Real Religion for Real People in Real Life

The Thessalonians’ Doctrine and Their Practical Duties

Well, this morning's message is found in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 from the second half of verse 10, so verse 10b through to verse 12. 1 Thessalonians 4, 10b through 12, and I will start reading at verse 1 and read through verse 12 so we get the context, and I'll remind you when we get to verse 10 that we are at the preaching text, and here we're going to see Paul as he has turned from the first few chapters of this letter to the Thessalonians which is the theological basis or the doctrinal basis, if you will, for what follows.

Beginning in chapter 4, he's turned to what we like to call the practical considerations of the theology. Theology matters, the doctrines have a purpose behind them, and the purpose that Paul has here is to remind the Thessalonians that they have duties to do, duties to perform in this world.

As they await for Christ's return, awaiting Christ being the theme of this church for this entire year in the preaching and in the home group studies, awaiting Christ is an activity. We're not just waiting, and the Thessalonians made an error of waiting by passively looking to the clouds as it were, so they might be the first to see him returning on the cloud on which he had left the apostles back in Acts chapter 1.

So as we look to these practical considerations, understand that we're looking at what Paul, what the Apostle by the Word of God would have the church to do as they await Christ's return. This is the practical matter to which we turn this morning.

If you would please stand for the reading of God's Word. Again, I will start at 1 Thessalonians beginning at verse 1. Finally then brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.

For you know what instructions we gave you through our Lord Jesus, that for this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgressed and wronged his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we've told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God who gives his Holy Spirit to you. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you.

Excuse me. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you brothers to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

May God bless the reading, and Lord willing now the proclamation of his Holy Word. Please be seated. Well, it's been quite a year and a half or so, has it not? I mean since March of last year things have been pretty turbulent in our life, and it throughout not just this immediate area, but this state, this country, indeed the world.

We have seen such times as no generation has seen, and there might be no end in sight. Many even speak of the current state of things as the new normal. We've heard that term over and over, the new normal, and if things continue in this new normal, that means that whenever we wake up and hear new headlines, or new news stories on the radio, the new normal means something else is changing, and changing dramatically.

Things are very turbulent. I mean the COVID pandemic has changed all of our lives, and friends and loved ones have suffered. We know those who've died from COVID. We know people who know people who've died from the virus.

Jobs have been lost. People have been displaced. The economy has gone stagnant. Our church life, though, having not lost, I believe, any of its spiritual vitality, the way we do everything, even as I look out now, and there's so few in the pews because many are outside, and some are in their cars, and we're wearing masks.

The way we do worship has changed because of the pandemic. And while the pandemic was raging, George Foster was murdered. I say murdered not to give an opinion on that whole incident, but only in agreement that a jury deliberated and found Officer Chauvin guilty of that crime, and that added a new layer of turbulence and stirred up the pot even more.

And with that furor as a catalyst, these social causes have risen up, and with that, our political parties have grown so far apart that it would seem like the Grand Canyons, but a scratch in a piece of Play-Doh compared to the chasm between our parties these days.

Everything has changed. It's all so turbulent, so stirred up. We have BLM. We have critical race theory. You could be condemned for some past act, no matter how long ago it was, and no matter how foreign it is to how you've acted in the last years, decades even.

Intolerance has suffered gladly, but only in the name of tolerance, as we tolerate you if you believe and espouse all that we do, and not have a syllable out of place. Do we not live in turbulent times?

Times that could stir us up. Times that could make the foundation seem like they're not just shaking, but crumbling around us. There's social justice. There's economic justice. There's environmental justice, and on and on it goes.

And I ask you this morning, have these things stirred you up? Have these shaken you loose from the foundation? The foundation, of course, being Jesus Christ and our faith in him. Have your foundations felt shaken, if not crumbling?

Has the psalmist's question from Psalm 11 been swirling in your thoughts when he says, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? So I ask you, as we look to this text that talks about the stirred-up Thessalonians and Paul's answer to them, I ask you, how have you done this last year or so?

