2 Thessalonians 3, What Do I Do?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

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2 Thessalonians 3, What Do I Do?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

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at Thessalonians chapter 3, hear the word of the Lord. Finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the

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Lord may speed ahead and be honored as happened among you, and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men.

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For not all have faith, but the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

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And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things that we command.

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May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. Now, we command you, brothers, in the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you receive from us.

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For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it.

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But with toil and labor we work night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.

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It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate.

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For even when we were with you, we would give you this command, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

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For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies.

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Now, such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

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As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good. If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed.

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Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. Now, may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way.

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The Lord be with you all. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.

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This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine. It is the way I write. The grace of our

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Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word.

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Well, did you like all the talk about the end times last week? You like that stuff? You like hearing about the antichrist and the rapture and the end and all that kind of thing?

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Well, you normally don't do that. This is the end of our 16th year. Actually, I guess it's the beginning of our 17th year. Last week was the end of our 16th year.

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And last week, but last week was probably the only time in 16 years I mentioned both the antichrist and the rapture at the same time.

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And I'm sure it's the most I've ever spoken about them in one sermon in my whole life. Now, do you want more?

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Are you thinking, yeah, I want more of that kind of stuff? Well, they say if you will predict when Christ will return and you get specific about Gog and Magog and Armageddon, and you could be really vivid about it in the way you describe it, if you warn people not to be left behind by the rapture, you can hold a conference and pack in the people.

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Can you imagine this place packed full of people come to hear about all that rapture and all that kind of stuff? Would you come to that?

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Well, conferences like that attract a certain kind of person. People who like to speculate about the end times are often not particularly interested in applying their faith to living in difficult times or to working in the meantime.

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They have an otherworldly spirituality. Maybe there are some exceptions, but generally that's the way it looks, the otherworldly kind of spirituality.

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That is, they have a spiritual life that's about escaping from this world, not living in it, not transforming it, not overcoming it.

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And so they will naturally be attracted to stories that describe how they are going to literally escape from the world.

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And we should try to be sympathetic. After all, at home they might have children who don't care about the

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Lord, who are rebels, who spend their life on the phone or the iPad, the husband who is absent or abusive, or the wife who was cold.

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They work a dreary job, and so they want to hear some fantastic tales of their soon -coming rapturous escape from this world.

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They're not the only ones who use the faith as an excuse to escape. Some theology students get carried away with debates about abstract theological issues.

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Believe it or not, some people go into theology in a way to kind of escape the practical affairs of life. They want to debate things like, did

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God decree to make people first and then see that once he's made them they would fall, and then that he would save from them and elect?

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Infralapsarianism. Or did he decree that he would have an elect and then decree to make the world to create the elect?

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Superlapsarianism. Want to hear a whole lecture on that? They'll spend their life debating things like that.

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Someone once told me how he thought, a man who just loved debates like that, who thought it was incredible that other people thought that that was was irrelevant.

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And I found out later, well, that his life was all about using his faith as a distraction from life.

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That he liked to talk doctrine but didn't want to live it. That he hardly gave to the church while indulging himself.

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There's a kind of spirituality and other worldliness that's about avoiding real life. You ask them, what is this stuff about the end times, you know, the rapture, the antichrist, all that?

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What's it mean for me now about how I'm going to wake up and live on Monday morning? How's it changed my life?

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They might not know. At most, maybe they'll say, well, I guess it shows that we should only vote for a president who supports

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Israel. Okay, well, they're fascinated by far away Israel. But what about my life here in Castleville County or in Danville?

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What does it mean about how I live now? Well, we're living in difficult times like in chapter one.

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We're waiting for the end times like in chapter two. What do we do in the meantime? Paul tells us in chapter three, he tells us what to do in four parts.

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What do I do? First, pray. Second, pursue. Third, practice.

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Fourth, peace. What do you do in the meantime? You pray from verses one to five.

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And he shows us three basic things about prayer here. Things to pray for. Pray for dynamism, deliverance, and direction.

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First, for dynamism. He says for us, that is for Paul and his team, that they be dynamic.

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They're preaching and they're teaching. They're spreading the word of God. Pray for us, he says, but not that not just that we'd be effective or that we have the right words to say.

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A lot of people respond like, but, he says, for us that the word of the

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Lord would, and the word Greek literally means, in Greek literally means, run.

