Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. We’ll read verses 1-8. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word.

Furthermore, then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God, so you would abound more and more. For you know what commandment we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not of the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles, which know not God, that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter because that the Lord is the avenger of all such as we also have forewarned you and testified.

For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. He therefore that despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy spirit.

May be seated. This time the younger children may go to their classrooms. Their parents desire that of them.

Looking at this banner here—”He has risen”—and then the banner of the spirit over here, it’s a good picture to keep in our minds what we’ve been talking about the last few weeks in terms of sanctification. God’s causing us to grow in grace and holiness. He has given us his Holy Spirit to lead us in that walk. He calls us to mortify, to put to death those parts of us, those parts of our activities or actions that are sinful. And instead to see ourselves be using everything that God has given to us—all the talents, attributes, etc.—in a risen fashion. And in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, sanctification is seen in that two-fold process: putting to death the sinful passions and the enlivening of what God has called us to do correctly by his word.

Now this passage in Thessalonians we just read is the beginning of a section where there’s a lot of commands given in these last two chapters of the book. He began by saying this is the will of God—that you walk pleasing to him, that you become increasingly sanctified, progressively in your life. And then he begins to give a series of very specific instructions to that end.

Last week we talked about where he began—where the apostle, and where God begins with us as we study this book—and that is in terms of the initiation, the origins of the family, the marital relationship, the physical relationship in marriage. And we talked about how that should be seen as holy unto the Lord, differentiated from the pagans certainly by an absence of moral sin in our lives and between husband and wife as well. But more than that, that we should in that area of our lives as well see that this is a sanctified area, that is holiness unto God, and is a delightful thing that he has given to us.

I mentioned that evaluation is part of sanctification. I mentioned this sheet I have from an old book where a man wrote to his eldest sister, because her parents had died, tried to give her companionship of the faith, and then gave her questions by which she would evaluate herself. And I said we’d read some of these every Lord’s Day for a while. Here are some of the questions that he encouraged her to think on for Saturday evening in preparation for the Sabbath at the end of the week:

How has my heart improved by the last Sabbath? How have I since improved the impressions I then received? What vows did I then make and how have I performed them? What progress have I made in the divine life?

That’d be a good thing for us to meditate upon Saturday evenings—to think back to the beginning of the week. What impressions did God give us in the service, through the sermon, through the worship itself, through the communion service, and interaction with one another on the Lord’s Day? How did we improve upon that knowledge? Think it through, develop it to fuller sense in our lives, add to our knowledge, add to our obedience.

Did we make any vows, commitments to God to reform any particular part of our lives in relationship to the preached word the last Sabbath day? And then how did we perform those vows? And how then did we progress in that particular area in our Christian life?

This is a useful tool to use at the end of the week in preparation for the coming Sabbath. I encourage you to make use of it.

Now I’m going to have to spend a little bit of time, like I did last week, on what can be seen as one of the problems in this text. I believe that the apostle here goes on from the matter of sexual relationships primarily within the marriage context itself and now moves into the area of business affairs. And so he addresses the first two large items of sanctification: being the family, the establishment of the family, the marital relationship within marriage, the physical relationship, and then our relationship in terms of business.

But I’ve got to spend just a little bit of time making that point. And that’s the first point of our outline: that holiness in business relations has a primary role in biblical sanctification.

Verse 6 of 1 Thessalonians 4 says that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter. Some of you—I mentioned last week—the NIV I think actually translates this. I’m not sure, but I think it says “defraud his brother in a sexual matter” and refers this back to the verse previous to it, to say this is talking about adultery and defrauding our Christian brother, mother of his conjugal rights with his wife. I don’t think that’s correct for lots of reasons. I can’t get into all of them because of the shortness of time. But I do just want to give you a couple of points.

First of all, the term “defraud”—in this verse, “that no one go beyond”—to go beyond is to reach past, to stretch out and to reach, grasp for something. And as a result defraud is brother. The term for defraud is usually, almost invariably, found in a financial sense in the scriptures. This particular form of the word is only found in four occurrences in scripture—one here and two others in 2 Corinthians 12:17 and 18.

