Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12

1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 9 through 12. Please stand for the command word of our King. “But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you. For ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And indeed you do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia. But we beseech you, brethren, that you increase more and more, and that you study to be quiet, to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that you may have lack of nothing.”

May be seated. Oh, talk up here. Mighty wind is filling the floor as well. We pray that God’s spirit would fill us now as we attend to his word. You know, sermons are completely useless apart from the work of the spirit. Obviously, the spirit speaks through the word. So, I hope that you sang that last prayer intentionally and with a good heart. Pray that God’s spirit might move in your heart this day in terms of his word and write that word upon your heart.

We’re going through 1 Thessalonians. We’re at the place now—the second half of the book, chapters 4 and 5—where very specific instructions are given to the end that they might become more and more increasingly sanctified and holy in life. We talked about the first part of chapter 4 that talks about that. Paul then began to give us some specific instructions based upon verse one. Remember that verse said that we beseech you, brethren, that as you’ve received, how you ought to want to please God so you would abound more and more.

So he’s going to tell him how to abound, how to increasingly walk to please God, how to put sinful thoughts and actions to death—the mortification that is the first part of sanctification—and then how to act in resurrection life from the grave, the second half of sanctification, to put on what’s correct. Very important that model as we look at this passage. And I’ll give you an interpretation of it which is not commonly shared by all, but I’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

Now what he’s done so far is he has instructed us—the spirit has—in sexual relationships primarily in the context of marriage. Remember, don’t walk, don’t engage in the lust of concupiscence, but rather in a dignified, honorable way seeking the well-being of the other person in the marital relationship. We talked about business and the application of duty to one another, your brethren. I think that’s what that passage is talking about—business affairs, in the passage we talked about last week.

And then third, here we get to the discussion of brotherly love. Remember, I said that these three—sexual relationships within marriage, business relationships with no covetousness, and then love of the brethren through deeds of kindness—are addressed here, and they’re also addressed in Hebrews 13, the first five or six verses.

And I’ll get to this again a little bit later. One of my concerns, I guess, about many of the commentators that I read—and I read a number of them each week—so often there are discussions about the minutia of the Greek, the construction of the Greek and the Greek word. Those things are all very important. But that is the bulk—80%, 85% of what is written in most commentaries—rather as opposed to looking for the correlation of that passage of scripture to similar passages of scripture both in the Old and New Testament. And that’ll become more important in terms of deciphering one of the phrases in this passage which seems at first a little bit odd, and we’ll talk about it again at that point in time.

Now we said that sanctification involves evaluation of our lives, and I’ve been quoting for the last couple of weeks from a book called “A Practical Directory for Young Christian Women,” written by Harvey Newcombe, published in 1833, written to his sister from an elder brother to a sister.

We talked about some of the questions you can use at the end of your day to evaluate your walk of faith—questions for Sabbath evening. We talked about last week, and I’ll read you a few of the questions for—I’m excuse me—last week we talked about the day of preparation for the Sabbath. And here are a few questions you can ask yourself at the close of the Sabbath day. I’ll read more of these next week.

Did I yesterday make all needful preparations for the holy Sabbath? Part of the evaluation at the end of the Sabbath: Did I prepare correctly? Did I have to do any work that I couldn’t have taken care of the day prior to the Sabbath day—the day of preparation, Saturday? What was my frame of mind on retiring to rest at the close of the week? When I awoke on this holy morning, towards what were my first thoughts directed?

Obviously, correctly, they should be directed toward the worship that we get to perform that day and to come to the holy convocation to engage in. That’s the point of the day—to worship God. And you should have trained ourselves—the first thoughts of our waking—to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy. How did I begin the day? What did I first do? What public or private duties have I neglected?

What has been my general frame of mind this day? With what preparation did I go to the sanctuary? And how did you prepare to come? And how did you prepare your children to receive instruction and to give God appropriate worship on this Lord’s day?

How are my thoughts occupied on the way to church? What do you speak of on the way to church? You’re thinking about things of the word and things that you could enhance your worship of God. What were my feelings on entering the house of God?

We’ve talked before about entering the house of God. This is not a special place in terms of its physical location. The temple is the people gathered together. But these four walls define where we do that. When you walk into these four walls, you should be thinking about approaching the throne room of God and begin to prepare yourself for worship in that way.

