I. Request for Prayer
A. 3:1-2: The last thing Paul tells his audience to do is to:
a. “pray for us” – He asks them to pray for two things.
b. “that the Lord’s message will spread rapidly and be honored wherever it goes” – Paul uses vivid terms to describe the advance of God’s word. The term “spread rapidly” literally means to = “run ahead.” He wants us to envision the word of God as a runner, sprinting ahead. We see the same imagery in the Old Testament. Psalm 147:15 says, “He sends forth His command to the earth; His word runs very swiftly.”
c. “honoring it wherever it goes” – He wants God’s word to spread rapidly with the result of people honoring it wherever it goes. He wanted the Thessalonian believers to pray that the message of Christ would have a good reception when people hear it. He wants people to come to know Jesus Christ by hearing the Good News of his death and resurrection. Now, some might say,
1. “Why are some Christians so zealous to tell people about their faith?” “Why do they feel like it is there responsibility to convert people? I mean, I’m glad that they are happy with their faith and that their lives have changed because of their religion, but that’s just not for me.” I guess my first response would be,
a. If you just experienced something that changed your life, you are going to tell people about it. The book of Mark records a fascinating story of a man whom Jesus healed of leprosy. A man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed. “If you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean,” he said. There’s a lot going on in this one statement. This man comes to Jesus with a humble attitude. He kneels before Jesus and begs him to be healed. He doesn’t demand. He says, “If you are willing…” He also acknowledges that Jesus has the power to heal. He says, “You can heal me.” He must’ve heard or even seen what Jesus could do. This man was not only fighting an infectious disease, he facing social stigma. In ancient Israel, if someone had leprosy, they were cut off from society. They were considered ceremonially unclean, which meant they were unable to participate in the worship of God. That’s why he says, “[you can] make me clean.”
Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” This is astonishing. He didn’t say anything to this man. He touched him. I’m sure the crowd gasped when Jesus did this. Can you imagine how this man must’ve felt? This might’ve been the first time anyone had touched him in months or years.
Instantly the leprosy disappeared, and the man was healed. This man’s life changed at that moment. His life was changed economically. People with leprosy were poor. No one would get near them, so they couldn’t work. His life changed socially. He was an outcast. It’s likely his own family did not want to get near him. His life was changed spiritually. His condition cut off from participating in the life of worship in Israel.
Then Jesus sent him on his way with a stern warning: “Don’t tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priest and let him examine you…This will be a public testimony that you have been cleansed.” But the man went and spread the word, proclaiming to everyone what had happened. As a result, large crowds soon surrounded Jesus, and he couldn’t publicly enter a town anywhere. He had to stay out in the secluded places, but people from everywhere kept coming to him. Jesus sternly warned the man not to tell anyone, but the man couldn’t help himself. The man went and “spread the word, proclaimed to everyone what happened.” Jesus’ popularity grew so much that he couldn’t enter a town publicly. He had to sneak into town like a celebrity and stay in secluded places outside of town. But that didn’t deter people.
Like this man, most of the people in this room have had their lives completely changed because Jesus. They’ve been freed from addictions, they’ve experienced healing from past abuse, they’ve gained mental stability, they’ve found purpose and meaning; and most of all, Jesus made it possible for them to come into God’s presence. You can have that too. Placing your faith in Jesus takes away your moral guilt. He died to forgive you and for you to know God.
b. “we will be rescued from wicked and evil people” – In other words, he asks them to pray God would deliver him from persecution.
Paul constantly faced persecution. As you read through the book of Acts, it seems as if Paul almost welcomed persecution because it happened so much. But passages like this tell us that Paul wasn’t looking for trouble when he entered a city. In fact, he prayed that God would deliver him from persecution. But he also understood it was price he had to pay in order to share the Good News about Jesus Christ.
Passages like this suggest we should pray we wouldn’t have to face persecution, but not shrink back if we have to.
Paul turns from his prayer request of them, to his confidence about them. In verse 3 and 4, he says:
c. 3:3-4: Paul expresses his confidence in the Thessalonian. He saw all their problems and deficiencies, but he also saw their potential. He never lost his vision for what God could do in and through them. So he prays that God would continue to reveal his love for them (3:5).
I. The Unruly
A. 3:6:
a. “tradition” – The word tradition can be a bit misleading. When you hear tradition, it makes you think about rituals and church traditions that are not in the Bible. The New Living Translation translates this “teaching (NLT).” Now, what he taught them was that they should not live an:
b. “unruly life” – The word “unruly,” doesn’t really capture the meaning of this Greek word literally means = “disorderly,” “undisciplined.” It basically describes someone who is resistant to work or who is lazy. This was a persistent problem in Thessalonica. Paul made a passing mention of it in 1 Thessalonians 5. Apparently, it got worse since he wrote his first letter. Now, Scripture has a lot to say about this in the book of Proverbs. The writer of proverbs calls the habitually lazy person:
B. The Sluggard: Some translations of the Bible use the word “sloth” in place of sluggard, and for good reason. Show pic. Sloths move only when it’s necessary. Even when they begin to move, you won’t find a sloth breaking any land-speed records. Sloths move at a rate of 10 feet per minute. For the sloth, living is about conserving energy.