How's your spirit? How's your confidence? Are you steady in Christ? Are you nervous in yourself? Have you forsaken the gathering together of yourselves as is the habit of some? Has brotherly love dissolved when you saw no mask, or when you did see a mask?

The Thessalonians were a church of premier spirituality in many ways, if not maturity. They had gotten themselves stirred up by events though. They got themselves very stirred up by events, and it sort of knocked them off the course, maybe not off the foundation, but off the course that they were to be on as they awaited Christ.

But they're not stirred up by events around them. They were stirred up by a particular event, and it was an event yet to come. They were so concerned about Jesus's return that they abandoned, or at least at risk of abandoning, the duties that they had in this world while Jesus tarried, while Jesus waited for the Father's command to come back.

You see, their excitement at having been converted to Christ made them so excited for the world to come that they ignored the world that was still is. Now, we ought to have some sympathy for them, ought we not?

You or I didn't run to the hills and stare at the clouds, at least I don't think any of you did, and there look for the first cloud that would bring Jesus back and come in the way that he had left. But how many of us allowed the upheavals of the past year or so to distract us from things that are crucial, from following Christ, keeping our focus upon the here and now, that in the Scripture in so many places is so important.

And this is what Paul brings the Thessalonians back to, not to reduce their excitement at being in Christ, not to reduce their hope for his return and for their final salvation, not for any of that, but to make them understand that as they wait, as you wait, we have duties to perform in the here and now.

So the title of this message was real religion for real people in real life. Our religion, our Christianity, our faith in Christ means something in the here and now. Our ultimate hope is not the here and now, it's the then to come.

That's ultimately what we hope in. And yet that hope secures us now as we wait. And this I think is Paul's point to the Thessalonians. Don't stop hoping for Christ, but as you wait, live for him. And he tells them, and he tells us how.

The thought behind much of this is eschatology. It's a word that you've heard. It's the study of last things. And if eschatology means anything at all, it means that our confidence of what the Bible says is our future.

When Jesus returns, that future is a solid hope, and it's a hope which sustains us as we wait for that return. Jesus said clearly that the timing of his return is the concern of God, his Father, and him alone.

And Jesus said to us in Matthew 24, Blessed is that servant whom his master finds so doing. So if eschatology is a study of the end of last things, let's keep it where it belongs, which is last. It's not an unimportant subject, but it comes last.

In the meantime, we have real religion for real people in real life. This is what Paul tells the Thessalonians, and this is what he tells us this morning. So we look to this text, 1 Thessalonians 4, 10b through verse 12, and what we're going to see is in verse 11, we have three instructions, and then in verse 12, we have the reason for them, or the hope for outcome of these three instructions.

All of this is preceded by the first part of verse 10, which is,. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more. This, we urge you to do this, refers most distinctly back to the brotherly love which they showed.

Paul says, I have no need to write to you about. You've been taught by God. Do this more and more. But it also points to our verses this morning. Do more and more these three instructions for the purpose of verse 12.

A man named Rickenback wrote that our faithful performance of everyday duties of life is how we show brotherly love. So show brotherly love more and more as we preached a couple of weeks ago. Yes, we need to do that more and more.

Here's the how. Here's the how. In verse 11, three instructions. Live quietly, mind your own affairs, and then work. In verse 12, so that we might live properly before outsiders. That's the whole message this morning.

We need to look first at these three instructions. Three instructions. Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed, as we instructed you during the three or four weeks Paul was there.

He gave instruction. He gave teaching about these things. Let's look at these and see what they mean to us this today and this morning. Verse 11, and aspire to live quietly. This could be taken as make it your ambition to live quietly.

Doesn't that sound a little odd to your ears? I have an ambition for you that you need to take upon yourself, and the ambition is to not do something. It sounds opposite to us, because an ambition is to accomplish something.

I'm going to gain this skill. I'm going to get this education. I'm going to get this job. I'm going to accomplish this advancement. I have an ambition. An ambition is to do, and here Paul says, have an ambition, have an aspiration, which is to not do something.

Really says, aspire to live quietly. Have this ambition to settle down. That sounds very odd to us, but if all that meant, if you took it so simple, was a silence in an auditory sense, this would be very easy, wouldn't it?

