Proverbs on Wealth 
Part 8 – Laziness: A Case Study (Consequences)

Baxter T. Exum (#1750)
Four Lakes Church of Christ
Madison, Wisconsin
August 25, 2024

Good morning and welcome to the Four Lakes congregation! If you are visiting this morning or joining us online or on the phone, we are especially glad to have you with us, and we’d like to ask that you fill out a visitor card – either online or on a card from the pew in front of you. And we also invite you to pass along any questions or prayer concerns in that way. In terms of our schedule, please remember that Gary Mueller is planning another Pontoon Fellowship in a few weeks – 2 o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, September 8. If you are interested, please see Gary and please sign up on the bulletin board in the entryway.

We are here this morning to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. God loves us and sent his Son to save us. He died on the cross, he was buried, and he was raised up on the first day of the week. This is the good news, and we obey this good news through faith, repentance, confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and baptism (a burial in water for the forgiveness of sins). And this morning we are sharing some good news from Mark Posey (from Alabama) who does a lot of mission work in Ukraine. He says, “Praise God! Another baptism in Nikopol Ukraine. Welcome Zoya to the Family of God. Slavic is doing a great [job].”

This update comes to us from Melvin Otey. You may remember we just shared three videos from brother Otey when I was out of town last month. He’s a friend we first met at his law office in Washington, DC, when we were there for worship, and he is now a law professor in Alabama. He posted a few days ago and says, “There are still people seeking the truth. Tonight, a man who lives in our community came to Bible class for the first time. He had been watching Gospel Broadcast Network, listening to our sermons online, and studying the Bible for himself. After class tonight, he was baptized for the remission of his sins. My son, Caleb, happened to be teaching a lesson on evangelism tonight. The gospel still works y’all. We don’t always know when it will ripen in someone’s heart. We don’t always know how far the message will go. Caleb said during class, to help us avoid being discouraged when we don’t see immediate returns, ‘When you’ve done your job, you’ve done your job.’ Our job is to sow the seed. If we do that, the word of God will do its job. Welcome to the family of God, Johnny.” And I would add: This guy has an awesome beard! I am looking forward to meeting my bearded brother some day!

We have a neat update from the Salt River Church of Christ in Mesa, Arizona. They say, “So happy to witness Mike baptize his mom, Lupita, into the blood of Christ! Please keep them in prayer.” Good to see it!

This last one comes to us from the Seven Oaks congregation down in Mayfield, Kentucky. They say, “[We are] so proud of Jacob Rohrer and his decision to be baptized into Christ tonight.” There was some teamwork involved in this one, and we are certainly happy for Jacob. There are many more examples we could have shared this week, but we’ve shared these to show what it means to obey the gospel, and if you are ready to do what these people have done, or if you would like to learn more, please let us know. We invite you to get in touch using the contact information on the wall up here, or if you are joining us on the phone, you can send a text or give me a call at 608-224-0274.

This morning, we are headed back to the book of Proverbs! As of this moment we have now covered 406 of the 915 Proverbs, or right at 44%. And this summer, we are now looking at everything King Solomon says about WEALTH. We started with Solomon’s advice on GETTING wealth. We looked at how to LOSE your wealth. We then looked at the idea of ENJOYING OUR WEALTH. We looked at what King Solomon had to say about POVERTY. We looked at the value of GIVING our wealth to others, and last week we moved into something of a bonus (and somewhat related) study on LAZINESS. As I’ve said all along, we are being somewhat flexible with this arrangement, and since we have at least 27 verses on laziness, I’ve decided to divide these into three lessons – last week we looked at an actual chunk of scripture (a portrait of laziness), we’re looking at another chunk of scripture this week (a description of some of the consequences of laziness), and we hope to wrap it up next week with the rest of the rather random proverbs on laziness.

And as we get started this morning, I would invite you to be turning with me to the last few verses of Proverbs 24, and I’d like to point out that these are the last few Proverbs that were actually compiled by King Solomon himself, and I say that because of an interesting statement that comes in the first verse of Proverbs 25. It’s easy to overlook, but in Proverbs 25:1, the text says, “These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, transcribed.” So, I’m going to check this one off our list, now that we’ve looked at it. There’s no great wisdom here, but it’s an explanation. Solomon is no longer personally responsible for the arrangement of what happens starting in Proverbs 25. Many of the Proverbs are his, but they were apparently collected and arranged after his death. This means, then, that the last few verses of Proverbs 24 are the end of King Solomon’s personal arrangement. Which means that we are studying, today, the original ending of King Solomon’s Proverbs. This is how King Solomon originally intended to end this book. Either that, or he died before finishing, and somebody else packed up the scraps of paper on his desk and compiled it in future years.

