Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Diligence and Sloth

has as its center the sayings of the wise at the middle of the book that really form a summary of that book. The last time I preached I preached on the central verse of the first 30 sayings of the wise. Today we’ll turn to the conclusion of the sayings of the wise. The conclusion of any piece like this is particularly significant. This conclusion is found in Proverbs 24, verses 30 through 34. That is our sermon text.

Proverbs 24:30 through 34. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Proverbs 24, beginning at verse 30. “I went by the field of the lazy man and by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding. And there it was, all overgrown with thorns. Its surface was covered with nettles. Its stone wall was broken down. When I saw it, I considered it well. I looked on it and received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. So shall your poverty come like a prowler and your need like an armed man.”

Let’s pray. Father, may your spirit write this word upon our hearts. Transform us, Lord God. We know that indeed we are to ascribe strength to you alone. We have no strength to resist the heartless slothful condition that we inherited from our poor father Adam. That Jesus Christ is full of strength and might. And we pray that the spirit of Jesus might transform us that we might receive his might, his power, his strength, his diligence and so not suffer curse but enter into blessing. In his name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. It is a joy to return to this church, to this congregation from my travels, Eli and I, to Poland. We had a blessed trip, a most blessed trip from our Lord and Savior in all respects. It was very profitable for the kingdom. I am sure both the talks from the seven letters to the churches of Revelation that I gave in Upper Silesia and then the talks on the seven deadly sins and the two sermons I gave from John chapter 6 seemed well received and seemed very appropriate for the particular places we were speaking.

As I meditated upon the situation in Poland and prepared for our return and thought of the sequence in the church year that we are now celebrating, I thought it would be good not yet to return to the gospel of John but to spend the Lord’s day speaking about sloth and diligence in preparation for next week’s service which is to focus upon worldwide missions.

It’s really my intent to exhort this congregation to faithfulness and diligence in this critical area of our mission at RCC, this area of contributing to world missions and specifically to the regions that God has directed us to. It is my belief that God is affecting slowly but surely reformation in Poland. There are many good things I will bring in a report about this at the appropriate time. This church has already done good labors in inaugurating and promoting reformation in Poland and the external manifestation of the kingdom of Christ in that country and with those people.

It’s funny on the way over Eli was talking to me and asked me if I had a heart for Poland. And I never really think in those terms and said I don’t know that I have a heart for Poland. But this is what God has told me I’m supposed to do next is come over here and preach. About a week into it, we were standing with a pastor in Rybnik and Eli and I had to chuckle because he turned to me and he said, “Well, it’s very clear you have a heart for Poland and we really appreciate you being here.”

Well, this subject of sloth and diligence is about whether or not we have heart for tasks. And I guess that in terms of a heart for the task that God has given to us, I certainly have a heart for the people in Poland that God has led us into relationship with and for their mission in Poland. And I want to exhort this congregation to have a heart for these same things that your leaders of your church, your elders have determined a direction for us to take.

I’ll tell you right at the get-go here that one of my points of application as we get to the end of the sermon will be diligence in our economic affairs. You know, at this point, our giving to the work in Poland and India—most of it’s going to Poland—is very significant and helps them greatly. Most of this giving is accomplished through the tithes and the elders directing a portion of those tithes to be used in mission work overseas. And I think that it’s time for this church to consider to pray about offerings, regular offerings to worldwide missions above and beyond the tithe.

So I’ll put that right out in front for you. Paul exhorted the churches in his epistles to give to the needs of the church at Jerusalem and it was impoverished. That church in Poland is impoverished. The economy there is very poor and with just a little support from this church, tremendous things have happened and will continue to happen, Lord willing, in that country.

There’s a woman there who we could support full-time translating works. She’s translated Nancy Wilson’s book *Fruit of Her Hands* into Polish. Other translation work has happened there, you know. For probably her we could replace her salary at the school she teaches with $250 a month. I’m not saying all from this church, but I’m saying that kind of minimum support can actually fully support a woman translating works from English into Polish. Now, we have to think strategically: what could we publish these works? What kind of money would be available for that? How do we put together what’s the wise and strategic use of resources?

But I believe that it is our desire, it’s my desire certainly and the desire of what we’ll present in the context next week for our church to grow in our heart for worldwide missions, to not be slothful about it, but to be diligent based upon our heart attitude, and to promote the use of more funds from our congregation, if possible, to do this sort of work.

So, I’ll return to that theme, but I want to talk first about diligence and sloth in more of a general sense from the passage we’ve just read. I want to talk about its application, obviously, in terms of vocation. I want to talk briefly about its application in terms of the family. Then, I want to talk about its application again in terms of the church and then we’ll conclude.

So first of all in this passage we have as I said a climactic passage to the center of the book of Proverbs—the literary center and the outline of how Proverbs is constructed together. It climaxes on this exceedingly long section. There are five verses here—that’s long in the book of Proverbs—exhorting diligence to us, exhorting us to have diligence, warning us about the dangers of sloth.

One of the most important things for our young people to develop—in Proverbs is written to young people—is a heart to do particular things. A heart to engage in particular activities and a desire to diligently keep their heart in this critical time when sin is knocking at their door in the form of many and diverse temptations that they did not have until they move beyond puberty into adult life, until they move to the place where vocation begins to be considered. How shall wealth be obtained? What shall we do with that wealth? What shall we do with the alcohol we can now drink? What shall we do with the sexual desires that we now have? All of this world opens up and at the height of the instruction at the center of this book that young people are to have on their tongues in their minds and hearts is diligence. Diligence and this tremendous warning that Proverbs gives us in terms of a slothful attitude and the results of it.

