Good Works Stir Up the Idle

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Please turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 9. 2

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Corinthians chapter 9, we're going to be looking at the very last part of verse two, which says, and your zeal has stirred up most of them.

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I will read all this first paragraph of chapter nine in preparation of the proclamation of God's word.

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Please stand when you have that. 2 Corinthians chapter 9, which can be found on page 968 of the

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Pew Bible. Now it is superfluous for me to write to you about the ministry for the saints.

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For I know your readiness, of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year, and your zeal has stirred up most of them.

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But I am sending the brothers so that our boasting about you may not prove empty in this matter, so that you may be ready as I said you would be.

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Otherwise, if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready, we would be humiliated to say nothing of you for being so confident.

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So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you have promised, so that it may be ready as a willing gift, not as an exaction.

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Amen. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask that today as we consider your word, as we consider how zeal stirs others up, we ask that you would give us a great zeal, that you would give us confidence in the work that you do through us, and we pray that this would cause us to serve you with a great eagerness, with a great zeal.

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In Jesus' name, amen. So in previous weeks, we've been looking at motivations for good works, we have talked about how

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God enables good works, and lately we have been looking at passages about how, about the effect the good works have on others.

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So we looked at good works in general, meeting urgent needs, then how good works affect leaders, how they affect workers, and now how they affect the idol, that good works stir up the idol.

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Now this might seem fairly similar to another verse that we had looked at before.

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Hebrews 10, 24 spoke about how we should not, we should continue gathering together and consider how to stir one another up to love and good works.

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Now over there, we were talking about how God enables us to good works by our neighbors stirring us up, by fellow

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Christians stirring us up, but here today in this passage, we are going to look at how God enables us to stir up others, stir up our brothers and sisters.

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So here in this passage, 2 Corinthians 9, 2, for I know your readiness, of which

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I boast about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year, and your zeal has stirred most of them up.

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Paul speaks here of what is known as the Jerusalem collection. There are many poor in Jerusalem who are in much need because of a great famine that has come, and so Paul, not only out of a care for those poor saints in Jerusalem, but also out of a care for the church in general and its unity, especially among Jew and Gentile, has gone about to the

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Gentile churches that have more resources and asked them to contribute to the needs of the poor believers in Jerusalem.

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And so he's gone about preparing people in order to give for this collection, telling them to save up and get money ready.

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And so he's done that, going to different places. He had been to Corinth before, and then he went and spoke of this to those in Macedonia.

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And now he writes back to Corinth, saying that in Macedonia, when they had heard about Achaia, that they had been stirred up by this.

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Now, it would be helpful to know what these different places are referring to. What is

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Achaia? Well, Achaia here is a large region of which Corinth is the primary city.

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So when Paul speaks of Corinth, he speaks of several churches. We also read of the church of Synchra and Romans.

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So there are multiple churches, but the primary one he's talking about is Corinth. So when he says this to them, that he has boasted about Achaia, he is speaking to the

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Corinthians, letting them know that he has boasted about them in particular. Now, who does he refer to when he refers to the

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Macedonians? Now, one church that comes to mind, one of the major cities in Macedonia, another region, is

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Philippi, the church of the Philippians. Now, there are several reasons why you would think this.

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First of all, you have this statement in Philippians 4 .14. When I left

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Macedonia, no church entered into a partnership with me in giving and receiving except only you.

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Even in Thessalonica, which is another city in Macedonia, you sent me help for my needs once and again.

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We see that play out in Acts chapter 18, where Paul had been working as a tent maker and then reasoning with the

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Jews on the Sabbath day. And so that's the only day that he's really spending advancing the word of God.

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The rest of the days he's busy working. Then when people come from Macedonia, the implication being that they have resources, which is what

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Philippians confirms for us, he then commits himself fully to doing the work because he no longer has to work as a tent maker to make his living.