If all he meant was to be quiet, that'd be simple. Turn down that radio. Stop talking so loud, and get rid of that loud Hawaiian shirt, and everything will be fine. You're following the apostle's instruction.

Just pipe down, because you're making too much noise. Well, we have to admit that being a noisy neighbor would be something less than a good testimony of our faith in Jesus Christ, but this means something far deeper than that, much, much more than just not being loud and noisy.

The word behind aspire is a compound in the original language. The word is philo to me 'omai. Philo to me 'omai. Philo means to love. To me 'omai is honor. So what this is saying is to love the honor of something.

Look to this thing as an honorable thing, and love that honor of living quietly. It's an honor that Paul says before us. It's an ambition. It's an aspiration. Those words in your ESV Bible, or if you're using one of the other major translations, I have no objection to them.

They're good. But behind it is love honor. Love the honor of this thing. And another interesting thing that we need to understand about this word in the original, love the honor, it's in a form of the verb called the middle form.

We're not going to go into a long lecture about this, but just very simply, a middle verb means that the subject, which is you or me, the subject acts upon him or herself for your own benefit. There's a benefit to loving this honor, to loving this honor of quietness, to live quietly.

And as you act upon yourself, as you bring the action of the verb upon yourself, you benefit from it. You do it for your own good, for your own benefit. So if this is not just failing to be noisy, if your ambition is not to just have your radio so loud that you bother your neighbors, what is it?

It's a quiet spirit. It's a quiet spirit that is confident in Jesus and certain of his word. It's that spirit that knows that as you follow Jesus's word by faith in him, your house is built on the rock, and the storm comes, and the house survives the storm, as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount.

It's that spirit of quiet confidence in Christ and his word, and especially here in the context of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, the promise of his return. And it is so quiet, and so confident, and so sure, that it's not easily rattled by events, even the kind of events that have been around us the last year and a half.

Matthew Henry, the great Puritan, says here, it is the most desirable thing to have a calm and quiet temper, and to be of a peaceable and quiet behavior. And John Calvin adds to his comments here, a tranquil spirit.

You see, people become frantic about many things. The Thessalonians seem to think that since their destiny was now in heaven, they're no longer of this world, and Christ was coming, and they're so focused on that, that they're acquit of any earthly responsibilities.

And so this is sort of a franticness. This is a frenetic way of living the Christian life, giving up on everything that they had in the here and now, because they thought that the then to come was so imminent.

This has happened before in church history. In the Great Awakening in America, in New England, in the 1730s, Jonathan Edwards, being one of its leading defenders, he noted with some alarm the effect that this new faith had on many converts.

As he and George Whitefield were preaching, and people were coming to Christ, and they were so excited about it, and some of them began to act in some ways that were not in keeping with this gospel. They were not in keeping with the responsibilities of the here and now in this world.

Jonathan Edwards wrote, they seemed to follow their worldly business more as a duty than from any disposition they had to it. The temptation now seemed to be at hand to neglect worldly affairs too much, and to spend too much time in the immediate exercise of religion.

In a word, their religious fervor caused them to check out of the world. Well, Jonathan Edwards had no patience for this, and neither did the Apostle Paul for the Thessalonians, or for us today, if such has been the case for any of us.

Now you might listen to something like I quoted from Jonathan Edwards and say, well isn't that what you want? Don't you want people so excited about Jesus Christ that that's all they think about? That's all they do?

I can't wait to get to church. I must be in church. I must be in prayer with the saints. I must be about religion, and religion, and religion all the time. Wouldn't we want people that excited? Well the answer is, yeah.

Wouldn't it be great if we were all that excited about our faith in Jesus Christ? And yet, just think through in the Sermon on the Mount. Just think through the letters. Just think through what we're having here in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.

It's very important. It is of crucial importance to the Apostles, to Jesus, to the Word of God, to us, to live in this world as we wait for Christ's return. You know, more recently many people followed Harold Camping's advice to sell all and prepare for Jesus to stand on the earth on May 21st, 2011.

