Word of Salvation – Vol. 18 No.26 – June 1972
Of Working And Eating
Sermon by Rev. A. I. deGraaf, B.D. on 2Thess.3:10
Scripture Reading: Proverbs 6:1-19, 2Thess.3
Psalter Hymnal: 299 (1-4); 41; 462 (after sermon); 449 (1,2); 449 (3)
Brothers and sisters in Christ, boys and girls, congregation of our Lord…
You all know the story that Luke 10 tells of Lazarus’ 2 sisters Martha and Mary. We have a tendency – especially when we are in church, to misunderstand Jesus’ words to slaving Martha – as He says that Mary, sitting at His feet, chose the best part… that apparently He does not like it so much….
when women cook good meals
and when carpenters make fair, square joints,
insurance brokers tote up record sales
or simple broom hands in a factory leave a floor spotlessly clean.
But this is NOT what Jesus meant!
Jesus does not give medals to lazy people, and all the Bible – especially our text today – shows the holy nobility, the divine worship which is given by the God of heaven and earth to our daily work.
It is no good to agree in Church that, yes, Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet was right, then to have to be Martha all week and so there you are far from Jesus.
All Jesus meant to say to Martha, is:
“without sitting at my feet, your labour is in vain.”
If you work for the meat that perishes,
and neglect the Bread of life eternal,
your life is hollow and your death will be terrible.
“Martha, Martha, you’re getting busy and excited about many things
BUT ONE THING is necessary:”
…and what is that one thing?
It is that you walk with your Lord and Worship and serve Him, Love Him!
But then, do that everywhere! Do that…. also in your daily work! You see we are living in an age, in which the devil tries to take the joy out of your daily work. If we are going to let him, then not only is your five-or-six day week going to be difficult to be Christian in, if not impossible, but this will kick back at your Church-going on Sunday, too! For who wants to go to a church AND KEEP GOING, where life looks so different from that on Monday- thru-Friday, that it is as if he hears another language? Your Lord wants the Communion Table and the Pulpit – to stand in a place with open doors and open windows. Having sat at Jesus’ feet, Mary and Martha (together with Bill and Joe) are to walk hand in hand with Jesus into a meaningful daily life, a meaningful daily struggle against Satan, and have Jesus walking with them all the way.
The people in Thessalonica were troubled, you see, by well-meaning Christians who were expecting the coming of Jesus every day! And so they said: “Let’s stop working and wait for the Second coming.” Maybe some of them piously said: “Fancy Jesus coming back and finding me with a hammer plugging away at one of the public toilets in Thessalonica for that’s what my boss is building at present.”
Yes, as if Jesus, when He held a hammer working for his ‘Dad’, Joseph, was building churches only!
No, the people in Thessalonica had forgotten that Jesus REALLY HAD SAID:
“When I come back, how shall I find you?
Woe unto the LAZY and EASYGOING servant
who shall not be busy when the Son of Man comes as a thief in the night!”
And if we would think that that of course means CHURCH work and not our daily work, then Paul is here in 2Thes.3 to wake us up a bit. For, I repeat: we are living in an age in which the devil tries to take the joy out of your daily work.
Capitalism, hard, HARD Australian capitalism, makes your work something that can just be bought by some rich company, and bought as cheaply as possible. Your work means nothing: if you get killed or injured there’ll be some other bloke to sell his labour. If that cannot take the joy out of your work? Boy!
But then here comes Socialism, the labour Union man brandishing the stick of the class struggle, but he does not make it much better! He teaches the working man to regard the boss as an enemy! He instils in the labourers the mentality of slaves who must sneak and cheat where they can! Strikes and slowdowns are then the order of the day: Money! More money! And for less and less work!
Already there looms up before our Western world the spectre of what people must do with all that FREE TIME we are going to get. And here is St Paul, tent-maker and spare-time evangelist (but he wrote more than most full time ministers). Or shall we say evangelist and spare time tent-maker? But then he earned his full keep and must have made more tents than some full time tradesmen now. I am sure that in anything Paul did he LOVED his work, and could say what a friend of mine said when doing an efficient job on a car in less than no time and with obvious pleasure: “Look mate, I don’t muck about!” THAT is what God meant work to be! But now I hear a serious Christian brother rise up with a question: “Don’t you forget Genesis 3? Is not work a curse? Did not God mean it as PUNISHMENT when saying after Adam’s fall: Now in the sweat of your brow you must eat your bread?”
Yes – and doesn’t even Paul speak in Romans 8 of an earth sighing and groaning in bondage?
When Paul says: “He who doesn’t work neither will he eat…!”
is he not still stuck in the curse of God on sin?
Well then, why get so excited about work?
* * * * *
The answer is clearly in the Bible, brother!
Sin did bring a curse, but He Who held the hammer in his father’s workshop was the One Who got nails hammered through hands and feet.
But even there on that cruel cross He said, “IT IS FINISHED” and sang right there of a JOB WELL DONE, as God the Father sang it after the world was created! The curse is not curse any more for him who believes that Jesus on that hill…
where His body was broken
and His blood was shed,
meant BUSINESS!!
Paul does speak in Romans 8 of a groaning earth but he goes on and speaks of the earth labouring IN HOPE, now! As a woman getting a baby. That’s why WE are getting our babies in hope, too, and dare even to adopt them, for we know that earth shall be set free from bondage. And we who wait for the coming of Christ know that we…
work!
toil!
produce!
on an earth travailing, yes,
but travailing in the red rays of the new morning:-
CHRIST IS COMING!
