PEARLS OF PAUL
DO NOT BE WEARY IN WELL-DOING
DR. JIM DIXON
2 THESSALONIANS 3:6-13
FEBRUARY 20, 2000
In the Old Testament, in the book of Proverbs, the 6th chapter, the 6th verse, we are given these words. “Go to the ant. Consider her ways and be wise.” I want us to begin this morning by doing something very unusual. I want us to go to the ant and consider her ways in order that we might be wise.
Now, the scientists who study ants are called entomologists. They study ants and other insects. They tell us that ants live in formicaries. An ant nest is called a formicary. This is because the Latin word for an ant is the word “formica.” Now, you might think, “Well, isn’t Formica the name of a laminated plastic product?” That’s true, but that laminated plastic product is called Formica because it’s made from formic acid, and formic acid comes from ants. So, ants live in formicaries, and these formicaries vary in size. Some formicaries are very small, some are very large. Some ant colonies consist of no more than 30 or 40 ants, but in Israel, most ant colonies were much larger, 20,000 to 200,000 ants in a formicary. In Africa, there are formicaries that are larger still. In Africa, there are formicaries that consist of 10 million ants, and the formicary is the size of a tennis court! You wouldn’t want this in your back yard.
Formicaries are complex systems of tunnels and chambers. In a formicary, you find granary chambers for the storage of food. You find garden chambers. You find nursery chambers for newborns. There’s a royal chamber for the queen, and there are special sleeping chambers for various types of ants where they can go to rest or sleep. There are complex systems of tunnels and chambers in a formicary.
How is a formicary built? Well it all begins with the queen. The queen is much larger than a normal ant, and a queen has wings. The queen flies until she sees the place where she wants to build her nest, where she wants to build her formicary. She lands there, and she casts off her wings because she’ll never need them again. She’ll never fly again. She begins to live on her body fat and on the wing muscles which she’ll no longer need. The first thing that the queen ant does is that she begins to build the nest. She begins to build the formicary, but only at the very beginning—just a few tunnels and a few chambers. Then she begins to give birth. She begins to give birth because when she landed there she was already impregnated.
Now, she gives birth at first to worker ants. She gives birth to hundreds, maybe even thousands of worker ants. Those worker ants begin to labor on the formicary. They begin to build a nest. They begin to expand it, that complex system of tunnels and chambers. That’s all built by the worker ants. When she’s given birth to thousands of worker ants, she begins to give birth to another kind of worker ant called the soldier ant. The soldier ants are larger, and they guard the nest. They protect the formicary. Some soldier ants have huge heads, and they actually go to where one of the tunnels access the outside world and they just stand there. With their huge heads, they block the tunnel. They’re literally blockheads! They do this to protect the nest, to protect the formicary.
When the queen has produced thousands of worker ants in the form of laborers and soldiers, she then begins to give birth to baby queens and also to little males. Now, all the worker ants are female, but in effect, in practice, they are really neuter. But there’s a limited number of queens and males that are born in a formicary, so the queen gives birth to dozens of baby queens and males. The queens and the males all have wings. They live in the formicary within the chambers, in separate chambers, for three to seven weeks and then they pair off, one queen and one male. They take their mating flight. God designed it this way, and they mate in the air as they’re flying in the sky. The male deposits his sperm into the queen’s gaster. That’s a Greek word. That’s a biblical word. It means “stomach” or “belly.” The Apostle Paul, when he’s speaking of the sin of gluttony, describes some people as “gasteres argai,” which literally means “slow bellies.” It refers to their incapacity for movement due to the size of their stomachs. So, this word gaster is used by entomologists to describe the storage place where the male sperm is kept.
After the mating, the male descends to the earth and just wanders off and dies. That’s all the males are designed for. They just wander off and die. The male only lives three to seven weeks, but the queen is still very much alive, and she will live 10 to 20 years. She never needs to mate again. She stores the sperm in her gaster, and she accesses it as she needs it to unite with the eggs. Now, she then goes and finds where she… well, she has two choices. She can either turn to the formicary from which she came and she can become a sub-queen. She can become a sub-queen in a massive formicary. In a huge ant colony, there are many sub-queens. Or, she can go to a new place and start a new nest, building a new formicary. She will land there and she will build a few tunnels and chambers and then begin to give birth to the soldier ants, and the whole cycle begins again.
