Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Pastor Dennis Tuuri

**Scripture Reference: 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, and covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well. I looked upon it, and received instruction. Yet 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.

This morning we turn to the discussion of the fourth of the seven deadly sins known as sloth. We said before the old Greek word for that was acedia, or lack of caring. And we’re going to talk about in the weeks to come. Two weeks from today, we’ll talk about the application of slothfulness to the husband. So you might as well start getting ready for that.

Now, these next two weeks are not the weeks to miss your family devotions if you want to keep from feeling pretty guilty two weeks hence. Slothfulness is a tremendous sin. You know, moving away from the jokes in the family, it has very serious effects. We’ll talk about that in a couple weeks, and we’ll talk about a week, I think, about despondency and depression and sloth. But we started off by talking about the application of sloth to the simple activity of work—whether or not one gets to eat or not, and whether or not he works. And we’re using that as kind of the base for then discussing in this sermon the idea of the church, the family, and then our own emotional lives as well in the weeks to come. But this is where the important place we got to get the lesson learned is with these very obvious verses before us in terms of a slothful man not having things to eat and his house falling in upon itself.

Sloth is, as we said last week, kind of a dry rot in men. And we’ll see later on today that it leads into a liquefaction of the man. Hopefully I’ll give you a warning now that if we may not get to the second half of this outline—much of it in terms of the application to the church—the concluding song today really has that application in mind. And so if we don’t get to that, you’ll see why the last song seems a bit inappropriate. But in any event, I want to just review quickly what we said last week.

We looked at Psalm 24 last week. The purpose of the slothful man, to the wise man, is to give instruction to him. You don’t look at a slothful man and say, “Gosh, I’m glad I’m not as slothful as he is.” It’s not the idea. See, you don’t want to compare yourself and then say, “I’m okay because I’m not as bad as this guy over here who does absolutely nothing.” It’s not to give you reassurance. It’s to give you wisdom and instruction for how you to run your life.

And that wisdom begins by showing us that the man turned into a sloth—which is an animal term, of course. A man turned into beast. He does that through inaction, through the lack of working with his hands. His hands fail to work. And because he’s doing that, he is failing to image God correctly. We always pray that God would reveal something of himself. That’s what the prayer of illumination is all about.

Take that word, show us who you are, and then who we are supposed to be in relationship to that. We said last week that God is a God who works. And Jesus came to do work, the work of the father, and he completed all the work that the father had him to do. He works, and his father is working even to now. God is a God that works. He makes man to be a worker, not to be an idler or a slothful person. And so he gives us commandments.

When he puts Adam in the garden, he commands them to go to work to dress and keep the garden. When he gives the Ten Commandments, he says, “Six days shalt thou labor.” You have a specific law there. Paul in First Thessalonians commanded people with the authority of Jesus Christ to work for their living and for their food. So sloth turns a man into a beast by inaction of the hands and work. Sloth is self-centered.

Sloth really doesn’t care about the things around but just for oneself. And so there’s an element of self-centeredness to it. But it can also be seen as contrasted to pride. A couple of quotes we mentioned last week that I think are particularly good. Sloth is casting aside your calling to be a son or daughter made in God’s image and instead deciding to live as a lower animal. Pride wants to be more than a man.

Sloth wants to be less than one. Pride seeks God’s throne. Sloth runs away from the garden. Pride takes on God’s role. Sloth tries to escape human responsibility. Pride is the story of dominion turned sour. Sloth refuses to exercise dominion at all. Inaction of the hands. Secondly, the man turns beast through acedia, through no caring. He doesn’t have a heart to do anything. So it’s a failure not just of the hands.

It’s a failure of the hands that comes from a failure of the heart. Proverbs 24 says he saw the man who was slothful, the man who lacked understanding. We said that word is really like the word for heart, talks to his whole being. And so a man loses heart for his task, and as a result his hands go slack. Apathy is what’s being talked about there. Chaucer said that sloth has to do with this lack of caring, and as a result of failure to be diligent.

Even if sloth does something, it does it with peevishness, slackness, and false excusing as to why it shouldn’t be doing it. And then it also doesn’t do things well. It does a halfway job. That slothfulness—a failure to care for the work that God gives us to do. Condition of the spirit, and sloth comes about through a failure of the ears as well. This is the man who doesn’t take counsel. Remember we looked at one of the verses from the proverbs that talk about the sluggard who is more wise in his understanding than seven men with discreet answers.

And that whole—there are two verses that bracket a whole section of sloth there in Proverbs 26. And those brackets show us that the slothful man is one who refuses to take counsel. So his ears are stopped up to counsel of godly manity. Falls into fear of other things because he fails to fear God. Sloth has to do with a failure in the gut as well. He doesn’t have the belly for work because he begins to fear the things around him through his inaction.