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That the word would run. The ESV read here translates it as speed ahead. The Greek word you'll recognize.

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You know the Greek word actually. It's trick. May the word go on a trick.

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May it run, it go, it be active, be dynamic, like a sprinter at the

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Olympic Games. Pray that it goes out like that. Doesn't go out just like dead words, but it be active, vigorous, energetic.

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We need to pray for the same. Here we try to get the word of the Lord out. Hopefully you share the word as you have opportunities in your family, in your jobs.

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We have Jim Jr. here, in which Mary shares the word with the little kids. We spend your money.

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Go drive that van, put gas in it, and then go pick up kids. We invite them to come. We use the gym to draw them in.

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That's why we're in a gym right now. It draws in the kids, and then we share the word. We do the same with the youth on Sunday evenings.

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There may be 30 to 50 kids here. Kids to young adults, older teenagers to young adults.

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We preach the word to them, and then of course we have this service, and we record it, and we post it on YouTube, and now we send it out by Substack to over 14 ,000 email addresses, mostly local people, and we're trying to get the word out.

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But if that's all we do, we've not done enough. We need to pray that the word, we're getting out, that it runs out, that it's dynamic, that it's powerful, that it's life -giving, that it changes the hearts of people, that God would use it to extend his kingdom, and through it give faith.

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Another famous verse from Romans 10. Faith comes from, from who? Well, from God.

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God gives faith by hearing, hearing the word of Christ. So they got to hear the word, but God's got to make it active.

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God's going to make it dynamic. He's got to speak through it, and through that he gives faith. So pray that God unleashes his dynamic word in your family, in this area, breaking through hard hearts, and giving life.

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Run is about how it goes out vigorously, dynamically. Then pray for, he says, how it is received.

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He says, with honor, pray that the word would be honored, not ignored, not shrugged out, not treated as if it's boring, irrelevant, or even worse, scoffed at, just rejected.

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Pray that it be honored. Literally, the word there is glorified. Pray that the word goes out, that it runs, and be glorified.

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Treat it with glory. It means treat it as heavy, as weighty, as important. Pray that God would grab people's hearts so that when you share it, people you're sharing too, like your own children, would pay attention, that they would know this is important, that they'll see that it is more important to you than the scores of your favorite team, more important than how your stocks are doing, or how good business is, more important than making money.

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You need to glorify it first for others, like your children, to do so.

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We see, especially with the youth on a Sunday night, here, I see that it's obvious. Sometimes the word is received with glory, grabs their hearts, and sometimes

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I'm trying to get them to pay attention. When the word is glorified, when it's honored, you can see it here, right here in this building, when the

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Spirit is speaking through the word. They'll pay attention when he's doing that. I don't have to tell them to be quiet, you back there, be quiet, or turn around, look at me, get off your phone.

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I don't have to say that when the Spirit grabs their hearts. A lot of times I do. Most of you here are too polite to show when

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I'm boring. Even when I'm boring, you're trying to look nice. So it's harder to tell when the word is being glorified, what some people call being anointed.

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That's a real thing. Some people want to reject that as kind of a charismatic thing. No, that's a real thing. The Spirit speaking through his word.

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Paul says it happened in Thessalonica at the end of verse 1, as happened among you. He went there, he preached the word, he went out, he ran out, and it was glorified.

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In other words, it captured their heart. They treated it as heavy, and then they believed. And we need to pray for the Holy Spirit to do that more.

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Notice how the word is received here is under God's control.

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That's an interesting thing, isn't it? Because pray that it be glorified, that people pay it attention and treat it as important.

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That's under God's control. God can determine whether people are going to listen or not. A lot of people think, well, everyone has free will.

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They can, well, maybe. But here, the final one in control of whether they pay attention and listen, accept it, is

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God. That's why we pray to Him. If it was all up to people, Paul would say, well, there's not much we can do about it.

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We can hope. But no, it is under God's control. Pray that the word of God would be glorified as people respect it and pay it attention and believe.

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Pray for that. Second, pray for deliverance. Paul asked him to pray in verse 2 that he and his team would be delivered from wicked and evil men.

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Either in chapter 1, he didn't pray that the Thessalonians would be delivered from persecution. Remember that? You're being persecuted.

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You're being afflicted. And when he prays for them, he doesn't pray for that, that they be believed of it.

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He prays that they would be counted worthy. Here, though, he asked for prayer for deliverance for himself.

