Avoid Laziness - Cultivate Diligence #2

Introduction: The Context of Parental Admonition

0:04 How not to foul up the training of your children. This is cassette number 26 in a series given by Pastor Albert N. Martin in the adult Sunday school class of the Trinity Baptist Church on August 11, 1991.

0:20 Now for the benefit of those who may be visiting among us today, and my eyes have not yet fastened upon, yes they have, I see, two visitors and there may be others, let me attempt to give you some idea of precisely where we are in the present course of our studies in this adult class. Today is the 25th lesson on the general theme of how not to foul up the training of your children. And as one adult male said to me, he said, Not only, Pastor, are parents learning more about how to rear their children,

1:00 since I'm being reared all over again. And so I trust that no one sits here saying, oh well, this is for someone else. Whenever the word of God is taught, that attitude betrays a backslidden heart, a proud heart, and a very spiritually dull heart. I care not whatever the subject is, the entrance of the word of God gives light and gives understanding to the simple and the spiritually healthy soul will welcome the teaching of the word of God, no matter what the subject is, for there will always be spiritual profit for the one who receives the word in faith.

1:42 Now the major focus of our study has been upon opening up the implications and the significance of the latter part of Ephesians 6, 4, in which God, speaking explicitly to fathers, admonishes them to provoke not their children, but to nurture them, to nurture them, to nurture them, to nurture them, to nurture them, to nurture them, to nurture them, to nurture them, to nurture them, to nurture them. in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. And in that text we see that the total nurture of our children, that is, the bringing of our children to maturation, is the responsibility of the parents, and the two major means are chastening and admonition. And after spending a number of weeks considering the biblical doctrine of chastening, or the principled application of corporal punishment, for the molding of the character of our children, we are now concerned with what it means to admonish them in that admonition which is of the Lord. And we have been using the book of Proverbs as our major source material as to what we ought to focus upon in admonishing our children. And we have discovered together that the foundational issue of all of our admonition, is the fear of God. Proverbs 1 and verse 7.

3:06 So that in all of the things concerning which we admonish our children, we are to bring them back again and again to the issues of the being and existence of God, the rights of God over them, the authority of God, the law of God, and the future judgment by God. Failing to do this, we may give excellent moral training, but we are leaving out that which is the principal part of all true wisdom, and therefore of admonition that can be called the admonition of the Lord. And with that major issue in place, we are now considering the major issues that constitute godly parental admonition, by simply trying to extract from the book of Proverbs, those issues which receive most repeated attention. And we have thus far covered five of those major areas. Parents must repeatedly admonish their children to be attentive listeners, and we studied some twelve texts under that heading. Parents must repeatedly admonish their children to be active and earnest in the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, some fifteen texts.

The Theology of Laziness and Diligence

4:30 Parents must admonish their children to learn to desire, welcome and heed, rebuke, correction and counsel, and we studied some twenty texts. Parents must consistently admonish their children to recognize and avoid moral defilement, and those people and influences who would lead them into it. We looked at some twelve pivotal texts, and then, parents must consistently and repeatedly admonish their children concerning the righteous use of their tongues, or the nature of godly speech. And for three class periods, we went through some sixty-five to seventy texts of scripture, dealing explicitly with this matter of the use of the tongue. We are now opening up the sixth of these major areas of emphasis in the book of Proverbs, which ought to constitute a major emphasis in our admonition of our children, namely, parents must continually admonish their children to avoid laziness and its devastating fruits, and to cultivate diligence and industry with its blessed results. And we began last week by trying to open up a theology of laziness.

5:55 Why do we need to do this? We need to be admonished to industry and to diligence, and against laziness. And we saw that the answer to that question lies in an understanding of what man was before the fall, and what happened as a result of the fall. There is now a curse and a reluctant earth, which is to a degree unyielding, that will only be productive in the sweat of man's brow, and man has a nature, that is reluctant to obey God.

6:30 And it is God who says, six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work. So an unyielding earth, and an indisposed human heart, conspire to make us all natively lazy. And therefore, there must be constant admonition, as well as the internal operations of the grace of God, if we, and our children, are to be diligent, and marked by industry. Last week, we studied a number of texts through to Proverbs 12, 11, and 27.

Diligence vs. Vain Pursuits (Proverbs 12:11, 12:27)

7:10 And I want us to pick up our study at that point this morning, and hopefully complete this strand of emphasis. Proverbs chapter 12. And I want to say just a word by way of a PS, to our brief exposition of Proverbs 12 and verse 27. In Proverbs 12 and verse 27, we read, The slothful man roast not that which he took in hunting, but the precious substance of men is to the diligent.

