God Commends and Commands Diligence

God Commends and Commands Diligence

[Lets read] 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 this morning.

Now we command you brethren in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us, for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you. Neither did we eat any man’s bread for not, but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you. Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensemble unto you to follow us. For even when we were with you, this we commanded you that if any man would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but our busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread. But ye brethren, be not weary and well-doing. And let’s conclude the reading there in verse number 13 this morning, and mark your Bibles with me to this portion of Scripture.

And let’s ask God’s blessing on the reading of it. Father, as we’ve opened your word, we do ask, we don’t want to merely ask because this is the time when we normally pray, but we do ask now that we have read this passage that you would open our eyes, and give us fresh understanding of this passage. And for our lives, in light of it this morning, we thank you that you have brought those to be with us who are here. We pray, Lord, for comfort, for strength, for encouragement for the hearts of those who are not able to be with us today because of some hindrance. We pray these things and ask your continued blessing on this service as we move forward. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Paul makes it very clear in this passage this morning that laziness is not a characteristic that pleases God. This laziness is actually disorderlyness. He said there are some that walk among you that are disorderly. He said we have behaved not ourselves disorderly among you, but there are some that walk disorderly not after the tradition, which he received of us. And this tradition is a scriptural tradition. This is not a man-made tradition, but this is what the Lord had delivered to them through the apostle.

And so we can certainly look through the scriptures and see that God not only commends diligence and hard work, but he commands it. He commands diligence. He commands hard work. And of course, hard work comes in different forms. It doesn’t mean everybody’s going to be digging a ditch, but it’s going to be out there digging a trench by hand. I mean, if you’ve got a machine to do it, use the machine. But the point is that we are as Christians should not be freeloaders. We should not be lazy. We should not be moochers. We should not be employed. We should be about whatever it is the Lord has for us to do and not be.

As Paul is telling these brethren here, “Doddling,” because when you doodle and when your idol problems start to creep up. You know, there’s a reason why God gives us the responsibility that he gives us, because if we have more idleness in our country, in our world now than ever before, think about how much time is spent on these devices and how many problems arise by the excess, they’re tools. They can be useful. They can be helpful. Yeah, absolutely. But how many broken homes have resulted from the idleness where people just are addicted to a screen and they’re addicted to the technology. You can become addicted to just about anything. But I would have to say that we’re living in a world that is, and I’ve preached certainly on addictions before, but we’re addicted to so many things and we don’t want to face the reality of life.

As Christians, that should not be our mindset. We should not be lazy. We should not be disorderly. We should not be in that way of thinking. But Paul commanded, Paul said that there was a problem with idleness there among them, and he said in verse 11, there were busy bodies in their midst. In verse 11, we notice there that he said this, “For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all but our busy bodies.” And we notice in verse 12, Paul told these busy bodies that they should with quietness that with quietness they should work and eat their own bread.

You should work with quietness. In other words, the quietness means stop being busy and striving with one another, getting another people’s business and be about the business the Lord has given you to do. Don’t try to meddle in everybody else’s affairs to the neglect of your own responsibilities. And so we notice that Paul says with quietness, work, do your own work. Mind your own business, we might say. And a lot of this trouble even that’s coming because of this busy body activity is going to just be resolved.

You know, there’s a reason why God has given us our own home, our own families. We thank God for each other, but I’m sure we wouldn’t want to live together in the same household. We have our own responsibilities. We have our own family, our own stewardship. Every one of us is a steward of something or some things that we are to be diligent in the stewarding of that matter. I mean, some of us have children. Some of us have had children. Some of us now have grown children or grandchildren. Some of us don’t have children, but we have other responsibilities the Lord has given. Maybe we have a wife, a husband. Maybe we have any number of things, a job. And these are things with which we are to be employed and we are to invest our time for the glory of God and our energies for the glory of God.

It is not unspiritual to work. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Work is a spiritual, it’s a natural thing, but there’s also a spiritual component to it as well in that this is to be done for the glory of God. There is an acknowledgement of that. What do we call it? The protest has been called so many times. The Protestant work ethic. The Protestant work ethic. Well, the Protestants didn’t come up with the idea of work, but the idea was that they understood that God was overall creation that He’s given us responsibilities and therefore we are to glorify God in the carrying out of our responsibilities. And so it tends to make better employees and better workers, right? Because we have a responsibility to God to manage the creation and to manage the stewardships that He has given to us.

