Untitled Sermon

I think if I asked each of you in this room, you would probably all say that you enjoy helping people. It feels good to help people. For instance, if you see an email come through the unofficial email list requesting help with moving or babysitting or needing certain items or some financial help and you’re able to meet that need, there’s some happiness that wells up inside of you when you can make that person’s life a little bit easier, right? Well what if, over the course of time of you spending your time and money helping people, you find out that many of the people you are helping don’t actually need your help? But they’re just taking advantage of your generosity because it’s free and gives them less work to do? At that point, how much would your heart enjoy helping those people? I imagine not very much, and I think the Christians in the Thessalonian church would be able to sympathize with you.

Please turn with me in your bibles to 2 Thessalonians 3. We’re going to be looking at verse 13 this afternoon. For a little bit of context, I’m going to start reading at verse 11.

(Read 2 Thes. 3:11-13)

Main Idea: Be faithful in your work to the Lord, because the Lord is faithful in his work for you.

The structure in this sermon will be a little bit different. Instead of some exegesis and application in each point like I usually do, the first point will just be the explanation of the text, and then I’m going to backload the sermon with the points of application. I’ll give you those application points when we get there, but first off, what is going on in this verse?

The first phrase we see if “as for you, brothers.” From this phrase, it’s implied that Paul just got done talking to a different group of people before he addresses the “brothers” in this verse. In this case, he was talking to people who were idle in the church. Paul has just gotten done telling them to not be idle and saying that those who don’t work deserve to eat, and that they should work their own jobs instead of using all of their free time in the church to be busybodies. So now, in verse 13, he is essentially contrasting the “brothers” with the idlers. “Brothers” refers to both men and women in the church who were already being faithful with their time, and especially their money. Most of the people Paul is talking to here are wealthier.

The next phrase we see phrase we see is “do not grow weary.” Apparently these people had been serving the church for quite a while, and they were beginning to reach a point where they were starting to be less and less willing to serve their fellow church body. Why? Well, this is because they were becoming aware that many of the people in the church they were helping didn’t actually need their help, but they were simply not working at all and pretty much living off of the generosity of the wealthier members of the church. Now, there were still people in the church who legitimately needed their help, but many were just being lazy. And worse, these lazier members were using all of their free time to mind other people’s business. Paul calls them “busybodies” in verse 11. At this point in 2 Thessalonian church, the wealthier members are very aware of where a lot of their money is actually going to, and they were becoming very unmotivated and disinterested to keep giving if their money was just going to a bunch of freeloaders. But Paul is telling them to not grow weary, and he does this for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are still many people in the church who legitimately are poor and need the help of those people. There is still much good to be done. And secondly, they don’t do good for others, ultimately, in the name of other people, but in the name of the Lord Jesus. In Paul’s rebuke to the idle, he tells them to stop being idle and to work “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Christians work ultimately for him, not for other people. Because of this, Paul is encouraging the faithful Christians to keep working and keep doing good, for the good of those who need it and for the glory of God.

Finally, Paul tells them to keep doing good. Now, what exactly does Paul mean by good? Well, there are two main views that people have taken. At the least, we know that Paul means to keep serving the church. That’s a given, but some people also think that Paul means to keep being faithful in your individual day-to-day lives. They’ll look at verse 12 that says that people should earn their own living and apply it to the wealthy members of the church. However, while it is right to do that, I think Paul is only referring to service within the church in this specific context. In verse 12, he’s specifically talking to the lazy people who are not working. He’s telling them to mind their own business and to work their own jobs instead of taking advantage of others, then in verse 13, he’s saying as for YOU, keeping doing what you’re doing in terms of giving to the church. They are not specifically instructed to keep living quiet lives and earning their own wage.

So in context, what Paul is saying in this verse is, even though some people are taking advantage of you, keeping serving and giving to your church, because you work for the Lord, not ultimately for other people.

Okay, so that’s what the verse means. But what can we ourselves learn from this verse? How can we apply it to ourselves? Well, to close this sermon, I want to leave us with three points of application.

1. Use extra resources you have to help people

Think about all of the resources that you have in your life, and ask yourself how you’re able to help other people using those. Maybe you have extra cash that can go to helping a church member in need. There are a lot of people who could use someone to help them pay for things like medical bills, or rent, or maybe even food. If you find yourself with a lot of extra cash, think about how you can bless a church member using that.

Maybe what you have is more time than you know what to do with. If you find yourself with a lot of time on your hands, that can be used to go meet with a fellow member from Third Avenue to encourage them. Or it can be used to help someone move, people are always moving around here! Or particularly if you’re a woman in the congregation, people of Third Avenue are always asking if there’s a woman available to watch their kids while they go on a date or have to go away for a day or two. Maybe you can use your time to help people.

