Work

Sermon Transcript

What are some of the defining features of American culture? There are no doubt a lot of ways you could answer that question, but one that’s been common throughout history is the value Americans place on hard work. While our European forebears often had titled lands and inherited posts of royalty, the theory in America was a meritocracy, where everyone had to work to get the votes for their political office and work for their pay. Today Americans are still among the world leaders in hours worked per year and get, on average, less paid time off than workers in most European nations. At the same time, American neuropsychologist Theo Tsaousides, who I assume had to work hard to earn his PhD, summarizes well the feeling of many Americans when he writes, “The truth is, I have mixed feelings about working hard. The prospect of hard work doesn’t inspire me. When someone tells me “you have to work hard,” I don’t light up. I get stressed out just thinking about it. I get butterflies in my stomach and a mild headache. It doesn’t make me want to get started. It makes me want to procrastinate, to get distracted, to find other things to do, to take a nap, to go on vacation. And when I think about what my aversion to hard work could do to my future, I get really worried. I may have to rethink my life goals, lower my expectations, and settle for the status quo.” We kind of sense that we must work hard, we can get inspired to do so, we can talk fondly of hustling or being on our grind, but we also have to admit that some part of us would rather do just about anything than work hard. We’re continuing our series this morning through the book of Proverbs, which is all about wisdom—helping us perceive reality and live in accordance with it, and the reality with which it wants to acquaint us as we consider both the necessity of hard work and our aversion to it is summarized in Proverbs 10:4 – A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. So today we’ll talk first about a slack hand, and then the hand of the diligent.

 

A slack hand

 

First, what is a slack hand? As is usually the case in Proverbs, rather than giving us a definition, it gives us various characteristics of it. The first characteristic we can notice is that it wastes time. Proverbs 12:11 says, “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.” There is a way to be very active that is nonetheless very lazy, and this verse describes it as following worthless pursuits. A worthless pursuit is something that takes up your time, energy, and typically your money, but doesn’t produce anything that brings God glory, serves the good of your neighbor, or even genuinely helps you. I imagine most of you would have no trouble generating examples in your own life: Scrolling on your phone, binge watching TV shows, video games, and sports come to mind. These things aren’t necessarily bad in themselves; you can enjoy a TV show with thankfulness to God as you rest from your ordinary labors, but when these things start to become habits in our lives that take us away from the work God has given us to do or even take us away from the rest God has ordained (like sleep), that’s a foolish use of them.

 

When Jesus was on earth, he expanded on this wisdom to point out how even our work, when pursued to the neglect of our souls, can be foolish: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). Proverbs 12:11 says whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but if you work your land to the neglect of your soul, what good will all that bread be to you when you too die, and after that comes judgment? If you’re too busy with your job to do basics like meditate on scripture, pray, and gather with your church, your job has become a worthless pursuit. I understand there are works of necessity that need to function on Sunday mornings and that means some of you in medicine or law enforcement or other such fields may have to work Sundays occasionally and that some jobs have particular busy seasons, but don’t just go with the flow of that and let it squeeze out your friendship with God. You can picture a slack hand, even—what is it doing? It’s going with the flow. It doesn’t exert strength to direct the flow. Exert your strength, even in busy jobs, to fight for the 5 minutes to sing a hymn there, the 5 minutes to pray there, the 10 minutes on the phone with another member to pray together, the sermon podcast on your commute, and so on. If you spend all your time working, you’re wasting your time, even as the person who spends all their time on their phone is wasting their time.

 

Another way the slack hand wastes time is in talk; Proverbs 14:23 – “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.” In the New Testament the apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonians that some “among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies” (2 Thess 3:11), and he elsewhere suggests this was a particular danger for younger widows, writing that “they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not” (1 Tim 5:13). If you find you have time to talk to your family and friends, but you struggle to get your work done, that’s evidence of laziness. Perhaps it’s not so much the job you are paid to do, but your house work that gets left behind in service of your social life—your living space is a mess, repairs keep getting deferred, bills don’t get paid. Churches are not immune to this either—it is possible to talk about loving God and one another without actually then doing the good works God has prepared in advance for us to do. “Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).

