Well, good morning, church.
If you would turn with me to Proverbs 6.
Proverbs 6, verses 6-11.
We’re going to be this morning. Proverbs 6, 6-11. We’ve been in the Psalms for quite a while, so we add a little wisdom to the Psalms. It’s all wisdom literature. I saw something in Proverbs I thought the Lord wanted us to consider this morning.
Proverbs 6, 6-11.
The wisdom writer says, Go to the aunt, O sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food and harvests. How long? How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.
You probably heard the saying, find what you love to do in life, and you’ll never work a day in your life. And I don’t think that’s true. Because I think, even when you do things in life you love, if you’ve got your dream job, life still boils down a lot of times to just punching through and working. Work is work is work is work. And a lot of times, we don’t feel like working.
And it’s not even just our vocational jobs and careers, what we do, whether you love your job or you don’t like your job so much. It comes to our responsibilities. You have responsibilities financially. You have responsibilities. You have responsibilities with your home. You have possessions. You have things. And a lot of times, we don’t want to be as faithful, as diligent as we ought to be with all the things, all the areas of our lives for which we are accountable. And I think that’s the most important thing to remember. All the responsibilities we have in life, all of our jobs, all the people we’re responsible for, all of our stuff, we’re accountable for all that to God. It’s not a small thing. It’s not an insignificant thing. So I believe, what the wisdom writer is telling us is idleness is its own kind of evil. That’s what I want to talk to you about this morning, the evil of idleness.
The evil of idleness.
In verse 6,
he says, Go to the aunt of all things. Consider her ways.
Be wise without having any chief, officer, or ruler. She prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. And it’s funny, almost, isn’t it, that the wisdom writer would say in the Bible to people, you should consider one of the smallest creatures of all. And it’s the aunt, this insignificant thing.
We can learn from it. And we learn from it because you and I, we have a certain dullness on us. It’s not a dullness God put on us. There’s a certain dullness on us because of sin and our sin nature. So God didn’t make us this way. But God says, you aren’t apt to do the things you ought to do. But God is kind to put these object lessons in creation, even in the smallest of things, that if we would desire to please the Lord, He would show us how to do that. If we would actually desire happiness, as God would define it for ourselves, He shows us what a right life looks like. That’s what He shows us. The aunt doesn’t have a ruler and it does right. We do have a ruler who shows us plainly and clearly, yet we still do wrong. So He says, consider the aunt, pay attention, be keen to do the right thing.
Matthew Henry says, Man is taught more than the beasts of the earth and made wiser than the fowls of heaven, and yet he is so dejected, that he may learn wisdom from the meanest insects and be shamed by them. When we observe the wonderful insights of the inferior creatures, we must not only give glory to the God of nature who has made them strangely, but receive instruction to ourselves.
Receive instruction to ourselves. And that’s what we’re doing here. That’s what the Proverbs are. Why is it then that you and I are superior creatures to the aunt, yet at the same time, we’re so dull, we must learn from the aunt?
It’s kind of a funny thing when you think about it. Go to Genesis chapter 1.
Genesis 1, 26 through 28.
It says, Then God said, Let us make man in our image and after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock and over the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God. He created him, male and female. He created them.
So you and I are in the image of God. You and I are in the likeness of God. You and I, different from the ants and birds and whatever zoological creatures, you want to think of, you and I have powers of discernment. We can think and we can make decisions and we can rationalize. You and I have a certain moral excellency. We have the ability to exercise right and wrong. We consider the ethics of a contextual situation. And most of all, you and I have a capacity to have a relationship, a meaningful relationship with God that is a two-way street in which we enjoy God and we enjoy God. And God, in the image of Him upon us, He knows and loves us. So we have personhood. That’s the unique thing about being a human. You have personhood. It’s what gives, really, credence to capital punishment. And when God talks to Noah, He says if someone kills someone, it’s life for life. Why does He say that? Because you’re made in the likeness of God. It’s not a small thing to kill a human. The image of God is on them. In the very same way in the book of James, James says, don’t have hateful speech against one another. He says because you are in the likeness of God. So the image of God is this precious, special thing upon you and I. And with its preciousness comes responsibility. With its preciousness comes a certain sort of agenda that you and I are obligated to. And what He said is this. It’s exercising dominion. You and I are called to cultivate. We’re called to oversee. We’re called to labor. We’re laboring in God’s world. So the creature unique has a task unique. And it’s in obedience to God to please God by laboring and working and doing in God’s universe. It’s His design. It’s how He made it.