We read there Paul defending himself to the Corinthians. He said, “Did I make a gain of you by any of them whom I sent unto you?” And then the next verse: “I desired Titus, and with him I sent a brother. Did Titus make a gain of you? Walk not of the same spirit.” I think what Paul is saying is we didn’t profit financially by our coming to you.

The term is used in that sense almost invariably. The term “in any matter”—the Greek word is *pragma*, which comes from the word *pro*, which relates to things or matters. The word *pro* can mean anything specifically, but for instance it’s used in Luke 3:13 to talk about the exacting of money by the publicans when John refers to them when they come to be baptized. So again it’s used in a financial sense.

*Pragma* when it’s used in the plural sense—although here it’s used individually—but is a common Greek term of financial affairs, was used almost exclusively in that way in the Greek itself. Now in the scriptures *pragma* can be used also to talk about matters or things in general. But I think that the financial overtones to both of those two words produces a lot of motivation for us to believe that he’s talking about business relationships.

And then of course, if you believe—as we taught last week—that the previous verse speaks primarily to the marital relationship itself, certainly to a husband or wife to approach the sexual relationship outside of the prescriptions of God’s law doesn’t result in the defrauding of a brother someplace else. It rather results in the defrauding of the wife or the husband within the relationship. So I don’t think there’s any reason to assume it relates back to verse 5.

I think he instead goes to a second phrase to define what our sanctification consists of. He says you should be sanctified. You shouldn’t engage in fornication. And then he gives two specific things in which this applies. One is sexual relations primarily within marriage, and the second is in terms of business relationships.

There’s many people that believe this interpretation: Tyndale, Wycliffe, Beza, Calvin, Zwingli, Grotius, and many more.

So I think what’s going on here is that God is calling us to engage in honesty and fairness in dealings—business dealings particularly—and a concern for the profit and well-being of others in those affairs. In other words, you want to watch out for your brother that you don’t defraud him.

It’s interesting that two of the outstanding vices commonly seen historically with pagan societies have to do with lust and greed. I was watching some TV show the other day, and after I’d done the studying they mentioned, “Well, maybe the bad motivation that we see evidenced here was lust, could have been greed. I’m not sure.” Focus on those same two again. And I think that’s what’s going on here.

There are some verses—and I won’t read them all—but I’ve got some verses listed: Malachi 3:5, 1 Corinthians 5:10, and Ephesians 5:5 that correlate sexual sin and economic sin.

For instance, in 1 Corinthians 5:10, he says that he’s telling them to stand aside and not to associate with certain people. And he says, “Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, nor with the covetous or extortioners or with idolators.”

Ephesians 5:5: “For this ye know that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolator.”

So sexual and commercial or business sins are placed side by side in many places in scripture. And so I think that’s what’s going on here. And this tells us that business relationships—covetousness, greed, avarice, and defrauding our brother—are a matter of great importance to avoid in terms of our sanctification and our walk of grace.

Interestingly, the commentator Moffett, although he thinks it speaks of sexual morality here, says that the terms used are terms of trade and business and he sees as a metaphor back to the sexual sin. Well, there’s no reason to see it as a metaphor. The plain meaning is that it is economic terms.

Why do people avoid this interpretation though—people like Moffett and others? Well, I think part of the reason that became clear to me as I was reading various commentators on this passage is that in general, business sin is not perceived in the Christian church—has not been for the last hundred years—as anywhere near as serious a matter as sexual sin. You know, sexual sin, it’s one of the biggies. But if a man uses illicit business practices, isn’t truthful in his advertising, etc., that isn’t such a big deal to churches.

But we are called to be a reformed church, continue reforming. And God says here, in other places, that this is a big area of our sanctification. And it’s very important to see that God calls us to holiness in this area. And that violation of this is a grievous sin before God, as we’ll see developed as we go through the talk.

God using the instrumentality of Paul through this epistle—first to the Thessalonians and then to us—notes in this practical section how to apply the faith in such a manner as to be a holy people. And he begins with the family. And then he moves to business. Two areas which most every day of our lives focus around. Two of the central areas of our lives: family and business. Certainly we’ll see relationships to the church spoken of a little bit, but nonetheless these basic two productive areas of our lives—family and business—are to be seen as holiness to the Lord.