 

A slack hand can waste time on worthless pursuits, on mere talking, and a slack hand can waste time sleeping. Proverbs 20:13 sys, “Love not sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread.” Sleep is a gift from God, no doubt, and to neglect it entirely is foolish (cf. Psalm 127:2), but to love it is also foolish. I remember a brother in college admirably admitting that when he faced hard decisions or a situation in which he was afraid to fail, the thing he felt most tempted to do was to go sleep. Many of us, myself included, find that our folly inclines us to follow worthless pursuits that prevent us from going to bed at a wise time, and then when morning comes, suddenly we love sleep too much to get up and get to work! If you find you cannot get to work on time, parent your children, take care of your life responsibilities, or draw near to God because you can’t get out of bed, it probably means you love sleep too much.

 

A slack hand can waste time on worthless pursuits, on mere talking, on sleep, and finally, a slack hand can waste time in indecision. Proverbs 15:19 says, “The way of a sluggard is like a hedge of thorns, but the path of the upright is a level highway”, and the idea there seems to be that to a sluggard, the way before them always looks like a hedge of thorns. When we looked at proverbs on decision making a few weeks ago, we saw the wisdom there is in slowing down in our decision making. However, there are some things that are so clearly wise that to slow down before doing them is foolish. Just go to work when it’s time, pay your bills before they’re due, and go to church on Sunday morning. If you get an idea of how to love your neighbor, just give it a shot—is it really that likely that you’re going to love the wrong neighbor? If you think you should invite someone over, just invite them—do you really need to spend much time evaluating whether there might be someone even better to invite over? I’m an optimizer, and what that can do is leave me inactive as I stress about what the absolute best thing to do would be, and end up doing very little in the process. That’s a path full of thorns.

 

On that note, another feature of a slack hand is that it tends to overstate adversity. In Proverbs 22:13 we read that “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!’”. In other words, the sluggard always has an excuse. Could there be a lion outside that will kill you in the streets? I mean, I can’t say there’s zero chance of that—but is that really why you won’t get up and go to work? “It’s snowy outside; I can’t go to work.” Sure, but are the roads really that bad, or are you eager for a reason not to work? “I’m physically unable to work.” Is that true in some cases? Yes, and that’s why we have a disability assistance program in this country. But does anyone really think that system isn’t also abused by many who are physically able to work, but simply don’t want to, and therefore are overstating their adversity? Another route people have tried today is to claim they are mentally or emotionally unable to work—too depressed or too anxious. And is mental illness a real thing? Yes. But is your experience of it rendering you unable to work? There is such a thing as a legitimate excuse, but this proverb and others like it are trying to equip us with the wisdom to recognize that there is also such a thing as a bad excuse, and the sluggard loves to generate them.

 

That’s important for you to know for yourself: Just because something is hard, even very hard, doesn’t mean God doesn’t want you to do it. One ordinary way for your faith to be strengthened, in fact, is precisely by doing hard things in dependence on God’s Spirit. That’s important for you to know for yourself, but it’s also important for you to know so that your love for others can be guided by wisdom. Not everyone who tells you they are unable to do something is telling you the truth. Parents, if your kids tell you they are too tired to set the table tonight, it’s generally foolish to excuse them from doing so. In one of the New Testaments passages to which I alluded earlier, we’re told this: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thess 3:10). We often want to assist others who are suffering because we love them; that is right and good. But to accept every excuse someone makes for not working at face value is foolish. Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone who lacks material provision is not to feed them, but to exhort them to get to work, even though it’s hard (cf. 1 Thess 5:14).

 

Because if every time the slack hand meets adversity it remains slack and stays in bed, guess what will happen? It will be that much harder for it to get out of bed the next time. A brother in the church years ago got me on some fitness videos on YouTube and I confess I watched a few. One that stuck with me was called “The most important time to go to the gym” and do you know what the fitness expert said? The most important time to go to the gym is the time you really don’t feel like going to the gym, because if you give in and don’t go at those times, it’s that much easier for you to give in and not go the next day. Now we even have brain science to confirm what was already there in Proverbs: Every step you take down a certain path makes it easier for you stay on that path, and every time you give in to the slack hand, you’re only making it slacker. Listen to Proverbs 19:24 – “The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and will not even bring it back to his mouth.” The sluggard’s hand has become so slack that it won’t even make the journey from the dish back to his mouth! Obviously this is hyperbolic, but the point is clear: If you give in to laziness, you’ll only get lazier.

