Do Not Grow Weary In Doing Good

Alba 4-21-2024

DO NOT GROW WEARY IN DOING GOOD

II Thessalonians 3:6-15

You may have heard the quote: “Do all the good you can, to all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as often as you can, and as long as you can.”

I was looking up that quote and found that it has been attributed to various people from John Wesley, to Charles Spurgeon, and even to Hillary Clinton. I think she must have read it somewhere. To do all the good you can means we should always do our best to help others.

Scott Bradford, a minister in Texas told a story about someone doing good. He made a phone call to his daughter-in-law to see how she’s feeling with her radiation treatments. She’s tired now and feels sore, but her skin is not burned. Then she told him about his grandson Patrick, who is nine years old, and what had happened the previous day.

Because she is so physically exhausted by the radiation treatments, she stopped at the grocery store to pick up two things and get back out to the car. In the meantime, Patrick, the nine year old who was with her, noticed a lady in one of those carts a person can ride who was doing her shopping.

She had her basket full, and she had her lap full. So Patrick told his mother he was going to help the lady. She asked him not to since she was so tired. But he went to get a regular grocery cart anyway.

He looked for and found the lady and told her he was going to help her. He proceeded to take all the groceries out of her lap and put them into the cart, and asked her if she needed anything else.

When she was finished, he stood in line with her until she had paid her bill. Then he went with her to her car to unload the groceries. When he got to the car the lady's son, who is in his thirties from the look of it, was sitting in the front seat playing a video game!

Patrick tapped on the window and said, “Hey, buddy, are you gonna help unload these groceries?” The stunned man got out and asked his mother where she found this kid. She told him she didn’t find him–that he had found her. Her son helped to unload the groceries and put them into the car, all the while getting an earful from his mother.

When Patrick was finished she offered him money for what he did. Patrick refused the money because, as he told her, “We’re supposed to do all the good we can do.” Scott said, “Here is a child who gets his allowance from us because their expenses are so high and he is saying, 'I don’t want the money because the Lord wants me to do all the good I can do.'”

Well his grandfather is a preacher so he probably heard the Bible verse that says “do not grow weary in doing good” from our text this morning, II Thessalonians 3:6-15.

Here is what the apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Thessalonica in those verses: “But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us.

“For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread.

“But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good. And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet do not count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.”

Right in the middle of warning the ones who were being lazy and taking advantage of others, Paul tells the church that it should not discourage them from doing what was right and good.

When first looking at these verses I saw the negative commands that are given or implied. For example: Don't Be a Burden (vs. 8); Don't Be a Busybody (vs. 11); and Don't Keep Company With the Disobedient (vs. 14).