Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Work
2 Thessalonians 3:10
For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.
Truth be told I do not feel like getting out this morning. The mere thought of having to do work is tiring me. Even writing this devotional today seems like a little more work that I want to do. I would just like to sit around this morning and do nothing.
Over two decades ago, when the OM Book Ship Logos II made its first visit to Guyana I was supporting the Line-Up team in their work preparing for the ship’s arrival in port Georgetown, I was full of energy then and I was working eighteen hours each day. The Brazilian on the team, Giordanni de Carvalho, asked me one day, “why do you work so much?” I replied, with very spiritual tones, “the Bible says that ‘if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” Giordanni, without missing a beat said, “you must eat a lot.”
For many years I was a driven person. First, I was driven to succeed, most of the persons in my generation of the family chose different paths to the one I chose, they had all succeeded and I guess that without thinking about it at the time it drove me. Second, I was driven by poverty. Things had gotten really bad at one point in my life and so I guess that I wanted to guard against that. And third I guess is that things are just so much better when you could enjoy the fruits of labour and so the more you work often is the more you can enjoy.
I am grateful to God that I survived that season without ruining my health, physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Though there is evidence of things that I neglected during that time.
Work is critical to our design, way of life, and well-being. And while there should never be an imbalance, we should not seek to escape work. I have been around long enough to see lazy people at work. People who get up in the morning determined to get back to bed at night without doing anything all day. Some lazy people have the decency to just sit on the street corner doing nothing, but others have the effrontery to show up places of work with their names on the roll and do little or nothing all day but still collect their pay at the end of the week or month.
We must recognise that not everyone who is doing nothing is lazy, there is a reality in our social and economic context where many persons who want to work cannot find work or cannot find appropriate work. Unemployed and underemployed are unfortunate features of our structures at the moment.
Unfortunately, as well, we find lazy people in the church who are very spiritual about doing nothing. Here we are not referring to not doing any church work, although that is a problem in itself, but for today we are focused on those doing no work at all.
This is the problem that the apostle Paul encountered among the Christians at Thessalonica, that led to the statement in our key verse today – lazy people shouldn’t eat. Clearly, there was a tendency among Thessalonian Christians to be lazy and not work. Paul had started to address this matter since his first letter to them.
In the first letter Paul wrote, “For you remember, brethren, our labour and toil; for labouring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, we preached to you the gospel of God.” 1 Thessalonians 2:9. His point here was that he didn’t just come along preaching and living off of the people. He was busy early in the morning and late in the night doing his tent-making work so that he wasn’t a burden to the people to whom he preached but that he instead provided for his own needs and that of his team. Paul held himself up as an example. Later in that letter, he goes on to push them to “to work with your own hands,” 1 Thessalonians 4:11,12.
Now in this second letter, he revisits the matter in the passage 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15, pushing the idea that people must work to provide for their own need and the needs of their dependents. In fact, at least twice he states that we should limit association with the lazy, in verses six, “But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us.” and in verse 14, “And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed.”
We, in church, have to be able to see our responsibility for the discipline of the believers who are members of the household of faith. Discipline both within and without the church. Leaders have to be examples of a good work ethic and work to instil the same in the followers, especially among the young people.
A closing note. There are those who make a living and whose work is preaching the Gospel, in those cases, we are to provide for them adequately, this does not go unaddressed in the letters to the Thessalonians. “And we urge you, brethren, to recognize those who labour among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake.” 1 Thessalonians 5:12,13.
Think on these things:
- Are you a hard worker? Is your work ethic, especially in your work outside of the church, an example both to Christians and non-Christians alike?
- Are the people who minister in your church good examples of hard work?
- Are there programmes or deliberate efforts in your church to help develop professionalism and a good work ethic among members?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would be patient through our time of testing.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