Failure of the heart, the ears, the hands, and now the gut. He doesn’t fear God, but he ends up fearing the possible lion in the streets and won’t hear counsel that God takes care of lions. If he’s commanded us to do a task, our fear shouldn’t hold us back from it. Slackness of hands in the scriptures in the Old Testament is a result frequently of fearfulness of the world and a failure to fear God correctly.

Okay, we gave you some verses there on the outline last week. I didn’t include all the references this week in that first part, but last week’s outline is identical to the first half of this week’s outline. Point one has all the verses we’ve been talking about. Sloth reaps an absence of goods for oneself. Remember, we said that in Second Thessalonians, Paul commanded by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness they work and eat their own bread.

If one doesn’t do that, as a result, biblically, the punishment from God is failure to eat if you don’t work with your hands. But we said we have some problems in America. First of all, there’s an amelioration. There’s a weakening of God’s corrective judgments to the slothful through welfare, through social welfare programs that don’t insist that people work, but rather encourage and almost give way to the indolence of the homeless, for instance, of the transients.

Another way that the modern society ameliorates or lessens God’s judgment of the slothful is through debt. The slothful man frequently enters into debt and so he thinks he’s doing okay. He still got food on the table, but it’s only because he’s using somebody else’s money, and he’s become a servant. So our modern culture has a better idea than God’s word. And unfortunately, all too often the church has a better idea than God’s prescriptions for men who need money, need to put food on the table, which is work.

Gleanable assets in the church? No. The better idea instead is: “Even a person doesn’t work, he still should not starve in this country. We want nobody starving. If nobody doesn’t work, we’ll give them food anyway.” That really comes in the culture we live in—America—from the worship of the creature as opposed to the worship of the creator. Man is the measure of all things. You know, and as a result, if a man has needs, well, he really should do a better job of working.

But still, we can’t let a man suffer because he’s the ultimate goal and measure of all things. It’s the worship of the creature instead of the worship of the creator. Hunger. We said God sends hunger upon the slothful as the primary means to warn him and to move him away from his sinful action, to bring him to his senses. Judgment today is being softened by the civil state, dead economies, and welfare, etc.

Okay, and now a couple of other—this is where we’re going to pick up starting new stuff now. That’s about what we reviewed from last week, and now we’re going to move to some new material. Still working here on the application of this second point B of your outline, that sloth reaps an absence of good for oneself and for one’s family. Now I want to just kind of take a little bit of divergence here—but not too much, I don’t think—and there’s a second big point I want to make here.

The purpose of work is redefined to the slothful man as being the only purpose of work is to put food on the table. And so as a result, the slothful man today may have a lot of money. He may be able to put food on the table, but he still doesn’t work. He still doesn’t have a care for the calling that God has given him in terms of his vocational calling, and he is still slothful. What I’m trying to get across here is that beyond this idea of the obvious benefit of working in terms of food, that is not the goal of our work.

The goal of our work is to glorify God. There are two essential models today of what man is. And this environmental movement posits a model of man as caretaker as noble savage who just sort of exists in the context of the culture. The biblical model is dominion man who works for the glory of God to develop and beautify the world that God put him into. The way that Adam’s original work was to beautify the garden.

Gold doesn’t lay on the streets. It lays down in the sand. And there’s a verse in Deuteronomy 33. I don’t have the reference this morning; I’ll get it for you in a couple of weeks. The verse that says that the blessings of God will make his people suck the wealth out of the sea and out of the sands. You see, God puts us here to develop things. And that’s the purpose of our work: to beautify the world we live in physically, mentally, intellectually.

We’re to nourish our families, for instance, and we’re to nourish the world around us. The point of that is that if you think you have enough money where you don’t need to be diligent anymore in tasks, you failed to understand what the whole point of work is. It’s not to subsist. It’s not simply to feed the mouth. It’s to glorify God. It is to exercise dominion through being not caretaker, lazy, savage man, but instead to be dominion, productive man, regardless if we have enough money to be self-sufficient.

Why do people want to win the lottery in Oregon? Well, the primary reason is they got jobs they don’t like. They got jobs they don’t want to do, or they don’t want to do any work. They want to take this money and then just retire someplace. Why do we have people retiring at ages 62, 63, 70, whatever it is, and then just moving into a life of consumption instead of remaining productive with a different twist to it? Because we failed to understand what work is.

The church has failed to teach what work is, and as a result, the culture doesn’t know what it is anymore either. Noah Webster in his federal catechism, couple of paragraphs here, he said: “Money or a medium of trade is necessary in all great states, but too much money is a greater evil than too little. When people can get money without labor, they neglect business and become idle, profligate, and vicious. And when they have nothing but money, they are poor indeed.