These are important things to do, and it’s important that you remember this process of evaluation—generally such as these questions we’re reading and have read now for the last couple of weeks, but specifically on each of these topics as well: in terms of sexual relations within marriage, in terms of your business affairs, and now in terms of holiness and everyday life, which we’ll talk about today. Evaluation of how well you respond to the command word of God is an important part of your growth in the Lord.

So, let’s talk now about these verses and what they mean to us. Essentially, the verses lay themselves out in a very easy-to-outline set of verses. In verse 9 and 10, we read the introduction. In verse 11, we have the main thrust, and verse 12 gives us the goal. Verse 9 begins with the term “but.” “But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you. For ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And indeed you do it toward all the brethren which are in Macedonia.”

“But we beseech you, brethren, that you increase more and more.” So, what he says there in verses 9 and 10 is he begins with a “but,” saying he’s going to a new subject now, okay? And he’s going to address the subject. He starts the subject off by saying “as touching brotherly love.”

Now, holiness in everyday life—which is specifically oriented toward verse 11—that’s what I’m going to do here: look at verse 11 primarily, and verses 9, 10, and 12 as the context for 11.

Holiness in everyday life that is spoken of in verse 11 has in its context a relationship to brotherly love. The theme of brotherly love is introduced for us. The subject is raised at the very first part of verse 9: “But as touching brotherly love.” The term there for brotherly love is “philadelphia.” You know, the city of brotherly love in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. This is only used—oh, a handful of times in the scriptures—to speak about brotherly love. Frequently, the term is “agape” love in a general sense. This is talking about brotherly love, and it’s important to touch briefly on this particular word.

The word “philadelphia” in classical Greek was used exclusively to speak of the terms of affection, the terms of endearment—to use a current, fairly current phrase that we have—for a blood sister or brother in the context of a family itself, the nuclear family. That’s what that term meant.

But in the scriptures, exclusively again, the term “philadelphia” refers to brotherly love in the context of the church or the extended church or what you might call the household of faith.

Now, seems like a small point, but it’s a very important point for us. First, it tells us the importance again of love for the brethren, using the term that describes the ordinary relationship of the household, now extending that term in the scriptures to talk about relationship to one another. This is a very important topic.

We’ve talked on this topic before in this chapter and I—or in this book—I said be touching on it several more times before the epistle comes to an end because it’s a big theme of this book: brotherly love. And in this context, it’s important to recognize that brotherly love—love for all Christians in the context of the household of faith and then Christians outside of our own church as well—is extremely important in the scriptures.

Not to be selective to a group of people, but to have that love work in terms of the whole congregation, the whole body of Christ, in terms of the whole region. The reverse of this—the reverse of brotherly love and what Paul encourages these people to do to build on the love that they have for one another—is seen as a horrendous thing in scripture. Proverbs 6:19 recites the last two of seven things that the scriptures say the Lord hates, the Lord despises. Bad deal from God’s perspective. Very bad deal when these particular things are done.

And the last one, the seventh one, which may reflect the perfecting of God’s hatred towards him—that is particularly bad. It says that God hates “he that soweth discord among brethren.” One of the worst things, maybe the worst thing you can do in terms of a denial of the Christian faith, is to sow discord among brethren.

Why? Because we’ve been called to image God. We’ve been called to correct our lives on the basis of the relationship that Christ has to the Father, the Father to the Son. It is the very—we’ll get to this. I’m getting ahead of myself. It is the very goal of God in our sanctification that we love one another.

Commercial affairs, sexual affairs—what was the underlying thing there? The love you have for the people in which you’re engaging with. And so, if that’s the very thing we’re trying to do, then an attempt to strike right at that, to strike right at those relationships, and instead either intentionally or not intentionally to spread discord—that is a horrendous thing in the sight of God. A very bad deal.

So first, the great importance of this topic: brotherly love. And the subject is first raised, and then Paul commends them in the next part of the verse of verse 9 to go ahead and feel good about themselves in terms of the brotherly love they have already exhibited.

He says, “As touching this brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you, for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another, and indeed you do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia.”

He uses a strange word here—the only place where the word is used—”theodidaktos,” combining “theos,” God, and “didaktos,” teaching. To say that this word is “God-taught.” You are God-taught in terms of how to love one another. God instructs you in this.

Now, kind of as a sidelight, it’s very important to recognize that I think Paul refers here—or at least he had in mind—Isaiah 54. Isaiah 54 is a chapter that talks about the great blessings of the new covenant, the great blessings of the kingdom of God and salvation that’ll be ushered in through Messiah.