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Now, is he selfish? He's just kind of inconsiderate of their suffering, but he's all sensitive to his own suffering?

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No. He's interested in deliverance, not just for his comfort, that he not be chased out of towns like he was out of Thessalonica, but he's interested in deliverance for the progress of the gospel.

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There are persecutors out to stop Paul and his team. In Acts 17, when Paul and Silas first came to Thessalonica, it says he reasoned with them from the scriptures, showing them that the

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Messiah was predicted in the Old Testament to suffer and be raised from the dead. And some of them were persuaded.

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And it says a great many of the devout Greeks, devout means they're going to the synagogue. They're kind of at least partway converted to Judaism.

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They believe in the Lord. Now, they've come to believe because of Paul's preaching, because the word of God ran out and they honored it.

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God gave them a heart to honor it. They've come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and so they joined Paul. That made many of the unbelievers who were not persuaded jealous.

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And in Acts chapter 17, verse 5, they took some wicked men of the rabble and riot against Paul.

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It calls a riot, a shouting, these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.

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And Paul had to leave Thessalonica because of that. Paul asked that they pray that he be delivered so that he can continue where he needs to be, that he can stay when he needs to, to nurture the churches, not ran out of town to the next mob.

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Pray that if he needs to come back to Thessalonica that he can do that, to teach the word of God, and he can do it safely.

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For us, pray that we be delivered from everything that hinders our spreading the word, like bad parents who don't let their kids come, or who encourage their kids to act up, or bad religion that lets parents not to let their kids come.

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We had this family of Hispanic kids that was coming regularly here all last fall, and suddenly they stopped.

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We've had this before, and the times we've looked into it, found out that the institution they go to, the clergy there, would tell people don't go to the

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Protestant churches. So that's probably what's behind it. So we have opposition right here, and pray that we be able to overcome that.

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Pray for deliverance from wicked and evil men, because at the end of verse 2, not all have faith.

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That's an interesting phrase, isn't it? Not all have faith. They can't put their faith in the

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Lord, because they don't have faith to put. So pray to be delivered from them, so we could get the word to those who do have faith, and they're out there.

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While we're struggling with those who have no faith, who don't have faith, we can rest assured in verse 3 that the Lord is faithful, which is actually in Greeks the same word.

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Some people don't have faith, and the Lord does have it, and here is faithful. If you have faith, you're faithful.

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Some people don't have faith, but the Lord has it and is faithful. He will establish you, so you're stable.

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That's the problem. They're upset. The Lord come already, they're upset, and he will establish you so they're not easily disturbed by the latest bad news, by blood moons, or whatever.

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He will hold you fast, and he will guard you against the evil one, the one who works the wicked and evil people, through those mobs like he met in Thessalonica.

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And so we asked him to pray that they, Paul and his team, be delivered, and he promised that Thessalonians would be delivered.

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You will be delivered. He says we're confident you will be delivered, even though we've just asked them for prayer.

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Now surely the same promise that he just gave to them is good for him too, right, for Paul, that he also will be established.

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He's not going to be run out of every town, and he'll be guarded. Now the question is why pray if he has the promise, you understand?

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He's asked them to pray for deliverance, and then he gives them a promise that is the answer to the prayer he just asked for.

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Well then why pray? I have the promise, why do I need to pray for it? Well because prayer is the way or the means that the promise becomes effective.

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God works through means, works through ways. He tells us to pray, and he works through that to give us his promises.

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Here prayer is the way that God uses to apply the promise to those who have faith. We have a promise.

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He will deliver us. He will hold us fast. Now pray for deliverance to get that promise.

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You might think, well that's ridiculous. If I have the promise, why do I got to pray? And so if you think that way, you won't pray, and you won't get delivered because you don't have faith.

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Or you might think, I believe the promise, so I'm doing what the promiser says to do, pray, and you'll get it.

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So which are you? A doubter, thinks it's ridiculous, or the one who thinks, you know,

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I believe the promiser. Since I believe him, I'm going to do what he says. Paul says in verse three that he has confidence, that he's persuaded that the

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Lord has made them into true believers in verse four. And so as believers, you do what the one you believe in tells you to do.

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You always do what the one you believe in tells you to do.

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Remember? Remember the analogy? If you're out to eat, about to get a steak, and I warn you, don't eat that steak.