But that’s what? That’s a perfect world, isn’t it? That’s a world before the fall of man. That’s the image of God untarnished. That’s not right. Now, though it will be someday when Christ returns.
But here’s the goodness of that. God has not just left us like you’re like a pig walled in mud and I’m just going to leave you until you return until I come back and you’re just not going to know. That’s not at all the case. And again, I think that brings the preciousness of wisdom literature, the preciousness of the scriptures, and the preciousness of object lessons in creation. God wants to show us what it looks like to please Him. He’s not leaving us to guess at it. And the issue here in Proverbs chapter 6 is the issue of laziness. It’s idleness.
Laziness, idleness,
slowness, slothfulness to do what’s right. It’s a serious impairment brought on by the sin nature. And we know this. Why? Because the proverb writer, he brings up sluggishness 14 times in the book of Proverbs. Think about that. To repeat something I said last week, how many times has God said, God need to say something before we take it serious? Right? Once. So if he’s saying something 14 times in his book, it must mean that you and I really need to desperately understand the nature of what it is to be sluggish and how we please God in resisting to be that.
Idleness, laziness, friends, it runs counter to the great privilege, responsibility we have as image bearers. That’s what’s wrong with it. It runs counter to the great privilege, it runs counter to God. Or we could say it like this, laziness in your life, some of us are maybe lazier than others, I don’t know, but we’re all lazy, we’ve all done wrong at some point. Here’s what it reveals. It reveals a dullness concerning the image of God. It reveals in us a certain dullness concerning the image of God. A disinclination to labor, cultivate, it dishonors God because he privileged you to do so. He said, go do this. I think when we think about, you know, laboring, working, certainly in the biblical text, you get this picture of a farmer, right? We’re pretty well removed from an agrarian society. Not a lot of people are farmers. It might be the mental picture you need of someone in their cubicle working hard.
That pleases God because it’s the work God put in your hand to do. And if it’s the work God put it in your hand to do, you should do it with all your mind.
One theologian, Miles Van Pelt, he says this, we must understand, that we work because we were created in the image of God and God works. His image bears were created to imitate him. Consider the work of God in Genesis 1. He creates, he makes commands, he names, he shapes, he forms, he separates, he establishes, and he blesses the visible realm of creation. This activity is called work three times. God is the first master craftsman. Once we observe that work is a prominent attribute in the revelation of God, as the creator of all things, it’s not surprising that those created in his image would share in the same capacity. So he goes on to say, work is not menial. We do it because God does it. See, that puts a whole new perspective on what it means to accomplish, to do, to be responsible, to be diligent. It’s good to be diligent because you fulfill your God-ordained role as an image bearer in God’s image. In God’s created universe. You think. You decide. You make decisions. You choose a certain way. In the very capacity that you have to do that, it’s a grace that God has given to you. And even in fact, and he draws it out further when he talks about that, it’s worship. Look at what Paul says in Colossians 3.18. Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives. Don’t be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents. This pleases the Lord. Fathers, don’t provoke your children. Bond servants, obey everything those who are your earthly masters. Not by way of eye service, but as people pleasers. With those of sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do,
