Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

The sermon scripture is found in Proverbs 24:30-34. Proverbs 24:30-34. “I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding, and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well. I looked upon it, received instruction. He had a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth and thy want as an armed man.”

We continue this morning going through a series on the seven deadly sins. We’ve come now to kind of like the middle of the seven which historically has been seen as sloth. And I guess one thing you can remember in terms of this order: the first three—pride, envy, and anger—you may or may not see people engage in those activities. They’re more internalized, I guess, and the ones we’re going to be considering as we move to the second half of the list—gluttony, lust, and sloth—also can be seen in external actions.

It’s kind of like the hinge one here. Sloth is a little bit different than the last we’ll be talking about, however, because in addition to greed, gluttony, and lust, sloth can be seen as we saw from the reading from Proverbs, but it relates more to a sin of omission as opposed to a sin of commission. It’s what you don’t do as opposed to what you have done incorrectly. And so it’s a problem of defective love—love that doesn’t really love anything.

We’ll be talking about that. Now, I’ve chosen there’s lots of verses in the scriptures we could talk about. We’ll be talking about several of them over the next few weeks, just so you’ll know. Next week I plan on talking about the relationship of sloth to the state of the church in America today and some of the problems in this country.

And then in the following weeks, I’ll also talk about one lesson about sloth directly related to the family. And there are some very interesting proverbs about the relationship of a slothful man to what happens in his household. And then we’ll probably be spending at least another week on the sin of sloth, kind of looking at it a little deeper, perhaps, than some of the surface things we’re looking at today, and developing it in terms of how it happens in a person’s life.

This morning I’ve chosen this particular passage, though, and you’ll note it’s an interesting passage. We’ll be talking in a couple of minutes about how the slothful don’t receive instruction. Hopefully we’ll get to that this morning. But in any event, it’s interesting here that the wise man sees what happens to the slothful man and receives instruction from it. From the slothful man’s failure to take note of what God’s word has instructed him to do and the resulting judgment upon him that is seen in those four verses from Proverbs 24.

The wise man looks at it. Verse 32 says, “I saw, I reflected upon it. I looked, received instruction.” Lots of ways in which God instructs us. And so hopefully, as we look through these verses relative to sloth this afternoon and into the next month or so, we’ll consider these things, reflect on some of the things I’m saying, and hopefully take the good, leave out the dregs of the bad, and then as a result, receive instruction from God’s word as it relates to this sin, which can be so devastating in a person’s life and the life of a community as well.

## Man Turned into Beast Through Various Forms of Sloth

Okay, first we’re going to talk about a man turned into a beast through various forms or ways of sloth. Now I say that—I kind of take it as a takeoff from the word we use here, sloth. And another word that the scriptures use is sluggard in the Old Testament scriptures. Those words really don’t refer to animals in the first instance. In fact, if I’m to believe what Bill Gothard has written, it’s just the reverse.

The animal that we know as the sloth, according to Gothard, was discovered by some Europeans who saw this very slow-moving animal, and the Hebrew word that is most often translated sloth in the Old Testament—alatuth, or a-sleuth—has that term sloth in it, and so they name the sloth after the biblical word that describes the man who is slow in his actions. And so it’s kind of the reverse of what you might think. And of course, the sluggard—I didn’t look up the etymology of the slug, but certainly the sluggard moves like a slug.

And so a person who is slothful has become a beast more than a man. He’s turned into a sloth or a slug.

As long as I’m talking about the specific words used here, there are essentially three words that are translated sloth, slothful, sluggardly, etc. in the Old Testament. And remember, we’ve talked about how the Hebrew language is rich in pictures. One of these words, as I’ve just said, the word that sloth is based upon means slow. Just slow. Another word really means to be slack. And frequently you’ll see scripture verses about the hands that hang down. We’ll talk about those in the context of this. Slackness is another word that’s translated slothfulness. And the third word means for a man or something to be leaning against something else. Just, you know, leaning against the wall at a killing time.

So you’ve got slowness, slackness, and idly leaning. And in a way, you know, all of those are kind of like the sloth and the slug. And then also like you might think of it as an inanimate object—even you get so slow you end up like a board just leaning against a building someplace.

Now it’s interesting because the two words that we would normally think of in our language—sloth or the other word would be lazy—comes from a root word also meaning slack. And so we have this slackness and then the slowness that comes down to us as a picture of sloth.