Sloths have the lowest metabolic rate of any mammal, which means that it takes them a long time to digest anything. It takes a sloth 30 days to digest a leaf.
Unlike most mammals, sloths have sacrificed the ability to control their body temperature to save energy. Instead, they’re completely reliant on their environment to maintain their core temperature. If they get too cold, the microbes that live in their stomachs will die. Therefore, sloths can starve on a full stomach.
It turns out, sloths are anatomically incapable of climbing down trees. My close friend spent a good part of her childhood living in the Amazon jungle of Brazil. Like any good Amazonian, she owned a pet sloth. Each day, she and her brother would watch their pet sloth inch its way up a 15-foot tree in their backyard. It took most of the day for it to reach the canopy. The sloth would fill its stomach and then, instead of starting its descent, it would just let go.
From time to time, they would hear a crash coming from their backyard. They would look out their window and see their sloth lying on the concrete patio beneath the tree.
The first time they heard a crash, they ran outside to see what happened. Tears rolled down their cheeks as they stood over their motionless sloth. But two minutes later, it reanimated and slowly climbed back up the tree.
On average, a sloth will fall out of a tree once a week for its entire life. They can plummet from over 100 feet without injury.
Like the sloth, many sluggards calculate effort using a suffering-to-exertion ratio. They ask themselves, "How much suffering am I willing to endure, before I exert some effort?"
a. Inactivity: Sluggards never get enough rest. Old Testament scholar, Derek Kidner, says, “He’s more than anchored to his bed, he is hinged to it.” The writer of proverbs observes, “As a door swings back and forth on its hinges, so the lazy person turns over in bed.” (Proverbs 26:14, NLT). If you see a sluggard lying in bed, you’re observing him in his natural habitat. He stirs as if to get up, but he’s just turning over to hit the snooze on his alarm.
Proverbs 6:9-10 describes the outcome of chronic inactivity, “How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep… A little slumber… A little folding of the hands to rest… And poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.”
b. Depression. Excessive sleep and chronic fatigue often point to depression. But in the sluggard’s case, it’s the reverse. His depression stems from excessive sleep and chronic laziness.
Do you ever wonder what thoughts swim around in the sluggard’s head as he lays on the couch? The wise person tells us, “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied” (Proverbs 13:4). The sluggard lusts after things he doesn’t have. He lives in an imaginary world. No wonder, you find most sluggards connected to a video game console or grappling with pornography addiction.
Although sluggards thirst for the things they want, they “get nothing.” Depression eats away at them. And over time, it destroys their life. “The sluggard’s craving will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work. All day long he craves for more…” (Proverbs 21:25-26). Sluggards daydream about the kind of life they want instead of working for it. You’ll see them gesticulating with excitement as they describe some grandiose plan that will make them successful. But it never happens. It just ends up in the bin of ideas that never get accomplished.
c. Financial Difficulty. Laziness can inflict the sluggard with more than just depression. It can ruin him financially.
Proverbs places the sluggard and the diligent side by side to highlight two different outcomes. Proverbs 10:4 states, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” Whereas Proverbs 14:23 says, “Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty.”
The sluggard’s bills pile up as she lounges around the house. When you ask her when she plans to pay her portion of the bills, she barely looks up from the screen to tell you “Don’t worry, I’ll get it to you” as if you were interrupting something important.
1. Of course, the wise person isn’t suggesting that all poverty stems from laziness. The wise person sees that injustice and corruption sweep away what little the poor have. But living a life of laziness will lead to poverty.
d. Lying Excuses. The sluggard’s mouth pours out excuses: “The check should be coming in the mail today,” “Work messed up my direct deposit,” “I’ve been really busy, I’ll get it to you tomorrow.” The sluggard shows unlimited creativity when it comes to fabricating excuses. Proverbs 26:13 furnishes us with one, “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets!’” To put it in our terms, when you ask a sluggard, “Why aren’t you putting out applications for a job?” they say, “Didn’t you hear? A ferocious snow leopard escaped from the zoo. I’m not going out there!” People who are good at giving excuses are rarely good at doing anything else.
1. Sluggards put off the appearance of busyness even though they never get anything done. They spring to action when their boss walks into the backroom and pretend as if they’ve been working the whole time. But as soon as the boss leaves the room, they resume their inactivity.
e. Arrogance. Sluggards vaunt themselves as experts of any topic of conversation. They can’t resist asserting their opinions. Proverbs 26:16 says, “Lazy people consider themselves smarter than seven wise counselors” (NLT). That’s how sluggards justify doing less. They convince themselves that they’re smarter. That’s why they don’t have to try as hard. Warren Wiersbe describes the sluggard’s hubris: He lives in a fantasy world that prevents him from being a useful part of the real world, but he can tell everybody else what to do. He’s never succeeded at anything in his own life, but he can tell others how to succeed.
f. Lacks follow-through. Sluggards are quick to sign up for something, but slow to get started. They’re always putting things off until the last minute. People constantly have to remind them of approaching deadlines.