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It's poisoned. Whether you eat it depends on whether you believe me. When the Lord commands you to do something, like be baptized, and then says, well, you don't have to be baptized to be saved.

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You don't have to be baptized to be right with God. That's not how you get saved through that. Now, if you're an unbeliever, you think, well, then

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I won't. I'm just out for the benefit. I don't care what he says. I'm just out to get what

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I can out of him. So I'm not going to do that thing. It's not going to get me an advantage. Your problem isn't that you're not baptized as if, well, if we finally cajole you enough, we nag you enough about it, you'll finally cave in and get baptized, and then you'll be right with God.

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That's not your problem. Your problem is your lack of faith. If you have faith, you are fateful.

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And so when the Lord says, be baptized, you do it. You always obey the one you believe.

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Third, pray for direction in verse 5. Now, that sounds like a common prayer.

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It's a very common prayer people ask for. People ask for direction about all kinds of things, what to study in college, who to date or to marry, what career to pursue, whether to take that job offer, what ice cream flavor at Baskin -Robbins to choose.

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But he's not saying pray for direction for choices. But in verse 5, he's praying for them to be directed, for them to be directed from their hearts, that their hearts be steered to the love of God and the steadfastness or the endurance of Christ.

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Notice that. Pray that your heart be directed to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ.

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Now, if you believe our hearts are neutral, or at least just free enough, maybe they're tainted by sin, but we're free enough that we can kind of direct ourselves if we choose and God can't intrude into our free will.

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You know, kind of like the theology of Bruce Almighty. One thing you can't do is interfere with free will. If that's what you believe, this is a very strange prayer.

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How do you handle this prayer? May the Lord direct your heart. Your heart is the core of who you are.

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May who you are at your base be directed in the way the Lord wants you to go.

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In other words, may the Lord take control of your heart so that your heart loves God and is drawn to love like God.

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Your heart loves God and loves like God and be steady and faithful, enduring under pressure like Jesus.

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So the prayer is that the Lord would use his sovereignty to overcome your sinfulness.

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So you're not like those people in chapter 2, verse 12, who love unrighteousness. That's why they go do unrighteous things because they love it.

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They get their pleasure in rebelling against God. They love money above all. Their hearts are drawn to make more money.

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That's what life is all about for them. Instead, you're different, not because you see your willpower, it's because you just made some better choices, but because your heart was steered, it was drawn, it was directed to love

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God. So he's not praying that you just choose God.

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We can get people to say they've chosen to obey God if we just browbeat them enough, we nag them enough, we manipulate them enough, maybe some emotional imitation with the organ playing softly in the background, enough repetitions of just as I am, or if we threaten them enough with eternal punishment, eternal destruction, remember that from chapter 1.

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But he's not just praying that they make decisions, but that their hearts would love

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God. They would have the love of God and the faithfulness, the steadiness of Jesus.

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They're fastened on God. They're fastened on Jesus, like Jesus was fastened on the Father, who prayed, not my will, but yours be done, because he loved the

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Father more than his own life. That's steadiness. The prayer is for the

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Lord to direct our hearts so they are inclined to Him. They go after Him.

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We want to obey Him. We want to hear His Word. So we want to come to church.

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We want to pray and we want to sing together. Pray that your heart, the hearts of your children, of your families, your friends, be directed by God to love

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God. What do you do now in the meantime? You second. Pray and pursue.

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Second, pursue the example of the apostles, starting in verse 6. They were not lazy or moochers.

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They just sit around and give theological lectures and expect to be paid handsomely for it.

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They worked. There was this guy on TV in Los Angeles who taught some of the Bible, smoking a cigar. And if enough donations weren't coming through, he would stop and say,

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I'm not going to do any more lecturing if the money doesn't keep coming in. And that was his thing. Very overt about it, too.

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The money's got to come in or I'm going to stop speaking. Apostles were not like that. Don't be like the others, like that guy in LA with the cigar.

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Others in our culture who think it's OK to be idle, a life of doing nothing, except sitting around and talking, scrolling on social media.

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Be busy in what you were called to do, like Paul and his team were busy in what they were called to do.

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Now, they had a problem with some people at Thessalonica being idle, being layabouts. Now, it could be because they thought the end was coming soon.

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And so why bother paying your rent? Or the mortgage is all going to be burned up anyway.