And so the problem seems and it’s been suggested by some commentators that maybe there were some amongst some of these busy bodies arose from the idle ones who thought, well, the they misunderstood or they wrongly interpreted that the Lord is coming back and is coming is imminent and therefore we’re not going to work. That may or may not be the whole reason for this year, it may just been there were some that were lazy and they were not exemplifying godly characteristics like they should. Because even in the first episode, Paul talked about this matter. It wasn’t in chapter four, I believe. In verse thessalonians chapter four, there were some issues that Paul was addressing there. There was a problem of fornication that Paul was addressing in that passage.

You know that kind of that’s a problem that tends to arise when there’s idleness that’s going on. We notice that they were told in chapter four that they were to love one another, they were to in verse 11 study to be quiet and to do your own business and to work with your own hands as we commanded you. So obviously there was some issue going on in this church where there was some laziness, there was some idleness, there was some some problem with work and it was producing other problems. It was producing some issues, some gossip and possibly even as we perhaps as indicated here, don’t go and defraud your brother, don’t commit fornication, your own brother’s wife, don’t take your brother’s wife. There’s all kinds of sins that can creep up in laziness.

I know we’ve heard from a child, probably most of us have heard the statement, idle minds or idle hands or the devil’s workshop, right? And so we need to be employed and not to be lazy. Paul doesn’t say if any man is not able to work, he says, he didn’t say if any man is not able to work, neither should he eat, he says, if any man would not work, neither should he eat, if he will not work, if he just refuses the work, if he just chosen, I’m just not going to work, then he should not eat. Laziness, as we’ve already indicated, is not a Christian virtue.

But Paul says in verse number six, we command you, brethren, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly and not after the tradition which he received of us. In other words, in this context to this church, what is he saying? If someone proves to be a perpetual, habitual, lazy, busybody, mooching, freeloader, separate from them, don’t continue to allow that to go on in your midst. Why would we separate from them? What’s very much in the same spirit that he wrote to the Corinthians? You want to see the brother get the right biblical mindset and be restored, right? It’s not to destroy him, don’t count him as an enemy, but separate yourselves from him.

As he says here, this brother is walking disorderly. He’s not walking after the tradition which he received of us. In 2 Timothy, let’s turn over there to chapter two, verse number 15, 2 Timothy chapter two, verse number 15. Here’s an interesting word Paul uses. He uses the word study, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. He’s telling Timothy here. Certainly study is involved, but the word he’s using for study here is the word, the verb form of the word spudae. The word spudae means to move quickly. It’s the verb here is to move quickly to hasten, to make haste, eagerly with eagerness, willingness, or zeal. You’d be honest in showing yourself approved unto God, Timothy. You earnestly, fervently with great desire, show yourself approved unto God. That included his actual study of the word. Give yourself to the things that you’ve been taught. Not only in the study of God’s word, but earnestness in prayer and your closet and your profiting will appear unto all. The Father which sees in secret as the Lord Jesus said will reward thee openly.

Now, this idea of diligence, this idea of earnestness, this idea of moving quickly with eagerness to do something. That is the spirit of the Christian. Now, I’m not preaching this message this morning because I know that there’s somebody in the church that’s been going around and mooching on everybody else. I haven’t seen it anyway, if it has, we’ll see about that. But I don’t think that’s an issue going on here, but this is the spirit. It’s the principle that I want us to see here this morning.

You remember the story of the little red hen, right? The little red hen was one who found the grain of wheat and asked her friends to cat the pig, the duck, right to come and help her plant it. But you know, they just didn’t have time to come help her plant. They refused to come along and so she went and planted it herself. And then when it came up, she asked them to come and help her harvest the wheat and they didn’t have time. They were busy. They weren’t interested. And so she went and harvested the wheat herself. And then she said, “Will you come and help me mill the grain?” And they said, “Turn it into flour.” No, they didn’t have time to do that. And then after she turned it into flour, “Will you help me bake the loaf?” No, she didn’t. She didn’t get any help from them on that either. But then when she finally had baked the bread and they smelled the bread, they said, “Oh, we want to come join you and have some of that bread.” And she kept it to herself because they had no part in the process.

