The Quiet Power of Simplicity

I wanted to talk today a little bit about the idea of simplicity. The quiet power of a simple life. Some of my thoughts were sharpened last night, yesterday, when my mom and a friend of hers were discussing the transition into retirement. And what that sort of looked like for them, having raised kids, busy kids, my mom had four. Three boys and a girl. And sort of now, you know, downsizing, getting rid of all the stuff that we have accumulated over the years.

And it's been interesting to see how they have experienced this decluttering process in their lives. And they've realised just in twenty years, in the time that we've been in Australia, how much we've accumulated. Stuff that's just been added, stuff stored away in boxes and in closets and whatnot, and you haven't thought about for years, just how big and overwhelming that can be. But this week, in thinking about today's topic, there is an absolute reason for us to feel overwhelmed. I read this from a Christian blog about statistics in America, and I'm guessing Australia would be similar, about the clutter, the noise in our lives.

This is what they said, the average American home includes more than 300,000 individual items. A home, individual items, 300,000. Our closets in America average 103 individual items per person, even though we only wear 20% of our wardrobe with regularity. According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans collectively spend more than $1,200,000,000,000 on non-essential goods every year. The average ten year old owns more than 238 toys, but only plays with 12 regularly.

And one of the fastest growing real estate markets in the past four decades has been rental storage units. Despite the fact that the average American home is now a thousand square feet larger than they were in 1973. Homes are bigger, can store more stuff, and yet we need storage units. Our lives are cluttered. Our lives are busy.

And it's not just with stuff, material things. If I think about my life, it is filled with noise. There are Facebook feeds that I must keep up with, Instagram pictures that I must like, there are newsreels that every morning I must watch, talkback radio that tells me what I should think or think differently about the status quo. We tune in to listen to Karl Stefanovic every morning. Then there's the gossip around the lunch room at the workplace.

Opinions on good Netflix shows that we should weigh up to watch. And then finally, at the end of the day, we crash into bed only for it to start up all over again the next morning. In a frantic pace, with the noise and the clutter of our lives, the Bible tells us that God wants quiet lives for Christians. God wants our lives to be marked with simplicity. And I wanna ask us, do we think about that aspect of our Christian lives very much at all?

I think it comes to us as a bit of a shock. This idea that God wants us to slow down instead of speed up, because even in our preaching and our teaching in churches, we can often be told what to do and how often to do it, and just keep doing it. Even in churches, we can create Christians that are busy. I want us to look at a passage and we'll be jumping through a few of them today, but one passage that is going to be our text this morning, one Thessalonians chapter four. One Thessalonians chapter four, and we're going to focus on verses nine through to twelve.

One Thessalonians four, verse nine. Paul says, now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. For that is indeed what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you brothers to do this more and more and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands as we instructed you.

So that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. So far in our reading. We come to this passage in the letter to the Thessalonian church, the first letter that Paul wrote to them. Because it seems that the Thessalonians had lost their peace. They had lost joy.

And their hope for the future was on shaky ground. It seems that many had stopped working. Many were waiting. They had visibly become preoccupied with scandals about the return of Jesus, scandals about eschatology. Does that sound familiar?

And they had stopped working and expected Jesus Christ to return any day. And other Christians had become worried because some of their fellow brothers and sisters had died before Jesus had come again. And their question was, what does that mean for them? Have they missed out? Will they not be part of God's people if they have already died?

The question is, why would these Christians think such things? Why would they be so restless? Well, Paul says that they have forgotten the gospel. They have forgotten the implications of the gospel even as he writes to them in the first chapter of this letter saying that they are an example of hope, joy, and faith to the other churches and Christians in Macedonia. But here in chapter four, it seems, they have allowed a degree of false teaching to persuade them to believe something other than what they had originally heard.

And as a result, the focus of their lives had shifted from God and His promises to the unstable ideas of man-made theories. Their minds were no longer firmly set on trusting and waiting on Christ and resting in His infinite ability, instead, they now doubt their salvation. They now doubt that they may be part of God's kingdom. Their hearts aren't secure in the constant truth of the gospel. It's an interesting thing to read this passage just before the famous rapture verse.

Talking about, you know, us being caught up as Jesus Christ descends. So what is happening here is an instruction that is going to try to move them away from their doubts and their fears into something that they can rest in. Paul says to them that the Christian life is not complicated. Paul encourages us to a quiet life, to aspire to a quiet life. Why does Paul write this?

Well, obviously because the Thessalonians weren't. They are busy. They are frantic. They are desperate. Meanwhile, Paul says, God's wisdom is uncomplicated and it is unchanging.