And in the context of Isaiah 54, we read in verse 13—I’ll also read in verse 11. “Oh thou afflicted, tossed of tempest and not comforted. Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors and lay thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy windows of agates and thy gates of carbuncles and all thy borders of pleasant stones. I’m going to make you a beautiful habitation,” he says. “And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.”

There’s that phrase: “thy children shall be taught of the Lord.” “Theodidaktos” in the Greek—the very phrase we have here. What is that beautiful environment in which we find ourselves in terms of the kingdom of God? Well, we—like I said—the building is not ultimately what we worship God in. It is the temple, the congregation, the building that is the church itself. And so, the fair stones that God has placed us in, in the context, are one another.

God has taught us and brought us into that relationship and teaches us to love one another.

Going on in Isaiah 54: “And in righteousness shalt thou be established. Thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou shalt not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near thee. You’ll be safe. Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by me. Whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall, for thy sake. You’ll be protected by God in the context of the greater temple, Jesus Christ, and ultimately his church that he produces as well.

And so, Paul exhorts them. He reminds—rather, he commends them—they’ve been taught by God how to love one another. And secondly, they have demonstrated the truth of this teaching of God in that it took hold in their lives by the love that is their practice, as noted in all of Macedonia. Paul says, “Indeed you’ve done this in all of Macedonia.”

We’ve talked about that before. He commended him earlier on in this chapter as well, or in the book as well. Now, he says in that commendation that “ye yourselves are taught of God and love one another. And indeed you do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia.”

And again, I want to touch there on the non-exclusivity of love for the brethren. Hebert says they are not to allow their personal predilections to make their love selective. Not just our own group but to be the recipients of our love. Not just ultimately, even these are our own church, but rather all Christians. We’re to see ourselves as having that obligation, the continuing debt to love one another actively. Okay.

So Paul touches—Paul touches the subject. He commends them on their love. But then he begins a series of exhortations to them. He says that while you have done this thing, but at the end of verse—the middle of verse 10—”We beseech you, brethren, that you increase more and more.”

And when he says, “We beseech you, brethren,” he’s going now from a touching on the subject of commendation to a series of exhortations. And after this “but we beseech you, brethren,” there are four phrases in the Greek that are clearly indicative in a line here. What does he beseech them? He beseeches them that they increase more and more in what? Brotherly love. “And that you study to be quiet and to do your own business and to work with your own hands.”

And this is why I’m saying that holiness in everyday life, as pictured in verse 11, is related integrally to brotherly love. Brotherly love is the first of four specific commands that flesh out what Paul is beseeching them to do: to increase in brotherly love one for the other.

Eadie said that there is a close grammatical thought here, although somewhat more of a lax logical connection, with what immediately precedes this verse—speaking of verse 11 to verse 10.

Now, I mentioned before how commentators make these sort of statements. He’s saying, “Okay, there’s grammatical connection between these four, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a logical connection.” Well, I think what we have to do, our call to do, is to take our logic and our understanding and make it subservient to God’s revealed word. If there’s a connection there grammatically, there must become a connection logically as well.

And if we don’t see it, the dullness is ours. It’s not God’s in producing it. That’ll be very important as we continue on in this. We must conform our logic to God’s grammar.

Paul, first of all, then, the first series of exhortations begins with that they would abound more and more in their love for one another. Paul has used this word “abound” several times now in this epistle. The abundant life is what he’s talking about. And that abundant life is characterized by an abounding in grace, an abounding in love for one another, an abounding in terms of fulfilling all these commands that God has given us to do.

Now, Paul prays to this end. And it is important to recognize that indeed also in Philippians 3, Paul himself says that we must press on. We must reach forward to those things which are before us. We must press toward the mark in verse 14 of Philippians 3. We must continue to exercise ourselves.

In other words, to that end, certainly God will teach us. Certainly the glory is God’s for the accomplishment of our sanctification. But our goal, our job rather, is to press toward the goals that God puts in front of us. So we’re not supposed to think the brotherly love just somehow sort of happened to abound. We’re to work actively that it might abound. Okay.