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And so we have a lot of biblical evidence, these statements directly from the narrative of Acts and the epistle to the

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Philippians, that Paul has been heavily financially supported by the Philippians. And this is, we also see this here in this epistle of 2

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Corinthians. In 11 .9 he says, I did not burden anyone for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need.

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So he's talking about how he didn't take any money from the Corinthians because while he was in Corinth, those from Macedonia supplied his needs.

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That's what Acts 18 is describing. He's there in Corinth, some from Macedonia have come. Philippians tells us that it's the

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Philippians in particular who are helping him. So maybe he has in mind Philippians, the

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Philippians. I believe there's a lot of reason to think that when he's talking about stirring people up, he's not talking about the

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Philippians when he says Macedonia, even though other times in this epistle, when he says Macedonia, he is primarily referring to the

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Philippians. Believe here, he's primarily talking about the Thessalonians.

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The Philippians are people who are already eagerly helping Paul. Paul commends them repeatedly for how eagerly they help him, how eagerly they give to the cause of the gospel.

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They are people who are already stirred up. They are not a people who are in need of being stirred up.

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But consider the Thessalonians. The Thessalonians are a people in need of being stirred up.

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In 1 Thessalonians 4, 11 through 12, Paul tells them, and aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

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So he tells the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians, his first epistle to them, after he has been through there and left, that they need to, out of all the things that they need to be told, he thinks they need to be told they need to work more and not be dependent on each other.

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They need to save up so that they can give to others rather than being dependent on others.

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And then in 2 Thessalonians, this is still a problem. And so he speaks to them again in 2

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Thessalonians, his next epistle to the Thessalonians. He says in 3 .10, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

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And in 3 .11, for we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies.

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So the Thessalonians have a problem with idleness. They have a problem with not working and not saving up so that they would be able to give to others.

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Paul repeatedly has to tell them that they need to work more in order to save up in order that they would be able to give to others.

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So when he is telling the Corinthians that their eagerness has stirred up others who needed to be stirred up, and then on top of that, he is sending messengers just to make sure that they're really ready so that if they end up coming and they don't give, that those who were stirred up would not be so disappointed and Paul wouldn't be humiliated.

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Who does he have in mind? Is it not the Thessalonians, the idle ones who were in need of being stirred up?

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I believe it's talking about them. The point here is not that you must believe this is talking about the

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Thessalonians versus the Philippians. My point is that there were many in Macedonia who were idle, who were in need of being stirred up.

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So Paul is not talking about the kind of encouragement we looked at last time in 2 Corinthians. They're just to those who are already working.

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Paul is talking about stirring up those who need to be stirred up. It's not just encouraging those who are working, but stirring up those who are inactive, who are idle.

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And this is an encouragement to them. So what is zeal when it talks about zeal?

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It's an eagerness, it's a desire for something. Titus 2 .14, we saw that Christ has given himself to purify a people for his own possession, a people who would be zealous for good works.

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So zeal in this context is talking about a zeal for the particular works that God would call them to, a zeal for good works.

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So it is the case that God uses the good works of his people to stir up the idle among his people.

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Now, why is this needed? Why is, is there really this pervasive problem of idleness?

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There is. And this has been spoken of in many previous generations as a notion of sloth.

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May have heard of the seven deadly sins, right? Or Dante's Inferno, where one of the, you know, one of the sins is sloth.

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So this is something that is more common in many older writings among the church to talk about sloth as a dedicated topic.

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In Latin, it would be acedia, which comes from the Greek word acadia. So acedia, if you ever hear that word, that's what this is talking about.

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It's not just inactivity physically, but a sort of spiritual sloth.

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One of the ways it's been defined is a sorrow towards divine good. Another way you could think about it is a lack of love towards those things that God would say are really good.

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A lack of love towards such things. It comes with an internal instability.

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So a lack of focus. So rather than focused on those things that are truly good, your heart wanders to other things.

