Last week, as I was doing some banking at home, one of my 6 year olds sat next to me and watched me sorting and handling some cash. She asked me, “Daddy, how do you get money?” Half paying attention I kept counting money and said, “I have a tree in the backyard that it grows on.” Very familiar with me, she ignored what she knew was bologna and pressed the question again, “No, how do you get money?” I said, “I’m a pastor. The Church pays me to be their pastor.” Which saying it like that made it sound so, not spiritual. And then she said, “Being a pastor is the easiest way to make money.” “Oh really?” I asked. “Yeah, all you do is read the bible and pray.” I said, “Yes, I do do those things.” And then my other 6 year old, who had been listening, looked up from her coloring book and said, “Yeah, you just read the bible, pray, and play with puppets!”
Warren Wiersbe in his book, “Fifty People Every Christian Should Know,” points out how much domestic life provided Martin Luther with analogies and illustrations in all his sermons and writings. I feel the same way.
And with that, I turn our attention to the topic of “work.” Specifically, work ethic. Proverbs has a lot to say about work ethic and laziness. A wise, godly person will have a good work ethic. A foolish, ungodly person will not.
God made man to work. He put Adam in the Garden of Eden to “work” it. Adam wasn’t to lay around like a bum, consuming everything and doing nothing. He had responsibility immediately. Responsibility is essential to being human. To take “dominion” and “rule” over the earth as humans is to work the earth. Man and earth go together and man is to bring out all the potential of earth’s beauty and productivity through his “work.”
God worked for 6 days creating. The Israelites were to observe the 7th day as a Sabbath, a day of rest, following the example of God Himself resting on the 7th day after he created everything in six days. But resting on the 7th means work was happening on the other 6 days. God is a God who works. Jesus said in John 5 “I am working and my Father is working with me to this very day.” In John 9 he said He was doing the works His Father sent him to do, and in John 14 he said the Father was doing His works through Him. Working is important in the NT writings of the Apostles too. Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 3 that he gave them an example of working hard with his own hands, providing for his own needs while with them, and that if anyone of them were lazy, and refused to work, then that man should not eat. Paul was fine with a Christian starving if that Christian was lazy. In fact, Paul insisted he should starve, and not only starve, he told them to shun him and make him feel ashamed.
Laziness is a serious sin and hard work is a righteous quality. And Proverbs is loaded with teaching on this matter. Let me present 5 points taught in Proverbs regarding work.
#1: THE WISE DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
The first lesson is that the wise do what needs to be done. They do the work that needs to be done. Turn to some verses with me.
- Proverbs 10:5… The wise son does the work he needs to do: gathering the crops. He doesn’t neglect that important job.
- Proverbs 21:5…. The wise are diligent, the plans they make the set about
- Then 21:20….The wise stock up, the wise do the work necessary to store up and have food on the shelves
- Proverbs 28:19….Here again the wise work their land to put food on the table.
The wise do the work they need to do. They take care of their responsibilities. They don’t leave things undone. Proverbs describes the lazy man as neglecting his responsibilities. But the wise man faithfully carries out the work he needs to.
This is a character issue. It shows reliability, stewardship, faithfulness, and integrity. Laziness is bad character. Hard work and being responsible is good character. The Proverbs 31 woman is praised for her strong work ethic, 13, 15, 17, 25, 27 ,31. She is the noble wife, exemplary for many things, particularly her work ethic.
#2: THE WISE DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE WHEN IT NEEDS TO BE DONE
Similar to the first point is the second point: the wise do what needs to be done WHEN it needs to be done. Proverbs 20:4, “Sluggards do not plow in season; so at harvest they look but find nothing.” This is why Proverbs tells sluggards to learn from ants. “Go to the ant, you sluggard,” 6:6 says, “consider its ways and be wise! It stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.” The point here is how the wise take care of their responsibilities in a timely manner. The reason the wife in Proverbs 31 can laugh at days to come is precisely because she took care of what needed to be taken care of when it needed it. She was like the five virgins in Matthew 25 who were ready for the bridegroom. She wasn’t lazy like the other 5 who didn’t get ready WHEN they should have and so missed the party.
We could get more specific and say that the wise prepare for the future. Wisdom in one sense teaches us to take it one day at a time, and look for the manna God provides today and not worry about tomorrow. But we also find God teaching us to look beyond today to the future and to prepare.
#3: THE WISE DON’T MAKE EXCUSES
The lazy, however, do. Turn to 22:13 with me. The proverb captures the lazy man’s unrealistic reasons for not going and getting work. The lazy man has every reason in the world to not do what he should do. He comes up with absurd fears to justify why he shouldn’t or doesn’t need to get up off the couch and get things done.
But not the wise. The wise don’t let excuses win they day. The wise slay the lions and go to work.
#4 THE WISE TAKE CARE OF THINGS
Let me point out several aspects of this.
First, they take care of things pertaining to themselves. Turn to 26:15 with me… He’s too lazy to feed himself! He’s too lazy to meet his own basic needs. The foolishness and moral stupidity of laziness is stressed throughout Proverbs.