Of course, this is the way God designed it. Entomologists tell us that ants are the most social of all insects. Ants communicate with one another. That communication is important for their sense of community. They communicate with each other in four ways. They communicate with each other vocally. They make sounds, and they are able to receive these sounds with various meanings. They also communicate with each other pharmacologically. They emit chemicals, and those chemicals have different meanings. They also communicate through movement, and they create vibrations. These vibrations have particular meanings. Finally, they communicate with each other through touch. In an ant colony, there’s a lot of touching going on. It’s not sexual. It’s relational. It has to do with their sense of community and their social nature as they feel part of the community.
Entomologists and those scientists who study ants tell us that if this sense of community is broken and the ant is no longer able to have these forms of communication with other ants, the ant experiences what scientists call breakdown. They are no longer able to function. They no longer do their work. They’re no longer mobilized. They’re no longer active. So, an ant colony is a perfect illustration of a mobilized community, a working society, a society of workers. Now, the Bible says, “Go to the ant. Consider her ways and be wise.” Now, I hope you understand. The church of Jesus Christ is designed by God to be a mobilized community, a social unit of workers, a mobilized community. This morning, I want us to examine the church as a working or mobilized community—first of all, to examine the church as mobilized or working, and then to examine the church as community.
First, then, the church is meant to be mobilized. Everyone is meant to work in the church. This is the plan of God. It’s revealed in 1 Corinthians 12 and in Romans 12, but also in passages throughout the Bible. Everyone in the church is meant to work. Now, God designed nature that there might be much work. It takes honeybees a long time to make a pound of honey. They have to visit 3,000 flowerheads and travel an aggregate distance of three times the circumference of the earth to produce one pound of honey. The average honeybee in its entire life only makes 1/10th of one pound of honey. They work hard. Ants, in building the formicary, labor hard. They carry weights up to 50 times greater than their own body weight. The work is great, but God designed nature that way. He also designed Christians that way. He wants us to work. There is joy in work and there is glory in work, but He’s called upon us to work.
The Associated Press released a story a few weeks back about a man in New York state who doesn’t like to work. He’s lazy. He doesn’t want to work. Yet, like most of us, he likes to eat. So, what he does is he goes into a restaurant. He goes into a fine restaurant in New York City. He’ll order the best thing on the menu (at least what he thinks is the best thing on the menu). He’ll order the finest wine or maybe he’ll order a few mixed drinks. He’ll just sit around and mellow out, enjoy himself, and have a huge meal, complete with dessert. When he’s done and the bill comes, he’ll simply say, “I can’t pay it.” Sometimes the people at the restaurant will just get mad at him, tell him to leave and never come back. In that case, when he gets hungry again and does it all over again, he just goes to a different restaurant and does the same thing. But other times, the restaurant owners call the police. They call the police, and the police come and arrest him. Sometimes the police just scold him and let him go, in which case he goes out to another restaurant and does it all over again. Other times, the police put him in jail, but then he gets three square meals a day, and he likes that.
In 1994, this man was arrested in the Rockefeller Center for eating at a cafe and not being able to pay. He was sentenced to the Ryker Island jail for 90 days, but that was alright with him. It was 90 days of three-square meals a day. When he got out, he just did the whole thing all over again. Thirty-one times this man has been arrested in restaurants for not paying. According to the Associated Press, this man, over the last five years, has cost the people of New York State $250,000, just sponging off of society, freeloading.
In our passage of scripture for today, the Apostle Paul tell us that apparently some of this was going on in the church at Thessalonica. There was sponging and freeloading going on, Christians who didn’t want to work. They were just living off of the good will of the Christian community. Bible scholars debate as to why these Christians were not working. Some Bible scholars think, “Well, maybe they thought the second coming of Jesus Christ was imminent, and so they just quit their jobs like the Millerites did in the 19th century.” Most Bible scholars say no. They say that probably it was no more than simple laziness and sloth. The Apostle Paul describes these people as “working around working,” “ergazomai pari ergazomai,” busybodies, living in idleness, not doing any work.