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Now, if you think about that, the various callings that God has given you in life, those things that you should dedicate your energy and your meditations on, you think about the wanderings from those, what does that often look like?

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A lack of focus. A lot of people will justify a lack of focus based on their own biology, maybe it's lack of sleep, et cetera, and those things can certainly have an effect.

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But if you wander from those things that God has called you to, if he has pulled you to a good purpose and he has given you a good purpose and your mind is wandering from those things because you do not see them as truly good, this is an evil thing.

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It's not just a biology, an issue of your own biology that leads to a lack of focus, it is a lack of desire for that which is truly good.

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It also comes with what is known as melancholy or depression. Because if you are turning your mind from that as truly good and end up focusing and loving those things that are not truly good, they will always disappoint and they will lead to a sadness.

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So there's an instability and a joylessness that is associated with this notion of sloth or acedia.

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To illustrate this, I have put on the back of the bulletin a quote from The Screwtape Letters.

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If you're unfamiliar with The Screwtape Letters, this is a book by C .S. Lewis that where a senior demon coaches his nephew on how to tempt mankind, okay?

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And in this, it's gonna talk about a patient, the patient is the man, the Christian that's being tempted.

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And it's gonna talk about the enemy, the enemy here is God because this is a demon speaking. And I think this illustrates very well the notion of sloth because it's a more complex notion than just laziness that you might have or idleness in a very physical sense.

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I'm gonna go ahead and read this because I think it's a very helpful quote. In this state, your patient will not omit, but he will increasingly dislike his religious duties.

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He will think about them as little as he feels he decently can beforehand and forget them as soon as possible when they are over.

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He will want his prayers to be unreal for he will dread nothing so much as effective contact with the enemy.

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His aim will be to let sleeping worms lie. As this condition becomes more fully established, you will be gradually freed from the tiresome burden of providing pleasures as temptations.

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This is what demons would usually do is provide pleasures as temptations to draw you away from the things that God would have you to love.

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As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cuts him off more and more from all real happiness and this habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure, you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wondering attention.

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You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep.

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A column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him.

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You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room.

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All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, that being hell,

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I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what

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I liked. I'll let you read the rest of the quote later, and I'll stop there.

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But you have one of these people who are pulled away from what is good, who said,

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I now see that I spent most of my life doing what I neither ought, neither what

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I ought nor what I liked. Not only was I not doing good things, but I wasn't even spending that time doing something

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I enjoyed. And does this not describe our generation?

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You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, not engaged in social activities, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room.

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Man, what does doom scrolling at 11 p .m. or 1 a .m.

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sound like other than staring at a dead fire in a cold room? This is describing a serious problem in our own generation where we have been pulled away by pleasures and numb to them such that we no longer desire anything that's good and are willing to wander to anything at all.

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It may not even be something incredibly enjoyable. No doubt many of you can think of some kind of habits of your own where you wish you did not have them, but they're just there as distractions for you from what is good.

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Now this is, like I said, not laziness in the very simplistic way that you may be accustomed to think of laziness.

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Acedia or sloth is something more than that, right? It is not just a lack of love in what

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God has given you as good and your ends, your purposes that he's called you to is not just a mere idleness in the sense of not doing anything.

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Consider the way that 2 Thessalonians had put it in 2 Thessalonians 3 .11. We hear that some of you walk in idleness not busy at work, but busy bodies.

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Now that's picking up on what in Greek is, you know, a pun there. That they're not busy working, they are busy bodies.

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So they're active, they're going from house to house, they're doing things, but it is not the things that they ought to be doing.

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Now, there might be all kinds of noble pretexts to keep you from doing the things that you ought to be doing.

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How many people, you know, really invest in all kinds of things that they claim are good just to avoid the things that are truly good?

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You know, there's the stereotype of the student who has an essay due, and what do they do while they have their essay due? They clean their house, right?

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The whole house gets spick and span because they wanna do anything but the thing that they actually should be doing, which is writing the essay.