7:52 And it was a PS really, not on verse 27, but verse 11. He that tills, his land shall have plenty of bread, but he that follows after vain persons, or vain things, is void of understanding. In other words, the person who is pursuing necessary commodities by which to exist, or legitimate wealth, he that tills his land shall have plenty of bread. He who seeks that plenteous bread in the way of diligent labor, is a wise person.

8:29 But he that follows after vain persons, or vain things, is void of understanding. And in the context, it is vain persons and things with respect to the accumulation of bread or of money. And this is the heart of the curse of the dream with a dollar mentality, of the growing addiction to lotteries. A dollar and a dream, we are told, is all you need.

9:00 And if the multitudes who spend 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 dollars a week on their lottery tickets would take and invest that same amount in sound investments, at the end of 20 years, they would have a substantial nest egg. But they're following a vain way of attaining wealth, rather than the way of diligent labor. And behind the whole craze that our nation is increasingly gripped with, is this indictment of the wise man Solomon. It is seeking the benefits of arduous labor, wise planning, judicious investments in some other way. And God calls it vanity. Now then, turn to chapter 13 and verse 4, and then we'll work through hopefully the remaining 12 or 14 texts this morning. Proverbs 13 and verse 4.

The Fat Soul of the Diligent (Proverbs 13:4)

10:06 The soul of the sluggard desireth and hath nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat. Now here's the picture of the sluggard. He has an idea of what are the quote good things in life. Some sense of financial stability, some sense of security, the well-being of knowing that he's adequately providing for himself, for his family, perhaps for needy relatives.

10:41 You see, his conscience is well enough enlightened as to what we would call responsible, reasonable financial goals. The soul of the sluggard desires. But the problem is, because he's a sluggard, he will not use the God appointed means to attain those goals, and therefore he has nothing. But the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.

11:13 Now it doesn't say his belly shall be made fat through excessive accumulation of caloric intake, minus adequate exercise and means to burn up that intake. It says the soul of the diligent shall be made fat. And what is a fat soul? It's a well-fed soul.

11:35 It is a contented soul. It is a soul that has the legitimate joy of accomplishment. The soul of the person who can sit back and look at the blessing of God upon the fruit of his arduous labors, his careful industry, his wise investments, and when he has a sense of well-being in gratitude to God, not like the foolish rich man in Luke 12, who regarded his wealth as the fruit of his own cleverness, period, to be used for his own selfish ends, period. Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years.

12:16 He had a lean soul, because it was a soul without any reference to God. He had a fat back at bank account, but he had a lean soul. He had fat barns, but a lean soul. But God says the man who is diligent and is diligent in the fear of God, who does whatever his hand finds to do with all of his might and under the blessing of God, those labors are blessed to the provision of his needs, so that his desire to have a measure of financial and economic stability, to have some sense of the noble dignity of providing for himself and his family, that sense of well-being is not sinful. It's one of the blessings of righteousness in the way of diligence. And we need to impart that to our children. Do you want the delight of looking at your report card and having that sense of fulfillment, that knowing you had the ability to get a B, you got a B and not a C, and said, oh, well, a C is not so bad.

13:24 How can you have any sense of a fat soul if you're only half-heartedly applying yourself? Oh, yes, your soul would desire all A's and B's. God's given you the ability for A's and B's, but your laziness will rob you of having a fat soul that can come home with delight and say, Mommy and Daddy, look what God helped me to do in my report card. And Mommy and Daddy then can commend that son or daughter for his or her diligence, and take a text like this and say, that's what it is to have a fat soul, to have a sense of accomplishment and a sense of fulfillment, rather than coming home and saying, well, the teacher's not fair, and she's got her pets, and Mary got A's and B's, and I didn't get... Do you tolerate that in your children?

14:14 Do you sympathize with your children questioning the integrity of the teacher rather than the industry of your kids? God help your parents. You're turning out people who, kicked from pillar to post, never have any stability in their work, and it'll always be the fault of the job, always the fault of the foreman, always the fault of the personnel department. No, no, the fault is, you encouraged them to be sluggards, because you didn't teach them this principle.