Now, so the first of these exhortations tells us we’re to love one another increasingly, and that love is not to be exclusive. It is to be generated toward all Christians. This command can be a hard thing to do. We have need to be told to reach toward the mark. I came across a poem in one of the commentaries that says, speaking of brotherly love:

“To dwell above with saints I love, to me that will be glory.
To dwell below with saints I know. Well, brother, that’s another story.”

Well, frequently we can think ourselves—we find ourselves in that same attitude. Really tough to exercise brotherly love towards some of the characters that God has us in the context of. Now, these scriptures from Paul tells us that our love, our exercise of patience, usefulness, kindness to one another is not dependent upon my blood relationship. Certainly it’s dependent upon a covenant relationship, and it’s not dependent upon whom I feel is my brother. Rather, it’s dependent upon the fact that I know this person is my brother in the context of this church. That means that everybody that is in this church that’s not been excommunicated, you are to account them as your brother and sister in the Lord.

And you must exercise this love toward them increasingly.

Brotherly love is the subject, as Neil said, of this entire passage, issuing first in hospitality and secondly in every man recognizing his Christian duty to contribute his share of honest work to the community as a whole. These things are all part of brotherly love, as we’ll touch upon. Hebert said that our faithful performance of the everyday duties of life is intimately related to our love for our associates.

Now, the fact that we are God-taught is to the end that we might love one another. We are God’s pupils to the end that we may exercise genuine Christian love one toward the other. That’s the first command that Paul gives here. But he now goes to a series of commands: three basic components, as I’ve put it, in terms of everyday life that may not be understood in this way. And I want us to help us understand why these commands are relating to brotherly love, help us understand our logic so they could submit to the grammar of what God has given us in terms of the written word.

Now we have in verse 11 the three basic components of everyday life: “that you study to be quiet, that you do your own business, and that you work with your own hands as we commanded you.” He speaks here of abstinence from mental excitement, an abstinence from meddlesomeness, and an abstinence from idleness.

Hendrickson in his commentary said that fanatics, busy bodies, and loafers—nearly every church has them. And often, Hendrickson said, “One and the same person are all three.” These are talking about how we work our lives day by day, day in and day out, and they’re calls to sanctification and holiness by God, to the end that we might exercise brotherly love. And so these things are related to that.

Now, let’s look at some of the—well, it’s important that before we get into the specifics here that we take a look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 3.

Turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 3. And these verses in 2 Thessalonians indicate that Paul’s exhortation here in 1 Thessalonians was not totally efficacious in doing away with these sins in the lives of the Thessalonians. The closing section of the second epistle, chapter 3, comprising most of the third of these three chapters of the book, is found in chapter 3 of Thessalonians. And from verses 3 to 15, he addresses the same basic subject.

So we’ll talk about in more detail at that point in time. But Paul says, “I was an example to you that I worked with my hands.” Look at verse 11: “We hear that there are some which walk disorderly, working not at all, but are busy bodies. But we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work and eat their own bread. But ye, brethren, be not weary in well-doing.”

I’m going to talk more about some of these things next week. And we’re going to talk more about that—verse 13. Not being weary in well-doing is a correct response to people that are idlers, busy bodies, and who act disorderly. We’ll talk more about that. But just so you’ll see there that Paul refers to the same problem again in 2 Thessalonians 3. Very important that we hear this exhortation. The heart is deceitful above all things.

Let’s look now at these three-fold components of holiness in everyday life.

First: “Study to be quiet.” And I put on your outlines “avoid fanaticism.” And I’m going to change that as we go through this. I don’t think that is really the essence of what’s being said here. The word “study” is a word that originally meant to love, to be honored, or to love honorableness. And eventually it is used three times in the scriptures—in Romans 15:20, Paul says, “I have strived to preach the gospel.” 2 Corinthians 5:9: “Wherefore we labor that whether present or absent we may be accepted of him.” And then here in 1 Thessalonians 4:11. The word means to work really hard, to be really involved in a particular activity. Okay? Study—get diligent about—whatever and the word that you’re studying to become, which is translated “quiet” in the King James, that word can mean generally a peace or a cessation from any activity. It is used, for instance, in Luke 23:56 of resting on the Sabbath day. Okay? So strive, work real hard that you might rest. Kind of a funny phrase, you know? Work real hard that you might rest.

