Warning Against Idleness - 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12 - Waiting Well

All right, hey, welcome guys at all of our campuses. We're excited you're here this weekend, and we're gonna be marching right through.

So if you have a copy of scripture, you can take it out and turn with me to 2 Thessalonians chapter three. As you guys are finding that, I want to give you a quick update on some exciting news from last week. Guys, last week was our big give weekend, and I wanna make sure everybody kinda tunes in. Listen, the church came together and gave $700,000 last weekend, all right?

And that's a good start, all right? And I wanna remind you of what we were doing there, okay? Because what we're saying is, God, this is not our leftovers. We really view the month of December that way. Guys, we're asking God to do some mega things next year. I mean, a new home and hub, how many times does that happen in a church's life, right?

Like new home and hub, we gotta rekindle, guys, we've only got two years left on this whole 200 adoption and foster families raised up, probably need another 40 or 50 families to jump in over the next couple of years. Churches getting planted, missionaries, I mean, all the stuff that we've got going on. And we wanted to sow that first fruits to say, God, we believe you for these things, and so we want to give first on the front end.

We don't wanna kinda wait to see if you're gonna move and then decide that we're gonna jump and act. That's not faith, really, right? That's maybe gratitude or praise, but what we wanna do is a faith thing that says, God, we're believing on the front end what you can do. Now, what he's gonna do is whatever he's gonna do, because he's God, okay?

And I'm not God, and I can't call it, but what we can do is give the chance to ask him for some really big stuff for next year. You know what's even, maybe not even cooler, but one of the cool things about that first fruits offering that we did last weekend, guys, we had over 30 brand new individuals and families that gave for the very first time, all right? And that's exciting, too, yeah. And the reason that's so exciting is because all types of obedience is gonna fall now for them.

And if you're one of those, I'm telling you, I can't tell you how many times I've heard the story. We started giving, and I'm thinking about going on a mission trip. We started giving, and we're gonna check groups out next year. We started giving, and now we're gonna serve, okay?

When God begins to break our hands off of that idol of money he begins to really open up our life, and we begin to grow like crazy. And so I'm just so grateful for people that are leaning in, especially those of you for the first time. Guys, it's a great start. I know these numbers start getting kind of big in a bigger church, but the reality is that we're praying to see like a $4 million December. That's what's gonna keep us on track with deeper, with the new home and hub, and all that kind of stuff. And so this is an incredible start last weekend, but we're gonna pray that God is gonna do so much more in the rest of the month to come, all right, with year-end giving and all that.

All right, let's dive in. I'm excited about this sermon this weekend. I don't know that I've ever preached on laziness before.

Okay, it's kind of weird, all right? I've never preached on, I don't know if I've preached on idleness, sloth, but that's what we come to today. And an expository church, which is what we are, when we're going through a book, we just hit it as it comes, okay? So let's just kind of get into this stuff together.

You know what the tagline of this series is, right? Waiting well is not wasting time. But we live in a culture that says wasting time, man, it's just wasting time is everywhere that we look. What is wasting time? Wasting time is spending time not fulfilling the purpose for which we were created. In our culture that we live in, all the time, all around us, and I think we buy into it in different ways.

I know that I do, and I'm sure that you do as well. Guys, we even have these phrases in our culture where we say, what are you doing? I'm killing time. What could that possibly mean, right? What does that mean? I'm just trying to get it to go faster?

That's metaphysically pretty trippy, all right, to think about trying to get it to go faster. I mean, what does it even mean? It means waste.

That's what it means. I'm wasting time. I'm trying to kill time. I'm just trying to get time to go faster. I'm just trying to move through it.

When all the while, God has purposes for us that He is calling us to fulfill. I think about in our house one of the dirty words in our house, and I know a lot of people have dealt with this with kids and all that. Okay, but in our house, you almost never hear one of my kids say, I'm bored.

I learned to fix that real early, okay? Hey, man, if you're bored, there's a lot on this little farm that we gotta get done, okay? And so if you're bored, we could find something for you to do that is productive and is helpful for what we're trying to do out here.