Sometimes I think we say things like, “You know, I’d really like to grow in my Christian life.” You know, I’d really like to have a nice garden this year. I’d really like to do this. I really like to have that. Well, that’s nice. That’s well-intended. That’s all those things. But there’s a point to which, if you say, “I want something,” then you’re going to have to work for it. You can’t just say, “I want this, Lord.” Now, God is gracious and everything that we have is a gift from Him. I understand that. But there is a responsibility on our part that we’ve got to be diligent. We can’t just say, “Lord, I want you to do this and I just pray one time about it.” No, I need to labor in prayer. It is the Lord that’s going to bring the answer. But He wants to see that I’m continuing in prayer about a certain manner. If we say that I want to see souls saved, then we need to speak to souls, right? We don’t need to just say, “Well, I hope somebody gets saved out there.” We’ve got to, as the hymn says, work for the night is coming.

We can’t just say, “I want something to happen and then just hope it happens.” We have to do what is… We cannot become anxious because we can’t do everything. We can get overwhelmed by how much there is to do, but we can do our part. We must do our part. Whatever our responsibilities are, whether they be just just the natural things, you know, maybe it’s putting food on the table. Maybe it’s washing the dishes. Maybe it’s taking the trash to the dump. You know, those are unglamorous sort of duties, but they are very important duties. Even the most menial task, we need to be industrious about the way we go about it to the glory of God.

Because if we’re… We need to be faithful even in the few things that the Lord has given us to do, with grateful hearts, with earnest desire, we need to be faithful in these things. And you know, the Bible condemns the sluggers, condemns the softball. Paul certainly is condemning that here this morning and saying that the tradition, the commandments the Lord has given to me to tell you is very clear that this is disorderlyness. A sluggish… He doesn’t use the word slugger, but a slugger is… If he continues in his sluggish way, then you need to put him out so that he may learn not to be a slugger. Right? That’s what the passage is telling us this morning.

But in Proverbs 13, verse 4, we see there in Proverbs 13, verse number 4, here’s the good description of the slugger. And we saw the slugger when we were going through that people in Proverbs series just over a year or so ago. In Proverbs 13, verse 4, it says, “The soul of the slugger desireth.” Yeah, I really like to see souls get saved. I would really like to see that garden do well. I’d really like to lose weight. Yeah, I’d really like to do a lot of things. Whatever it is, I really desire that. Well, he desireth and hath nothing. Why doesn’t he have anything? Well, it says, “But the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.” The difference is the effort put in. The difference is, one says he wants it and the other shows he wants it. One says, “I want this, but the other puts feet to the prayer,” so to speak, and actually goes out and acts upon, not without prayer. The Christian should not act without prayer, but praying about it and then going and acting upon what he’s asking the Lord to help him in.

And we should certainly ask the Lord to help us when we begin a work day. When we begin our day at work, we should pray and ask the Lord to bless the day. Help us. Give us the strength as we work. If we’re keeping children at home, we need to pray that the Lord will help us with that. I know I’m probably one of the worst when it comes to my… When I’m going about a task and we need to pray that the Lord will help us with interruptions because oftentimes our plans get interrupted and that doesn’t make us feel too happy. When we had a goal to accomplish this and then the plan is getting interrupted, well, as long as we were giving earnest effort to do the thing, the Lord allowed the interruption to come along and we need to also account for that. We need to also be yielded to the Lord’s interruptions in the timing that he brings those things into our lives.

But the sluggered desires and has nothing, the soul of the diligence shall be made fat. The slawful says, “I deserve to be rewarded even though I didn’t actually labor for it. I deserve to receive this even though I didn’t… I did not strive after it. I’m special. There’s a sense of entitlement. I deserve this.” Isn’t our society full of that kind of entitlement today? I deserve… I deserve this even if I don’t work for it. Our attitude should be just the opposite.