work heartily. The Bible says work hard. Whatever is your responsibility, you should work hard at it. As for the Lord, not for men. Knowing from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. So who is really the person who is the person watching over everything you’re responsible for in life to do? God. Who is going to make an account with you someday of how you did or didn’t work diligently with everything in your life that you were given? Well, God is. Paul makes that very clear. Your station in life should be accompanied by conscious awareness. This is a place, this is a time God has brought me to do a job well for me. For His glory. But I want to say secondly, why work hard, not just for God, but for yourself. And I don’t mean the bad way. I mean the good way. I mean the good kind of pride. Not the kind of pride that makes you go, ah, look at me, look what I’ve done. But it’s the kind of pride that says, wow, God has given me these unique talents and gifts. Or even, God has given me this particular job. And again, you may not always like your job, love your job, but remember friend, any job, is a job. And if it’s a job, it’s in God’s created world in which He said, jobs are good things to do. So when you have that perspective, you’re able to do a job you don’t particularly love because God saw it fit to put this job in my hands and I’m going to be responsible to Him for it. It’s unique to me. Nobody else is doing this job. Nobody else is doing this job. Nobody else has your gifts and talents. You’re doing something special. If you’re a teacher and you teach and you’re able to help students, understand, understand, and process things, God gave you that sense of satisfaction at the end of the day going, man, that kid, he was really horrible at algebra and now he’s not so horrible. Thank you God for helping me. You know, my teacher, I don’t know if my teacher could say that about me. I’m still horrible at algebra. Or the doctor. What about a doctor that treats every patient with this care concern like it’s his only patient? You know, you ever been to a doctor and they’re like, what’s wrong, blah, blah, blah. And you’re like, you didn’t even really give me a chance to talk. I don’t feel like you diagnosed me well. That’s happened to me. On the flip side, I love my family doctor who I saw a couple weeks ago because he just like, he stares at you, he talks to you, he’s interested in you and he’s like, man, you really care. You’re interested in me. He’s a good doctor, right? It’s a calling on his life. He’s also, you know, a believer. I think he sees that as well.
Whatever it is, civil engineering is something that can resonate in Huntsville. When you design, you know, whatever it is, a bridge or a street and you do it meticulously, to make sure it’s going to be built just right and it’s going to last and the water is not going to, you know, when it rains, flood the street, the bridge isn’t going to have a weakness. These things, they honor God and you should be able to say at the end of the day, Lord, you have fashioned me in your image and you’ve given me even what may seem a small thing to you because you do it on a daily basis, right? This is, wow, Lord, you made me this way and I have pride in this because you gave this to me. You put it in my hands. And now, a lot of that goes back to how we talk about we live life too fast. Remember we talked about the study that says most Americans live in a concussive state. They’re just kind of mindless because they’re so busy. So, yes, I think really valuing that truth in Proverbs really means you’ve got to slow down and not just kind of mindlessly live your life but just live in the moment. Think about the things that God’s put in your hand and see them in context of God’s created universe and who He is, how He’s made you to be, right? To make a point on that, though, I think the opposite is very true. When you don’t see work as unique to you, something God’s given you, you can do the opposite thing and become, and we’ve talked about this a little bit, haven’t we? You become a workaholic. Look what I’ve done. Look how great I am. I love my job. Look what I can accomplish. I love the means of my job. I love the car I can buy. I can love the house. I love the status. I love the vacations I can go on. And you don’t have the backdrop of, wow, I’m an image bearer that God made me and that’s the only reason why I can do these things, right? So, either way, we’ve got to live in that space of everything God puts in my hand to do heartily, it is unto the Lord. Unto the Lord.
Realizing your existence in God’s universe as an image bearer, it’s its own kindness to you and it is an honor and a praise to God who graciously made you so. Do you kind of live, do you live with that? Imagine a budget report. Praise God. Right?
I just finished this project. It was long and it was grueling and man, it just, it took twice as long as it was supposed to take. Man, God gave me the mind. He gave me the resources to get that thing done. Like, praise God. Lord, thank you for helping me work so hard and be so diligent in that thing, right? Slow down and live with that kind of recognition of just the very presence of God in your most menial task. It’ll change the tone and tenor of your life. It really will.
But third, I want to say this.
