Everybody, what is going on? You know what time it is. You're listening to join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter.

Thanks for joining. At first glance, it could seem like Paul is encouraging the Thessalonians to isolate themselves from lost people.

But that's not what Jesus modeled. So what does he mean when he instructs the Thessalonians to keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness?

Today, we're reading Second Thessalonians 3, and it's important for us to resist the urge to pluck the easy verses out of the chapter and ignore the rest, as there's so much more gold in there.

I mean, that interpretive challenge.

What are we to make of Paul's instruction to keep away from the brothers who walk in idleness?

It's kind of like this.

When you were growing up

and talking about things your friends were allowed to do,

but you weren't, your parents probably said something like,

well, if they jumped off a bridge, would you?

What was the point? Just because everyone else is doing something doesn't mean we should too.

But unfortunately, there's this reality that we're likely to replicate or repeat the behaviors of the people we surround ourselves with.

So in school growing up, this could manifest itself in ways that were clearly negative, like

peer pressure to make a poor choice.

Or it can manifest itself in ways that don't necessarily seem good or bad.

So when I was in middle school, one kid got colored notebook paper, then suddenly more kids

got colored notebook paper.

And before you knew it, the whole

school had thrown out white paper with blue lines, and they had pink paper, orange paper, purple.

And having colored paper wasn't bad, but that thing spread through the school. And childhood examples,

they can seem silly, like colored paper, who cares?

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