God never meant for the Thessalonians to be captured by anxious doubt or frantic searching. Instead, Paul encourages them to live simply. So the first command, the first sort of point that is made there by Paul is to aim to live quietly. What does it mean to aspire to a quiet life as a Christian? Well, to aspire to something means to make it your aim, to make it your goal in life.

Now think about how we view the Christian life today. We may think about evangelism. We may think about outreach. We may think about, you know, being witnesses in our workplaces or putting programs, youth programs, bonfires on for our people at church. How often do we think about aspiring to a quiet life?

What a strange command that is for us to hear. And this is not strange for the church, it is strange for everyone. If you were to go to a university, and we have a few uni students here. If you were to go to a university and say, give us three goals for your life, what you aspire to, some are gonna write, I want to make a success out of my career. Others will say, I want a healthy family.

Others may have great visions, personal goals, I want to change the world to be a more sustainable place, to look after the environment, and so on. How many will say, I want to lead a quiet life? I aspire to lead a quiet life. I don't think Paul is saying here that this quiet life is an insignificant life, is a life that has no weight or no influence. That's not what Paul is saying here.

Paul goes on in this same sentence to say that Christians are to mind their own affairs. One of the cutest things, I'm sure we agree, is seeing a four or a five year old that's, you know, fairly chatty now and can say their own thing and think their own thoughts, getting really huffy and crossing their arms like this and telling mom or dad, mind your own business, when mom and dad are being annoying and telling them to do something they don't wanna do. I don't think Paul is saying that we have that sort of intent with minding our own affairs. Paul is saying that we have to focus on the things that we've been called to focus on. Focus on the areas, and they are immediate areas that God wants us to look after, the things that we can change, the things that we have influence over.

Immediate family members, immediate friends. It does not mean ignoring everyone around you. Mind your own business. Okay. Well, I'll just focus on my little thing.

Because that doesn't fit with the rest of scripture which is all about loving one another, respecting one another, looking out for one another, carrying the burden sometimes of one another. God never calls us to be hermits. But over and over again, we are reminded that we should not become too involved in other people's business. We've all met versions of this in churches that we've attended, I'm sure. People who think that it's their spiritual gift of fixing what is wrong with absolutely everybody.

They get far too involved in the lives of people where they have no business. And they often cause far more harm than good. Paul tells Christians, aim to live quietly by minding your own affairs. Focus on yourself and the tasks that God has given you to do. But then Paul moves on and he wants to focus on another aspect of what makes up this quiet life.

And he explains what it is that God has given us to do, which is the second point, the beauty of work. Paul says to these Christians, I want you to work with your own hands. Now, I don't think Paul is saying that we all have to take up woodworking. I mean, we've got some excellent woodworkers here. This very pulpit lectern that we have is from one of our very own woodworkers.

Paul is talking about being engaged, keeping yourself engaged in your own work. There is something beautiful and noble about someone doing their job well, respectfully and skillfully. I've been blessed to be able to have gone to many countries over the years, and because I often go on holidays to these countries, I can just sit and people watch. And it's been an absolute joy and privilege to be able to sit, you know, on a street corner somewhere or at a café, and just look at people going about their day to day work. There are people emptying bins.

There are people sweeping the sidewalks. There are people folding little wontons that they're gonna put in my soup that I'm waiting for. And it is a joy to watch them do that well. There's something dignified about that sort of work. One of the great deceptions of our age is to think that secular work, meaning work that is not what I do, preaching and teaching and churchy stuff, secular work, the everyday stuff, is somehow unimportant.

It's somehow less. It is less valuable to God and to the church. Some Christians feel that if they aren't making a living by opening their mouth for God, their work is not important. But God has a contrary opinion to that. He values honest work.

Regardless of how tedious, how monotonous, or how secular that work may appear. In fact, in the second letter that Paul writes to the Thessalonian church, probably because they didn't listen to the first letter, Paul commands in two Thessalonians chapter three that the busybodies of the church should stop being busybodies and rather work in quietness and eat their bread. Work in quietness and eat their bread. In other words, busybodies, getting involved in everyone else's business, get involved in your own business and enjoy the fruit of that work, eating your own meal. The things that you can provide for yourself. We prayed for him this morning, Max.

Max Holman. One of the earliest memories I have of Max when I became pastor here at Open House is what an Aussie bloke he is. He's one of the Aussie blokes that I know. And I remember him meeting a visitor one day that came to church, and shaking his hand, he asked him, what do you do for a crust? And it took me, I don't know how long to work out what that means.