I just thought I’d bring out a couple of little facts about the sloth himself before we get into the analysis of these verses we’ve just read.

The sloth is a very slothful animal. The sloth sleeps fifteen hours a day at least. The sloth is so slothful and so lazy that over the course of its lifetime, he allows algae to grow on his fur. And so if you find an old sloth, he’s got kind of a greenish tint to him from all the algae that’s been accumulating on his fur. And additionally, he’ll probably have a lot of moths coming out of him because moths also take up residence in the fur of the sloth.

Though sloth is the slowest of all mammals, it’s been remarked that at a relative scale, a single cell protozoa moves much faster than a sloth does. Very slow. He may spend an entire lifetime in a single tree as long as there’s enough food. Food is his big problem in life—it’s the only reason he moves. I don’t think that’s about the only reason he moves.

And as a result of his slowness, however, and his lack of diligence in seeking food, he’s very prone to starvation. When there’s a natural disaster of some type and the leaves of the trees die and everything, he can starve off pretty quickly. And as a result, while there were once apparently at least ten different species of sloth, we’re now down to two. And probably those will be a thing of the past as well as we go through time, simply because of starvation and failing to attend to one’s needs.

Well, the scriptures tell us that the man turns into this beast-like form of a sloth through several different means. And the first thing I want to talk about is he does this through inaction.

## Through Inaction

Through inaction, verse 33 of course gives us the picture in Proverbs 24. I hope you’ll keep turned to that spot most of this morning’s talk. He passes by the field of the sluggard, which we would think of as a beast-like person, and in verse 33 the description is that “a little sleep, a little slumber, little folding of the hands to rest, then your poverty shall come upon you as a robber.” And so the slothful man is physically inactive. He fails to image God.

It may not seem immediately apparent, but the scriptures tell us that we are here created in the image of God, and the slothful man fails to image God. Now, why do I say that? Well, the scriptures tell us that God is not a god of sloth. God is a God who works. Our Savior tells us, if you remember correctly, for instance, in the fourth commandment, we are told to pattern our week after God’s creative week: six days of labor, one day of rest. And then so we’re to image God in terms of what we do in labor in terms of time.

Now, Jesus had several things to say about God the Father, and himself who was come to demonstrate God the Father to us and to show us who God the Father was. In John 4:34 Jesus said that “my need is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work.” In John 5:17 Jesus said that “my father worketh hitherto and I work.” John 9:4: “I must work the works of him that sent me because the night cometh when no man can work.”

And so Jesus made use of the time that God had given to him and allotted to him. John 17:4 says that “I have glorified thee”—this is Jesus praying to God—”I have glorified thee because I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” And so these verses, as well as a whole bunch of other verses, tell us that God is a God who is not slack, who is not lazy.

It’s interesting that several times repeated in the Old Testament, the word slackness is used to describe what God isn’t. It says that God isn’t slack. He will deliver you. He won’t hold back when you need help. And as well, it’s a whole other host of verses that talk about God’s active activity in the world. So God is a worker, and as a result of us being created in the image of God and then redeemed through the work of Jesus Christ, God the Son, then we are also to see ourselves as more fitly empowered for work and creative work. We’re here to work.

We have, as a result of that, laws, and these laws show us God’s path, God’s way, the way that God walks. Jesus came and kept the law, and he kept the law as a demonstration to us of the path of righteousness. And so that path, that law, tells us in various places to work and to work hard.

We have had a lot of discussions over the last six or seven years in this church about the fourth commandment, the Sabbath command. And most of us are coming to a renewed appreciation for the requirement of that command to rest one day out of seven and to worship God in that day, and to, I guess, work in a different way—to work by worshiping God and resting in him and in the salvation offered through Jesus Christ.

But it’s very important, as good as that is a positive development in this church, it’s very important that we recognize that at least implicitly and seemingly explicitly, the fourth command also tells us to work. “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest to God. Worship God.” And so the command in the fourth commandment includes a rest, but it tells us also that we’re to be working for six days—a positive command to image God. We obey his law. That law tells us that we must work.

Now, this isn’t just a result of the fall. Adam was placed in the garden, and in the state of innocency in the garden, prior to the fall, did Adam have work to do? Yes, he did. We’ve talked about it a lot in this church. He was to dress and keep the garden. He was to guard it, and he was to nourish it and develop it. So even before the fall, we have Adam with work to do.

