The Excellent Life

Alright, everyone, if you can take your Bibles and turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 9 through 12. 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 will be our passage for today. At our church, we are going through the book of 1 Thessalonians, and I thought this would be a very encouraging passage for us here at First Baptist Artesia. And so I've titled this sermon The Excellent Life. And we're going to look at two areas of Christian love where we must continue growing. I'll mention what those areas are, but let's go ahead and let's read the passage together. You can remain seated, and I'm going to read this out loud. 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12. I'm going to read from the New American Standard Bible, not too different from your translations. 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 says this:

About brotherly love: You don’t need me to write you because you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. In fact, you are doing this toward all the brothers and sisters in the entire region of Macedonia. But we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this even more, to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, so that you may behave properly in the presence of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone. — 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 (CSB)

This is the reading of God's Word. Praise be to God. Amen. Amen.

You know, I think we're tempted to put our lives on autopilot. We're familiar with this term autopilot. We tend to want to maybe press a button and go through the everyday routines and just want life to kind of go on its own, just like our cars. You know, I don't have a full self-driving car. I don't own a Tesla. But I've been in a Tesla, and I get scared every time my friends turn on the full self-driving. I don't know if the car is going to stop. I don't know why it's changing lanes on its own. And so I think we're already living in the future, and it's amazing to see the car go from one place to another just completely on its own. I still think it's witchcraft. But you see that we're in this kind of society where even our cars are just driving on their own, and people now, you see these stories of people reading books while they drive and staying on their phones while they drive. And you saw those news stories of people even sleeping on the freeway. You're not supposed to do that, right? It doesn't matter how good Elon is—you're not supposed to do that. And I think our cars, as good as technology is, our cars are kind of just a picture of how we tend to look at life, right? Sometimes we want to put life on autopilot. We kind of want to just go through the routines and just go through the everyday motions, and we don't really want to think, we don't want to work to deal with hard things. If we're being honest with ourselves, sometimes we want to stay passive, and we don't feel like growing. We don't feel like putting any effort or excelling in our lives.

But the dangerous thing is that complacency is a deadly foe. If you and your life are struggling with apathy or complacency, this type of stagnation is not good for any person, especially the Christian. If you are a Christian here today and you have no motivation to grow or to improve or to excel in your Christian life, I want to warn you, friend, of that dangerous place to be.

A.W. Tozer said that complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is the stagnant soul. And by 'content,' I don't mean content in Jesus. This contented soul is the one who doesn't care that it is not progressing. And you might have been living your Christian life—you may have been a Christian for maybe weeks, or years, or many years, maybe even decades—and you have gone to this space, you've experienced everything, you've gone through all the suffering, and you've seen all the spectrum of the Christian life, and you are here today and you are struggling feeling complacent. You feel stuck in your Christian life. I am here to bring you an encouragement from God's Word, that you don't have to stay stuck. You don't have to remain where you are. You don't have to accept the complacency that you're struggling with.

And my goal for today is that we would be aware of this deadly enemy, the complacent heart; that we would forsake this lack of desire for growth and spiritual progress; and that we would, rather than just get by in life, strive to excel still more in our Christian life. And that's what God wants us to do. God wants us to excel in our holiness. He wants us to excel in our Christian living, and He wants us to live the excellent Christian life. But excellence is not what this world makes it out to be. What we're going to see in this passage is that the excellent Christian life, one who excels as a Christian, is one who excels in love. If you want to grow and excel as a Christian, you must excel in Christian love.

If you're familiar with 1 Thessalonians, this book has a theme of encouraging the church to be a steadfast people of God. And so Paul is writing to these brand new Christians. They're going through persecution, going through difficult times, kind of going through a lot of victories and success in their Christian life, but still struggling with some things here and there. And so he was taken from them prematurely, and so he is writing this first letter to them, giving them specific instructions that he thinks that these new believers need to know in order to continue to excel still more in their Christian life. And so even though they're experiencing a lot of victories, he says there's still room to grow. And so he wants them to be steadfast. He wants them to grow in holiness.