And indeed, this paradoxical nature of this statement has been observed by most commentators. Of course, we may translate it. I think the Phillips translation translates this: “You should be ambitious to not be ambitious.” You should be ambitious to be unambitious. The New American Standard says, “You should be ambitious to be quiet.” The Way translation says, “You should make it a point of honor to avoid religious excitement.” Darby says, “You should seek earnestly to become quiet.” Seek restlessly, as it were, that you might be still. Okay, so the idea here is that you’re supposed to work real hard at stilling something.

Now, many commentators think that this has a specific correlation to eschatological excitement. And indeed, we find after these three exertations, which we’ll finish up with next week, the next section of 1 Thessalonians 4 and going into chapter 5, talks about eschatology. Okay? And indeed, when Paul gives his corrections in 2 Thessalonians 3, the indication is that people are all excited about the Lord’s imminent return, and therefore they stop working, therefore they get idle, and therefore they start to become busy bodies and start to tear down the community and stop exercising true brotherly love.

And so there can be this eschatological element to it as well. But I want to do—uh, let me just read one other scripture. However, in 1 Timothy 5:13, we read: “And with all they learned to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle, but tailers also, and busy bodies, speaking things which they ought not.”

Frequently in the scriptures, a failure to work and an idleness leads to being involved in other people’s affairs. And being involved in other people’s affairs frequently leads, in the scriptures, as it does here in 1 Timothy 5, to being a tattler, to being a whisperer, to dropping a nuance about somebody that is negative about them. Okay?

And so, given that—and this is where I said the way these commentators work—given the fact that we’ve got three of these specific commands relating to brotherly love: to stop, to work hard at stopping something, and then to mind your own business, and then to get busy with your hands and work. That “stopping something” could be lots of things. It could be a general lack of being too fanatical about eschatology. We’ve certainly seen that in our day and age. But as well, I think these verses could refer to stop talking about one another in a negative sense. To work real hard to be quiet—to keep your mouth shut—because as you’re not working and idle and as you start gadding about and as you start getting information, it’s real tough then to keep the lips together and not let them come out, and you really got to work hard at that thing.

Now, you can accept that or reject it, but the truth of what I just said isn’t dependent upon this verse. I think this verse may well address that, but this verse is obviously—the verse from 1 Timothy 5:13—obviously says that one of the things we must be very careful not to do when we’re in idleness and being busy bodies is to speak badly about one another. And I think that’s what that word means.

Let’s go to the second exhortation: to mind your own business, to avoid meddling. The word here—”your own business”—is “idios,” which is kind of the root for our word “idiot.” Remember, we’ve said before in this church, the technical definition in the Greek of an idiot was somebody who didn’t go out into the marketplace. Where here Paul wants us to be a bit more idiotic. Paul says, don’t be going out so much and getting involved in other people’s business. Be a bit more of an idiot if you want to look at it that way. Mind your own affairs.

He says it doesn’t mean business in the sense of commerce so much. It means your matters, your affairs, your daily—your—the things you have to do in life. Okay. So it says to be busy with or attend to your own things, and as a result then not to be meddlesome.

Hebert commenting on this said that they’re to serve God by a faithful performance of their own tasks. It is a warning against meddlesomeness in the affairs of others. While having a proper concern for the needs of the brethren, they must avoid the neglect of their personal affairs. Let them have the habit of attending to their own interests and responsibilities.

Now, see, that’s a very important thing that Hebert said there. While having a proper concern for the needs of the brethren, they must avoid the neglect of their personal affairs. And I think that gets right to the core of what this passage is seeking to do. It’s seeking to put restraints on our concept of what brotherly love is and tell us that brotherly love is not a matter of running around getting involved in every other family’s business. And in fact, when you exercise brotherly love that way, it can actually turn out to cause discord and problems in the community. It can actually tear down the community instead of being helpful in building up the way brotherly love should be. Okay.

I think Rushdoony once gave the example of—well, I won’t get into that. But now, this warning against meddlesomeness is a common one throughout scripture. Probably one of the proverbs that has already come to your mind. If it hasn’t come to your mind yet, as soon as I read it, you’ll remember that it’s pertinent. Proverbs 26:17: “He that passeth by and meddleth with strife belonging not unto him is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.” Okay?

To get involved in something—some kind of strife or confusion—that is none of your business is to walk in there and take a dog by the ears. What’s the implication? You can’t let—oh, soon as you let go of that dog by the ears, he’s going to bite your hand. So danger is almost inevitable to the one who becomes meddlesome.