There’s a good little book that I’ll be quoting a little bit more of later that’s been newly reprinted by Sprinkle Publications called The Religious Tradesman. And by tradesmen, they meant businessmen. It was written in the early 1700s. It has a little short preface or introduction by Isaac Watts, and it’s a good book. And it talks about the application of the faith to business. And the first chapter and then later a chapter on diligence—it talks a lot about the fact that we should always work six days a week.

In that book, the author quotes somebody else—he doesn’t say who he’s quoting from—who said this about Adam: “If noble birth, as one observes, a great estate, a small family, and a mind fitted for contemplation would exempt man from labor, none had so fair a plea for it as he”—that is Adam. But still in the garden, God gave Adam work to do. And so he was called to labor because he was made in the image of God who always works.

After the fall, of course, our work is changed. It is made more difficult. And now sweat accompanies our work as a remembrance to us on our bodies of the fall. And if you get upset about sweating, and I do—it tends to make me itch and other things—it should be a perpetual reminder to me of our fallenness and of the diligence required in labor as a result of that, and then also to not continue to rebel against God that brought that sweat upon our heads in the first place.

Okay, so these verses talk about inactivity as the slothful man is inactive. Now it’s in terms of this concept that the slothful man rejects the calling by God to image God correctly by working diligently in his life.

I came across a quote by a guy named Shoemaker in a book about the relationship of sloth to pride that really is pretty good. And I’d just like to read this now if I can find it. Yes, he said that pride—let’s see here, pride, relationship of sloth to pride, now and how they’re kind of opposites in a way. “Pride wants to be more than a man. The person who is proud wants to be more than man. He wants to be God. Whereas sloth wants to be less than a man. See, he fails to image God correctly. Pride seeks God’s throne. Sloth runs from the garden. Pride takes on God’s role. Sloth escapes or won’t take on man’s role or human responsibility. Pride is the story of dominion turns sour. Whereas sloth refuses to exercise dominion at all.”

And so you can see that sloth is a rejection of the calling that God has given us to work and to image him through that.

Now, while this writer contrasts sloth with pride, it is worth noting that the reason why sloth does all these things or fails to do things is his own self-centeredness. The sluggard is a person who is concentrating only on himself and only on his personal desires and not on the calling God has given him to do, which really is another form of pride. So they’re really kind of linked that way, in spite of some of these differences that could be pointed out.

So inactivity—by the way, it is worth noting here in passing that this inactivity doesn’t happen all at once. You notice he says “a little sleep, a little slumber, little folding of the hands to rest.” The slothful man begins by failing to take God’s path of righteousness and diligence and labor in small decisions of life. He doesn’t say, “I’m going to stay in bed all day.” He says, “I’ll sleep a little bit more. I’ll hit the snooze button—you know, another five minutes, another ten minutes, a little sleep, a little slumber, little folding of rest.”

How can destruction come from taking a five-minute nap? Well, it can’t. The point of this verse is that those five-minute naps turn into longer ones and turn into a pattern of rejecting God’s call to be diligent in all that we do, that then becomes one in which our house essentially collapses in upon itself.

And so sloth, this inactivity we’re talking about, happens over a period of time. And probably one of the very first manifestations of sloth in a person’s life is procrastination—failure to attend quickly to the task that God has called us to do, to put them off five minutes, ten minutes, a day, a week, and before you know it, they’re not done at all. That’s the pattern that the scriptures lay out for us of the slothful man.

He was slothful by way of inactivity. Additionally, once you do tasks, even if you do them, you may not do them well. Remember, we said that Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales concludes with the Parson’s Tale, which goes through the seven deadly sins. And the Parson had this to say about sloth: “He said that sloth cares not when it must do a thing, whether it be done well or badly.” So if it has to be done, we will have to do it, I guess, but it doesn’t do it well. It doesn’t care if it does well or badly, and as a result, of course, it does it badly.

So procrastination, small movements, small decisions of rebellion against the diligence God calls us to do and imaging him in terms of our lives, and then doing jobs less than well—less than unto God, as it were—are these things that create the physical inactivity that Proverbs 24, verse 33 speaks of, as well as a whole host of other verses.