Spain was ruined by its mines of gold and silver in South America. The kingdom possessed all the money in Europe and yet was the poorest. It will never be rich and flourishing till its mines are exhausted. The discovery of rich mines in this country would be the greatest misfortune that can befall the United States. Money is representative of property. It is the change which facilitates trade. But the wealth of a country is its produce, and its strength consists in the number of its industrious inhabitants.

But man cannot become rich unless he earns more than he spends. It is the same with the country. The laboring man are the support of a nation.” You see, what makes you rich isn’t possessions. It’s your diligence and labor for what God has called you to do. And the slothful man, the most he wants to do is just get by and put enough food on the table to eat. So the rich can be slothful as well, and failed to exercise calling.

And that’s because of this lack of care for what God has given us to do. God doesn’t give us great wealth to exempt us from service or productive labor. When he does give people great wealth, he brings with it greater responsibility because now you have greater resources to exercise diligence and stewardship and productivity over to glorify him. He doesn’t give us great wealth to exempt from service.

He gives it to add to the service that we have. You see this story of the talents that we talked about last week in the book of Matthew and also in the Gospel of Luke, where these guys are given various talents, and the one who doesn’t make anything productive—he just puts it, it’s probably a gold piece, right?—he puts it, he digs a hole in his yard and says, “I’ll just keep it intact. Might lose value or something. I don’t know.” And when the master returns, that’s the one that’s cast into hell. He has failed to be productive with the money and resources God gives him.

Okay, the purpose of work is not to subsist. It’s to glorify God. Now, some people become slothful because the church teaches cheap grace today. They quote verses like Psalm 37:25: “I’ve been young and now I’m old. Yet, I’ve not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.” Well, we have this promise. And so, if we are slothful, we’re Christians. God will still take care of us, won’t he?

Well, that’s a good verse. But Proverbs 10, which we read responsibly a couple of minutes ago, fleshes this story out a little bit for us. We read there in Proverbs 10:3: “The Lord will not allow the righteous to hunger, but he will thrust aside the craving of the wicked. Poor is he who works with a negligent hand, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” God’s promise is conditioned upon hard work.

It’s not cheap grace. God says, “No, I haven’t seen the righteous without bread.” Because the righteous are those who are diligent in work. And if you’re not diligent in work and you don’t respond to God’s corrections, God says, “You’re wicked.” In Proverbs 10, the slothful man ends up with nothing for himself and nothing for others. The point of our labor and the blessings that God give us isn’t again just for our own use.

It’s to make productive use. And it’s also to distribute to the poor or to those who need grace demonstrated to them. The slothful man has nothing for himself and he has nothing to give other people. God’s lack of slackness toward his people is his grace extended toward them. And in Proverbs 31, story of that dominion woman there, that mighty warrior of a woman, as it were. We read in there then Proverbs 31 that she looks well to the ways of her household and she eats not the bread of idleness.

She’s not slothful. What else does she do? Well, verse 19 says she layeth her hands to the spindle. Her hands hold the distaff. She’s a worker. Remember, we said that in the 1800s, the sign of a blessed marriage is when the wife’s furniture is moved to the man’s house, and at top it all was the spinning wheel. He’d married a dominion wife. Verse 20 says, “She stretches out her hand to the poor. Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.” Proverbs 21:24 says this: that the desire of the slothful killeth him, for his hands refuse to labor.

He, the slothful man, coveteth greedily all the day long, but the righteous giveth and spareth not. The slothful man can’t give. He is covetous to his own needs only, and he cannot have the goods to support other people, nor would if he had the goods. Again, work is to be productive, to provide for ourselves, and also to be able to give to those who have needs. Paul in Acts 20:32 in his farewell speech to the elders at Ephesus said, “I’ve been a good example.

I’ve worked with my own hands. I’ve been a diligent laborer.” He says in verse 34 of Acts 20: “I’ve ministered unto my own necessities and to them that were with me. I’ve showed you all things how that, so laboring, their own necessities. In other words, you ought to support the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said it is more blessed to give than to receive.” And so labor, when we teach our children about diligence, it’s also to have something left over to demonstrate grace to other people that God has given to us.

The slothful man, through lack of heart, lack of ears, lack of hands, and lack of guts, ends up not having things for himself. He misses rewards and instead what he does have from God is he has judgment. The presence of judgment is what he does reap. And again in Proverbs 24, not only is this slothful man’s poverty come upon him in verse 34 as one that traveleth, and his want, but we read there in verse 31 that his house has grown over with thorns and nettles.

