Early on a Sunday morning several years ago, a 7-year-old boy in Plain City, Utah, hopped in his parents’ car, pulled out of the driveway, and took off down the road.
Not long after, local police began receiving complaints about an erratic driver in a white Dodge Intrepid. When deputies located the vehicle and turned on their flashers, the boy refused to pull over, instead leading police on a low-speed chase through the streets of Plain City.
Sheriff's lieutenant Matthew Bell believes there is a practical reason the boy never exceeded 40 miles per hour: “His speed was slow, but erratic,” Bell said. “He would kind of scoot down lower to push on the gas, and kinda sit up on the seat more to see where he was going.”
The chase finally ended when the boy pulled back into the driveway of his suburban home, hopped out of the car, and ran into the garage. When confronted by police, the 7-year-old explained the motivation behind his unexpected joyride: he didn’t want to go to church (“Sheriff's office releases chase video of 7-year-old driver,” www.ksl.com, 7-29-09; www.PreachingToday.com).
It’s amazing what some people will do to avoid going to church, but the question is: What can WE do to make our church the place where people want to come? What can WE do to attract disinterested people to our fellowship where they can encounter Christ? What can WE do to reach out to people who are not a part of the church and don’t want to be? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Thessalonians 4, where the Bible talks about how to behave towards “outsiders,” who are not part of the church.
1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. (ESV)
To walk properly before outsiders, first of all...
LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
Care for each other. Create an irresistible culture of compassion within the church.
That means love each other like brothers and sisters (vs.9). Treat each other like family, because that is what we are – we are the family of God!
Aristides, an 2nd Century Greek historian, was trying to describe Christians to the Roman emperor Hadrian, and this is what he said: “They love one another, and from widows they do not turn away their esteem; and they deliver the orphan from him who treats him harshly. And he, who has, gives to him who has not, without boasting. And when they see a stranger, they take him in to their homes and rejoice over him as a very brother; for they do not call them brethren after the flesh, but brethren after the spirit and in God” (The Apology of Aristides, as translated by D. M. Kay).
That was the reputation the early church had. Oh, that it becomes our reputation today! If that were to happen, you’d have to bar the doors to keep people away.
Four years ago (2016) Time Magazine identified what it called “240 Reasons to Celebrate America Right Now.” Number 77 was none other than the lowly, but always open Waffle House. According to the author Ben Goldberger, “it's so dependable that FEMA has a so-called Waffle House Index for disasters; if the locations are closed, you know things are bad.”
The food is not half bad, but those who sing its praises do so not because of the food, but because of the way they take care of their customers. One customer said, “There's no ego, no pretension… it's welcoming to all.” Daniel Humm, a high-end New York restauranteur, visited a Waffle House and reported: “It was a reminder of how important hospitality is. We just felt so taken care of.” (Ben Goldberg, Time Magazine, “77. Where Hash Browns are Heavenly,” 7-11-16; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s a picture of what the church should be. It should be a place where there is no ego, no pretense, a place where people can say, “We just felt so taken care of.”
Faith Bible Church is already that kind of place, but let’s “do this more and more” as verse 10 says. For if we excel in this kind of love, we won’t be able to keep people away. To create an irresistible culture of compassion, love each other like brothers and sisters.
More than that, love each other like God taught you to love. Love each other sacrificially and unconditionally as God loved you.
The end of verse 9 says, “You have been taught by God to love one another.” Here, the word for love is agape, which speaks of an unconditional, sacrificial, commitment to one another. At the beginning of the verse, the word was philadelphia, which speaks of a familial love, a love that brothers and sisters have for each other. You see, God’s unconditional love for sinners brought us together into one family, His family.
Romans 5 says, “One will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8).
Jesus didn’t wait until we were good to die for us, no! He died for us while we were still sinners. He took the punishment for sin that we deserved and died in our place on the cross. Then three days later, He came out of the grave alive! Now, He offers to ANY sinner eternal life. He offers YOU eternal life without condition. All you have to do is trust Him with your life. Put your faith in Him and rely on Him to save you from all your sin.
That’s the way God loved you – sacrificially and unconditionally. Now, love each other the same way. Look the crucified One in the eye and dare to ask Him to give you that kind of love.