Second, the wise also take care of their possessions and property. Turn to 24:30-34… What the author saw in the sluggards vineyard was neglect. Weeds and thorns had overtaken it, the wall was falling apart and falling down. The wise take care of their possessions. You do this in large part because you’re taking care of yourself and your family by caring for your possessions. For instance, turn to 27:23-27. Do you see how the author gives the wise advice that a man should are for his flocks and herds because by doing so they will provide him with food and clothing? The needs of life? Take care of your things. Take care of your responsibilities at home, at work, at church and wherever you have taken on those responsibilities.
I think here we can see the point of Proverbs 18:9… “One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.” It is so clever of a saying that basically means laziness is akin to destroying. Laziness is another way to destroy something. Neglecting to take care of something so that it deteriorates, is very much like actively ruining that something. Let us not destroy our stuff by neglecting it through laziness. Which leads to the next point:
Lastly, the wise take care of their family’s needs. The wise don’t lazily neglect the needs of their family. Turn to 24:3-4 with me….. He’s not talking about your house physically. He’s talking about the kind of home you create in that house. What kind of life happens inside that house? The wise build and establish their homes with godly wisdom and understanding.
Turn with me to 1 Timothy 5:8…. [read] That is a serious statement by the Apostle Paul. A man who did not take care of his family, who claimed to be a believer, but through neglect, laziness, addiction, or whatever, didn’t provide for his family’s needs, was worse than an unbeliever. Paul says he may profess with his mouth he believes, but he’s a hypocrite because it is unconscionable that a believing man would not take care of his family. I have written in next to that verse Proverbs 11:29, “Whoever brings ruin on their family will inherit only wind…”
I want to stretch this to spiritual matters. A father has the responsibility to be the head of his home, and fundamental to that role is being the spiritual leader. He is the first pastor to his children – not me. He is the first model for them – not me. I support and supplement, but I do NOT substitute you as the father in your home. I said something several years ago in a sermon that one man here told me he was struck by and I want to say it again: “Am I, as your pastor, praying more for your wife and kids than you are?” If so, then you are sinning and it is time to man up in your home. The prophet Samuel told the king, “Far be it from me to sin against the LORD and fail to pray for you.” Let every man have that same spirit when it comes to their home. When you pull in the driveway after church today, look at your home and say, “Far be it from me to sin against my wife and kids, and against God above, by failing to pray for you.”
A Christian man should do the work of pastoring his own home, which means modeling Christ-like character, growing in wisdom from the Scriptures, going to church because HE wants to go, praying for his wife and kids, praying WITH his wife and kids, reading the Scriptures to them, leading his wife so that the two are making decisions about their home and life that show Christ is put first. There was a time when churches had the attitude, “Win the kids, win the parents.” Bologna. My attitude is, “Win the parents, win the kids.” The best thing we can do for your kids, aside from our own genuine faith and Christian walk here, is to make you parents strong in the faith so that your kids see at home everyday what real, strong, genuine Christianity is at home. So let no professing Christian man neglect the material needs of his family, and let not that man be lazy with the spiritual responsibilities he has at home.
#5: THE WISE KEEP BALANCE
Hard work and being responsible is not meant to be the number one thing that you do that you sacrifice everything else for. The wise aren’t “workaholics” sacrificing everything to advance their careers or get rich or build their egos. The wise give work hard but they also keep a balance with the rest of life. Let me show you how I get there
First, Agur says in 30:8, “Lord, give me neither poverty nor riches, but only my daily bread.” Then I also see numerous verses that tell us there is a time to work. Numerous proverbs tell us that the lazy sleep at the time when they should be working (6:6-11; 10:4; 20:4, 13). The ant however gathers and stores up food, the wise gather crops in the summer, they also take care of their flocks so they can get milk and clothing, the Proverbs 31 woman gets her work done and then she can laugh at the future because she’s not afraid because she’s prepared. My point is that there is a time to work and the implication I pull out is that there is a time to not work. Did God not tell the Israelites that they were to do NO work on the 7th day, the Sabbath? Get the needed work done when it needs to be done, fulfill your responsibilities, and also keep that in balance with your marriage, your family, your friendships, and above all, your God.
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright once told of an incident that may have seemed insignificant at the time, but had a profound influence on the rest of his life. The winter he was 9, he went walking across a snow-covered field with his reserved, no-nonsense uncle. As the two of them reached the far end of the field, his uncle stopped him. He pointed out his own tracks in the snow, straight and true as an arrow’s flight, and then young Frank’s tracks meandering all over the field.
“Notice how your tracks wander aimlessly from the fence to the cattle to the woods and back again,” his uncle said. “And see how my tracks aim directly to my goal. There is an important lesson in that.”
Years later the world-famous architect liked to tell how this experience had greatly contributed to his philosophy in life. “I determined right then,” he’d say with a twinkle in his eye, “not to miss most things in life, as my uncle had.”
Keep balance.
CONCLUSION: THE WORK OF JESUS CHRIST
There is one work that we should all neglect. There is one work that we should all avoid. It is the work of salvation. Do not work for your salvation, it is impossible. There is only one Person who worked for our salvation, and it is that one and only work that He did that God accepts us for: it is the work of Jesus Christ. His work was to die on the cross for our sins so that we could be saved by trusting in Him for forgiveness and eternal life. The crowds once asked Jesus: “What works must we do to be saved?” Jesus answered them, “The work you must do to be saved is this: To believe on the One whom God has sent.” So I say to you today,