Proverbs: The Difference Between Diligence and Laziness

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

Newsong is a gospel-centered community-serving Anglican church in Port Perry, Ontario, and the parish of the Anglican Network in Canada.

We'd love to connect with you.

If you'd like to reach out to us, you can find our contact information at Newsongportperry.ca.

God bless you through the ministry of the Word.

This is a reading from the book of Proverbs.

Go to the end, Old Sluggard.

Consider her ways and be wise.

Without having any chief, chief officer or ruler.

She prepares her bridge in summer and gathers her peace and harvest.

How long will you lie there, old sluggard?

When will you arise from your sleep?

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, like an armed man.

A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligence makes rich.

He who gathers in summer is a fruit son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.

The way of a slugger is like a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is a level highway.

I passed by the field of a sluggered, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense.

And behold, it was all overgrown with thorns.

The ground was covered with nettles, and its stone walls broken down.

Then I saw and considered it.

I looked and received instruction.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thank you, God.

Heavenly Father, we now come before you to hear you to speak to our hearts and to our minds.

Father, we just pray that any distractions from this week, whether good or bad, would just fall away.

Lord, we just want to be renewed by your spirit.

We just want to lift Jesus high.

And we just pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So when I was in college, when I went there, when I was I went there as a mature adult, I remember doing the assignments and being given all these mass amount of assignments to do.

And I just remember I got them done, barely got them done, because they gave us quite a lot to do in a very short amount of time.

But I just remember the students that would procrastinate on their assignments, they wouldn't do them.

And then they would go to the teacher asking for an extension, and they'd be shocked when they would fail.

So we're continuing our sermon series in the book of Proverbs, and we're looking at certain topics as we go through this book.

And the way we're looking at it is we're trying to look at it by how do we live wisely by God's design?

How do we do that?

And Proverbs is loaded with different ways of looking at these topics.

It keeps repeating itself just from different angles as it goes through.

And the topic we're going to look at today, you can see the title, the title says the difference between diligence and laziness.

What we're looking at today is the idea of work, what it means to live wisely by God's design in the context of work.

And we have to remember as we go into the book of Proverbs that the first verses one to seven open the book.

They are the way that we can view the whole book of Proverbs, the verses one to seven.

And the main one, the most important one, is verse seven of chapter one.

And it's the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

This is a very important verse to always have in the back of our minds as we dive into the book of Proverbs and as we look at different topics as we go in.

Because it's talking about the wise and the fool.

And the fool and the wise take different pictures or different metaphors as we go through it.

So now we're looking at work.

What does it mean to live by God's design, live wisely by God's design in the context of work?

And you might be thinking right now, what can we learn from this in a room of mostly retired people?

And I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying, just being real here.

What can we learn from it?

And there's lots of things we can learn from this.

And the way we're gonna view this, we're gonna look at it by three ways.

And we're gonna look at practical work, soul work, and then the last one I stole from Timothy Keller, redeeming work.

So we're gonna look at it.

So let's look.

So if you have your bulletins, the text that we're looking at is all listed through, and it's various proverbs, so they're all mixed together, or they're all put together to make one text to look at.

So let's look at it.

So we're gonna look at verse six, the beginning at the top.

Go to the ant, O sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.

Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer, and gathers her food and harvest.

How long will you lie there, O sluggard?

When will you arise from sleep?

A little s a little sleep sorry, when will you arise from sleep?

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man.

So we're looking at practical work right now.

And when we talk about a sluggard, what a sluggard is, is someone who procrastinates.

It's someone who doesn't say flat out, no, I'm not gonna work.

It's just someone who puts work off to the last minute and then realizes that they're in trouble.

That's what a sluggard is.

It's someone who doesn't refuse to work.

Do they just put it off?

So we're gonna go through the verses here.

So the ant, the ant is a the type of ant that gathers and stores up its food for the months where there's nothing to gather.

That's the kind of ant that we're looking at here.

And what the what's going on here is that the the writer Solomon is telling the person to look at this, to consider the ant.

Because the person that's being asked to consider is a sluggard, someone who doesn't want to work.