And if you look in chapter 4, we're kind of going in the middle of this book and looking at a certain context here. And in chapter 4, he is talking about all about the subject of sanctification. He's talking about what does it mean for a Christian to really be holy? In chapter 4, verses 1-2, he defines what sanctification is, and he says this is sanctification: to be set apart to the Lord. To be holy is really just that: to be completely other, to be set apart. And he says, 'Since you are holy, since you are sanctified,' he says, 'I encourage you to continue in that holiness. You can grow in your sanctification.' And so he defines what sanctification is, and then he goes into more specific areas of where they can grow in their holiness.

And then he goes into verses 3-8, and he has a lot of strong, specific words about sanctification in the area of sexual purity. And he says, 'Look, I want you to know that yes, you should be holy and sanctified in all areas of life, but I want to take note of this area of sexual purity.' He says, 'I want you to be pure and abstain from sexual immorality.' And so he notes that for them, maybe because they were in particular struggling with this in a specific way. And then we get to our passage in verses 9-12, where he is starting to talk about how holiness is expressed in everyday relationships. And he says, 'Your holiness is not just generally and not just in the area of sexual purity, but your holiness is also expressed in how you love the church, and how you love people outside the church.' And really, those are our two points for today.

The two areas of Christian love where we are going to grow and learn about growing today are: one, in verses 9-10, the first area is we must excel at loving the church. We must excel at loving the church in verses 9-10. And then secondly, he wants them to excel at loving everyone in verses 11-12. So, excel at loving the church and then excel at loving everyone. I'm going to repeat these as we go. But let's go look at the first one in verses 9-10. This is the first area that he wants them to grow in holy Christian living.

Excelling in Love for the Church

First of all, excel at loving the church in verses 9-10. Look at verse 9 with me. He says, 'Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.' So he starts off by further explaining what it means to live this God-pleasing life from verses 1-2. And he says, 'Look, when it comes to the love of the brethren, I have nothing to say to you.' And it's a different tone from verses 3-8. He showed a lot of warning about sexual impurity in verses 3-8. And so the tone of verses 3-8 is completely different from verses 9-12. And here he is acknowledging them, he is commending them, and he is encouraging them. And he's saying, 'Look, I acknowledge the love of the brethren that exist already among you.'

The term 'love of the brethren' is the term we're very familiar with. It's the term *Philadelphia* that talks about brotherly love. It's a term typically used with regards to love towards your fleshly or earthly family. But here, when you see it used in the New Testament, it's used with reference to loving your siblings in Christ: those who are part of the church, your fellow believers. And so Paul is here using this term to kind of show that the church is an active family atmosphere. That when you look at each other here at First Baptist Church Artesia, you don't see just people generally, you see them as family. And he says, 'Look, we are part of a family in the local church, and this family expresses love through acts of love.'

And he says, 'Look, I don't need to write to you because I know that you're already loving each other.' Throughout this book, he is constantly acknowledging that they are regularly loving each other. And so he probably received a report from Timothy, when Timothy came back after visiting them, and he heard that they were doing well and they were serving and loving each other. And so he wants to acknowledge that love was in their character, and he's like, 'Look, I don't even need to write to you about love 'cause you're already doing it.'

You know, he's being a good parent that acknowledges when children are doing a great job and already learning what they need to learn. I know there are a lot of parents here, and parents of young children here, and so I want to encourage you parents that you don't have to be teaching your kids forever. They'll eventually going to learn the basic things like how to eat, how to dress themselves, and how to use the restroom. And so all of the older parents can attest to that, that hopefully, you're not still spoon-feeding a 40-year-old and putting on the socks of a 40-year-old, and I hope you're not teaching a 40-year-old how to use the bathroom, right? And so we—it's nice to know that kids grow up, they learn, and parents don't have to nitpick and say like, 'Hey, remember this and do that.' No, good parents know that when their kids are learning something, they say, 'Hey, you already know this. You've learned this already. I don't have to tell you anymore because you already know this.' Paul is being a good parent, and he is saying, 'Look, I don't need to berate you about love. I don't need to tell First Baptist Church Artesia about love, 'cause I already know you guys love each other. I'm just here to encourage you to keep loving,' he is saying.