But the reality is, that's not just kids, right? What is mindless scrolling, Netflix, binging, excessive sleep, overindulgence in hobbies if they're not signs of boredom? Well, what's going on with us? Sometimes there is a soul sluggishness. Sometimes there is an idleness. What does it really mean to be idle? It means to wanna shirk the responsibilities that God has given us in favor of doing some other things. And this is what I think many of us feel many times when we start thinking about idleness. And of course today, the passage is gonna really be about, and it's gonna kinda narrow in on this concept of I'm idle and that means I don't wanna work.

Okay, it means I don't wanna work and produce. And we're gonna talk about that. The thing about Mercy Hill is I kinda feel like there's a lot of people here that overwork, not underwork. Okay, it's kinda like we draw people that maybe aren't, I'm not sure how many of us are just like thinking about not working anymore, okay? But we're gonna deal with it because the text deals with it.

But I do want us to see that it's a bigger thing, all right? And many times I think what happens is we think that our idleness or lack of wanna work or our idleness in other areas of our life, our idleness in marriage, our idleness with our kids, our idleness in group life, relationships, all the things that God has called us to, okay? Our health, our financial stewardship. We're idle in these areas and here's what we think. We think we're idle because of the circumstances of our life. We're actually idle because of the decisions that we make. All right, idleness is a decision.

It's not a circumstance. You can be idle or productive in any circumstance. Killing time, sloth, sluggish soul, boredom, these are things that we choose in any circumstance that we're in, why? Because usually idleness, sloth, you know, sloth, sluggish heart, laziness, usually these things are not, we don't fill that time with literally nothing. We are choosing something else instead of many times the purposes that God has for our life.

And we've all been there, all right? Here's the big idea this weekend. God has purposes for us for His glory and our good. The first way that I wrote this big idea was that God gives us work to do for His glory and our good.

That may be even better, that may be even more to the heart of what we're gonna talk about, okay? But I wanna broaden it a little bit and just say that concept of work also goes on into this concept of purposes. You know, idleness is the opposite of choosing the intentional life. Idleness is choosing pointlessness over purpose at different times in our life. Yeah, it shows up in the workplace.

Man, I've got a job to do, I'm getting paid, but I'd rather scroll Facebook Marketplace. Not that I've ever been there. Not that you guys have ever been there, right? I mean, or hey, I've got a body to steward, but I'm a little sore today.

You know, gonna take a day off, and that ends up leading you to Taco Bell for the new breakfast taco, okay? And it's just like, man, it kinda, it's the choice that ends up leading you down this path. It's not just filling with nothing, you end up filling it with something that's the opposite of God's purpose for you, no offense, Taco Bell, okay? Man, I know God created me for him, but intimacy with God takes focus, it's hard. Does anybody ever struggle praying?

You know why? I mean, we're fallen creatures in this most intimate moment with our God. Of course it's gonna be hard. It takes a little bit of focus, but you know, it's a little bit easier.

Next thing I know, I'm looking through email. Man, I just think about this in my life, how many times I can end up in idleness, and I didn't mean to get there, but there was decisions that I made that took me there. And I wanna engage that today, and I think Paul wants to engage that today. Look with me at verse six, okay?

Here we go. Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness, and not accord with the tradition that you receive from us. Now, to make the point that I wanna try to just get the big idea here, I want you to just get down with me to verse 11. For we hear that same, that some among you walk in idleness. Now what that means is, we hear this, this is not a one-off instance. What he's saying is, there are some people that we keep hearing about, there's a bit of a reputation that is beginning to follow you, that some are walking in idleness.

Not busy at work, but busy bodies. Now such persons we command, and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly, and to earn their own living. All right, if you like the laser approach, if you like the, hey, boil it down and just sort of give it to me, I think this passage gets to the heart of what Paul's saying real quick, and here it is. Some in the church are idle, they're not working, and you should stay away from them.

That's what he's saying. There's some in the church that are idle, okay? That idleness is leading them to things that are not godly. I mean, not being idle, number one, is not godly, but it's also leading them to being a busy body. These are not godly things.

And so he says, I want you to stay away from them. Now let's talk about idleness real quick, and then we'll hit this idea of staying away from them very quickly. But what is idleness? Idleness is the opposite of living for God's purpose. That's what it is. You have an idle life, or you have an intentional life.

I have an idle life, an ambivalent life towards God's purposes for my life, or I have an intentional life where I know what God wants me to do, and I want to go after that. Idleness, here's the problem with idleness, okay? The word, we wanna say it's lazy, it's sloth, it's that kind of thing. It is that, and it's more than that. It's also disruptive. It's also not being responsible.

