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Welcome to Day 3 of our look at 1 Thessalonians, Chapter 4 in Daily Drive Time
Devotions, verses 9 to 12 today. We are talking this week about excellence in
your faith. And you might be thinking, "I thought there was going to be a talk
about spiritual excellence, things like Bible reading and prayer and sharing
your faith.

" That's what we naturally think of when we think of spirituality and spiritual
growth. And of course, Bible reading and prayer and sharing your faith are part
of living out the disciplines of the Christian life. But if you really want to
be excellent in your faith, then you've got to live it out in the everyday
places of life.

So yesterday we talked about what you think and how you treat your body. That
has to do with living in excellent faith. What you think about sexuality and
sex, that has to do with living in excellent faith.

And today as we look at these verses, we're going to be looking at how you
handle your job. Our sexual life and our work life. That's a lot of our life.

I'm not going to ask how many times you've thought about the Bible today
compared to how many times you've thought about sex or work. It would be an
interesting answer, but I'm not going to ask that. The point is, if I don't
understand how God's a part of every part of my life, I'm not going to be
growing as He wants me to grow.

And verses 9 to 12 talk about our work life, beginning with talk about loving
one another. I'm going to begin reading in verse 9. Now about brotherly love, we
do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love
each other.

And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. And yet we urge
you, brothers, to do so more and more. Make it your ambition to lead a quiet
life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands, just as we told
you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you
will not be dependent on anybody.

There again, in verse 10, are those words more and more again, this time applied
to your job, more and more excellent, more and more growth. How do you handle
your job? That's the question here.

Some people think that they can somehow separate their Christian life from their
work life. It's absolutely impossible. Paul in this passage talks about the
attitude towards your job that makes all the difference between excellence and
mediocrity at your work, in your spirituality at work.

The attitude, Paul says here, that leads to excellence in your work is ambition.
Make it your ambition, he says. Now, when we think ambition, we think reach the
top.

We think climb the ladder. We think attain the best. We think have the drive
that pushes us towards personal productivity and success.

And all those thoughts, they have nothing at all to do with what Paul is talking
about here. He's talking about an entirely different kind of ambition and an
entirely different kind of achievement. In fact, as you first read it, it
doesn't sound ambitious at all.

Paul says, make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to attend to your own
business and to work with your own hands. Now, does that surprise you a little
bit? Paul writes and he gives them an ambition that any Christian any day could
live up to.

Every believer in every age and every country in the world today cannot have the
ambition to be the CEO of a corporation. And the Bible's not going to tell us to
have an ambition that not everybody could reach. But every believer in every age
and every country of the world today can have this ambition to lead a quiet
life, to mind to attend to your own business, to work with your own hands.

Now, it may sound simple, but these are very, very deep phrases about the kind
of person that you are. This ambition to lead a quiet life, that has the idea of
being someone you can count on. There are some people, they are all noise and
excitement, but you know you can't depend on them when it comes right down to
it.

Paul is saying, don't be like that. When he talks about attending to your own
business, he's saying, first don't be meddling in other people's business, and
then make sure you get your own work done. It's pretty simple stuff, but it
shows the kind of character that you have.

And when he talks about working with your own hands, Paul here is not condemning
poverty and what people who want to work can't find work. He's condemning those
for whom work is available and they choose not to do it. He's saying, simple
work with your own hands.

There is an excellence in that not to miss. In fact, let me tell you what was
happening in Thessalonica. They had heard the story that Jesus was coming again,
and they believed the truth that Jesus was coming again.

And because of this, they thought, you know, I don't like the job I'm in much.
In fact, I don't like it at all. Jesus is coming again.

He's coming soon. I've got a little saved up. I'm in this church where everybody
loves each other.

There's some other people in the church that could probably carry me for a
little while. I've got enough money. We've got enough money together to make it
through.

So I'm going to quit my job and I'm just going to wait for Jesus to come again.
If I have to wait for him to come again, why shouldn't I enjoy the waiting? And
so because they quit their jobs, they became lazy.

And when they had too much spare time, they began to gossip. Now we're going to
come back to this again when we study 2 Thessalonians, chapter 3. Verse 11 of
that chapter says, "We hear that some among you are idle.

" They are not busy. They are busybodies. So Paul says it's an important
ambition to work, daily work, even routine work as he's talking about here.

There's an ambition behind that. Why is it so important? Two things he talks
about here.

First, it gives a good witness to the world. And second, it keeps you healthy
and well grounded. First, it gives a good witness to the world.

Paul says, "So that your daily life might win the respect of outsiders. " He's
saying a lazy Christian is a bad witness. That's what he's saying.

When believers feed off of everybody else and don't work when you have the
opportunity, it's a bad witness. The world looks at those kind of believers and
says, "You know, I wonder if they're a believer out of genuine faith or are they
just in it for the free lunch? " That is a good, healthy skepticism when they
ask that question.