Now turn, if you will, to Hebrews 13, and I’ll show you where this is again repeated. And I guess I’m belaboring the point a bit, but I want you to understand the importance of this area of our lives in our walk in terms of sanctification.

Hebrews 13, verse 1: “Let brotherly love continue.”

And now we’re going to go on to brotherly love next week in this series, because the next verse in Thessalonians—verse 9—talks about brotherly love. So he says be sanctified in Thessalonians, and he says in terms of sexual matters, business matters, and then brotherly love.

Hebrews 13:1 begins a series of short exhortations in the command section of the book, akin to what we’re doing in Thessalonians. And it begins in verse one by saying, “Let brotherly love continue.” Verses 2 and 3 gives us examples of brotherly love. And then verse four goes to the marriage relationship: “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” We spoke to that verse last week.

And then the next verse of Hebrews 13 in these practical instructions to sanctification—brotherly love, marriage relationship. And then verse 5: “Let your conversation or walk be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have. For he has said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee, so that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper. I will not fear what man shall do to me.”

So he says don’t be covetous. Watch it in terms of business relationships with people as brothers, as well as those outside of the church. And so it correlates to this.

We will go a long way toward reconstructing our world if we see our average work-a-day world as being within the bounds of the temple—thus not profane, which means literally outside of the temple—but rather holy. If we on our entrance to our workplaces have inscribed in our minds, at least, “Holiness to the Lord”—we talked last week that should be essentially in our minds in terms of the bed, in terms of our marriage relationship. You can almost think about that as a headboard for your bed. And I’m suggesting that into our workplaces as well. When we walk into those workplaces, we should see inscribed upon it, “Holiness to the Lord.”

After all, the horse from the book of Zechariah that we talked about a couple of weeks ago—the bells of the horse—the horse was among other things a means of business and enterprise. And so when God says the horse’s bells will be seen as “Holiness to the Lord,” it refers to the business relationship as well.

It’s a tremendous sin of the modern church—seeing only clerical callings as being truly holy unto the Lord. The Puritan concept, the Reformation concept, the vocational calling: that every occupational calling that is legitimate in terms of God’s word is a holy calling before God—is one that must be recaptured in the church today. And this verse is critical to doing that.

I’ve been at churches or graduation classes—some of high school seniors, for instance. The ones that are going into the mission field or Bible school, something like that—there’s a special service for those kids. They come forward, they’re consecrated for the task. The rest of the kids, they never admit this, but essentially what the child picks up is, “I’ve entered a second-class vocational calling here. I didn’t make it into the mission field of the pastor or whatever. I’m not as good.”

I think to correct this, we ought to, for a while in America today, have consecration services for high school seniors and others coming out of college—explicitly for those who are going into the workplace, who are going into the mill, the factory, the corporation—that we consecrate them and help them to see that indeed they’re entering into a holy calling before God, that this is a vital area of their Christian walk.

Now, Paul turns to God’s laws to teach the Thessalonians where their sanctification would come from. We turn to God’s law now for a brief consideration of how holiness in business relations is defined.

So it is—now we’ll turn now to the second part of the outline: The content of holiness we’re speaking of, that is so vital, is defined by God’s law.

Obviously we could go to the Ten Commandments—Exodus 20:13 and following: “Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness”—and certainly that has relationship to the judicial system, but as well to economic systems. In verse 17: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.”

But let’s turn instead to a couple of other case law verses and look at, first of all, proscriptions based upon the Ten Commandments. A proscription is something that is forbidden. A prescription is something you’re supposed to do.

So first the negative side of this: the negative implication of the verse. Paul says in verse 6 from Thessalonians, “Let no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any manner.” The scriptures give us some explicit proscriptions to enable us to obey this command.

First, in Leviticus 19—I won’t turn there. Leviticus 19:13, and then again in James 5:4, we have the admonition not to pay somebody late.

Leviticus 19:13 says: “Thou shalt not withhold the hire of thy laborer. The wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.”

James 5:4: “Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth. The cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth,” the Lord of Hosts, that is the Lord of justice who brings an army to bear upon those people that break his law in a negative sense.