A little boy had a birth defect, which caused him to go into very violent seizures without warning. His father usually held him in church, where on occasion he started into a seizure right in the middle of a worship service. The father simply got up from his seat and carried the boy to the back of the sanctuary. He held the boy close to his chest and rocked him. He whispered to his son and did all he could to help him get through the seizure. And he did it with no hint of embarrassment or frustration – only love for his hurting son (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, p.323).
That’s the way God loves you even with all your imperfections. He’s not embarrassed to call you Son or Daughter. Rather, He holds you close and whispers to you His love even when you have lost control.
That’s the way God taught you to love. Now, love each other in the same way. To create an irresistible culture of compassion, love each other like brothers and sisters; love each other like God taught you to love; and...
Love each other in practical ways. Excel with useful, concrete acts of kindness for one other.
Verse 10 says, “That is what you are doing.” You see, true love is not a feeling as much as it is a doing! Love always does something!
There was once a professor of psychology, who, although he had no children of his own, liked to tell his neighbors how to raise their children. For example, when he saw a neighbor scolding a child for some misbehavior, he would say, “You should love your boy, not punish him.”
Then one hot summer afternoon, the professor was repairing the concrete driveway leading to his garage. He was tired after several hours of work, so he laid down the trowel, wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and headed towards his house. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mischievous little boy putting his foot into the fresh cement.
The professor rushed over to the boy, grabbed him, and was about to spank him when a neighbor leaned out from a window and said, “Watch it, professor! Don’t you remember? You must LOVE the child!”
At this, the professor yelled back, “I do love him in the abstract, but not in the concrete!” (Sunshine Magazine, 1985)
My dear friends, there is no such thing as love in the abstract, no! You can only love in the concrete. You can only love in practical, concrete acts of kindness.
In their book The Way Back, Phil Cooke and Jonathan Bock ask some significant questions: Why did the Early Church succeed where we are failing? How did they transform the Western world in such a relatively short time? They did it because they did things that baffled the Romans. The Early Church didn't picket, they didn't boycott, and they didn't gripe about what was going on in their culture. They just did things that astonished the Romans. They took in their abandoned babies. They helped their sick and wounded. They restored dignity to the slaves. They were willing to die for what they believed. After a while, their actions so softened the hearts of the Romans that they wanted to know more about who these Christians were and who was the God they represented. Without confrontation, protest, or debate, love did its work. (Phil Cooke and Jonathan Bock, The Way Back, Worthy Publishing, 2018, page 69; www.PreachingToday.com)
Let love do its work through you! It’s the only way to create an irresistible culture of compassion.
When Max Lucado’s father died, a lady drove six hours to get to the funeral. She was a distant relative, but when she arrived, she walked into the house, went immediately into the kitchen, and began washing dishes. She straightened everything up and helped prepare for the meal. She went to the funeral. Then she came back, did the dishes again, and got in her car to drive home. As far as anyone knew, she never said a word. She never introduced herself; but when they looked around, they realized that love had been in that house (Gene Getz, The Walk, 1994, p.74).
That’s love, my friends. It doesn’t speak as much as it does. Rogers and Hammerstein had it right when they said: A bell isn’t a bell until you ring it. A song isn’t a song until you sing it. And love isn’t love until you give it away.
Find concrete ways to give your love away. If you want to create an irresistible culture of compassion, love one another in practical ways like brothers and sisters as God taught you to love.
However, don’t take advantage of your brother’s love. Don’t expect handouts from the church. Rather...
WORK WITH YOUR OWN HANDS!
Be responsible to provide for your own needs if you are able, so the church can help those who are truly needy.
1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. (ESV)
Even though God calls believers to love one another, they should not take advantage of each other’s generosity.
That’s what was happening in the 1st Century Thessalonian church. In 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul said to them, “We hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies” (2 Thessalonian 3:11). When they heard that Jesus was coming soon, some of them quit their jobs. They stopped working to wait for His coming. Then when Jesus didn’t come before their food ran out, they became parasites on the church, taking advantage of their brothers’ and sisters’ generosity.
