Sermon Tone Analysis

God’s People Work

 

September 13, 2009

1 Thessalonians 4:9-12

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Henry Blackaby tells us /that //where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, quoted from /Luke 12:34

What you value most is your treasure.

Where you spend your time and your money is your treasure.

Whatever dominates your conversation is what you treasure.

What others know you for is a good indication of what your treasure is.

Most Christians are quick to claim that God is their first priority.

Yet often their actions reveal that their treasure is not God but things of this world.

Some Christians find it difficult to discuss their relationship with God, but they can chatter easily about their family, friends, or hobbies.

Some find it impossible to rise early in order to spend time with God, but they willingly get up at dawn to pursue a hobby.

Some find it difficult to give an offering to God but readily spend lavishly on recreation.

Some boldly approach strangers to sell a product, yet they are painfully timid in telling others about their Savior.

Some give hundreds of hours to serve in volunteer organizations but feel they have no time available to serve God.

If you are unsure of where your treasure is, examine where you spend your available time and money.

Reflect on what it is you most enjoy thinking about and discussing.

Ask your friends to tell you what they think is most important to you.

Ask your children to list the things most valuable to you.

It may surprise you to know what others consider to be your treasure.

Please turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and we’ll read verses 9 through 12.

While you’re turning to our key passage this morning, you may have noticed it’s the same passage I preached on last week and the week before.

This passage is rich in treasure.

Paul experienced the joy of bringing people to saving faith countless times.

What a treasure that would be!

He thanked God for the strong faith of the Thessalonian church and prayed they would continue to grow and mature.

I, too, pray for you this same prayer, that you would continue in love, growing and maturing in your faith.

Let’s look at verses 9 – 12 in 1 Thessalonians 4. /Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia.

But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and 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 live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

/

This passage begins with praise but it ends in warning.

Let’s look at this warning and why it was given.

With the warning we come to the situation behind the letter.

Paul urged the Thessalonians to keep calm, to mind their own business and to go on working with their hands.

The preaching of the Second Coming had produced an odd and awkward situation in Thessalonica.

Many of the Thessalonians had given up their daily work and were standing about in excited groups, upsetting themselves and everybody else, while they waited for the Second Coming to arrive, for they assumed it was immanent.

Ordinary life had been disrupted; the problem of making a living had been abandoned; and Paul's advice was very practical.

\\ \\      (i) He told them, in effect, that the best way in which Jesus Christ could come upon them was that he should find them quietly, efficiently and diligently doing their daily job.

Principal Rainy used to say, "Today I must lecture; tomorrow I must attend a committee meeting; on Sunday I must preach; some day I must die.

Well then, let us do as well as we can each thing as it comes to us."

The thought that Christ will some day come, that life as we know it will end, is not a reason for stopping work; it is a reason for working all the harder and more faithfully.

It is not hysterical and useless waiting but quiet and useful work which will be a man's passport to the Kingdom.

\\ \\      (ii) Paul also told them that, whatever happened, they must commend Christianity to the outsider by the diligence and the beauty of their lives.

To go on as they were doing, to allow their so-called Christianity to turn them into useless citizens, was simply to bring Christianity into discredit.

Paul here touched on a tremendous truth.

A tree is known by its fruits; and a religion is known by the kind of men it produces.

As I’ve said before, the only way to demonstrate that Christianity is the best of all faiths is to show that it produces the best of all men.

You can’t be effective in sharing your faith if you are not respected.

When we Christians show that our Christianity makes us better workmen, truer friends, kinder men and women, then we are really preaching.

The outside world may never come into church to hear a sermon but it sees us every day outside church; and it is our lives which must be the sermons to win men for Christ.

\\ \\      (iii) Then Paul told them that they must aim at independence and never become spongers on charity.

The effect of the conduct of the Thessalonians was that others had to support them.

There is a certain paradox in Christianity.

It is the Christian's duty to help others, for many, through no fault of their own, cannot attain that independence; but it is also the Christian's duty to help himself.