The stone wall thereof was broken down. Thorns and nettles. That’s a picture in the scriptures of the howling wilderness, cursings of God. Yet the Garden of Eden on one hand—you got thorns and nettles on the other hand blessing and cursing. So we read things in Proverbs 24, for instance, where the slothful man ends up with thorns and nettles. It doesn’t just mean that blackberries took over. It means God’s curse is upon him. It means God’s curse is upon him.

It’s interesting that one of the few verses, other few verses where these terms are used in the scriptures, in relationship to Sodom and Gomorrah—how their land becomes filled with thorns and nettles these sort of things. Sodom and Gomorrah—we mentioned last week, I think, during the sharing time—that one of their sins was an abundance of idleness in their land. And remember, we said last week that the word used there for idleness in terms of Sodom and Gomorrah was a positive word in most cases.

But too much idleness, not being diligent to spread your wealth and to make yourself productive for God, ends up in curses to you. The curses that fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah and the curses in Proverbs 24 that end up to the slothful men’s house. Thorns and nettles. Thorns and nettles. Now, it’s interesting. We said that God isn’t slack in his promise to us and demonstrating grace to us and love to us.

But Deuteronomy 7:10 tells us another side of God’s failure to be slack. We read there that God repayeth them that hate him to their face to destroy them. He will not be slack to him that hateth him; he will repay him to his face. If God is diligent to reap out blessings to his people that are diligent, he is also diligent to reap out curses, thorns, and nettles to those who are not diligent and who hate God and turn from the task he has called them to do and instead do their own thing.

And this is the context for understanding Second Thessalonians 3. Turn there with me, please. Second Thessalonians 3. This is a very important passage. Very important passage in Second Thessalonians 3. The slothful person—you know, we kind of wink at laziness, and it’s kind of a joke and everything—but these are strong words in Second Thessalonians 3, verse 6. We command you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: you keep aloof from every brother who is unruly, who leads an unruly life, not according to tradition.

And then what is he talking about here? Well, we can think of things. Let’s let the verse tell us what he’s talking about. Verse 7 says: “You yourselves know how you ought to follow our example, ‘cuz we did not act in an undisciplined manner among you.” We weren’t undisciplined. We were diligent. Remember his example to the Ephesians elders? Worked with his hands. Verse 8: “Nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with labor and hardship we kept working night and day so that we might not be a burden to any of you.

Not because we don’t have the right to do this. In other words, he was an apostle. They should have paid him for his labors. But in order to offer ourselves as a model for you, that you might follow our example. For even when we are with you, we used to give you this order: ‘If anyone won’t work, neither let him eat.’ He’s talking here about keeping away from an unruly man, disciplining him with church discipline.

He—the unruly man—he’s talking about the object of this particular example of church discipline that he’s encouraging them to do is a slothful person. Not, you know, an adulterer or a murderer or idolater at the temple of Baal or something. No, a slothful person. A slothful person. Verse 12: “We hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all but acting like busybodies. Now, such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quiet fashion, eat their own bread.

But as for you, brethren, don’t grow weary of doing good. And if anyone doesn’t obey our instruction in this letter—in other words, ‘don’t be slothful, be diligent’—if he doesn’t obey that instruction, what are you supposed to do? Take special note of that man and don’t associate with him, that he might be put to shame. But don’t regard him as an enemy. Admonish him as a brother. There’s hope for him, but you’re supposed to discipline him. You’re supposed to take corrective action.

He doesn’t just say, “Don’t feed him.” He says, “Mark that man.” The church should mark that man. If he doesn’t respond to the exhortations of two or three to move away from his slothfulness, you’ve got to do more than that. You’ve got to mark him and then tell people, bring him to shame. In other words, slothfulness isn’t something just to be winked at. Slothfulness is a terrible sin. Apparently, some species of bees drive out useless drones that don’t do anything.

They drive them right out of the hive. The ancient Greeks and the Romans appointed magistrates, civil rulers to see that people spent their time not in sloth, but in diligent labor. They severely punished those men who were slothful. We used to have vagrancy laws. I think that we’re probably somewhat along that same line. Scripture tells us: when you provides not for his own, especially for those of his own household, he is worse than an infidel.

He’s denied the faith. We said last week: Matthew 25, that parable of the talents. Very interesting in Matthew 25, the people that use the talents that God gives them productively—God says, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” But to the one who just returns what he had and wasn’t diligent, what does he say to him? He says, “You wicked, lazy slave.” And then in verse 30, “Cast him out. Cast the worthless slave, the wicked and lazy one, into the outer darkness, in the place where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Slothfulness. This is a bad deal.