So the first verse is uh speaking directly to the person to come and look at it.

Look at the ant, consider it and be wise.

See, there's a benefit in the first verse of that you can be wise if you consider the ways.

And as we keep going, we see in verse 7 that the ant doesn't have a boss, doesn't have someone over them telling them what to do.

They do it on their own merit.

They go off and do it.

And they gather in the summer because there's months coming where there would be nothing to get gather.

And then it goes into verse 9, and the person says, How long?

When will you arise from sleep?

And then in verse 10 it says, a little sleep, a little slumber, and a little folding of the hands to rest.

So there's three.

There's three a little in this, and that means it's very important to consider it.

And then you see the consequence of what happens if the person continues and they're sleeping and they're resting and they're taking their time.

A robber comes on them.

Poverty comes on them like a robber.

When I was reading one of the commentaries on this, the commentator is um is he's a professor at a seminary, and he was just reflecting on talking about when he has students who are given these big assignments, and they have the whole semester to do them.

And then they come to him right at the end of the semester, and they come to him saying, We didn't get it done, and they end up failing.

And then they start asking him to give them another assignment to make up, to try to get their markup so they don't fail the class.

But what he does, which I found pretty funny, I laughed to myself, he just points them to these verses.

He tells them to consider these verses.

Why you had the entire semester, but you didn't listen to the to what the ant has to do here.

Now, this idea of work within the Bible, work is given by God.

It is a command, it is a good thing.

And when you see it in Genesis chapter 1, we see God works.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

The whole Bible opens up with God creating, He is working.

Work is a good thing.

Christianity is the only religion that has work in it as a good thing.

In every other religion, work comes out of the fall.

But we see here in Genesis that work is given before the fall.

In verses 20, in Genesis chapter 1, 28 to 31, it says this.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And God blessed them, and he said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of heavens, and every living thing that moves on earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit.

You shall have them for food, and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has that has the breath of life, I have given every plant for food, and it was so.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

See, God gives the command to work, that humanity is given this great dignity to work, to cultivate the land, to gather for itself, to take care of itself in terms of working, but always under God's watching them and them submitting to God.

See, this is very important to remember when we think about work, and then when we also think about this text here, when we look at verse six of chapter six in Proverbs, there's a deep, deep irony going on here.

Because this the writer is telling the sluggard to go to the ant, this little tiny, tiny ant.

See, we see here that God gives the command for man to be over all things, but after the fall, we see the command to be under the ant, to learn from the ant instead of learning from God.

There's an irony in this text.

Well, you might also be thinking, well, I've done my time, I am retired.

See, the idea of work, this idea of earning the paycheck, of going to work in 9 to 5, comes out of the Industrial Revolution.

And the Industrial Revolution has been going on, it started in about 1760, when steam and coal engines started to begin and mass production was able to happen.

And this idea of you go off to work, you you work these hours, and then you come back and you get a pay.

That comes out of this.

But that obviously you need, and I'm not here to say that no, you shouldn't make money.

You need to make money to live.

That's you have to do that.

But when Solomon writes this, this is a time when work was more community focused.

See, the thing that happened with when the Industrial Revolution, it created this mindset of self-focused, of providing for yourself and no longer for the community.

Before it, it was a community-focused kind of work that whatever you did with work benefited the community.

And that's what's going on in this text.

James Harriet, in his book, All Creatures Great and Small, reflects on his life of being a rural vet.

And he writes about these stories that he had, or some of them could be fictional, but he writes about them.

But the thing that you notice through it, if you watch the show, you notice it in the show too, that when one of the farmers or one of the local merchants is suffering, the entire community suffers.

So we see this that work through God's plan is something that benefits the community.

It doesn't just benefit the self.

That is how we have to view work.

Work is for the benefit of the community.

But we might you might be thinking, well, who should work?

Why should I work?

I've done it, I've already been there.

See, work is this beautiful thing that God has given, and we always need to remember that as we come to it, as we think about work.

And I'm gonna say one of the most feared words in the church, one of the most feared words, volunteering.

Or we can make it, we can say it in a more politically correct way, serving.