I can tell you young people, I can tell the families in this congregation that your elders have a diligence and a heart to do what’s right in the context of this church. As any church always has, this church has a variety of issues going on at any particular time. And I want you all to rest assured that your elders will diligently attend to what needs to be attended to in this church. We’re exhorted in Romans 12 that those who rule should do so diligently, not slothfully, with a hard attitude to bring correction, to bring oversight and if necessary to bring discipline in cases where it is needed.

And I know that your elders have a heart to do just that. I’m not trying to frighten anybody, but I am trying to say that these warnings that given us in scripture against slothfulness are real. And one of the ways that God brings chastisements into the life of his people is through the voice of their elders, urging them to repentance, urging them to have not a slothful attitude, but diligence.

The very center of the heart—part of the Proverbs here—exhorts us to diligence and specifically exhorts children to diligence in hearing their parents and abiding by their wisdom and their discretion. One of the most critical areas for young people as they move into adult life is to heed this call to diligence, not sloth, in hearing the words of their parents and attending to them. Very critical.

And so we have these warnings presented for us. These warnings are set first in an illustration here in the verses in front of us that talk about sloth in some very specific ways and these verses are obviously related first and foremost to vocation and then to the home and then we’ll make application to the church.

What happens in this text? Well, what we have here is we call men slothful or sluggards. Men—the ill—the language that we use is a picture to people that when they enter into this particular activity, they exchange the image of God as men and they become mere beasts, slugs and sloths. A sloth is the slowest moving animal that there is. Sloths move so slowly that their hair, the older they get, turns green from the algae that lives on their backs. Sloths will frequently spend their entire life in one tree. Sloths are so slothful, so lacking in diligence even to receive food that most species of sloth are now extinct through starvation. They are a picture to us. They’re a picture to us.

And here this man who does not have diligence, the lazy man is moving like a sloth. The image of God is to work diligently. Jesus said that he came to execute the Father’s will. And Jesus has great diligence. His food, his very source of sustenance and joy—that food is sustenance and joy—is to do the will of the Father, to complete the work he has been given to do until it’s over, to complete that work. God calls us to be imagebearers.

God made the earth. Sloth is a perversion of the fourth commandment. It wants to have Sabbath rest all the time instead of laboring six days and then entering into Sabbath rest. And our culture is given to sloth in its worst forms. People work so that they can retire and they can enter into sloth. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t retire, but if you retire, it should be to change the sort of work or labor you do, not to escape from it. It is of the very essence of us being the imagebearers of God to work six days and then rest on the seventh day. That is a command to us to labor. Do all your work six days.

The slothful man doesn’t do this here. And he doesn’t do it not just simply because he doesn’t have hands that are ready. The picture of sloth is slack hands, you know, somebody with his hands down. I was asked by a pastor in Poland what I thought about the Arab-Jew situation and they’re very—these brethren churches are very dispensational. But in the context of the conversation, he said that in Poland they say that Arabs have two left hands. They just can’t ever get it together to build a culture. And you know, that’s a—you don’t want to say Arabs, you probably want to say Muslims because that is the Muslim culture. It’s one of sloth and then great oppression as well.

Well, that’s the slothful man. He has slack hands. But the slothful man also has a heart that’s not given to the task that God has given to him. We read in verse 30, “I went by the field of the lazy man.” His hands are hanging down. But his heart has a problem too. “By the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding.”

Now this word understanding has a connotation of understanding. The slothful man, the Proverbs tell us, is wiser in his own thinking than seven men with a good answer. So the slothful man has stopped up ears. He can’t hear God’s counsel through people. But he also—this word primarily means this word “understanding” in my translation “devoid of understanding” could be better translated. He has a lack of heart. He has a lack of heart.

God has given him a vineyard. He’s given him a picture of the garden like he gave Adam, but he doesn’t have a heart to do the things in that garden. God has given you tasks to do. Teenagers, young people, God has given you a task to honor your parents, to respect their authority, to submit to their wise judgments as you’re moving into independence. Parents, they’re becoming independent. They’re going to make decisions. Your relationship to them has to change. But young people, you must have a heart to desire to hear what your parents say. If you do not, then if you walk down the wrong path, you will suffer curses. That’s what happens to this man.

His heart is lacking for the task. And instead of a garden, instead of a vineyard—a vineyard’s the place of joy. God puts us in the place of joy in this church. He puts us through the work of Jesus Christ in a vineyard. He causes us to rejoice with one another. But the man without a heart to do the central things of his life—to work, to listen to his parents and his authorities and his superiors in the family and the church and the state. This man, he doesn’t have a vineyard. His vineyard is all overgrown with thorns and nettles.

Do I need to tell you what that means? The Garden of Eden. Adam is kicked out. Thorns and nettles are the specific words that are used to describe the curse of God upon man who rejects and rebels against the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. His life has moved from blessing and joy and peace to curses, thistles, nettles, hard time. You’re getting hurt all the time. The slothful man isn’t happy in his sloth. His way is hedged up with thorns and thistles.

