How to focus on Jesus’ mission so we don’t have regrets – 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4, Part 5

My friends remodeled their kitchen, and it turned out beautiful.  A few months later they went on a mission trip.  When they returned, they couldn’t stop talking about what they saw, experienced, and how it changed their life.  They told me that if they had gone on the mission trip before they remodeled their kitchen, they wouldn’t have remodeled the kitchen.  It worked fine before. It was just outdated.

What did they see on that mission trip? What did they experience that changed their life? Why did they wish they hadn’t spent the money to remodel their kitchen? In this post, we conclude this week’s series of posts on 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4, and we’ll discover what led to my friends’ regret.

First, I want to point out that there has been a tendency in American evangelical Christianity to want to know when the day of the Lord will take place.  But that fascination with timing is misguided.

In The Scandal of the Kingdom: How the Parables of Jesus Revolutionize Life with God, Dallas Willard writes, “Jesus did not say, ‘Be experts at predicting when the master will arrive so you can delay getting ready for as long as possible.’…Jesus didn’t ask us to know when he was returning; he was teaching us to joyfully anticipate and prepare for his return.” (166)

I thought Willard’s quote about preparing for Jesus’ return relates to 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 3. Paul writes, “People are saying, ‘Peace and safety’.”

Paul’s point is that sometimes we can have an “I’ll get around to it eventually” mentality about living as Jesus’ disciple.  You know the “I’ll get around to it” mentality? 

I just did my taxes yesterday.  I hate doing taxes.  Everything about it is fussy.  The online passwords never seem to work, the forms are confusing, and the whole thing is about how much money I owe the government.  So I put it off.  I think “I’ll get around to it.”  And week after week goes by, and I don’t do my taxes.  Tax day gets closer and closer, and I still don’t want to do them.  I’ll get around to it eventually, I think. There’s still time. I think that way, and I know the specific deadline, April 15.

It seems to me that Paul is saying that we can have the “I’ll get around to it mentality” when it comes to getting ready for Jesus’ return. Paul’s point is that, unlike tax day, we don’t know how much time we have until Jesus returns. Tragedy can strike anytime.  Jesus can return anytime.

So Jesus calls us to be ready at all times.  Be on mission.  Any of us will be surprised when Jesus returns, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be ready. When we are always on mission for Jesus, when we focus our life on his purposes, then we are in a constant state of readiness for his return.

As we learned in the previous post, the ancient Hebrew prophet Amos taught that being ready also means pursuing justice.  We give our lives to help people become followers of Jesus.  We give our lives to help those in need.  We give our lives to overturn injustice.  We give our lives to help people flourish.

It seems to me that being ready is living simply, generously, sacrificially, focusing on how to make an impact today.  Filter your decisions through the mission of Jesus.  It was not wrong for my friends to remodel their kitchen.  But when they gained the perspective of the mission of the Kingdom, it helped them think about life differently. On their mission trip, they came into relationship with people whose needs were more important than a fancy new kitchen. My friends’ eyes were opened, and they wished they hadn’t used their finances to remodel their kitchen. They wished they had used their finances to help people in need.

But what about all this future talk, about Jesus’ return?  Paul’s point is that we are people who have hope because of Jesus’ return.  We live like people who have hope, and we give of our time, energy, money, and selves in order to help others have hope too. 

This passage in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5 is about the abundant life that Jesus says he came to bring to people.  The mission that Jesus calls us to is for our good and for the good of others.  When we pursue the mission of his kingdom, we find and share flourishing. 

Remember, our God is a relational God.  He is love.  When he calls us to be ready for his return, we do so by seeking his ways, pursuing the mission of his Kingdom, knowing that following him is always going to be for the good.

It might not be easy because following him is sacrificial. It means we choose to sacrifice.  Sacrifice is not easy.  But it is good. That’s how we ready ourselves for his return. We do not focus on escaping hardship through a rapture. Instead we live the hardship of the sacrificial life of discipleship to Jesus. He himself said, after all, “Die to yourself, and follow me.”

Photo by Osama Madlom on Unsplash

Jesus’ return might be a very bad thing for Christians – 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4, Part 4

Is it possible that when Jesus shows up, it might be a very sad moment for Christians? Can’t be, right? When Jesus returns, it will be glorious celebration. Except that’s not what the Bible says.

In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 1–4, Paul writes,

“Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief.”