It's also disrespect. It's this kind of concept of just having this attitude of, man, I'm moving away from what God has given me to do to serve, and I want to consume, I want to receive, and I want to be one who is sort of left alone. And what that is doing in this church is it's being brought up as they don't want to work.

Now, theologians have talked about this forever. Wait a minute, why are they not working? I mean, we don't know, right? Some people say, well, they're not working. But listen, they're not working because they believe Jesus is gonna come back imminently, and so they don't wanna be wasting time with work and things like that. You know, they wanna be waiting for Jesus to come back.

Other people believe, and I tend to believe, that it's actually the exact opposite. They're lazy and want to be idle, so they're real excited about believing that Jesus is about to come back. They're using their theology to justify their sloth, lazy, idle hearts. Man, they don't wanna be told what to do. They don't wanna have a boss. They don't wanna have a time of day that they get up in the morning. They don't wanna have a purpose for their life that somebody else created for them, namely, God.

They like the idea of freedom. And I think about this for us, guys, because we live in a time, I've looked at kind of a little bit of an older generation, sort of the boomer generation. I'm not like a generational exegete, okay, I don't know exactly, but it feels to me like if there was an idol in that generation, it was kind of like, man, success, make something of myself, work really hard, that kind of thing. I don't know, I'm not saying that's, that's not infallible, it's just the way I see it, okay? Now, I think about the generation that I'm a part of, the millennial generation or whatever, what you see in a lot of the literature right now, and I'll reference, 2007, I think this is kind of where some of it kicked off, a book that was very popular called The 4-Hour Workweek, okay?

And what happened in that book, 2007? The concept has sort of shifted from success to freedom. If I, I don't want, if I, the good life is not having anybody tell me what to do because I have chosen that for myself.

That book really was, I mean, it was interesting in a lot of ways, and I liked it in a lot of ways, and then there was a lot of ways where I thought it was abhorrent. And here's why, because it makes the good life out to be dancing the tango in Brazil and running with the bulls in Spain or wherever it is, okay? Now, there's nothing wrong with those two things, okay?

I would like to do one of them, you can choose which, you think that is, all right? There's nothing wrong with that. Guys, enjoying creation and rest and retreat and vacation, that's all part of God's plan for us. I fully understand that, enjoying His creation is part of it for us, I get that.

But don't misunderstand. When the idea of work is demonized, cultivating family is demonized, being known is demonized, when those types of things are, then what are we doing? We're celebrating in some ways, and we're trying to replace work with, I don't have any boundaries, and I can be idle. One of the things I think we see from this is very clear, work is a major part of God's purposes for His children. He is calling out their lack of work, and He's saying it and putting it in a context here where this is a bad thing.

And if you know much about theology, it is a bad thing. The concept of work goes all the way back to the beginning. Man, God was a worker. He didn't shirk work.

He didn't run away from work, He created. We serve a God who's got dirt in His fingernails. He worked, and guess what we are? We're little images of Him.

We're little pictures of Him. That's what Genesis 1 tells us. And then Genesis 2 tells us this. The Lord took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Of course He did. We're little pictures of God. That's the image of God stamped upon us. And we are called to bring forth abundance and to protect what is cultivated, and that's what we're called to do. Now I'm not saying that the job you're in is the job you're always gonna have. I'm not saying that retirement is not something, we say that word, I mean, everybody's probably, you know, wants to have that retirement, but that doesn't mean we stop work. You might change professions, you might change careers.

You might move into a field where you don't get paid for it anymore, you know. But we continue to work for the Kingdom of God for this is who we are. And Genesis 2, this concept the Lord gave to put the man in the Garden to work it and keep it. Here's the question that we've gotta answer that many of us have wronged, even if we have been in churches for all of our life. Listen, did work come in after sin or did work come in before sin?

You see what I'm saying? Is work a pre-fall idea of God or is work a post-fall idea of God? I've heard people talk about this and they're just like, man, some people talk about retirement as if it's the ultimate heaven because you get away from work. You understand, we're gonna work in heaven.

Because work is pre-fall. Work is not, listen, it's frustrated, I understand that. Just like our health is frustrated, just like our relationships with each other can be frustrated.

I mean, what are we just seeing? Far as the curse is found. The curse is found all the way to the dirt.