And he says, 'Look, you are already loving. And I don't need to write to you for that, and I know why you're already loving, because this is why he knows that they are loving.' Verse 9, he says, 'For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.' That is where he has confidence that they are loving. Not just because he heard of it and observed it, but because they have a spiritual instructor who taught them how to love. And who was it that taught them? It was God Himself. God Himself was the one who directly discipled them on how to love one another in the church. And if God taught them how to love, he could be sure that within their community they were actually manifesting love.

John Calvin put it this way: He said, 'There was no need for Paul to write letters about love on paper, because love was written upon their hearts.' Their hearts were framed for love. It's like what Romans chapter 5 verse 5 says, where Paul says that we as Christians have perseverance, we have proven character, and we have hope because God's love was poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). If you are a Christian here today and you have embraced the gospel, it's as if God has taken a basin of His love and He poured it into the receptacle of your hearts, and because the Holy Spirit dwells within you, you now have the capacity to love.

And as hard as it is and as difficult as it is to love people, especially within the church, sometimes we sell ourselves short and we think that we do not have the capacity to love, when God says, 'No, I have given you My Spirit, and therefore you do have the ability to love.' And they can love because they don't have a human teacher that taught them to love. Yes, they had the missionaries, Paul, Timothy, and they had all the brothers in the apostles there to teach them to love. But it wasn't just human teachers that taught them to love. And thank God, because if it was only human teachers that taught them to love, their view of love would probably be skewed. Because humans struggle to love, do we not? When we teach about love, we teach a conditional love. We teach an impulsive type of love. We teach a misplaced type of love, and we also have wrong definitions of love. Praise be to God. Paul says, 'You were taught by God. You weren't just taught by men.'

God is the best example of love, and the best teacher of love. 1 John 4:7-8 says that. That you did not love God first, He loved you first. And you show love in your life because it shows that the love of God is within you, because God Himself is love (1 John 4:7-8). He shows unconditional love. He shows loyal love according to His covenant. He shows a steadfast love, and that's built into the message of the gospel. That the God of love would send His Son as an act of love, Who is love embodied, to live a perfectly righteous life, to die on the cross, so that the ultimate act of love would be displayed and illustrated on the cross of Calvary, where He took the sins and the consequences of the sins of His people upon Himself and exchanged it as an act of love for His righteousness. So that you as a believer today would accept that love and be completely forgiven of all of your sins past, present, and future.

And so that the Lord who died did not stay dead, He rose from the grave to show that God accepted His sacrifice. And that love would be made manifested, that you would enter into this family of love. And that you would be with the God of love for all of eternity. And so the gospel is a message of love where God redeemed sinners because He loves sinners despite the fact that they hated Him. And He transforms that hate into love. Friends, you are no longer enemies of God. You are now lovers of God.

And if you are a non-Christian here today, we are so happy that you're here. Maybe you've been visiting, maybe you're visiting for the first time. If you're not a believer here today, I want to warn you today that you are still an enemy and a hater of God. And that if you were to remain that way, you would still fall under the judgment of God for all of eternity. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can trust in Christ, you can believe in Him as Lord and Savior, and God can set His love upon you, and you can be a lover of God as well, if you would but love His Son, and trust in Him as Lord and Savior. And with that love, leads to loving one another. In verse 9, he says, 'You are taught by God to love one another.'

This is their continual, habitual, mutual practice within the local church. So it's not just a one-time love, but it's an ongoing love to not just one person, but to the whole church. And then look at verse 10. He continues to observe and confirm that they're doing this. He says, 'For indeed, you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia.' Paul is confirming historical proof that they are taught by God in their manifestation of love towards one another, towards the brethren in Macedonia. So he's saying, 'Look, you're loving everyone in the local church, and you're also loving believers who are visiting the area of Macedonia.' He's saying, 'Look, your practice of love shows that you are taught by God.'

