The Gospel Diligence

INTRODUCTION:

Interest:

Cause and Effect. That principle, the principle of cause and effect, explains much of the world we live in. For example, if I ignore my wife when she is speaking, I know that she will get frustrated at me. Cause: ignoring my wife; effect: her frustration. Or on the flip side, I know that helping her out with the dishes after a meal will result in her appreciation. Cause and effect once again.

The principle of cause and effect allows us to understand and make sense of the world we live in. In college I studied physics. Much of physics is built around this principle. We would study a series of effects in the lab so that we could determine the cause of those effects. Or we would generate certain conditions in the lab because we knew those conditions were the causes that would create desired effects. The relationship of cause and effect allowed research and testing to occur.

Involvement:

Our lives are filled with cause and effect relationships. This morning we will be considering one of these in the context of our Christian lives.

Context:

As we continue our series through Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, we will be continuing to look at specific areas in which we all have a Gospel duty to push each other in further spiritual growth. Last week, from the specific issue of sexual immorality in which Paul pushed these young-in-the-faith believers to transformed lives, we were able to learn the general principle that A refusal to transform the way we live equates to a denial of the Gospel we profess.

Preview:

This week we will be able to once again learn a general principle from the specific matters that Paul addresses. This principle, much like the things I learned to deduce in my physics classes, follows a cause and effect type of relationship: given the cause expressed we should expect a certain effect.

The cause side of our principle this morning can be stated this way—Cause: Gospel Faith

That is the cause side of our principle—gospel faith. but what is the effect that gospel faith is expected to create? This morning we can state the effect this way—Effect: A Diligent Gospel-filled Life

A gospel faith is expected to produce the effect of a diligent gospel-filled life. Or, we could put it all together as a single statement this way: Our Gospel-faith produces distinct Gospel-filled lives. Cause and effect: Our Gospel-faith produces distinct Gospel-filled lives.

This entire letter, remember, is written to a group of believers who are within the gospel life cycle because they had accepted Christ as Savior. They had Gospel Faith—Faith that Jesus had died for their sins; He was their voluntary, perfect, substitutionary atonement; fully accepted by a holy God; because they have placed their faith in Him by believing the Gospel message. They understood the results of their faith—salvation from the eternal judgment that their sins deserved and a right standing before God through the righteousness of Christ. They understood the results…but the Thessalonians failed to fully comprehend the effects that their faith was to have in their lives. They were falling back into the cultural habits and actions of the day rather than seeing the gospel work out its transforming effects in their lives.

Application

As we have been observing over the past couple of weeks, we tend to struggle with the same kinds of problems. We all know too many people who know the contents of the Gospel message, who say they believe it even; yet they continue to live lives that look just like the lives of nice people who have never heard the message or may even reject it outright. In fact, we ourselves have to admit that all too often when we examine our lives, our lives represent lives that have fallen back into the cultural habits and actions of the world around us rather than standing out as oddly distinct—as distinctly gospel-filled lives.

This morning we are going to look at the next paragraph in Paul’s letter which gives us three specific effects that should be expected to be on display in our lives because of our Gospel faith, effects which are part of a distinctly gospel-filled life.

Transition from introduction to body:

Let’s begin by reading our four verses this morning…<read vv. 9–12>

Our Gospel-faith produces distinct Gospel-filled lives. The first distinct effect that we can see displayed because of our gospel-faith is that…

BODY:

I. Our faith drives us toward love-focused lives

In verses 9 and 10 Paul is speaking of a specific type of love. As I expect many of you already know, unlike English, Greek had multiple words for love which specified the type of love in view by a statement. The specific type of love Paul is speaking about in these verses is brotherly love, literally the word philadelphia. Paul is not talking about love in general, he is talking about the love that binds the children of a common father together.