So, first of all, don’t pay late. Do not, if you owe somebody money in a commercial transaction, pay it on time. If you have somebody working for you, pay him on the agreed-upon schedule.

Now it means don’t pay late, first of all, obviously in terms of your purpose of will—in other words, don’t try to keep back his money and defraud him in that way. But I think also implied in this is that you should have a sensitivity to those under your employment that you do pay them in a timely fashion. It’s very important that a person doesn’t have to ask for his wage, that he’s seen as a partner in the transaction, that he’s paid as you are paid.

I think behind this we can see that there is implied here the sanctity of covenants. I don’t believe that Leviticus 19 teaches that we should all be paid at the end of the day. I believe that it means when a contractual relationship has been entered into—such as was common in this particular era with day workers—that the pay would be at the end of the day. You should meet that covenant. And so the sanctity of covenants and contracts relative to wages and labor, I think, is implied by Leviticus 19:13 and James 5:4.

We are to work in terms of that covenant.

The other side of this, of course, is that if your employer is to pay you in a timely fashion—as agreed to by the terms of the covenant, whether it’s explicit or implicit—then you also are supposed to do a fair day’s work for him. Rather obvious, I suppose, but is very important.

I think that all too often, even Christians think getting to work late is no big deal. And Christian employers, well, if you skip by a couple of days the paycheck, who cares? God cares. And James 5:4 says he cares a lot. And these verses are going to go on to say how much God cares about this sort of economic sin.

The sanctity of contractual obligations in terms of business is an important concept that must be restored. I was talking to one of you just before the service, Mark McConnell, about this. Being a purchasing agent for ten years, covenants have more and more become things that are broken—dates to ship things, to pay things, etc. More and more become wishful thinking as opposed to a contractual obligation. And that’s a bad thing.

The scriptures say that you should not pay people late. That refers to all commercial transactions, not just the payment of wages. We know a situation right now where one of the men in our church has not been paid by somebody for a long time. Hopefully by the end of this sermon, you’ll see that is a bad deal. The scriptures say that is on a par with sexual sin—that we talked about last week—and also then with other sexual immorality. I think it is really, scripturally, whoremongers, homosexuality, etc., are seen almost on a par with financial sin where you defraud your brother through financial affairs. It’s that serious, and the church has got to realize this once more.

Secondly, by proscription: don’t use deceitful evaluations by ways of instruments or by way of speech.

First, by ways of instruments or devices.

Leviticus 19:35: “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure.”

Deuteronomy 25 repeats the same basic thing. Why don’t you turn to Deuteronomy 25 and stay turned there as we go through some of these other verses. We’ll return to this a little bit later in the text.

Leviticus 25:13: “Thou shalt not have in thy bag diverse weights, great and small. Thou shalt not have in thy house diverse measures, great and small. Thus shall have a perfect and just weight.”

Instruments, scales, the weights that are used with the scales, volume measures, bushel basket—what is the definition for that? Standards of weights and measures are not to be used in a positive sense. You’re not supposed to use deceitful evaluations. The scale and balance was the method of evaluation of goods and services.

And so when we read that Proverbs 20:10 says that diverse weights and diverse measures—both of them are like an abomination to the Lord. It’s talking about means of evaluation of goods and services in commercial transactions.

Micah 6:11: “Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances and with the bag of deceitful weights?” You see, these things correlate to the section in First Thessalonians. He says that a deceitful balance is an abomination to the Lord. It is uncleanness. It is fornication—that kind of idea—strongly abhorred by God. I shall not count him pure—which is what our calling is, to be pure before God—if we have wicked balances or wicked means of evaluating goods and services.

We can do this by way of speech as well. Proverbs 20:13 shows us—Actually, it’s Proverbs 20:14. I made a mistake in the outline. Proverbs 20:14 says, “It is nought, it is nought,” saith the buyer, but when he has gone his way, then he boasteth.” We read that in the responsive readings.

If you go to buy a car or something else, to run the item down, to unfairly evaluate in the presence of the owner as a way to reduce the price of the item is really bearing false witness before God. It’s using improper or deceitful evaluation.