And the inverse is true as well, that maybe someone struggles with loving in their life, because it really shows that they're not really truly taught by God. Because if you're truly taught by God, the God of love, you will love. And he says, 'Look, you did this, you practiced it to all those who are in Macedonia.' When he mentions Macedonia, Macedonia was a Roman province and the area of Thessalonica. Thessalonica was the capital of Macedonia during that time. And so here, they would love believers coming into their city. And so they would maybe house them and spend time with them. But it showed that their love was not just evident within the walls of their local church, but believers who came from outside of the local church ministering to them as well.

And so we as Christians call this catholicity within the church—not Roman catholicity, that's different. We're not talking about the Roman church, but catholicity just means universal. Meaning, outside the local church, Christians universally around the world. And so here, this is a great illustration of how this church loved within and loved also from without, all believers. And so we can do that as a church as well. We can fellowship together. I mean, we're manifesting this here right now with me coming here to guest preach, and your pastor coming to visit during our constituting service. And so when we pray for one another—we're actually going to pray for you guys today during our prayer meeting service today. And so all of these things we manifest working together as local churches in cooperation: praying, missions, church planting, even membership transfers—all of those things we do together as the church universal.

But note he also says in verse 10 that they practiced it to all of the brethren who are in Macedonia. And so that's a description of their wide love for every believer. And so, in another way of putting this, Paul was encouraged to observe that they were not practicing a selective type of love. Which is what we tend to do, don't we? We tend to practice selective love, meaning we tend to choose who we want to love: at a certain time, in a certain way, to a certain people group. Paul says, 'As a Christian, you're not supposed to practice selective love. You're just supposed to practice love.' It's not about feeling. It's not that we say, 'We don't love based off of, well, I don't feel like loving today.' We love at all times, all people, with all lifestyles. We love all within the local church. And so I want to encourage you to do that today. If you are struggling with practicing selective love, I want to encourage you to branch out to love all types of people within the local church.

And he is saying in verse 10, 'Look at the end of verse 10,' he says, 'But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more.' You hear that urgency that Paul is saying, 'Look, there is an urgency to living this Christian life and this feeling of earnestness and growth.' He's saying, 'Look, I want you to feel the importance of growing and excelling. Feel that sense of urgency. Know and feel compelled to want to excel still more.' That term 'excel still more' just literally means 'to do so more and more,' to continue to grow, to be active and increasing. So here, in this context, it's specifically with regards to love, right? He says in verses 1-2, generally speaking, your holiness and your sanctification should excel still more. Here in verse 10, that holiness and sanctification grows by excelling still more in love. So he's saying, 'Look, I want your capacity for love to grow more and more. There's always more room to grow in love.'

Whether it's within the church, whether it's within your marriage, for your children, children towards your parents, whatever it is, you always have the capacity to grow. We should not stay stagnant in our love, friends. You know, stagnation is a dangerous thing. Stagnation is a dangerous thing for water in general. You know, we have a kettle at my house that we use it every single day. And we love warm water and tea and all the stuff. My wife makes mocha and everything. And so my wife and I are always constantly asking each other because we're always using the kettle, 'Is this today's water or is this yesterday's water?' Because I'm always afraid of drinking stagnant water, you know, because of the pathogens and the bacteria and the worms. I don't know what it is, right? And I remember one time I drank day-old water one time by accident. And I drank it and I was acting like a baby. I was like, 'Am I gonna die?' I was going to my wife, like, 'Am I gonna die?' She's like, 'You're not gonna die, calm down,' right? Because there's this fear, right? If you drink stagnant water, it could make you sick, and it's very dangerous. And those of you who have gone camping, don't you—don't ever drink water from a stagnant lake, right? It's one of the most dangerous things you can do for your body. And so when we think of stagnant water, stagnant water is one of the most dangerous things to consume in your physical body. You know what's more dangerous? A stagnant Christian.

