WWUTT 558 If He Won't Work, He Won't Eat?

Church Discipline and the Duty to Work

The Apostle Paul said to the church in Thessalonica, even when we were with you, we gave you this command. If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. Boy, we could solve all kinds of problems in this society if we went back to biblical principles when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty. Visit our website at www .wutt .com.

Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Paul’s Command to Avoid Idle Brothers

Thank you, Becky. We continue again with our study of 2 Thessalonians and should be able to conclude this study today. Let's come back to chapter three, starting in verse six. The Apostle Paul writes, "'Now we commend you, brothers, "'in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, "'that you keep away from any brother "'who is walking in idleness "'and not in accord with the tradition "'that you have received from us.

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

"'It was not because we do not have that right, "'but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. "'For even when we were with you, "'we would give you this command, "'if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

"'For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, "'not busy at work, but busy bodies. "'Now such persons we command and encourage "'in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly "'and to earn their own living.

"'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. "'Do not regard him as an enemy, "'but warn him as a brother.'".

So yesterday when we were considering the subject of church discipline, I went back to Matthew 18, so we could see the original instruction as Jesus gave it. So Paul takes that instruction on how we are to discipline in the body, how we are to correct a wayward brother or sister that is in sin by doing it one-on-one, first of all.

And if they will not listen, then take two or three others along so that everything may be established by two or three witnesses, just as it was stated in the law of Moses. And then if they will not listen to them, then it comes before the whole church.

And if they will not listen to the church, then they're supposed to be removed from the body. So those are the instructions that Jesus gave in Matthew 18. And Paul gives that specific application here in chapter three, particularly pertaining to brothers who are walking in idleness and are not doing their work.

This is not the only place that Paul has confronted sin and has said to a body, hey, if they're not gonna repent, they need to be removed. He did this before in 1 Corinthians 5 concerning a young man there in that Corinthian congregation who was sleeping with his stepmother.

And that person needed to be purged from their midst. This is 1 Corinthians 5, 9. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters since then you would need to go out of the world.

But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard or swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those who are outside, purge the evil person from among you. So this deliberate charge that we are to discipline within the body of Christ, and it is a very rare thing anymore to be in a church that actually practices discipline.

I remember an article several years ago from Dr. Albert Moller. And I don't remember when exactly he wrote this article. I know it was before I became a pastor because it was dated sometime around 2006 or something like that.

And then I didn't even find it until several years later. Anyway, I remember Dr. Moller stating that according to surveys, less than 10 of churches practice church discipline. Less than 10 of churches in America will actually discipline their members according to the guidelines of discipline that are given to us in scripture.

And I would be willing to wager it's even less than that because some churches that claim that they practice discipline, what they actually do is rebuke those members that won't follow the pastor's vision.

So you understand the whole thing behind vision casting? You know what that is? So a pastor will have a vision and he'll cast a vision for his congregation. He'll say, this is what we're gonna do. Here's where we're gonna go.

Everybody needs to fall in line with that. If anybody questions the pastor's vision or says, I don't think that's practical or that's even our responsibility as a church, then they're gonna be asked to leave and go somewhere else because they're causing a disruption in the body since they're not falling in line behind the pastor.

Now, if members of the congregation are not following the pastor's instruction, not listening to his teaching, that's a big problem. But this is sort of an area where pastors are casting things. Let me give you, I'll give you a more specific example.

So there was a pastor up in North Dakota and there was a friend of mine who sent me a video of this pastor casting a vision for his church. And the vision that he was casting was this whole other campus that they were gonna build.

And he even had visual aids up there on stage. His whole sermon was about how they were gonna build another campus right there in the same city. This is how much money it's gonna cost. We're gonna front all the money.

We're gonna build this other campus and you need to step up your giving because we need to be able to cover the cost of all of this. The church was also taking out loans. And so the members of the congregation were gonna have to give more to be able to cover the cost of those loans.

On and on it went. And he even said in his sermon that if you're not passionate about this, if you don't love the gospel, like he was tying this building another campus into preaching the gospel, which he never actually did in the sermon, but somehow this extra campus was connected to that.

He said, if you don't love preaching the gospel and you're not behind building this other campus, you need to go. You need to go find another church here in town. And I told the friend that sent me that video, I said, yeah, I would have gotten up and left.

I never would have come back to that church again. That has absolutely nothing to do with the church's responsibility or even the responsibility of that congregation. What is that church doing in terms of sharing the gospel, preaching the gospel and sound doctrine every Sunday from the pulpit on Sunday morning?

And then evangelizing within their community. There was no statement about any of that within his sermon. It was just this vision casting. And if you can't fall behind the pastor's vision, well, you gotta get out of here.