We can do it by fixing scales, which all of us would find abhorring, or we can do it with our speech. By the way, for you children, you know that proverb we just read responsively—”A child is known by his doings”—and the context of that are the various economic sins that can occur that are listed in that chapter of Proverbs. So even in children we must teach them the importance of legitimate weights and measures and proper evaluations.

So: to pay on time—or don’t pay late. Don’t use deceitful valuations. Don’t advertise deceitfully.

Amos 8:5 says that those who want the Sabbath to be over, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat.

They wanted to make the ephah small and sell the refuse of the wheat. So, in a bushel basket, for instance, one way to accomplish this would be to take the bad part of the wheat—that you’re not really thinking you’re buying—put it in the bottom, say fourth of the bushel of the ephah, cover it up with the good stuff, and purport to have a full ephah of good wheat. But in actuality it’s really a small ephah—it’s 3/4 of an ephah of good wheat. You sold the refuse of the wheat in there as well. That is deceitful advertising.

I believe the ephah was a measure of capacity roughly equivalent to a bushel. So falseness in advertising, I believe, is condemned here by the prophet. Any puffing of the product to make it appear to be what it is not is here cited as abominable.

Again, in Micah chapter 6, a word indicating a sin that called forth God’s severe wrath upon his people. Puffing of the product, falseness in advertising to boost sales is a sin. Plain and simple. It is wickedness and abomination. It is in its essence a violation of the ninth commandment, because it is a false witness to one’s product.

Additionally, it’s a violation of the eighth commandment because the customer’s money in effect is stolen when he does not receive in exchange what he has been led to expect.

This economic sin is connected in Micah to the word “violence,” in the Micah text we read earlier, because the violation of the ninth and eighth commandments also moves into a violation of the sixth commandment—”Thou shalt not kill”—which is meant to protect the life of man and all that he is and his holdings. The customer’s life is related integrally to his goods, his ability to provide for himself and his household, and thus is damaged by false advertising.

And of course, the covetousness prohibited by the tenth commandment is the basic motivation for all this lawbreaking.

Now, this is important because it says that the second tablet of the Ten Commandments—which command us, which teach us how to love our neighbor—a lot of those things can be violated by means of economic transactions. And then of course the other commandment which we haven’t mentioned in terms of economics is the commandment against adultery.

And so again the very second tablet of the commandments points in large letters to sexual sin and to economic sin as well as being ways to diminish another person’s life, and so to violate the whole of the second tablet. It’s a sin before God.

By the way, the Micah text points the blame not just at those wicked businessmen. The text in Micah 6 he condemns the businessmen and the rulers, but he also condemns the citizenry of the town. After all, it is usually the covetousness—the larceny in the heart of the buyer—that wants something for nothing—that the false advertising seeks to play to.

You see an advertisement in the paper that says it’s too good to be true. Therefore, I better buy it quick, ’cause they probably made a mistake. I’ll buy that thing cheaper than it really should be—than a property valuation. See it as, I’ll buy it to make money myself at the expense of the other person because they made a mistake. Aha, that’s your motivation.

But more often than not, the person buying is deceived. The advertising has tricked him. He’s played off that sin in you to sell you a product that isn’t really what you expect. If you’ve ever bought a Sunday paper and looked through some of the little mail-order ads, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The TV antenna that looks is made to resemble a dish antenna where you can get cable channels through, where it’s simply just a little antenna to sit on top the TV. That’s one of the ones that are commonly seen in the Sunday paper.

Now you may not be foolish enough to fall into that, but there are a lot of people with not a lot of native intelligence who will fall into that trap, and it’s a plain violation of these commandments of scripture. False advertising is condemned by God.

And the fourth proscription is the debasement of currency.

That Amos passage said they want to make the ephah small, and they want to make the shekel great. The shekel was the basic unit of money in the Old Testament. It’s derived from the Hebrew word for weight. It was made great through debasement—that is, by adding some base metal to the silver of its original and lawfully-defined composition.

So we see: the short ephah, false advertising, deceitful scales or evaluations, and then debased currency is prohibited by this text from Amos again in Micah.

So debasement of currency is also proscribed.