Nevertheless, in this study of LAZINESS, we have an interesting case study in Proverbs 24:30-34, where King Solomon observes and then notes the CONSEQUENCES of this behavior. So, let’s look together this morning at Proverbs 24:30-34, where King Solomon says,

30 	I passed by the field of the sluggard
	And by the vineyard of the man lacking sense,
31 	And behold, it was completely overgrown with thistles;
	Its surface was covered with nettles,
	And its stone wall was broken down.
32 	When I saw, I reflected upon it;
	I looked, and received instruction.
33 	“A little sleep, a little slumber,
	A little folding of the hands to rest,”
34 	Then your poverty will come as a robber
	And your want like an armed man.

As we look back at these five Proverbs, let’s pay attention to what we might describe as a case study in laziness...

    I. ...and we start in verses 30-31, where King Solomon makes his initial OBSERVATION.

I get the impression here that Solomon is out and around, taking a walk. Perhaps he’s taking a break from his kingly duties. And as he’s out there exploring his kingdom a little bit, he notices something. He makes an observation. And as I understand this, he walks by the property of a known slacker. I don’t think he’s jumping to conclusions here. After all, there may be some legitimate reasons for a field to be overgrown. Maybe there’s been an injury, or disease, or a death in the family. Perhaps they are letting the field rest on the seventh year, as God had instructed, and so on. So, Solomon is not unfairly judging the owner of this particular property, but he knows going into this, that the owner is a “sluggard.” The owner is “a man lacking sense.” And when he walks by this man’s field, he notices (in verse 31) that “it was completely overgrown with thistles; its surface was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down.” So, already knowing the man’s heart, Solomon observes that being lazy has a way of showing on the outside.

And one thing I really hope we understand (based on these first two verses) is that it takes no effort at all for a property to completely fall to pieces. If I roto-till my entire front yard, if I take out the rocks, if I rake it smooth, and if I don’t touch it for a year, what’ll happen? Will it be completely bare? Will I have a luxurious green lawn? No! I’m guessing that within a week I’ll have weeds popping up, and within a year I’ll have a yard full of dandelions and thistles. Maybe 20 years ago, we made the mistake of putting a finch feeder in our yard, and we filled that feeder with thistle seed. What a huge mistake! For the first year, we enjoyed watching those cute yellow finches on that feeder. But then we started seeing thistles pop up around the feeder, and then they spread. Those birds would poop those seeds all over the place, and within a year we had thistles in the flower beds, thistles in the garden, thistles in the grass, thistles everywhere! And by the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. We pulled the feeder, but we are still dealing with that mistake more than 20 years later. Now, we only use sunflower seeds, because, when those fall on the ground, the worst that happens is that we get a sunflower! So, I have sunflower seeds on my permanent Christmas and birthday gift lists. The point is: It takes no effort at all to have a yard full of weeds. But, it takes work to remove those weeds. My first real job (where I was paid money to do something) was on a Christmas tree farm. I was young, so I know I’m exaggerating, but as I remember it, they dropped me off in a pickup truck over the horizon, they gave me a chopper, and they told me to work my way back toward the house chopping and pulling 2-foot tall weeds from around baby Christmas trees that were maybe 6-inches tall at the time. This struggle with weeds goes back to the curse in Genesis 3.

And it continues to this day. When we first built our house back in the year 2000, the city (I assume) wanted Midland Builders to have some “green space.” So, the builder created an outlot behind several of the properties and deeded it over to a homeowner’s association, where 23 of us own a partial stake in that property. That has been a royal hassle. Together (as an association), we owe taxes on it, we have to pay insurance on it, and we even owe a water bill on it. Even though there’s no water service to the property, the water bill is how we pay for fire protection (in case the property bursts into flame), and the water bill is how we pay a run-off fee. Did you know that when God sends rain on the City of Madison, the city has found a way to tax us for that rain? The rain runs off every property in different amounts, depending on whether it soaks in or hits a hard surface, and somebody has to deal with that runoff, so the city has found a way to tax us for rain. Someday, when I finally get to talk to the apostle Matthew, I can hardly wait to tell him that in the year 2024 the government has found a way to tax us for rain. As a tax collector, I think Matthew would really appreciate that (that, and the fact that they have figured out how to tax us for driving and can take the money out of our wallets as we are driving in Illinois, and as we are traveling 70 MPH – I think Matthew would love that as well). But this rain-tax is on a lot that nobody wants. We can’t build on it, we can’t really enjoy it, and we have to constantly harass our neighbors into paying their yearly dues. Then, on top of that, a month or two ago, another neighbor outside our association looked over into this field, got upset that it wasn’t mowed, complained to the city, and the inspector came and found some thistles in it, and sent us a warning letter: You must remove these thistles in ten days, or we will come mow the field for you and send you the bill for $150 an hour. By the way, the Cap Times had an article about weed complaints last week. With more rain this summer, weed complaints are up 47% this year, so we are not alone. The city’s complaint department has a staff of 43 people and a budget of $5.6 million. I say all of this to illustrate that it really takes no effort at all for a field to be overgrown with weeds. And that is what Solomon observes.