The bus is gonna roll over you. That was the thing that Mark Driscoll said, oh, years ago. I guess he was still somewhat reputable at the time, but he talked about this thing of like, hey, we've got a pile of dead bodies behind the buses.

It just kind of rolls them over, the people that don't get behind the vision of the church. The vision that the church needs to have is the preaching of the gospel and the teaching of sound doctrine to its congregation.

And the teaching of sound doctrine requires church discipline. Now you consider again what Paul said here to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 5. He said, do not associate with anyone who is a greedy, a swindler, an idolater, somebody who is sexually immoral, who is a reviler, a drunkard, or a swindler.

And so now we come back to 2 Thessalonians and Paul says, we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.

When the list of sins that Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5, that all sounds really bad. Those sounds like bad sins. And then we get to 2 Corinthians 3 and we're supposed to have nothing to do with somebody just because they're lazy.

Boy, that seems pretty extreme, right? Well, I still say that the thing that Paul was accusing these lazy men of is mentioned in the list of sins that he gave in 1 Corinthians 5. He said that if there's anyone who is sexually immoral, greedy, an idolater, a reviler, a drunkard, or a swindler.

See what we understand from these lazy men in Thessalonica is they were swindling the rich out of money and mooching off of the charity of those who were generous. And instead they weren't working. They weren't doing the job that they were supposed to do or making their own living.

In fact, given that Paul also addressed this in 1 Thessalonians. He just didn't give it the specificity that he does in 2 Thessalonians. But given that he addressed it in that first letter, here's my theory, that the members of the church in Thessalonica believed, hey, Jesus is coming back any minute now, so we don't have to do anything.

What do I gotta do? I just gotta kick back and wait for Jesus to arrive. Because remember, the Thessalonians thought because they had brothers and sisters that had died, they missed out on the day of the Lord.

And then you had with this second letter, somebody that had told them that the day of the Lord had already taken place. So you probably got some members in Thessalonica that in that first letter were going, well, we just need to wait for Jesus to show up.

So there's not a reason for me to have to go to work anymore. Why do I need to make a living? He's coming back any day, could be tomorrow. And then by the second letter, it was probably, well, he's already come back.

So what difference does it make what I do? It doesn't matter, we've already missed this boat. There's no need or meaning for me to do anything. So I do believe that a wrong eschatology had something to do with the laziness of some of the members in Thessalonica.

They had a wrong understanding of the day of the Lord, of the return of Christ. And it was filtering into their very daily lives. And so Paul was saying, no, if they're not working, don't have anything to do with them.

Don't give them money when they're perfectly abled bodied individuals that can be doing a job and making their own wages. And they're not doing that, so keep away from them. We've rebuked them, we rebuked them in the previous letter, you've rebuked them, we're rebuking them again.

And if they still will not listen to correction, if they still will not repent, have nothing to do with them so that they would be convicted over their sin and they would repent. Don't regard them as an enemy, but regard them as brothers as we see at the end of this particular section.

Imitating Paul’s Example of Honest Labor

So have nothing to do with those who are walking in idleness. 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.

But with toil and labor, we worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you. And Paul talked about this also in his first letter, he set an example for the Thessalonians to follow. It would have totally been within his right to accept payment from the Thessalonians, for them to take care of him because he had given his life to preaching the gospel.

It would have been perfectly within his rights as an apostle the way he articulated it in the first letter to receive the charity of the Thessalonians for preaching the gospel to them. But he didn't want the Thessalonians to think of them as being like the other philosophers who came into these Greek cities and would set up their schools and would go and preach in the public square.

And they would teach only so much and then say, hey, if you wanna learn the rest, you gotta come over here to my school and you gotta pay this much money and then I'll teach you all the rest of the secrets of the universe.

Paul was not gonna be associated with them. So he came and preached the gospel for free. This is how you know the genuineness of my heart and my concern for you as sinners, desperately a need for a savior.

I'm not doing this for money. I'm doing this because I care for your souls. And so here, Paul kind of comes back to that again in this letter saying, remember, we could have taken money from you, but instead we wanted to set for you an example.

So you need to follow the example that we set. Paul was a tent maker by trade. We have it talked about in the book of Acts when he went to Thessalonica, that he was making tents, making his own living at the time that he was also preaching the gospel and teaching those there in Thessalonica.

So he says, we had given you this example. You need to be imitators of us. Says the same thing to the Corinthians, be imitators of me because I am of Christ. And God has instructed us to work. Work is not a result of the fall.

Work is something that God had set Adam to do in the garden of Eden before he sinned. It even says there, he made man, set him in the garden to work it and keep it. And so work is something that we should do for the joy of the Lord, for his glory, giving him praise in all things.

It is a requirement that you are to work. As long as you are abled bodied, as long as you can do it, you've got breath in your lungs, you've got strength in your arms and legs, get up and work. So where we see this command here that if a person doesn't work, then he doesn't get to eat.

