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Slothfulness
Today I begin a 7 part series on the 7 deadly sins. They are going to be a bit longer than usual so I challenge you to take the time to read them. I am starting with Laziness/Slothfulness to shame you into reading these...(Hey, whatever works right?)
Proverbs 19:15
Slothfulness casts one into a deep sleep, and the idle person shall suffer hunger.
Sloth, from the Latin word "Accidia", means "the absence of caring” or “The lack of spiritual or physical work.”
Slothfulness can be actual physical laziness or, as many fail to realize, spiritual reluctance to obey God. The reason slothfulness is considered a sin? Lack of any activity, physical or spiritual, causes internal rot.
Let’s look at the characteristics of the animal…
2 Thessalonians 3:10
For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."
If we don’t care for a garden the crop will deteriorate and be useless. The same goes for the body. Laziness has permeated our culture. One doctor gave this to his patient…
“Doctor to patient: Sorry, but right now you're not in good enough shape to get in shape.”
Slothfulness is not neglecting one thing for another, that’s just bad priorities. When the thought of physical work is replaced with avoidance or anything that requires little or no work, then the danger of slothfulness exists.
They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.
Socrates -
So, slothfulness is not sitting there doing nothing, per say. Resting is needed and biblical (4th commandment). But resting and wasting are different…
You can't kill time without injuring eternity
God never intended his children to just sit back and receive blessings and provisions. If that were true we would be inanimate objects. Trees do that. God provides the worm for the bird but does not drop it in the nest.
There is pleasure and reward for enjoying the fruit of ones labor. The best fish I have ever eaten were that which I caught. Same goes for some vegetables.
Part of the freedom we have in Christ (John 8:36) is the freedom to work. Serving God is the byproduct of the freedom he has afforded us in salvation. To abuse the freedom God affords through Christ is sad indeed.
Let this sink in…Liberty is God's gift. Liberties are the devils
Again, you can’t waste time without inuring eternity. Elizabeth Barrett Browning said,“ Free men freely work; whoever fears God, fear to sit at ease.”
Enough about the sloth in the physical realm. Lest look at the definition of sloth again…The absence of caring or the avoidance of physical or spiritual work…
This is where I want to focus because the avoidance of physical work has its results in this body and life. If I don’t exercise, my body suffers. If I don’t brush my teeth, they fall out. If I don’t care for the lawn, my wife will cause me physical pain.
But the avoidance of spiritual work is something we must be careful of. Why?
John 9:4
As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is
coming, when no one can work.
Next to grace, time is the greatest gift God has given mankind. It is the medium by which all His work on earth gets accomplished. To waste it is most grievous. But we do it without a second thought so often. Question? Would you do that with grace? Would you waste God’s grace?
Hebrews 10:26
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,
No saved, Holy Spirit filled, Bible believing, God loving, born again Christian, would even think about abusing God’s grace deliberately over and over again. Yet that same person would think nothing of doing that with the gift of time.
Each minute is an irretrievable gift—an unredeemable slice of eternity. But slothfulness and idleness have a twin brother…have you met the procrastinator?
I loved “The Amanda Show” She had this character called “The Procrastinator” Whenever there was trouble she would jump and say, “I’LL DO IT….Eventually”, then sit back down. Hillarious!
Procrastination is no better. The procrastinator says, “Hey, at least it gets done…eventually.” That is still wasting precious time. Think about this…If Jesus was a procrastinator, we’d still be in our sins.
However, the procrastination I want to look at is not physical but spiritual. So many of us wait and waste so many years to get serious about the Lords will for our lives. About living for him.
The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.
Richard L. Evans,
Ask yourself, “If God has a plan for my life, is this it?”
The spiritual sin of slothfulness is most apparent in the form of apathy and ignorance.
As a former pastor I said to one of my elders, “I am concerned about the health of the church body. There seems to be a spirit of laziness. Do you think it is apathy or ignorance?
The Elder replied, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” (ha ha)
This sin can erode at the foundation of your spiritual life until you look up one day and realize the damage is far greater the cure would have been. I found this true story…
We often fail to consider the gradual, cumulative effect of sin in our lives. In Saint Louis in 1984, an unemployed cleaning woman noticed a few bees buzzing around the attic of her home. Since there were only a few, she made no effort to deal with them. Over the summer the bees continued to fly in and out the attic vent while the woman remained unconcerned, unaware of the growing city of bees.