Labor vs. Talk (Proverbs 14:23)

14:42 You did not, under God, seek to work it into the texture of their soul, as Solomon is doing here with his son. All right, then we move on to Proverbs 14, and verse 23. Proverbs 14, and verse 23. In all labor there is profit, but the talk of the lips tendeth only an old English word, penury.

15:12 Someone tell me, what does the word penury mean? I think I could, if I were a betting man, say that no one in this congregation has used the word penury for a long time. What is penury? All right, Tom.

15:28 Project poverty. Ain't got nothing. Dirt poor. In all labor there is profit, but the talk of the lips tends only to penury.

15:41 What's the emphasis here? Very simple. Talking is no excuse for working. Talking is no excuse or substitute for working.

15:52 Here's the person. He's got all kinds of schemes about how he's going to make money. He'll talk from 7 in the morning until 7 at night, but he never gets off his duff and does anything during the day. Schemes.

16:07 Big talk. Zero bank account. Zero checking account. Standing in line for unemployment.

16:15 Now, I'm not saying if you stand in line for unemployment, you're lazy. Please don't anyone put it wrong, but we're talking about this character. Always talking. He can talk about work.

16:26 He can talk about his schemes. He's always got dream castles made of his words, but he simply will not apply himself to a task at hand that will be productive. So God says in all labor there is profit, but the talk of the lips tends only to penury. Let me get very practical.

16:46 If I were in a job situation, and I have been, where I couldn't make even the minimum wage, I always figured it's better to come home with 35 cents an hour and have something so that I can have a sense that I've worked as unto the Lord with a sense of dignity than to do nothing and try to collect something for nothing. And I've done it. And I won't brag or say things that would appear as though I were bragging, but I've put my hand where my mouth is, and I've been grieved to see people under the pious notion, well, I'm encouraging injustice if I work below the minimum wage, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The talk of their lips, the lips tended only to abject poverty, but in all labor there is profit. And little do we know, someone may be watching us, working for below what we're worth, and working as diligently as though we were getting paid twice as much as what we're worth, and that's just the kind of person they're looking for. And out of the blue, God opens up a marvelous opportunity for a noble ability to earn an adequate wage.

18:01 He that is faithful in little, is faithful in much. He that is unjust in little, is unjust in much. Talk of the lips tends only to abject poverty. In all labor, there is profit.

18:18 When I used to be in the itinerant ministry and didn't have any doctrine of the church and no accountability to a church, but was completely freelance, and when I preached somewhere, I got paid sometimes, and when I didn't, I didn't get paid. Well, I had a little apartment to have, to pay the rent every month and other expenses, and had a child at the time. And when we'd get snowfalls there in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I'd take my little Volkswagen and go around. Sometimes the snow was so deep, and that pan on the bottom of the Volkswagen would get hung up in the snow.

18:49 I can remember putting that thing in first gear and pulling out the choke a little bit and walking alongside of it to get my Volkswagen through a street that hadn't been plowed. And I'd say, you want me to shovel out your driveway? Well, how much? Well, what's the kid that usually comes charge you?

19:06 Well, he charges five bucks. I'll do it for four bucks. I underbid him. Shovel snow!

19:13 As a reverend! Yes! Why? Because in all labor, there's profit.

19:20 That helped pay the grocery money more than one snowy week. And I could go home at the end of the day and look myself in the mirror with a sense of dignity that I had shoveled snow to the glory of God. That sounds strange to this generation, doesn't it? But the Word of God hasn't changed.

19:38 The Word of God hasn't changed. In all labor, there is profit. But the talk of the lips tends only to abject poverty. Chapter 15, verse 19.

The Difficult Path of the Sluggard (Proverbs 15:19)

19:49 The way of the sluggard is as a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is made a highway. Now tell me, what is a hedge in your path? Well, it's an obstacle. Now if it's bristling with sharp thorns, the obstacle is made even more difficult.

20:14 Now this text says that the way of the sluggard, his path is like one pile of obstacles bristling with thorns. In other words, it's a difficult way. It's a painful way. Your flesh is ripped open with the thorns.

20:37 You can't make it. You can't make much progress going down that way. The way of the sluggard is as a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is made a highway. Wide, smooth, you can travel 60 miles an hour on it.

20:55 That's the way of the upright. And notice, the contrast is between an upright or righteous man and a sluggard, saying that a sluggard is an unrighteous, ungodly person. The terms, you see, we'd think that the contrast would be, the way of the sluggard is as a hedge of thorns, but the path of the diligent is made a highway. Upright and diligent are used synonymously in the Hebrew parallelism in this passage.