In fact, you know, I think there is a correlation. I think it’s a very clear correlation to the addictions of our time and the laziness of our time. People don’t want to work. Generally speaking, this is not some isolated observation. It’s everywhere. Everybody you talk to just about, it is hard. It’s almost impossible to find someone who’s diligent at doing anything diligent. Yet, as Christians, it doesn’t matter what time we live in. It doesn’t matter what era we live in. One of the hardest things throughout time is for Christians to be… The easiest thing is for Christians to just go along with the culture, right? If slavery is the norm, just be a slave on it. But Paul challenged… Paul challenged Philemon about Onesimus, didn’t he? Well, I know you have the right to do this, but you ought not to do it. You ought to receive him not so much just as a servant, but as a brother, right?

We noticed that the slawful man is wiser in his own conceit, Proverbs 26, 16 says, “Then seven men that can render a reason. In other words, he can make tons of excuses as to why he lacks diligence.” The Christian should not have a spirit of entitlement and a spirit of defending his laziness. But one of, thank God, he’s given me another day. Thank God, I have the opportunity to serve him today. Thank God, everything I’ve received, he’s given to me. Thank God that I have the opportunity and not, and when I have failed him, thank God that he is merciful and that he teaches me and that I can learn even through the reproofs that he brings into my life.

In Proverbs 26, verse 13, we read there that the slawful man saith, “There is a lion in the way. A lion is in the streets as the door turneth upon his hinges so that the slawful upon his bed.” I know that probably all of you are aware, most of you at least are aware of what a meme is. A meme is some usually humorous type thing that’s pictures worth a thousand words and there’s maybe a caption on that picture and it communicates some thought that’s often humorous about usually it’s something that’s going on currently in our world around us. And I’ve seen so many of these memes of people that are like millennials and Generation Z that they put out there and it’s always like they’re just glorifying sleep and we just like sleep. Life is so stressful, I’m just going to go back to sleep and all of these things. People are loving sleep.

The Bible tells us not to love sleep. We need to get sleep. Some of us might need to get more of it, but we should not love it. We should not love to slumber. You know what happened to David when he was slumbering, when he needed to be at the time when kings go to battle? We can stumble into sins in the spirit of laziness. We may not have sought out that sin, but we can stumble into certain sins. There are a lot of stumbling blocks on this right here. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it, but we’ve got to be careful. We’ve got to be careful that we’re not late because laziness leads into vanity leads into sin.

Because of the laziness of the sluggered, he tries his luck, so to speak, at easy money fast type schemes. Hopefully I’ll catch up, get the windfall, and then I won’t have to work. Everybody wants to win the lottery. A lot of poor people spend too much of their money, which would be even one dollar, but of their money on the lottery. Hoping they’re going to hit it rich. How many bad stories do we have of people who did get it rich, and then everybody that they knew from childhood came back and wanted to get the money from them, and then what money they did have. They wasted that, and they’re at worse debt now than they were before.

Well, Proverbs 1224, Proverbs 1224 tells us that the hand of the diligent, Proverbs 1224, the hand of the diligent shall bear rule, but the slawful shall be under tribute. Why? Because he desires, but he doesn’t put in the work. He’s quick to spend, but slow to get up and go to work. I’ve worked with people before. They work just to make it just enough money so that they can go party all weekend, and then spend it all up like the prodigal did, and then he came back, but they’ll just live for the weekend. They have nothing else to live for. They live for the party life as Christians.

Our hearts must hear that song of higher ground. Lord, lift me up and let me stand by faith on heaven’s table land. A higher flame than I have found. Lord, set my feet on higher ground. We’re pressing on the upward way. Are we gaining new heights every day? Are we diligent in our prayer life like Daniel was? Lord, help me to pray. Help me be consistent in prayer. Help me not to be lazy and just get by with doing the bare minimum in my Christian life. May we have a desire to pray and to study and to dig into God’s word and find precious jewels there.

God certainly hates greed just as much as he hates laziness. Some people are workaholics, right? Some people work themselves to death because they’re wanting to make lots of money and just to be rich. That’s another problem. That’s another message. But the devil certainly loves a lazy person. He can sow all kinds of bad thoughts and they will grow. He can sow bad habits and they’ll grow very well in that kind of environment of a lazy, slothful person.