The Proverbs say he doesn’t—he cannot get satisfaction because he will not be blessed by God in his labor. It’s because he doesn’t have a heart to do what God wants him to do. And he suffers curses, thorns and thistles. I know there are people in this congregation, as there is in every church. Your way is becoming a way of thorns and thistles. You’re suffering the judgments of God because you don’t have a heart to do the simple things that God places in front of you.

God says that the slothful man moves from blessing to curse, from being an imagebearer of God, a man, into being a slug and a sloth. So-called in our language today appropriately because of this rejection of the image of God. He has become a beast, a sloth because of his inaction, his hands that hang down, because of his loss of heart.

In the ancient, in the medieval church, the word for sloth is acedia—no heart. Because they understood this verse and other verses that says the problem with the slothful man, the reason his hands hang down is because he doesn’t have a heart for the work. And the sloth, the man turned beast through sloth does so through foolishness. He is devoid of understanding. He will not hear counsel.

Let me ask you something this morning. How does Jesus talk to you? How do you hear the voice of Jesus? I was preaching over there in one of these brethren churches and I talked about the seven letters to the seven churches and Jesus comes to the churches on Sunday and we hear the voice of Jesus coming through the pulpit and afterwards a woman came up to me and said I was sort of concerned about what you said because doesn’t Jesus speak to us in the Bible when we read the Bible and I said well I didn’t say Jesus only speaks from preaching of the pulpit but you should understand that Jesus is speaking in that way and I want to write to this woman and give her a little fuller answer.

You know that one of the huge problems with the church in America and the evangelical church in Poland is we think that Jesus talks to us in our quiet time—that’s when Jesus really speaks to us. We get off by ourselves, read our Bibles and pray. That’s when we’ll hear the voice of Jesus. Now, Jesus can and undoubtedly does talk that way many times. But if you do a survey of the New Testament, when the Spirit of God moves them, speaks to them, corrects them, encourages them in a path, it is almost always—90% of the time—it is through the voice of people. It’s through the voice of your mom, the voice of your dad, the voice of your children, sometimes the voice of your friends, the voice of the preacher.

God uses other people. Why does he do that? Because we’re without heart in our fallen nature to hear the word of God. We are self-deluded and deceived. This is one of the great points of Vantillian understanding of the world in which we live. We are, as Augustine said, man curved in on himself. We need a crushing blow from outside to understand what’s really going on in our life. Because when we get alone with Jesus and we read his word and we think about ourselves, we justify everything. The slothful man rationalizes everything. “There’s a lion in the street.” There’s a reason for my inaction. See, you—we laugh at that, but we shouldn’t because this is who we are.

We twist God’s word in our sinfulness. And it is so easy to do in the privacy of our prayer closets when it’s just us and something there, the scriptures and the prayer. And we think that—I don’t think that’s what God talks to us. Young people, if you’re going to be diligent and have a heart to do what God wants you to do, you should understand that your father and mother speaking to you is the voice of Jesus Christ more often than not. When their instruction is consistent with the word of God, it is the voice of Jesus. Nothing less than that.

“My sheep will hear my voice,” Jesus said. He didn’t say they’ll feel my voice. He didn’t say they’ll have an inclination of what they maybe should do. Some of that’s certainly true. The Spirit motivates us. But Jesus said that you lambs should hear the voice of Jesus speaking in your parents’ words. To rebel against them, their authority, their discussion of your actions is to rebel against Jesus and to move from being man to being a beast. From the vineyard and the blessing to the thistles and the nettles and the curse and having a way that’s difficult.

“Its stone wall was broken down.” Can’t guard anything, right? Adam failed to guard the garden, the vineyard, and it got all overgrown at this serpent who then ushered in the curse. And the slothful man, the young man or young woman, the parishioner that doesn’t—you know—hear the voice of Jesus talking to their elders.

Let’s think and pray about what we should do for missions, what we should do in terms of benevolences, what we should do to pay off this building, the various tasks that we’re given to do, what we should do in terms of understanding the scriptures, the instructional opportunities. What happens is then curses come up, the wall is broken down, and you are open to your adversary. That’s what’s being pictured here.

Will we see this verse 32 and consider it well? Praise God for the sluggards because God says they have a purpose in his created universe. They’re to help us to see what the problem is. We’re supposed to consider it well. We are supposed to look upon it and to receive instruction. “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. And so shall your poverty come like a prowler, and your need like an armed man.”

You know, the picture of what happens here is not that the sluggardly man all of a sudden says, “I don’t care about God.” But he turns away—a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands—a little wall of resistance, what mom and dad have to say, a little wall of resistance. Well, as elders add it again about money or whatever it is, little turning away, little loss of heart.

Before you know it, your back is turned to your parents or your back is turned to your spouse. You become loveless toward it. You don’t have a heart for the marriage anymore. You don’t have a heart to encourage your husband or wife to righteousness anymore. God says little turnings away and end up with our back to each other. And then we’re in this place of curse. God says we’re no longer even imaging his created image in terms of being men and women. Now we become beasts through a loss of heart, a loss of action through foolishness and plugging up our ears and other people trying to tell us, “Do this. This is the path. Walk in it.” No. Wiser in his own eyes.

Slothful man doesn’t attend to his vocation. And because he doesn’t attend to his vocation, he’s not blessed by God. And when he’s not blessed by God, he doesn’t have goods for himself. His poverty comes upon him. This text says other scriptures are replete with references to this—that the slothful man will not receive the blessings of the land. The person that doesn’t have a heart for their vocation ends up impoverished. They end up not having things for themselves. And worse than that, they don’t have things to give to others as well.