## Through Acedia (Loss of Heart)

But it isn’t just physical activity that creates the slothful man. No. In addition, the second point of your outline under the slothful man—the man turned beast—he turns into a beast through physical inactivity, but he also turns into a beast through the sloth of acedia.

Acedia—that’s probably not a word you’re real familiar with, although it’s still used today. Acedia is the classic word in the list of the seven deadly sins, which of course weren’t written in English early on. Acedia comes from the Greek, and it is the combination of two words—”a,” you know, like “amillennial” means “no millennium”—”a” and “cedia,” and cedia means to care for something. And so the second thing that the slothful man does is he doesn’t care for anything. And that’s probably why he is inactive.

In verse 30 we read that “I pass by the field of the sluggard and by the vineyard of the man lacking sense.” Now that word “understanding” or “sense” is a very important term. It’s frequently translated “heart,” and it doesn’t just mean intellectual understanding. It doesn’t just mean wisdom. It doesn’t just mean emotions. It means all those things, and the soul and spirit combined, as it were, and the will.

And the slothful man is not just physically inactive. He lacks sense. He lacks heart for the task. He has acedia. He doesn’t care about anything anymore. And so the term means the loss of one’s heart for one’s labor—not having a heart to do the labor and task that God has called you to do. Very important. Sloth is essentially devoid of heart or caring or will, as well as understanding.

I guess one word that we might have today is apathy, although apathy probably refers more to the passions of the emotions. Yet this term, really, has a whole—in terms of this verse used in Proverbs 30—the word heart takes in the totality of a man’s life: his will and spirit, emotions, understanding, etc. It speaks to a condition of the spirit but also to the condition of the mind, as well as the body.

As we’ve just seen, this particular aspect of acedia or sloth—lacking heart for the jobs that God calls us to do—also has been heavily documented throughout the history of the church. We’ll be looking at a couple of those quotes here in a minute.

Aquinas, for instance, said that sloth was sorrow in the divine good. And see, if you didn’t realize that it’s talking about a total lack of heart for one’s work, that wouldn’t make any sense—that the lazy man is sorrow in the divine good. You see, presented with the good things of God, acedia doesn’t care for them and instead sorrows over the good things that God has given us.

Augustine said that sloth was the sadness of goodness—sadness in goodness. I was over this morning at the Kovans, and he was talking about how he’d seen a t-shirt for terms of Christians that were all “under construction” still, you know, and that’s true. We’re all under construction as Christians, we’re growing in our grace, etc.

And I guess one way to think about acedia in terms of the slothful man is it’s like dry rot in the timbers. God is constructing us, but we got dry rot rotting away because we have no care for anything that God has called us to do. And as a result, we don’t do things. We don’t really waste time. Acedia shows us really that we’re not wasting time. Rather, we’re wasting ourselves.

You know, it’s kind of like that old phrase: you don’t break God’s law, God’s law breaks you. Well, in this case, you don’t waste time. Really, God’s time is God’s time. But you waste yourself in what you could have been doing in the context of all that time.

Chaucer, again quoting from the Parson’s Tale, talks about this particular aspect of acedia in this way, or sloth, in relation to envy and anger. He said, “Envy and anger cause bitterness of heart, which bitterness is the mother of acedia.” The story of Hamlet, for instance, where he has anger over the murder of his father and then that results in his envy against the man that killed his father—who then ends up marrying his mother—turns into a slothfulness or an apathy in Hamlet himself, and that’s what he must wrestle against in that classic work.

Chaucer also wrote the following: “He said that sloth has no diligence—no diligence in what it does. It does everything sadly and with peevishness, slackness, and false excusing, and with slovenliness and unwillingness, for which the book says, ‘A cursed be he that serveth God negligently.’” And so sloth is the negligent serving of God through a lack of a proper care or love for what God has called us to do and what God has put us in the context of.

Dorothy Sayers, in her work on the seven deadly sins, said this about sloth: “She said that in the world it calls itself tolerance, but in hell it’s called despair. Sloth is the accomplice to the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing that it would die for.”

That’s the picture of acedia—having no heart to do what God has called us to do.

I suppose that in terms of bringing it up to date, so to speak, some people don’t like when I do this. I won’t mention the particular group that does this particular song, but there was a—there still is a group that has a song in which the central theme of it is the becoming of the person, becoming comfortably numb to the world in which they live. A comfortable numbness overtakes the slothful man, and he fails to care for the things that God has put him in the context of.