Do you remember that? 10 years ago. And then he said also that on October 11th, that same year, the world was going to come to an end. So jobs were quit, homes were sold, families were ruined, and his predictions, Camping's predictions, were turned into action.

Well 10 years later, here we are, along with those who shipwrecked their earthly life because of something Jesus said is not our concern. Meaning the timing of his return, not the fact of his return, the timing of it.

I would argue that this is not the quiet, confident spirit that's not easily stirred, that the Apostle Paul tells us to have. Make it your aspiration. Make it your goal. Love the honor of living quietly.

It's the inner man. It's that quiet, not stoic, but that quiet confidence in Jesus Christ that all things are done according to his will. And that as we live this life, worshiping him, and praising him, and waiting for his return, we live this life in a way that is practical.

As a way, in a way that, as we'll see in a few moments, keeps food on the table. We're not done living in this world. We're done living for this world. We're done living for ourselves, but we are still here.

You know, in this last year and a half, many have become frantic about things, not about what is to come, but what did come. I'll throw out some examples to you. I've been thinking about these for a while.

Masks. I ask, have you failed in brotherly love over masks? If so, would that be that quiet spirit, that confidence that Jesus Christ would have? Is that showing the brotherly love that Paul says, show more and more?

I mean, whether you insist on that they work and should be worn, or that they infringe on your freedom, and they don't follow the science, whichever side you're on, has brotherly love prevailed more and more, or less and less, in whichever way?

Has this quiet spirit, has this loving the honor of this living quietly, this inner man that is quiet and confidence been your guide? Black Lives Matter, BLM, wherever you stand on the goals or the legitimacy of the movement, the same questions impose upon us as a church.

Do you fear the foundations will be destroyed, never be raised again, or can you find some measure of empathy with those who finally found a voice, or think they found a voice, or for whatever reason are attracted to this and find there something that speaks to their experience?

Can you find some sympathy, some empathy for that brother or sister? Can brotherly love prevail over your own particular opinions or feelings about it? Churches are blown up over these things. A large, well-established church where I live in Fremont, has kind of come unglued, because immediately after this social movement raised up, the pastor started preaching about it, basically looked at people and said, you need to repent of your social injustice, of your racism, of your not caring, having no idea if that person who is looking at actually committed any of these things.

Does brotherly love prevail? Is this living the way that Paul would have us to live as we wait for Christ's return? I argue that these things where they've caused a break or a breach in brotherly love is the opposite of aspiring to live quietly.

The opposite of loving the honor of that is joining the Israelites who, when they were crossing the Red Sea, saw the Egyptians, or before they crossed the Red Sea, saw the Egyptians pursuing in their chariots and became frantic, and then God quietly through Moses parted the sea and they went on dry land.

It's joining Elisha's servant who frantically saw only the surrounding Syrians until God opened his eyes and he saw the chariots and the horsemen of Israel all around his master Elisha. It's to join the frantic disciples in the boat, swamped, fearing that they'd be swamped by the storm until Jesus stood up and said to the swathes and to them and to us, peace, be still.

You see the fact of Jesus's return magnifies our duties in this life, and it gives us a solid foundation for finding perspective for all the things going on around us, even a year as stirred up as we've had, even a year that might be as stirred up as the one to come.

God only knows, but I do know that the quiet confident spirit is not easily shaken by these things and keeps its eyes on the goal, which is to continue to live for Christ, continue to grow into his image, continue to worship him, continue to spread his gospel.

That's the quiet confident spirit. That's the ambition we must have. That takes study, that takes practice, that's hard work, and that takes faith. So he says to make this your ambition, to love this honor of living quietly, and next he says to mind your own affairs, like aspiring to live quietly.

You know there's a level where we can take this very, very simple. Mind your own business. When we were kids we used to say mind your own beeswax. Just pay attention to your own stuff. Don't be a busybody like those young widows in 1 Timothy 5 .13, the ones who are not only idlers but also gossips and busybodies saying what they should not.