We should see the goodness of God in our work and not being lazy and being diligent for the sake of other people.
Labor is God’s means by which people take care of themselves. It’s God’s idea. It’s God’s idea that people take care of their own needs and they take care of their families. Not just so they can survive, but so they can thrive. And I want you to see what Paul says on that in 2 Thessalonians. He says, For even when we were with you, we would give you this command. If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. So what is Paul saying to these new believers in Thessalonica? He’s saying, Hey, do you want to reach people for the gospel? Do you want to be a good example of what it means to represent Jesus? And be a part of the kingdom of God on earth? You should do your job. Go to work. Be a really good employee. Take care of your family. Okay? It’s no one else’s job to take care of you and your family. It’s not the government’s job. It’s not some entity’s job. You go take care of yourself. You go take care of your family. It’s very, very biblical.
Secondly, though, and I think this is like icing on the cake for that point, the wisdom writer tells us to take care of our family, but in Proverbs chapter 21, 25, he says this.
The desire of the sluggard kills him for his hands refuse to labor. All day long he craves and craves. But look, the righteous gives and doesn’t hold back.
So not only is it through your diligence that you take care of your family, God has made it such when you and I as His people are diligent and working, He blesses us with so much means. We can not only take care of our families, we can be image bearers for people who don’t have an image bearer to take care of them.
You can stand in the gap for somebody else who’s poor and needy. And there are a lot of reasons why people can’t take care of themselves. People get sick. They genuinely need help. People don’t have good mothers and fathers, right? People sometimes can’t find jobs. All the different reasons that people genuinely can’t take care of themselves. The wise person who’s diligent as God wants him to be is useful in saying, hey, this is what the image of God looks like on a man, on a woman, when we seek it and seek to please God. I can provide for my own and I can bring God glory by providing for other people. That should be a huge motivation to you and I to work. Not to say, look at me, look how much I have, but God, how much can you use me through my diligence?
Laziness is selfishness. The idle life wonders, how little can I give to God and people and get away with it?
That’s really what idleness is. How little can I give to God and people and get away with it? How much ease and comfort can I have in my own life?
It’s said that a dean at Harvard University once asked a student while he failed to complete an assignment, the student said, I wasn’t feeling very well. The dean said, I think that in time you may perhaps find that most of the work of the world is not enough. It’s done by people who aren’t feeling very well.
And I think that’s a powerful little truth, one that I think Christians should grasp above anyone else.
Work, being diligent, being responsible in all the stuff we’re supposed to oversee, it’s not always, I think, the joy and the fun we want it to be. Nonetheless, in the fallen world, God calls us to be that. So we should have the greatest grasp of what it means to be an image bearer in a fallen world. We should be the ones showing the world what it means to be a person. That’s what it looks like to be diligent, to take care of stuff, to take pride in what we do, not for our own sake, but for the glory of God, for the glory of the gospel.
It’s a really wonderful witness to your employer when you are the star employee for the right reasons, not because you want to pat on the back, but when your employer can go, wow, they show up early, they leave late, they get their stuff done on time, they have a good attitude, they don’t start fighting, they’re quick to put fires out, I can count on them, they’re going the distance. Do you think that that person is going to have an easier time sharing the gospel with their employer or the person that shows up late, fusses and complains, does a B-minus job? Right? It makes a huge difference. And I think you can get really practical with it. You’re probably going to have a much harder time being a light to your neighbors when you’re the person, your grass is up to your kneecaps and you got rotten wood on the side of your house that’s falling off and you keep doing that delaying like, oh, I’ll do that later, oh, I’ll do that later. Be a person that people respect and say, hey, I want to know them. And if this feels super practical, it’s because it’s super practical. And I think Proverbs is almost like you got to reverse engineer because usually like when we read, you know, whatever we’re doing in Matthew or whatever you’re doing in the Testament, you start these big lofty theological ideas and you got to work it down to practical application. This is reverse. We’re starting this super practical application, we’re going backwards and say, look how much this glorifies God in the image of God, right? That’s what we’re doing. That’s what we’re doing here. So God is God not just of the big, huge theological implications of your life. He’s God, isn’t He, of the little small things too. Of your rotten siding falling off of your house or that thing you keep putting off to do. And it was convicting to me this week. I’m like, man, I do that to my wife a lot. She’s like, can we fix that? I’m like, yeah, we’ll fix that sometime. Can we get that done? Yeah, we’ll do it sometime. Like, no, I need to be a better steward of what God’s given me and just take care of things. You take care of things.