We are called upon by God to not just serve ourselves, but rather to give to other people. Turn to Acts 20, verse 33, please. This is another—this passage we’re going from today is the conclusion to the words of the wise. This text in Acts 20 is the conclusion of what Paul says to the Ephesian elders. Familiar task to those that aspire to office, for those that evaluate officers. Acts 20 is a picture of many things through Paul’s admonitions. It tells us what elders should be like. And he concludes this in a very interesting way at the conclusion of his final speech to the elders at Ephesus.

Verse 33: “I have coveted no man’s silver or gold or apparel. Yea, you yourselves know that these hands were not slack. They did not hang down. These hands have ministered unto my necessities and to them that were with me.” He says that he’s been diligent in economic matters, in vocation, and in producing a living—not just for himself but for the people that were part of the team that traveled with him.

Why does he do this? Why is this picture of sloth given to us at the ends of the words the wise? It puts an image in our mind. It’s an illustration to remind us of the curse of slothfulness. Why does Paul bring these things up? He says in verse 35, “I have showed you all things.” He’s saying that my conduct has been a picture to you of how you should understand your vocations. “I have shown you all things how that so laboring you ought to support the weak.”

Now, we know that elders support the weak in faith, weak in relationships, and we know that elders are about helping strengthen and nourish up God’s people in the word. But the immediate application here is financial. It is money. You should work. You should work to support the weak and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, how he said “it is more blessed to give than to receive.”

And when he had thus spoken, he knelt down, prayed with them all. Last thing he says to the elders—to teach the congregation to teach themselves—is diligence. And specifically diligence in vocation, to the end. Not just that we would have a good life for ourselves but rather that we might help those. It is more blessed to give than to receive.

You see your vocation in this way. You know, the problem in the world today is the Christian church has moved away from the Puritan idea of calling and vocation. In the Reformation sloth was seen as a tremendous sin. Not having a heart for the job that God had given to you is a tremendous sin because every job was seen again as a holy calling from God. To plant the garden and extend it into all the world and to not have a heart for the task that God has given you to do tomorrow morning at 8:00 when you go to work is sin before God. And it is a very important sin because it moves you away from blessing into curse.

God says the very reason he has given you to work tomorrow is not primarily for the support of your family. That’s part of it. But it is primarily to manifest the garden image in the world. And that in terms of economics, it is so that you might support yourself and your family certainly, but that you also might be able to give to those who are in less fortunate circumstances through no fault of their own. You’re supposed to help other people with your money.

Why this offering is important. That’s why committing to giving offerings to the church in Poland that can have such an effect in our in the lives of the churches over there is significant and real. That should be thought about and prayed about by every member of this congregation. What can we do? You know, we would like to see the elders use of the tithe money that’s budgeted for missions. Maybe a goal for this church would be to match that amount of money with offerings from the church. I don’t know. But I’m telling you there is a tremendous opportunity for reformation in Poland. And we have an obligation to take if we have excess money.

I’m not, you know, the last thing you want to do is to go into debt to do anything with your money or to impoverish your family. But I know that most of us are taking care of our families. Okay? God says, you know, he wants us to understand that the use of our resources and our vocation is not just our own families or to feather our own nests, as important as that is, but rather to extend grace through the benevolences of the church and to the missionary endeavors in Poland, which essentially are benevolence as well.

God says that we understand that we are supposed to work. You know, Richard Baxter—there’s this saying in the scriptures in Thessalonians. Paul says that if you won’t work, if a man won’t work, neither should he eat. And Baxter, the great Puritan pastoral theologian said that he thought this applied to everybody, including the wealthy. You got some wealthy guy that’s just, you know, sitting around all day slothfully. He shouldn’t be allowed to eat. Wasn’t a matter of eating to sustain your food. It was a matter that the idea is that if you’ve given up work, you’ve given up the essence of who you are as an imagebearer of God, and you don’t deserve the food that comes from God’s table ultimately.

So sloth, failure of heart—no belly as well. There’s no belly for the fight. You know, and the church was in the wilderness and was supposed to go into the promised land. The specific exhortation from God told them that they were slothful. “Why are you slothful to enter the land? Why don’t you have a heart for what I’ve given you to do to conquer this land? Why don’t you have belly for the fight that’s going to happen to you when you go there?”

That we have a belly for the fight as Reformation proceeds in America or as Reformation proceeds in Poland or in India. Are our hands slack or are they active? Are our ears closed to the counsel of other people in these matters or are they open to the counsel of God’s word? Is our heart involved or is it cold? Do we want to do what God has put before us in terms of our families, our work, the church, or do we not care? Is our belly ready to go to do what God has called us to do?

I don’t want anybody to understand by this lack of heart being the essence of slothfulness in this text before us that I mean by that you have some kind of excuse that you’re supposed to wait around for God to mystically move upon your heart. That is a perception of things that comes from the pit of hell that tempts many a man to more and more sloth. You’re supposed to repent of your failure of heart and to apply your heart with all diligence to the task that God has given you to do. That’s what God calls us to do.