At the conclusion of this section of scripture, the Apostle Paul writes to the whole Christian community and says, “Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in well doing.” Now, the Greek word for well doing is found only there and in no other passage of the Bible, but most Bible scholars agree that it refers primarily to ministry. Do not grow weary in ministry. So, Paul is telling us that we need to work. We need to work vocationally, but we also need to work in ministry.
My guess is that, in a congregation like this, there’s not much vocational laziness. Most of you have jobs and you work hard. You might be a homemaker, you might be an attorney, but you work hard. If you don’t have a job, you’re probably just between jobs. But you’re not lazy, at least not in terms of your vocation. But it’s possible that you might be lazy in terms of ministry. You see, this is the plague of the church of Jesus Christ as we enter the 21st century. The problem is Christians who are not mobilized, Christians who are not active, Christians who do not serve the church. You see, the Bible tells us that every Christian is a minister. It’s not just pastors who are ministers. All Christians, the Bible tells us, are ministers. The word “diakonos,” which is the word for minister, is used in the Bible to describe every single Christian. If you’re a Christian, you’re a minister, and you’ve been called to work IN the church and FOR the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Seek first My kingdom.”
Your service is more important than your vocation. When you stand before Christ, you will find that out. We’re all called to serve and to work in the service of Jesus Christ, and we’re called to work through the giving of our time and through the giving of our talent and through the giving of our treasure, that we might serve the church of Jesus Christ on earth. Jesus said, “I will build My church and the powers of hell will not prevail against it.” He wants to build it through you. You see, there’s a sense in which ants and Christians are alike. We’re all called to build. Ants are called to build formicaries. We’re called to build the church of Jesus Christ. Now, this church is just beginning a new capital stewardship campaign. That capital stewardship campaign is called “Building on Blessing.” This is our third capital stewardship campaign pretty much in succession. This campaign was approved by the elder board in January and approved by the congregation at a congregational meeting last week. It’s our hope and prayer that each of you will want to roll up your shirt sleeves and be part of this, that you’ll want to work to build the church of Christ with your time, your talent, and your treasure.
You know, I have to be really honest with you and tell you I hate capital stewardship campaigns. I really do. I kind of feel like Jonah when I think about another campaign. I feel like taking the wrong boat. Jonah knew he was supposed to go to Nineveh, but he didn’t want to go there. He knew it was the will of God, but he didn’t want to go there. I feel like that sometimes when I look at another campaign. I feel like, “Well, I know it’s the will of God, but I would kind of like to take the other boat,” because I know I’m going to get critical letters and I know some of you are going to be upset. And I don’t want you to be upset. I hate to upset you. Some of you are going to be upset with me, and I really don’t like that either. It’s not easy, but I do believe this is the will of God. It’s the will of God.
Churches are a lot like formicaries in that they differ in size. You’ve got small ant colonies, and you’ve got large ant colonies. That’s all by the design of God. That’s true of churches too. They vary in size, all by the design of God. You can find some churches that have 30 or 40 people in the entire congregation, and they’re precious to Jesus Christ. But you find other churches that are huge, and they are also precious to Christ. There’s a church in South Korea that has 500,000 members. They’re not all there on a given Sunday, but they’re building a new sanctuary that holds 50,000 people. That’s a huge church. But God has different purposes for each church.
When our church started, I honestly did not understand the purpose that Christ had for this church. I had no clue. All I wanted to do (and all we wanted to do) was to exalt Christ and see people fall in love with Christ. We wanted to see people learn to love each other and begin to serve the work of Christ on earth. That’s all. We still want to do those things, but now we’ve begun to understand the purpose that Christ has for this church. It’s because of that vision of what Christ has for this church that we came down here to Highlands Ranch and we built this worship center. The shell of this worship center is designed to hold 3,500 people. That decision to build a sanctuary that would hold 3,500 was a decision that was well thought out. It was the response to a vision of Christ and the call of Christ. This wasn’t done arbitrarily or capriciously. It was done by design with willful intent and obedience to Jesus Christ. The day will come where Cherry Hills Community Church has two services on Sunday morning and both of those services are full with 3,500 seats, so that 7,000 people will be gathering here every Sunday morning. I don’t know whether that will happen while I’m still serving here. I don’t know that. I’m just a servant, called to be faithful in my time, but I do know it will happen at some point in time. That’s the plan of God for this church. His plan is that all of these people be mobilized and ministering in community with each other.