The curse is found in everything that we do, I get that. Work can be frustrated, but in its essence, work is a blessing from God because we are little images of him and he is a worker. So we can't talk about retirement in this way that we just can't wait to get away from work. Man, we go through things like COVID and people start quitting their jobs because they can get a check from the government as if the main purpose for work is money. The main purpose for work is fulfilling our created passion and what God has done in our life. I remember one time I was sitting in a community group, not at Mercy Hill, years ago, and a guy said, you know, he said, man, I want y'all to pray for me because I've got this choice in front of me, I got laid off, I can take unemployment or I've got another job opportunity.

I think I can even make more money if I just take the unemployment. And I just spoke up in group and I said, brother, what in the world does that have to do with it? I mean, that's a mentality that says, man, work is connected solely to money. Work is first and foremost something that we do because we're in God's image. It's a good thing.

It's a blessed thing. And so this is what I'm talking about here. Man, we've gotta make sure that we have the right idea about work and our culture certainly doesn't at times. You know, right now in our country, there's seven million men, 25 to 54 years old, prime working age that are not working nor are they looking for work. This is just where we are as a culture.

And I think about, you know, just the way, and I'm like, how much of that stems from bad theology that we think work is cursed rather than understanding that it's blessed? If any of this interests you, if you wanna dive into more of this, guys at all of our campuses today, we're gonna be selling a book. We always sell these books.

It's obviously zero. You know, we're not making any money off. We just wanna give them away.

Or we wanna give them to you at cost and they're in our lobby. There's a book called Every Good Endeavor. And it's just a book that kinda helps us think about work.

So my question is this. What is your perspective on work? If we think it's a curse, we're not gonna pursue it very hard. But if we understand what God has done, then we'll run after it. You know, if we think it's a cursed thing, if we think it's a post-fall thing, if we think it's God slapping down humanity so we have to work, then you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna do the minimum just to get by and we're gonna call that virtue. You know, that's what we're gonna do.

All of a sudden you're gonna see hashtag lazygirljobs. You're gonna hear words like quiet quitting because we actually believe this stuff is a curse when in actuality it's a blessing. Guys, we're gonna end up in laziness, sluggish, shul, idleness.

And we're gonna think that's virtue. I want you to understand it's profoundly unchristian. You know, the idea of a sloth. A sloth is a funny creature, you know? Really funny on the movie Zootopia, okay? If any of you guys have seen that. Think it'd be cool to have a sloth as a pet.

That'd be pretty fun. It's not funny to be characterized by the concept of sloth. And so let's think about what he's saying here. And so here's what he says. It's so serious. He says, keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness, not in accordance with the tradition that you receive from us.

I mean, that's what he says right here in verse six. Keep away from them. How could it be?

Keep away from them. I know that some of us are like, man, this is pretty serious. It is serious. I think when we think about church discipline, I know if you're brand new at one of our campuses, I've gotta explain that. But when we think about church discipline, we put it in camps of like, okay, adultery, you know, or some kind of crazy greed issue or abuse or something.

I mean, do you see what he's saying here? Wait, somebody that has bought so much into idleness and sloth and lazy and sluggish heart, then you need to turn away from them because what they're doing is destructive to themselves and others. And this is not becoming of the Lord. If you've never heard the term church discipline, let me just define it and then we're gonna move on. It's not what this sermon is about. But church discipline is when a church turns away from a member to help them repent of ongoing sin. You say, well, if this church ever had to do that, yeah, we've had to walk through this. You know, and I know that some of us might say, man, is this harsh?

No, it's not harsh. It's a last ditch effort. It's the Hail Mary to bring somebody back into the fold.

That's what it is. And I'm not talking about a sin. We're talking about a settled heart of, no, I will not reconcile this marriage. I know it's ungodly to leave. I know I have no grounds, but I'm gone.

God just wants me to be happy. How many times have I heard that in my life? No, I will not stop looking at pornography.

No, I will not stop verbally abusing my family. And finally, the church looks in with much prayer and consideration and heartbreak and says the only way here for you to understand the depths of the way that you're going is for us to turn from you. I want you to hear something today. This is heavy. Idleness is in that category.

Idleness is in that category. Now look what Paul does here. He turns this, and he's gonna try to give them the example and the teaching from his own life. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you. Nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it. But with the toil and labor, we worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we did not have the right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate.