21:24 And you have no reason to have a conscience at peace that you're an upright, righteous man or woman if you're not a diligent man or woman. Diligence is of the essence of uprightness. Because it is to be like God. My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.

21:46 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work. There are untold difficulties in the way of the lazy. And it is moral perversity to be lazy. And as a general rule, the path of the diligent, the upright man, is a smooth path.

Appetite as a Motivator for Labor (Proverbs 16:26)

22:11 All right, Proverbs 16, 26. It's a wonderful passage. It would have to be scrubbed out of countries like Sweden, and countries like our own, moving more and more to an uncontrolled, socialistic concept. But the Word of God does not change.

22:33 The appetite of the laboring man labors for him, for his mouth urges him thereto. Now, nothing can be more practical than that, can it? The appetite of the laboring man, Proverbs 16, 26, labors for him, for his mouth urges him thereto. What does this tell us?

22:58 This tells us that it is perfectly right and noble to be motivated to hard labor under the pressure of the sensation of hunger. Perfectly right. In fact, it's amazing. Paul uses this very reality in 2 Thessalonians 3 to get these pious, no-good, lazy bums off their dust and working again.

23:27 They're going out in their white coats, sitting on the mountain, waiting for the Lord to come. But they get hungry toward evening. So they come down from the mountain and knock on the door of their brethren and say, The Lord has not come today. And I'm a little bit...

23:41 Oh, that smells so good. And they're hitting around for an invitation for a meal. And what did Paul say? If any man will not work, what?

23:53 Let him not eat. Let his tummy play a tune on his backbone for a number of days. And he'll come down off the mountain and put off his white robe and put on his work clothes. Let his hunger, his appetite, start motivating him to labor.

24:14 But if you continue to give him a free meal, you encourage him in his delusive, self-deceptive piosity. Pseudo-spirituality. He ought to be working instead of looking with a misty-eyed, glazed look, waiting for the return of the Lord. And this text finds an application in New Testament church discipline.

24:39 And it is perfectly right to say, If I don't work, I don't eat. And we need to enforce that lesson with our own children. I tell you, you send a teenage boy with a hollow leg up to his room and make him miss a meal because of his laziness. I tell you, that's a lesson you don't soon forget.

25:00 I know by experience. I know what it is to have my stomach growling all evening and all night and feeling so ravenous I could eat the leather on my shoes. But I had been lazy and had not fulfilled a given task and was sent to my room without my meal. Thank God for that kind of discipline.

25:24 And I tell you, my appetite labored for me the next day. And my mouth urged me there too. That's scriptural. That's not torture.

25:34 That's not torture. And if the lesson needs to be enforced, the admonition needs to be enforced by that form of discipline, then have the moral courage to do it that you might teach your children this valuable lesson that they will not grow up with the idea everything is fun and games and play and don't wait until the kids are 15 to start doing it. Listen to Baxter in his Christian directory. Advice to parents about how to rear their children.

26:10 Direction number 11 on page 452. For sports and recreations, let them be such and so much as may be needful to their health and cheerfulness. Now, people say the Puritans were a bunch of killjoys. That's no killjoy speaking.

26:28 He says, give them so much sport and recreation as is needful to their health and to their cheerfulness, but not so much as may carry away their minds from better things and draw them from their books and other duties, nor such as may tempt them to gaming or covetousness, such as may tempt them to get their money by betting and by lotteries and by other illegitimate means. Children must have convenient sport for the health of the body and alacrity of the mind, such as well exercises their bodies is best and not such as little stirring, and with them cards and dice and such idle sports are every way most unfit as tending to hurt both body and mind. Now, if he were living today, what would he put in room of cards and dice, TV watching and Nintendo games and such idle sports are in every way most unfit as tending to hurt both body and mind, and godless psychologists and medical professionals. And so I'm going to give you a little bit of a vision, are appalled at the mental, psychological, and physical devastation upon the TV, Nintendo, game generation.

27:55 This is not narrow-minded Christian fanaticism. Now, I am not saying that if you allow your children a limited amount of time with these things, I am not saying that. But I am saying this allowing of the kids to sit for hours passively in front of the TV and almost invariably with it goes the consumption of junk food is creating a generation of physically unfit children that is alarming even to godless medical people.

28:32 We've got couch potatoes at age ten. And the mind is not being taught to think. It is passively receiving. It is receiving images and impressions.

