so lord build your church and we pray these things in jesus name amen you