Are you faithful with very little so that the Lord would give you very much?
Are you faithful with what you have so you’re not missing out on God using you in a bigger way to be a blessing in other people’s lives? That’s another key, important reason why we must be faithful so that we don’t miss out on being used by God in bigger and better ways for His glory.
Look back at Proverbs chapter 6, verse 9. He says, How long will you lie there, O slug, when will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man.
I don’t know if you’ve done gardening before, I bet some of you are more into gardening
than others of us. I can’t say I’ve got a green thumb. You know, some people, they do and they love it. But you know, even if you’ve done just basic gardening, if you’ve done basic landscaping, you know there’s this thing called routine maintenance, isn’t there? There’s really no such thing as, well, I did my gardening for the year. You know, no one ever at the beginning of the summer cuts their grass and goes, ah, my grass is cut for the summer. That’s not how it happens, is it? You’ve got to protect it. You’ve got to grow it. You’ve got to keep it from weeds. You’ve got to keep your, your trees and this from harmful insects. My next door neighbor, he has these three big beautiful crepe myrtles in front of his house. They’ve been there as long as we live there. And a couple weeks ago, he had to cut them all down and throw them in the street because they were overrun with aphids. I didn’t know what aphids were until just a couple weeks ago, but it’s this harmful insect. It’s parasitic. And these beautiful crepe myrtles, they were blackened. I mean, the leaves were black and they were just, they were just beyond what he could do to fix it. So he had to cut these beautiful trees down and he had to throw them out. I want to say to you, just as the wisdom writer has given you and our principles for life, much more are these spiritual principles that we ought to apply to our discipleship. Friends, idleness and discipleship is just as deathly as idleness in all other parts of life. And the New Testament is absolutely replete with warnings against idleness and laziness.
In Proverbs chapter 6, what does this sluggard say?
He says, just a little more sleep, just a little bit more slumber. Let me fold my hands just a little bit more. Now you and I both know there’s no such thing as just a little bit more. What one, one more little slice of cake becomes five more, doesn’t it? There’s not, when you, when you sleep, oh, I just want to sleep for five more minutes. You don’t actually feel that much, more rested when you sleep five more minutes, do you?
Right? So what, what really is the lazy person doing? He’s delaying. He’s delaying. He’s putting off the inevitable. He’s putting off the good he ought to do. And what does James tell us? He who knows the right thing he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sin. He sins.
This becomes even more troubling for your soul than it does the side of your house with that rotten wood. Because here’s why. Nothing remains static in life. By the time you get to that rotten wood you put off, it’s going to be that much more rotten. Think about it with your soul. When you say, ah, my soul is in such and such state and I’m going to really tend to my spiritual life eventually. If and when you get to it, guess what? Your soul’s going to be in that much greater decay.
So why do we risk losing so much? If it is so, why do we, why do we play such silly, really harmful games with our own souls?
Look at what Jesus says with me. In John chapter 15, Jesus says exactly what we need to hear. He says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered, thrown to the ground. Jesus says, if you want to be one of my disciples and you really want to bear fruit for me and you want to know me, I don’t do house calls. Jesus says, we lodge together, we live together, or you’re going to be unfruitful and you’re eventually going to be cut off and thrown out.
Friend, are you sleeping while Jesus is beating on the door, wanting to come in, lodge with you, grow you up?
Jesus says, you must, what’s the word? It’s a precious word. You must abide.