28:44 And the preoccupation with video games has a devastating effect because it stirs up all of the juices of competitiveness without their proper outlet as comes in an active sport. That's exactly what Baxter was talking about. Let the sport be such as to thoroughly exercise the body and to release proper emotions of competitiveness and the joy of victory and the agony of defeat.

29:18 Now listen to Baxter. Their time also must be limited then that their play may not be their work. As soon as they have the use of any reason and speech, they should be taught some better things and not left till they are five or six years of age to do nothing but get a habit of wasting all their time in play. Children are very early capable of learning something which may prepare them for more.

29:50 As soon as they can walk and talk, they ought to have some chores. That's what he's saying. Till they're five or six. You can teach them very early that recreation is that.

30:05 It is to recreate the emotional and physical mental faculties for that which is life's task, which is work. They weren't put here by God. They were taught to play. And if you teach them that by giving no responsibility and yet letting them eat full meals, have all their needs provided, you're teaching them that in a world that's nothing but play, all of their needs are met and then suddenly at age eight or nine, you're going to teach them that's not the real world?

30:39 You started too late, my friend. You start teaching them as soon as they have speech and reason and have enough physical dexterity that they can begin to bear legitimate responsibilities and furthermore, you teach them to do it cheerfully. You don't allow them to do it with a sullen face. You don't allow them to do it as though it is a great burden.

31:04 You try to teach them that recreation is the reward for work well done. It is that loosening of the bow before it is strung again for its next responsibility in the shooting of the arrow of some specific task that God has assigned to them. Take a text like this and seek under God to work it into the consciences of your children that the appetite of the laboring man works for him for his mouth urges him thereto. All right?

Slackness is Destruction (Proverbs 18:9)

31:44 Proverbs 18 and verse 9. Another pivotal text. He that is slack in his work is brother to him that is a destroyer. Now, what's the emphasis of this text?

32:00 Well, this guy's working. He's not sitting on his duff. He's working. He's busy.

32:07 His hands are busy. His feet are busy. His mind is busy. He's working.

32:11 But you see, the problem is he is slack in his work. He's only doing his work with half his mind. Or a third of his might instead of what the scripture says, whatever thy hand finds to do, do with how much? All of thy might.

32:27 And God says the fruit of slack work is that it makes this man brother. He has an affinity. He has a companionship to him that is a destroyer. Here's a man who does all of his work with all of his might and produces so much at the end of the day.

32:48 Along comes an evil person and destroys half of the fruit of his labor. For example, suppose he was out in the field reaping grain and he worked diligently with all of his might as unto the Lord, took only as many breaks as were necessary to replenish his bodily fluids, to have his lunch and a few minutes for it to settle. He was the model of a diligent field laborer and at the end of the day he has ten sheaves of grain that show the fruit of his labor. Along comes a destroyer and takes five of them and puts a torch to them and burns them up and they're nothing but a handful of ashes.

33:28 Now God says another man going out into the same field and working all day but with a slack hand, at the end of the day he only has five sheaves. He's in companionship with that destroyer. The destroyer took the five sheaves and made them ashes with a torch. The man with the slack hand left the other five sheaves still in the field.

33:51 But they have a fraternity in the fruit of their actions. Do you see that? And we need to teach our children that lesson. As I indicated to you last week as my father bore witness to what was one of the major tenets that he sought to pass on to us as children is that not only do we apply ourselves to a task that is right, but bring it to completion with diligence.

34:21 This was the principle. The man who works with a slack hand and how many times as a child did I get a verbal reminder and sometimes more than verbal, not because I wasn't doing what I was told, but I was doing it dragging my feet. When I could be scrubbing the floor with twenty pounds of per square inch pressure and was doing it with ten, my mother's eye would catch it and she'd be on my case and say, Son, your heart's not in it. Get your heart in it.

34:57 And I wasn't an only child. There were ten of us. No wash and dry clothes. No excuse, Mom.

35:12 No excuse, Dad. You've got to have your eyes open and know the signals when your child's heart is in what he or she is doing. And when it is not, and when it's not, bring this text back. Bring this text to bear upon the conscience of your son or your daughter.

Consequences of Slothfulness (Proverbs 19:15, 19:24)

35:32 We move to Proverbs 19 and verse 14. Verse 15, I'm sorry. Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep, and the idle soul shall suffer hunger. Here the emphasis falls upon being totally non-productive.