Serving, volunteering is a way that we can directly benefit the church community.

That when we have volunteers in all the areas, the entire church is benefited.

And I would encourage you, if you haven't volunteered, try volunteering.

Do it in something that you may not be naturally gifted at.

But this isn't just me being up here telling retired people to volunteer.

Volunteering, serving in the church is how we worship God.

And it's for all ages.

It's for everyone, even if you have a job or if you don't have a job.

Everyone is called to serve.

And that's just my challenge to us all.

We should all serve the church in some capacity.

It works for the betterment of community.

So there's this idea of practical work.

Yes, we need them, we need to make money to provide for ourselves and our families, but we need to do it in a way that benefits the community, not just the self.

That is what is going on here in the text.

We see it when we reflect on it and reflect on God's word.

Now, if we look again at chapter 6, Proverbs chapter 6, verses 10 to 11, we see a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.

Proverbs 6:10–11

See, it sneaks up on you if you don't, if you don't stay connected within a mindset of how to provide for the community, you will become isolated, you'll become um, you won't be connected to your church, you won't be connected to your community in some capacity.

And that's what we see here.

It sneaks up.

Poverty sneaks up on the person who does not want to work or who takes their time at working.

So where do we go from here?

What's the next step?

Well, in Proverbs, or in the whole book of the Bible, there's you when you read it, it can be very practical.

You read very practical things.

But the thing that's so wise and so good about the Bible is that there's normally layers to the text as we go through it.

There's normally the practical thing on the surface, but then there's something beneath the surface in it.

And I'm gonna call this section soul work.

So let's look at it.

So let's go, you turn the page to ch uh page five in the bulletin, and we're gonna look at chapter 24, verses 30 to 34.

And I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense, and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns, the ground was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down.

Sorry, I lost my place, give me a second here.

Then I saw and considered it, and then I looked and received instruction: a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.

Now, what's going on here?

Just as I was reflecting on this, it it reminded me of when I first came to faith when I was 18.

I used to go to this youth group, um, youth group, kind of young adults group at this church, and it was very thriving.

It was a big crowd of people, and I have very fond memories of it.

But something I remembered thinking about it, and I'm actually going to message him this week about it, that there was a one of the youth leaders there, he was probably in his 40s at the time.

He always had he had this habit of always asking people, how's your heart?

How's your walk with the Lord?

And I would dread it.

I would always dread it because I feel like I would always have to give an honest answer.

And then we would pray about things.

But this is the best thing that we can ask each other because we are a community and we are a family.

And then we could ask each other, how are you doing?

How are you doing?

And it's something good to ask to truly ask yourself, how are you doing?

How is your heart?

How is your walk with the Lord?

See, these verses here show a vineyard.

And a vineyard is a lot of work to maintain and also to cultivate.

It is a lot of work.

And then we see here that it has fallen apart, it's become overgrown with thorns, it has become covered with nettles, it has become a wasteland, basically, unproductive anymore.

It's covered.

See, we see this, and in verse 32, you see the the Proverbs writer saying, Then I saw and considered it, I looked and received instruction.

See, when we meditate on these verses, we can think about what is our life like, our outward life looking like, and what is our inward life looking like?

Is it covered with thorns and thistles?

Or is it thriving?

See, in scre in uh C.S.

Luce's book, famous book, The Screwtape Letters, if you haven't read it, I'd highly recommend you read it because it's very clever how he writes it.

And it's from the idea of looking at what demons do and how they harass and how they make um Christians fall.

And what's going on in the what happens in it is that you realize that the demons don't, we always think about when the enemy is doing something to us.

We always think about it's gonna be some grandiose plan, some big thing's gonna happen.

But they actually just let us do it to ourselves, they just kind of let it happen.

And that's actually the most cunning plan of it all.

And you see that in screw tape letters, and that you can see that here in the text when we think about how are we doing?

How is our heart?

How is our walk of Jesus?

So, how do we get how do we get through this?

If if we struggle to cultivate our relationship with the Lord, and then if we struggle with cultivating a healthy working life outside in the community, in the church, how do we go keep continue forward?

