Living in Ungoldly Times
(the
Remedy)
(Proverbs 6:16-23; II Thessalonians
2:8-12)
May
22, 2022
Read Proverbs 6:16-23; II Thessalonians 2:8-12
Last week I tried to deal with the prevalence of lying and
disinformation in our culture
In a lesson entitled The Anti-Christian Movement. Lying was at its center.
There should be little wonder because of the heavy
influence of Satan involvement in
our present culture and world, since Jesus has revealed to
us that “....the devil.........
is a liar, and the father of it.” (John
8:44) Lying and deception will be a major
part of Satan’s attempt to overthrow God one last
time. The Revelation of Jesus Christ
tells us that Satan “....shall go out to deceive the nations
which are in the four corners
of the earth.” (Revelation 20:8a)
I do not know if this is a concomitant of v. 11 in our text
today - “...God shall send
them strong delusion that they should believe a lie” or not but it is very possible.
When I was at
a professor, I think his name was Dr. Preston, from whom I
learned
what concomitant meant.
Little did I ever conceive of using it nearly a half century
later in a Sunday School lesson as this, in this way. Concomitant as a noun is a
a phenomenon that naturally accompanies or follows
something:
I have been trying to warn of Satan’s recruitment of human
beings, in these last times,
to do he and his angelic host’s dirty work.
7 And there
was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against
the dragon; and the dragon fought and his
angels,
8 And
prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in
heaven. (Same for the Satan’s cronies [close friends or companions] who
are
according to Christ in Luke 13:28-29 = There shall be
weeping and gnashing
of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac,
and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the
and from the west, and from the north, and from
the south, and shall sit down in the
9 And the
great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the
Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole
world: he was cast out
into the earth, and his angels were cast
out with him.
10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven,
Now is come salvation,
and strength, and the kingdom of our God,
and the power of His
Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is
cast down, which accused
them before our God day and night.
11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the
word
of their
testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
12
Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to
the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea!
for the devil is come
down unto you, having great wrath, because
he knoweth that he
hath but a short time.
13 And
when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he
persecuted the woman which brought forth
the man child.
16 And the
earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth,
and swallowed up the flood which the dragon
cast out of his mouth.
17 And the
dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war
with the remnant of her seed, which keep
the commandments of
God, and have the testimony of Jesus
Christ. (Revelation 12:7-13, 16-17)
Satan is a liar and the father of it, but not so with
God - one of the original
commandments prohibited lying - “Thou shalt not bear false
witness.”
(Exodus 20:16)
God proclaimed to Moses that He was “....abundant in ....truth.”
(ch. 34:6) I want to
sidetrack here and say that there is something
else God is abundant with and that is redemption. “Let
in the Lord: for
with the lord there is mercy, and with Him there is
plenteous redemption.
And He shall redeem
iniquities.” (Psalm 130:7-8) I
should think that the words abundant
and plenteous are
synonyms.
Christ declared “I am....the truth.” (John 14:6)
The Love of
the Truth (vs. 10-12)
The reason for the doom of those who are to be destroyed at
the second coming of
Christ here given, is that they do
not receive THE LOVE OF THE TRUTH!
·
GOD EXPECTS US TO RECEIVE THE TRUTH AND LOVE IT.
Ø
Truth is good in itself. Truth is to the soul
what light is to the body.
It is natural for men to love
the day, unnatural for them to shun it.
In a right and healthy state we
should love truth simply as truth,
whatever else it be.
Ø
Christian truth is peculiarly attractive. Scientific truth is
beautiful,
philosophic truth is valuable;
but the
truth of the gospel has far deeper
attractions, because it contains revelation of the love
and fatherhood
of God, of the grace and
goodness of Christ, of the
redemption of the
world, of the way of salvation, of the heavenly
rest, etc.
Ø
Truth should be welcomed with love. We cannot accept it
to any
advantage until we love it; for
o
love opens our eyes to a sympathetic understanding of it, and
o
love saves us from
a cold, barren acceptance of it, and helps
us to receive it profitably.
_____________________________________________________________
·
IT IS AN EVIL HEART THAT PREVENTS MEN FROM
RECEIVING THE LOVE OF THE TRUTH.
condition of those who reject
the love of the truth to the fact that they “had
pleasure in
unrighteousness.” The pleasures
of sin cannot
exist side
by side
with the love of
the truth. Evil hates the light (John
3:19). Moral
corruption has no sympathy for the lofty
thirst for truth of a pure soul.