If only it were that simple. If only I could stand here and tell you, you know, when you look to other people's houses, you're doing wrong. Look to your own stuff. Don't butt into other people's affairs and you'll be better.

Give you three simple steps. Monday morning you could practice these spiritual exercises, and all of a sudden you'll be only concerned for yourself. Oh, if only it were that simple. The first clause says something like, and perform one's own.

Perform one's own on a regular and continuous basis. Do your own thing. I don't know if any of you remember the song the Isley Brothers many, many years ago, but they had that song with the refrain, it's your thing.

Do what you want to do. I can't tell you who to sock it to. Well that's an old, old phrase. We used to sock it to you. Anybody remember that? Yeah, I can. Okay, we're all in that same demographic. Yeah, that's an old one, but you get the point.

It's not that simple. They meant do your thing, whatever it might be. Paul means do your thing in God's providence, which is yours to do. One's own. It translates the word idios. Has nothing to do with idiot.

Idios means one's own. That which pertains to oneself is used out, is used to point out particular and distinct concerns. So Ephesians 5 .22, I'm just going to bring this one example to you. In Ephesians 5 .22, wives are told to submit to their own husbands.

Wives, submit to your own husbands. Notice it says to your own husbands. That's this word idios. Not just submit to your husband, to your own husband. Very particular, very distinct concern. Now why is he using that word here?

Well, because just before Ephesians 5 .22, at the end of chapter 4 of Ephesians, he said we're to be found submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord. So we all owe each other a certain brand of submission, but a wife owes her husband a different brand of submission.

It's her own concern to be to be submissive to that one man. So my wife owes me a kind of submission that she owes no one else. She doesn't owe it to you. I owe you submission. You owe me a submission.

You owe each other submission, but your wife, a wife to a husband, it's her own. It's this word that Paul uses to do one's own. Mind your own affairs. You see, you have affairs that are yours in a way that are no one else's, and that cuts the other direction as well.

Other people's affairs are theirs and not yours. We might both have houses to care for, but my house is my own affair in a way that yours is not. Two housewives have similar duties, but Mary Beth is her own in a way that Cindy Pindy's is not.

Now this doesn't contradict what Paul said in Philippians 2 -4 where he wrote, let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. There's no license here to ignore the needs of others, but the affairs of others.

It's not wheedling into somebody else's business. Their needs though are Christ's business, and therefore our business. A very different thing here between their affairs and their needs. Now we can't ignore their needs because to do that would make nonsense out of the earlier commendation of their brotherly love, which was most likely seen in their generosity to all the saints throughout Macedonia.

He's telling the Thessalonians to get back into the real world. If anything has gone on this year has pushed you out of the real world, then this is a call back to it, and if you've been steady and steadfast in Christ and look to his word throughout this time, stay there.

Stay there because that's the right place to be. So mind your own affairs. Look to your own house first, and that's one level of meaning here, but I want to add something else to it for you. Idios, one's own, in the original is in the plural.

It's in the plural. Now this could be a collective singular. Each of you, all of you, attend to your own individual affairs. So he's speaking to the whole church and saying all of you, plural, attend to your own singular affairs.

Or it could be, and I have to admit this is just me, but I think it's a fair analysis of the grammar that we have, and I think it makes good sense of the passage. Otherwise I wouldn't preach it to you, of course, but I think it could be all of you together as a church mind the business of the church.

That could explain why that word, your own, is in the plural. You see the church waits for Jesus's return. That is crucially important. Our hope is in his return. Our hope is in the salvation we will know when he calls us to himself.

He calls all men out of the graves to the resurrection, some to life, some to condemnation. That is our great and ultimate and sustaining hope, and that's a hope for the church, for you as individuals, but for us as a body, and as we live in this world, as we carry on our duties in this world, we as a body, we as a church here, we do have affairs to attend to.

Consider these things in the context of this being a plural and written to the church, to the church's affairs. Mind to the business that we have together as a singular body, together all of us for the church.