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Well, this is true of spiritual things as well. There are many people who spend lots of time and even good spiritual things, right?

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There are many people who spend lots of time reading the Bible because they do not want to spend time in prayer.

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There are many people who spend lots of time in prayer because they do not want to act. I hear all the time, you know,

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I'll pray about that, I've really been committing to prayer, when the answer is, no, you should just do the thing that God has called you to do.

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You don't need to pray about it, it's already obvious. And then many people act and engage in all kinds of good things because they do not want to spend time with God and his word.

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And so you have that whole cycle of things where people are called to one spiritual good and they replace it with another spiritual good.

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But of course, many times what happens is you replace it with something that is not a spiritual good at all.

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Just the distractions of this world, not even particularly good distractions. I was reading some very early church works and also works that summarized early church works on this notion of sloth or ascedia.

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They pointed out that a number of things that often are associated with this, being overly concerned about your own health, you know, using that as a frequent pretext for avoiding the good things that God has called you to, visits with others as being things that one ought to invest in.

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You know, I need to go spend time with my family, et cetera, things like that, that would often be used as excuses. That though those are good in some circumstances, that many who are wandering from the things that God has actually called them to would use them as supposedly noble pretexts.

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And this is a great danger in our era. There is a fruitlessness, and that's another way that you can think about this.

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It's not so much laziness as it is fruitlessness, like a hatred or a lack of love, rather, because I know a lot of people don't use the word hatred that way.

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They think of like, you know, this burning anger, but a lack of love toward what is good or what is fruitful.

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So there are all kinds of people who engage in, for example, sexual simulation without sexual union, right?

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They sexually stimulate themselves, but without sexual union, so they're not pursuing the actual fruitful thing, which would be building up a relationship.

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There are all kinds of people who would pursue sexual union without procreation, right? So they want to have the pleasures of friendship, but without the fruitfulness, or the pleasures of marriage, but without the fruitfulness of children.

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And so there's just a despising of actual fruitfulness. What is the main attraction of spending many hours in video games, and don't hear me as saying that video games are out and out wrong, but if someone is really entranced in them, usually that's because they're giving them some sense of work and achievement without actual real fruitfulness of work and achievement.

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How many people will spend their lives campaigning and talking about giving to the poor, or wanting the government to do this without actually giving to the poor themselves?

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There's all kinds of work, and all kinds of pleasure -seeking that has the outward look of fruitfulness, but without the inward heart of fruitfulness, because our hearts have been drawn from the real good that God has called us to, and fruitfulness.

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And this is the danger that idleness is. It is not simply a lack of any kind of activity, but a lack of love for that which is good.

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It is a very real danger. Proverbs 6, 10 through 11 says, a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.

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It only takes a little of this heart being drawn away to wake up one day and realize, like that man did in the screw tape letters, that he wasted, wasted so much time.

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Now, there are many cures for this. You can stir up your heart in prayer, asking

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God to build in you a desire for such things. You can build the habits of work to enjoy, working on the things that God has called you to work on, and those distractions begin to fade in their desirability.

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However, despite all those things that you can do for yourself to fight such things, there is something incredibly powerful that you can do for others who are afflicted with this acedia, trapped in their own sins and sloth and idleness.

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And what is that? Well, we see right here in this passage. Your zeal has stirred most of them up.

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Your good works, your zeal for good works, stirs up the idle. Now, how does it do that?

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How does it stir up the idle? The first one, I'm gonna give you three ways. Okay, the first one,

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I think, is just the notion of creativity. All right, God is all creative. He has made all things.

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He has put, He has made us in His image. Part of that entails having some kind of creative spirit.

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Right, we are creative. We have ideas about things that we could do. Adam named the animals, that is very creative activity.

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Yet, we are finite in our creativity. And so, it is helpful to see how others would serve

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God because it brings to mind the imagination ways that we could serve God. So, one is just human finitude and creativity benefits from seeing others.