Now, on a broader sphere, this idea of sloth as self-deception is clearly pointed out and we need to hear words from other people about our sloth and about our selfdeception. You see the church thinks that we can’t do the task. If you think about it today the modern church has rejected the law of God, which is the basis for our counsel and wisdom, and it’s rejected an eschatology of hope which is the basis for having a heart for the task God has given to us. So in its very theology the modern church in America and in Europe doesn’t have ears open to the counsel of God’s law and it doesn’t have heart and a hope for the future that will drive it away from self-deception and away from a depression that comes along with selfdeception in terms of what God would call us to do.

But we know that God does call us to these things. He does give us counsel. He does put hope before us. And we should repent of our failure to engage in these matters.

Proverbs 12:24 says this: “The hand of the diligent will rule, but the lazy man will be put to forced labor.” Now, we’re dominion men and women. We said that the whole movement of the 30 sayings of the wise is to move from keeping the law of God, becoming a son, and then a householder, and then exercising dominion and helping other people. That’s the movement of the 30 sayings of the wise that I talked about four weeks ago from the pulpit. And this movement, it ends with a great call to diligence.

And what we see today in the context of Poland and America is a church that is servant and tribute to the state. No longer ruling, informing, advising the state of matters, but completely irrelevant. Why? Because the church has become slothful to her task to extend the manifestation of Christ’s reign into the world in which we live. God says that we’ll be put to forced labor. And that’s what’s happening. Failure of diligence on the part of the church.

And that you young people and parents, the same thing will occur there. If we don’t exercise dominion, if we don’t grab a hold of the task that God gives us to do with our children. If our young people don’t grab a hold of the task to have open ears to hear the voice of Jesus speaking through their parents, they will be put to forced labor. Their life will not be one of exercising dominion in the context of vocation and a godly calling. No, they’ll be the tail and not the head.

And so it is with young people that I know who have grown up not diligent to abide by the wisdom of their parents. They work jobs that are somewhat meaningless. They don’t have the ability to exercise dominion in any sense. And they are, as this verse tells us, they will be under forced labor in many instances. They’re the tail and not the head.

“Anxiety in the heart of a man causes depression. But a good word makes it glad.” You may be thinking, “Yeah, this is me. I have a failure of diligence. My failure of diligence to grab a hold of my family has created weeds, thorns, and thistles in my children. My failure of diligence to exhort and encourage my wife has caused weeds, thorns, and thistles in the context of my marriage. My failure to keep heart with God and encourage my husband and what he’s supposed to be doing as a wife has caused thorns and thistles in the context of our home. And this may bring great depression to you. It probably will.”

Anxiety in the heart of a man causes depression. This immediately follows this idea that the hand of the diligent rules, but the slothful man is under tribute. It’s being under tribute. It’s being having these thorns and thistles grow up in the context of our lives that may indeed then lead us to further sloth through depression, through sadness, through an inability to think through things at all.

This text in Proverbs 24 goes on to say that the lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting, but diligence is a man’s precious possession. God has given us at a drop from the sky this relationship to the church in Poland. Will we add value to that? The slothful man may be given something in hunting. He may have some food that God has dropped into his lap, but he doesn’t cook it. He doesn’t add value to what God has placed into him.

You know, in an economy, there’s value added products. You take a product, some kind of computer, you add certain value to it, special programming, whatever it is, you sell value added products and you’ve added value to them. Well, the same thing’s true of the tasks of the church. God has given us particular things not so that we can just say, “Oh, isn’t this nice? Let’s eat it raw.” But it’s so that we can take a hold of it. Have a heart for what God has given to us. Add value to that thing. The diligence.

Avoid depression, melancholy of thinking that somehow, you know, bad things are happening and we just can’t get it together. That’s the tendency when we’re slothful. But God says, “No, add value to what God has given you.” What do you add value to? Do you add value to your wife? Do you add value to your husband? God gave you a mate. Probably in most cases there wasn’t a great deal of diligence involved. Perhaps there was some hunting for your wife, for your husband. Now you have this wife or husband. Will you add value to the relationship?

If Jesus speaks to other people primarily, and I believe he does, then primarily probably one huge reason why God has given you a mate is so that Jesus could break through your selfdeception and your selfishness and help you to see the areas of your life that need correction and need diligent work.

Again, God says, you know, you find out that you’ve got a mate who’s fallen and maybe fallen in many more ways than you thought and maybe isn’t doing that well at all. Well, wake up and smell the coffee. That’s your job. You’re going to be the voice of Jesus, the primary voice of Jesus, speaking to your husband, speaking to your wife, speaking to your children.

God causes you to have children—not a lot of diligence involved in having kids. They come fairly easily to most people. Sometimes not. Providence of God. Some have difficulty in bearing children. Most people have quite a few and it’s not that tough. God gives them to you in hunting so to speak, drops them out of the sky. A storm comes, brings them to you and you raise them. But do you self-consciously have a heart for grabbing a hold of these children, raising them diligently?

You know, it’s interesting. Every time I come back from Poland, I come back with a renewed intent to be a better father, a better husband, a better pastor, grabbing a hold of the people that God has put in my area of responsibility, loving them, loving them enough to speak the words of Jesus of rebuke as well as exhortation to them. Always in the context of exhortation, helping people to see what God has done in their life already.

