Proverbs 15:19, Are You Dishonest With God?

September 24, Proverbs 15:19

Matt. 25:14-30 “Are you a profitable or an unprofitable servant?”

Are You Dishonest With God?

There is a surprising contrast in today’s Proverb. We would expect the slothful contrasted with the diligent or industrious. The contrast, however, is between the slothful and the righteous person! This reminds us that there is something dishonest and sinful about laziness! He is wicked because as a slothful servant he neglects his duty to God as well as himself and others. Laziness here is just another name for unrighteousness. Laziness lives on the labours of others! Further, it demonstrates that the straight course is not only the easiest but also the best. The righteous man is the honest man. He faces the challenges of life, prepares himself well, and works hard to accomplish his goal. He travels on his way both freed of obstacles and made smooth for easier travel.

1. The Difficulties Created: He sees only a way of thorns, a brier-hedge! These thorns are either of his own making or his imagining. Everywhere he looks, thorns lie thick and menacing. He has limbs that are too lazy, or an imagination that is too active. That hedge of thorns is a barrier before him, making his way both undesirable and difficult. Let us apply this to his spiritual life. It is the way of unbelief and full of thorns, of miseries. He knows he should change his ways. He attempts to pray, to read his Bible, to attend a place of worship, but the effort is too much for him. He soon falls back to his old laziness. The hedge is too thick! There are too many thorns! “He is too idle to be importunate, too slothful to be earnest” (CHS). “Sloth begets poverty, and poverty begets fraud.”

2. The Difficulties Compounded: As was his beginning, so also is his whole path. New thorns keep springing up. Fear of trying to cut his way through them paralyses him even more. The longer he delays, the quicker the thorns multiply, or so he imagines. Now he can’t possible go on. He feels self-justified in his sloth. He is sure no one could or would blame him. The fault is always somewhere else! His dishonesty appears when “he plants his own hedge and then complains of its hindrance” (Bridges). Here is the classic example of you reap what you sow syndrome. His sloth is nothing but dishonesty, when the truth is told! He was too lazy the first time, and so failed to do the job right. He didn’t properly clear the way of the few thorns that were there. Now he finds the work would be much more difficult the second time around. He has become hopelessly entangled in the thorn hedge that is largely of his own making. “Laziness begins with cobwebs, and ends with iron chains.” He might easily have shaken them off at first, but now they are firmly fixed. The slothful man eventually comes to the end of his way. He will find his hedge of thorns blocking his way to heaven and to God.

Let us heed the admonition of Paul, “That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Heb. 6:12).

Thought: “Every good withers in the drought of idleness” (Spurgeon).

Prayer: Lord, keep me from the way of the slothful.