And so Thessalonians were wrong in thinking that because Christ was coming, they should stop their work.
“How will Christ find you?”
Neglecting your family?
Neglecting the needy?
Letting the place get into shambles?
If you don’t work: you won’t eat and that goes for spiritual food too! When we are not faithful at our task AS UNTO THE LORD, then listening to endless sermons, taking Communion, and having a good time of it in church can become empty and meaningless as the evening meal can become at home for the man who has been bludging and dodging all day at his job, with the rotten feeling gnawing inside that you are eating what you do not deserve.
When your job expects you to be lazy, and you cannot change that, for your life’s sake you better look for another job!
One day you and I will have to face the Judge of heaven and earth and it is precisely BECAUSE we expect Jesus from heaven, that we seek…
the hallelujah-giving service
of hard and love-inspired, intent
and talent-giving, daily work.
What have you done for me, with all that I gave to you? One of the reasons why we might badly need Christian schools is, that in many public schools the joy of hard work and diligent study is sapped away by both teacher and fellow student alike.
May Christ give that coming in church on a Sunday puts you back onto the track again, my young friend, for your talents may be more than just those needed for a dead-end-money-making job you can grab as soon as you squeak through Junior Certificate.
For the sake of your freely-giving-God, keep going! For Him! For how otherwise shall you eat? And one of the reasons why we need Christian labour organisations in this land is that God’s men and women must find back the joy and nobility of their daily task and may fight for good conditions ON THE RIGHT GROUNDS and with the right weapons. May Christ give that coming into church on Sunday may put you — weary from battle against the evil destructive spirits of our day – back onto your feet again, that tomorrow you may remember and say to yourself the words of psalm 146:
“I must Hallelujah my Lord!
I WILL Hallelujah my Lord in my (daily) living –
I shall sing it out to my God as long as I live!
Do not join yourself trustfully
with my tyrannical lords – Never mind what THEY say!
in men there is no salvation at all!
On the day that a MAN stops breathing and turns back into dust,
all his clever plans are gone
just like that.
But THAT man is blessed, however,
who trusts the God of Jacob for his help,
who all the time – EXPECTS THINGS FROM JEHOVAH HIS GOD!
The God Who made heaven, earth, sea, and everything in them,
who maintains his faithfulness on into eternity.
He is the God Who shall bring justice
for those pressed down deceitfully –
He does provide food for those going hungry.
The LORD sets captives free.
The LORD opens blind eyes.
The LORD straightens up again those who were bent over.
The LORD loves deeply those who deal justly.
The LORD God cares for strangers;
children without fathers and widows, these He helps hold up:
But the brutal practise of those denying God,…
well, their life He ties into a knot!
The LORD is king now! and forevermore!
O Zion! Your God rules from generation to generation!
Hallelujah! The Lord!”
That is what human work is because Jesus came!
That is what human work is according to the Bible!
A praising in gratitude of the Lord our Owner and Master. Therefore Paul can say that this is what we are to be doing better than the despairing unbeliever. This is what we are to be doing when expecting the coming of Jesus Who – He says in John 5 – works Himself, as His father works.
And then He says: WHEN you so work, THEN you shall also eat – and like what you eat! Also what you eat in the church: the food to keep your spiritual life going that must be the motor and power of your daily work.
Working in a sinful world, for a Christian IS struggle. Of course it is!
You are facing the Enemy of souls all the time! God’s new world is still under construction and it is in scaffolds so heavily that at times we are hard put to see it taking shape underneath. Paul knew what he talked about when he spoke of an earth groaning in travail! But underneath the Kingdom IS growing, and the Christian knows answers no one else knows. Those who sit and eat of living bread have a secret that can keep them going even at the factory. Quietly and continuously seeking to reform what was bowed down by sin. Not getting tired of doing good. In this world the cross has stood, and in this world, with the acrid smell of welding arcs and the noise of diesel engines and vacuum cleaners, in this world where the housewife’s battle against the dust seems as endless as the doctor’s struggle against disease, right down from elusive cancer to the bother of the common cold, both still with no known remedy, Right down in this world God put His table and says; you get it free: My gift! But work then! Work! For if you plan NOT to accept my ONE gift: the call to work and discipleship, how can you accept my other gift: the food of life eternal, and enjoy it?
How shall you be at home on a new earth which is anything BUT a lazy man’s selfish paradise? I put my table, says the Lord, on an earth where you have family tables, too. And after a hard day’s work for God at the factory or in your home; at the hospital or on the truck or in your car; at your desk ironing out problems, or at the board ironing out shirts…!
After all that… as a thank offering for Jesus who was broken to make a world whole your family meal may have something of the Lord’s Supper. And Martha may become Mary and thank God for the blessing of dedicated labour, and pray God for more blessing tomorrow, until the last Tomorrow shall dawn at last and Jesus shall say; “Well done my FAITHFUL servant. You were faithful to me amidst the thorns and thistles and I know how they hurt you. Have I not worn a crown of thorns myself? You have hammered away when some devils were about to break things again, I know how it hurt for have they not hammered nails through My own hands and feet? But you were faithful, and now come into my joy! For what you sowed in tears shall be harvested in shouts of high and jubilant joy! You have not hoped and worked in vain. The night is over, and the day has come! Now enter into the feast of your Lord: You have worked; and worked again! Now you REALLY and fully, shall eat!
Amen.