 

And why is that a problem? Because a slack hand causes poverty. Like, literally, if you won’t work, you should not expect to have the money you need to buy food, shelter, or anything else. Remember that the proverbs are here as a gift from God to help us understand reality and how to live in accordance with it, and one thing these proverbs reveal is the God-ordained connection between work and reward. Unfortunately we do have cases in America where we have foolishly severed that link and people who are unwilling to work then sometimes feel entitled to material provision, but the proverbs suggest that’s a recipe doomed to fail for both you and your society. A slack hand causes poverty, and we mustn’t then give riches to the slack person and so deceive them into thinking that’s not the case.

 

The slack hand causes not only a poverty of money, but a poverty of authority. Proverbs 12:24 says, “The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor.” If you give in to laziness, don’t be surprised when you keep getting passed over for promotions at work. The slack hand causes a poverty of satisfaction. Proverbs 21:25 says, “The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labor.” The sluggard is always in a position of wanting but being unable to attain, because when the sluggard wants something, instead of working for it, he grumbles and expects others to give it to him. It’s often the spiritually lazy who grumble most against God and his church. Parents may be lazy in their parenting but then grumble that their children aren’t more obedient. Resist it as we may, create systems counter to it as we may, it’s wiser to perceive this reality and live in accordance with it than to resist it: A slack hand causes poverty.

 

That slack hand can show itself in many ways. It can show itself in wasting time on worthless pursuits, mere talk, sleep, or indecision. It can show itself in its seemingly endless ability to make excuses. It can show itself in many spheres: Most obviously in your job, but also in your spiritual life, your investment in your church, your investment in your marriage, your children—basically anything in your life that brings God glory, serves your neighbor, and is genuinely for your good, but requires effort. The flesh wants to be indulged, not disciplined, and if you indulge it, you will only get lazier, and you will reap from it poverty of money, poverty of authority, and poverty of satisfaction. In short, it will leave you empty. But, the hand of the diligent makes rich, so let’s turn and look at it now.

 

The hand of the diligent

 

What are some characteristics of the hand of the diligent? While the slack hand wastes time, the hand of the diligent works when it is time to work. It doesn’t work non-stop; the diligent need rest too, but it works when it is time to work. A couple weeks ago we saw that Proverbs 10:5 says, “He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.” In farming terms, when it is time to gather, what does the prudent son do? He gathers. What does the slack hand do? It sleeps. One of the simplest steps you can take toward diligence, then, is forcing yourself out of bed in the morning; remember the second half of Proverbs 20:13 that told us not to love sleep: “Open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread.” Get those eyes open. You know your schedule better than I do; I know one brother here who works 4-midnight, so for him forcing himself out of bed happens at more like 10 am than 6 am. I know another sister here who sets aside daily time to meditate on scripture and pray at 9 pm, so for her when that alarm on her phone goes off at 9 pm, she doesn’t have to get herself out of bed, but she may have to get herself off work or whatever else she was doing to get her mind on to scripture.

 

But most Christians find it wise to meditate on scripture and pray first thing in the morning. Most will also want to do some combination of taking a shower, getting dressed, eating breakfast, making coffee, brushing teeth, helping kids up and out the door, and so on. These things take time, and so guess what that means? To do them, you will have to get out of bed. And sometimes that might be the hardest thing you do all day, especially in seasons when struggles with anxiety or depression are more acute. Sometimes on those days it’s purely by faith in God and his goodness that you simply get out of bed. In a song that Dave, a brother in our church wrote, the lyrics say, based on a passage of scripture: “This is the day, the Lord has made; everything he has for me, time to get up, get up, get up and go get it.” The hand of the diligent believes that and gets out of bed.

 

And when it’s time to start working, you’ll have to get off your phone. And when it’s the afternoon and it’s time to keep working, you’ll have to stay awake and endure. And when it’s time to be with your family after work, you’ll have to switch from one job to your more important job and get to work there. And if you want to build up the body of Christ, when it’s time to have that new person over, you’ll have to get off your phone and talk to them, and so on. The hand of the diligent works when it’s time to work.