Maybe what you’re really good at is cooking. With allllll of the babies that are born in this church, there are meal trains going everywhere to people’s houses! There are also people who are sick and people who can’t move around very much, and a nice hot meal would mean a lot to that brother or sister.

Those are just a few examples, but even if you’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t have a lot of extra money, or a lot of time, and I know for sure I can’t cook”, there is always, always something you can do. You can pray for your church. Friends, we must be in constant prayer for our church, particularly during the hard season we are going through right now. Pray especially for our elders as they lead us through this difficult time. Prayer is one of the greatest ways that we can serve the church body, and so even if you can’t do anything else, be sure to prayer members in particular and for the church as a whole.

Looking at this application point from another angle, maybe the problem isn’t that you don’t know which resources you have to benefit the church. Maybe what you struggle with is being willing to give said resources up. Are you willing to use extra time or money that you have in order to help another brother or sister in the Lord, or would you rather keep that extra for yourself? Now look, I’m not saying that you have to use all extra of whatever you have for other people. You can use extra time to rest, or extra money to go out to eat or buy something for your house or whatever, it doesn’t really matter. What I’m asking is whether or not you EVER use extra resources you have in order to help other people? Our hearts, as Christians, should gravitate towards the growth of the kingdom by serving our fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord.

2. Work for God’s glory, not your own.

Okay, so at this point you’re identifying extra resources you have in order to help people. Now here’s the next question. What motivates you to help those people? What return to you expect for serving others? It’s easy to reflexively say that we want to honor the Lord ultimately, but really analyze your heart with this question. Is there a part of you that wants to look good in front of the person you helped. Or maybe it’s more than that. You want to look good in front of the whole church. Do you find yourself hoping that word gets out about the great and mighty deeds you did for someone in order to gain favor or your own glory from the church? Take some time and think about that.

Here's the reality. If you’re working or serving other people for your own glory, then eventually you will burn out, you will grow weary, and you will lose motivation for helping people. This is especially true when you find out that you’re not going to get anything in return for helping someone. Whether that be money or praise or publicity. Once there’s nothing in it for you, you’re out.

Friends, hear this. The single greatest reason that a Christian can serve their church is to make the glory of the Lord shine brighter. The aim of our work should never, ever be to point it back to ourselves, but to point to the love that the Father has for his children. The glory of God is something worth serving for because the glory of God is infinite. If we serve for God’s glory, then it won’t matter so much to us if people simply take advantage of our time or money like the lazy people were in the Thessalonian church. The irony is that we don’t serve people to ultimately serve people. No, we ultimately serve people in obedience to our heavenly Father! He alone is worth ALL of the effort we put in to caring for our church body. What’s more, when we look at our fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord from a “God’s eye view”, from his perspective, then what we’ll see is a church that is loved unconditionally by the Father, and because we are conformed more to his image as believers, our love will ALSO grow for the church. In short, the greater your love is for the Lord, the greater your love will be for his people, and the more you will be wiling to serve them no matter what you get out of it because you’re pointing them to the faithfulness of their Heavenly Father. Work for God’s glory. Not your own.

3. Do good for others because the greatest good has been done for you.

Our ultimate example of someone who tirelessly uses His resources for the good of the people and the glory of His heavenly Father is Jesus Christ. Jesus had motivation to keep going even when people were taking advantage of him. In Hebrews 12, we read that for the joy that was set before Jesus, he endured the cross. He endured God’s full wrath and death idlers. But then on the Third Day, Jesus was raised from the dead, defeating the power of sin, who’s curse we were under at one time. And now, we have eternal life in Christ’s name. In this context, you are I were the idle people in the Thessalonian church. In fact, not only were we lazy, but we were hateful and rebellious towards He who died to save us. And it wasn’t until the Holy Spirit broke through our hard hearts that we could see the depth of our sin and the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I hope we don’t think that we are earning any of God’s favor by doing good. That is not the point. In fact, that’s impossible. We are incapable of doing something good enough to earn the favor of the Father. No, we do good for other Christians in response to having been saved from our own eternal death in hell. We must stare at the cross and the empty tomb. We must see what was won for people as undeserving as us in Christ. And then with that Gospel afresh in our hearts, we must serve our church, even those members who don’t necessarily deserve help because we were once in their place. We deserved death, and we got life. So why wouldn’t we go out of our way to help someone regardless of whether they deserved it or not? We must not grow weary of doing good for other people because in the Gospel of Christ, the greatest good has been done for us.