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Right, great artists, how do they learn to be great artists? Well, it's often from other great artists.

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So, that creativity has a transmissive property. In addition to that, it changes the standard of the sense of goodness that God has called you to.

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Right, there are two different standards we could look at. Right, there is the standard that God has given us in Matthew 5, 48,

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Jesus says, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. God has called us to perfection.

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Now, that is hard to imagine. That perfection is hard to imagine. So, oftentimes, we will look at different relative standard in order to get a sense of that perfection that God has called us to.

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We will look to other men. Okay, you look to other men, you see what they are doing, and then you end up measuring yourself by them.

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Now, if other men are doing very excellent things, that changes the standard in a significant way.

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The word that is used here is erethezo. It means to stir up, even to stir up strife.

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This word for stir up, it is the same word, it means to provoke. It's the same word that's used in Colossians 3, 21, don't provoke your children.

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Okay, don't stir up your children, don't provoke them to anger. This is often used in a negative context to provoke.

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Here, they're being provoked in a good sense. So, that standard provokes people, it makes them recognize that there is something higher.

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Second Corinthians 10, 12 describes a bad example of this.

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Okay, so there's different ways that you could look at the standard of man, and it would be a bad thing because it's not the perfection that God has called you to.

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In Second Corinthians 10, 12, regarding the super apostles, false teachers in Corinth, Paul says, but when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.

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Okay, so how is raising the standard good if comparing ourselves to one another is the thing

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Paul speaks against in just the very next chapter? Well, what were they doing? They're using the standard of one another to lower the bar, to measure themselves by themselves in order to stagnate.

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They're concerned with the wrong things, they're concerned with how they speak and their appearance. You know, they're comparing themselves to Paul and saying, well, at least we're not getting shipwrecked, well, at least we're better speakers than him, things that are not the right measurements, but then on top of that, they are using these things to set an upper bound on the kind of fruitfulness that there could be.

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They say, oh, well, this man is really great, you know, that's really all anyone could do, so if I'm down here, that's fine.

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They're using it to stagnate. What's happening here in 2 Corinthians is the opposite, is it creates a lower bound on the possibilities of zeal that God can raise someone to.

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If God can raise the Corinthians to this, then certainly he could raise the Thessalonians to that as well.

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And this standard ends up raising for others. So even though God is the perfect standard, he has called us to perfection himself, he has given us each other to give us a sense of how high that perfection could be.

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When you see one another reaching higher standards with their zeal for the good that God has called them to, how much more does your heart desire that good?

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Now, this is very contagious, right? This is a very contagious thing. You think about sports, you know, any sport, pick your favorite sport.

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Probably 20 years ago, it was not as competitive or the standards were not as high.

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You know, I don't know what the stats are, but my understanding is that in basketball, you know, I used to watch when

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Michael Jordan was playing, my understanding is that a lot of the stats have really increased, you know, people jump higher, they do a lot better, et cetera, in a lot of ways.

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And this is true in many sports. There are a few sports that are the exception to the rule, but in general, the standards have grown and grown and grown as athletic excellence has been contagious towards others.

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The same way, the same thing happens in the church. As we each have a great zeal for the things that God has called us to, it has a contagious property of raising others to similar sorts of zeal.

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You know, I've experienced this in my own life in some ways. Many of you know I wrote a book a while ago called

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The Dorian Principle, which is about ministry and money. I wrote that,

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I kind of left it on the shelf after trying to promote it a little. And then there were two people named

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John and Andrew who ended up reading it and really getting passionate about the ideas proposed in it and created a website called sellingjesus .org.

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And this really lit a fire under me to write articles on that website, things like that about this topic to encourage others to think deeply about what the

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Bible says about money and ministry. And this frequently happens where they have something in mind that I'm not really eager to work on at first, but as I see them work on it, my heart just gets really stirred up to go work on those things.