Paul mentions the day of the Lord. This is now the second time that Paul has referred to this event, the day of the Lord.  In chapter 4, verse 15, Paul mentioned “the coming of the Lord.”  Now in verse 2 he calls it “the day of the Lord.”  Paul is referring to something the Old Testament prophet Amos said in Amos 5:18,

“Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the Lord? That day will be darkness, not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light— pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?”

The day of the Lord sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it? 

Amos was prophesying to the northern tribes of Israel who were rebelling against God.  They assumed that the day of God’s arrival would be a day of rescue.  Amos says “No! When God shows up, it’s not going to be a rescue, it’s going to be destruction.”

What?  I thought when God returns we are going to be saved.  What is Amos talking about?  He explains in the next few verses. When God shows up, he says this,

“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

God hates their worship services?  God hates their offerings?  What is Amos talking about? Aren’t worship services and offerings what God wants us to do?  Yes, but also no.  Why? 

The ancient Israelites mistakenly believed that all God wants is worship services.  Show up to church, drop some money in the plate, sing along, listen to the sermon, and God is happy right?  Wrong.  God says he is much, much more concerned that the choices of their lives are in line with their worship.  The people of Israel were holding worship services that made them look good, religious, but in the rest of their lives they were not pursuing justice.  They are not actively striving to be about the human flourishing of the kingdom of Jesus.  As a result, when God shows up, they will be shocked. 

It’s called the other 167.  There are 168 hours in a week.  We worship for about one hour.  What do our choices in the other 167 hours of the week reveal about what we truly believe?  Are the choices of our lives consistent with our worship?  Are we pursuing justice?  Are we giving our lives sacrificially to the oppressed, to those in need, to the poor?  When we give our lives, our money, our time, sacrificially, we show that our heart is truly beating for the Lord.

Photo by Aleksandr Kadykov on Unsplash

Why I no longer emphasize the rapture (something else is far more important) – 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4, Part 3

What will happen to people who are still alive when Jesus returns?  Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 15, “According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.”

Paul is talking about Christians who are in two different stations of life. First, there are Christians who have died the sleeping kind of death (see post explaining the “sleeping” kind of death here).  And second, there are Christians who are alive.  No surprise there.  

Then Paul mentions two things that will affect Christians who are dead and those who are alive. He mentions “the coming of the Lord,” and he writes that Christians who are alive at the coming the Lord will not precede those who died the sleeping kind of death. 

I find this to be a somewhat mysterious passage.  What is the coming of the Lord? And why is there an order of meeting the Lord when he comes?  Alive people have to wait to meet Jesus?  Christians who are alive meet the Lord after the dead Christians wake up and meet the Lord first?

As we continue reading in verses 16–17, Paul explains it for us, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”

Paul’s word have resonance with what Jesus himself taught in Matthew 25:30–31, “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.”

A few verses later in Matthew 25, Jesus depicts this in verses 39–41, “That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.”

Is this a description of what some have called the rapture?  What is the rapture?  The rapture is the idea that when Jesus returns, Christians will meet Jesus in the air, while the nonChristians will be left behind to face suffering for seven years.  That teaching is a relatively new one when you take in the scope of 2000 years of Christian history.  It started in the mid-1800s and became extremely popular in America in the 1900s.

Have you ever heard of the book The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, or the movie A Thief in the Night, or Larry Norman’s song “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”?  Those were all very popular in the 1960s and 70s.  In the last 20+ years, the Left Behind series of books and films are a recent example of this teaching.  Those books, songs and films are all based on a rapture way of understanding and interpreting the Bible. 

But something happened about 30 years ago.  In academic biblical circles, this teaching was scrutinized stringently by scholars, and those scholars largely found the teaching of the rapture didn’t hold up.  In other words, those scholars said that the biblical passages that seem to describe the rapture are not actually describing a rapture.  Today what you are much more likely to find are biblical scholars talking about the idea of the rapture as an artifact of evangelical theological history, or as just one potential interpretational option among others.  There are clearly still pockets of teaching out there that strongly emphasize rapture teaching.

Is Paul teaching a rapture?  Is he saying that Jesus is going come back, but not to earth, only to the sky, and angels will blow a trumpet, and first all the dead Christians will wake up and fly up to Jesus, and then after them, the alive Christians will fly up to Jesus, and they will all be in heaven? 