Now, can the actual danger to you directly—where people get mad at you and start getting, you know, two guys are fighting, you try to intervene, and all of a sudden they’re both picking on you, they’re both beating up on you. Now, that can happen. I’ve seen it happen. Or it can be damaging to you in another way as well. You can, in your getting involved in other people’s affairs in an improper fashion, you may well hear things. You may well become privy to information between the two parties that is going to inflame your passions about your ability to control it and may end up poisoning your attitude toward this, that, or the other person and getting you all upset. And then you’ve been bit by the dog—the dog of Satan, as it were.

So either way, it can end up in many ways of damaging people. Proverbs 23 says, “It’s an honor for a man to cease through strife, but every fool will be meddling.”

See, the fool thinks he knows best. The fool thinks that only he can bring peace to a situation. The fool thinks that his perspective of what’s happening is the correct one. He’s not teachable, you see. And the fool always wants to have the last word. So he’s continually mixing it up with people. And as a result, he’s entered into sin. And it’s the opposite of this brotherly love. And these things that work opposite to brotherly love can eventually work into what we talked about earlier—that big bad thing out there, Proverbs 6:19—about sowing discord among brethren. That’s the thing you want to be very careful you keep away from, as far as possible. Okay? And these things all can lead into that very easily. Okay?

2 Timothy 2:23: “Foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do engender strife.” So if you’re going to get into an argument, that’s a foolish thing, and you know it could break up the peace. Don’t do it. Put restraints upon your intellectual endeavors and your speculation as well.

1 Peter 4:15: “Let none of you suffer as a murderer or as a thief or as an evildoer or as a busy body in other men’s matters.” Now, isn’t that interesting—the degree of what Bridges calls the criminality that he places to meddlesomeness? He puts it in the same line with murdering and stealing and being and doing evil. And he says, “If you, because of your meddling, get burned, don’t come crying to me.” God says on the converse, if you get hurt for doing what’s good and proper, God says that’s great reward to you. But it’s not reward, and you should not want to be in a position where your meddling has actually caused you to become injured or suffer.

Proverbs 17:9: “He that covereth the transgression seeketh love, but he that repeateth the matter separateth very friends.” And often, meddlesomeness can end up in that—a repeating of matters and friends being separated. Okay?

So, medicine is talked against here, and then third: he says perform your vocational calling, work with your own hands. The other side of that is avoid being a loafer, avoid idleness of time. Okay? Now, it doesn’t mean that everybody has to be a manual laborer, but it is certainly worth pointing out here before we go on to talk about the implications for our part of our sermon that God does here dignify manual labor.

Manual labor is work looked upon in the Greek world as somehow disgraceful and shameful if you had to do any manual labor at all. And all too often, you know, some of us can fall into that same Greek idea that, “Oh man, I don’t want to push a broom. That’s a bad deal. That’s like being a slave or something.” No, no. God says that’s a great thing to do if you do it unto him.

Man, I think one poem I read this week: “The man who sweeps and does it for God’s laws benefits the world, and he also benefits the thing he does himself, you know? Sweeps the broom.” So God dignifies tremendously here manual labor. And if you’re a manual laborer, blue-collar worker, you would have fit in real good at the Thessalonian church. And indeed here at this church as well. We don’t have a lot of—we don’t have anybody who’s really super rich in this church. Some churches do, but you notice how Paul doesn’t tell the Thessalonians the dangers of riches. He tells them instead the value of working with your hands.

And it’s important that you guys here—you’re a church very much like the Thessalonians. You do abound in love. You do abound in the keeping of God’s commandments. And as what I’m trying to do today is encourage you to increase more and more and see the nuances of things as Paul is getting the Thessalonians to see that can be detrimental to brotherly love. And you should feel as good about your manual labor as the Thessalonians were made to feel about their manual labor by Paul’s epistle. It should be a source of strength to you and comfort from the Holy Spirit that verse.

Okay. Now Paul says, essentially, it’s a very simple point here: that, you know, you should be uh—not idle. As Hebert said, “Pious idlers can be a serious danger to the peace of the brotherhood.” Remember, the context here is all that love, the first of these four commandments really—the three I’m talking about. The first one was brotherly love. That’s the context. And so idleness can be a tremendous danger to the peace of the brotherhood.

Paul says this is a command that we’ve given you. We’ve talked about that before, but it does have a very pointed, emphatic stress by Paul that these things that he is commanding you to do—he’s commanding people to work, and he does it again later in 2 Thessalonians when they end up not working again.