Here, in 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul says, “Don’t do that!” “Work with your hands,” he says, “so that you may walk properly towards outsiders and be dependent on no one.” The world is watching us, my friends, and they don’t respect lazy busybodies; they don’t respect those who sit idly by and meddle in other people’s business.
So get to work! Do what you can to take care of your own needs, so you can be generous with those who are truly needy and show the world the benefits of following Christ.
Geoffrey Owens was doing what many freelance workers do during a down season. He was working a regular shift in a retail store, where a customer recognized him and snapped a photo.
That customer was shopping at Trader Joe’s in Clifton, New Jersey, where he saw Owens, who starred on The Cosby Show for five seasons, and was then working as a clerk. After he took a picture of Owens, the customer sold that picture to the British tabloid The Daily Mail. It published the photo as part of a snarky, where-are-they-now exposé, with a headline that read: “From reading lines to serving the long line!”
“It made me feel really bad,” the shopper told The Daily Mail. “I was like, ‘Wow, all those years of doing the show and you ended up as a cashier.’”
However, the attempt at shaming the actor backfired, as people around the nation expressed their support, not only for Owens as a talented actor but as someone engaging in honest work. Comedic actor Tony Atamanuik put it this way: “I’ve worked as a cleaning person in a video store, washed dishes, bussed tables, worked in a law office, catered, waitered and more. Work is work, always be prepared to do it. Geoffrey Owens is a testimony to the dignity of work and to frame it as anything else is ignorant.”
The groundswell of support was so strong that Owens ended up doing a segment on the Today Show, and as a result, later landed roles on NCIS: New Orleans and the Tyler Perry drama The Haves and Have Nots. (Tony Dokoupil, “Stars defend ‘Cosby Show’ actor from ‘job-shaming’ after photos of him bagging groceries go viral,” CBS News, 9-03-18; www.PreachingToday.com)
People respect good, honest work, so don’t avoid it; embrace it. People will be more apt to hear what you say when they see what you do.
To create an irresistible culture of compassion in the church, love one another and work with your own hands.
Kevin Miller talks about his boyhood days in a small town when his dad would often say on a Saturday morning, “C’mon kid.” He would hop into the station wagon, and they would head down the street to Hooper Wolfe’s hardware store. Hooper Wolfe's had an old wood door, painted white—except where the paint was worn off near the handle. You walked in, and you could hardly move. There were two narrow aisles. The counters were filled with merchandise, shelves were overflowing, and stuff was hanging from the ceiling. You'd think, “No way am I going to find anything in here.”
But you didn't need to. As soon as you walked in, Clarence from behind the counter would say, “Help you today?” And Kevin’s dad would say something like, “I want to hang a light out back.”
Clarence would come out from behind the counter and ask questions. “Where you going to hang it? Over the patio? Well then”—and he would start rummaging through shelves until he pulled off just the right light—"you want a light like this. And don't use these bolts here; they're good for indoor stuff, but for outdoor, you want something galvanized.”
“Your wall is brick, isn't it?” Clarence asked. “Well, to run the conduit through there, you want a masonry drill bit at least ¾ of an inch. If we don't have that in stock, you can get one over at Miller's Lumberyard.” Then Clarence would pull a flat carpenter's pencil off his ear and get out a little piece of paper and sketch it all out. “The conduit goes here… and make sure you don't mount the light too close to the soffit.”
“Today,” Miller says, “when I have a project on Saturday, I head to Home Depot. Unlike Hooper Wolfe's, where you had to parallel park on the street, there's an ocean of parking. And inside, Home Depot is huge. The ceilings are 30 feet high. Home Depot has forty times the inventory of Hooper Wolfe's. It all looks great under bright, argon lights.
“There is a guy in an orange apron—a block away. If you run him down, he's likely to say, ‘Sorry. I usually work in paints. I'm just covering in electrical because someone called in sick.’ So you're pretty much on your own” (Kevin Miller, Wheaton, Illinois, www.PreachingToday.com).
How about the church, especially in these days before Jesus returns? May we be more like Hooper Wolfe’s Hardware Store than Home Depot. Sure, the bright lights, spacious sanctuary, and multiple programs are nice, but now more than ever we need people like Clarence, who work hard and care enough to help people navigate their way in these confusing times. If we can do that, we won’t be able to keep people away.