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This conference that is coming up, DorianCon that you saw in the announcements, that is a result of Andrew and John having worked on a statement regarding the stewardship of Scripture, something that I wasn't initially working on, me seeing the work that they were doing getting so stirred up to want to participate in that, to have a conference about it as well.

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These are, God works in very significant ways stirring up others through your zeal for good works.

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Now the third way beyond how creativity affects us, how standards affects us, the third way is simply the spiritual way through Christ and his

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Spirit. Now this is the same thing that I've mentioned in previous sermons that I really want you coming away from this little subsection in our series understanding is when

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God unites us to Jesus Christ, he does so in both a legal way in addition to a spiritual way.

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Not only are we free from all the accusations of all the guilt of our sin because it has been legally placed on Jesus Christ, but spiritually those who have believed in Jesus Christ, those who have trusted in him for the forgiveness of sins have been united to him in such a way that they are not only united to him but united to everyone else who's united with him so that when we behave in the kingdom of God in a way that is zealous, pursuing the things that God would have us to pursue, there's an organic connection between each one of us as we witness each other in Jesus Christ stirring each other up.

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So it is not, what I'm talking about here is not mere psychology. Okay, it's not merely, oh, when people see others going to higher standards, they are excited to go to higher standards.

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When someone sees creative ways that one would serve God, they're stirred up to creative ways that one would serve

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God. That is true in a external sense, but it is also true in an internal spiritual sense through the unity we have with one another in Jesus Christ.

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He is the vine, we are the branches. As we abide in him, we are not only in him and him and us, but we are in one another as he explains in the high priestly prayer of John 17.

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And us being in one another means that as we have this kind of zeal, it spreads to one another.

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We are a part of the same organism. We are part of the same vine being branches in that vine who is

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Jesus Christ. And so it is those two ways about creativity and standards on one level, but they have their spiritual effect in the work of the spirit through our union with Christ and with each other.

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And this is not something that you can experience apart from being a part of the body of Christ.

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This is not something you can experience apart of being in the vine. If you today do not know Jesus Christ, if you have not trusted in him for the forgiveness of sins, what you need to know is that you are guilty before God because of your sins.

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Everybody has sinned, everybody has sinned against God and is worthy of death, but Christ has paid that penalty and you can be united to him, not just legally having your guilt placed on him, but in addition spiritually so that you would have the blessings of life that come from brothers and sisters in Christ.

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And if you trust in him today, you can have all that and much more. I wanna talk more about how it is that you are to stir one another up.

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If you are pursuing good works with the desire to stir up the idol, what should you keep in mind?

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This word that speaks of zeal, it is not the typical word for zeal. It is a word that means eagerness.

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So zeal and eagerness, those work together. Excuse me.

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Excuse me, I'm referring to the word readiness for I know your readiness. This is not the typical word for, let me just take back everything

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I said. This is just a word that means eagerness in other verses. Acts 17, 11, they examine the word with all eagerness.

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Elsewhere in this passage, so if you look at 8, 19, Paul says, and not only that, but he has been appointed by the churches to travel with us as we carry out this act of grace that is being ministered by us to the glory of the

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Lord himself and to show our goodwill. That phrase, our goodwill, is the same word in Greek.

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It is the same word for eagerness. So here, the translators are recognizing that there's kind of a distinction between Paul's eagerness and the

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Corinthians' eagerness. Paul is talking about people not thinking that he's trying to get their money for himself, to hide it, and so they translate this goodwill to make it clear in that context.

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And then with the Corinthians, because they're preparing themselves for a work that they will do, they're choosing the word readiness.

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But these in Greek are really just the same word that means eagerness. So Paul's talking about his own eagerness. He's saying,

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I'm trying to show you my own eagerness for you to be stirred up. And then he's saying, your eagerness has stirred others up.

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So it is eagerness. It is a, this word that is readiness, it is an eagerness that we should have.