Well, we see it in the next text that I have listed here.

So let's look at them.

We're gonna look at um chapter 10, verses 4 to 5, and chapter 15, verse 19.

And we call this, we're gonna call it redeeming work.

A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps and harvests is a son who brings shame.

The way of a sluggard is like a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is a level ground.

See, in verse four, when it says slack hand, this is you have to think of it kind of like um kind of like a like a bow and arrow.

The bowstring is kind of on the bow, but it's not fully taught.

It's slack.

So it's it's a slack bowstring.

That's kind of like the image it's giving.

And then when you see diligent, it means smart work.

So it doesn't mean you work a lot, you work crazy hours.

It means you work smart.

And if we reflect on Genesis 1 again, that God creates creation, He creates it, creates the world, but He rests at the same time.

And that is smart work, is that we work and that and that we rest.

So we see here in verse 4 that the slack hand causes poverty.

Now, just want to take a side note here again.

When we talk about poverty, when when it says someone who slacks will bring poverty, this isn't the Bible talking like looking down on people who are lower income.

Because the Bible all through it, all through the Bible, raises up the poor, commands to take care of the poor.

What's going on here is that the Bible is speaking directly against someone who procrastinates take working for themselves and taking care of themselves.

That's what's going on here.

The sluggard brings poverty to themselves.

This isn't a life circumstance that's happened, it's they've caused it on themselves.

And then in verse five, it says the gathering season.

The gathering season is to work diligently when you have the work before you.

So you Can reap from it later on in life.

And then those who don't bring shame.

It brings shame on the community and shame on the family.

That's what's going on in the text.

And then verse 19 talks about the sluggard is like a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is a level highway.

See, we see what goes on here is that the sluggard's way is always blocked by things that get in the way, that cause them to procrastinate.

But the path of the upright is level ground.

So you might be wondering, well, you've said all these things, I need to work hard, I need to do these things, I need to get better at things.

But that's not the gospel.

The gospel message is not that.

And that's not what I'm saying up here.

See, the only way we'll be able to do this, the only way is that we put our trust in Jesus and we apply the gospel to our lives.

In the areas where we feel like we may not be doing the best, we apply the gospel to our lives.

We ask Jesus to bring his Holy Spirit into that part of our lives to fix it.

We can't fix it on our own.

We always tend towards to be the sluggard.

Even if we are someone who works diligently, someone who works very hard, we'll end up always wanting the work for ourselves.

See, we need the gospel in our lives because our hearts always lead us to the other way, towards this being a sluggard.

See, only when we apply the gospel to our lives will be diligent.

Our hearts will be constantly covered with thorns if we don't.

When I was um, I used to spend a lot of time in BC and I used to do a lot of rock climbing there, and you would scrub the rock to get moss off of it.

But because BC's climate is so wet and so kind of like a rainforest, the moss grows back really quick if no one touches the rock.

And it's like that.

If we don't cultivate our lives, if we don't cultivate our hearts, moss will kind of grow over it again.

And the only way to get rid of that moss is with the gospel.

And there's something about this text I found so profound is that when it talks about a hedge of thorns, we all know someone who wore a crown of thorns.

And that's Jesus.

And he wore that crown of thorns for us.

He took the thorns off our hearts, off our minds, so that we could live a life following him because we won't without him.

So what do we do?

We have to stop working for ourselves and work for the community, work for our church, work for the community around us for the betterment of it.

We need to meditate on God's word, and we need to ask God to pour his spirit on our hearts daily, because they'll continually be covered with thorns.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we give you thanks and praise for Jesus and his work on the cross.

Father, we give you thanks and praise that you have called us to yourself, that there is no way that we could have done it without you.

Lord, we just pray now that you would help us apply the gospel to those areas of our lives that we hold on to so dearly, but that we have to give to you.

And we pray us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

We follow a generous God who calls us to give willfully, cheerfully, and sacrificially towards gospel ministry.

Newsong is 100% funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you'd like to learn more about how to give towards Newsong's ministry, you can do just that at newsongportperry.ca slash giving.

God bless you and keep you today and every day.