But not only was the field full of weeds, Solomon also notices that the stone wall was falling down. And I don’t get the impression that this was due to vandalism of some kind; no, this was due to neglect. And again, it’s amazing to me how something as simple as a fence needs so much maintenance. At home, my wife was providing daycare when we moved here, so we put a fence in before we even planted grass (as I remember it). Twenty four years later, we have now painted it twice, I’ve replaced a gate once, we have replaced several boards here and there, and we are constantly fixing holes where the rabbits keep trying to get in. By the way, we have a beagle, and when the rabbits finally get in they immediately regret that decision, but it is a constant struggle to maintain a fence. And I know: If I hadn’t maintained it through the years, that fence would be in pieces right now. As it is, though, it takes constant maintenance. We might think of the “Mending Wall,” the poem by Robert Frost, where two neighbors meet up every spring to walk along each side of a stone wall, replacing those stones that have fallen over the course of a year. Without that maintenance, the fence would disappear over time. Or, I think of my wife’s grandmother’s house in Ohio. So many memories in that house, but the last time I saw it there were trees growing in the gutters, and now the house is completely gone. We stopped by the vacant lot last summer. Without constant work, time takes its toll. Solomon, then, observes that the lazy man’s field is overgrown with weeds and that the fence that once protected the property is falling down. So now, even if he could grow a crop, animals would wander in and eat it.

And you know, in those days, agriculture was an honorable profession. Farmers and vineyard keepers would work hard to feed the community. Have you guys seen a well-groomed vineyard? It is amazing! Driving through southern California last year was an awesome experience. Very impressive! Rows and rows of trees, and vines, and all kinds of crops. A productive field or vineyard takes years and years of planning and hard work. But this man is a slacker, and it is obvious to the world. What was once a productive piece of land is now a dump – not due to a fire, or flood, or drought, or storm; not due to some kind of attack by an enemy, but due to neglect. We think of Jesus talking about judging a tree by its fruit (in Matthew 7). This farmer’s laziness is now evident to the world. We cannot hide laziness forever; the results are now out in the open for all to see. And unlike others who have NOT been blessed with owning a property like this, this man has this amazing gift of land, but he is neglecting it. To own productive land in the ancient world was a tremendous blessing, and to neglect it was just awful. What a waste! And we can almost sense King Solomon’s sadness over this; but this is what he observes.

    II. As we move into verses 32-33, we come to the INSTRUCTION part of this Proverb.

And I love Solomon’s reaction here. Instead of getting out of his chariot and harassing the owner over this, Solomon “sees,” and then he “reflects” on this. You may have a footnote on this, indicating a literal translation indicating that he “set his heart” on this situation. He takes it to heart, as we might say today. He “looks” and he “receives instruction.” In other words, King Solomon applies this observation to himself first. And there is some wisdom in this. When we observe laziness in the world, let’s not start by assuming the worst of people, let’s not start by harassing, but let’s start by applying the lesson to ourselves first. And that’s what King Solomon does here. He sees the failure of one man, and instead of attacking, he applies it to himself first.

And then we have this statement in quotation marks (in most of our Bibles). Solomon sees this overgrown field with the broken down walls, and then it’s as if the situation speaks to him. This is the voice of wisdom. And I might suggest that this may even be an inspired observation. In a sense, this is perhaps God weighing in on this situation. And the voice of wisdom observes, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.” This is what caused the overgrown field with the broken down walls. And this statement reminds us that the failure came a “little” at a time. The word “little,” in fact, is used three times here, indicating that the tragedy of verse 30 didn’t happen all at once, this isn’t an outright refusal to every work again, but this happened a little at a time. It’s not “never,” but “later.” Here and there, but over the long run, the owner of this property made a series of seemingly insignificant decisions – decisions to sleep, and to nap, and to rest – hitting the snooze button one more time, just one more game of solitaire, checking in on social media one more time, one more episode on Netflix, and so on. Before long, we’ve established a pattern, a lifestyle, a habit.