Illustration

It’s potentially safer for me to use my children as an illustration his morning than normal since neither of them are here. One of the things that makes my heart glad is to see the love that my son and daughter have for each other. Their love is this type of love. It is not a love that results because they are attracted to each other…no that would be the love they have for their spouses. It is a love they have for each other solely because they grew up in the same house and for that reason have shared a lot of the same experiences and have similar outlooks on life. Their brotherly love actually leads them to like being together now that they are adults.

This is the kind of love that Paul is referring to, but he brings it into the Christian context; because of the common experience of saving grace, believers are bound to one another in love, spiritual children of the same heavenly Father.

Notice, Paul says that this particular love is not something that he needs to write to them about, because they already know about it directly from God…in fact, Paul seems to create a word in verse 9 because the phrase that we have translated “taught by God” is an unknown compound word in Greek made up of the words “God” and “taught.” He does not need to write about brotherly love because they are God-taught on this topic.

Remember what Jesus said in John 13:35…it is the verse at the top of our bulletins this morning…Christians are to be known by their love for each other, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” This brotherly type of love in the Christian context is to be the defining characteristics of believers, it is the thing that gives us a distinct family resemblance.

Application

We may have different skin color and different hair color. We may have different accents and different idioms. We may like different types of food and have different hobbies. But we are to all have the same distinct love for each other…the love that is God-taught to us by our Christian faith.

Paul says that in the case of the Thessalonians, they are practicing brotherly love toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. Remember, Macedonia was the Roman province of which Thessalonica was the capital. It was natural for people to come to and from the city and as the Gospel spread throughout the province, there were more and more brothers and sisters to have brotherly love toward. But Paul is not praising them for “having” love toward all the brethren; he is praising them for “practicing” love toward all the brethren. They were doing things out of love for brothers and sisters in Christ.

Do you remember the earlier context of the letter? This was a church that was experiencing strong opposition and even persecution. Being a Christian in Thessalonica was not popular. Doing things for Christians was guaranteed to draw negative attention to oneself. And yet, they were not only stepping out in love and doing such things for long-time friends, they were practicing love toward people they would most likely not even know anything about aside from a shared profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

Application

How about you? Are you living what I am calling here a love-focused life? A love-focused life is the natural God-taught effect of gospel-faith. But a love-focused life must be practiced, not thought. Are you showing Christian brotherly love to the people sitting around you? Are you quick and willing to do things for each other? Are you quick to do things for other Christians God brings across your path? And notice, that no matter what you have done to this point, Paul reminds us that we are to continue to do more, “to excel still more” in our brotherly love toward other believers. As one commentator expressed it, in brotherly love there is always room for growth.

Transition:

Our Gospel-faith produces distinct Gospel-filled lives. The first display of faith that is to be expected is a love-focused life. Our faith drives us toward love-focused lives.

Moving on to verse 11, we see a second effect, a second display of our gospel-faith,…

II. Our faith drives us toward industrious lives

I’m using the word industrious here to summarize the three things that Paul says should be our ambition in verse 11. Now on the surface, especially in some of our English translations, it may look like Paul is starting an entirely new idea in verse 11. In the original, though, it is clear that Paul is continuing the same sentence that he began in the middle of verse 1 0, which means that in his mind the thoughts of verses 11 and 12 are tightly connected to verses 9 and 10. Most likely, Paul is moving into particular things that had the potential of destroying the general idea of displaying love…and most likely, just as with the verses we looked at last week, these were specific problems that were popping up in this young church.

The word that is translated “make it your ambition” is a word that means that the three things that are listed next should be eagerly sought after and adopted as the proper lifestyle for a Christian.

Let’s briefly look each of these three things. First off, is the instruction to “lead a quiet life.” The idea is the exact opposite of a restless life. It describes a life that reflects a tranquility of the mind. As foreign as this will sound to our modern pro-activist ears, this actually describes a person who does not take on every cause that arises and who does not get worked up over every issue. Instead, this person will exude a quiet confidence in God in the face of ever-swirling culture he or she is surrounded by.