Maybe.  Maybe not.  When I read verses 16–17, I see why some people read Paul as teaching the rapture.  But then again, I grew up hearing about the rapture in school (I went to a private Christian school through 8th grade), in church, and in college (I went to an evangelical Bible college), all of which believed in the rapture viewpoint.  If you’ve been taught the idea of the rapture, it is very hard for to read this passage any other way. 

But there are other ways.  In fact, many scholars interpret these passages other ways. 

One way to interpret this passage and others like it is to ask, “How did the original audience interpret it?”  Remember that when we study 1st Thessalonians, we are reading other people’s mail.  This letter was not written to us.  So it had meaning to the original audience.

Here is a brief review of the historical/cultural context of the Christians living in the city of Thessalonica at the time Paul wrote the letter. The original audience had an expectation that Jesus would return in their lifetime.  They were struggling with persecution. The original audience of Christians were a tiny minority when it came to world religions; in fact, they were a minority among religions in their local area.

Think about how significantly different we are from them.  We contemporary Christians have the privilege of reviewing and learning from 2000 years of Church history.  Many contemporary Christians are not persecuted (while some are).  In some places, like the USA, Christians are in the religious majority. 

In other words, we contemporary Christians would do well to try to open our eyes to another culture, that of the persecuted Christians in Thessalonica. For the believers in Thessalonica, therefore, this is a passage about hope.  That’s why Paul writes in 4:18, “encourage one another with these words.”  That’s why Paul is saying that there is not just a dying kind of death, but also a sleeping kind of death from which we can wake up to meet Jesus.  No matter if you are a genuine Christian who passes away before Jesus returns, or if you are a genuine Christian who is alive when he returns, there’s hope!  Jesus is coming again.

When you are facing persecution, imagine how encouraging it could be to have hope.  I think you and I can take great courage and comfort in this teaching too.  We are people with hope, we carry hope, and we deliver hope to the people around us. 

The culture of the Kingdom of Jesus is a culture of hope. How are you expressing hope to the people around you? How are you oozing hope? How are you encouraging one another?

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Why Christians have hope in the face of death – 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4, Part 2

Death sucks. I have pastoral colleagues who say they like doing funerals, not because a person died, of course, but because of the opportunity to have spiritual conversations. I’m really iffy about that. When it comes to rituals of the faith, I’d much rather do a wedding, baptism, or lead the celebration of communion. Because death sucks.

Yet, as we learned in the previous post, Christians have hope in the face of death.  Why do we Christians have that astounding hope?

In 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 14, Paul explains, “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

There you have it.  There Paul explains why Christians grieve, but with hope.  We grieve with hope because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  When Jesus died and rose again, he paved a pathway, he went before us, he was the first, opening the doorway that enables those who die to die a sleeping kind of death, from which they will wake up like he did. 

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s real death.  Heart stops beating, lungs stop breathing, brain activity ceases.  It is not sleep, where all our bodily functions are still working.  No. It is real death.

Paul is saying that for Christians this very real death has the possibility of awakening, because that’s what Jesus did.  Jesus died a very real physical death, and by the power of God, Jesus awoke.  It was a miracle.  Dead humans don’t wake up.  But Jesus did.  This is the crucial miracle of God, that through Jesus’ resurrection, he goes before us, making a way for us to likewise experience awakening after we die.

But notice a very important word in this sentence.  “Believe.”  Belief happens before death.  In other words, there is a particular way of life now that enables the sleeping kind of death.  The word “believe,” because that word grounds this passage in the here and now. 

I was talking about this passage with a friend this week, and he said this, “I live in today.”  That might sound like an obvious truth. But it is important to consider.  We live now.  Therefore, whatever we choose to believe, we choose that belief now.  What do you believe? Better yet, how do your life choices reveal what you truly believe?

To summarize what we’ve learned so far in 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 13 and 14, Paul is talking about the sleeping kind of death, and how the sleeping kind of death enables people to grieve with hope, because those who die in Christ will awaken with him, and that gives us hope.

That idea seems to spark another thought in Paul’s mind.  What about those who are still alive when Jesus returns? We’ll see what he has to say in the next post.

Photo by Ahmed Hasan on Unsplash

The sleeping kind of death versus the sickness unto death – 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4, Part 1

Have a listen to the Johnny Cash song, “Ain’t No Grave.” What is it about?

Is Cash’s song about zombies?

Turn in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4. 

Paul writes, “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.”

