Alright brethren, let's turn
to 2 Thessalonians 3. 2 Thessalonians 3. We looked at
what the Lord commands us to do when dealing with a brother
walking disorderly. Today we're going to look at
the Lord's exhortation concerning an honest day's work. Let's begin
in verse 7, 2 Thessalonians 3, 7. He said, For yourselves know
how you ought to follow us, for we behave not ourselves disorderly
among you. Neither did we eat any man's
bread for naught, but wrought with labor and travail night
and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you, not
because we have not power, but to make ourselves an example
unto you to follow us. If Paul had only preached, he
would have still wrought with labor night and day. Because
preaching the gospel is labor. Preparing and praying and getting
a message from the Lord is labor, isn't it Ben? But he did, he
built tents because the gospel was being established, the early
church was being established and he didn't want anybody to
blame him or charge the gospel. as being for profit. And it says
here, but he did that to set an example for the Lord's people. And he said, verse 10, for even
when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would
not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some
which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command
and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness they
work and eat their own bread. I titled this an exhortation
from our Lord. And I titled it that because
unless somebody accused accused of preaching works or of legalism,
this is an exhortation from the Lord. This is the Lord's Word.
I've come to where it doesn't really concern me what men call
me. They've called me hyper-Calvinist.
I recall one week, and I think it was from the same message,
I think I was called an antinomian, and then somebody else called
me a legalist in the same week, and I think from the same message. Those are some of the nicer names
I've been called. But this is an exhortation from
our Lord, and in case somebody thinks This is legalism. Understand, this is the very
word of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is his command to his saints
right here. It's the will of our God, our
Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ that his people work a job. Whatever
the Lord's given you to do, that you labor in that occupation.
Eat your own bread and enjoy the fruits of your labor. That's
the gift of God to you. Whatever you have, you know you
may think you came to have that occupation by your or whatever,
but it's a gift of God to you. That's what the scripture says.
Ecclesiastes 2.24 says, there's nothing better for a man than
that he should eat and drink and that he should make his soul
enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw that it was from
the hand of God. Ecclesiastes 3.13, every man
should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor. It
is the gift of God. Everything we have is a gift
of God. The most mundane, everyday things that you have is God's
gift to you. He gives everything to us. He
rules providence. If we lose a job, he shut that
door. And if you have a job, he opened
that door and gave it to you. And everything we have is a gift
from God. But for God's saints, our Lord
teaches us to work. He teaches us to work, to labor,
whatever He's given you, He's given me. to preach the gospel. And I try to come here with a
full meal for you. I want you to have a full plate
when you hear this message. And for you, he's given whatever
you put in your hand, whatever he's given you as your occupation.
It's God's will that we work, that we may provide for others
in need. That's his will. Look at Acts
20 and look at verse 35. Speaking on behalf of the Lord,
this is what is what they said, Acts 20, verse 35. He said, I've showed you all
things how that so laboring you ought to support the weak and
to remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. He said, it's
more blessed to give than to receive. Look over to Ephesians
4 and look at verse 28, Ephesians 4, 28. He said, let him that stole steal
no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands, the thing
which is good that he may have to give to him that needeth.
You see, that's the purpose. Everything that God ordained
in this life, the offices that we hold, the various offices,
and even something as simple as an everyday job, working,
everything God ordained is preeminently to glorify His Son. Everything. Everything. We see it in creation.
You know, a corn or wheat. That's the seed. It's to glorify
Christ. You see a picture of Christ in
it. So is working. An everyday job. It's to glorify
Christ. Because the salvation of God's
elect was accomplished by the Son of God coming down and taking
flesh and working for us. He worked out salvation for us. Our salvation is entirely because
of the Lord's work and what the Lord did. And so just an everyday
job shows you an example in many ways of Christ who worked for
us. Let's see that. Look at John 9, John 9 in verse
4. That's where we'll begin. John
9, 4. And this is the first thing I want you to see. Remember Christ
worked for us as poor and needy sinners. He said in John 9 verse
4, he said, I must work the works of him that sent me while it
is day, the night cometh when no man can work. Christ loved
the Father and he loved the elect that the Father trusted to him.
And by the constraint of his love for them, this is what he
said, I must work. I must work. No other sinner
could work this work that was required to make us accepted
of God. He said, I must work. And it was work. What he did
was work. It was labor. You may have had
a labor-intensive job that was a hard job and a hard labor.