A stagnant Christian is a danger to himself or herself, and also is a danger to the local church. A Christian who desires not to grow, not to excel, not to grow in love, is a very dangerous person. And Paul is saying, 'Look, as much as you are growing, as much as you are finding spiritual success in your life, I want to encourage you to excel still more in this love. Don't be stagnant. Grow.' Paul wants to guard against a mediocre love, a complacent love. And maybe they struggled with that because of the pressures of life. And we can struggle with that as well, right? If we're going through suffering and difficulties, sometimes one of the first things that we throw out the window is our capacity and expression of love. Because we're going through tough times. And Paul says, 'No, the pressures of life are not an excuse to be stagnant in your love.' He encourages abundant love for one another.

And so a good question to ask yourself is: Where have I grown cold in my love for one another in the church? Where have I become complacent in my Christian love? And how can I improve in loving the local church? And so I want to encourage you, friends, to really examine your heart. Observe if you have the wrong mindset in how you approach love. Maybe you feel like you've loved the most and you're just kind of doing the bare minimum of love. I want to encourage you to just keep growing in love as well. Maybe position yourself to love others, initiate relationships, be involved in the community of the saints, which is a community of God's love. And so if I can encourage you to protect the Lord's Day, fellowship with one another throughout the week. Even encourage you to serve as well. If you are not serving in the local church, you are not loving the way that God wants you to love. And so I want to encourage you to serve, and serving can be very simple: just by using your gifts and inviting people to your house, praying for people, discipling. And even loving through difficult times. I want to encourage you to love others by sacrificing your preferences.

Maybe there's sin involved in your relationships here. I want to encourage you to forgive and reconcile. Maybe pursue loving correction. It's very risky when you risk relationships by pursuing correction. I want to encourage you to love others by gently correcting in love. And encourage someone who's in a trial. There are people here who are discouraged. There are people who are suffering, and they need your love to encourage them. And so, how can you excel in loving the church more? There are so many ways to do it. If you want to cultivate a loving heart as well, surround yourself with other godly, loving people, keep singing these songs of love. Come learn of love from God's Word and confess to others where you have failed to love.

If you're not a Christian here today, the biggest issue that you have is not that you're not loving people in your life. The biggest issue is that you don't love God. And God is calling you to love Him. God is calling you to love His Son. And so before you think about loving people in your life, God wants to confront you with loving Him first. And the only way you can love Him is by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, repenting of your sins, and giving your entire life to Him. And in that, you can experience the God of love, and then you will be able to love others as God wants you to love. So, that's the first area: excel at loving the church.

Excelling in Love for Everyone (Including Outsiders)

Secondly, excel at loving everyone in verses 11-12. Look at verse 11 with me. Excel at loving everyone. It says, 'And to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands just as we commanded you.' As we have been talking about this, Paul is explaining what holiness looks like in Christian love. And so we had just talked about in verses 9-10, growing in love for the local church. Now he is broadening it out: love not just within the local church, but love towards the non-Christian community. How can we as Christians manifest our love towards the non-Christian community outside the local church?

And the way he describes it isn't in the way that we would think, but he is saying, 'You can display love in the everyday responsibilities of life.' In how you go to work and how you deal with your duties at home. He says, 'You can show love to the non-Christian world just by being responsible for the things of life.' Look at how he words it. Look at verse 11. He says, 'Make it your ambition.' Literally, the word 'ambition' just means 'the love of honor.' It's to strive eagerly for something. And we're familiar with ambitious people. Are we not? We know that to be ambitious is to have like this restless eagerness or to zealously pursue something. We know people trying to climb the corporate ladder and to be very entrepreneurial and make the money that they seek to make. And so we know what it means to be ambitious, and it is kind of built up into this term.

But look at the way he couples that pursuit with a particular lifestyle. Verse 11, 'Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.' He's basically saying this: actively pursue quietness. And it sounds, it sounds contradictory, doesn't it? It sounds like he's being opposites here. And the term 'lead a quiet life' literally just means a calm and restful life. It's a term that has been used with reference to rest after labor or peace after war. And what he is encouraging here is for Christians to live a respectable, balanced life. He's not talking about personality here, okay? So all the extroverts here are kind of nervous 'cause they're like, 'Oh, Jesus is telling me to lead a quiet life, that's impossible for me 'cause I'm an extrovert,' right? He's not talking about personality or like constitution, okay? He is talking about how you conduct your life as a whole. It is a life generally at peace, a life that is generally balanced and very content with where it's at. And so that's kind of the first application here is when you live a quiet life, you are content with who you are in Christ. That's what it means to live a quiet life.