You must go on with Jesus. You must remain with Jesus. When we read the gospel accounts, what do we see? We see Jesus abiding with his disciples. They live together. They talk together. They pray together. They eat together. They’re just together. And that’s the only way that you and I will be diligent to keep our own souls is when we abide with Christ.
Are you, are you so prideful to think that you can withstand the corrupting nature of your own flesh?
Are you, are we so prideful to think that we won’t give in to the pressure of the world to conform? Do you think you’re so strong to withstand Satan? You think it all the time. And so do I when we don’t abide with Jesus. When we don’t abide with Jesus and spiritual laziness.
So I want to remind us this morning, if we’re Christians, we have not been brought back to a place like Adam and Eve were, this Edenic state where I’m not sinful, but I’m not really in a state of perfection either. Right? Adam and Eve were a work in progress. That’s not at all what it is for you and I. The great wonder of the Christian life is the cross of Christ through that, the very image of Jesus is put on us. Not just the image of God, but that much more explicit, the image of Christ. That means of Christ who is perfect, perfect in me and Christ never failed in all diligence to live for the Father. Christ never failed to withstand Satan. That means I’ve got the very same heavenly energy at work in me. That means in the Spirit I’ve got the same supernatural power at work in me. That means in all things I can with spiritual diligence keep my soul, not because I know godly things, but because the very presence and power of God is within me.
There’s no pause button. I think we like to think there’s pause buttons and rest cycles and growing in Jesus. I’ve been walking with Jesus for a few years now and I’m a four. And I like being a four. Four is comfortable for me. Friends, there’s no tears in Christianity. There’s ten. There’s sanctification. There’s glorification when we’re raised up on the last day or there’s nothing at all. There’s all of Christ all the time, all different, diligence, all sacrifice, all surrender. There’s nothing. And what does God say about the person who attempts to be partially diligent?
He says, I vomit you out. He says, I’d rather you just be cold. God has a greater severity for the person who’s somewhat diligent with their own soul than the person who just says, I’m not for it at all.
Do you keep telling yourself tomorrow’s the day when I’m really going to be zealous for God?
Tomorrow’s the day I’m going to really, you know, be a lightning rod for the kingdom. Tomorrow’s the day when I really get on my knees. Tomorrow’s the day when I start serving. Tomorrow’s the day, you know, when I really give it all. Promise. Tomorrow’s never going to go.
Never.
Now is the day of salvation. Now is the moment to commit to Christ. Now is the moment to guard your heart. Now is the moment to labor for the Lord. Right now. And that’s it. You got this moment and that’s the only moment you got.
But lastly, I want you to see on this, your service to the Lord is intricately tied to your diligence in knowing the Lord. It’s not two different things. Friends, the more we’re influenced by Christ, the more ready we are to serve Christ. I lived with my grandmother when I graduated high school for a while. And it was a precious time. I love living. I love living with her. But she was a chain smoker. You know, what she had been since she was 14, 15.
And one day we thought we’d go for a walk. You know, it’d be nice. We didn’t get 100 feet. And she was about out and I thought I was going to have to carry her back to the house because she couldn’t do it. And I thought, and I remember being like, what in the world? Because we were just walking. We were just barely walking. And she just could not do it because she’s just you sitting down doing this. Right? Right?
Friends, that’s a picture
of our souls so often. God says, do this. God says, run there. And we’re just like, but I can’t even breathe. I can’t even breathe.
Friend, know Christ so you can serve Christ. Be vigilant to guard your soul. Diligent to serve the Lord in all things. Don’t let lethargy be a description for you. And I think one of the best examples we get in the Scriptures of this is Jonah. Remember Jonah? He knows what he’s supposed to do. He knows who he’s supposed to be as a prophet. Yet Jonah is what? He’s asleep in the bottom of a boat.
And there’s literally a storm getting ready to kill him. And it says, wake up, sleeper. What are you doing sleeping down there? Wake up. Wake up.
Are you sleeping instead of praying? And I mean literally on that one.