This doesn't mean those who are infirmed or those who are elderly or those who are even mentally handicapped to a position that they can't even put their hands and feet to work somewhere. It's not who we're talking about.

We're talking about those who can work, but don't. It is a very serious sin against God to reject work, to be lazy and do nothing. When the very heart of the great commission is to work, Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Therefore, I tell you, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.

The gospel doesn't get preached if you're sitting on your duff. So there is work even in the very commission that God has given to his church. And so you must work, you must earn your own living, you must buy your own bread, you must even take what you earn and share it with others so that those who cannot work would be able to receive charity and food from those who love them and are taking care of them.

But here you've got abled bodied individuals in Thessalonica who are not working and they are the recipients of this rebuke. Verse 10, for even when we were with you, we would give you this command. If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

And that is a principle that even our society today has forgotten. There are plenty of abled bodied men and women that can go out to the workforce and get jobs. And instead we're trying to load them up with food stamps and EBT cards, et cetera, et cetera.

Now I'm not saying that a nation or an economy, especially one as blessed as ours, shouldn't take care of its citizens that are in most need of care. God established a welfare program in Israel in the Pentateuch.

So yes, welfare is good, but right now welfare in our society has no oversight. It's kind of like anybody who wants to apply for it and needs something, we just give it to them. And there needs to be more done than that to be able to cut a person off if we know, hey, they are able to go get a job, they need to go get a job.

We're not gonna continue to support them with food and medical assistance and all these other kinds of things. If a person is able to get work and doesn't get work, he should not eat. I had somebody that came up to me after church one time.

This was really early in my pastorate. I wanna say it was even while I was an interim. And she brought me this passage. She had her Bible open and she said, is this right that this says that if a person doesn't work, then they shouldn't eat?

And I actually knew something about the woman that was asking me that. She was presently not working nor was she even looking for work. And I happened to know that that individual was frequenting bars even during the week, which I had already been on her about that she needed to stop patroning those bars.

But she brought me this passage, 2 Thessalonians 3 and says, it says here that if a person doesn't work, then they don't get to eat. And I said, right, that's what it says. And she said, well, that was something that was in Thessalonica at that time, right?

And I said, no, that is absolutely a principle that still should be at work today. And so she said, so if somebody here was not working, the church would actually not provide for them? And I said, we would judge that on a case-by-case basis.

But yeah, based on the stipulations that Paul gives here in 2 Thessalonians 3, if they're able to work and they just won't work, we would cut them off. We would even exclude them from the body of Christ because they are a burden to everyone else instead of working and earning their own living the way that they should.

She never came back to church again because I said that, because I just agreed with the page of the Bible that she came to me with. This is the kind of attitude that our society today is breeding, that it's somehow unloving and uncaring to cut a person off if they're not working to make their own living.

But Paul says, for the love of this wayward brother, you must cut him off because you love him as a brother, not regard him as an enemy. So we go on here. We hear that some of you, this is verse 11, we hear that some of you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies.

So if a person doesn't have something to do with their hands, they get all up in everybody else's business. And then they sin further because they're gossips. They're gossiping about people. Now such persons, we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

Mind your own business. It's basically what Paul is saying there. Verse 13, as for you brothers, do not grow weary in doing good. So now he's talking to those who have been working faithfully and have been following in sound doctrine and following the example that Paul and his missionary brethren had set before them.

Don't grow weary in doing good. You're gonna discipline these guys. Some of them are even going to leave you because you disciplined them, but don't grow weary. You are 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.

Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. So to reject the instruction of the apostle Paul was to reject the word of Christ himself. That's basically what Paul was saying there. And I say to you that a church that will not discipline its members is not discipling them.

And therefore that church is in biblical disobedience. They need the kind of rebuke that Paul is giving here, probably need the kind of rebuke that Paul gave the Corinthians as well. So it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not a church founded on the gospel anymore, but they're certainly wayward and they certainly need to be called out on their sin.

As Jesus said in Revelation chapter three, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent. Yes, church discipline is a must for every church congregation. Now let's look at these closing passages here, these closing three verses.

Paul’s Closing Greeting and Authentication of the Letter

Paul says, now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and every way. The Lord be with you all. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine.

It is the way I write. So that way they know this letter is from Paul, not from that scoundrel who wrote earlier, claiming to be Paul or another apostle and making them think that the day of the Lord had already happened.

Paul concludes with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, be with you all. And same to you also. Thank you so much for listening to when we understand the text and being with me over the course of our study of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians.

Next week, we'll be in 1st Timothy. Lord, teach us to work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, giving you all glory and praise and honor, which you deserve. Give us hearts that desire to serve you.

In the name of Christ we pray, amen.

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers and offering commentary on the church and social issues. You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .tt .com.

Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word when we understand the text.