It was nothing compared to our Lord's work. He's dwelling, the
Holy One, among sinners, and it was a work from beginning
to end. For the glory of his Father,
for the glory of his Father, Christ said, I must work. God
his Father sent our Savior to work out righteousness for his
people. He sent him to glorify God's
righteousness, to show how God is absolutely, thoroughly, unbendingly just. Well, by no
means clearly guilty. He came to manifest the glory
of the law and magnify it and make it honorable for God. and
for His people. He came to make an end of sin
so that God can receive His people and do it in a holy and just
way to bring in an everlasting righteousness for His people.
That was His work. That was His labor. He did that
to glorify the Father. That's why He said, I must work
the works He's given me to work. He said, I must be about my Father's
business. There was no... He didn't take
a day off. Every day, every hour, our Savior
said, I must be about my Father's business. I mean, when he was
12 years old, he was in that temple speaking things that just
made the grand old theologians, it just astounded them. what
he could speak. And he entered at his ministry
and he labored, he worked, he never ceased. I must be about
my father's business. So the preeminent constraint
for you and me, the preeminent constraint in the heart of God's
child that makes us work the job God's given us to do. That
constraint that he keeps bringing to your mind and bringing to
your heart and keeps you getting up every morning and doing what
he's putting your hands to do is the glory of God our Father,
preeminently, that's it. The glory of God our Father and
His Son, Jesus Christ. This is what Paul said in Colossians
3.22, servants, And this includes anybody who works for somebody.
Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the
flesh, not with eye service as men pleases, but in singleness
of heart, fearing God, and whatsoever you do, whatever your occupation,
do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men. That's the constraint
of God's child. And if you're a master, if people
work for you, he said, and don't forget, you have a master in
heaven. Whatever you do, do it to the
Lord. Do it to our master. Christ did everything he did.
He said, I must work the works. He did it for his bride. That's
why he did what he did for his bride. God the Father chose the
church. He elected the church, his people,
and he gave her to Christ in eternity as his bride. And Christ
promised to come forth and make all provision for his bride and
provide everything for his bride. I must work the works of him
that sent me. His preeminent constraint was
he was doing everything for the church, for his bride. Our preeminent
constraint that God gives his saints in labor, in whatever
God's given you to do, is for the sake of the church. That's
number one. It's for the sake of the church,
for the sake of Christ's people. That should be number one, without
a doubt. And the constraint of a faithful
husband is for his bride, is for his bride to provide for
her and preeminently to provide the gospel for her, to have her
under the gospel, that's it. Listen to Ephesians 4.25. Husbands, love your wives even
as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. That
he might sanctify, that he might sanctify, that he might cleanse
it with the washing of water by the word, the preaching of
this gospel, creating a new heart within. That he might present
it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or
any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.
That was why Christ said, I must work. I must work the works of
him that sent me. And that's the constraint in
the heart of every faithful husband is to say, I must work the works
of him that sent me for his bride. Christ did what he did for the
salvation of each elect child in particular. He did it for
the sake of each elect child in particular. That's why Christ
said, I must work. God's elect, you who know Him,
you who believe Him by the grace of God, were the poor and the
needy. He said, do what you do, labor
in your occupations that you might provide for the poor and
needy. You were the poor and needy. We were the poor and needy.
David said, bow down thine ear, O Lord, and hear me, for I am
poor and needy. We're talking about poor, we're
talking about without a righteousness, we're talking about sinners,
ungodly, wretched, hell bound if left to ourselves. Paul said,
this is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. We were like orphans. An orphan's
the most helpless. An orphan and a widow, a true
widow that has no family to help her, and an orphan who has no
family, that's the most helpless ones there are in the world.
That was us by nature. And the Lord Jesus came forth,
and scripture says, Moses, verily, he was faithful in all his house
as a servant for a testimony of those things which we've spoken
after. But the Lord Jesus was faithful as a son over his own
house. He's the firstborn son, and the
father trusted all the children of the house to his firstborn
son, and Christ was faithful as a firstborn son to his father,
whose house are we if we hold fast confidence until the end.
So for you and me, you get up in the morning or you're tired
and you don't feel like laboring anymore, what's the constraint
to keep going? The preeminent constraint of a faithful pastor
and of faithful saints to labor is Christ's work for us. It's
what he's done for us. We labor for the elect's sake.
For the elect's sake. For the same reason, faithful
fathers labor to provide for the children in their house.
Because you see a picture of how Christ labored for the children
in his house. And you want to labor to provide
for them and preeminently to have them under the gospel. Listen
to this, Paul said in 2 Timothy 2.10, all the suffering he endured,
all the rejection and all the stripes and all the stuff he
endured, he said, I endure all things for the elect's sake. I do it for the children's sake.