In the lazier book we become as a nation, the more enslaved we become to those around us. We become the under tribute. We become the deader rather than the lender, don’t we? But I was thinking back on the words of the early Jamestown leader, Captain John Smith, he said the following. He issued this command to the settlers because many of them were idle or spending their time trying to find gold. He said, “Countrymen, the long experience of our late miseries, I hope, is sufficient to persuade everyone to a present correction of himself. And think not that either my pains nor the adventurers pursues will ever maintain you in idleness and sloth. I speak not this to you all. For divers of you, I know deserve both honor and reward. Better than is yet here to be had.

But the greater part must be more industrious or starve. However, you have been here to foretolerated by the authority of the council. From that I have often commanded you. You see now that power rested wholly in myself. You must obey this, you must obey this now for a law, that he will not work, that will not work, shall not eat, except by sickness he be disabled. For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain an hundred and fifty idle loiterers. Therefore he, the defendant, let him surely, assuredly, expect his due punishment.”

Well, even the early colony, I know that the pilgrims came, they tried even in what was it, the Plymouth, they tried some of that sort of a socialistic state and it de-incentivized people to work and they realized very quickly that experiment must be laid aside. As Christians, we also must realize that our labor and our diligence is unto the Lord, but it also affects our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we’re diligent in our spiritual life, if we’re diligent and we’re looking not just to be served but to serve, it will help one another.

We all have. I know I have room for improvement in this area to be diligent as it pertains to the needs of my brethren, one another. We must not be lazy. It’s so easy to get all of our time and energy sapped by those things that don’t even really matter. We need to be about the Lord’s business and the things that are right in front of us. It’s amazing how quickly time is passing us. I know we all say it all the time. Seems like every day, every week, every year is passing by more quickly and so that behooves us to even more so to work with quietness, with our own hands and do a good job at what the Lord has put in front of us to do, not to say, “Somebody else will do it.” Somebody else will take care of that and we’ll just kind of mooch off of what they’ve done.

Even when it comes to the study of the Word of God, we can listen to the preaching of the Word of God. We can read something that somebody else has dug out of the Word of God, but we’ve got to dig in the Word ourselves. We’ve got to get in there with the shovel and the pickaxe and look for the gold ourselves and dig it out. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,” Solomon said, “do it with thy might, do it with thy might, with earnestness, with diligence, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whether thou goest.”

Remember this, laziness leads to sin. Laziness is a sin in God’s sight, but it leads to more sin. It leads to problems that will not only, we don’t live unto ourselves, our laziness and our lives will affect our families, it’ll affect our fellow employees, it’ll affect our brothers and sisters, it’ll affect others. But the converse, the opposite is also true. The soul of the diligence shall be made fat, right? And if we’re fat and blessed and truly honored of the Lord, then we’ll be a blessing to others around us.

The problem at Thessalonica was that there were some that were saying, “You’re not going to work.” They were not a blessing. In fact, they were creating more stress, and I could think of a hundred examples that I could tell you this morning. I probably don’t need to tell you those examples, but you can think of them. You can look at situations where you have someone who feels entitled, and they’re taking advantage of another person, and it’s increasing the stress upon that person because they’re lazy, because they feel like somehow the other person needs to work more than they do.

And yet, what a blessing. When out of love to God, and out of a sense of obedience by faith, we just do what the Lord would have us to do, we become a greater blessing to those around us. Our brothers and sisters, our fellow employees, our family, and may the Lord help us, the Holy Spirit will help us, each one of us, to see areas. We might say, “Well, none of us are today or in this situation where we’re going around and eating other people’s bread, but we might have an area in our life.” We say, “You know, I have been lazy in that. I have not been diligent in that area. Why haven’t I been? What’s the problem? And may the Lord help me help us to identify those things and to correct the matter by His grace.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity that we have to look into your word. Lord, you’ve put enough hours in the day for us to do what we need to do. Oh, there’s probably up-team things that we’d like to do or that we hope to do, that we don’t always get around to doing, just because we’re limited in time and energy. But Lord, help us to do those most important things that are our priorities. Help us to identify the priorities and help us to put our hand to the plow. Help us to do with all our might what our hand finds to do. Help us, Lord, to learn from the spirit of this passage this morning that things such as fornication and busybody, meddling in others, matters, and getting into complications of life that are unnecessary. Those things will happen, Lord, if we do not prioritize to serve you, and we pray now that you’ve got us and blessed us the rest of this day and the application of these things, even as we go into this week, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.