Secondly, “attend to your own business.” This idea expressed by this phrase has two aspects in the original language. The first is the aspect that comes across very well in our English translation, the idea of staying out of other people’s affairs. The second aspect of the phrase, though, goes beyond simply staying out of other people’s affairs; it also carries the idea of keeping one’s own affairs in order. Following the wordplay of one commentator, we could loosely translate the thought as being busy with our own business and thus not being busy with other people’s business.

Now, the third phrase, “work with your hands.” In this case, the phrase in the original language means the same thing as the English counterpart conveys; work rather than being idle. What may be lost on us is that in the culture of the day, physical labor…which is what is connoted with “working with your hands”…was cast in a negative light. Physical labor was relegated to slaves and those of very low social rank. Anyone of any wealth or social rank would not indulge in physical labor. In fact, the social desire to avoid physical labor was so significant that many free people would attach themselves to wealthy patrons, usually a politically active person, such that the patron would provide for the person’s well-being and in turn would expect the free person’s support in the political activity of the day, thus increasing the patron’s social prestige. If you think about it for a moment, being entirely connected to a patron could lead to all sorts of compromising situations. Paul really is stating a counter-cultural idea here by telling the believers to stay out of the social intrigues of the day and instead simply give themselves over to simple labor that will provide for their needs without any extraneous obligations.

Lead a quiet life, attend to your own business, work with our hands; I could not think of a better way to summarize these than by the idea of an industrious life. Our faith should drive us to be simple, industrious people.

Application

Our focus really is not the issues of the day. Sure the issues day affect us; we cannot be untouched by them. Our context is, of course, very different than that the one the Thessalonians lived in. For example, we live in a country with a system of government that allows us as private citizens to have a much greater influence than the Thessalonians could have ever imagined. We also have modern media that means that we can have a much greater voice in the public arena than the Thessalonian believers. We can engage in the public discourse and issues in ways that were simply impossible for them…and for that reason we have a responsibility to consider how we might engage as believers in these things as God grants opportunities. But we must never allow the issues of the public arena captivate us to the extent that an issue or an activity or a public pursuit causes us to set aside these principles of a simple, industrious life. God calls us to lead quiet industrious lives…we need to be very, very aware of the danger of our own pride if we start being led away from such a pursuit. It is very easy to begin with a passion for a particular issue and find that in very short order be caught up in a pursuit for personal glory. Our pursuit is instead to be a quiet, industrious life.

Transition:

The second display of faith which is expected is that of an industrious life. The cause: our Gospel faith. An effect: an industrious life. Our Gospel-faith produces distinct Gospel-filled lives.

In verse 12 we find a third expected display of faith…

III. Our faith drives us toward respectable lives

Paul writes in verse 12 “so that…” In other words, living in the manner he has just described in the previous verses will result in the following…“so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.”

There are two expected results listed here that come from our faith having its natural effect. First of all, we will have respectable lives in the eyes of outsiders. “Outsiders,” of course, refers to unbelievers, those outside the church. We are to live in such a way that they will admit that we behave properly…in other words, we live decent, upstanding lives.

Application

Now, let me just pause for a moment and clarify that these does not mean that we should expect those outside of the church to approve or accept our lifestyles without any hostility. Such would ignore too much other teaching of this book and even the reality of what the church in Thessalonica was experiencing. We can anticipate that living in a respectable manner will in no way guarantee the respect of unbelievers. The unbelieving world lives in a broken, sinful culture. And it is peopled by broken, sinful people. Lives that stand in contrast to that…respectable lives as defined by God, have a very good chance of provoking the hostility of those outside the church. But we better be sure that their hostility is coming our way because we exposing their sinful lifestyle by contrast rather than because we are acting in sinful manners ourselves. Remember, Peter says in 1 Peter 2:20 that it is when we do what is right and suffer for it that we find favor with God.

Our faith is to drive us to do right…even toward those who will not acknowledge what is right. We must live respectable lives toward outsiders as the first expected result of our faith. We must also live respectable lives in the eyes of insiders—those within the church.