That they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ
Jesus with eternal glory. So that's why Christ said, I
must work. He did it for the glory of His Father. He did it
for His bride. He did it for the children of
His house. And that's what He puts on your
heart, who know Him. He wouldn't rest until He could
say this. And this is what He ended up
saying. He said, I have glorified Thee on the earth. He prayed
to the Father. He said, I've glorified Thee on the earth,
Father. I finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do. He said,
it is finished. and he would not rest. He didn't
enter glory and sit out until he finished that work. But when
he finished it, he sat out. The work's finished. That's why
he sat out. So even everyday, day-to-day
occupations that he gives you and me. God's glorifying his
son in a regular everyday job. He's showing you a picture of
Christ in that. You get up early in the morning and let this be
your thought. Think about Christ and let this
be your thought. What his thought was, I must
work. I must work. Your wife, your children, they
must be fed. They must be clothed. They must
have shelter. They must have daily necessities.
But most of all, they must have the gospel. And you do what you
do, first and foremost, for Christ's bride, for his church, for every
child of his house. And in doing so, you'll provide
for your own family and for your own children. Now secondly, what
I want you to see is only the grace of God can work this. Only
God's grace and power in the heart of His child works this.
Go to Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2. When our Lord,
when He sent the Holy Spirit And he baptized the whole church
in the Holy Spirit. That's when the Holy Spirit came
upon us in power, and that's when he began regenerating his
people in a greater way. more obvious way, and there was
a marked change that happened in the world when Christ ascended
and poured out the Holy Spirit. And here's what happened on that
day of Pentecost. Acts 2.44, those that were born
of the Lord, it says this, Acts 2.44, and all that believed,
see, gave them faith in Christ to know Christ was all their
righteousness, all their salvation. All that believed were together
and had all things common. and sold their possessions and
goods and parted them to all as every man had need. And they
continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread
from house to house did eat their meat with gladness and singleness
of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. You
see that they sold their possessions and their goods and divided them
up amongst themselves so that those that didn't have as much,
those that had need would have, and those that had more didn't
have as much but they were providing for the others and so there was
an equality amongst them. Men read that, and I've had men
say this to me, men read that and they say, that's socialism,
that's communism. Well, no, governments try to
imitate that with socialism and communism. They try to imitate
that. And this is an election year,
and there's a lot of talk right now about socialism and about
communism. But man cannot legislate grace
and love in the heart. You can't pass laws to make men
have grace in their heart and love in their heart for one another.
You can't do it. God gave ten commandments. That's
the most perfect law ever given. And that never put grace and
love in the heart of anybody. You cannot do it by legislating
it. You can't make happen what the Lord made happen on the day
of Pentecost. Paul's word in our text, it's
not legalism. at all. This is not brought about
by law. It's brought about by the grace
and power of God. It's brought about by God making
you see how that Christ was rich and yet for your sakes He became
poor that you through His poverty might be made rich. And that
humbles you in your heart and makes you see everything you
have. I mean everything, every spiritual
blessing, every temporal blessing, the breath you breathe, the clothes
on your back, the job you work, everything spiritual and temporal
is the gift of God that came down from above through the righteousness
of our Lord Jesus Christ. He gave, He provided, He did
that for you. And when you know that, brethren,
by that grace and that love of God being in your heart, that's
what makes you want to provide for your brethren, for the sake
of Christ. When government tries to do this
by law, here's what happens. The wealthier, they're taxed
and they give to provide. And I'm thankful we have programs
in this country that provide for those that need it. We should
have that. I'm thankful for that. But here's
what happens when the more the wealthier are taxed and have
to provide for the poor, the more they despise the poor. I'm
talking about corner men now. And the poor, the more they're
given the handout from the wealthy and don't have to work, the more
they take advantage of the wealthy. That's just natural. That's just
man's nature. Notice in our text back there
in 2 Thessalonians 3, Christ's command is in verse 10, This
we commanded you that if any would not work, neither should
he eat. We're not talking about a man
that can't work. We're not talking about somebody that's disabled
or have some problems where they cannot work. We're talking about
a man who won't. And that's the Lord's word. He that won't eat,
he that won't work, he don't eat. That's just the Lord's word. But God's grace creates a new
heart with a new constraint of Christ's love for us. That's
what constrains the heart of his child. Listen to Paul in
2 Corinthians 5.14. The love of Christ constraineth
us. Because we thus judge, if one
died for all, then we're all dead. Every single one of his
people died in Christ. We were dead in our sin, but
when Christ came and laid down his life for us, we died in him.