And I think that if you realize that’s what sloth is—sloth, you actually could have a great deal of activity going for you, couldn’t you? You could be on a real treadmill but not care for any of it, not do any of it diligently as unto God, and still be a slothful man.

Now, if we think of it that way—this lack of heart for what the goodness of God and what he has given to us as a comfortable numbness, as it were, to the things of the world, the world being created by God. That is the godly sense of the world. And that comfortable numbness really is much of what America is comprised of today. That’s the American dream: kind of a comfortable numbness that has no need to be challenged anymore, and be creative anymore, and be pushing outward.

You know, it’s interesting that we’ve been content in this country for a number of years with the concept of morality as compared to godliness. There’s a difference there. The slothful man may see himself as moral. He doesn’t do anything wrong. He doesn’t smoke or chew or go with the girls that do, but he doesn’t diligently apply himself to the work that God has called him to do. He doesn’t exercise the dominion mandate, and as a result, he is a sloth. He is sluggardly and inactive and under God’s judgment because of it.

He doesn’t, you know, in the ’50s it might have been an interesting time and a nice comfortably numb time to live. But they weren’t necessarily times when the church was essentially concerned with the evangelization and discipleship of the world, nor with the growth and sanctification that took God’s word and his laws seriously. And that’s a good thing. Now, we’re going to spend more time talking about that aspect of it in the weeks to come. Very important that we do that, but we’re going to kind of return now to this essential first theme, the first layer, as it were, that we can see of the slothful man, the physical inactivity that it leads into and the collapse of his own home as described in Proverbs 24.

It is important, though, that as we go through this, you keep this in mind: not just the inactivity side of sloth, but the acedia, the failure to care, the lack of heart. Because really, when we get done with this series, hopefully what we do when we come to God’s word—it’s a two-edged sword. It exercises its judgment on us correctly, and then heals us. And hopefully we’ll repent of some of the sloth in our lives, not just in terms of inactivity, but in a failure to care for the task that God has called us to do, whether they’re vocational tasks in the home or in the church or whatever it is.

So we have to have a proper sense of what the sin is before we can properly confess and agree with God that it’s wrong and move on to repentance and into works of righteousness showing fruits of repentance.

## Through Foolishness (Refusal to Receive Instruction)

Okay, so sloth is also a failure to have heart about the task that God has called us to do. Third, the man turns into a beast through the foolishness of sloth. And it’s very interesting here, as I said, that the slothful man is not receiving any instruction throughout this process of Proverbs 24. It’s the wise man who looks at the situation and gets instructed by it.

You’d think the slothful man could realize in the context of his home that something’s wrong here. But it doesn’t work that way. Little by little, the man slips into the sin, and as a result, he becomes deluded, and he doesn’t even recognize his own slothfulness. And because he fails to take instruction, it’s interesting that there are several verses listed on your outline there.

We read that in Proverbs 10:8 and 9, for instance. And in the context of this is the slothful man. Verse 4 of Proverbs 10 says, “Poor is he who works with a negligent hand, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” That’s what we’re talking about this morning—outwardly physical activity. “He who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely. He who sleeps and harvests is a son who acts shamefully. Blessing is on the head of the righteous. The mouth of the wicked conceals violence. The memory of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot. The wise of heart will receive commands, but a babbling fool will be thrown down. He who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will be found out.”

You see, the slothful man is a babbling fool. He doesn’t get the wisdom that the wise man goes after from God’s word and instruction and through other godly men. He is his own counselor. He takes no counsel from other people, and as a result, he slips into the sin deeper and deeper.

In Proverbs 26, I suppose, is the best picture of this. Why don’t you turn to Proverbs 26? We’re looking at verses 12-17. And it’s interesting because in the context of this, we have that phrase repeated in Proverbs 22 about the slothful man: says, “There’s a lion out in the street, so he stays home. I’ll be slain in the streets.” He says, “We stays in the house.” I never quite figure what is going on with that thing. What does he need a lion out in the streets?

Well, it’s interesting if you look at the context of those verses. Proverbs 26:12-16 rather. “Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There’s more hope for a fool than for him. The sluggard says, ‘There’s a lion in the road. A lion is in the open square.’ Like the door turns on its hinges, so does the sluggard on his bed. The sluggard buries his hand in the dish. He is weary of bringing it to his mouth. Again, the sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can give a discreet answer.”