When the church reaches that size, God will want us to continue to try to grow His kingdom on earth through the spawning of mission churches and by continuing to do mission projects all over the world and continuing to seek to elevate the poor in the inner city as we’re seeking to do now. I hope you understand. There is no church in Denver seeking to do more in the inner city than we are. While we build here, we still labor there. In the last few years, we have literally given millions of dollars to missions as a congregation. And I would say that’s to your credit, but ultimately, it’s to the glory of Jesus Christ. But the work is not done. The work is not done.
Sometimes people will come up to me and say, “Well, when does it end? When do we quit building?” We quit building when it’s done. There’s a sense in which the work of Christ is never done because we’re always going to be challenged to do something. There will never come a point when we’re not supposed to bring to the altar of Christ our time, our talent, and our treasure. It doesn’t end. At the end of the Apostle Paul’s life, Paul said, “I poured my life out as a libation to Jesus Christ.” That’s what I want to do with my life. I want to pour it out as a libation, an offering to Christ. Don’t you want to do that? That’s what it’s all about. Someday, you’re going to stand before Christ, and I’m going to stand before Christ. What are we here for? At the end of my life, I want to be able to say, “I fought the good fight. I kept the faith. I finished the race.” Don’t you want to be able to say that with me as you stand before Christ? I know you do. You see, the work is not done, so we need to be mobilized as the community of Christ, working to build the church in accordance with the vision that Christ has given us.
We’re also called to be a community. It’s not easy for a large church to develop community. You know, our Minister of Education is named Glen Goldie. Many of you know Glen. At one time, Glen was in public education in the state of California, working in Santa Barbara. In 1981, Glen went to a conference in Los Angeles for teachers and educators. A woman spoke at that conference who was a professor at Pepperdine University, a Christian college in Southern California. She shared how difficult it is to develop community and how much work it takes. She told this conference of educators that just a few weeks earlier, she and her husband had decided that they were not working hard at developing community in their neighborhood. They didn’t even know the names of their neighbors. They prayed together. They got down on their knees, and they prayed together. They made a commitment that they would seek, in the name of Christ, to befriend their neighbors and try to develop community there.
Well, it was just a couple of days later and this professor at Pepperdine University was driving home. As she went through her neighborhood, she saw that a moving van was right in front of the house, just two doors from her house. Somebody was moving into the neighborhood. She thought, “You know, I’ve prayed about this and now I’m going to do it. I’m going to go over there, I’m going to welcome them, and I’m going to be neighborly. I’m going to try to communicate with them and develop community.” She went over there and she brought a gift. She gave it to them, she introduced herself. She said, “Welcome to the neighborhood.” The people said, “Well, thank you. It is great to meet you. However, we’re not moving in, we’re moving out. We’ve lived here for six years.” Isn’t that amazing? It’s absolutely amazing. And yet it’s understandable because it takes work to develop community, whether you’re talking about a neighborhood or whether you’re talking about a church. It takes work.
We’re working hard to try to develop community at this church. That’s why we have a Congregational Life Department and we have small groups. Steve Logan is doing a great job of heading up that ministry. We have so many small groups in this church and small group leaders. It’s all designed to facilitate community. Actually, every department of ministry in this church is seeking to develop community. Even the Music Department is seeking to develop community. The choir has organized 27 small groups within the choir to develop relationship and fellowship and community. This is true in the Missions Department. This is true in all of our departments. We’re seeking to develop community. We’ve established a Communication Department here at the church with Rebecca Johnson and Jay Phelps. We’ve established this department in order to create community through communication, but we also need a facility that facilitates community.
We want to build a fellowship area. We want to complete the balcony. That’s part of what this capital stewardship campaign is for, to complete the balcony with a thousand seats up there. There can be people who can come there and experience evangelism and discipleship. But we also want to build a fellowship area where people can come into relationship with each other. We want to call it the atrium. I don’t know whether you like the name atrium, but it’s a Roman word; it’s a Latin word. It was used in the Roman world to describe the inner courtyard in a Roman house. Every Roman house had an atrium. It was an inner courtyard, and it was for the purpose of fellowship. When people came over to the house, that’s where they gathered, and that’s where they fellowshipped. That’s where they experienced community. As a family and as a neighborhood of friends, they experienced fellowship and community in the atrium.