Major sin. One of the seven deadly sins. Now you know why. Hopefully. These verses from the scriptures tell us. Wickedness is what Jesus said here of the slothful men. Wickedness. In Proverbs 10, we just talked about that—about how, you know, the righteous are rewarded. But remember, it said there it said that he’ll cast aside the craving of the wicked. Poor is he that works the negligent hand. So in terms of the parallelism there, the man that works the negligent hand is a wicked man.

Not just a lazy man—a wicked man. See, he’s failing in the basic calling to image God through hard labor. It’s a bad deal. Bad deal. Now, let’s turn to Proverbs 6. I mean, we will get through all this. Proverbs 6. Very important situation going on in Proverbs 6. Much of this we’re familiar with in Proverbs 6. Go to the ant thou sluggard. You know, the industrious ants. Observe her ways and be wise. Probably know all about that.

Having no chief, no ruler, no officer, prepares her food in the summer. Proverbs 6 goes on to say, “How long will you, in opposition to the ant—in other words, who’s industrious?—how long will you lie down, oh sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of hands to rest. Your poverty will come on you like a vagabond. Your need is an armed man.” Similar verses to the Proverbs 24 passage we’ve been dealing with.

But notice this—that there’s a context here to these statements. In verse four. Well, I’ll start in verse one of Proverbs 6. The whole context here. If you become surety for your neighbor, you’ve given a pledge for a stranger. If you’ve been snared at the words of your mouth, you’ve been caught with the words of your mouth. Do this, my son, and deliver yourself, since you have come into the hand of your neighbor.

Go humble yourself and importune your neighbor. Now, very important lesson here in terms of surety for loans. Don’t do it. But listen to this. Verse four: Don’t give sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hunter’s hand and like a bird from the hand of the fowler. In Proverbs 6, he’s not talking about the man who is so lazy he doesn’t provide for himself. He’s talking about the man who has made a bad deal, entered into a bad covenant, and he is exhorting that man not to be slothful—to remove himself from that bad covenant that is going to be cursing to him.

He says, “Don’t, don’t wait till the guy says anything. Don’t go shy. Get out of that deal right now. Go and importune your neighbor. Break that covenant. Not unilaterally. Ask him to let you out of that agreement.” And you can see a guy saying, “Yeah, well, I’ll think about that. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow.” He said, “No, don’t do it tomorrow. This deal could go south tonight, and you could end up owing a lot of money and in a lot of trouble.” Now, Proverbs 6 is important because it tells us that there’s slothfulness in business.

You see, this is the segue, as it were, from these verses about slothfulness in terms of food—providing for yourself—into seeing that there’s a whole area of slothfulness and many other things that we do in life. Just as important, just as important. And he uses the very same words from Proverbs 24 about the man who’s going to come to poverty. Here he’s using them in terms of the man who is going to come to disaster through a bad business deal, a bad covenant of going surety for a man, going into debt.

So I guess what I’m saying is Proverbs 6 is a reminder to us that slothfulness applies to all these other areas of life. And we’re going to talk about one specific area. Now, before we do, a couple of other points from Proverbs 6 in case we don’t get back to it later. Notice here that the main problem is again a lack of activity in response to God’s calling. God calls us not to enter into such covenants. The slothful man fails to actively involve himself in getting out of that covenant.

And notice that this is again in here the same verse of Proverbs 24—that the steps to disaster are small ones. A little sleep, a little folding of the hands to slumber. Little by little, weaving the noose, the slothful noose, around your neck. That’s what sloth is all about.

Okay. Now, let’s talk about the application of this in terms of the church. And I’ve used the same basic outline in the second half of the talk as I have in the first half of the talk. First half of the talk: the man turns into a beast through his failure to diligently apply himself. And the church turns into Satan’s workshop. Remember, we mentioned the 15th century—well, maybe we did—the 15th century. There was a play written called Jacob’s Hell. And I don’t know if that was the origin, but that was at least one of the places where they really picked up on this phrase about idle hands being the devil’s workshop.

And it’s where that proverb, I think, was really developed in that play. And Satan’s workshop is the idle church. That’s why I use that as a description there. And what happens in an idle church that fails to attend to the task it’s supposed to be—and idle members of that church—they start to turn themselves inward. Notice how in Second Thessalonians 3, he said they not only are they not working and supporting themselves, they turn into busybodies.

See, idleness leads to all these other sins, and then you start talking about people and getting in problems with people, etc. And if you find yourself in a lot of that sort of activity, maybe the problem is you need—you don’t need so much to discipline yourself out of it. That’s part of it. But you need to put your hands to active work. Busy to active work. Church that doesn’t do that has become the Satan’s workshop.