You see, he starts in verse 12 comparing the man, talking about the man who is wise in his own eyes. Then he gives us a picture of the sluggard and his slide into there’s a progression there. First, he stays inside because there’s a lion in the streets, and he ends up a couple of verses later, not even wanting to take the bowl of cereal and take the spoon up to his mouth and feed himself anymore.

So there’s a slide that goes on, and then he concludes, he brackets it again with saying the sluggard is the man he’s talking about. The sluggard is a picture of a man who is wise in his own eyes. You see, he wouldn’t receive counsel. “No, there’s not a lion out in the street.” “No, see, he doesn’t listen to that. He has his own conception of the world. And because of his rebellion against God, there is fear associated with that world. And he is fearful of this lion. And his answer to fear is not conquering it, not understanding the world as God has created it, listening to counsel of God’s word or to godly people. His answer is retreat.

And that small step of retreat and failure to attend to counsel becomes then part of this process whereby he eventually fails to even be able to feed himself anymore. Ecclesiastes says that the sluggard eats his own flesh. “He folds his hands and eats his own flesh.” He gets to a point at the downward progression of the cycle. He doesn’t even eat anymore. Starts to, you know, consume his own body weight in his slothfulness. Folds his hands. And all that is based upon in these verses from Proverbs 26, a failure to receive instruction or counsel.

This is such an important point. You know, Chris W. and I were talking on the way in this morning that these seven deadly sins—the ones we’ve covered so far—they’re so deceitful to us. You don’t realize you’re even engaging in some of these sins. It scares me, you know, to think that you could be doing these things. I could be doing these things and not even be aware of them. But you see, God provides a vehicle whereby we can sensitize ourselves to our own sins, that we can take the scales off of our eyes. And that’s there are two elements of that.

The first is to keep us exposed to the word of God. But then secondly, it’s you folks for me. And for each of us here individually, it’s other people in the church that receive counsel from them on things. If we find ourselves being the rugged individual and never hearing counsel from the body of Christ on important matters of our life, we become deceived by ourselves. And that is the picture of what happens to the slothful man.

So the man turns into a beast through failure to take counsel—take godly counsel. And that’s a picture of that. He becomes self-deluded and won’t even admit to his own failure to take counsel. Now, the beginning of wisdom, scriptures tell us—the beginning of correct counsel from God’s word—is what? It’s the fear of the Lord. And a sloth, because he’s turned into a beast, as it were, he’s a beast instead of a man, he doesn’t fear God. He fears other things, but he doesn’t fear God. He has fear, but it’s not properly directed.

See, if he properly understood that he should fear God and the consequences that God can bring in his life, he would become diligent. Then, because God uses that as the rod to bring us into submission, and then we begin to joy in that relationship, don’t we? But the slothful man doesn’t accept the fear of the Lord, and as a result, he fears other things.

And it’s very interesting again that in the scriptures in the Old Testament, the picture of the slack hands—the sluggardly hands, as it were—is accompanied by people that have fear. And so throughout the prophets, for instance, we read that the admonition is “Don’t be afraid.” God is going to come to your assistance. God will help you. Therefore, lift up the slack hands. We have that same thing in the book of Hebrews later on.

You know, pick up those slack hands and get to work. Don’t be fearful. Hebrews 12:11 and following. Verse 11 says talks about chastening: “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” Wherefore, and here’s the application part of that verse—that truth of verse 11 about chastening and resulting to be the fruit of righteousness. The application is verse 12: “Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down slackly.”

See, don’t be slothful. Don’t be slack. Don’t have weak knees. It says in verse 12, see, it’s essentially the same thing in Isaiah 35:3 and 4. “Strengthen ye the weak hands. Confirm the feeble knees. Say to them, of a fearful heart. Be strong. Fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance. Even God with a recompense, he will come and save you.”

You see, if we understand God’s providence in the world, then God takes that improper fear that we have out of us by encouraging us that God is there for us. And his chastening, which we fear when we fear it correctly from his hand, his chastening will produce the peaceful fruit of righteousness by causing us to leave behind the slackness and the slothfulness that fear has led us into—that inactivity.