Hence it may be concluded that indifference to
truth is a sign of moral evil.
Jesus said, “He that is not with me is against me; and
he that gathereth
not scattereth abroad.” (Matthew 12:30) The corrupt
life is a false life,
and its departure from truth
reveals the baseness of
the character beneath.
This is why the rejection of the
truth is blameworthy. Intellectual doubt is
of quite a different character.
Indeed, it often arises from genuine love of truth,
while self-satisfied orthodoxy
is often quite indifferent to verifiable facts,
preferring respectable error to
painful truth. (Concerning verifiable facts,
I spoke of the Progressive
Movement recently, this movement teaches
children that a she or a he is
to be referred to as they or them. At a
graduation of
representative was jeered for
mentioning male and female. CY - May 17,
2022)
·
REJECTING THE LOVE OF THE TRUTH BRINGS ON AN
INCAPACITY TO KNOW TRUTH FROM ERROR. God punishes men
in this condition by sending “them a working of error,
that they should
believe a lie.” This is
an awful fate. Truth is too precious a pearl
to be cast
before swine. They who do not love it shall not have it. Liars become
incapable of knowing truth. The habit of indifference to
truth so grows
upon some people that the whole idea of truth becomes
obscure and
meaningless to them, and they ask with Pilate, half
bewildered, half
scornful, “What is truth?” Is not this a veritable destruction — the
spiritual eye blinded and burnt out by the fires of
falsehood and
unrighteousness; the
highest intellectual faculty, that of grasping truth,
killed by corruption and falsehood? God save us all from this hideous
doom!
THIS IS TO WHAT
THE EXCLUSION OF THE TRUTH LEADS!
Satan’s antichrist will stamp falsehood upon the whole system
(politically,
economically,
religiously, etc.) and will use superhuman
craft for the
MISGUIDANCE OF
MEN. Guile
marks his whole career, and
unrighteousness
is the aim and result!
Already, people are saying that President Biden’s appointment of a
Disinformation Czar of the last week is suspiciously Orwellian. (CY -
May 1, 2022)
Biden 'disinfo' czar Nina Jankowicz ripped over TikTok (nypost.com)
·
THE HIDDEN MYSTERY OF LAWLESSNESS WILL BE REVEALED.
The volcano must break into
eruption some day. Evil cannot
slumber forever. Hypocrisy will tire of its meek,
innocent demeanor.
(As is evidenced in the Progressive
Movement in in the
any man put his confidence in
the secretness or slowness of the processes
of evil. The more they are hidden now, the worse will be
the appalling
outburst of them when the restraint under which they groan at present
is released. (This is what Fundamental Christianity has
done since
the inception of The United
States of America! The progression of
evil in American government and
culture is mind-boggling and
it has occurred in my
lifetime! Does it not make you wonder
which generation Christ referred
to when He said, “This generation
shall not pass
till all these tthings be
fulfilled.” Matthew 24:34;
Luke 21:32 - CY - 2022) The
longer the wild horses are held in by
the leash, the fiercer will be
their mad gallop when they break loose.
·
CHRIST WILL CONQUER THE MYSTERY OF LAWLESSNESS.
“....whom the Lord
shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and
shall destroy with
the brightness of His coming.” (v. 8) Compare with
what the angels of the Lord told
Lot prior to the destruction of
(Genesis 19:12-17) Evil will not long be rampant. One
fearful rebellion
and then a tremendous defeat.
Ø
Christ is to be the Conqueror of it. He came to destroy
the works
of the devil. (I John 3:8) It is obvious we could not effect this great work.
He, our Saviour, does it for us.
Ø
Christ is to come again for this object. When the mystery is
revealed,
(Do you think that Joe Biden’s new czar of disinformation, Nina
Jankowicz, head of the new Disinformation Governance Board will
discover the mystery of evil? Or is she even interested for national
security reasons to put the FBI, IRS, CIA, Google, Facebook, Instagram,
Tik Tok, or the old time Twitter algorithms (a process or set of rules to
be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations) on
the anti-christ? Will he qualify to be monitored? Will he be on their
list? or will the attention be directed against Christians? We seem
to be a nation that puts a lot of stock in polls. [many suspect that we
have come to the place where even so-called polls of American citizens
themselves, are skewed to disinform?] LET ME TAKE A POLL. If
Ms. Jankowicz discovers the mystery of sin, or the man of sin, the
anti-christ, do you think she will reveal the data? Or out of personal
privacy or personal “civil rights issues” will she go to great extremes
to cover him/them up? Under the Biden administration, or if the agency
survives, will under future administrations, will the “man of sin” make
the hit list? CY -
2022) Just remember! After this
Christ’s
“manifestation” follows.