The whole attic became a hive, and the ceiling of the second-floor bedroom finally caved in under the weight of hundreds of pounds of honey and thousands of angry bees. While the woman escaped serious injury, she was unable to repair the damage of her accumulated neglect.
When you combine the fact that time is short and that you are Jesus’ only plan for the spread of the gospel, where does laziness, slothfulness and procrastination fit in?
Apathy, indifference, complacency, tolerance. These are all forms of slothfulness. There are 14 references to the word “sluggard” in Proverbs. Here is a couple of other scriptures to ponder...
Proverbs 22:13
The lazy man says, “There is a lion outside! I shall be slain in the streets!”
Proverbs 26:13
The lazy man says, “There is a lion in the road! A fierce lion is in the streets!”
There is a saying, “Any stick will do to beat a dog” (I didn’t say a good saying). So too, "any excuse will do"
Spiritual slothfulness is convenient for those whose heart is not right with God.
What is your lion today? Is it hypocrisy, laziness, procrastination, human strength? Is it you’re too busy to get busy? We can indeed learn a lot about this large animal analogy. But also of the small animal as well.
Seneca said, “It is a shame not to learn morals from the small animals.”
Proverbs 6:6-10
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.
9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest--
And also,
Job 12:7-8
7 "But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
8 or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish of the sea inform you.
So what is the cure? The cure is prudence, which means “foresight.” It is the ability to judge good from evil. Courage from coward. Advantages from disadvantages. In short, it is wisdom. It can also be called diligence, meaning industry or persistence.
Christian, Let me sum it up…It means Grow up!!!
Hebrews 5:12
In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!
Many of you do not need to be taught this, you simply need to be pushed. I will close with this…
Prudence…
======================================================
To read more go to www.versebyverse.us click on menu and select Bible book expositions, topical messages, blog or videos (to
Proverbs 19:15
Slothfulness casts one into a deep sleep, and the idle person shall suffer hunger.
Sloth, from the Latin word "Accidia", means "the absence of caring” or “The lack of spiritual or physical work.”
Slothfulness can be actual physical laziness or, as many fail to realize, spiritual reluctance to obey God. The reason slothfulness is considered a sin? Lack of any activity, physical or spiritual, causes internal rot.
Let’s look at the characteristics of the animal…
- It is the slowest animal
- It spends most of its time in the canopy, off the ground. (quick joke… Why did the sloth cross the road?... He was wondering the same thing)
- They travel only 125 feet per day
- They spend 15 hours a day sleeping
- They have a very slow metabolism.
2 Thessalonians 3:10
For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."
If we don’t care for a garden the crop will deteriorate and be useless. The same goes for the body. Laziness has permeated our culture. One doctor gave this to his patient…
“Doctor to patient: Sorry, but right now you're not in good enough shape to get in shape.”
Slothfulness is not neglecting one thing for another, that’s just bad priorities. When the thought of physical work is replaced with avoidance or anything that requires little or no work, then the danger of slothfulness exists.
They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.
Socrates -
So, slothfulness is not sitting there doing nothing, per say. Resting is needed and biblical (4th commandment). But resting and wasting are different…
You can't kill time without injuring eternity
God never intended his children to just sit back and receive blessings and provisions. If that were true we would be inanimate objects. Trees do that. God provides the worm for the bird but does not drop it in the nest.
There is pleasure and reward for enjoying the fruit of ones labor. The best fish I have ever eaten were that which I caught. Same goes for some vegetables.
Part of the freedom we have in Christ (John 8:36) is the freedom to work. Serving God is the byproduct of the freedom he has afforded us in salvation. To abuse the freedom God affords through Christ is sad indeed.
Let this sink in…Liberty is God's gift. Liberties are the devils
Again, you can’t waste time without inuring eternity. Elizabeth Barrett Browning said,“ Free men freely work; whoever fears God, fear to sit at ease.”
Enough about the sloth in the physical realm. Lest look at the definition of sloth again…The absence of caring or the avoidance of physical or spiritual work…
This is where I want to focus because the avoidance of physical work has its results in this body and life. If I don’t exercise, my body suffers. If I don’t brush my teeth, they fall out. If I don’t care for the lawn, my wife will cause me physical pain.
