Just because a person’s an adult doesn’t necessarily mean that person is responsible. When I turned 18 years old it seemed that the only thing I could think about was moving out on my own. But like most 18 year olds, I still had a lot of growing up to do. Eventually my mom helped me buy a trailer that was in a mobile home park in West Pomona, right off Holt Blvd. and Dudley. The trailer was cramped and old, the area was horribly crime infested, but I was just excited to have my own place. But my first foray into adulthood didn’t last very long since I neglected to pay my utility bills. Soon I was without a phone, then without light, and then without gas. So soon I moved back in with my mom and stepdad until I could get my utilities turned back on. That was the first of many lessons that being an adult didn’t automatically make me responsible.
Just the other day someone emailed me a list of those daily affirmations. You know what I’m talking about: Those one liners that are supposed to inspire you to be responsible and to take responsibility for your own success. Only these daily affirmations were ones that didn’t quite make the cut. Let me read you a few:
I will assume full responsibility for all my actions...except the ones that are other peoples’ fault.
I will honor my personality flaws because without them I would have no personality at all.
I’m grateful that I’m not as judgmental as all those self-righteous people around me.
False hope is better than no hope at all.
A good scapegoat is nearly as good as a solution to the problem.
Here’s one all us Alcoholics Anonymous members can relate to: Just for today, I won’t sit in my living room all day watching TV....Instead I’ll move my TV to the bedroom.
Maybe I read the wrong list of daily affirmations when I turned 18.
Well just as adults can act pretty irresponsibly sometimes, Christians can also act pretty spiritually irresponsible at times. Spiritual irresponsibility takes many forms, and we’ve encountered several kinds of spiritual irresponsibility in our study of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. The Thessalonian Christians were followers of Jesus Christ, but some of them were acting spiritually irresponsible. Some were speculating about Jesus Christ’s second coming and the rapture of the church. Despite Jesus’ clear teaching that it’s not for us to know the dates or times of his coming, and despite the apostle Paul’s clear teaching not to speculate, that didn’t stop some of the Thessalonian Christians. These are the kind of guys modern Christian publishing companies would go nuts over, because they’d quit their jobs, stopped taking care of their daily responsibilities, as they plotted charts and came up with end time scenarios. It reminds of so much of the speculation that’s surrounded y2k. Other members of the Thessalonian church had quit their jobs and they were just loafing around. They were sponging off the other members of the congregation in the name of Christian love, spending their days meddling in other people’s affairs and spending their energy on fruitless activities. If they were alive today, they’d probably be spending their day in internet chat rooms, watching soap operas, and playing Nintendo. There was a responsibility problem in the Thessalonian church, and when Paul wrote his first letter to them he told the church to warn these people (1 Thess 5:14).
Today we finish our series called LIVING CONFIDENTLY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES through the New Testament book of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. In this series we’ve been preparing for the new year by looking at what the Bible teaches about spiritual confidence. We’ve talked about how a personal relationship with Jesus equips us to face an uncertain future, how we can share that confidence with other people. We’ve talked about what kills spiritual confidence in our lives and how to empower other people with the confidence that comes from Jesus. We’ve talked about how to face the uncertainty of death with spiritual confidence, as well as how to build a confident church. Today we finish our series on this, the last Sunday of 1999, and we talk about Responsible Living. Today we’re going to find three strategies to live spiritually responsible lives as we face the year 2000.
1. Managing Our Relationshiops (2 Thess 3:6, 14-15)
Paul starts by addressing the entire church about how to treat the irresponsible people among them in v. 6 and then in vv. 14-15. Paul begins his appeal by making it abundantly clear that he’s speaking in his official capacity as a representative of Jesus. He’s not just sharing his opinion, but what he’s speaking of he’s doing so as an apostle of Jesus, with the authority conferred by Jesus. In fact the word "command" here is a military term for giving soldiers their orders. Paul couldn’t have appealed to any higher authority for what he’s about to say than he does here (Wanamaker 281).