Ø Christ conquers with a breath. (As the precedent was set
at creation when God spoke the words “Let there be...”
so at the end the
same He will “...consume with the
spirit of His
mouth......”.
Proverbs 29:18a
- “Where there is no vision, the people perish” - rather,
cast off
restraint, become ungovernable, cannot be
reined in (Exodus 32:22, 25).
“Vision” (chazon),
prophecy in its widest sense, denotes the revelation of God’s
will made through
agents, which directed the course of events, and
WAS INTENDED to
be coordinate with the supreme SECULAR AUTHORITY.
The prophets were
the instructors of the people in Divine things, standing witnesses
of the truth and
power of religion, teaching a higher than mere human morality.
The fatal effect of the
absence of such revelation of God’s will
is stated to be
confusion,
disorder, and rebellion; the people, uncontrolled, fall into grievous
excesses, which nothing but high principles can
restrain. (IN
THIS INSTANCE
CHURCH-STATE
RELATIONSHIP)
Contrast no restraint and restraint. A restraint is a measure or condition
that keeps something or someone under control or within limits.
·
THERE IS A RESTRAINT ON THE MYSTERY OF LAWLESSNESS.
Ø
Its full power is not yet revealed. There are those who
treat all sin with
unbecoming levity, because they
do not yet see its terrible fruits. They
are playing with a slow-moving
adder, that may awake at any moment
and inflict a fatal wound. Below is an excerpt from a C. H. Spurgeon
sermon entitled NUMBER 1500, OR LIFTING UP THE BRAZEN
SERPENT
What an awful thing it is to be bitten by a serpent!
I dare say some of you
recollect the case of Gurling, one of the keepers of
the reptiles in the
Zoological Gardens. It happened in October 1852, and
therefore some of
you will remember it. This unhappy man was about to
part with a friend
who was going to Australia and according to the wont
of many he must
needs drink with him. He drank considerable
quantities of gin, and though
he would probably have been in a great passion if any
one had called him
drunk, yet reason and common-sense had evidently
become overpowered.
He went back to his post at the gardens in an excited
state. He had some
months before seen an exhibition of snake, charming,
and this was on his
poor muddled brain. He must emulate the Egyptians,
and play with
serpents. First he took out of its cage a Morocco
venom-snake, put it
round his neck, twisted it about, and whirled it
round about him. Happily
for him it did not arouse it so as to bite. The
assistant-keeper cried out,
“For God’s sake put back the snake,” but the foolish
man replied, “I am
inspired.” Putting back the venom-snake, he
exclaimed, “Now for the
cobra.” This deadly serpent was somewhat torpid with
the cold of the
previous night, and therefore the rash man placed it
in his bosom till it
revived, and glided downward till its head appeared
below the back of his
waistcoat. He took it by the body, about a foot from
the head, and then
seized it lower down by the other hand, intending to
hold it by the tail and
swing it round his head. He held it for an instant
opposite to his face, and
like a flash of lightning the serpent struck him
between the eyes. The blood
streamed down his face, and he called for help, but
his companion fled in
horror; and, as he told the jury, he did not know how
long he was gone, for
he was “in a maze.” When assistance arrived Gurling
was sitting on a chair,
having restored the cobra to its place. He said, “I
am a dead man.” They
put him in a cab, and took him to the hospital. First
his speech went, he
could only point to his poor throat and moan; then
his vision failed him,
and lastly his hearing, His pulse gradually sank, and
in one hour from the
time at which he had been struck he was a corpse.
There was only a little
mark upon the bridge of his nose, but the poison
spread over the body, and
he was a dead man. I tell you that story that you may
use it as a parable
and learn never to play with sin, and also in order to
bring vividly before
you what it is to be bitten by a serpent. Suppose
that Gurling could have
been cured by looking at a piece of brass, would it
not have been good
news for him? There was no remedy for that poor
infatuated creature, but
there is a remedy for you. For men who have been
bitten by the fiery
serpents of sin Jesus Christ is lifted up: not for
you only who are as yet
playing with the serpent, not for you only who have
warmed it in your
bosom, and felt it creeping over your flesh, but for
you who are actually
bitten, and are mortally wounded. If any man were
bitten so that he has
become diseased with sin, and feels the deadly venom
in his blood, it is for
him that Jesus is set forth today.