He's basically saying, 'Make it your ambition to be unambitious.' Paul is saying this: It's okay not to strive for big things. It's okay not to strive for the glamour. Maybe you feel like you don't have a glamorous life. Maybe your job isn't what you expected it to be or wanted it to be. Maybe if you're kind of staying at home now, moms with the kids, and you thought like maybe I could have had this certain career instead of staying with the kids, or maybe you thought you'd be like an influencer or more in the public eye. And you're just like, 'I wish I had an occupation or a career in this way.' Paul is saying, 'That's okay. There is glory in the ordinary.' If you are living an ordinary Christian life, he says, 'I want you to be content in everyday faithfulness.' That's what it means to live a quiet life. Quiet faithfulness in the everyday things.

It also means not to cause unnecessary problems. So living quietly also means not to be socially disruptive or harmful to public society in an unnecessary way. I know the gospel can ruffle feathers at times, but this is basically saying this: to love society is to live the quiet, humble life that serves others in everyday matters. Friends, there are a lot of insignificant things that we deal with, whether it comes to washing dishes, changing diapers, going to work on Monday, things that don't seem glamorous, but they are a big deal before God. And quiet everyday faithfulness honors God.

He says, 'Make it your ambition to live that respectable life.' He goes on in verse 11, he says, 'Attend to your own business as well.' Attending to your business is coupled with this living, this quiet life. He says, 'Give attention to your own personal affairs.' Now, if someone on the street goes to you and says, 'Mind your business,' that's a very rude statement, right? That's not what Paul is saying here. He's not saying, 'Mind your business' in a rude way. He is saying, 'Mind your own business' in a certain context, because this church had struggled with being nosy gossips. And what they were doing was, is they were fixated on other people's business in the wrong way, to the wrong degree. It was too much in the wrong way. And so they were overly busy with other people's matters to the neglect of their own self and their own responsibilities.

If you look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, go ahead and turn there. 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, just a couple pages over, verses 11-13 give us kind of the scenario of what Paul was trying to warn them against. Sadly, they did struggle with this eventually, but Paul is trying to get ahead of it. And he says in chapter 3 of 2 Thessalonians verse 11, he says, 'For we hear that some of you are leading an undisciplined life.' We're going to go back to that in a little bit. But he says, 'doing no work at all.' So they're not caring for their responsibilities. 'But acting like busybodies.' He's saying, 'There are some people in the church or in this world that pretend that they're busy, but they're not really actually busy. They're busy in the wrong things.' And in this context, what they were busy with was the affairs of other people. So they said they were busy, but they weren't really busy with their responsibilities. They were busy by being nosy gossips. And then he says:

For we hear that there are some among you who are idle. They are not busy but busybodies. Now we command and exhort such people by the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly and provide for themselves. — 2 Thessalonians 3:11-12 (CSB)

And so that echoes back to our passage. So he says, 'Hey, go back to your own responsibilities and provide for yourself. Don't be so fixated on other people that you neglect your own responsibilities.' And so these people were possibly gossips, they were possibly controlling, and they were masters of everybody's business except their own. And Paul says, 'You can love other people by tending to your own responsibilities.' And so I'm going to ask you this: What are responsibilities in your life that you are neglecting today? You can love others by being mindful of them and being caring for your own personal responsibilities. And this is not to mean that Paul is excusing or saying that we should neglect other people. If we live in the local church, their business is our business, right? And when it comes to suffering, if someone is suffering, that's our business. If someone is sick, that's our business. If someone is in sin or struggling and going through something, that is our business. This is not to talk about proper concern and loving involvement. But Paul is saying and speaking to a specific situation, where he's saying, 'Look, keep to your responsibilities. Don't be a nosy gossip. Don't be so fixated on others that you sacrifice your own responsibilities, but attend to your own business.'