But the avoidance of spiritual work is something we must be careful of. Why?
John 9:4
As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is
coming, when no one can work.
Next to grace, time is the greatest gift God has given mankind. It is the medium by which all His work on earth gets accomplished. To waste it is most grievous. But we do it without a second thought so often. Question? Would you do that with grace? Would you waste God’s grace?
Hebrews 10:26
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,
No saved, Holy Spirit filled, Bible believing, God loving, born again Christian, would even think about abusing God’s grace deliberately over and over again. Yet that same person would think nothing of doing that with the gift of time.
Each minute is an irretrievable gift—an unredeemable slice of eternity. But slothfulness and idleness have a twin brother…have you met the procrastinator?
I loved “The Amanda Show” She had this character called “The Procrastinator” Whenever there was trouble she would jump and say, “I’LL DO IT….Eventually”, then sit back down. Hillarious!
Procrastination is no better. The procrastinator says, “Hey, at least it gets done…eventually.” That is still wasting precious time. Think about this…If Jesus was a procrastinator, we’d still be in our sins.
However, the procrastination I want to look at is not physical but spiritual. So many of us wait and waste so many years to get serious about the Lords will for our lives. About living for him.
The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.
Richard L. Evans,
Ask yourself, “If God has a plan for my life, is this it?”
The spiritual sin of slothfulness is most apparent in the form of apathy and ignorance.
As a former pastor I said to one of my elders, “I am concerned about the health of the church body. There seems to be a spirit of laziness. Do you think it is apathy or ignorance?
The Elder replied, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” (ha ha)
This sin can erode at the foundation of your spiritual life until you look up one day and realize the damage is far greater the cure would have been. I found this true story…
We often fail to consider the gradual, cumulative effect of sin in our lives. In Saint Louis in 1984, an unemployed cleaning woman noticed a few bees buzzing around the attic of her home. Since there were only a few, she made no effort to deal with them. Over the summer the bees continued to fly in and out the attic vent while the woman remained unconcerned, unaware of the growing city of bees.
The whole attic became a hive, and the ceiling of the second-floor bedroom finally caved in under the weight of hundreds of pounds of honey and thousands of angry bees. While the woman escaped serious injury, she was unable to repair the damage of her accumulated neglect.
When you combine the fact that time is short and that you are Jesus’ only plan for the spread of the gospel, where does laziness, slothfulness and procrastination fit in?
Apathy, indifference, complacency, tolerance. These are all forms of slothfulness. There are 14 references to the word “sluggard” in Proverbs. Here is a couple of other scriptures to ponder...
Proverbs 22:13
The lazy man says, “There is a lion outside! I shall be slain in the streets!”
Proverbs 26:13
The lazy man says, “There is a lion in the road! A fierce lion is in the streets!”
There is a saying, “Any stick will do to beat a dog” (I didn’t say a good saying). So too, "any excuse will do"
Spiritual slothfulness is convenient for those whose heart is not right with God.
What is your lion today? Is it hypocrisy, laziness, procrastination, human strength? Is it you’re too busy to get busy? We can indeed learn a lot about this large animal analogy. But also of the small animal as well.
Seneca said, “It is a shame not to learn morals from the small animals.”
Proverbs 6:6-10
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.
9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest--
And also,
Job 12:7-8
7 "But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
8 or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish of the sea inform you.
So what is the cure? The cure is prudence, which means “foresight.” It is the ability to judge good from evil. Courage from coward. Advantages from disadvantages. In short, it is wisdom. It can also be called diligence, meaning industry or persistence.
Christian, Let me sum it up…It means Grow up!!!
Hebrews 5:12
In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!
Many of you do not need to be taught this, you simply need to be pushed. I will close with this…
Prudence…
- Provides for the future. (one cannot provide for the future and be slothful at the same time.).
- Involves caution. (caution involves analyzing, knowledge, a certain amount of risk. It, by definition, combats laziness).
- Involves industry and persistence. (There is no neutral in Christianity. Moving forward in any endeavor is the opposite of sloth).
- Is discernment. (Making proper decisions, determining right from wrong, weighing motives and pro’s and con’s, again all contradictory to laziness).
- Caring for others above self. (Depression is the result if inward focus)
======================================================
To read more go to www.versebyverse.us click on menu and select Bible book expositions, topical messages, blog or videos (to
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