There will be in the Christian a lovely charity which delights to give and a proud independence which seems to take so long as his own two hands can supply his needs.

The most fruitful question that I asked myself in preparing for this message is: What is work?

I was trying to get at the essence of what work is.

Because what I want to do this morning is to help us see our work from God's perspective.

If we can discover how God conceives of work and why he wills it, then that huge portion of our live – work -s that may seem so separate from religion and faith can be just as God-focused as our more religious acts.

To be a Christian means to bring all your life, including your work, into sync with God's revealed will in Scripture.

So to help us do that I want to show from Scripture four reasons why God wills work.

First, God wills work because when we work with reliance on God’s power and according to God’s pattern of excellence, God’s glory is made known and our joy is increased.

In Genesis 1:27, 28, it says, /"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

And God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'"

/Since our being created in God's image leads directly to our privilege and duty to subdue the earth, I take it that human vocation involves exercising a lordship over creation by which we shape and control it for good purposes.

God takes man on as his deputy and endows him with God-like rights and capacities to subdue the world—to use it and shape it for good purposes.

So if you go all the way back, before the fall of man into sin, there are no negative connotations about work.

According to Genesis 2:2, God himself rested from /his work/ of creation.

And the capstone of that work was a creature in his own image to carry on the work of ruling and using creation.

At the heart of the meaning of work is /creativity/.

If you are God, your work is to create out of nothing.

If you are human, your work is to take what God has made and shape it and use it for good purposes.

Here’s another question I considered as I studied God’s view on work.

How does a human’s work differ from a beaver’s?

Here is where the beaver comes in.

A beaver subdues his surroundings and shapes a dam for a good purpose—a house.

He no doubt enjoys his work; and even the diligence and skill of the beaver reflect the glory of God's wisdom.

All things bright and beautiful, \\ All creatures great and small, \\ All things wise and wonderful, \\ The Lord God made them all.

And is glorified in them all.

So what is the difference between a human being at work and a beaver at work?

Or for that matter, a bee, or a hummingbird?

They work hard; they subdue their surroundings and shape them into beautiful structures that serve good purposes.

The difference is that humans are morally self-conscious and make choices about their work on the basis of motives which may or may not honor God.

No beaver or bee or hummingbird consciously relies on God.

No beaver ponders the divine pattern of order and beauty and makes a moral choice to pursue excellence because God is excellent.

No beaver reflects on the purpose of his existence and consciously chooses to glorify his Maker by relying on him.

But humans have all these potentials because we are created in God's image.

When God commissions us to subdue the earth—to shape it and use it—he doesn't mean, do it like a /beaver/.

He means, do it like a human, a morally self-conscious person who is responsible to choose his proper destiny.

When he sends us forth to work in his image, to be sure, our ditches are to be dug straight, our pipefittings are not to leak, our cabinet corners should be flush, our surgical incisions should be clean, our typing sharp and accurate, our meals nutritious and attractive, because God is a God of order and beauty and competence.

But cats are clean, and ants are industrious, and spiders produce orderly and beautiful works.

Therefore, the essence of our work as humans must be that it is done in conscious reliance on God's power, as a conscious quest of God's pattern of excellence, and in deliberate pursuit of God's glory.

When you work like this—no matter what your vocation is—you can have a sweet sense of peace at the end of the day.

I don't think God has created us to be idle.

Therefore, those who abandon creative productivity lose the joy of purposeful work.

Ecclesiastes 5:12 says, /"Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the surfeit of the rich will not let him sleep."/

People who spend their lives mainly in idleness or frivolous leisure are rarely as happy as those who work.

Most of the retired people in Cut Knife know this, and so have sought creative, useful, God-honoring ways to stay active and productive in God's kingdom.

And we should help each other in this Galatians 6:2 says /Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

/Think of how you feel after a day helping a friend harvest a field or build a new garage or weed their garden or paint their deck.

No Christian should ever be totally independent.