sermonette: No Work, No Eat

The Christian Work Ethic
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 04-Jan-03; Sermon #591s; 15 minutes

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Good afternoon all. I trust that your week went well. Maybe I should say work week in light of what I am speaking about. I hope everything went well there.

I have a question as we begin this afternoon. What would you do if you knew for certain that Christ would return in just a few days? Now, this is something we should seriously think about, not just His return, but what our actions would be if we were to do that.

Now we have heard in the news, not too recently, but within the past five years or so of certain groups whose preacher predicted that Christ would come within a week or so, and it was interesting to me in reading over some of those accounts what the people did. I remember specifically one instance in I believe it was South Korea, where a minister had made a prediction like this. Many of these people in his congregation quit their jobs and just waited for Christ to come. Of course, it did not happen. And suddenly having quit their jobs and also having given away their possessions, they were left destitute. Who was going to support them then? They had to go back and then find employment again and recover all their goods.

Consider also (just as another factor) that our present governmental system is essentially a weak form of socialism. Many would say it is a strong form of socialism these days, and it is getting stronger all the time. Socialism itself is actually just soft communism. What I mean by this is that there is an essence or a thing about our government in which people are more and more willing to depend on the government for their sustenance. Not just in times of distress, but all the time.

This mentality has also seeped into the church. We think that whatever happens, someone else is going to take care of us, which is just a terrible way to think for a Christian. It is a kind of cradle-to-the-grave benefit mentality. We have termed it often the welfare mentality, where you feel you are entitled to support from other people just for being. There is no qualification for it. You expect people to just give you things. So who needs to work when the government, or let us say in this case in a religious sense, the church, will feed us, clothe us, give us money for gasoline for our cars, etc.

Now the Bible's approach to all this is not soft at all. Certainly, the Bible teaches that Christians are to show charity to one another, and to give when there is a need. But it also emphasizes, and I do not use that term lightly, personal responsibility for one’s sustenance, what has been termed the work ethic. Often called the Protestant work ethic, it is really a misnomer. It is the Christian work ethic, or God's work ethic. We will get to that later.

Let us begin in II Thessalonians 3, verse 6. I am going to read this whole section. The New King James titles this section, “Warning Against Idleness.” It is really an expansion on I Thessalonians 4:11-12, and we will get to that in a minute also.

II Thessalonians 3:6-15 But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day [notice the emphasis there of his own example as well as whoever was with him at the time], that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have authority [meaning he did have authority to ask tithes of the congregation and not have to work, but to be supported by the tithes of the church], but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us.

For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread. But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good. And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet do not count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.

This is an expansion on something that was said in I Thessalonians 4:11-12. Now in that section, in just very brief phrases, he says that they should work, mind their own business, and live quietly. The reason he gives for that is so that they would project a good witness to the world.

However, it seems like the Thessalonians did not take it to heart. Instead, they had concentrated on Paul's emphasis (in the first book of Thessalonians) on Christ's return. If you go back and look, you will see that he ends every chapter with an exhortation to be ready when Christ returns, or he mentioned some form of the return of Jesus Christ. And so, it may have gotten them so excited that they thought that he meant that Christ Himself was going to come immediately. And so, some among them who were of this nature, just went ahead and stopped working. And being idle, they began to be busybodies, and become a drag upon the other members of the church, because what they began to do was mooch from everybody else.

And Paul, having heard of this (I guess he was in Corinth at the time when he wrote this, or somewhere on the Greek peninsula he had heard about this), someone had come and told him. And so one of the reasons for writing II Thessalonians is to correct this misperception of theirs, and get them back into living properly.

What Paul does here to emphasize what he is saying about this particular aspect of Christian living is (he brackets it between two rather strong warnings) that if you do not do this, the other members of the church are going to ostracize you.

In verse 6 and verse 14, he says that if you do not do this what I am telling you, the other members of the church are not going to walk with you. They are not going to treat with you. They are not going to keep company with you. So it is a fairly urgent and strong admonition from the apostle Paul.

Now, this is not an isolated incident in the New Testament era. Evidently, there were scattered churches and they had a fair amount of trouble with people who had traveled from church to church and sponged off the church members, because they would say that they had a message from such and such a church, or they had just been there, and they are bringing greetings, and so they would speak in the church services, and they would expect to be fed and provided for while they were there.

So what the church did was come up with some general instruction on how to deal with these people, because there were a lot of itinerant preachers who had set themselves up to preach the gospel.

This ended up in the form that is called the Didache but in chapter 12 and verses 2 through 4 of that; it is an early Christian document that was made probably at the end of the 1st century or at the beginning of the 2nd in Syria, so it might have been passed around among the true churches of God.

But anyway, I thought it was interesting what this says.

Let anyone who comes in the name of the Lord be received. But when you have tested him, you shall know him, for you shall have understanding of true and false. If he who comes as a traveler, help him as much as you can, but he shall not remain with you more than two days, or if need be three. And if he wishes to settle among you, and has a craft, let him work for his bread. But if he has no craft, provide for him according to your understanding, so that no man shall live among you in idleness, because he is a Christian. But if he will not do so, he is making traffic of Christ; beware of such.

So even in this document there was quite a bit of a warning to be wise about such people who would live off the church. And this is not just Christian either. The Romans had a saying, “By doing nothing, men learn to do evil.” Isaac Watts, he was a Christian Englishman said, “For Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.” And the Jewish rabbis themselves about the same time, said, “He who does not teach his son a trade teaches him to be a thief.”

So it is not just a Christian thing. This is a universal principle. What Paul says there in II Thessalonians 3:10, “for even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” So maybe I should go one step further and say, “This is not just a universal thing among men, this is a godly thing.”

Let us go to John 5, verse 17. Jesus says, answering a question why He had done a certain work, a healing on the Sabbath.

John 5:17 But Jesus answered them, "My Father has been working until now, and I have been working."

The first thing that God manifested himself to humanity was as Creator, One who works, One who builds, One who makes, One who does. And so the example we have from God is one of a Person, a Being who is active and striving and building and creating and working all the time. So we can also say in a spiritual sense that those who are lazy about providing for themselves will also be lazy in providing for their eternal life, because it takes a great deal of work to live this Christian life. Christianity is not a religion for slouches. And people, frankly, the Protestant and Catholic versions of Christianity, make Christianity into a religion of do nothing. And if they would only read the Bible, they would find that it is actually the exact opposite. It is a religion of great, intense exertion. Much of it is mental, but much of it is also physical, because the physical helps buttress the mental and the emotional.

So what we have here is an exhortation from the apostle Paul about a physical thing with once again deep spiritual connotations because an idle Christian, he says,

I Timothy 5:8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

This exhortation by the apostle Paul is not something that is simple and does not mean a whole lot. This goes to the very root of Christianity, our very faith that we must work out our own salvation in fear and trembling.