Of course, we understand that some rest is good. God rested. But God rested only after working for six days. Not a bad ratio! This guy, though, slept, and slumbered, and rested. How much? Just a little more! One nap after another, and before long, his fields are covered in weeds and his wall is broken down. Now, the lazy guy can see his field and his walls in a state of disrepair, and he learns nothing. The wise man, though, sees the same thing, and he takes it to heart. King Solomon sees and he learns. The lazy man, of course, knows what needs to happen, doesn’t he? We assume that he was at one time a hard worker. We assume that he, at one time, cleared the field, and cultivated the vineyard, and his work was so important to him that he even built a wall around it. But little by little he slept, and napped, and rested, perhaps spread out over many years, resulting in this neglect. And Solomon learns from this.

And here’s something to think about: Many times, when we want to learn a lesson in the business world, we look to the success stories. We look at the guy who builds a computer in his garage and ends up ruling the world. We look at somebody who succeeds. But Solomon reminds us that we can also learn from failures as well. Sometimes we learn what NOT to do, and that’s what we see here. There is a danger in continual sleep, and napping, and rest.

    III. With this as background, we now come to the CONSEQUENCES of this behavior.

“Then your poverty will come as a robber and your want like an armed man.” You may have a footnote or a different translation on “robber” here. It goes back to a word referring to a “walker,” and it’s the idea of a punk roaming the streets at night looking for someone to rob. Some translations may refer to this guy as a “vagabond.” That’s not a word we use too often today, but it’s someone who constantly roams around looking for someone to rob. And the “armed man” in this passage refers to someone with a “shield,” a soldier. It’s the picture of an armed conflict, the idea of foreign army invading and plundering a village. So, we have two flavors here, but the message is the same: Laziness leads to poverty. The laziness may come a little at a time over an extended period, but the poverty part comes suddenly and without warning. For the guy who’s always sleeping, his poverty will come as a surprise. Everybody else can see it coming, but the lazy guy is shocked by it, “Wow! How did this happen!” He sees no connection between the constant napping and financial ruin. Solomon, though, sees it, and he gives the warning to his sons: Don’t be slackers! If you’re always napping, poverty will sneak up on you. You won’t literally be robbed, but it’s almost like you’re robbing yourself. The consequences will be swift, unexpected, and severe. Those fields and vineyards that should have supplied his family with food and an income throughout the year are now empty and overgrown, and now the man has nothing.

Conclusion:

So what? What does this passage mean for us today? Whether we’re working at home, or volunteering, or working in an office or somewhere else out there in the world, we have the choice to work hard or to rest and relax, and wisdom teaches us that there is a value to rest, but when we work, we really need to be working. As Paul said in Colossians 3:23-24, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.” So, there’s a literal and very physical application here.

But I would also suggest that there’s more of a spiritual and symbolic application as well. In a sense, God is looking over the wall into our hearts, and he can see how we’re doing spiritually. What does he see? Does he see a vineyard full of fruit? Or does he see the consequences of spiritual neglect? Does he see weeds and a broken down wall? You know, Jesus told a parable about a sower who went out to sow, and he applied it spiritually. Some seed landed beside the road where it was immediately eaten by the birds. Some seed fell on the rocky soil where it sprouted but died when it got scorched by the sun. Some seed fell among the weeds, where it sprouted but ended up being choked out by the thorns. And some seed fell on the good soil where it sprouted and grew up and multiplied – some by a hundred times, some by sixty, and some by thirty. And again, the Lord applied that story spiritually. So also, God has given each of us a vineyard. It’s up to us what we do with it. It’s up to us to step out of our comfort zone and take on some new responsibility (as John talked about a few weeks ago).

Today’s Proverbs come as a call to action from King Solomon – whether physically or spiritually, the wise king is calling us to be diligent. Work comes first; rest comes later. The Christian life is a life of work and service, and rest comes at the end. As Paul says in Ephesians 5:14-16, “Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.”

Next week, we hope to wrap up our study of laziness by looking at the rest of the random Proverbs on this subject. For now, let’s close our study by going to God in prayer:

Our Father in Heaven,

You are a God who works and continues to do so many amazing things. You continually show us the importance of both working and resting. As your people, we want to learn from the example you set in creation, and we want to lead the way in showing the world what Christian living is all about. If we have failed in the past, we ask for your forgiveness, and we ask that your word will take root in our hearts.

Thank you for giving us the proverbs of King Solomon, but we thank you more than anything for sending something so much greater than Solomon. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for his sinless life. Thank you for his example of hard work as a carpenter and as a teacher and preacher. We pray that we would follow his example as we serve you from the heart.

We are your servants, and we come to you this morning in Jesus’ name. AMEN.

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