But I thought about this when I was gone. Why does this happen? You know, well, I stop all the busyness. No emails, maybe one or two. No cell phones, no CNN, no worrying about the Arabs and the Israelis. I come back and watch the news and it’s the same thing as it was three weeks ago. What difference does it make? All the hours I put in. Oh, some understanding of current events is good. You know, I chastise my children sometimes for video games, but I do just as much slothful activity with the news as they do with the—I watch the investment shows as if I had money to invest. You know, it’s pointless. So, I’m taken away from all of that busyness and I think about these people all day long. I give a little talk in the evening, couple of talks maybe. I think about the people involved. I rebuild those relationships and that helps me to come back here with a proper sense.

And I think that sometimes we lose heart because we’re so distracted by so many things in our lives that the central job of grabbing a hold of the mate, the children, the other people in our church—you know, to grab the job God’s given to us, adding value to it, excelling in it, applying ourselves with diligence. These things just get scattered sometimes because we get so busy with all the affairs of life and we get so disappointed when the children don’t respond or the mate doesn’t respond or the wife doesn’t respond or we tend to lose heart.

And God would have you to know that. Don’t excuse that. Don’t rationalize your loss of heart, the depression you may have about any particular area of your life. You’ll be wiser in your own eyes than seven with a good reason. I’m one of those seven bringing you the knowledge today that Jesus Christ continues to put in front of you today the path of blessing in the vineyard. He calls you to leave that path of nettles and thorns and thistles. He calls you—He calls you to confess as sin a lack of heart for the job that God has given you to do.

Not to sit around waiting for him to give you some bolt from the blue. You just got the bolt from the blue from the word of God warning you of the curse of God upon the slothful and your pastor telling you, “Amen and amen.” That is the truth of God’s word. You’ve gotten the voice of Jesus today. To confess it as sin, the oppression, the melancholy, the slack hands that might come from the result of them.

One of the most important things we do in Poland is to bring hope to those people. They live in the context of a European view of life that is depressing, nihilistic, and is the result of secularism and materialism. They’re moving from the cultish view of the Roman Catholic Church and the magical way that’s seen in Poland to now the Western culture, you know, secularism, materialism.

Marx’s son, by the way, said—he wrote a book, son-in-law, published in the year that Marx died on the right to be lazy, a natural extension of materialism. Why should we be diligent about anything if this is all there is? Depression affects these people in Poland. They’re a little tiny group—a hundred people, 300 people is the extent of the reformation in Poland.

Mark and [?]’s publication in all of a country of 40 million people—five years they’ve been doing this and do they see any churches or revival? Not really. Not really. And it’s easy. They told me this: our hands go slack because it seems like nothing’s happening. God says, and I understand why that happens with you, but when your countenance falls and your hands fall, it is a lack of trust and faith in God to provide what is good and proper in due season for you. And you need to repent of that. You need to gird up your loins once more. And you need to have hope in what God is accomplishing in the world and do your task. And God will certainly bless it in due time.

And in fact, they used to only have 40 or 50 people in the reformation in Poland four years ago. It is happening. Slow incremental change. Same thing’s true in our families. You know, rapid turnabouts are not that often. But God says he is moving. Have a heart for the task. Confess depression, melancholy, and a giving up—and for what it is—sin. Sin and a lack of trust that God is doing what he wants to do.

Proverbs 19:15 says, “Laziness casts one into a deep sleep. A coma. An inactivity. A coma. A depression. A strong depression is what sloth produces in us. And God says we should repent of that. Move back to having a heart for his particular task.”

Proverbs 19:24 says, “The slothful man hides his hand in his bosom. Well, not so much as bring it to his mouth.” Again, the picture in some of the Proverbs: he starts to eat, but he can’t even eat. People can get so depressed that they will not eat. And we treat that with drugs. We treat it with self-help. And they should think more of themselves than they do. Their whole problem is thinking more of themselves than they do. And not listening to the voice of God through the sermons, through the friends, through the spouses that are telling them, “Take heart for the task that God has given you to do. Get out of that depression. Apply yourself to work and a little work when you can do it. A little activity. A little diligence will do just what a little work, a little slumber, a little sleep, a folding of the hands did. It will bring you back to that vineyard and take you out of the position of thorns and thistles.”

This is so important in the context of our families.

Proverbs 19:13 says, “A foolish son is the ruin of his father. The intentions of a wife are a continual dripping. Houses and riches are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord. How did you hear that? Look at it. Turn to your scriptures to Proverbs 19:13. And you see the structure here. This is an ABAB structure. There’s a repetition. Son, wife, son, wife. Proverbs 19:13 and 14.

First son: foolish son, ruin of his father.
First wife: contentious wife, continual griping. Bible says better live in the corner of a house with a contentious woman. And when she gets angry, you move to the field. That’s what Proverbs says.

So crummy son, crummy wife. Verse 14: good son—houses and riches are an inheritance from fathers. An inheritance for who? The son. The son who’s not disowned or not disinherited. The father who is rich and has things to give to his son, both honor and riches. Good son. See, gets the inheritance from fathers. But a prudent wife is from the Lord. Good wife, bad son, bad wife, good son, good wife.

What does verse 15 say? How does all this happen? “Laziness casts one into a deep sleep. That comes depressive sleep. An idle person suffers hunger. He who keeps the commandments keeps his soul. But he who is careless of his ways will die.”

Why does the eschatology of negative results—foolish sons, contentious wives—come upon men because they’re idle. They’re slothful. They lose heart for adding value to the wife or to the children. They give up and their way is the way of death. He is careless in his ways will die. And now slothful father gives way to foolish son, contentious wife. That’s a very picture of death and the judgments of God against sloth.