But it means, what do you do for a living? What do you do to make your, you know, to get your own bread, your crust of bread to eat? Paul says, the jobs we do that earn our crusts is noble, is honourable, and they should be done diligently and skillfully because ultimately, it brings glory to God. Now, some of our retirees might wonder what that means for them. And I know Paul was writing to a time where there were no such things or phenomenon as retirement.

This retirement concept is a fairly new idea. But I think the same thing applies. If you are retired, it's worth asking yourself, what will it look like for me to be busy with a type of work that brings honour and glory to God? Ultimately, scripture tells us that if we try to work as little as possible, which is an increasingly large reality in our country as well, if we try to skirt around work as much as possible or we jump from one financial crisis to another, having to beg or borrow from family or friends to get by, well, this is not honouring to God, to the one that you profess to serve. And Paul not only preached this, Paul lived this.

Remember, Paul is the great missionary, perhaps the greatest missionary that the church has ever had, and he was a tent maker. Literally, he sewed tents together and sold them in marketplaces. Why? So that the church wouldn't be burdened with looking after him. And he said from time to time that he can prove that he's not dependent on anyone but God alone.

There is beauty in work. There is nobility in pursuing that and being busy with those sort of things rather than the noise of everything else. But to what end are we busy with these things? Why do we aim to have a simple life? Why do we aim to be busy with those things that God has given us to be busy with?

Well, it has an evangelistic purpose to it. The final part of this verse that we read to the Thessalonians, aiming to have a quiet life, to be busy with the work that we should be busy with, is this purpose statement in verse 12. So that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. We are communicating something in our quietness that is so counter-cultural to the way that we think, we influence in our day and age.

We think we must be noisy, we must tweet, we must Facebook post. We must sign petitions. We must go out and blast people. There is a communicative aspect to a quiet life. We must walk properly in the sight of our neighbours by aiming for a quiet life of concern concerning ourselves with our own affairs.

Now why is Paul concerned about the outsiders? Well, because how we live as Christians reflects the truth and the effectiveness of the gospel itself. We are billboards of the power of the gospel. A noisy and a frantic life betrays the good news of the gospel of peace. We believe as Christians that Christ has conquered every enemy.

And yet if we live as though everyone is our enemy, what is that saying about the gospel? Christians are the only ones that have peace. Christians should be the only ones that are the calmest. In the Psalms, King David pays tribute to this virtue of quietness. Quietness in life, quietness before God.

In Psalm 131, this is what he writes. Psalm 131, verses one and two. Oh Lord, he says, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvellous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. Pride is a loud attribute. Pride makes a lot of noise in its desire to draw attention to itself, to get its own way. What we see in this psalm is the quietness of maturity. Nothing makes more noise, I'm sure our mothers will agree, than a crying baby.

Nothing is more piercing, nothing is more sort of motivational, sometimes in a negative sense, than a crying baby. When a baby wants mom's milk, they're gonna make sure that mom knows it. And David says that over time, he has become like a weaned child. A child who is no longer demanding mom's milk. They are content.

Immature Christians are those who are never content, and therefore they are not quiet. Proud Christians are noisy Christians. David writes, I have calmed and I've quieted my soul. My eyes are not too fixated on the things that are not necessary for me to be focused on, things that are not meant for me. And I think David comes to a point of understanding that as we mature, and perhaps we've learned through some battle scars of our youth, getting involved in things that we didn't really need to get involved with, we learn that peace and calm is actually a pretty attractive thing.

Mature Christians rest. Immature Christians sweat. Mature Christians pull close to God. They draw to God and they sit next to Him. Immature Christians whinge to God.

When a mature Christian comes to God, they sit with Him like a weaned child. Have you ever seen a toddler that's now, you know, maybe two, three, four years old and they're off mom's milk, but when they sit on mom's lap, they like it. They're not there for anything, they just wanna be with mom. That's the image of a mature Christian with God. People who don't have quiet souls tend to be noisy over reactors.

When something doesn't go to plan or someone says something that they don't like, they quickly pull up arms. But Paul says, this reaction betrays the gospel of peace. And for the outsider looking in, the outsider is looking at the church, the effectiveness of the saving power of Christ that has conquered every enemy that we have, if that looks shaky, what is it saying about this gospel? So are we willing to believe that a quiet life actually is able to communicate the gospel to non-Christians? I don't wanna say this in the sense that now we must make sure that we look very quiet and we don't say anything if we, you know, are struggling or or whatever.

To put on a brave face. That's not also or either what I'm saying. Paul is saying, Christian, if you are frantic, if you are anxious, if you are angry and bitter, come and drink the gospel again. Come and reflect on the implications again. Meditate on it again and again so that that anxiety, that frantic searching passes away.