35:58 Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep. Now, when you're in a deep sleep, you may be dreaming up a storm. And in your dream, you may be out in a field sweating buckets and outworking every other laborer. And when you wake up, you ain't done nothing.

36:18 Or you may have been very active in your sleep, but you don't accomplish anything. Slothfulness cast into a deep sleep. That is a state of total non-productivity. And the idle soul, there's the Hebrew parallelism, to show my interpretation is not arbitrary, the idle soul shall suffer hunger.

36:45 The indication being, again, you don't have a bunch of woolly-headed, soft-hearted people that say, oh, poor man. He had a bad upbringing. And he wasn't taught how to work. And I know he could work, and he had an opportunity to work, but society's to blame for his laziness, so let's feed him anyway.

37:06 The Bible says, if any man will not work, let him not eat. And the Bible says, if any man cannot work, let not others shut up the heart of compassion towards them. But the Bible nowhere says reward slothfulness by undeserved benevolence. Nowhere.

37:27 It condemns it. It forbids it. And where do we start teaching that? In our own homes.

37:35 With our own children. In the framework of their individual personalities and strengths and weaknesses, we need to cry to God for wisdom, to know how to make plain that this is God's order. Verse 24 of the same chapter. And here's one of those humorous passages.

37:59 The sluggard buries his hand in the dish. Ah, the sluggard's hungry. And oriental fashion, there's the dish of food from which everyone's going to eat. And man, he's so determined to eat to the satisfaction of his hunger, he doesn't just put his hand to the lip of the dish or into the first half inch.

38:19 I mean, he plunges it right in. He buries his hand in the dish. But what happens? Will not so much as bring it to his mouth again.

38:34 See what the picture is? He has enough energy to get his hand into the dish, but he will not bring the effort to completion to get the hand back out of the dish and get the food into his mouth. It's the picture of the half-done job. And this is one of the areas where we, for the most part, you may have an exceptional child, but my experience growing up among ten children, in the rearing of my own children, it seems to me that this is one of the most difficult areas to continue to deal with and contend with is the tendency to do jobs halfway.

39:14 To do them in an incomplete fashion. And that's the mark of the sluggard. He puts his hand in the dish, but he will not bring it to his mouth. There is an incomplete effort in order to accomplish the task.

Overcoming Difficulties and Avoiding Haste (Proverbs 20:4, 20:13, 21:5)

39:37 He does not complete his task. Chapter 20 and verse 4. The sluggard will not plow by reason of the winter, therefore he shall beg in harvest and have nothing. Or when he seeketh in harvest, there shall be nothing.

40:00 Here's the picture of the man who balks at the difficulties in the path of productive and necessary labors. He balks at the difficulties in the path of necessary and productive labors. Yes, the ground needs to be plowed, but it's cold outside. And when I get cold, I shiver.

40:26 And the sluggard says, Yes, I ought to be out plowing, but it's wintertime and I don't like the inconvenience. I don't like the inconvenience of being cold. Therefore, when harvest time comes, he has nothing. And oh, what a picture of so many who, because of real difficulties, these are not imagined difficulties, we'll come to some of those in a later text, these are the real difficulties encountered in the course of labor.

40:56 Now we go back to our theology. Why are there difficulties? Because this world is cursed for man's sake. Had it not been, there would be nothing negative with the most arduous labors of man in an unfallen world.

41:12 But this is a fallen world, and winter is more biting and stinging and negative in its impact upon man than it would have been had not sin entered. This is part not of the sweat of his brow, but by the shivering of his bones when he has to go out and plow in the winter. He must learn that the difficulties are to be overcome. They won't kill him.

41:37 You can always come in and warm your hands by the fire and have a cup of hot chocolate. They're not life-threatening difficulties. They are inconveniences and real difficulties, but they are found in the path of productive and necessary labors. Therefore, we must teach our children to ride through them, or, in the time of harvest, they'll have nothing.

42:00 Apply it to their schoolwork. Yes, there are difficulties when they've got to do a paper on a subject for which they have no intrinsic interest. If there are a hundred things for which they have some natural interest, lo and behold, the teacher assigns them something that's the 101 thing. It falls right off the edge of the scale.

42:17 They've got no interest. They've got to overcome the difficulty of having no intrinsic motivation about that subject. Furthermore, your own encyclopedia at home doesn't have anything about that subject, and they've got to make efforts that are not pleasant to their flesh in order to accomplish that given piece of responsibility. Now, you can do one of two things.