When Paul writes “brothers and sisters,” he is addressing Christians in the church.  He suggests that we Christians have a different perspective on death from the common perspective of the rest of the world around us.  Paul hints at this different perspective when he uses the word “sleep.”  He is saying that there is a kind of death that is like sleeping.  And he says that the sleeping kind of death is available to us, to the point where we do not have to grieve like those who have no hope.  What is he talking about?  It sounds vague and mysterious.

First of all, Paul is not saying that all grief is bad.  When Paul says, “You do not grieve like the rest,” he is not saying that it is wrong for Christians to grieve when loved ones die.  Grief is normal.  Grief is good, actually.  We should grieve because we are sad, and we hurt, and we miss the people who have passed. 

God is a relational God, and he created us to be relational.  So we will naturally feel loss when someone is no longer a regular part of our lives.  Therefore, we Christians need not avoid grief, or fake that we are okay.  Expressing the emotion of grief and crying and hurting is normal. 

My grandmother passed in 2007, and I sometimes still feel a tinge of grief when I think about her, as we were close.  That memory and grief honors the relationship, as it recognizes the loss.

Too often, though, we can attempt to hold grief in, or we act as though grief is not affecting us.  People ask how we’re doing, and we quickly say, “I’m good, I’m okay.”  Yet deep inside, we’re hurting. When we hide our grief, when we try to bury it, we can feel very lonely.

Far better to express our grief openly together with others.  Paul would later write in Romans 12, “Mourn with those who mourn”.  It is a powerful thing to mourn in loving care of trusted friends and family, because just as you will be there for them, they can be there for you.  Grief activates a very important togetherness. 

But notice what Paul says here in 1st Thessalonians 4, verse 13.  There are different kinds of grief: hopeful grief and hopeless grief.  When Christians die, yes we should grieve, but our grief has hope.  That hope affects our grief.  Hope can take the edge off the grief.  Hope can give us a different perspective on our grief.

Grief is still grief, and thus even when Christians die, it is right to feel deeply sad. But remember hope, Paul says.  When Christians die, hope is not lost.  When Christians die, we hold on to hope.  Why?  Because when Christians die, they die the sleeping kind of death. 

When you are asleep, inevitably, what will eventually happen?  You wake up!  When Christians die, we die the sleeping kind of death, and we have hope that we will wake up to new life.  Thus, when Christians die, we have hope.

Paul contrasts this hopeful grief with the kind of grief experienced by “the rest of mankind.”  The rest of mankind are those who do not view this life from a Christian perspective, and thus their grieving is very different.  They grieve as well, but without hope.  A word for that kind of hopeless grief is despair. Despair is very difficult to deal with.  The Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard calls despair, “the sickness unto death.”  In that title, you can feel the despair.

But Christians, however, have hope in the face of death.  Why do we Christians have that astounding hope? We find out in the next post.

Photo by Ann Danilina on Unsplash

Did Jesus return last year? – 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:4, Preview

I just googled it and found that people are predicting that Jesus will return in 2024, 2030, and 2033.  Yes, I mentioned 2024.  Yes, I know that was last year. Did Jesus return last year, and I missed it?  Remember the hype of Y2K, or the end of the Mayan Calendar, or 2012?  Remember rapture-bombing?  Here are a few examples:

As you can see in the photos, rapture-bombing was a rather hilarious (in my opinion) social media trend where people set out clothing to make it look like the rapture happened.  Just to be clear, the rapture didn’t happen last year.  

When I was a kid, the thought of the rapture scared me. The rapture is the belief that Jesus’ return will be in two stages, the first of which is only in the air to “rapture” or cause all true Christians around the world to suddenly and simultaneously disappear in an instant, leaving every else behind.  What really freaked me out was the thought that maybe I wasn’t a true Christian, and I would be one of the left behind. 

Forty years later, I think about the rapture very differently.  Yet, I must admit that there are passages in Scripture that still have me wondering about the rapture.  This week in our blog series through 1st Thessalonians, we are looking at one of those passages.  Take a look for yourself.  It’s 1st Thessalonians 4:13–5:4.  In fact this passage is considered by some bible scholars to be the clearest teaching about a rapture.  Is it, though?  And are there dangers to rapture theology?  I think there might be.

We’ll talk about it more this coming week!

How to retire well – 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12; 5:14, Part 5

There are ways to retire well, and there are ways to retire wrong. Retiring well has nothing to do with how much money you’ve saved. When people think of retirement, they often think about making sure they have enough money to spend the time they will not be working on hobbies, trips, and entertainment. But there is something important missing to that mindset.