Those are the negatives. Let’s talk about the positives. The same way we talked about sexual sin—that you can just say it’s all these don’ts. There are also a lot of dos that God has called us to in the matter of sexual relationships in the context of marriage. It is a good thing. And commerce is a tremendous thing, a gift of God. So, let’s look at some of the prescriptions.

First, the scriptures tell us explicitly, not just by implication, to use just evaluators.

Leviticus 19:36 says: “Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin shall ye have. I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

“I brought you out of sin and bondage to sin into deliverance and freedom. I brought you out of falsehood in weights and measures to truth and justice in weights and measures.”

Not just the absence of doing evil, but the positive doing of good, looking upon evaluators as God-given indicators of justice.

Proverbs 11:1: “A false balance is abomination of the Lord. But a just weight is his delight.”

God delights in the just weight. It makes God happy. It makes him pleased. Remember we said that sanctification is living a life, a walk that is pleasing to God. When we use just evaluators in our transactions, not only do we avoid sin—that’s the mortification side—but the resurrection side is we bring justice and righteousness and a testimony of God’s justice into that transaction, and we bring delight to the very person of God when we do that.

What a beautiful thing that the economic transactions that we do on a daily basis—we can bring delight to our Father, to our Creator and Redeemer.

Proverbs 16:11 says that a just weight and balance—they’re the Lord’s. All the weights in the bag are his work. His work. They picture something about the person of God, his justice. When we use unjust measures, we testify to a false god. When we use just measures, we testify and bear witness using the images of God’s justice and holiness that he himself has created for that very purpose.

So we’re to use just evaluators.

Secondly, we’re to be content in our financial affairs.

Hebrews 13:5: we read that “Let your conversation be without covetousness.” We are watching without covetousness. And he says positively, the way to achieve that is to be “content with such things as ye have. For he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”

What do we have? We have God. God told Abram, “I am your exceeding great reward.” The gold and the silver are pictures of my purity. Essentially, is what God tells us in the scriptures. When we have a relationship with God, that is the sum total of what all the economic transactions are a picture of. And we can be content with that, can’t we? And we can be content with what God and his providence—through his loving heart toward us—has given us in terms of material possessions.

Contentment is essential to avoiding economic sin in the marketplace.

Third, act in brotherly love.

I don’t think it’s, you know, a coincidence that he goes on to speak of brotherly love in verse 9 of our text, that Hebrews began with brotherly love and then defined it. Remember we said there’s two great commands: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. That our Savior teaches us that. The second, like unto it: to love your neighbor as yourself. Brotherly love.

And how is that love described? It’s described in terms of the second tablet of God’s law. Don’t kill him. Don’t take his life from him. And in order to not take his life, don’t commit adultery. Be sexually pure. And also engage yourself in business properly. Don’t steal. Don’t bear false witness in your advertising or otherwise. And don’t be covetous.

All of the economic transaction is to be in the context of love of the brother, love for the one you’re doing biblical or economic transactions with. The same way with the sexual relationship just talked about last week in the verses preceding this: the key to holiness and purity and joy in sexual relationships is trying not to please yourself but to please the other person.

So I think that in a correlary fashion the joy of economic transactions is found when you seek the betterment of the individual that you’re trading with. Completely different concept than most of us have.

It’s interesting to me that capitalism—aggressive capitalism, laissez-faire, do your own thing, let the buyer beware, and just take as much as you can get—is frequently associated by historians with John Calvin. Now Calvin did go a long way at Geneva toward encouraging business. He saw it was an important part of the Christian life, and they encouraged different industries, etc., through civil means.

But Calvin also saw the importance of acting in brotherly love as a proper guard against improper business affairs and a motivator to proper business affairs.

I’m going to read here from Ronald Wallace’s book, “Calvin, Geneva and the Reformation.”

Calvin is always warning about the deadly effects of covetousness, as an unquenchable and irresistible fire in the soul, destructive of all individual and social good. He called those who extorted cheap labor from the poor “blood suckers, murderers of a worse type than any street thug.” He was never weary of castigating those who use their financial power to draw money from others to themselves. He expresses his dismay that when prices were so high, wealthy merchants could keep their granaries closed in order to raise the price even higher and thus to cut the throats of poor people.