And then he gets to the last part, which he says, 'Work with your own hands.' And all three of these things are together: living this quiet life, attending to your own business, and working with your own hands are all put together where working with your own hands just literally refers to the manual labor, but generally and broadly speaking, it refers to your everyday work. Yes, that includes tomorrow and going into work on Monday. It is honest toil and how personal holiness relates to hard work. You see, we just read in 2 Thessalonians 3 that this church was living an idle life. That they were so fixated on so many other things that they lived an undisciplined life. There are some people in this church, they were depending too much on the charity of the church, and that caused them to be lazy and spiritual parasites.

You know, I know God has created all things and every creature has its purpose and every creature glorifies God. But some of the *ickiest* creatures that I can observe in this world are parasites. Like, I hate hearing about ticks and fleas and tapeworms. Just talking about it makes me cringe. Leeches, right? I don't want to watch—when Discovery Channel puts those things on, I skip the channel, right? I don't want to hear about parasites. When you have an organism that depends on another organism for sustenance, disadvantaging something else in order to advantage itself. I think it's one of the most immoral things, right? Paul here is saying that there are potentially spiritual parasites within the local church. That some are neglecting their own responsibilities, not because they genuinely need help, but because their sinful lifestyle is causing them to spiritually leech off of others in the wrong way.

And this could have been a number of things. He talks about the return of Christ in the next portion. It's possible that they had a misunderstanding of the return of Christ and they thought, 'Jesus is coming back soon, therefore, I don't need to work.' And can you imagine if you had that type of theology? 'Oh, Jesus is coming back, we don't have to go to work tomorrow, guys. Praise be to God.' Okay, don't tell your—don't tell your pastor that I told you not to go to work tomorrow, okay? This is a misunderstanding. And so he is saying, 'Look, maybe they just thought like, hey, their theology and misunderstanding of theology led them to a misapplication of life.' And that shows how important good theology is. Good theology changes how you live. And he says, 'Look, don't misunderstand. Work hard to the glory of God.' And he says, 'just as we commanded you.' He says, 'I told you this before. I've instructed this to you.'

And this all leads to a particular purpose. Look at verse 12. 'So that you live a quiet life, you attend to your own business, you work hard with your hands so that,' verse 12, 'you will behave properly towards outsiders.' When you commit to your everyday responsibilities, you show love towards outsiders and you are showing a good gospel testimony. Literally means, you win the respect of outsiders. Now, we understand that when we are Christians and we preach the gospel and we live out the gospel, we will inherently lose the respect of outsiders because of our Christian life. We know that, okay? That's not what we're talking about. What we are talking about is a proper living that corresponds with the gospel message. That when you live a holy life, it increases the integrity of the message that you speak. And the flip side is true. If you are living an unholy life, that undermines the gospel that you preach to those around you.

And so Paul is saying this, 'Look, I want you to behave right towards outsiders, not because we're trying to be man-pleasers, but because we want to make sure that people hear and respond to the gospel. But people will not respond to the gospel if you profess to be a Christian and live a life of sin. If you're being lazy and not adhering to your everyday tasks at work, if you're not taking care of your family and everyday responsibilities, that is not appealing to the unbeliever.' That says, 'Hey, they don't live out what they believe. They're saying they're a Christian, but they're a deadbeat in all these other areas.' He says, 'No, holiness is holistic. Holiness is everyday responsibilities. Hard work is a good testimony to the unbelieving world. And it aids in our evangelism, friends.' And so, I want us to rewire how we look at working in everyday life. Whether it's you looking at your job, parents, how you serve your kids and take care of your home. All the mundane responsibilities. I want to encourage you to reframe how you look at those everyday things, and look at them in light of your Christian gospel testimony. How can your everyday life affect the unbelieving world? Because it does.