42:37 When they're grousing about that teacher gave me this and that did that make it, you can agree with them and grouse about the teacher, which some of you do, and teach your kid the violation of this principle, or you can sit your child down and say very lovingly and sympathetically, now sweetheart, now son, daddy, mommy understands that there's some difficulties in conjunction with this assignment. I'm sure the teacher had good reasons for giving this assignment. And many things in life are not going to come easy. But they must be done.

43:09 And you take this text and you say, if you do not plow with this paper in the midst of this winter of its difficulties, when it comes marking time, you're going to have nothing. And that is setting a pattern for when you get older in life, there will be many things that are not pleasant. My mother's words ringing in my ear this morning, doing things you don't like to do, develops character. Plow in the winter.

43:39 Then come harvest time, you enjoy the fruit of your labor. Refuse to plow and you will have nothing. All right, we move on now. Proverbs 20 and verse 13.

43:54 Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty. Open thine eyes and thou shalt be satisfied with bread. Now does this verse mean that when we're tired and it's time to go to bed, we should say, now Lord, help me to hate sleep. Because the Bible says, love not sleep.

44:17 Lord, give me a positive feeling of antipathy to sleep, that I'll regard sleep as my enemy and help me just to get as much as I need so I can get out of my sleep and get up. No, it's not talking about that at all. There are other verses in the analogy of Scripture that indicates that the ability to sleep and be refreshed is a gift of God. He giveth unto his beloved in sleep.

44:43 When the tired, worn, distraught, emotionally upset prophet was running from that painted witch named Jezebel, who was threatening his life and he's out moving away from the place of ministry and service and God sees his weary servant, what does he do? Back him on the side of the head and say, get up, you and I got business to do. No, he put him to sleep. And then he fed him and put him back to sleep.

45:11 What this verse means is that we are not to have an inordinate sinful love of sleep, that is, loving to sleep when we ought to be laboring, making excessive rest a substitute for legitimate labor. Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty. If you don't get enough sleep to work efficiently, you'll come to poverty. You get laid off from your job because you're making too many glitches at the computer.

45:41 You're making too many glitches in the measurements when you're cutting the boards for the framing of that house. If you don't have adequate sleep to function with adequate mental and physical coordination, you're not going to accomplish your job. So this is not speaking of legitimate sleep. But do not love what is more than legitimate sleep, lest thou come to poverty.

46:01 Open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread. That is, give yourself enough sleep as is necessary to do your legitimate labor, and then you'll reap the fruit of your labors. Now what's that mean as parents? That means you as parents must seek to monitor what is an adequate measure of sleep for your children, and very early train them to the discipline of the alarm clock.

46:29 If not the alarm clock, you be the living alarm clock. In my home, whether we were too poor to have an alarm clock, I don't know, but we had a living one. It came and shook our feet and got us out of bed when we were supposed to get out of bed in the morning. And there was no turning over and not getting out of bed.

46:48 If you didn't get up with the first shake, then you felt the hand not shaking your foot, but about two feet higher than that on another part of the anatomy. When it was time to get up, you got up. And once you had been served reasonable notice, you were given your notice, and that was it. And you learned to conquer the tyranny of the sheets.

47:08 And you and I must teach our children this. If we don't, what happens? Some of you wives know what happens. You're married to a lazy bum that by the time you've gotten him out of bed in the morning, you're having to fight feelings of resentment and lack of respect so strong that it takes all the grace God can give you to fulfill the biblical mandate to be submissive to that man as unto the Lord.

47:37 You can't even respect him that he hasn't mastered the tyranny of the sheets. How in the name of common sense, men, can your wives respect you as a man and a leader in the home when those little light 84 threads per square inch sheets of cotton and polyester can pin you down like a heavyweight wrestler? You're the real macho man, aren't you? Then you go around barking orders thinking everybody's supposed to jump to attention when she knows what a...

48:12 I'm going to use the word pusillanimous weakling you are. Haven't used that in a long time. But it fits. How can she respect you when you don't have the mastery of the sheets?

48:26 Put yourself in her place and try to respect the man who's pinned every morning by the sheets. Big macho man, pinned by canon sheets. I hope you men see something of the irony of all of that. And take a text like this and pray it in and then sit down with your sons and with your daughters and seek to work it into their consciences.

48:52 Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty. All you need to do to come to poverty is have an inordinate love of sleep. All right? Proverbs 21 in verse 5.