Now the irresponsible people are identified in v. 6 as "every brother who is idle." The way this reads in the Greek text is a person chooses a lifestyle of idleness. He’s not talking about someone who’s been laid off or hits hard times, but someone who willfully chooses a lifestyle of irresponsibility. That’s why I think the best English synonym for "idle" is slacker.
Now it’s important that we understand exactly what Paul’s commanding the church to do here. He’s not telling the Thessalonians to have nothing to do with the slackers. That’s why I read v. 13, because it’s important to remember he wants the Thessalonians to view the slackers as Christians, still members of the congregation, not as enemies or as backsliders. But he does tell the Thessalonian Christians to distance themselves from the slackers, to put some space between themselves and the people taking advantage of the church. Now remember the slackers were relying on the financial support of the other church members, that’s how they were supporting their irresponsible lifestyle. Paul is telling the Thessalonians to stop supporting the slackers, to put what we today call "boundaries" between themselves and these people who were choosing an irresponsible path.
Now remember Paul’s already admonished these people in his first letter about their lifestyle, he sent his co-worker Timothy to encourage them to shape up, but they’ve persisted in their irresponsible choices. So after all these warnings, the next step is some tough love, some boundaries, to distance themselves from those who were being irresponsible. Now that this second letter’s been written and Paul’s brought out the big guns of his apostolic authority, this is the final chance for these irresponsible Christians to mend their ways. If they don’t respond to this letter, they’re guilty of violating scripture, of not merely living irresponsibly but of living rebelliously.
Paul’s prayer is that these boundaries will help these irresponsible Christians come to their senses and start to live responsible lives. Paul’s not trying to punish them, but he’s seeking to bring about repentance. What Paul is doing here is quite similar to what people today call an intervention, where a friend or family member engaged in self-destructive behavior is confronted with strong boundaries by the other members of the family. Although there’s no guarantee, this kind of action can sometimes bring about positive change.
So here we find the first strategy for responsible living. We develop a responsible life BY MANAGING OUR RELATIONSHIPS WISELY.
Now it’s imperative that we realize that the Bible is not telling us to become self-righteous snobs. The church isn’t supposed to be a holy huddle of perfect people, but it’s a community of struggling, sinful, imperfect people, together striving to follow Jesus Christ. The church is supposed to be a place of grace, a place where mercy is freely offered and freely received.
But sometimes giving grace can be destructive and unloving, especially when a person’s involved in self-destructive behavior. When a person insists on an irresponsible lifestyle--whether it’s refusing to work like we see here, or alcohol and drug addiction, or gambling, or sexual promiscuity, or whatever--there comes a time to set boundaries. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is say, "no," even when it infuriates the person we say "no" to. You see, personal relationships in the Christian community are characterized by something called "fellowship." Although we don’t use that word "fellowship" much these days, it’s a word that pictures a mutual, relationship of both give and take. Fellowship by nature is reciprocal, mutual and interdependent.
But what happens when we have that kind of mutual relationship of give and take, but one person’s only taking? Or what happens when we have a reciprocal relationship and the only thing the other person is contributing is undermining our faith in Jesus? Can we truly call those kinds of relationship biblical fellowship? If a person who claims the name of Jesus as their Lord and Master chooses to live an irresponsible life that disregards the teachings of Jesus, we’re faced with a dilemma. We can no longer call that relationship true, biblical fellowship, so we need to redefine the relationship. Now that doesn’t mean avoiding being around the person, screening our calls, and shunning the person. It means that we establish some boundaries, that we put our love to the test by refusing to endorse or enable self-destructive behavior. We still love the person, we still care, we still try to respond to them as best as we can, but we establish boundaries. I’ve had to establish firm boundaries with some people in my own life this past year, and it’s been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.
Now in some extreme cases when a person’s part of a local church and they persist in an irresponsible lifestyle that disregards the teachings of Jesus it becomes necessary to exclude that person from church m embership. This is when the person chooses to live as a non-Christian, even though they still claim to follow Jesus. This is the person who persists in a lifestyle of willful, unrepentant sin, whether it’s sexual promiscuity, cheating, false teaching, or whatever. There’s a whole process to go through with that kind of person--a process that usually lasts several months--but if in the end the person still doesn’t respond, that person is removed from church membership. We’ve had to do this a few times in the past, and I’m sure we’ll have to do it in the future.