Same things repeated in Zephaniah, Zechariah, other places in scripture. God doesn’t give us a spirit of fear to the world around us, but one of sonship. The son recognizes that the chastisements of God bring righteousness. It brings us out of our slothfulness and into obedience.

## The Slothful Man’s Judgment

Okay, let’s see. So the man turns into a beast through inactivity, through loss of heart for the task that God has called him to, and through foolishness—refusing to accept the counsel of God’s word or the counsel of godly men and refusing to come to the fear of the Lord, but instead ending up fearing other things: the lion in the street, and so staying in his house.

You see, the lion in the street is used. The lion uses scripture. The devil is characterized as a lion, and God is a lion. Jesus Christ is the great lion, of course, the lion of Judah. And believe me, if you have a proper understanding of the fear of the Lord, a fear of God will not drive us to inactivity because the lion that God is comes into our homes. He doesn’t stay out there in the street.

And so if we understand the fear of the Lord, then it’ll drive us away from our slothfulness.

Well, as a result of this, of course, the man who’s turned into a beast ends up reaping an absence of goods—poverty first of all for himself. Verse 34, the result of all this, the result of the lack of heart for his task, the result of the inactivity, the result of the failing to take counsel, the result of the fearful staying inside and the declension into inactivity.

The result is verse 34: “Then your poverty will come upon you as a robber and your want will be like an armed man. You will have want and poverty”—judgment from God. Your failure to image him correctly results in failure to reap goods. You reap instead an absence of goods, poverty, and want.

Proverbs 23:20 says, “The drunkard, the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe the man with rags.” Drowsiness—the slothful man made slothful in this case through too much eating or too much drinking. Result of that is rags. Proverbs 19:14: “Houses and riches are the inheritance of fathers. A prudent wife is from the Lord. Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep, and an idle soul shall suffer hunger.”

See the difference? Riches, house here, prudent wife on this side. Slothfulness: deep sleep, and as a result, you suffer hunger. Proverbs 14:23: “And all labor there is profit. The talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.”

Chaucer talks a lot about how the slothful person babbles. As some of these proverbs do, the slothful man is the man who babbles, failing to hear instead, talking. You know, we’re supposed to be quick to hear and slow to speak in terms of anger, but also in terms of foolishness. We’re supposed to listen to other people. Our talk is cheap. Talk is cheap and generally unproductive. Work is what matters in God’s sight—the activity of our bodies to the task. Proverbs 20:13 says, “Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty. Open thine eyes and thou shalt be satisfied with bread.”

The same picture here. Now it’s interesting that we have a couple of problems here. Why even mention this? And I, you know, it’s not just that I mention it. I mention these verses because God mentions these verses. There’s a whole group of verses that tell us that inactivity and sloth will produce want of food, hunger, poverty, and the breaking down of our own house.

Why does God do that? I mean, it seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it? Seems obvious that if you don’t work, you’re not going to eat.

I mentioned this book, The Religious Tradesman, written in the early 1700s, reprinted by Sprinkle Publications. Quoting from that book in terms of the need for work. He says this, and it’s interesting this particular quote. The section is he’s giving various reasons why we should work and work diligently. And he says that “nature or self and reason teaches us this. You know, he doesn’t go to the inspired word first. He goes to nature and reason. And he says to expect that ‘sustenance should drop from the cloud without labor and care of our own is an absurdity so obvious and flagrant that none are stupid enough to maintain it.’”

You know, would that were true today. That isn’t true today anymore. At one time you could make those sort of statements and say, “Well, obviously reason says if you don’t eat—you shouldn’t, you don’t work—you shouldn’t be able to eat.” But that isn’t true anymore.

I remember several years ago John Lofton interviewed Jean Kirkpatrick—staunch conservative gal—and it was in the Conservative Digest, and it was just astonishing where he really pressed her on this idea, and she just dug her heels in firmly that in this country, nobody’s going to starve to death. And if that means people that don’t work have to be fed by us, then we’ll feed them.

You see, I use that example because, as I said, she’s from the right, and the conservatives themselves—most of them by and large, both conservatives and liberals today—say that in terms of homeless people who refuse to work, they still should be fed. And so we have government welfare share programs to do that. It is remarkable that we live in an age at which this obvious statement of truth is ignored and denied.