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The Lord's going to come back before they can evict me. So I'm going to stop paying and use the money for Outback Steakhouse or something like that.

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Or it might have just been their Greek culture. And that's probably more likely. In their culture, manual labor that's working with your hands was not valued.

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That was something slaves or peasants did. You want to get to be wealthy or an aristocrat you thought of as an elite person so that you could get other people to do the chores while you sat around and taught philosophy or poetry or politics.

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You leave the manual labor for the riffraff. And they have a similar view of a manual labor in Ethiopia.

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One day when we were there, I needed to trim the hedges on the perimeter of our house that we lived in.

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We rented the house. I drew a crowd. I got an audience. Just me trimming the hedges to see me work.

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It's very unusual to see a man who, from their point of view, was well off enough to afford to rent a house.

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So it must be wealthy by their standards. Doing a chore. If you have the money to pay someone else to do it, why don't you do it yourself?

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And I was doing a chore. I was trimming the hedges. And then, of course, I'm a foreign white man. That makes me really weird. And so that was just all amazing to them.

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As I'm doing it, about a dozen men are just standing around watching me. And an Ethiopian Orthodox priest comes walking by in his elaborate priest gowns.

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Very pretty, very colorful. And a hat. He holds out his hand to me, begging, like a mendicant friar from the

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Middle Ages. This is something like from medieval times. And I say one of the few terms I know in Amharic, their language, genzeb yelem,

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I have no money. I was thinking, even if I had money, I wouldn't give it to you because not only is your doctrine bad, but you're teaching people, by example, to live off of begging instead of working.

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Now here, Paul says his example that you should pursue is to work.

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That's his example. Work. Never see working with your hands. Making tents.

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Chopping onions. Peeling shrimp. Mopping floors. Cutting grass.

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Sorting items. Ordering shelves. Trimming hedges. Never see any of that as beneath you.

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Something you're better than. You want to get other people to do it, if you possibly can. Pursue being like Paul, who in verse 8, toiled in labor, working night and day.

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So a strong work ethic, the value of work, is so important, we should not tolerate its opposite in our midst.

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In the church, he commands us in verse 6. It's kind of like a general. All through this chapter, chapter 3, Paul says like a general.

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He used the word command several times. Like a general issuing orders to his troops. I command you in the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, this order comes right from the top. We're ordered to keep away from any brother.

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So a Christian, talk about in the church now, a church member who is walking in idleness.

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Now it's not that he just takes some time off. I hope you all get that. We all need at least a day off a week. It's not that he has some downtime or takes a vacation occasionally.

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Or maybe he has some downtime that's out of his control. He's unemployed. He can't find the work. No work to do.

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And he wants to work, but he just can't find it. That's understandable. But this person is walking in it.

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It's part of his lifestyle. It's his choice. He just doesn't care to keep a job, to earn his way.

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He's a freeloader. Stay away from him because he's not living according to what was taught by Paul.

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By example and word. That's the tradition in verse 6 that Paul mentions that we should pursue.

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Pursue my tradition. In other words, what I taught you by example. We can't see it now because we don't have it living before us.

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But we hear his words through this passage. Pursue that in verse 8.

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And then he says in verse 8, he didn't eat anyone's bread without paying for it.

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I don't think he literally means that he never took a gift of bread or a gift of food. If he was visiting someone, I think this is an idiom.

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Meaning that his daily bread, his sustenance didn't depend on other people.

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He wasn't a leech. He was able to support himself. So he didn't have to be a burden on them.

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And now, sure, if he visited them and they invited him to stay. Hey, Paul, stay for a meal. Stay for dinner. He would, I think.

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And then next time he could invite them to his place and he could provide the meal. He could do that because he had worked to provide for himself.

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For him, he was making tips. Now, that's the example that they should pursue and imitate in verse 9.

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He says there that in verse 9, he has a right. Literally, the word is authority.

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I have the authority. He has the right to be financially supported by them. He has the authority to require them, the church, to give him money.

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He has the authority to make them pay him. He describes that in more detail in 1 Corinthians 9, a whole chapter on it to the

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Corinthians. Now, in Corinth, he didn't avail himself of that right because they were kind of suspicious of him.

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At least some of them were. They were carnal. They were suspecting him. Maybe he's just in it for the money.

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And so he proved that he wasn't in ministry for their money by not taking their money.