49:07 Text desperately needed in our day. The thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness. But everyone that is hasty hasteth only to want. Now again, with the Hebrew parallelism in the context, what's he talking about?

49:26 He's saying that when the diligent man is cogitating, when he is ruminating on how to be more productive, his thoughts are always cutting short. His thoughts are always cutting channels that really do produce legitimate productivity and its rewards. On the other hand, the sluggard, the lazy man, the one who wants to get rich quick, everyone that is hasty hasteth only to want. He's sitting there thinking, now how can I figure out the best odds on today's lottery?

50:04 How can I figure out the best odds on next week's three million lotto draw? He is always conceiving of ways to get rich quick. He gets the New York Times and reads the financial section not to see how the well-proven stocks are doing, but he's always looking from some marginal stock to put money into which is nothing but a form of gambling. And he found that someone was able to put in ten thousand and inside of three months, their ten thousand took off and they've got a hundred thousand and he's ready to gamble everything he's got, hoping he'll hit it rich in the stock market.

50:44 There are forms of investment in the stock market that are nothing but gambling. Some forms are legitimate means of making our capital work and the Bible does not denigrate that. The Lord even said to the wicked servant, if I am what you say I am, you should have at least taken my money and put it in the bank and given it back with interest. So the idea of legitimate interest on legitimate investments is sanctioned by our Lord.

51:13 But not this character. This is the one who wants to avoid the gradual accumulation. He's hasty to gain his riches and all he gets for it is want and need. Well, that's as far as we get this morning.

Fantasized Excuses for Laziness (Proverbs 22:13)

51:29 Look at Proverbs 22, 13 and we'll close on that. The sluggard says, there's a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets. This is what Pastor Hofstetler calls the fantasizer that is always one of the marks of the sluggard. Hey, buddy, why aren't you working?

51:56 Oh, man, there's a lion loose in the street today. If I go out to work, that lion's going to get me. Where is he? Well, he's up there at the corner of 3rd and Elm Street.

52:05 He is? Yeah, I saw him. You stick your head out the window, look up to the corner of 3rd, you don't see a lion. And you go out in the street and say, you seen a lion?

52:14 No. You seen a lion? No. Nobody in the whole town's seen a lion, but this guy's sure he's there.

52:20 It's the sluggard you see. In other words, he fantasizes about imagined opposition and dangers if he should get up off his duff and do what he ought to do. The sluggard says, there's a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets. If I really give myself to work, it will destroy me.

52:40 I've got to go out into the street to labor. There's a lion out there. Therefore, I'll stay at home and justify my laziness by fantasizing about all of the potential dangers if I go to work. Well, you see, the application of that is infinite to our children.

52:57 If I spend that extra hour completing that report, why, I won't get my sleep, and I... No, no.

53:04 Losing an hour of sleep once in a while never killed anybody. And you've got to teach your children this. Well, if I go out and work in the heat of the day, I'll get sunstroke. No, I'll put a hat on you and we'll put some sunscreen on you, take a break every 20 minutes, take a glass of water.

53:18 You won't get sunstroke. It's amazing how the kids will come up with all kinds of excuses. There's a lion in the street. The lion's out there in the garden.

53:26 If I work in the garden today, Mom, the lion will kill me. I'll get sunstroke. No, you just show your kids you know a little something more about sunstroke than they do. You put a hat on them, make sure they take breaks.

Conclusion and Prayer

53:37 The applications are infinite. Dear parents, may God help you to train your children, warn and admonish them against the horrible, horrible fruits of laziness, the sluggard, and the blessed and holy fruits of diligence and industry. Let us pray. Father, again, we're so thankful for the completeness of the Scriptures.

54:07 We thank you for the harmony of Scripture as we have seen New Testament church discipline taking its lines from a simple statement in the book of Proverbs. O Lord, we pray that you'd write these things upon our own hearts. And in a day when the so-called Protestant work ethic is being mocked and denigrated and eroded, O Lord, will you not give this congregation a holy baptism of this biblical perspective on the nobility and dignity of work, and then enable us to pass it on to our children and our grandchildren by patient, loving, firm admonition, where necessary, enforced by the rod, that the folly of their laziness will be driven from them. O God, in the strength of Christ, we look to you to help us. We have no power in ourselves, but we believe that we can do all things through him who strengthens us. Hear our cry and help us.

55:11 For Jesus' sake we pray. Amen.

55:42 New Jersey 07045