Nothing in the commercial world, he believed, could be lawful which was hurtful to other people. And quoting Calvin: “How all bargains in which the one party unrighteously strives to make gain by the loss of the other party is condemned. The idea that any form of rivalry and commercial enterprise could help society, or that self-seeking could further the common interest, could never have entered his mind. He believed in restraining rather than in setting free the competitive spirit.”

We will go a long way toward sanctification in this area of our lives if we keep brotherly love as one of the motivations whereby we enter into commercial transactions. If we—where we work, the transactions we purchase, etc.—have in mind the mutual harmony of interests of buyer and seller, employer and employee, then we follow a biblical model.

If we pit things antithetically against one another—buyer versus seller, employer versus employee—we fall into a pagan concept of competition which is not biblical in its origins. The scriptures call us to a mutual harmony of interests, that our economic affairs should be seen as benefiting both parties. Brotherly love.

Fourth, pay tithes and rejoice.

I told you to stay at Deuteronomy 25. It’s interesting that Leviticus 19 concludes with statements about sin in the business place. Deuteronomy 25 concludes a long series of laws with these sins in economic matters that we just referred to and the need for a just weight and measure.

The same, the Ten Commandments conclude with covetousness—primarily speaking of business affairs, or at least material aspects. Concluding that—in Deuteronomy 25—he tells them to remember the Amalekites. And then in chapter 26, he goes on to tell them to pay tithe of all that they have and to rejoice in God’s salvation, that he delivered them from their enemies.

And James B. Jordan, in his outlining of the book of Deuteronomy—and I think correctly so—sees these last two aspects, the concluding verses of chapter 25 and then chapter 26, as positive statements by God whereby we may avoid the sin of covetousness. We can avoid it by paying tithe to God, acknowledging that all we have is given to us by him, and also by rejoicing in the life and deliverance he is given to us.

Remembering again that he is our exceeding great reward, and we can act justly and righteously—and that is the only way to satisfaction in business relationships.

Okay, those are some of the proscriptions and prescriptions. The passage in First Thessalonians goes on to give us some motivations to proper attainment of holiness in business relationships. He says don’t defraud, and then he gives some reasons. And in fact most of the texts we read are those reasons.

The first reason is fear of God’s wrath.

“Because that the Lord is the avenger of all such as we have forewarned you and testified.”

So he says, first of all, the motivation is fear of God’s wrath.

Deuteronomy 25 concludes with the Amalekites and the need to wipe them out in the future—to remember that they took advantage of you and would not transact business with you when you came into the promised land. God says remember that. Wipe them out. And by way of picture: If you fall into covetousness, you become an Amalekite and you’ll be wiped out by God.

Micah 6, we read some passages from, is an indictment against the city. And God says that he’s going to bring war against them and pestilence and mighty war against them. And he states essentially the same thing: that when you fall into this sin, you become an Amalekite.

Remember we said you fall into sexual sin—even with your wife—you’re termed a gentile then, and no longer to be seen as having the protections of the faith upon you. Same thing’s true here. The Lord Jesus Christ is an avenger to carry out justice in this arena. Fear of such calamities is Paul’s point here.

Calvin said that man’s dullness in such is such that unless they are struck forcefully, they have no sense of the divine judgment. And God says he will strike you forcefully if you look at this law as some light thing—not to defraud your brother.

I have a book I bought last week at the coast. We were over there at the Garretts. It’s called “So Dreadful a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War, 1675-1677.”

Probably most of you never even heard of King Philip’s War. King Philip was an Indian—I believe he was king of the Wampanoag tribe—and there was an Indian uprising against the Puritan colonists about 100 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. This was very early in the establishment of the Puritan colonies, really just 56 years after the landing at Plymouth Rock. And they—the colonists, the Puritan colonists—were almost wiped out by Indians. It was the worst war, in terms of percentage of American adults killed, that America has ever been engaged in. One out of sixteen men were killed in the Indian Wars. Imagine that. That would be equivalent to millions upon millions of adult males being killed in our society today.

For a year and a half or so, commerce came essentially to a standstill, and the colonies came very near to collapse—totally across the board—because of the effects upon the productive men in society. Women and children were killed, and as I said, commerce was essentially stopped.