 

And the hand of the diligent chooses what’s fruitful over what’s easy. One of my favorite proverbs of all the proverbs is Proverbs 14:4 – “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean. But abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.” A clean manger sounds nice; I know I like having a clean house. Doesn’t a “clean” life also sound nice? Minimal stressors, no hurry, minimal adversity…serenity. David Hogg, the newly elected vice-chair of the Democratic National Convention, put this mentality into particularly bold form when he wrote on x in 2022: “I’m never planning on having kids. I would much rather own a Porsche and have a Portuguese water dog and golden doodle. Long term it’s cheaper, better for the environment and will never tell you that it hates you or ask you to pay for college.” Sounds nice, right? A Porsche, a couple dogs, nobody telling you they hate you or asking you to pay for college…the manger is clean!

 

But of course, if everyone thought like that, in a generation there would be no one to build the porsches or breed the dogs or vote or fund the Democratic National Convention that employs David Hogg. Abundant crops come from the strength of the ox. Obviously children aren’t oxen, but the wisdom of any proverb extends beyond the specific situation it gives as an example. You can create a clean, tidy, serene life for yourself, or you can have a fruitful life, but don’t kid yourself into thinking you can have both. In Donald Whitney’s book on spiritual disciplines he mentions that the people he’s known who were closest to Christ typically also led busy lives; they were zealous for good works, as Titus 2:14 puts it. The apostle Paul writes in scripture about how his ministry was a toil and a struggle (Col 1:29), how he faced daily anxiety for all the churches (2 Cor 11:28), and yet to the church at Philippi he said that even if he was to be poured out as a drink offering for them, he rejoiced and was glad (Phil 2:17).

 

You can live a private, shallow, safe life, or you can live an outwardly oriented, deep, costly life. Those are the options Proverbs 14:4 gives you: A clean manger, or abundant crops, and the hand of the diligent will choose the latter, the fruitful over the easy, the more joyful over the safer. The great pastor from London Charles Spurgeon said he’d rather wear out than rust out, and may we all echo that sentiment. To quote another Brit with apologies to any of who you are already tired of hearing me read this quote, here’s how C.S. Lewis put it: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” The life worth living, the fruitful life, is a messy life, a life that will bring with it anxieties and stresses, but the hand of the diligent will take that life over clean mangers any day.

 

Really love and get to know people and it will get messy. They have burdens, and love will compel you to bear them with them, which will add burdens to your life. Really get deeply involved in your church and it will get messy. It’s a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints, and it will both bring your sin out of hiding and force you to face the sin of others. That sin will hurt you. Really look out at this city and start pouring yourself out for its good and you’ll start to feel just how broken it is. Have a bunch of kids and they’ll suck up your time, make a mess of your house, and someday tell you they hate you and ask you to pay for college. But abundant crops come from the strength of the ox. As you pour yourself out, you can actually be an instrument in God’s hands to give life and joy to others, and as you do, your heart will expand and grow to a depth of joy and life that a Porsche and a dog just can’t give you. Brothers and sisters, that’s the good life, and the hand of the diligent chooses it.

 

The hand of the diligent chooses what’s fruitful over what’s easy, and to that end, the hand of the diligent plans for the future. Proverbs 24:27 says, “Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.” Proverbs 27:23-24 says, “Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds, for riches do not last forever; and does a crown endure to all generations?” The ideas here are that it is wise to prepare for your work and to think about the long-term consequences of your work. I mentioned earlier that there may be a number of things you know you want to do in the morning before work begins. It is wise, then, to think ahead about how long those things will take, and schedule accordingly. You may start work at 9:00 am, so you set your alarm for 8:00 am, shower, get dressed, make breakfast, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, and then wonder why you don’t have time to meditate on scripture and pray before you head to work. Prepare your work ahead of time. You may set your alarm for 6:00 a.m. instead, even though you don’t officially start work until 9:00, because you have realized there are three hours of other kinds of work you want to do before you start the work for which you get paid.

 

You may aspire to buy a house or a car, to have your wife stay at home with your kids, to serve in a certain church office or pursue a certain ministry; the diligent will plan now to start moving in the direction of those things. Sometimes it feels easier to just put off thinking about those things; I know I’m prone to do that, and my wife has often had to be the voice of wisdom to say, “Well we need to start budgeting for that now if we are going to do it.” And even if you already have something, it’s not going to last forever, so how can you know well the conditions of your flock to prepare for the future? You’re going to have to budget for when that roof needs to be fixed or that HVAC unit needs to be replaced. We as a church need to be thinking about not just what would seem to serve the mission well now, but how to prepare for the next pastor, the next set of members, the kids who will grow up in this church. The diligent do that kind of thinking.