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Here, for the Thessalonians, it's different. The lesson is different. Some go into ministry to have a job with no heavy lifting required.

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Paul proves that that's not his motivation. He's not just in it just because he wants a kind of desk job.

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He proved that by working hard. He taught by example. In verse 10, his teaching, his words, his command was, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

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Notice the key is willingness. There may be times when people are willing to work, but they can't.

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You know, they're physically out of it or there's no work around. So, if you aren't willing to work, we're not letting you eat the meal after the service.

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Sorry. Sorry. Actually, I'm not sorry. This is the other side of the coin to the apostolic church sharing with the poor.

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Remember, if a member of the church was in need, those who were wealthier would sell their property and share it with them.

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They distributed food to the widows. The early church here basically had their own welfare for members.

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They provided for their poor members. So no one would starve. Of course, some people might try to take advantage of that.

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We had a young man around here last year who said he needed help, who came to church here a few times. Turned out he has some real serious doctrinal problems, but we learned that later.

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We asked him to mow the grass for us and help clean. And we gave him some money, but he wouldn't keep a job.

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Probably too used to being coddled by his mother and the government. So we're not giving to him anymore.

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Sometimes people need to feel the pain, like their hunger pains, of their bad choices to learn to change.

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We had a woman who attended with us for a while several years ago. We even had her stay with us in our house.

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She thought she was spiritual. She thought she was living by faith. She went by sister something.

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She could work, but didn't. Walking around Danville, hanging out at restaurants, hoping for free food, either from the owners or from some customer.

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She wouldn't even help with the ministries of the church. She'd criticize Jim Jr., but not help. She attended here for a while, but I eventually saw that she needed to be confronted, and I did in my own particular way.

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If she's not going to work, she's not going to eat with us. And you restaurant owners here, if she comes around to you, don't give her free food.

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Want a positive example? Cheer up. Positive example? Mr. Perry was in his 80s.

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He'd retired when we moved into this building in 2009, and we were refurbishing it.

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A lot of work to do. He came in his work clothes, his paint bucket. He helped paint that wall over there.

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So even when he got unable to work, he could eat. We would let him eat.

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We would even supply him food. During the pandemic, we brought him a meal once a week at the assisted living home. Mr. Perry could always eat from us and with us.

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What do you do in the meantime? Waiting on the end times. Work.

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Third, practice. What do we do corporately as a church?

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We practice communal or community responsibility. We practice church discipline.

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That's what Paul tells us to do here. We don't enable sin by passively going along with it, by feeding the moocher.

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No, we stop feeding and we shame them. In verse 11, we hear,

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Paul says, we hear these reports. There's rumors going around. I'm hearing, Paul says, that some among you in your church walk in idleness.

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There's that phrase again. Remember that? Second time you use it. Idleness was their lifestyle. They sat in hearties, shooting the breeze with the other idle men, getting free refills on their coffee.

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Gathering in dorm rooms, debating about the Israel -Gaza war, as though it depends on them, or the coming election.

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Foucault's philosophy. Or they're at home, debating online, otherworldly things. Infra versus super -elapsarianism.

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Never dealing with the real world where we have to work. Here, second Thessalonians, they were in the church.

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Maybe they're debating the end times, whether they're pre -millennial or post -millennial or amillennial. You can't get them to do something practical for the church, but they love to talk.

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They're not busy at work. They're busy bodies, at the end of verse 11. They're toadies. They're the kind living off the excess of some rich, powerful patron.

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Like a lot of people lived in that feudal culture. If you're not a wealthy aristocrat yourself, you want to find a rich person, an aristocrat, to mooch off of.

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That's the life. Oh, sure. You've got to do some few odd jobs now and then for them.

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You've got to cut their grass or open the door for them. Go to the store for them, get their milk. Be a gopher.

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Go for beer at the clubhouse, like a caddy on a golf course. Paul said

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Christians shouldn't live like that. Don't live at the snap fingers of some patron.

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In verse 12, he commands. It's not a choice. And he encourages like that. I command and encourage you.

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Command you in case you respond well just to the encouragement. In the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who the command comes from.

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That's who the encouragement comes from. Change. I know that's your culture.

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In the Jewish culture, they're always trained. Like Paul, you got to work. Everyone has to work. The Greek culture was different. You want to try to escape from the manual labor.

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Paul's going, I'm going to change your culture. Change. I know it's what you were raised in. I know that's how you were raised when you were a kid.