Now, I want to touch on one other point here before we move on. And I’m going to—I might talk about this more next week. I don’t know. Basically, what we see here then is that idleness and meddling can lead to a lack of brotherly love and can lead—I think as well—to actually hurting with our tongues one another. And I’m kind of stepping out there on a limb now. And if anybody wants to sell me off later on, that’s okay in the question and answer time. But I’m going to say this anyway.

In 1 Timothy 5 and Titus 2, we have specific references about women. Okay? And in 1 Timothy 5, guess I better make sure. I mean, why don’t you turn to 1 Timothy 5:13? Yeah. You see there in verse 11, he’s talking about widows, okay? But the younger widows refuse. When they begin to wax wanting against Christ, they shall marry. He goes on. So he’s talking about widows here, and the context is the female race, obviously, or female gender. And he says in verse 13:

“And with all they learned to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle, but tattlers also, and busy bodies, speaking things which they ought not.”

Titus 2:4 and 5 says: “The older women should teach the younger women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God not be blasphemed.”

I think those things go together. Paul is saying the key to not becoming a slanderer or a busy body is activity. And in Titus, the thing the older women specifically are to instruct the younger women to do is to be keepers at home and how to take care of their husband and how to love their children and how to build that home correctly.

Now, obviously, I’m not saying here wives be restricted to the sphere of the home. But I’m saying that as much as the man’s life rotates around his vocational calling, so the woman’s life should rotate around her domestic calling in terms of her own family and her affairs. And then when that doesn’t happen, when women start ignoring that stuff or have not been taught that stuff by the older women, then verse 13 can come into effect. They start becoming idle. They start going around to see people. They hear things they probably shouldn’t hear. And they then, either deliberately or not deliberately, can end up causing a great deal of discord within the context of the community.

Now, in Titus 2, it goes on to talk about young men. It says: “Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded in all things, showing thyself a pattern of good works, in doctrine, showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned.”

And this is where I’m going out on a limb. I think that women generally have either the capacity or whatever to fall into the tail-bearing, meddlesomeness stuff and cause discord in the context of the covenant community that way. Men, if I take Titus 2:6 as an example, in other places as well, their tendency—where they get excited about things and get too involved in something—it’s in intellectual discussions, theological nuances and debates. And sitting around pushing the envelope on a particular idea—you know, it’s like guys, you get together and you start talking about this or that issue: sovereignty of God, whatever it is. And pretty soon everybody’s throwing in this and this. And pretty soon you’re up there at the stratospheric level where nobody knows what they’re talking about anymore.

Men begin to make a lot of crazy generalizations, and people can get real offended in the context of those discussions. It can bring disorder. It can bring disputes and debates in the context of that group of men. I’ve seen it happen. So they tend to the same problem. They’re not really attending to their own business. They become meddlesome in terms of thinking about things and speculating about things that is out of their sphere of expertise. They have no business thinking about those things, oftentimes. And they fall into the same condemnation. They bring disorder and discord to the community by that kind of interaction.

Now, I’m not saying that, you know, women can’t get into theological discussions that bring discord, and that men cannot be tattlers. I know that not to be the case. I know that I’ve got to be very careful as well, just as careful as my wife, about what I say to people about other people.

But the scriptures seem to place these warnings. Maybe it’s because of the particular callings we are called to do in terms of the exercise of calling in the home or in the workplace.

I heard something else on the radio last night—not a Christian person, but I thought it made sense, some of my observations as well in terms of the scriptures. It said that in terms of men and women in their relationship, men don’t want to be pushed around, this gal said, and women don’t want to be pushed away.

And you probably, in the context of your relationship, have seen that thing to be true. The man does not want his wife telling him what to do. We don’t want to be pushed around. And the wife doesn’t want to be pushed away. She doesn’t want the man somehow to relate to her that he doesn’t want her around. She needs that affection. And the man needs to know that the proper superior-inferior relationship is going on in the context of the marriage. Both those things are good. They’re God-given propensities. I think the scriptures clearly testify to that. And it has relationship to what I’m saying here because men don’t want to be pushed around in intellectual discussions either. They always want to be able to assert their own. And that’s why you can get a couple of roosters out there fighting with each other, and it can bring discord in the context of the community.