What is he saying? Man, I could have come, and like pastors do, I could have preached and labored among you, and it would have been fine for me to get paid for that. But I didn't do that.

Why? Because I wanted you guys to see what it means to work really hard. And so he worked outside of the ministry to provide for himself. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command.

If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. Now look, I want you to hold a couple things in your mind. Okay, verse seven and nine, he says, imitate my example. I worked hard among you. I didn't take the right that I had in 1 Timothy five.

You guys have heard the passage before, a pastor that's laboring and preaching and teaching is worthy of double honor, don't muzzle the ox when he's grinding out the grain and all that. Maybe you've heard something like that before. What he's saying is, I had that right, but I didn't take it.

I worked really hard, and I want you to imitate me in working really hard. Think of the irony here. What Paul is saying is, I actually had the right not to go and do all the work that you need to be doing, and I did it anyway. And you guys don't have that right, and yet you refuse.

You're idle, I mean, think about how ironic this is. Imitate me, verse seven and nine, but then he says in verse 10, this is very important, what do you say? For even when we were with you, we would give you this command.

If anyone was not willing to work, let him not eat. You guys have heard me say this so many times, I hope you can say it back to me. What is discipleship? Discipleship is word taught, life caught.

Don't we see that here? I'm gonna teach you the word, verse 10. I'm gonna give you commands.

If they don't work, let them not eat. That's a command, that's teaching. And then what does he do? Imitate me. Some of us, we overcomplicate this concept of discipleship. We say, man, I don't know how to disciple somebody.

Yeah, you do, you know how I know that you do? Because you know how to teach your kid how to swing a baseball bat. You know at work, if you had to be gone for two weeks, how to teach somebody to step in your place. Teaching somebody to do something requires two things. I gotta tell you some things and I gotta show you some things, right?

I need to tell you some things and I need to show you. That's why we say this at Mercy Hill. Discipleship is word taught, it's life caught. It's lecture with things like the weekend or the sermon.

It's lab with things like group and relationship. All right, and that's what he's doing here. In an effort to teach them, what he's saying is, I live this way among you and I taught you this command. And it's sharp, right? It's a sharp command. If anyone, verse 10, is not willing to work, let him not eat.

Now what is he doing? I think he's hearkening back to something that we see in the book of Proverbs, written by the wisest person who ever lived, which said, Proverbs 16, 26, a worker's appetite works for him, his mouth urges him on. Now I gotta just stop here and just say, in our culture, that is very out of favor. I understand that, okay? I totally get that. But here's what you gotta understand. Christians, this is sometimes when we gotta have a little bit of steel in the backbone. If the word is saying it from a good and loving God, then it is not evil or mean or wicked or lacking in compassion. I want you to understand, when the Bible says a worker's appetite works for him, his mouth urges him on. That is not harsh. That is not lacking in compassion.

It's just facts. And any sentiment, or even policies, that begin to disincentivize work are going against God's design, and therefore they will harm people. And Paul knew this. And so what Paul is saying is, hey, don't be idle.

Idle is a big deal. Idle will get you church discipline. All right, we don't want that.

We want you in the full. We want you working for God's purposes in your life. You were born and bred to be a worker, little versions of God, in his design. All right, you're a worker.

So don't do this. And here's what he says. Imitate me, listen to my commands, and then he says this. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord, Jesus Christ, to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. You know what he's saying here? You're not busy at work, you're busy bodies.

Here's what he's getting at. Not working leads to other vices. And we certainly see this at work. I mean, the same communities that won't have a lot of work might have other vices that are going on.

Now I understand there's sociological factors that go into that stuff, but there is a deep theological connection here. When we're not working, what happens? Other things happen in our life that are not in accordance with God's will because we are called to be workers, to cultivate, to protect. And I think some of us have this wrong. Some of us will think things like this. So let me take it out of the work example, all right?

You're not busy at work, so you're a busy body. You're not intentionally moving in the purposes for God. You're idly choosing things that are not in the purposes of God.

And here's what we will think. We will think, okay, the emotional affair is keeping me from a happy and fulfilled marriage. Actually, it's probably not being intentional with your marriage that has led you to the emotional affair. It is not being intentional with where God has you and his purposes. Instead, what's going on is there is idleness in this area of your life, and now that is led over here. It's not the greed that leads you not to give.