In an interview, pro basketball star Gilbert Arenas talks about how he retired at age 32 with a net worth over $100 million.

Guess what Arenas said it felt like to be 32 with $100 million. “Miserable.”

Do you know why? 

He didn’t have basketball anymore.  Arenas says from age 10 to age 32, everything in his life revolved around basketball.  He talked about smelling the season.  That resonated with me.  I was a soccer player from 6th grade till I graduated from college.  Every fall for 11 straight years, I played soccer.  My body was accustomed to getting into shape.  Running, practice, workouts, games.  Every fall.  The end of summer changing to fall has a distinct smell.  All these years later, I still smell it every year. 

For Gilbert Arenas it was basketball.  Twenty two years of basketball.  It went away when he retired at age 32.

You know what he did? He says, “I had to figure out how to be busy…..I spent a year just driving in traffic.”

He would wake up, drive for 3-4 hours in the morning. Get lunch. Drive for another 3-4 hours in the afternoon.  No where to go.  Nothing to see.  Just drive.  In that first year after his retirement, he put 30,000 miles on his vehicle. 

He went to the mall, realized he could buy anything in the mall, and it felt meaningless.  He went to the dealership, realized he could be any vehicle he wanted, and it felt meaningless. 

What happened to Gilbert Arenas when he retired?  He lost his purpose.  For 22 years, the purpose of his life was basketball.  Now it was gone.

As followers of Jesus, you may lose your job, you may retire, but you do not lose your purpose.  You are a follower of Jesus, and though you may not need to make money anymore, your purpose remains.  You are a follower of Jesus, and your life is about pursuing the mission of his kingdom.

There is no teaching from Jesus that says, “When you arrive at retirement age, I release you from mission.  You no longer need to serve the mission of the Kingdom.”  No!  I recently heard this statement: “I’m not retired, I’m refired.”  Reinvigorated, because they spend that much more time serving the mission of Jesus.  What is so beautiful is that being refired for the mission is not only good for us, but also good for those we serve, as we pursue Jesus’ way.

Christian pastor and author John Piper tells the story of a family in his church who retired.  Their dream was to get a boat and go sailing.  So they bought a boat, and they would post pictures on social media of their exploits, which involved walking up and down sandy beaches trawling for shells. 

Around the same time, the church got news that one of their missionary families was tragically killed.  People in the church heard the news and said, “What a tragedy,” about the loss of the missionary.

Piper responded, “That loss of the missionary is sad, but that is not the tragedy.  The tragedy is the people who believe that retirement is meant for trawling for shells.” 

Piper is not saying you can’t vacation.  Piper is not saying you can’t have a hobby.  He’s simply saying that we ought not allow leisure, comfort, and entertainment become the focus of our lives.

No matter your station in life, student, working, parenting, retirement, you are God’s steward.  Live your life for the mission of his kingdom.    

Work hard, live simply, for the purpose of sacrificial generosity, which is the what Jesus taught us and how he lived his life. The mission of the Kingdom is the basis for how we make decisions.  

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Do you view your work as worship? – 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12; 5:14, Part 4

This week on the blog, we’re studying a few verses in 1 Thessalonians chapters 4 and 5 that refer to work. In this post, I want to mention 1 Corinthians 10:31, which is in another letter of Paul. There Paul writes, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.”  That’s a great perspective on work.  Work can be an act of worship to God. 

That’s convicting to me.  I teach adjunct Bible classes for Lancaster Bible College and Messiah University.  Earlier this year, I taught an eight-week online class for LBC, and the topic was the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  There are many online models of education, so let me explain how this particular online class worked.

An LBC professor designs the class, the assignments, readings, etc. I am not involved in that process. I get the course after it is fully developed. Each week, I lead a live one-hour Zoom session in the evenings. Students can attend on Zoom, or if it doesn’t suit their schedule, they must watch the recording of the class later in the week.  For example, my class had 27 students, but an average of 6 or 7 were there live for the Zoom session. Everything else in the class is asynchronous, meaning the students do the reading, watch the videos, and complete the assignments on their own time. And there are a lot of assignments. Here’s why:

This class is a part of the college’s accelerated program, mostly for people who are working full-time jobs, have families, and cannot get their education in a traditional classroom setting.  “Accelerated” also means that the person designing the course takes what is a normal 16-week semester course, and packs it down into eight weeks.