And because women don’t want to be pushed away—because they want relationships, and probably a lot because all too often they become practical widows because we’re not giving them the hearing ear, we’re not showing them relationship and affection—and then they become like those widows in Timothy’s epistle where they start going around and getting that affection and relationship from other women. See, they want relationship. And because of that, I think they’re a little more prone to hearing things and repeating things they probably shouldn’t be involved with.

So I’m just saying that there’s application of this that’s somewhat different in terms of our specific callings.

What I’m trying to say here is that these three commands give us a proper balance for biblical love. Now, remember, we talked about the sexual thing, and the image. Maybe it’s a lousy one. I don’t know. I think it’s a pretty good one. Field burning versus arson, or the uncontrolled house fire. Not the lust of concupiscence where you’re out of control and things are going nutty even between you and your wife. No, no, no. You want passion, but it must be under the control of the Holy Spirit. Field burn, not arson. And Paul gave those two—you know, “don’t do this, do this” kind of thing—see, as a way to approach sexual relations in marriage that is improper. Business: same thing. What was the phrase he used about not defrauding? Don’t overreach. He didn’t say don’t reach. Business is reaching. You do want to better yourself as well as better the other person. But don’t overreach to where you’re going to defraud somebody and try to hurt him and gain through his hurt. No. My business, commerce, is mutual benefit to the two parties. Don’t overreach. Be content. Okay?

And I think the same thing is what Paul is saying here in terms of Christian love. Yes, recognize the great importance of Christian love, but don’t overreach. Don’t become an arsonist in your love by spending lots of your time away from your family and involved with other people. Don’t go idle on us and then go out there and become meddlesome. That’ll bring discord. Don’t go idle with your family, men, and go out there and get so involved in your business that it brings discord to your family. Don’t go out there and get so involved in your intellectual conversations all the time with other men that it brings discord with your family and with those other men as well.

See, Christian love has to have this balanced thing to it as well. And so Paul says some things here that can only be properly understood in the context of being counterbalancing arguments. Mind your own business. Do your own thing. Well, it sounds like some pagan, right? But Paul’s saying these things, and he’s saying them in the proper context of the need for brotherly love, for relationships with other people, for helping those in the covenant community, for your civic responsibilities, your business responsibilities—in the proper context. That should be a big aim in your life: to be quiet, to have a quiet, peaceable life, to not get involved in things beyond your calling—intellectually or beyond your calling in terms of being any of your business—and to be content at home, to be quiet.

So Paul, I think, is giving us here a counterbalance. Now, next week, I’m going to take some more time on this. I hope you don’t mind that, but I think it’s very important. This is the part of the outline where it says “a preparatory discourse.” I don’t even know if “discourse” is the right word. I think it is. But just a little thing up here to the side.

We’re going to come back to this and talk about the unholy three. I think I call them—and I probably going to get in trouble for this too—the three hateful sisters. See, I made them feminine. But just to remind you, when I talked about the extension of mercy in the book of Job, then I talked about the sisters of mercy as well. See? So I’ve used that phrase both ways. But again, the scriptures seem to put it in a context—normally—the three hateful sisters that produce disorder in the context of the covenant community: the false witness, the meddler, and the tail bearer.

I’ll talk about those three activities next week, and I’ll also talk about what I think is the proper solution for those of you who may suffer at the hands of some of these people, as well as how to control yourself in that particular affair. We’ll talk about all that next week. Okay?

Third: Getting back to our text today. Then holiness in everyday life is its goal. So we’ve seen that it is introduced in the context of brotherly love. Our everyday life can help or hinder brotherly love in the context. And we’ve seen it has specific content—the three specific pieces of content to it. And now its goal.

We read in verse 12 that “you may walk honestly toward them that are without.” Honestly there doesn’t mean truth versus falsehood. The word has the idea of being well-formed. That’s what the root word means. 1 Corinthians 14:40 says, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” Decently is “honestly.” Romans 13:13: “Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.”

See, bad form to engage in strife and envying in the context of the church or the family. Bad form—as the English would say—and that’s really pretty much what the Greek says here. That you may have good form toward them that are without, that you might properly image God to unbelievers. That they may see that you’re not an idler—that Christians are hard workers. That they may see that you’re not a gossip—Christians are careful and discreet about their language. That they may see that you’re not involved in everybody else’s affairs—you’re trying to attend to your own affairs too—and you know, a lot of people have the impression—unbelievers do—that Christians are kind of lazy, you know?