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You want to escape work. You want to be an aristocrat and sit around and talk. No, change. Do your work quietly.

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Earn your own living. Here is the Protestant work ethic. The famous Protestant or Puritan work ethic.

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Here it is right in the Bible. That's where it comes from. It's about how you live now in this world.

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This world. You don't escape from it. You live in it and you change it.

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What are we to do about those who don't have this ethic? We're tempted first to be individualist and just do nothing.

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The individualist lets the lazy starve because he doesn't care. He thinks if the guy won't keep a job and feed himself, well, that's his problem.

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Just don't tax me to support his laziness. They don't think we have any duty to help them.

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Socialists ignores the reality that some people are irresponsible and that even the weak and the powerless and the poor and the hungry and the homeless are often that way.

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It's not always because they're victims of somebody powerful. Sometimes it's that way because of some bad decisions they've made.

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A young woman around here begs for money on Facebook occasionally to pay her bills. Just last week she was showing off.

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She got her big tax refund. So she's out in the most expensive restaurants in Danville eating out, living high on the hog and buying new gadgets.

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And probably next month she'll be begging again. Don't give to her.

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Socialists think we have a duty to help her and people like her, but they don't know how. They don't know how to help because they don't understand the problem.

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The Christian should see that we have a duty to practice community responsibility and we should know how to help.

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Sometimes helping means letting people suffer for their bad choices. Our first duty, though, is for fellow believers, members of the church.

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That's what he's talking about here. The household of God for brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow church members.

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No church member willing to work. This should be the rule here and in every church, particularly here.

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No church member willing to work should go hungry or homeless. And we who have resources should not grow weary and well -doing.

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We get tired of helping. Verse 13, don't get tired of giving. But if someone does not obey, doesn't do what he's supposed to do, what

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Paul says here, doesn't pursue the model of hard work and self -support, Paul says, take note of that person.

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Verse 14, literally mark him. He's the lazy one. He's a layabout.

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The toady. Always around when work needs to be done, but never doing it. Just talking. Have nothing to do with him.

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And this is church discipline. It's the last step. Jesus told us after confronting him, taking two or three others, then telling it to the church, treat him as a pagan.

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How do they treat pagans? The Jews. They had nothing to do with them. Ostracize him until he comes around.

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Here, until he comes around and gets to work. You shame at the end of verse 14, make him ashamed.

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Now, some people think it's horrible to make people ashamed. You should never make someone ashamed. Well, it's not horrible.

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And sometimes you should make people ashamed. Shame is a shepherd's weapon, like a staff. Sometimes you need to whack a strange sheep with it to get in line.

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You should be ashamed of yourself. Get to work. Shame the lazy into working. Not as an enemy you're trying to destroy, just humiliated.

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Destroy him. Verse 15, but as a brother, you're trying to train how to live in the real world.

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What do you do? Fourth, do peace.

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We sometimes say peace like a command, a verb. Peace, like be at peace.

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The final thing to do while going through hard times, waiting on the end times, working in the meantime, is let the

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Lord of peace. In verse 16, the

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Lord of peace give you peace. After all, you have the steadfastness, you have the steadiness of Jesus to direct your hearts toward him if you will but pray.

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Why would you be alarmed at Antichrist when you know Christ is victorious? Whoever the next

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Antichrist is, you know Christ will destroy him with his dynamic word. He's the

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Lord of peace, so be at peace. Why would you be upset about rebellions and apostasies, about the great de -churching that's going on right now in America, when your heart is directed to the love of God?

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If he directs your heart to love him, you will. He will hold you fast and direct your heart to hold on to him fast.

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So, be at peace. What do you do in this real world? Don't escape.

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Be assured you're held fast by someone, by the one who is steady.

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The one who can direct your heart. He's that powerful. He's that sovereign.

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He holds your heart in his hand. He can direct it wherever he wants it to go. Paul assures them at the end that this is really from him, that this is his handwriting.

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For us, that tells us this is inspired by God. This is God's promises. This isn't a forgery made up by a faker, but this is from the

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Lord of peace, who tells us he holds our hearts in his hands. He can direct them to love him.

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And so, we can be at peace. And this is the way he ends his letter.

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The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. May that dynamic word, the grace of the

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Lord Jesus, be enough to make you steady, steadfast like Jesus.