On the rare occasion a sluggard exerts some effort to begin a task, the task proves too much. Solomon says: “The sluggard plunges his hand in the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth” (Proverbs 26:15, NET). Can you imagine someone raising a spoonful of soup, but failing to cover the distance from the bowl to his or her mouth?
Sluggards leave behind unfinished construction sites, half-written papers for school and a mess for others to clean. They never finish things because they underestimate how much time it will take. And they overestimate their ability to get it done.
g. Mental Laziness. There are really two categories of mental laziness.
1. The vacuous mind – This person can hold down a full-time job or pass classes, but they’re mindless or lacking thought. They don’t spend time thinking about people. They don’t reflect. They don’t take the time to think carefully about decisions. Instead, they fill their minds with content from YouTube, TikTok and TV series on their subscription services that keep them spell bound for hours.
What a contrast to the mental sharpness God describes in Hebrews 10:24: Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.
2. The content consumer – This person never gives their mind a break. They’re stuffing it full of stuff. They’re listening to a podcast while we mow the lawn, they’re listening to an audiobook while we do the dishes, they’re reading a book while we eat lunch. They never give their minds time to breathe and to process the information they’re consuming.
Back in the day, I used to do some video editing. The final step in the process was rendering the video. This final step stitched together, the audio, video, subtitles and transitions. Sometimes, this would take 8 hours. And you couldn’t use your laptop or computer because your CPU was at 100% usage. Show pic. Some of us are running at 100% brain processing power because of all the content we are consuming.
• Unless we unintentionally disconnect and reflect, we will go through cycles of functioning and falling apart. And we will have to face whatever is bothering us, or whatever is wrong with us at the most inconvenient times. You may outrun how you’re feeling, until they catch up to you on your next vacation and ruin it. So take the time to mediate, reflect, and think.
3. The fruitless Bible reader. In Proverbs 2:1-5, Solomon says, “My child, listen to what I say, and treasure my commands. 2 Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding. 3 Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding. 4 Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures. 5 Then you will understand what it means to fear the LORD, and you will gain knowledge of God. Mining is hard work. Mining requires digging and looking carefully. It’s the same if you want to get something out of your personal time with God. You cannot merely glance at the the word or read it. You must meditate on what it says and ponder it’s meaning.
R.A Torrey: The reason why many get so little out of their Bible reading is simply because they are not willing to think. Intellectual laziness lies at the bottom of a large percent of fruitless Bible reading…What many want is some method of Bible study by which they can get all the good out of the Bible without work. If someone could tell lazy Christians some method of Bible study by which they could put the sleepiest ten minutes of the day into Bible study, and still get the something out of it that would be just what they desire. But it can’t be done. People must be willing to work – and to work hard – if they want to dig out the treasures of infinite wisdom and knowledge God has stored up in His Word.
C. 3:7-8: Paul was bi-vocational. He worked making tents and selling them in the market by day and did his Christian work at night.
D. 3:9-10:
a. “the right” – Paul had the right to receive financial support from the Thessalonians. In 1 Corinthian 9:14, Paul says: So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel. So Paul was entitled to support from the Thessalonians, but he quickly found out that there was a problem of laziness in this group. So he decided to work, in part, to be a good example to them. He even gave the Thessalonians this instruction:
b. “if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either” – “If we can’t force people out of this way of life, we’ll starve them out of it.” He was telling them, one way to encourage them to work is not to give them money or food. That’ll give them motivation to go out and find a job.
E. 3:11-12:
a. “to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread” – Part of the reason why their laziness was such a big deal is because they were taking from other believers in God’s community, that’s why Paul tells them to “work in a quiet fashion and eat their own bread.”
Now, that may not seem like such a big deal to us in our modern-day America. But in the ancient world, many people were stricken with abject poverty. So some of the people in Thessalonica were leeching off of other people in God’s community even though they were probably poor.
F. 3:13-16: In extreme cases, where someone is not working and manipulating God’s community and taking from those who are themselves impoverished.
Paul says they cannot be part of Christian community. This would be similar to a mother telling her 35-year-old son, who refuses to work and eats all of her food and doesn’t pay rent, to move out and cutting of her financial support of him.
a. “so that he will be put to shame” – Our culture would say that shaming someone is one of the worst things you can do. I would agree, shaming someone by humiliating them or degrading people is wrong. And it doesn’t lead to change. But shame can also be defined as def. distress caused by the consciousness of wrong. It’s clear Paul has something like this in mind when he says,
b. “do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother” – Paul is trying to set the tone for the Thessalonians. What he’s talking about here is something we do for the person’s own good. The goal is to win this person over. Finally, Paul ends the letter with (3:17-18)