How do we have blessed sons and good wives? Well, diligent. The prudent wife is from the Lord, of course, but again, it’s not as if she’s just dropped out of heaven. She didn’t spring from the forehead of Zeus or whatever it is, that Greek picture where somebody comes whole into the world as a woman. No, I think that the prudent wife is certainly virtuous when you marry her, but your job is to add to her virtue, other things, to cause her to increase and grow in maturity, just as her job is to do that with you, primarily through your words and through your deeds and your needs.

This is a day, you know, to honor wives, to build them up, and not in their self-esteem, but in the esteem of Christ, what God has called them and strengthen them to do. And this, I think, tells us that the two snapshots of a good house and a bad house has as their origin—what leads to either one—sloth or diligence. What have you done? What have you reaped? Is it too late? No, it’s not too late.

God says, “Today is the day of his visitation.” He causes you to come to repentance today. You say, “I have tried to do it on my own. I couldn’t, and you’re right.” If all this sermon does today is get you more jazzed up about committing yourself stronger and stronger to try to do what’s right, I’ve failed. Because what happens in worship is this transaction where you say, “I don’t have money. I don’t have righteousness. I don’t have a heart for my wife, my kids, my job, the church, this missions thing—you have a heart for none of it.” Jesus says, “Yeah, I know, but I do. I have strength. I have diligence. And I’m going to give you that today.” And that’s what he does here. You walk forward not trying. You walk forward diligent because Jesus has put that diligence of his. He has given you that in the context of Lord’s day worship.

Diligence is essential to a correct understanding of the biblical family and the blessings of God upon that family. Children, young people, teens, hear me well today. Hear me well. The word of God to you today is to do just what you’re going to do formalistically today. Mother’s Day—in the providence of God, right? All right. It’s the Lord’s day. We never want to lose sight of that. But remember, you honor the Lord by honoring other people. You honor the Lord by hearing the voice of Jesus speaking through your mom and by honoring her, delighting in her and your father.

And I’m going to ask you children, forget the presents you might give them today. That’s good. That’s proper. Are you going to honor your mother tomorrow? Are you, in spite of being 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23 years old, going to take this critical period and be diligent to what this text calls us to diligence? Is the central issue for young people to hear God speaking in your parents. Over and over and over in the Proverbs, the header section has this admonition—to hear your parents, to cause your parents to rejoice. Don’t cause them to despair.

Now, I know that many of you are causing your parents grief. I know that this is what happens. This is what sin is. But you need to turn from that today. You need to say, “I’m going to fall on my knees for any sin of not honoring my parents that I have engaged in. I’m going to fall on their knees sometime today, tomorrow, this week before them and say, ‘Please forgive me.’” Not because ultimately I’m concerned that your parents are happy. But because if you don’t do that with your actions, with your words, honoring your parents, you are on the highway to hell. You are on that slothful, undiligent way that leads to the broken down wall so that the enemy prowls upon you. You get mugged by poverty. You get mugged by the difficulties of life and everything becomes hard for you. That’s hell on earth. That’s what you move toward if you don’t move to repent of your sins toward your parents and tell them, “I want to honor you because I want to honor Jesus who put you as my parents.”

Parents, you’re supposed to call for this. You’re not supposed to sit around—well, I don’t want to, you know, make them obey me or anything. They ought to obey Jesus. You know, they’re obeying Jesus when they obey you. And it is the slothfulness of parents who will not call on their children to submit to their lawful decrees and insist that they do so. And it is sloth if at that point of rebellion, those parents don’t come to the church, or to close friends or to somebody else and say, “I need help. My kids are in sin.”

Do not think that Elder Wilson or myself are too busy ever to get that call. If we don’t get that call, we’re going to get another call a year, two, three, four years later. And then we’re—what can we do? The path has been determined.

Parents, you know, I urge you today to recommit yourselves to diligence with your children. Children, I urge you today by the mercies in Christ to commit yourself anew. I urge myself in this same task. I speak to myself, sinful as you are, that we recommit ourselves to a wholehearted diligence of heart and action, certainly to our vocations, certainly to the ministries of the church, but so importantly on this Mother’s Day to our families—parents to children, children to parents. God says this is absolutely critical for who we are.

Now, I mentioned this financial situation. I’ll talk more about it later, but I just think—and you can, you know, Jesus may speak to me through you today and you may tell me, “No, I think you’re just wrong. Economic times are difficult. People aren’t doing that well. Last thing we need to hear is there something else we can use our money for.” Well, you know, I—but maybe you’re right. But my understanding—I think that God is setting before us an open door of opportunity in Poland. And if we can just raise a little money consistently for one or two people to build churches, to produce literature, to conduct this ongoing reformation that’s happening, I believe significant things can happen.

I went to the heart of dispensationalism—Upper Silesia. There’s 40 brethren churches in all of Poland, 30 of them are in Upper Silesia. Radical dispensation—all the charts that you, some of you saw when you were dispensationalist about end times and all that stuff. I mean, they’re totally given to premillennial, pretribulation—all that stuff. They’ve got books and books and books on Revelation. They’re totally given over to the idea that the Jews and the Christian church are separate. We’re not Jews. Totally given over to the New Testament. And I went over there and spent six sermons talking about the seven letters to the seven churches of Revelation.