And that he died for all, all his people. This is what he accomplished.
That they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves. Before we were just like a brute
beast. We got up in the morning and all our day was concerned
about was doing for self. We worked a job for self. To
have, have, have, get, get, get. That's all it was. But now we're
living to Christ. Now we do what we do for Christ's
sake. unto him which died for them and rose again. That's who
we live unto. There's a good article in the
Bulletin where Scott Richardson wrote about faith. Read that
article. We walk by faith. It makes you look at everything
in your life differently from how you looked at it before.
Everything revolves around Christ, revolves around his church, his
people, his gospel, and everything we do, we're doing from the constraint
of him who loved us and gave himself for it. That child of God that has temporal
things now, because he sees what Christ did for him, he wants
to provide for his needy brethren. You want to do that. And if you're
the needy brother who's provided for, you don't want to take advantage
of that. You want to get to a place where
you can help the needy brother. And the child of God whose needs
are met by brethren, They don't want to take advantage of the
brethren. You don't want to. You want to work so you can help
your brethren. Listen to Acts 20.35 again. He said, I showed you how so
laboring you ought to support the weak and to remember the
words of the Lord Jesus how he said it's more blessed to give
than to receive. The only thing that brings a
believer as much happiness as Christ giving us these unsearchable
riches of Christ, the only thing that makes you as happy as being
given the free salvation that Christ has worked for us, the
only thing that makes you as happy is giving those same riches
to somebody else that needs them, a poor, destitute sinner. I'll
tell you this, my neighbor, met me this week and started talking
to me and asked me a question. You know, every Saturday morning
I get up and I preach that preacher's school. And where I preach that,
my table's sitting here, I got a little stand, I got my phone
on it, and I'm preaching into my phone. Well, there's just
a wall between me and my neighbor, and her table's sitting right
there. And she met me this week and she said, Clay, she said,
who are you preaching to on Saturday morning? And I said, you've been
hearing that? And she said, I sit at my table
now at nine o'clock every Saturday morning and listen to you preach.
And she said, I'm looking it up in the scripture. She said,
I never heard nothing like that. She said, that's beautiful. I
said, well, why don't you just bring your coffee over and sit
down at my table, and I can preach to you while I'm preaching to
them. I don't know if anything will come of that, but that just,
I thought, how amazing can God work through a wall? That's what you want. The only
thing that makes you happier than God giving you these unsearchable
riches is to see Him blessed to somebody else's heart through
your preaching and through you bringing them to hear the gospel.
That's what you want. That's what you do. That's why
you do everything you do in this world now. The constraint of
Christ's love in the heart, it doesn't make brethren take advantage
of one another. It creates inequality. so that
the burden doesn't fall on one or two. I pray we don't let,
here, we don't let the burden fall on one or two, it shouldn't.
That doesn't mean everybody can support with the same measure,
but everybody should support. Today, see here's why, today
the one that's meeting the need, the one that has to meet the
need, your need, he'll be the one with the need tomorrow. And
tomorrow, the one who met the need yesterday, he'll be the
one who's having his need met today. Listen, I'll show you
that 2 Corinthians 8. Go back over there, 2 Corinthians
8. Here's what, this is exactly the purpose of God's grace. 2
Corinthians 8, 13, look here. Paul said, I mean not, he's talking
here about giving, supporting, reveling in need. He said, I
mean not that other men be used and ye burdened, but by an equality
that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want.
that their abundance also may be a supply for your want. You
see that? Today, your abundance is a supply
for their need. Tomorrow, their abundance will
be a supply for your need. that there may be equality. Who's
going to work that? Me and you aren't working that.
Who's going to work that? Look here, as it's written, he
that had gathered much had nothing over, and he that had gathered
little had no lack. He points us back to the manna.
When the manna fell and they went out and gathered up that
manna, some gathered up a lot, some didn't gather up as much.
But by the Lord, it says the Lord blessed the gathering of
each one so that One didn't have too much and one didn't have
too little. They had an equality. They had what they needed all
the time because of the Lord doing that. Christ is that bread.