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That posture of eagerness is really what is more important than the works themselves.

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Just like I was explaining last week, it is not the size, the good works. It's not the grandness of your obedience to God that is important as the sincerity of the obedience.

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In verses 11 and 12, it says, so now finish doing it. This is the collection he's talking about, right?

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You've all prepared to give to this collection or you said you were going to. It says, so now finish doing it as well so that your readiness, your eagerness, and desiring it may be matched by your completing it of what you have.

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For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.

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So Paul's saying that what he wants from them is for them to engage in a real eagerness that doesn't, he is not concerned about the quantity that they would give, but that they would match their earlier eagerness in giving a quantity that would be according to that eagerness.

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So a lot of people would get excited about something, then realize they're going to have difficulty doing it, and then shrink back from it entirely.

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Paul's saying it doesn't matter if you are not able to do it well or in great measure. What matters and what stirs others up that they hear about is the eagerness with which you do that thing.

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There is, it is before they have even given, right?

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They haven't even done the good work itself. When you think of good works as being outward things, right, as we've defined it, it's sincere obedience, and so the inward heart also counts as part of that good work.

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But it's not the outward thing that stirred people up. It is the inward posture of eagerness that has stirred up those in Macedonia.

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You can think about this like a bow, right? The bow being drawn is what's important.

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It's not what comes out of the bow. Now, it's true, now, sorry, this analogy isn't great because it does matter if you're actually trying to strike a target and pierce it with any measure.

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But when it comes to being able to stir someone up, it is that posture of eagerness, not the ability to accomplish great things that is effective by the

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Spirit in stirring each other up, right? And why? Because the Spirit is working in us to accomplish these things.

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Now, some other thoughts on the importance of that posture. If you consider various people and some of the great works that they have done in Scripture, and you'll realize, okay, that does not encourage me that much because they didn't have eagerness.

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Think of one of the greatest prophets, Jonah, right? He went to Nineveh. So many people were saved from destruction because they repented at Jonah's message to them.

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Yet Jonah went and he tried going the other way at first. He was bitter, he hated the

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Ninevites, right? He is not someone who you look at and you're stirred up to good because you see his lack of eagerness despite the greatness of what he did.

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And there's another, Simon of Cyrene in Scripture says that the Romans compelled him to carry the cross.

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Now, he was a disciple, but the suggestion is there that because he is being compelled by the

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Romans, it is not something that he actually wanted to do, it's something that he was resistant to doing. He wasn't offering to do this.

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And so as you see people write about this, they write about his carrying Christ's cross with a level of hesitancy about whether or not this was really a, you know, whether or not he was really an eager disciple.

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So people can do great works, great, magnificent things, but if they lack the eagerness, it does not have the same effect that even doing a small thing with eagerness would have.

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Consider Tabitha, also known as Dorcas in Acts, and her good work is simply making clothes for the needy widows, right?

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And she makes clothes for them and they show off the clothes to Peter. Now, when she dies and passes away, people were so stirred up about her eagerness, they go and they tell

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Peter about this, and he comes and he raises her from the dead, right?

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And so the smaller things, you think about saving a whole city of Ninevites, right? You think about carrying the actual cross of Jesus Christ, all compared to making some clothes for the poor.

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That's a much smaller thing, but it stirred people up much more than those other acts have stirred people up because those other acts, there was a lack of eagerness, even though the outward work was very good.

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With Tabitha, the outward work was not so impressive, but it was the eagerness that really stirred others up.

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Now, regarding the visibility of these works, there is a question that comes to mind here because if you're thinking, okay, if I'm to do good works, part of my motivation should be to stir others up who are idle, what does that say for me showing off?

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Because doesn't Jesus say that you're not supposed to blow your trumpet when you give? Doesn't he say that you should give in such a way that your right hand doesn't know what your left hand is doing and things like that?

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Well, consider the Corinthians. Paul has not hesitated away from describing this group as being very generous to one another.