For those eight weeks, I really don’t do much teaching.  Just the one-hour Zoom session each week.  Because of that lack of in-person or synchronous time, the students have far more assignments than a regular class, an average of six assignments per week. 

Remember how I mentioned that I had 27 students in the class?  Multiply that by six assignments per week.  Each weekend for those eight weeks, I was grading, on average 162 assignments. My Saturdays and Sundays were shot with grading.  It was bananas. 

If you’re wondering, “Did you know the grading workload before you said ‘Yes’ to teaching the course?”  Yes, I knew.  I had taught the exact course previously, more than once.  But you know how you forget?  You work hard on something, maybe even hate it, then it is over, and you breathe a huge sigh of relief.  You might even say, “I’m never doing that again.” Then you get your paycheck for the work, and that feels good, and you slowly forget how difficult it was.  Soon enough, you’re doing it again.  Struggling again. That was me with this class.

I’m telling you this story because when I was grading all those 162 assignments each week, I was sometimes struggling.  I was not always grading to the glory of God.  I was not worshiping God as I was grading.

Even when we are dissatisfied with our work, even when we are trying to get a new job, taking classes, getting training, scouring job websites, updating our resumes, and every hour at our current job feels frustrating, we can still worship in our work. 

How about you? Are you worshiping God in how you work?

Some of you reading this are retired. You don’t have work. In tomorrow’s post I’ll talk about how Paul’s principles in this week’s passage clearly relate to retirees as well.

Photo by Desola Lanre-Ologun on Unsplash

How the quality of your work creates a picture of Jesus – 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12; 5:14, Part 3

This week in our study of 1 Thessalonians, we are learning what the Apostle Paul teaches about work. In the previous post, we studied Paul’s principle of working hard. That principle of hard work, Paul says, is for a very important reason.  

Notice in verse 12 that working hard and not being dependent on others, Paul says, wins the respect of outsiders. “Outsiders” is Paul’s way of referring to people who are not currently followers of Jesus.  Paul is saying that how we work and manage our money can invite people to become followers of Jesus or it can repel them away from Jesus.

Think about the people in your life who you suspect are not followers of Jesus.  They can observe the way you go about your life.  Are you a hard worker?  Are you living within your means?  Are you striving to live simply, and give generously, sacrificially? 

How you work and how you use the money God gives you says a lot about your heart.  About what is important to you.  People will notice that.  Does your spending line up with what you say Jesus is teaching?  People will get an impression about Jesus as they observe your choices.  People will see if you are following Jesus’ teaching about money or not. 

Then skim over to chapter 5, verse 14, and notice the phrase Paul uses, “warn those who are idle.”

Notice the spelling.  I-D-L-E.  Paul is not talking about I-D-O-L, worshiping idols or false gods.  Sounds identical when you say these words fast.  But they are different.

The word idle is “refusing to work, lazy.” 

In Paul’s next letter to the Thessalonian Christians, the topic of idleness comes up again.  Here’s what he says in 2 Thessalonians 3:7–12,

“We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.”

Let me repeat what I mentioned in a previous post, work is good.  Unless the work is sinful or unethical, work is good.  Doesn’t matter if your work is blue collar or white collar.  Doesn’t matter if you are working with your hands, or if you are working with your mind. Doesn’t matter if the world views your work as worthy of a high salary or a low salary.  Doesn’t matter if you sit at a desk or work in a factory or a hospital or a school.  Your work is good. 

Don’t get me wrong.  You might be dissatisfied with your work.  You might want to do something different.  You might want a higher salary.  I’m not saying that because your work is good, you shouldn’t try to advance. 

We can be satisfied and dissatisfied at the same time.  Satisfied in God, knowing that he will keep his promises, and thus we remain faithful to him. But also dissatisfied in wanting to grow, learn, advance. 

When you follow what Paul is suggesting here, you will work hard.  John Wesley famously said, “Earn all you can, save all you can, so you can give all you can.”  Earn all you can.  Work hard. 

Part of working hard can include a willingness to step out of your comfort zone.  Learn new things, try different experiences, even including a significant change of work. 

I recently published a book. It was a lot of work over a few years, starting with my doctoral program.  Sometimes writing the book was super frustrating.  Editing, for example.  So much editing. 

Then it was done.  Then it was published!  It felt great.  Until my wife and I realized that in this day and age, when the marketplace is saturated with millions of books, my book is not going to sell itself.  I had to get back on social media.  My wife creates content that I post on my accounts.  I had to get in touch bookstores and traditional media.  Not just writing the book, but also selling the book is work.  But it is honorable work. It was especially good because it pushed me out of my comfort zone, in hopes that the message of the book will help people and organizations.