And how does it do that? Again, through sloth, through the inactivity of the hands. In Joshua 18:3, Joshua says unto the children of Israel, “How long are ye slack to go to possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers has given you?” How long are you slack? How long are you slothful and sluggish about going in to possess the land? Joshua 18, and then it’s repeated later on in Judges 18:9 and following. That same essential talk tells us that one of the reasons, probably the reason, according to this verse, that while the people of Israel, when they came out of Egypt and they were supposed to go to the promised land and didn’t do it, they were slothful.

They were slothful, and they didn’t diligently follow God’s hand to go in and possess the land that he had given to them. And the church today is failing to put its hands to the purpose of conquering, as it were, preaching the gospel, discipling men and nations, and going into the land of the world and driving out unrighteousness and bringing in righteousness. And I think that probably the root cause of the church’s failure to have active hands for dominion work is slothfulness.

Now be said that slothfulness is not just a failure of hands. It’s a failure of heart. A slothful man lacks understanding according to Proverbs 24. He lacks a heart to do what God has told him to do. And the church today lacks that same heart to obey God. As the man turned to sloth becomes less of a man and he flees his garden responsibilities, so the church turns Satan’s workshop, becomes less than she has been called to do, by fleeing her responsibilities as well.

Yeah. Another writer wrote about the relationship of pride to sloth. He said if there is a pride of power, sloth is a refusal to exercise power. We refuse to use the power and abilities God gives us. We cover up the image of God. Sloth attempts to escape human responsibilities and flee from the garden. And the church today, through a lack of heart for what God has called it to do, and then a sluggishness and a torpor as a result of that, has failed to actively pursue preaching the gospel and the implications of the gospel in all that she is to do.

And so the church then also is failing, just as many people fail today. Remember, we said that sloth is essentially a withdrawal of oneself—one’s thoughts and one’s actions—and oneself really and his endeavor to society. He pulls back from his responsibilities to society and goes ingrown. And if that isn’t a picture of the church in most of the last hundred years in America, I don’t know what is. Sloth fails to move in service to God by moving out.

And the church has failed to move in service to God by moving into the promised land, as it were, of the world. Joshua led the people into the promised land. Joshua is a picture of Jesus, and Jesus tells us that all power and authority has been given unto him. And we exercise that power and authority through the preaching of the gospel. And when we fail to do it, we fail to exercise that power. It’s because we become slothful.

And the church has become slothful, not just through not caring, but through foolishness. Remember, we said the slothful man doesn’t take counsel. And the church today refuses to take counsel from all 66 books of the Bible. They take a short Bible approach, and as a result, end up not heeding God’s law and refusing to take counsel from God’s word. There is a rejection of the council of God’s whole word.

We said before that slothfulness is a particular sin that beset monks. Remember, we said last week that monks had no push and pull. They had no threat of removal of blessing because all they had was this daily subsistence that was theirs anyway. And they had no reward for their work because, if they did more work, it was communal lifestyle essentially. The monks had no push or pull, blessing and cursing, in the immediate context of their life.

And so sloth was a great temptation to them. Well, the church that moves away from God’s law, and as a result of moving away from God’s law, moves away from the blessings and cursings associated with that law, what is it left with? It’s left with a tremendous temptation for slothfulness. They don’t believe in blessings and cursings. They believe everything’s been given to us through Christ in Christ. And so they miss that push and pull.

Like the monk, like the undiligent man, through their foolishness of not hearing God’s word of blessing and cursing, they become having no heart for the task. There’s not a trumpet note in the life of the church today to call men into action. There’s a, at least I’m talking about now, churches that have a defeatist eschatology. We’re approaching Easter time. Remember, we in Isaiah it says, “Who hath believed our report of what Christ has accomplished with his death and resurrection?” There’s prophecy of that.

Remember, if you look at the picture of the people going to the tomb on Easter morning and the disciples that are there and know that Christ is risen, they go back and try to tell the other disciples. The disciples doubt them. They don’t believe it. They don’t believe that there is a risen Christ, and in Matthew 28, there’s two groups of disciples: some that hear the report, but some that doubt even after seeing Jesus. So we have a church today filled with some people that understand the implications of the resurrection and other parts of the church that still doubt whether the victory that Christ has—talked about in Christ—is finally occurred with his resurrection from the dead.

Now, without hope for the outcome of the warfare, without hope for the outcome, it is masochistic, essentially, then to care what happens in the world since one knows in advance what will happen will be bad. So if you are convinced that the outcome of a particular fight is bad, you’re not even going to enter in. Again, it’s a great temptation to slothfulness. Why care? Why try? And that’s the shape the church is in today.

Now, one of the things that is done on a weekly basis in this church and some less frequently in other churches that’s a picture of this eschatology is communion. When Howard L. was here, he mentioned a church that he attended that still has a memorial service for communion. And of course, communion is a memorial. It’s a remembrance of Christ. But his point was that, like so many churches today, communion is a sad affair.