We have Christ glorifying and God honoring worship to engage. That's your business. That's your own affair as a Christian, and ours together with you. We have brothers and sisters to exhort and encourage as we grow together into Christ, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

That's your own affair too, and as a church that's our own affair. We have mercy ministries. Every other Saturday we make food available to the needy. That's your affair as a church. We have prayer meetings where we seek the Lord for all of us, and also for those among us who especially need to be at the throne of grace, and to hear us pray for them for particular things, and that's your own affair as much as anything.

You see, the Thessalonians were distracted from these sorts of things by their expectation that Jesus was coming tomorrow, so they were abandoning these things. I would ask you, I'd ask all of us this morning, what distracts you?

What drives you away from minding the affairs that God has given you to mind? Oh, in the most distinct and particular sense, we could say that's my business, not excluding others from help and advice.

So I go to work. I put food on the table for my family, and these sorts of things, and that's my business. That's my affair, but it's also us together as a body being steady, not ignoring what's going on around us, but not being distracted from the great goal of together growing up into the image of Christ, not being thrown off that path.

I mean, wouldn't it be easier if all Paul meant was to mind your own business? We did mean that, but so much more, so much more than just not being the busy body of 1st Timothy chapter 5. The Thessalonians error was their misguided hope that Jesus would return before their unemployment ran out and led them to disavow all the worldly responsibilities.

So stop staring at the clouds and get your jobs back, but he also meant for us as a body to attend to the affairs that as a church body, constituted by our common faith in Jesus Christ, are our own to mind together as a body.

So your ambition is to live quietly, aspire to have this quiet, confident spirit that's not easily knocked off your foundations, mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands. Work with your hands as we instructed you.

Now certainly working with your hands doesn't give you time to mind affairs that are not your own. That's one very quick and practical application of this, and certainly when he says work with your hands, he does not mean that only manual labor is acceptable.

I mean Thessalonica was a commercial port, and many of the church members must have worked on the docks. We'd call them longshoremen today. There were craftsmen among them, there were housewives, there were accountants, there were poets, there were teachers, as here where we run the gamut from mid-level bureaucrat to engineer to blue collar, and so forth.

And the idea here is simply work. Work and be productive. You're still in this world, and we're not on the hilltops looking up to the skies to be the first to see Christ come back. We hope for that, and we expect that, and we actually in a sense live for that, but in the meantime, as Jesus said in Matthew 24, blessed is that servant whom his master finds so doing, so work and be productive.

We'll talk about work a little bit. We need to think about work, and what he says here, work with your hands. What does that have to do with good religion? Real religion for real people in real life? What does work have to do with religion?

Colossians 3 .23 says, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. You see, work is both duty and blessing. It's duty because the Lord made you to work. It's your duty as a bearer of the image of God to work.

Genesis 1 .26 says that man created, God created man to have dominion over the earth, and then Genesis 2 .15 says the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Work is a blessing.

Well, it's a duty because God made you to work. It's a blessing because by diligent labor we're able to provide for our needs, so the food on our table comes from the work of our hands. The fact that there's food to purchase from the labors that we engage, the fact that our hands have the abilities that gained us the employment that put the food on the table, all this is God's intended blessing of work.

So your body receives the replenishment while God gets all the glory and the thanksgiving for it. Now there's a reason that in the second letter of Thessalonians in chapter 3 and verse 10, Paul's going to say in a very severe way, if anyone is not willing to work let him not eat.

Work is very important as we wait for Christ. Now he's writing that about those who are able but unwilling to work. He's not speaking about the infirm, he's not speaking about the aged who are objects of charity and benevolence, and rightly so, and blessedly so, but we can ask why is Paul so severe here?

He says while you're waiting for Christ in 1st Thessalonians chapter 4 you're to work, and 2nd Thessalonians he emphasizes and says if you don't work you're not going to eat. Well it's because to not work productively and diligently is to deny God's purposes in making man.

It's to deny the image of God in you, it's to deny what it says in Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 that God made us to work, not to toil, that's from the curse, but to work and imbibe the blessing of being able to provide for our needs through diligent labor.

That's part of the image of God within, and that's why Paul is so severe when he says if anyone's not willing to work let him not eat. Work is something that most of the world does, so in that sense we're not that different.