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There is a place for private giving, there is a place for public giving. Just like there's a place for private prayer,

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Jesus says the same thing about your prayer closet, right? He says when you pray, don't go pray out in the streets to show off, rather pray in private where no one can see you and your

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Father in heaven will reward you. Otherwise, you already have your reward. But that doesn't mean that there's no place for public prayer, we've been praying here publicly.

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He even says, Christ even says, let your light shine before men. So not every good deed is supposed to be a hidden good deed.

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We are not to desire to show off, but we should have some understanding of how our works can bless others in such a way that it is good to disclose what would be helpful to disclose to one another.

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So be sensible about what would be bragging, what would be showing off, and what would genuinely be encouraging to others.

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You know, when Christ said not to sit at the head of the table, but to sit at the end of the table, he didn't say to reject the invitation to the front of the table that comes later, right?

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He said to sit there in order to receive the invitation that comes to the front of the table later. There is a place for allowing your good works to be visible, and there is a place for not showing off.

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So have that in mind as you think through this. And it's important also not to regress, right?

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Not to cease in this deal. If you consider verse four here, it said, otherwise, if some

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Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready, we would be humiliated, say nothing of you, for being so confident.

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So Paul would be humiliated, the Corinthians would be humiliated, and what would be the effect on the Macedonians who have been stirred up?

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If you had been excited about something because you saw somebody else excited about that thing, and then you find out later that they've lost that excitement, it'd make you question whether or not you had a reason to be excited in the first place.

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It would make you question any sort of zeal that you had been stirred up to based on someone else's zeal.

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So it is important to maintain that zeal that we would have for what the

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Lord has called good. There's some other considerations too for how this would, what we would consider about third parties in their good works.

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This is not just you and your brother, but others that you are connected to. Okay, so for example, if you want to stir others up, one way that you can do that is not through your own good works, but through the good works of others and calling those to attention.

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It is good to notice others' good works and to speak to them, to others, about the eagerness of this brother to this sister, et cetera.

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When you, when you, when you're out and about speaking with other

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Christians, you can be on the lookout for those things in order to be able to relay them to others. And this is true for yourself as well.

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One thing that I've started doing when I end up traveling and visiting other churches is

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I often ask about the kinds of things that they are doing in order that I would be more excited about the things of the

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Lord. When I hear of the good things that that church is up to, I am more excited about the good things that we are up to and desire to do those even more.

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So when you are with other Christians, consider asking about the kinds of things that they are up to, especially when you're visiting other churches in order that you might be stirred up.

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Another way that you can do this is with biographies. Those who have long, those who are no longer living anymore, but Christians who have done great things with a great zeal for the

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Lord, read their biographies and that will stir you up as well.

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Because as we have explained before, we have a connection to those in heaven as well. That connection pervades not just the other believers on earth, but even those in heaven.

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God has given us a wonderful gift in his son. He has given us salvation. He has given us an eternal glory.

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He's given us a hope of a resurrection, but he has also given us in this life one of the greatest things that he has given us is one another.

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He explains this in the gospels that those who have left father and mother to seek the kingdom will receive many and more in this life.

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You'll see many more fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, a whole family. And that family is not just the equivalent of a spiritual family providing all the things a spiritual family can provide, but it's a spiritual family providing things that only a spiritual family could provide, including stirring one another up to good works in a way that is established by our spiritual connection in Christ through the

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Holy Spirit. I would encourage you to eagerly, with great zeal, desire the good works of the kingdom of God in order to stir one another up.

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He has put a great power in your hand through the power of the gospel to stir up the idol.

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Do not fail to make use of it, amen. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the great work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

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We thank you for uniting us with him and with each other. We pray that this union between ourselves would not be something that goes to waste, but that you would use it to stir up within our hearts a desire for what is truly good, a love for the good, and a hatred of distractions that would pull us away from such things.