Nearly every enemy of the church are the people that claim to be Jews but aren’t. And I told him, “You’re the true Jews and what the term means. Praise God.” Every letter has some kind of Old Testament reference that if you don’t know, you don’t get the letter. I told him that. I showed them the Old Testament references. I showed them how the book of Revelation is guided by the seven feasts of Leviticus 23, the seven days of creation. This is the outline for the book—then a new creation. This stuff happened in between 30 and 70 AD and the world is new now. And this is the world we live in. I told him over and over that overcoming means overcoming our own personal sins and it means overcoming the cultural sins in which we live. It means conquering the city for Jesus. And in every church, I was invited back.

Now, in one of them, the next week at their Wednesday night Bible study, a big brouhaha, a big fight broke out, you know, over my teaching. But I believe the pastor stood firm and said, “This is a new perspective, but it’s important for us to hear.” At the same time, the beginning of that week in Breslau, having nothing to do with me, there’s a small brethren church and the youth pastor there has become convinced of postmillennialism. So, they had a public meeting where they were going to chastise him for these views.

That isn’t just what we’re doing Upper Silesia, but very significantly we went right into the middle, in the center of dispensationalism in Poland and planted seeds that were somehow received in some cases joyfully received by the pastors in these churches. Praise God. And we went over and gave this encouragement to the men doing the you know the underground work of reformation in Poland—Beuno and Marek and many other men that we know—and great things are happening.

We have an opportunity, then, seems to me an open door. God would call us today to evaluate our finances to be diligent in the proper use of them and: Do we have funds that we can use for benevolent purposes in Poland in helping fund some of these men and women to do the work of extending the reformation that is ongoing there? You know, we’ve got to think strategically. I don’t know what we’re going to do exactly yet, but I want you to think and pray about that the next couple weeks. I want you to be ready next week for Mission Sunday to understand that your pocketbook is involved.

I’ve talked about vocation, your children, your wife, your husband, personal stuff. But God says your pocketbook has got to be involved. God says that he wants us to be diligent in not just saying, “Oh, isn’t this a nice thing that God has given us in Poland?” But adding value to it. God says that diligence is a critical element for restoring ourselves, seeing ourself restored as imagebearers of Christ. It is the nature of who we are as redeemed men and women to see ourselves not as slothful ones but as diligent ones.

There was an article on the internet where a man took the *Chronicles of Narnia*, seven volumes, and assigned each of them to a particular one of the seven deadly sins. Seems to think that maybe Lewis had a particular sin in mind when he wrote these particular books. Well, the image for sloth comes from *The Silver Chair*. The Silver Chair shows the dangerous effects of sloth upon Jill. She’s supposed to look for a lost prince of Narnia. And before she goes there, Aslan tells her these signs to look for. And if she heeds these four signs diligently, then she’ll find the task that she’s given there to find this lost prince of Narnia. And he says, “Remember, remember the signs. Repeat them to yourselves in the daytime. Memorize them. Talk about them all the time because when you get there, when you get to the trial in Narnia, it’s going to look different. But if you apply yourself to these words of mine and these signs diligently, then you’ll do okay.”

And at first, Jill on her journey, she’s doing them. She’s memorizing them day and night. But the journey gets long. The ordinary cares of life become increased. It seems she’s never going to find the lost prince and her way gets toilsome and there’s difficult things that happen and she gets distracted and now she’s only saying them to herself. She’s not saying them out loud and after a while she’s just thinking about them occasionally. Sort of remembers them. Then when the trial comes it’s too late. She misses the first three signs.

Now finally Aslan comes to her and brings her back to her diligence with the fourth sign and she’s recovered. But the picture is that the trials and difficulties, the normal sort of stuff that goes on every day, wears down our diligence to attend to our wives, our children, our work, our church, and our parents. We get worn down and we lose a little hope and things aren’t happening like we thought they would. The trial comes in a different way than we think it will. Our lives aren’t as exciting. We don’t see the effects of reconstruction twenty years on like we thought we would. And we begin to lose a little hope and we lose a little more. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

Like Jill, many of us are susceptible to the weary grind, the dull repetition of routine, the easy slide into self-fulfillment, yet at the cost of true spirituality. But like Jill too, Lewis says that we can break the chains of sloth. We too can regain a spiritual vision as Aslan comes and talks to us. Jesus has come today and he has urged us to diligence, repent for our loss of heart in so many areas and for a renewed consecration to him in these vital and critical areas of our lives.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we do pray that you would forgive us of our sins. We pray, Father, you would give us a renewed consecration to the task you’ve given us to do. Help us, Father, to think particularly this next week or two what we should do in terms of Poland. What’s strategic? What are we able to do and what is strategic to do now? Guide and direct us, Lord God. Guide and direct the heart and work of this people and this congregation that they might see what areas some of them might be able to do in terms of dedicated regular gifts to assist the mission in Poland.

Guide and direct Elder Wilson and myself as we move toward the celebration of world missions. We thank you Lord God for this day of the celebration of the ascension of our Savior. The songs were so wonderful giving us a picture of the conquering hero. Help us to remember Lord God who we are. We are Christians. We are more than conquerors through Christ our Savior. Help us to attack the problems that exist in our life with renewed fervency.

Lord God, I pray for our young people. May they in this critical period of their lives, cleave to their parents, honor their parents, see the great necessity of the final years of advice and counsel from their parents as they move forward, establish their own households. We thank you, Lord God, that while this is impossible for us, the Lord Jesus has come today to give us this very thing. In his name we pray. Amen.