 

And the hope that the proverbs hold out to the diligent is that although a slack hand causes poverty, the hand of the diligent makes rich. It is true that generally those who work harder will have more money in the long run, and that they will then use that money not only on themselves, but to enrich others, to be rich in good works (1 Tim 6:18). As the slothful will be put to forced labor, Proverbs 12:24 says that the hand of the diligent will rule. The one who is faithful over little is generally set over much. If you aspire to a greater position in your workplace, a greater responsibility in leading a family, an office or position of leadership in the church, the best path to it is to be diligent with the tasks God has currently assigned you. Proverbs 22:29 adds, “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” A diligent man will generally improve his skills in his work, and as he does so, barring injustice, that will usually be rewarded. To sum it up, diligence brings blessing: “A faithful man will abound in blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished” (Prov 28:20). The diligent man or woman will be blessed themselves, and will be a blessing to others. That’s the good life.

 

And yet, that’s also the hard life, and our hand is often slack because our flesh simply doesn’t want to do what is hard. On some level you probably sense that the diligent life is the better life, but try as you may, don’t you find yourself still wasting time on worthless pursuits, mere talk, sleep, and indecision? Don’t you find yourself still endlessly generating excuses? To indulge the self is easy, to pour the self out is hard, because bound up in all our hearts is a force that the Bible calls sin, that curves us in on ourselves. Theoretical physicists tell us that black holes exist. According to Wikipedia, a black hole “is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.” Anything that gets within the event horizon gets sucked into it, and it just keeps sucking more and more into its center. That’s what our hearts are like under sin, and that’s why we don’t want to work, and that’s why many don’t work. Or, we may realize that by working we can gain more to suck into ourselves, and so we work like crazy to gain the world while losing our souls.

 

But God is not a black hole. God is a fountain of life, a father eternally begetting a son and eternally breathing out his Spirit through his Son. And in the beginning, he got to work. He worked hard to make the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them. He worked hard to make the first humans, he worked in each of your mother’s wombs to knit you together in them, and when we were all guilty of sin against him, while we were still refusing to do the good works for which he created us, he sent his Son to become a human and do the work we could never do for ourselves. Though the manger of heaven could have been clean without us, Jesus chose the fruitful life over the easy life, and came to be born in a dirty manger. What was he doing? He was entering our mess! When his disciples fell asleep, he stayed awake and prayed, and though he prayed for God to spare him from the cross, when it was time for him to go, he went. Though there’s no real lion in the sluggard’s street, there was a real cross in Jesus’ path, he really did carry it all the way up the hill, and he really did offer himself on it. Why? Because when he considered the condition of his flock and planned for the future, he knew that the only way we could be saved was if a perfect sacrifice was offered on our behalf, to satisfy the demand of God’s justice against our sin. He offered himself as that perfect sacrifice on the cross, stripped of all money, humbled to the position of a criminal, empty, taking upon himself the curse for our refusal to do the good works God required of us. And because he did that work, God raised him from the dead and exalted him to the riches of heaven, the name above all names, and the blessing of eternal life.

 

A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich, and you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he become poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich (2 Cor 8:9). Turn from your worthless pursuits, rest in his finished work for your salvation, and you will be truly rich. You cannot work for your salvation. All the diligence of sinful flesh cannot please God (Rom 8:7-8). Instead, you must rely on Jesus and his work for your acceptance with God, and ask God to forgive you and accept you because of what Jesus did in his perfect life, death, and resurrection. And then, resting in his work, you receive power from his Spirit to work hard.

 

One of the ironies of the gospel is that if you rely on your own work to make you acceptable to God or others, your diligence will never last. Either you’ll lower the standard to something you can attain, and so give up striving for perfection, or you’ll recognize the standard of perfection, despair of ever attaining it, and never get out of bed. But if you wake up every morning knowing that the most important work of your life has already been finished by Jesus, you can get out of bed and go do the good works he’s prepared in advance for you that day. If you wake up every morning knowing he poured out his life for you, and that there is now power available from him to spread his glory even in the way you do your seemingly mundane job, you can get out of bed in the morning. So get up, and get to work.