It has to do with a lot of mourning. We’re going to talk about excessive mourning in the scriptures in a couple of weeks, three or four weeks. But Communion models to people a defeatist mentality. The Christ who has been crucified instead of the risen Christ. Whereas communion as it should be celebrated according to the scriptures, that death accomplished victory and reigning for Christ and for his saints.

And so you’re either modeling discouragement and a lack of heart for the battle, or you’re modeling victory and joy for the battle. And as a result, you are either encouraging people to slothfulness or to diligence in the task that God has called us to do—to preach the gospel and the implications of it. And so today’s church is very much like the slothful man grown slothful through foolishness and inattentiveness to God’s word.

As a result, having no belly for the fight, no heart for the fight, convinced of a defeat in the fight, and as a result they fall back and have slack hands as a result. And as a result of that, various things happen to them. Like the foolish man who, because of his slack hands, lack of belly, lack of heart, lack of hands, lack of ears, he reaps the absence of blessings. The foolish man does. So the church also reaps an absence of blessings for its own sloth.

Proverbs 22:29 says, “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings. He shall not stand before mean men.” Kuyper and Delich in commenting on this said that this man in Proverbs 22:29 is entitled to claim the highest official post. Now the church that fails to be diligent fails to achieve that standing before kings—a place of responsibility in the world and of counsel and of diligence. And as a result, the church fails to reap the blessing of reigning, and the members of that church failed to reign in their particular callings.

It’s interesting. Jeroboam—remember, we talked about him who went through Micah—he became king of the northern tribe. Solomon promoted Jeroboam to a position of great authority in the land. And we’re told in First Kings 11:28 that the specific reason why Solomon did that was because of his diligence—because he was a diligent man. He was appointed to that rule. Pharaoh asked Joseph, “Do you have any diligent brothers that I can put over some tasks here?” See, the scriptures have these examples that diligence does indeed put us before kings and increases our responsibility.

And by contrast, failure to be diligent—we don’t reap that blessing. Someone once said that he’s a poor soldier whose sole aim is to escape detention. So it is a poor Christian whose sole aim is to escape hell. That’s all the church teaches: a minimalistic gospel of escaping hell and not the implications of that for how we live out our lives here. And we’ve moved toward slothfulness. It’s not merely a neglect of duty—it’s a refusal to joy in what Christ has accomplished.

In any department of life, he will take his hands out of his pockets and say, down deep in his soul, “Time is precious.” That person will be crowned king. Never has this been so true as in our day today. If you apply yourself to a task and do well at that task, you are recognized, because the world is full of slothful men. The church failing to apply itself to these tasks ends up not reaping the blessing of reigning.

Lord Bacon on this particular verse from the proverbs about a man being diligent in his business said this, and this is so important for us who are working for employers and whatnot, as well as applying it to the church. “Of all the qualities which kings especially look to and require in the choice of their servants, that of dispatch and energy in the transactions of business is the most acceptable. There is no other virtue which does not present some shadow of offense to the mind of a king.

Expedition in the execution of their commands is the only one which contains nothing that is not acceptable.” Church doesn’t apply itself to its tasks. As a result, doesn’t reap blessing. But as the slothful man fails not just to reap God’s blessing but instead gets thorns and thistles, so the church also fails to reign and instead ends up under tribute. We read in Proverbs 12:24 that the hand of the diligent shall bear rule.

Word meaning to exercise dominion. But the slothful shall be under tribute. That word tribute means to tax with forced labor, to become a servant. In other words, a slave is a better term there. And that’s the word, the root word of that, means to liquefy. Remember, I said we’d get around to talking about liquefied men here. Well, the man who is slothful becomes under tribute, becomes a slave, liquefy. That dry rot is actually turned into a wet rot now, and he liquefies, and he no longer reigns but instead he’s under servitude.

And the church today is under servitude to the civil state because the church has failed to be diligent in its application of the word of God to every area of life. It’s failed to apply its hands and its hearts and its ears to God’s law diligently, and as a result is under servanthood, service now to the civil state instead of assisting that civil state, standing before kings and man. Burke wrote that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

And for all too long, that’s just what the members of the church have been doing in America: nothing. And so as a result, evil has triumphed. Evil is not to be laid at the doorstep of the secular humanist. It’s laid at the doorstep of the church that has been slothful and not diligent. Isaiah 56:10—we don’t have the time to turn there—but as a picture in Isaiah 56 of the slothful shepherds over God’s flock who fail to feed them, and as a result, they are then prone to be attacked.