But the whole point of this is to manage our relationships with people wisely, because other people’s irresponsibility can become our own if we don’t have scriptural boundaries.
2. Modeling Generous Dilligence (2 Thess 3:7-10)
After issuing this seemingly drastic command, Paul appeals to his own life in vv. 7-10. Here we learn a bit about Paul’s stay in Thessalonica, that though he could’ve received a salary from the church because of his ministry, he chose to get an outside job instead. We know from the rest of the New Testament that Paul was a leather worker, and that he often worked as a leather worker to support his ministry. Not only did this avoid being an unnecessary burden on the people he was trying to reach for Christ, but it was also a built in ministry opportunity because the workshop was a prime place to talk about issues of faith. At times Paul accepted financial support from the churches he started, while at other times he refused it. Here’s one of the instances where he refused it.
In 1 Thess 2:9 he’d already written, "Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you." Perhaps Paul knew there was a tendency in Thessalonian culture to become slackers, and he knew the Thessalonian church all to well to know that they’d support people who pretended to be in need. So here we learn that Paul was strategic in his decision to work, that he wanted to leave the Thessalonians an example of how to live the Christian life. In fact, the word for "follow" in v. 9 is the Greek word mimeomai, which is where we get our English word mimic from. Many Bible teachers believe that this word mimeomai is Paul’s equivalent to the word "disciple" that Jesus used so often but Paul never uses. So Paul was strategically providing a discipleship model for the Thessalonian Christians, a living, breathing example they could look at to see how a devoted follower of Jesus lived.
In fact, Paul had even laid down a rule: If a person refuses to work they shouldn’t be financially supported by the church. Now this rule doesn’t say, "If someone can’t work" or "if someone can’t find a job," or "if someone’s going through a tough time financially." The emphasis is on that word "will," that they are willful in their refusal to work for their own sustenance. Paul’s giving the Thessalonian Christians permission to cut off the slackers from financial support, to set tough love boundaries.
Here we find the second strategy. We develop a responsible life BY MODELING GENEROUS DILIGENCE.
When people are being irresponsible our temptation is to chide them with our words. There’s certainly a place for our words; that’s what Paul meant when he said to, "Warn the idle" (1 Thess 5:14). But few things speak more powerfully and persuasively than a positive example. Our modeling is far more influential than we realize, and usually far more influential than our words are.
On the one hand we’re to model generosity. Paul’s willingness to forgo his rights as an apostle--even his right to financial support--is an example of generosity. Paul had a generous heart, and even though he was never a wealthy person, he wanted to give to those who were around him. In 1 Thess 2:8 Paul wrote, "We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us." Where are you modeling generosity to those around you? If your Christian friends or your children looked at you checkbook, would you be embarrassed by what they saw? Are your priorities clear in the way you spend your money and manage your finances? Generosity begins with our financial support of the church God calls us to, and then it grows out from there. We’ve been blessed as a church financially this last year--it’s been one of our best years yet--but I want to challenge you to look at your giving and ask yourself if you’re modeling generosity?
But the other side of this is modeling diligence. Paul wasn’t afraid of hard work, even if it meant getting dirty and developing calluses on his hands. When Paul was fully financially supported and didn’t have to work as a leather worker, he worked as an apostle just as hard. The so called "Protestant work ethic" is rooted in passages like these in the Bible that claim that the way we labor is part of our spiritual life as followers of Jesus. Can people see your example of generous diligence?
3. Focusing Our Efforts (2 Thess 3:11-13)
Finally we see Paul directly address the slackers who were living irresponsibly in vv. 11-13. Here we find that the slackers weren’t just sitting in front of the TV wasting away, but that they were busily involved in other people’s lives. They’d become meddlers in other people’s affairs. All the efforts and energy the rest of the congregation was putting into their spiritual life with Jesus and their labor on the job, these guys were focusing on gossiping, manipulating, and snooping. So their problem wasn’t a lack of energy but it was energy focused in the wrong direction.