Reverend Rushdoony, he tells the story of, I think he was at UC Berkeley or someplace like that, talking to these people who want to get rid of all progress and all industry—you know, which is by definition of course sloth, right? Wanting to get rid of industry. But anyway, to talk to one of these slothful persons, and he asked his gal, “What are you going to do for food if you shut down all these factories and whatnot and put the farm out of business?” and she said, “Food is, you know, food is just there, you know.” And of course, the idea of the noble savage gives you that concept.

Well, it’s just out there. You just graze along and pick it off wherever it is, and you eat, and it’s a great thing. The noble savage is really the idle savage—the lazy slothful savage. And that’s what this man in Proverbs 24 turns into. The noble savage. The idle, lazy, slothful beast. Instead of being a man.

Well, that is not reality. And so God in his providence gives us the scriptures, gives us a word here that is very applicable for our times. The time in 1700s, maybe nobody—maybe nobody was fool enough to believe you could eat without having worked. But today, there are lots of people so foolish. Maybe they wouldn’t think about it quite that way. Some of them do, as the gal that said food is, and the people that advocate the noble savage.

But by way of application, in terms of social policies, that’s exactly what they intend is to say is that we can just stop everything and there’ll be enough food to feed us all. Scriptures say otherwise. The scriptures say you stop working, you know, to move away from Joe—you know, it’s interesting that of course—well, let’s see here. Let’s see what my what references I have here to look up before I get going.

Yeah. Essentially, the sluggard who essentially wants to sit and be fed from the bounty of other people is essentially what he wants to end up doing. It’s interesting too that in this connection, the welfare moms—you know, I taught my girls world history last year, and of course Rome, as it turned into a welfare state, began to feed people that wouldn’t work. And by the way, that was a change for Rome. Earlier in Rome’s history and Greece’s history, they had magistrates whose sole job it was to make sure people weren’t slothful and weren’t lazy. And if they were, they got severe punishments from the civil state for their slothfulness.

And I think probably in the early colonies of America, we had similar things based upon these verses we’re looking at. But in any event, later, as Rome got into a welfare state mentality, they had welfare mobs were a fairly common occurrence where people would go out and parade and demonstrate and mob the magistrate’s office demanding more bread and circuses—more bread and circuses.

And it’s interesting that of course we’re reaching that situation today in America. One of the few times the homeless people get enough energy up to do anything is to go down to city hall and march and demonstrate for better housing or better food or more benefits. We’re creating an underclass here that expects as an entitlement social welfare programs food, and that’s been in place for thirty years. And there were more in this country. And now this whole homeless situation is taking that food that we’ve guaranteed them now as an entitlement, a right of being an American, regardless of whether or not you work. And now we’re doing the same thing with housing.

You see, we’re saying anybody who wants to can have housing even if you’re into it. Now, you hear all the stories that there are people willing to work. And I’m sure there are people willing to work in the homeless situation, but believe me, they are not going to—no matter what government bureaucracy is set up in this country—they are not going to go down to the camps here in Portland underneath the bridges and ask people, “Are you willing to work or not as a condition of receiving government housing?” No way. They’re not going to do that. It’s perceived as a right, and you’re somehow uncivilized if that’s not what you believe.

Well, the truly uncivilized people are the people that advocate such programs. You know, the mercy of the wicked is terrible. And what these people do is obviate or ameliorate—they reduce the proper consequences of the terrible sin of slothfulness that God has put upon us. And as a result, don’t move the slothful man away from his sin.

You see what I’m saying? We said that slothfulness is progression, and it gets down to the place where you won’t even put hand to mouth anymore to feed yourself. And we think that to cure that problem is to give him food. No. To give the slothful man food is to assist in that cycling down until he ends up killing himself or just wasting away as a nihilist.

Nihilism is a fairly modern phenomena as a philosophical movement, and it really is applied slothfulness. You see, so God gives corrective judgments here to people that will respond in grace to the hunger that God sends upon them to show them of their failure to attend to him. To the people that respond correctly, God has been gracious to them. He administers grace to them. And others refuse God’s grace, and the hunger doesn’t solve their problem at all. They’re in ethical rebellion against God. They don’t want to hear it.

So the point of all that is that when we take some means of alleviating the slothful people other than what God’s word tells us to do, we are not helping them at all. We are hurting them. Now you know Mary Pride wrote a book called The Way Home.