And then he says, 'and not be in any need.' And so he's basically saying, like, encouraging them to earn their own livelihood, to have a godly independence and self-support. We know that within the local church there is a healthy dependence, accountability, prayer, brotherhood, and fellowship, when you're suffering and you need help. That is all healthy dependence, right? But we also know within the local church, there is an unhealthy dependence where someone is asking for help only as a means of serving themselves. Taking advantage of other people in their generosity. Hurting others to further their self and increasing their laziness and spiritually leeching off of others, like we talked about. That's not loving. And that's not what community should look like when it comes to helping each other.

And mind you, Paul is not saying, 'I want you to be proud and independent and say that you can boast to others, hey, I cared for myself.' That is not the idea that Paul is trying to promote. But he is encouraging Christians to work hard, to be respectable and to tend to your own needs, so that you can provide for yourself, not just for the sake of being independent, but so that you can give to others. That you can instead of being someone who just takes, someone who gives and contributes. That's the goal. To love others in the church and even outside of the church is to be a contributing member. Paul is promoting that. He's saying, 'If you want to excel in the Christian life, the excellent Christian life, the one who loves is someone who contributes as a member of their church and also as a member of society.' Love is expressed through contributions. So where can you excel in everyday life today? Where can you be more faithful in your responsibilities today? How is your Christian testimony?

I want to encourage you to really take inventory of your heart and your spiritual life. Is your Christian testimony stained by unholy living, maybe lazy tendencies, maybe you're living in idleness, or maybe you're the wrong type of busy? And you're telling everybody that you're busy when you are the wrong type of busy. How is your Christian testimony? How can you love others around you through hard work? And how can you love them with a life of excellence for Christ? Friends, those are the two areas in which we should excel. We must excel at loving the church, and we also must excel at loving everyone in everyday duties of life.

Love as the Mark of a Christian

Love will show that we are Christians. You know, theologian Francis Schaeffer observed that Christians throughout history have indicated and used signs to tell the public that they were Christians. And so I want to read this for you because it relates to how we do things today. Francis Schaeffer said, 'Through the centuries, men have displayed many different symbols to show that they are Christians. They have worn marks on the lapels of their coats. They've hung chains around their necks and even had special haircuts.' I don't know which decade this quote came from. I don't know how you can have a specific haircut to show that you're a Christian, but he said that that's what they did, okay? And we're kind of the same, right? We have jewelry that shows we're Christians. We also have chains with crosses on them. And we had wristbands that say, 'What Would Jesus Do?' That's my generation, right? They had 'What Would Jesus Do' wristbands. And we have bumper stickers that say 'Not of this world. I'm from heaven.' I'm just going to slap it on the back of my minivan. And we have social media profiles that post that we're doing our devotions right next to our matcha latte. And we have tattoos that have our hand reaching out to a Bible with our favorite Bible verse in a heart, and all these things indicate that we're Christians to others. And we have all these, you know, 21st-century signs to show people we're Christians. You know what Francis Schaeffer says? He says there's a better sign to tell people that you're Christians.

He says, 'But there is a much better sign. It is a universal mark that is to last through all ages of the church until Jesus comes back. And that mark is love among Christians.' I think that's the best sign that you can show to this world that you are in fact a believer in Jesus Christ: is if you have love. If you have love for your local church, if you have love for those around you, that is the best way to show to this world that you are a lover of Christ and a lover of God. There is no better way to display to this unbelieving world that God loves you, He has forgiven you, He has saved you, and that you love Him. Because that love for Him will show in the excellence that you strive for in your Christian life.

And so I want to encourage you, saints of FBCA Artesia, excel still more in your Christian life. But the way that you excel in this Christian life is to grow in love. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for just the wonderful passage that reminds us of growing in You. We know that growth could not take place apart from the power of Your Spirit and Your love for us. And so help us, God, when it is hard to grow and it is hard to love. Help us, Lord, when we feel stagnant and complacent. Give us hope to know that the gospel can rejuvenate our hearts and help us in our time of need. And so bless these saints as they seek to serve You and excel in love. And we pray for this in Jesus' name. Amen.