And Paul says, "I want all of you. If you get the chance, if you have the
opportunity, get out there and work. Lead the kind of life that God wants you to
live.

It makes you a good witness. " And you can probably fairly quickly think of
someone in your life who at work was an incredible witness to the quiet life
that they lived. The fact that they just did their job and did it well.

Through the kind of attitude that they had towards others as they did that job,
you could see Christ in them. They weren't a gossip. They worked hard.

And you and other people knew that it was because they had a relationship with
God, a relationship with Christ. In fact, this person that you're thinking of
might even be the person who led you to a relationship with Christ because you
watched what they did and it changed your life. That's what Paul is talking
about here.

Be that kind of person. And as you are, recognize God is working through you and
you are changing people's lives in ways that you don't even recognize. It's a
good witness to the world to have this ambition.

And he says, "It also keeps you healthy and well-grounded so that you don't have
to depend on anyone. " He's not talking about spiritual interdependence here,
the fellowship that we have in a small group as we pray for each other. He's
talking about you not working and making someone else earn money for your food
and your shelter when you could earn it yourself.

Don't make someone else do that, he's saying. If you get away from the routine
of work, he's saying here, you get in trouble. So work with your hands.

Now, obviously, there's a lot of different ways to work with your hands, whether
it's on a keyboard or whether it's out in construction, you can be working with
your hands. Whether it's managing people or whether it's working in a place
where you don't see people much during the day, you can work with your hands,
get the stuff done that needs to get done. There are all kinds of different ways
to work, different kinds of work.

But Paul is saying here, stay involved in life and in work. And even if you
"retire," make sure that you're still involved in meaningful work because that
is healthy and it keeps you well-grounded. He's saying that you have to have
something you can invest your life in.

And one of the ways we invest our life is the work that we do with our hands,
day to day. If you don't have that, Paul says, you become a busybody because you
don't have anything else to do. Do you remember the story of King David in the
Old Testament?

The sexual sin that he got involved in with a woman named Bathsheba? The Bible
says that this happened "in a time when kings go off to war. " In that time,
David was back at home, not where he should be, not doing the work that he was
supposed to be doing.

Not protecting his country. In the time when he was supposed to be out defending
his country, he said, "I've got other people to do that. " So he didn't get
involved.

He took an early retirement and that had him sitting on a rooftop, didn't have
anything else to do, and he sees a woman taking a bath. He shouldn't even have
been there. He wouldn't even have been tempted if he'd been busy doing what God
had given him to do.

Now, all of us have felt the weariness that comes from work, the drudgery of the
day to day to day. You might be feeling it right now, but don't lose sight of
the blessing of work. Even in difficult, even in monotonous work, there is a
blessing.

It keeps you connected to reality. It keeps you from just becoming a commentator
on life. It keeps you real as a person, and that's what God wants us to be.

People who have an excellent faith, they have to have a real faith, a genuine
faith. And Paul says that one of the values of the work that God has given us to
do is it keeps us real to the people around us. You want to be excellent?

These first several verses of 1st Thessalonians chapter 4 say, "If I want to be
excellent, if I want to live and grow more and more, then excellence is built in
everyday places. Sex and work, excellence is built on everyday decisions. Don't
be lustful.

Don't be lazy. Instead, be holy and be ambitious. Excellence is built out of the
everyday.

" Let me just think about that with you for a minute through the excellent lives
of faith in the Bible. Think about David. He did have a sin in his life, but
much of his life he lived with excellence.

The excellence that David had to defeat a Goliath was built out of the strength
that he had gained in his year upon year upon year of being a shepherd every
day. Or think about Joseph in the Old Testament. The excellence for being a
leader in Egypt was built out of serving the Lord as a slave in Egypt for 13
years every day.

Or Joshua, that great general of the people of Israel. His excellence as a
military leader was built on humbly serving with Moses during the entire Exodus
and wilderness wandering every day. Or Paul.

His excellent service for God was built out of a 14-year desert exile in which
he learned from the Lord every day. Those who have learned to attain excellence
have determined that they will be willing to commit themselves even in the
routine, even in the details, every day. Let's pray together.

And you may need to pray, "Lord, I have been separating my work life from my
Christian life. I seem to forget about you during those 8 or 10 or 12 hours of
the day. I want to live my faith there, at my job, in my work.

Teach me how. " Instead of just being ambitious for my success, I want to be
ambitious to be the kind of person in my work that shows people what you are
like. That is my highest ambition.

Jesus, with all my heart, I want to live out an excellent faith in these
practical areas of life. And I look forward to what you're going to do in me.
I'm not depending on myself or my strength for this to happen.

I come to you, Jesus Christ, recognizing your Holy Spirit in my life. And with
all that I know, I depend on you in this moment for this to happen. In Jesus'
name, amen.

These next few days, we'll be talking together about what the last part of this
chapter has to teach us about the second coming of Jesus Christ. Some of the
clearest teaching about the second coming of Jesus Christ anywhere in the Bible
is in this last part of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.