No one knows what hidden possibilities of harm lurk in the
deep caverns of undeveloped sin. There are volcanoes in the hearts
of some quiet men which may
burst into destructive fires.
o
Note the home of the Divine comfort. It is to be in our hearts.
Comfort anywhere else is vain. Comfortable
houses, clothes, etc.,
leave the deepest trouble
untouched. The heart may be on a rack
when the body is on a downy
couch. God’s comfort reaches
the heart. ch. 2:16-17
Second,
The Remedy
The Word of God, both Jesus Christ the
Living Word
and The Bible, the Written Word.
We need the help and guidance of God’s Word
to get us through THE
COMPLICATED MAZE of modern life. This maze is complicated by
recreational drug usage and lying
propaganda with which we are
confronted daily, not the least of which is
a constant bombardment
of sexually explicit material for daily
consumption which is conspicuously
available to the majority of Americans,
either on cable TV or cell phones.
May I introduce:
THE
TALKING BOOK
A
SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING,
OCTOBER 22, 1871,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT
THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
“When thou awakest, it shall talk with
thee.” — Proverbs 6:22.
“When thou goest, it shall lead thee,
when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee,
and when thou wakest, it shall talk with
thee.”
IT is a very happy circumstance when the commandment of
our father and
the law of our mother are also the commandment of
God and the law of
the Lord. Happy are they who have a double force to draw
them to the
right — the bonds of nature, and the cords of grace. They sin with a
vengeance who sin both against a
father on earth and the great Father in
heaven, and they exhibit a
severity and a violence of sin who do despite to
the tender obligations of
childhood, as well as to the demands of
conscience and God. Solomon, in the passage before
us, evidently speaks
of those who find in the
parents’ law and in God’s law the same thing, and
he admonishes such to bind the
law of God about their heart, and to tie it
about their neck; by which he
intends inward affection and open avowal.
The law of God should be so dear
to us, that it should be bound about the
most vital organ of our being,
braided about our heart. (dreads or dreadlocks)
That which a man carries in his
hand he may forget and lose, that which he
wears upon his person may be
torn from him, but that which is bound about his heart
will remain there as long as
life remains. We
are to love the word of God with
all our heart, and mind, and
soul, and strength; with the full force of our
nature we are to embrace it; all
our warmest affections are to be bound up
with it. When the wise man
tells us, also, to wear it about our necks
gold chains,
diamond earrings, etc. he means that we are never to be
ashamed of it.
No blush is to mantle our
cheek when we are called Christians; we are never to speak with bated
breath in any company concerning the things of God. Manfully must we
take up the cross of Christ; cheerfully must we avow ourselves to belong
to those who have respect unto the divine testimonies. Let us count true
religion
to be our highest ornament; and, as magistrates put upon them
their
gold chains, and think themselves adorned thereby, so let us tie about
our neck the commands and the gospel of the Lord our God. You know
that the Israelites wore frontlets, or phylacteries. ( Exodus 13:16 ; 6:8 ; 11:18 ;
Matthew
23:5 ) These
"frontlets" or "phylacteries" were strips of parchment,
on which were written four passages of Scripture, ( Exodus 13:2-10 Exodus 13:11-17 ;
Deuteronomy
6:4-9 deuteronomy 6:13-23 ) in
an ink prepared for the purpose.
They were then rolled up in a
case of black calfskin, which was attached to a stiffer
piece of leather, having a thong one finger broad and one and a half cubits long.
They were placed at the bend of
the left arm. Those worn on the forehead were
written on four strips of
parchment, and put into four little cells within a square case
on which the letter was written. The square had two thongs, on which Hebrew letters
were inscribed. That phylacteries were used as amulets is certain, and was very natural.
The
expression "they make
broad their phylacteries," ( Matthew 23:5 ) refers not so
much to the phylactery itself,
which seems to have been of a prescribed breadth,
as to the case in which the
parchment was kept, which the Pharisees, among their
other pretentious customs,
( Mark 7:3 Mark 7:4 ; Luke 5:33 ) etc., made as
conspicuous as they could. It is
said that the Pharisees wore them always,
whereas the common people only used them at prayers.