He's that manna. Every one of God's saints have
what we need at all times in Christ, by Christ. He's our need. But as far as provision and what
we need, temporally speaking, He always provides the need. or the abundance that you have. And here's what he does. This
is the truth of the matter. When a brother is in need, Christ
made him to have that need. He did that on purpose. And he
gave you an abundance, and he did that on purpose, and he gives
you the grace to meet that need. All of that's worked by the Lord
on purpose. That's how he's keeping things equal. Tomorrow, he'll
give you a need. And then this one that don't
have as much, he'll give him more. and he'll be contributing
to meet your need. It's how the Lord works it so
that at all times, I wish we could have the faith all the
time to realize we have what we need and we're gonna have
what we need because Christ is providing it. That's so, brethren. That's so in this congregation. That's so of each of you in your
own lives. You're going to have what you
need all the time because Christ is going to provide it. That
doesn't mean you're not going to have hard times. That doesn't mean
that you're not going to have times where you have great needs. But He's going to meet the need.
Hasn't He done it for you already? He's going to meet the need.
That's our Lord. And David said, I've never seen
the righteous forsaken. I've never seen his seed begging
bread. He that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely
give us all things? You can count on that. You can
count on that. He said, all these need, these
things you have, He said, all the heathen Gentile nations are
seeking after nothing but that. He said, your Heavenly Father
knows you have need of these things. You seek first Christ
our King. You seek His righteousness. You
seek His kingdom, the good of His people, the needs of His
people. You seek His church's need. You seek Him first. All
these other things, He said, they shall be added to you. That's
the Word of our Lord. If we really believed Him, we
would never worry. Worry, when we get in trouble,
worry, something comes along down the pike that's troublesome.
I do it, you do it, I know it. But worry is just us, it's just
some belief. That's all it is. By God's grace,
though, he keeps you believing him, and we know he'll provide.
He labored for us, and so whatever labor God's given us to do, that's
what constrains us to labor. For God's glory in Christ, for
Christ his bride, for the elect's sake, and we're not only trying
to provide in temporal means what we're trying to provide
for each other, the gospel of Christ, the true need. We saw
last time, believers never lose by giving away to brethren. That's
what Christ taught us in 2 Corinthians, our text last time. Unsearchable
gift. You never lose by meeting the
need of your brethren. It doesn't seem natural to the
natural man that you would gain by giving away. You never lose
when it's for the name of Christ, for his children, for his brethren.
And you made all the more happy all the more happy. It's more
blessed to give than to receive. You made all the more happy because
you know, we saw it, you know, Christ, the Lord says, that brother
that you brought forth, they're glorifying God for you. They're
blessing God and praising God for His grace worked in you.
And not only that, they're praying for you that He would continue
to bless you by His grace. And not only that, but you provided
for their need. What more could we want? That's the happiness of a believer,
that the Lord has, he did all of that. He did that in you,
he did that in your brother. He did everything involved, every
step involved in that, from the brother with the need to you
with the abundance. He did it all. It's all his gift to us.
That's why we labor. That's our constraint. Christ's
love for us. So Paul says he ends up there
in 2 Thessalonians 2.13. 2 Thessalonians 2.13. He says, But brethren, be not
weary in well-doing. Don't become weary in well-doing. Don't become weary doing what
God's given you to do. He said, we'll reap in time. In the Lord's time, you'll reap
if you think not. You keep doing what God's put
in your hand to do. Christ will provide. He'll provide. He'll keep these blessings in
our heart. And you just, you keep, don't be weary in well-doing.
I pray the Lord will bless that. That's the exhortation of our
Lord to us. That's His word to us. That's
His word to us. All right, let's go to Him. Our
gracious Father, we thank you for blessing us with every need
we have and blessing us with every provision for that need.
We don't consider, Lord, that our poverty and our needs are
a blessing from you to make us depend on you, but they are.
And then you meet that need. Our Lord Jesus has met every
need we have, and we thank you for that. And we thank you, Lord,
for brethren who you use to help one another. Thank you, Lord,
when you give us the ability to help brethren. It's all to
your glory and honor. Lord, keep this constraint in
our heart. Keep us waking every morning,
knowing I must work. I must do what I do for your
honor, for the good of your church, good of your children, for my
own children and my own bride that they may have and have no
lack, and especially, especially in the things of the gospel.
Lord, what a blessing, what an unspeakable gift you've given
your people. We don't really grasp this and
what a blessing it really is, but Lord it is. It's the wisdom. It's your wisdom. It's why you
save through the preaching of the gospel and uniting us together
like this is to show us how you are really in your people, you're
really working, providing every day for everything we have, everything
we need. Lord, thank you. We thank you,
we praise you, and we ask you keep us always remembering this.
Use us as you would see fit. In Christ's name we ask it, amen.