And this book has a series of responses written by seven different Puritans who are contemporaneous with the events. There’s a section in here by Increase Mather, who was Cotton Mather’s father.

And he gives a history of the war first of all, and then he gives a series of exhortations and explanations for why so dreadful a judgment had come from God’s hand upon the Puritans. And it’s interesting—I won’t read the quotes, but he goes on and on—but one of the reasons, not the only reason, one of the big reasons he said for this judgment was covetousness and a desire for land.

He said, “When we first came here, men would be content with an acre, twenty acres for a family. But now,” he said, “men want a hundred or even a thousand acres for one man.” And that covetousness for land, that falling into defrauding their neighbor to achieve that, he thinks was one of the great reasons why God brought so dreadful a judgment upon them—akin to the Amalekite judgment—came upon them.

He gives the example here of a man who was a preacher and left his congregation, left the community so he could go have a large piece of land, several hundred acres. That man and his family and children were one of the first ones wiped out in this Indian War.

These people saw the judgment of God, and they understood that judgment in light of the scriptures. We see judgment in our nation today, and all we can think of is the homosexuals, the sexual sin—the stuff we’re not really close to. But if judgment comes, frequently it comes for economic reasons.

Sodom and Gomorrah—two reasons for their judgment: one, they were sodomites, but secondly, they didn’t take care of the poor and they defrauded in terms of business transactions.

God’s judgments are real. And Paul says we solemnly testified, and we solemnly forewarned you about this. He’s trying to get it across as clear as possible: If you don’t take steps to amend your business relationships and see in terms of your business place holiness to God, God’s wrath comes upon you. Believe it.

Secondly, a desire for conformity to God’s calling.

The negative thing is brought in, and then the positive thing is brought in as well. Verse 7: “God does not call us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.”

It’s not just that we avoid things. We can positively bring holiness into the workplace.

Lenski says here the contrast is between their former filthy pagan state, in which they were, and the new divine work which set in them—the divine call was put upon them—of pulling out of covetousness and a positive holiness in business relationships.

Arnot, who was an 1800’s Scottish preacher theologian, in his comments on business, says that he has a great love of businessmen and merchants because he said we’re going to see a day when merchants produce interdependence among communities and amongst countries which will put an end to warfare. Economic transactions and entanglements, he said, are part of the means whereby God in his common grace to man holds down the warfare that would kill people otherwise.

Additionally, Arnot said that those businessmen are the best missionaries you can send to another country. They bring the Christian culture with them. They bring the message of the scriptures—that they’re doing things correctly. And so business is a tremendous vehicle for the advancement of the gospel, the advancement of the kingdom.

Apart from, of course, the obvious fact that vocational callings are in and of themselves are called to exercise dominion in that particular sphere. But beyond that, it’s a way to influence wherever you go with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so we should do that—desire to conform ourselves to God’s calling, and see business as an essential part of that.

Third, he reasserts the source of the command.

Verse 8: “He therefore that despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy spirit.”

Despise is to set aside or annul. And I think if we see that sexual sin and economic sin are themselves a compilation of sins against the commandment to love our brothers as ourselves, what Paul is talking about here is certainly setting aside the individual command in terms of holiness in business and not defrauding.

But apart from that, such people who do that set aside, or annul, or kind of make of no effect, God’s law. Today, one of the reasons why we don’t have a Christian perspective of business management and why Christian companies turn to secular management styles and philosophies is because the church has abandoned or annulled or set aside God’s law—proscriptions and prescriptions—which we just talked to.

That law has in it what is necessary to reconstruct the business place. And if we set it aside, we set aside not the law. We set aside the God who gave us the law. And James tells us that if you stand in judgment of the law, you stand in judgment of the one who is the judge himself. And he will bring his wrath upon you.

The source of the commands in general to love our brother, and the source of the command to bring holiness into our business relationships, is God himself. And he is the God who has given unto us his holy spirit.

Literally, the text says he has given unto us the spirit of him—the holy—an unusual construction in the Greek, to emphasize again that it’s the spirit of God, his majesty, that directs these things in our lives, and that is a spirit of holiness and consecration, emphasizing that strongly.

Lenski said that sin disregards God in two ways. It ignores his love, grace, and blessings.