Smith’s Bible Dictionary (CY - 2022)
In order that we may be persuaded so to do, Solomon gives us three telling
reasons.
He says that God’s law, by
which I understand the whole run of
Scripture, and, especially the gospel of Jesus Christ, will be a guide to us:
— ”When thou goest, it shall
lead thee.” It will be a guardian to us: “When
thou sleepest” — when thou art
defenseless and off thy guard — ”it shall
keep thee.” And it shall also be
a dear companion to us: “When thou
awakest, it shall talk with
thee.” Anyone of
these three arguments might
surely suffice to make us seek a nearer acquaintance with the sacred word.
We all need a guide,
for “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”
Left to our own we soon excel in folly. There are dilemmas in all lives
where
a guide is more precious than a wedge of gold. The word of God, as
an infallible director for human
life, should be sought unto by us, and it will
lead us in the highway of safety. Equally powerful is the second reason: the
word of God will become the guardian of our days; whoso hearkeneth
unto it shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil. Unguarded
moments there may be; times, inevitable to our imperfection, there will be,
when, unless some other power protect us, we shall fall into the hands of
the
foe. Blessed
is he who has God’s law so written on his heart, and wears
it so about his
neck as armor of proof, that at all times he is invulnerable,
kept by the
power of God through faith unto salvation.
But I prefer, this morning, to keep to the third reason for loving God’s
word.
It is this, that it becomes our sweet companion: “When thou
awakest, it shall talk with thee.” The inspired law of God, which David in
the hundred and nineteenth Psalm calls God’s testimonies, precepts,
statutes, and the like, is the friend of the righteous. Its essence and marrow
is the gospel of Jesus, the law-fulfiller, and this also is the special solace of
believers.
Of the whole
sacred volume it may be said “When thou awakest,
it shall talk with thee.”
This concludes the introduction. There are five points in the sermon which
is on the website as #1210a at https://www,adultbibleclass.com.
I. We perceive here that THE WORD IS LIVING. How else could it be said:
“It shall talk with thee”? A dead book cannot talk, nor can a dumb book
speak.
It is clearly a living book, then, and a speaking book: “The
word of
God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” How many of us have found this
to be most certainly true!
This material can be found at:
http://www.adultbibleclass.com
If this exposition is helpful, please share with
others.
A - “Ask and ye shall receive”
B - “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou
shalt be saved”
C - “Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall
sustain thee”
D - “I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me (after “call upon me in the day of troube”)
E - “Eat the fat and drink the sweet and sent
portions to them for whom nothing
is prepared.
________________________________________________________________________
F - “Fear thou not, for I am with thee: be not
dismayed, for I am thy God:
I will strengthen thee,
yea I will help thee, yea I will uphold thee with
the right hand of my
righteousness”
G - “Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His
name”
H - “Heal
me O Lord, and I shall be healed”
I - “In your patience possess ye your souls” - In the verse before that Jesus said
“But
there shall not a hair from your head perish”
J - “Jesus....Have mercy on me”
K - “Thou shalt not kill”
L - “Love thy neighbor as thyself”
M - “More to be desired are they than gold...moreover
by them is thy servant warned”
(The Laws of God)
N - “No
good thing will He withold from them that walk uprightly”
O - “Open
thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.”
P - “Prepare to meet thy God O
Q - “Quicken (preserve) thou
me according to thy lovingkindness
R - “Lord, remember me when thou comest unto thy
kingdom.”
S - “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;
save me and I shall be saved:
for thou art my praise.”
T - “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and
lean not unto thine own
understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall
direct
thy paths.”
U -
V - “Trust in the Lord and do good; so shall
thou dwell in the land, and
verily thou shalt be
fed.”
W
X
Y
Z
(ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THE ANTICHRIST AND THE EFFECTS OF
HIS
LEADERSHIP)
THERE IS A MAN
OF SIN. The Bible does not ignore the awful depths of
human
wickedness. It is dreadfully significant that this evil being is a man,
not a devil.
Humanity, which was created in the image of God and intended
to be a
haunt of
iniquity. As good works through human sympathies, so does evil.
A bad man is
more dangerous than a fallen angel, because he is nearer to
his fellow men.