They’re not guarded correctly by the church. And the ministers of God’s church in America for the last hundred years have been slothful and lazy, not guarding their people through equipping them intellectually, economically, and dominantly. And as a result, there is curse in the church and God’s judgment. We mentioned Dante and his seven deadly sins in the Purgatorio. The two reigns of sloth as you’re about to leave the cornice of sloth there—the things that are like the final whips to make sure you don’t enter back into sloth.

One is the negative example of the host of Israel who died in the wilderness for lack of proper zeal in following Moses into victory. And then there’s a second example that Dante uses of the results of sloth for a people or for a person. It’s a secular example: the followers of Aeneas who chose instead of going with him to live at ease in Sicily, ended up failing to enter into the blessings of Aeneas, who founded the city and the culture of Rome—Rome, which at once was a great place.

So in both areas, failure of diligence to press forward and to do the hard work that brings victory and blessing brought instead cursing upon their heads. Commentator named Strauch commenting on these verses and referring to Luke 19, the parable of the talents in the Gospel of Luke, said: “The man who squanders time, shuns toil, and buries his pound in his napkin—his money in his napkin—is not worthy to live on earth. And that’s what God will do to the slothful man or the slothful church. It becomes utterly worthless except to be trodden underfoot.”

Now, as we move to a conclusion here, I know this isn’t exegesis, but it’s a good picture of what we’re trying to say this morning. In Exodus 17:11, there’s a picture of Moses who holds up his hands. And it reads that it came to pass when Moses holds up his hands, Israel prevails. And when he put down his hand, then the Amalekites prevailed. Well, I know it’s not directly applicable to what we’re talking about, but it’s a good picture of sloth and diligence on one hand and victory and sloth on the other and defeat.

Our place in the context of all this in terms of the church is the holding up of hands and working and in worship to God. Our place is to do what we know we’ve been called to do. Now, we can see lots of other churches that may be slothful in doing these things, but remember, the scriptures tell us: to him that knoweth what to do and who does it not—to him it is sin. And Dante said, “The slothful are those who recognize the good but we’re not diligent to do the good.”

If we have increased knowledge of what the scriptures teach in terms of law, blessings, and cursings, and victory, then we have an increased responsibility to act in obedience to it, and an increased judgment if we don’t. Colossians 4:17: we read, “Say to Archippus, ‘Take heed to the ministry which thou received in the Lord, that thou fulfill it.’ We’ve all received ministries in our homes and our vocations in the church. Take heed to it. Fulfill it. Do it well.

I want to talk just a couple of minutes as we close up here too about how we teach our children these things. Very important, of course, to teach the next generation. First of all, to teach your children, get them to recognize sloth for what it is—not something cute or silly or anything else. Sloth brings disaster and judgment from God. Sloth is a wicked enemy of God and the purpose he has called the church to do. You must recognize what that sin is and the vilenesses of it, and get your children to recognize it, and that’ll bring repentance.

But on the positive side, they should also value the opposite. Value diligence. We read in Proverbs 12:27 that the precious substance of men is to be diligent. The precious substance of men is to be diligent. That’d be a great verse for all the children in this church to memorize, and the parents too, of course. That diligence is a precious substance and it produces wealth and prosperity as we move in obedience to God. And even if it doesn’t produce wealth and prosperity in this world, it produces eternal blessings and glory to God.

And that’s what he’s called us to do. So get our children to recognize sloth for what it is and to value diligence for what it is: a precious, the precious commodity or possession of man. Now, if you understand sloth here, another thing you want to teach your kids and yourself is that the answer to sloth is not simply to whip your children into doing more work. It’s not just idle hands. It’s an uncaring heart.

It’s the uncaring heart and the unhearing ear to God’s word that produces the slack hands. And there’s one other factor: fear in the gut. The point is, we got to teach our children not just “Come on, keep moving, keep being diligent here.” No, we want to do that. We want to train them. Don’t be cold-hearted to what God has taught you to do. Have a warm heart to God and to the calling that he has given you as an individual.

If you don’t move on the heart, you may have busy hands, but you still haven’t cured slothfulness really, because there’s no care for what God wants us to do. You got to work on the heart of the child. You got to work on the ears of the child with God’s word. You got to work on the gut of the child. This is real important for this church to hear. Our children, probably as they’re getting older, probably know more about the various evils and terrible things that are going on in our world than, you know, 100 children—99 children out of 100 know less than our children do.

But along with that knowledge, we’ve got to teach them the victory that Jesus Christ has promised in the midst of this sort of world. You see, if we teach them to have a heart for what God wants them to do, open ears to hear the word of God and try to, by that, get them to be diligent—fearfulness, as we’ve said before, can put people into a position of slackness or slothfulness.