Photo by Alice Dietrich on Unsplash

People are watching how you work – 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12; 5:14, Part 2

It has become a fairly common experience of contemporary life, saturated as it is by devices that are tracking us, to say something in a conversation and within hours or days receive advertising about that very topic.

How often do you think about the fact that people are watching you? I’m not talking about government surveillance or artificial intelligence on social media. I’m talking about real flesh and blood people watching you. Your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors. As we’ll see in today’s post, the Apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Thessalonica, reminding them that people are watching. In particular they are watching how we work.

I teach adjunct courses for a couple local Christian colleges, and last semester the department chair observed me teach. It was nerve-wracking. Maybe you’ve had the experience.

Remember the story of how Paul started the church in Thessalonica?  You can read it in Acts 17.  Let me summarize it. Paul was in the city for three weeks, God was at work in amazing ways, and people were becoming followers of Jesus.

But just as things are going well, and Paul is grouping the people up into house churches, a riot breaks out against Paul, and he has to flee for his life under cover of night.  The rioters, in their search for Paul, go to the house of Jason, who was one of those new followers, drag Jason out in the street, beat him, and take him to the magistrate who throws him in jail.  Jason posts bond and is free.

Think about what it must have been like to be a Christian in that city.  People watching their every move. 

That’s why in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 11, Paul writes, “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business.”

Let’s pause there.  Lead a quiet life. Mind your own business.  Paul is talking to Christians in a town that also included people who were not in favor of Christianity. 

Because of that, I get why Paul says, lead a quiet life, mind your own business.  In other words, set an example of how a Jesus follower should live.  Let your actions tell your story to the people watching you.

It reminds me of when my kids were in high school sports.  Often at the beginning of a sports season, they would tell us, “Our team is looking really good this year.  I think we’re going to be good.”  Or they would say, “I am so much better than so and so on my team. The coach should play me instead of him or her.”  My kids could be insistent about this.  My response was, “Let the scoreboard do the talking for you.  I love you.  I think you’re great.   But less talking, more action.”

Paul is saying something similar to Jesus followers.  Focus on your own behavior.  You don’t need to draw attention to yourself.  Your behavior will draw attention all on its own.

The opposite of a person who lets their lives do the talking is the person who is in everyone’s business, the gossip, the talker, the know-it-all.  Most people try to avoid that kind of person.  Why?  Because you don’t know if you can fully trust them. 

Be respectful, respectable, trustworthy. Paul is saying that we should mostly let our lives do the talking.  Jesus once taught us that we are not to look for the speck of dust in others’ eyes, because often we have a log in own eye (Matthew 7:1–5).

So Paul has introduced this section in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 11, by emphasizing that we Christians are people who live quiet lives, minding our own business.  He then continues in verses 11-12, writing that one of the primary ways we live that quiet life and mind our own business is,

“Work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”

Paul is not saying that those who work with their hands are better followers of Jesus than people whose work is mostly with their minds or on a computer.  Working with your hands was basically the only kind of work there was in Paul’s day.  In essence Paul is saying, “Be hard workers. Be diligent workers.  Faithful workers.  Make sure your integrity is high in your work.”  Paul’s emphasis is not on the kind of work you do, but on the quality of your work.

Followers of Jesus are people committed to work.  Paul’s point is that there is more to work than just earning a paycheck.  There is that.  He said that when you work hard, you are not dependent on anyone.  You earn your keep.  You pay your bills.  You put food on the table.  You should not live beyond your means.  Your income from your work should be enough so that you aren’t depending on others. 

This is a general principle.  Of course, there are situations in which we will need to depend on others.  Michelle and I have many times depended on the generosity of our parents and others who gave us loans.  Right now, in fact, just like many of you, we are working and trying to live within our means, which includes paying off loans. 

But there are times when the situations of life mean we need help.  Faith Church has a Care & Share fund to help those in our church family who need it.  Maybe it’s an unexpected repair bill, a job loss, a health concern, and you need help.  That’s what the Care & Share Fund exists for.

Again, Paul’s general principle is: we work hard, and we manage our money so that we will not be dependent on others.  That principle of hard work, Paul says, is for a very important reason. We’ll study that important reason in the next post.

Photo by Tasha Kostyuk on Unsplash