Once again Paul pins on his apostle badge for what he has to say to these people. By the authority of Jesus he commands them to settle down, to stop sticking their noses in other people’s affairs and to get a job. Turn off the TV, hang up the telephone, get off the computer, turn off the gameboy, and look in the want ads and get a job. Even if it’s a part-time job, even if it’s a low paying job, start working for what you eat, says Paul.
Then in v. 13 he broadens the scope again to talk to the entire church about not getting discouraged. When people take advantage of us--especially financially--our tendency is to grow cynical. How many of us have given change to a transient on the street, only to see that person buy cigarettes with the money? Our impulse reaction is, "I’ll never do that again." So Paul tells them to not grow discouraged, to not withhold financial help from people who legitimately need it. Don’t let the slackers poison your heart toward people who have a genuine need.
So to the slackers Paul says to focus their energy on settling down and getting a job, and to the rest of the church, Paul says to focus their energy on doing good.
Here we find the final strategy. We develop a responsible life BY FOCUSING OUR EFFORTS IN A POSITIVE DIRECTION.
It’s amazing how much energy a person who’s willfully irresponsible has to use to fuel their irresponsibility. Think about the alcoholic, and all the energy he wastes trying to cover up his tracks. Consider the compulsive gambler, who’s always trying to balance his books, who’s just waiting to get that one break that never quite comes. People who choose an irresponsible path end up working much harder than those who choose the responsible path. That’s a general principle of life.
But it’s also amazing how much energy responsible Christians put into not being taken advantage of. Instead of focusing our efforts in the positive direction of caring for needs, of loving the unlovable, of meeting legitimate needs, we often grow cynical. We respond to needs with suspicion, and we close our ears to legitimate appeals for help with the justification that we’ve been used before. Yet the moment we as Christians or we as a church give up trying to do what’s right, at that moment we ought to put a closed sign outside. Yes...we’ll be taken advantage of a times, and yes we should be wise in how we help people, but the bottom line is that we’re here to do the works of Jesus. It’s risky business.
Conclusion
Unfortunately there will always be irresponsible Christians. In fact, sometimes all of us act irresponsibly at times. God challenges us to grow into responsible followers of Jesus by managing our relationships wisely, by modeling generous diligence, and by focusing our efforts in a positive direction. This will help us grow into a responsible congregation.
Now I don’t think it’s an accident that we’re talking about spiritual responsibility on the last Sunday before y2k. There’s been so much irresponsible hype and reckless sensationalism by Christians that we’re tempted to disregard y2k entirely. But the reality is that no one knows what’s going to happen next Saturday, or tomorrow for that matter. We live in uncertain times, and it doesn’t take a computer glitch to rock our worlds--just ask the people on that India airliner and the family members of the people who were bombed in South Africa this last week.
So I have some advice for you as we face y2k together. First, to summarize everything we’ve talked about thus far, act responsibly.
But beyond that I think Paul’s final words in vv. 16-18 are very appropriate for us on the last Sunday of 1999. Claim the promise of God’s peace no matter what happens. Jesus is the Lord of peace, and though governments may rise and fall, though terrorists may wreak havoc, though software programs may crash, Jesus promises peace in any and every circumstance. Jesus himself said in John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." That peace can guard our hearts and minds "at all times and in every way" according to Paul here.
Also, remember God’s presence is with you no matter what happens. The Lord is with you if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ. Jesus promised to never leave us and never forsake us, to stay by our side no matter what this world throws at us. Our soul can take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings no matter what happens, we can be close to his heart, safe and secure.
Finally, realize God’s grace in your life regardless of your circumstances. God’s grace means he doesn’t treat us as we deserve, but he delights to give us good gifts we don’t deserve. Though we act irresponsibly at times, though we often fail, he’s a gracious God. That’s my advice to you this next week and this next year.