“the mystery of
iniquity (lawlessness) - We are not to
expect to be able to
understand all the forces and influences with which we are
surrounded. It is
enough that we
are in the hands of God who knows all, and trusting in
Christ who can
lead us safely through the darkness.
See Romans
1:19-23 and Galatians 6:7-8
WE NEED TO
BEWARE LEST WE BE A PART OF THIS “APOSTASY”
AND
ANTI-CHRISTIAN SYSTEM!
ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT THE FORCES OF UNBELIEF AND
EVIL ARE GATHERING THEMSELVES FOR A MIGHTY CONFLICT!
AS SATAN IS A LIAR AND THE FATHER OF IT – (JOHN 8:44) , SO
THE ANTICHRISTIAN MOVEMENT, WHICH HE INSPIRES, IS
BASED ON LYING!
THERE IS TO BE AN OUTBURST OF INFIDELITY, A WIDESPREAD
SKEPTICISM, A HATRED OF REVELATION, MANIFESTING ITSELF
IN THE LIFE AND WORKS OF MEN OF LEARNING AND CULTURE,
BEING VERY OUTSPOKEN AGAINST ALL FORMS OF AUTHORITY!
REMEMBER HOW THE SITUATION WILL BE HANDLED - CHAPTER
1:7-10.
The Lord Jesus
shall destroy him, and that in an instant, when He cometh. He
needs only to
speak the word of power; the breath of His mouth shall sweep the
adversary into
that perdition to which he was appointed. The manifestation of His
coming, the very
sight of the awful Judge, shall slay the wicked one. This must be
our consolation
when the dark problems of life distress our souls — “the Lord cometh.”
Then shall come
the assured triumph of righteousness, the crowning victory over all the
powers of evil.
THE BREATH OF THE LORD IS SUFFICIENT TO OVERTHROW THE
KINGDOM OF ANTICHRIST AND TO BAFFLE ALL HIS PRETENTIONS!
His first work was difficult, involving His death. His last work will be
Divinely simple, and yet sublimely successful.
May God bless these thoughts to our hearts in Jesus Name!
v.
17
o
Note the home of the Divine comfort. It is to be in our hearts.
Comfort anywhere else is vain.
Comfortable houses, clothes, etc.,
leave the deepest trouble
untouched. The heart may be on a rack
when the body is on a downy
couch. God’s comfort reaches
the heart.
Ø
Stability in work and word. We must not stop at
comfort. We are
consoled in distress that we may
be free and strong and glad for service.
o
The service must come
from the heart. “The heart” is to be
established
for service.
o
It must be various
and complete — “every good work.”
o
It must extend to
speech — “and word.” The Scriptures lay
great stress on a right use of speech. It must be steadfast.
This is the end of the
benediction. Eternal comfort
must be balanced by steadfast
faithfulness.
3:10 “For
even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if
any would not work, neither should he eat.”
For even when we were with you;
during our residence in Thessalonica. This we commanded, that if any man would
not work, neither should he eat. This or similar expressions have been shown to
be a proverb
in frequent use among the Jews. Thus: “Whoever doth not work
doth not eat” (‘Bereshith Rabba’); “Let not him who would not
labor
before the sabbath eat on the sabbath” (‘In Lib. Zenon.’). It is a law of
nature, and the
apostle here sanctions it as a law of Christianity. There is
here a reference to the sentence pronounced on man in
consequence of disobedience: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread” (Genesis
3:19). Labor, indeed, may in one point of view be
considered as part of the curse, but it is also a blessing
adapted to man’s
fallen nature. Labor is the law of God; idleness
is the parent of many
crimes and is
productive of misery. He who has no
business allotted to him
ought to choose some useful occupation for himself.
V12 That with quietness. In contrast to
being
busybodies, with calmness of spirit, freedom from
excitement. They work,
and eat their own
bread; not the bread of others, but
their own, for
which they have
laboured and which they have earned.
v. 14 - “Note that man;” that is, set a mark
upon him, note him for the sake of avoidance,
excommunicate him from your society. And have no company
with him.
Exclude him from your fellowship meetings, your love
feasts. That he may
be ashamed; the design or object of thus noting him. As if the apostle had
said, “Bring the force of Christian opinion to bear upon
him. Show your
moral indignation by excluding him from the Christian
community.” The
noting or
excommunicating was more of the nature of a correction than of
a punishment,
and its design was the reclaiming of the offender.