Remember what you first believed when you received Christ and rest in that knowledge. And so I wanna ask us, are we peaceful people? Are you peaceful? Do we make it an aim for our lives? I think Christians in Australia, we really struggle with this.

Generally, I think the western church is pretty noisy. We fight political fights in exactly the same way as our neighbours fight political fights. We fight with the same anger, the same resentment, the same bitterness. We are also just as entitled. We become just as outraged as everyone else when someone says something we don't agree with.

We post the same sort of things on Facebook. We tweet the same sort of things on Twitter. We fill our lives up with as much clutter as our neighbours do. We are protective just in the same way of our finances as everyone else is. We cut corners in our work just like everyone else does.

We take sickies as if that is a real thing. It's not a real thing. We complain about our bosses. We hand in shoddy work because we feel our work is not important. We just have to look at how we're traversing rather the coronavirus lockdown at the moment and the noise coming from Christians about this.

Does it make us look like we are peaceful? Or are we frantic? Are we anxious? Are we resentful? Listen to what Paul writes elsewhere to Timothy in one Timothy, two verses one to three.

He says, first of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions. So Paul is commanding the church to prayer here, but for interesting people, all people, and then specifically kings and those in positions, so that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life. Godly and dignified in every way. Why? This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Saviour.

Do we pray so that we may have a quiet, godly, dignified life? I wanna finish with this last point. But that is that we can do all this because we had a quiet Saviour. God not only calls us to this quiet life, but He modelled that quiet life for us as well. Have you ever wondered what Jesus was up to for the first thirty years of his life?

They famously called the silent years. Jesus lived for the majority of his life a quiet simple life, seemingly working as a carpenter like his dad would have done. He grew up in a quiet, small town called Nazareth. And even as a visibly intelligent young man, who probably could have gone to study under some of the great Pharisees and religious teachers of his time in Jerusalem, the capital, Jesus stayed home. He grew up quietly and unobtrusively.

And even when his public ministry began and his miracles guaranteed that he couldn't remain hidden for very long, He would still pull aside often to go and pray, often to go and sit with God. And then, even as he went to the cross, even as he headed to go and pay for that victory that would be ours, to conquer every enemy that we might be anxious or frantic about, listen to what the prophet Isaiah prophesied about that moment. Isaiah says, he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. This is the way that Jesus Christ, at the pinnacle of His ministry, approached His sacrifice on the cross.

Even after His resurrection, there's no display of thunder and lightning now that He is the victorious conquering King. He quietly and personally comes to His disciples and His friends and He tells them the good news. We aspire to live quiet lives as Christians because our Saviour lived simply. We can go about our work quietly because Jesus went about His greatest work on our behalf quietly. And so we say, as with our Master, so be it with us.

The more we reflect on that finished work of Jesus on the cross on our behalf, the less frantic we are with our battles, the less opinionated we become about things that don't really matter, the less we are likely to fill our lives with empty useless things like junk. The closer we walk with the Lord Jesus, like weaned children quietly with their mom, the more desirable a life of quietness and simplicity becomes. And so as James three, verse eighteen says, the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace. The good fruit of the Christian life is best produced in quiet, peaceful life. May God's people be found to have these sorts of lives.

Let's pray. Lord, we love the peace, the humility, the gratitude that You offer us. We love that You've sown those things into our hearts as we've come to believe, as we've come to receive the glorious message of the gospel. Thank You, Lord Jesus, that You did not consider the things of God something to be clung to, something to be jealously, selfishly hunted down, pursued after. We thank You, Lord, that in humility, in quietness, in meekness, You did the work that You were given to do.

So Lord, we ask that You will give us the privilege of understanding what our work is, that You'll give us the wisdom of identifying the things that are not our jobs to do. For the things in our lives that we have manage, that we have control over, that we worry over, we fret over, God, give us the insight to let go of those things. Your ways are not our ways. Your thoughts are so much higher than ours. So Lord, let us see that You are sovereign over everything.

Help us to hold things loosely even when for entertainment's value or for sake of discussion, we engage in things that are probably not ours to pursue. Father, help us to love the simple life, to do our work well, to see the dignity, the nobility in those things. Lord, to pursue the important things in such a way that we bring glory to You. That we live a life that is attractive, interesting, engaging to the outsider, those who don't know You yet. And Father, through that, to show the power, the effectiveness of the gospel to save us not only from an eternity without You, but to save us from the cares and the concerns of this life while we wait.

In Jesus's name we pray. Amen.