It's the decision not to be generous that helps you slide further and further and further into the love of money. It's not a circumstance that's happening to you. It's a decision that we make. It's not a lack of community that leads to isolation many times.

It's a decision not to be known. Let me give you an example of this, if this makes sense, okay? I've met people, this has happened even in our church, and it grieves me every time. Well, I can't connect here, I've left the church, I can't connect or whatever, right? Nobody knows I'm even gone, all that kind of stuff.

I don't know anybody, nobody knows me, okay. All right, hey, man, are you in a community group? No, got it, okay. Do you serve on the weekend? Nope.

Everyone on the go team? Nope. Well, I guess you're right.

The church has no connection for you. You understand? It's like, yeah, you're right. I mean, you're right. Nobody knows you, you're right.

Nobody knows you. But this is what we think. It's a circumstance that happened to me. No, it's decisions that we make. It's decisions in idleness in these areas that lead us to all types of, these guys are, hey, they're not working their busy bodies. They're meddling in everybody else's stuff. They're stirring up problems. Man, their decision not to be intentional with what God has called them to do in terms of working is now leading them in a path that hurts them and hurts others.

Here's the application for this weekend, y'all. I wanna call us to engage fully in God's purposes for your life. Man, engage fully in God's purposes. It's not circumstances, it's decisions. Sometimes we choose the idle life over the intentional life, the pointless over the purposeful.

I wanna call us away from that today. God has many more purposes for us than just work. He's got purposes for us in family, discipleship, knowing Him, mission.

I mean, the list goes on and on. It's the whole canon of Scripture. It's the life that He's called us to. And what I'm saying is, in areas of our life where we just blatantly choose not to invest in that area, we will be idle in that area and will lead us to other things. You know, one of the things that we've gotta do, though, we've gotta decide, do we believe that God's purposes for us are good? Because many times, it's not that we don't understand what God is asking us to do. We're not sure if we want to. We're not sure if it's the right thing for us.

We're not sure about the purpose of it. I remember this happened to me a few years ago. We were renewing a Costco membership or something. I don't go to Costco a ton, but when we go, I see a ton of y'all there, buying like the football-sized jar of pickles and the whole sitting in a massage chair and the whole deal, okay? So we got a lot of people who love Costco or whatever, so I'm renewing the membership, or maybe we're getting a membership, I can't remember. And the woman's like, well, we got these three different levels of memberships, whatever, and I said, well, I just want the most basic ones. She said, well, surely you don't understand, sir. I wanna tell you kind of the great stuff and this other thing. And she told me the whole thing, and I said, man, that's great. She's just doing her job, I get it. We want the basic membership. Surely, sir, you don't understand, okay?

So she goes through the whole thing again, and I said, hey, that's great. I just want like the most basic, cheapest. But I understand, I understand what you're trying to do. I mean, I get it, like, man, it's your job, no problem.

But I just want the most cheapest, basic one. She said again, sir, you don't understand. I was like, no, I got it, okay? And I wanna make sure you understand that I got it. I give you more money now, I get a bigger discount on all my stuff that I buy. If in the course of a year I buy enough stuff that I get more of a discount, then that's great for me. If I don't, then I can come to you at the end of the year, and you'll give me a refund to make up the difference if I didn't make all my money back.

Am I doing pretty good so far? And she's like, yeah, AP's like fist-pumping, you know? And I'm like, well, here's the thing, okay?

What if I don't come back because I don't remember that I have this upgraded Costco membership? I mean, you're talking to a guy that when the pharmacist asks me what my kids' birthdays are, I tell them a year and a height, okay? So, you know, I'm like, man, they were born, they're this tall, it was cold outside. Is that good enough, okay, you know? And so my point, here's my point of that. I was trying to tell her, like, hey, listen, I understand it, I just don't want it. And some of us are in that place today when I start talking about God's purposes for your life, for mission, for cultivating family, for work, of course, that's what we're talking about here. And so you say, well, how do I gain that heart to understand, not just to get it, but to get it, you know, to want it?

And this is what I want you to see. Y'all, you think about God's goodness towards us and his purposes for us, how are they not good? When we think about, man, I'm not sure these purposes for God are good, you know what we're doing? We're buying into the original lie that was told to us so long ago. What was the original lie that Satan came and told to Eve?