In the Middle Ages, churches-built atriums. They were courtyards surrounded by covered colonnades, and they were for the purpose of fellowship and community. In more recent times, churches have built fellowship halls. Even small churches have fellowship halls, but you may have noticed we don’t have anything like that here. We don’t have a fellowship hall. We don’t have any place where we can just gather for relationship and community. The only place we really have is the lobby, and you know how we all try to gather out there and fellowship a little bit there. But the lobby is also for access and egress, and it’s no good to clog it, so we need to build a place that is just designed for us to fellowship.
We want to build an atrium over here to the north and west, looking at the mountains. We want it to be a large area where hundreds of us can sit around. We want to have a coffee bar and a kitchen and nice places to sit. This will be used all week long, not just on Sunday mornings. It will be used all week long, and we’ll have seminars in there and Bible studies in there, as well as just using it for fellowship. The balcony, which is our first priority, is going to cost $2.5 million. That’s not cheap, but it will give us a thousand seats up there, and it will also have audio and visuals that will make it a quality worship experience for every woman and man who sits up there.
Then the atrium will cost maybe $6 million, but it will include a mezzanine and a floor below as well and it’s a huge area for us to fellowship. We want to do the balcony first, and then as money comes in hopefully enough will come in that we will be able to do the atrium. Our hope and prayer is you’re going to want to get behind this and you’re going to want to be part of this because you want to create community and you want to fulfill the vision that Christ has for this church and the vision that brought us here in the first place.
Now, 2,000 members of this church have just joined the church since we’ve come down here and were not part of the prior two campaigns, Rise up and Shine (or Growing by Grace), so this is going to be your first opportunity to be part of a capital stewardship campaign for over 2,000 of you. Others of you, thousands of you, have been part of those prior campaigns, but God has still blessed you. God has still blessed you, and you are able to do more. That’s how Barb and I feel. We were part of those prior two campaigns, but God has blessed us, and we’re able to do more. We’re going to prayerfully ask God what He wants us to give to this campaign, and hopefully you’ll do the same. We know that He wants us to do something sacrificial, but we also know that we’ll never be sorry.
You see in your Grace Notes there’s this insert relating to the campaign, Building on Blessing. You see that we have all of these nights starting with Thursday night, March 2, where we have dinners and desserts. We want you all to come out and be part of the dinners and desserts. If you come, you’re not going to be asked to make a commitment on those nights. These are informational gatherings. Hopefully they are motivational gatherings, but you’re not going to be asked to make a commitment at these dinners or desserts, so you don’t need to come with any kind of fear or trepidation. There will come a Sunday where we ask you all to make your commitment—large or small, however Christ leads you—but these desserts and these dinners are for the purpose of information.
I hope you don’t think that any of this is extravagant. We’ve not built extravagant buildings here, and we never will. We only build buildings as they are needed for ministry. We don’t build buildings for the sake of buildings. We build buildings for the sake of ministry and the service of our King and our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ. Our buildings are being used constantly by the members of this church, and it’s wonderful. They are used every day of the week. In some churches, the buildings are only used on Sunday and just sit there the rest of the week. We feel like we are good stewards because these buildings are in constant use. We have over a thousand children a day who are here at our facility being ministered to with the love of Christ and in the name of Christ. That is awesome. We have all kinds of church activities and ministries taking place here every day of the week.
This past week, we had a gathering of the National Interim Committee on Reform Theology here at the church. Representatives of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church were here from all over the country. I was one of those representatives. We had two days of discussing reform theology, which is about as exciting as a basket weaving contest, but it was an exciting time for all of the commissioners from all over the country because they got to see some of the ministry of this church. They marveled as they walked around and saw all of the things that are taking place. On Wednesday morning they saw the Women’s Bible Study in the lobby, and on Thursday morning they saw the MOPS out there in the lobby. And of course, the kids are all over the classrooms, and they just saw activity after activity taking place, all in the name of Christ. They had never seen anything like it, but I think you understand that this is what Cherry Hills Community Church is about. I hope and pray and I think you do feel like I do. I thank God for this church. This is a God thing. This church is a miracle. It’s a God thing, and I know you want to be part of a continuing miracle as we build on blessing. Let’s close with a word of prayer.