Notice that Paul ends the verse stating that he has given these instructions so that they would “not be in any need”…that’s how we have it translated in the NASB. This is one of the places in which I believe that some of the other versions bring Paul’s actual idea out better than the NASB or KJV do. For example, the NIV translates it as “so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” The ESV says “dependent on no one.” Paul is not focused on the needs of the individual; he is focused on the needs of the community. His idea is not that the motivation to live in the way he has prescribed is so that the believers would have all that they needed to live; the motivation is so that they will not be a burden on the church. There seems to hints in this letter that some of the Thessalonian believers were not willing to work because they thought that the Lord’s rapture was coming very soon, why work when Jesus is coming. The hints of this attitude become a major issue in the second letter Paul sends to the church a few months later. Paul is just about to begin dealing with some apparent misunderstanding that the Thessalonians had about the coming of the Lord and he uses this last statement to transition to that topic. The second reason that the Thessalonians were to live respectable lives was so that the church overall would not be burdened providing for them things like food and clothing.

Illustration

Let me give you an illustration of this issue from several years ago. As most of you know, we have what we call a deacon fund in our church. Our deacon fund is a separate bank account fully administered by the deacons; the deacons collect contributions monthly from anyone who wishes to give and then they use this money to help out other church members at times when they have a special need. We know that times of need can arrive in any of our lives. They arrive because we live in broken world and they arrive because our God knows it is good for us to have times of trials that cause us to depend on each other. Over the years I have seen this fund utilized to encourage many people during such times as when houses have burned down or jobs have been lost or cars have broken down and so on. I do remember one time, though…as I said, this was years ago when I was serving as a deacon in the church…there was one person who over a couple of years was help multiple times because he was out of work and in real need. That in and of itself is not necessarily a problem…sometimes the needs that we face might be deep and long lasting. In this case, though, after being helped multiple times, it because apparent that the person was really not very willing to work. He turned down several jobs that were not what he was interested in doing. Then, because he was not working he began asking for help from the deacon’s fund. At that point, I remember, some of the deacons sat him down and explained that he was not living in a respectable manner—he was violating the principle in this verse even though I don’ t know if they used this verse when talking to him—and he was inappropriately becoming a burden on the church. If I remember right, they helped out just a bit more one last time to give him a bit of time to change his actions, but told him that there would be no more help from the deacon’s fund unless he took one of the possible jobs available and did everything possible to care for himself and his family first. They wisely cut him off from the deacon’s fund.

The thing is, what this man was doing was a burden to the church. He was actually not being loving toward the other members of the church. He was also allowing Satan a foothold in his life as he was learning to become lazy rather than industrious. And others both within and without of the church were seeing a life that was not respectable. In other words, he was damaging his Gospel-witness all around because the Gospel was not having the expected result in his life. The cause was not producing the natural effect which made it appear as if the cause had not occurred.

Application

How about you? We don’t have anyone taking advantage of the deacon’s fund, that is not a problem, but how respectable is your life? Do those outside the church look at your life and see the effect of your faith on display before their gaze? Do those in the church? Is the effect there that the faith you profess is expected to produce—a respectable life?

Transition from body to conclusion:.

The cause: our Gospel faith. The natural effect: a respectable life. The third display that we should expect is that our faith drives us toward respectable lives.

CONCLUSION

Our Gospel-faith produces distinct Gospel-filled lives. Cause and effect, the relationships that govern so much of our world and allow us to understand and make sense of it apply just as much to our spiritual lives as to our physical lives. Cause and effect rule just as much in the arena of faith as they do in the arena of physics that I studied in college.

Cause: Gospel Faith

Effect: A diligent Gospel-filled life.

Our faith drives us toward love-focused lives. Our faith drives us toward industrious lives. Our faith drives us toward respectable lives.

Our Gospel-faith produces distinct Gospel-filled lives.

Do you have a gospel-filled life?