What is it? God's holding out on you. He's got something better for you that he doesn't want you to have.

And, man, that's a poison that's in every one of our hearts, man, we wonder about that with God. Man, is there something better for me that's out there? Is there purposes that are better?

Man, if I don't work and I'm just idle, is that actually more fun, you know? If I don't think about cultivating my family with my kids and discipleship, but I just kinda waste all that time and use that time for myself, is that actually gonna be better for me in the end? But we serve a God whose purposes for us are good.

And how do we know that? Because God loved us enough not only to create us, but to send his son to die on a cross so that we could be in relationship eternally with him. I think about Jesus, y'all. Jesus was the least idle person that ever lived. He fulfilled his purpose to a T. And what was that purpose? Well, when it comes to our sake, it was paying the penalty for our sin so that he could give us a chance at a new life. That's what he did for us on the cross.

I want you to think about this. Jesus wasn't idle for all the times that we are. Jesus fulfilled God's purpose for all the times that we don't, which are many times.

And man, if God loves us enough to send his son, we can trust him with his purposes in our life. So let's just talk about work and then we'll talk about a couple other things when we're done, okay? So when it comes to work, how are we doing? Do we see it as a blessing? Some of you are in a tough situation, I know that.

Man, I know your stories. I know some of you, man, boss is not a believer. Man, I understand it. I'm not saying you need to stay in that job forever. I am saying you don't need to sour on the idea of work because work is God-given.

It's part of his grand and good purposes for us. You can say it like this, work is a pre-fall blessed purpose from God. When I said this in the beginning, I'm gonna say it again, okay? Here's the thing, this is what's been tricky with me. I've been talking to all our pastors this week about this sermon. I'm excited to preach it, but I'm also like, man, I kind of feel like I'm talking to a people that generally are like more on the overworked side of things than the underworked side of things, okay?

And so, man, I know that's not maybe where everybody is, but I do think we need to expand this. And we say, it's okay, wait a minute, because some of us are gonna be like, well, I'm good at work, man, that's fine. But what if you're doing this? What if you're going so hard at work that you got nothing left for these other areas that God is calling you to, for the mission of God, for cultivating your kids and family and discipling them, for pouring into your marriage? What if the idol part of your life is not in the works bucket?

But what if it's in one of these other areas? Sometimes, I get it, listen, this is a call today. Sometimes, it's easier to just let the kids watch Bluey again than to read to them from the Jesus Storybook Bible, you know? Sometimes, we start getting a little bit older, and it's like, yeah, you know that window for thinking about foster care and adoption, God, I know you're short of calling us to that, but it's gonna mean giving up a lot of me time, you know?

It's gonna end up, I mean, think about it. As we, sometimes, I think we can start being idle when it comes to stewarding our health. What age, you know, what steps do we need to take in that area? Man, we're good on the work side, I get that, okay, maybe. But what about our health? You know, and here's the thing. When I say that out loud, some of us might be like this. Man, I can't, you know, what do we need to do?

Diet, exercise, rest, this three-legged stool, all right? What if some of us today are like, well, I can't worry about that part of my life. Listen, because I've gotta work too much. Okay, what if somebody flipped that on you and they said back to you, well, yeah, I don't really have time to work because, you know, I gotta think about my health all day. I mean, you would think that's crazy, right? You would be like, man, that's just, I can't even conceive of that. It's the same thing.

It's the exact same thing in reverse. There are areas of life, counsel of God's word, that he calls us to steward. Man, what area, maybe, is he putting his finger on in your heart today that you might say, man, I know there's areas in me. There's areas in all of us. Man, what areas might there be some idleness that needs to move into intentionality?

Why? Because we believe all of God's purposes for us are good. We see that in the cross.

We see that in the love of his son, not going to the cross for us. All right, and then can we pray to repent of that idleness and move into intentionality? Let's pray. Father, we come before you. Lord, I ask right now, God, that you would move in our church. This is one of those weekends where there's not a lot to do other than to repent and to just think about what are the areas in my life that need more attention and intentionality. And God, I pray that your spirit would do what he does and that is, God, that he would cut us to the heart. Father, that he would point out what is true, what is wrong, that he would search us and know us. God, bring those things up into our mind and let us repent of them and walk in greater fellowship with you today. In Christ's name we pray, amen.