When the Spirit wakes you up to pray, get up in the morning and get on your knees. And pray. Seek God’s face.
Ask for His kingdom to come. Ask for God’s blessings on your family. Ask for strength for the day. Are you in the recliner when you should be in the study? Are you a proved workman who’s not ashamed?
Do you consider your sin struggles? Are you seeking to overcome them? Are you meaningfully living in Christian fellowship? Are you living in Christian fellowship? Right? I know we talk about this here a lot and we’ll always talk about it a lot because it’s critical. But do you have someone, someones who know your heart and they love you and they’re praying for you and they’re building you up? Do you have someone who’s helping to kind of poke you when you’re not doing right? And you kind of poke at them and you’re encouraging and sharpening one another. Do you read good godly books?
I would be glad to give you a list of a ton of good godly books. They’re just going to feed your soul.
To reference what we talked about last week. Are you sleeping while your children’s spirituality is going to ruin? Are you sleeping while your children’s hearts are impoverished? Are you sleeping while the lost people around you are not being engaged? Let me say it to you. Friends, let’s not be found asleep. Let’s be found awake doing the Lord’s will knowing He’s coming back. And that’s what I’m talking about. And that’s really, I think, the key to this. I want you to see this again in 11. He says, Poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man. When an armed man comes upon you, you can’t do much, can you? You’re stuck. It’s got you. It’s had its way. You’re done with. You’re over. So I think the only way that you and I are really going to be able to see the evil of idleness in our own lives, the only way we’re going to be able to see it, hate it, run from it, is by allowing more and more the reality of God to infiltrate our hearts and minds. The reality that I’m not a person. I didn’t mutate. I didn’t evolve. God created me with His image on Him. I literally exist to know God. I literally exist to do His will, to please Him with my life. Much more has the image of God been restored through Christ in me. I’ve been created to know Jesus, be like Jesus, live for Him, His kingdom. That is what God has done in me, for me, through me. That is the remedy for the evil of idleness. That and that alone. Do you live with that kind of just crisp, clear, explicit awareness? We need to. We need to.
Luke chapter 12, I just want to kind of close with this picture of what Jesus says. He says in Luke 12, 35-37, He says, He says, Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning. And be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast so they may open the door to Him at once when He comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when He comes. Truly I say to you, He will dress Himself for service and have them recline at table and He will come and serve them. What a precious picture. Jesus is just looking forward to that day when He can say, Well done. Well done. You computer programmed for my glory. You prayed for my glory. You cut your grass for my glory. You studied the Bible with your children for my glory. Man, you were diligent. You were awake. Here, have a seat. Let me serve you.
That’s an amazing thing. God longs to say, Well done. Well done. Do you desire to hear that? Church, let’s be zealous. Let’s be diligent to serve the Lord with all we have. Okay, let’s pray.
Father, as we consider all that Your Word says,
we see first and foremost that Jesus and Jesus alone has accomplished all goodness. He has done all right things before You. And Lord, it is not our own righteousness. It is not our own accomplishments. It is the merit of Jesus. Jesus who served You perfectly. Jesus who did all Your will. Jesus who lived perfect as a human. And it’s Jesus’ perfection that we plead.
And we thank You for Jesus.
That Jesus in our place lived, died, and rose again. So Lord, as we repent where we’ve been lazy, as we repent of where we’ve been careless, we repent of where we’ve been, Lord, just obnoxiously obsessed with self and leisure, Lord, we want to look to Jesus. And as we look and believe and desire Him, oh, His Spirit would fill us and work through us that we would please You. And we would say, oh, look what Jesus has done in me and through me, Lord. Let that be true of us in our homes, in our workplaces, Lord, all the ways You’re calling us to serve You and make a difference for You, Lord. I pray we would be sharp. We would be able. We would be willing.
And we would bring You glory, God. So that’s our prayer. That’s our hope. And we’re just casting our lot in on Jesus and on Jesus alone. And it’s in His name that we pray.
Amen.