Don't Slack Off

We have taken the last several weeks to pull back from the noise and confusion of the world around us and seek to find God’s wisdom so we can know what to think and how to respond.

To do that, we have turned to the book of Proverbs. This great book gives both extended sections and short, easily digestible nuggets of wisdom on a variety of themes.

We began by looking at what wisdom is, noting that it is the God-given insight to be able to see rightly what is going on and know how to speak into it.

We saw that we are called to pursue wisdom, to pray for God to give it and to ask him to show us what is right and wrong.

We saw that this leads us to trust him more deeply with everything we have, which allows him to direct our paths in ways that honor him and are for our good.

Last week, we saw that this same wisdom leads us to watch our words, being careful to make sure we are not just airing our opinions but actually bringing godly wisdom to the conversation as we speak.

God has been using these messages to challenge me to take a hard look at what he says is best. He has challenged me to slow down my words and make sure that I understand what is going on before I engage in a conversation.

Add to that some other areas where God has been working in my heart, and I have to say, I am feeling a little worn down.

You may be in the same boat—It’s summer, and you have been working hard to stay afloat for the last few months, to keep your family going, to keep up with school, or to adjust to all the changes around you.

Are you feeling tempted to slack off? Are you hoping to just coast through the rest of the summer and pray that you might find some energy somewhere to go into the fall?

Part of that may be because you need to develop a healthier rhythm of rest. You have been burning the candle at both ends, and it is about to the middle and you are going to burn out.

If that’s you, then you need to figure out how to say no to some things, to establish boundaries, and to set aside time to be with God and away from work, both paid and unpaid.

That is a God-given pattern that goes back to the very creation of the world, where God did his work and then rested on the seventh day.

So, for those of you prone to workaholism, you need to slow down and take a day off to remember that God is in control and the world can continue on without you.

As important as rest is, though, there is a point when it becomes unhealthy.

Like so many other good things that God gives, rest can become sinful when it passes into laziness or slacking off.

Again, this is where we find great wisdom from God in the book of Proverbs.

Turn over to Proverbs 26:13-16 with me.

Although there are lots of passages in Proverbs that talk about the wisdom of hard work and the sin of laziness, we want to dive into one this morning that gives us four marks of a slacker.

As we go through them, I want you to allow God to expose your heart to what might be uncomfortable truths. Decide right now that you will agree with him and do whatever he tells you to do in response.

Read these verses with me...

We find here 4 different marks of a slacker. First, we see that...

1) A slacker makes up excuses.

Read verse 13 with me again.

Now, we don’t have lions around here. In fact, we don’t really deal with a lot of big predators, with the exception of the black bear living in Hans Meadow and tearing up trash cans.

Because of that, you might be tempted to look at this and think, “I can’t blame him! I wouldn’t go to work if there was a lion out there!”

Lions are big, scary, incredible predators—it just makes sense that you would not go near them!

Here’s the problem with that: Solomon’s slacker is making up excuses!

There are couple of things you should know about lions. First, like most animals, they don’t really like to hang out in the middle of cities. They weren’t known for hanging out in the middle of the road, and they certainly wouldn’t typically stroll into the middle of town square without there being something very wrong.

Not only that, lions are big cats, and like most other cats, they don’t like to do much during the heat of the day.

They are much more active in the evening and night than they are during the day.

We saw this when we had the privilege of walking with lions at a game park in Zimbabwe. It was hot, and the lions kept just lying down because they didn’t want to walk much in the heat.

So when the slacker says he is scared of the lion in the street or in the square, he is simply making up excuses.

Here’s the thing about excuses: they often sound like legitimate reasons.

Like I said, if you don’t know much about lions, this excuse sounds reasonable.

However, when you really press into it, you find out that it just doesn’t hold up.

You see, our excuses are choices.

Here, the slacker is choosing to give into irrational fear or make up an outright lie because he doesn’t want to do what he needs to do.

Now, I want you to think back over your last week.

I don’t want to add an unnecessary level of guilt for workaholics who will never be able to do enough in their eyes, but take a look at what you did at work or at home.

Is there something you knew you could and should have done, but you came up with an excuse not to?

Evaluate the reasons you have told yourself and others why you didn’t accomplish what you believe God was asking you to do—were those true, or were they excuses?

Making up excuses is the mark of a slacker, which is not wise!

The first mark of a slacker, then, is that slackers make excuses.

Because we won’t lean in and do the difficult things, we then find that slackers...

2) A slacker doesn’t accomplish much.

Check out verse 14...

The next picture of the slacker is of him or her just rolling over in bed, back and forth, like a door on its hinges.

The imagery is pretty straight-forward. Most of us know well the experience of setting an alarm to get up and do something, but we roll over, hit snooze, and roll back to sleep, repeating that process as long as we can get away with.

I think this is more than just that, though. If we aren’t careful, that same attitude of rolling over and going back to sleep follows us through the rest of our day.

Let’s lean into this picture a little further: do doors move? Absolutely. They swing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Do doors ever actually go anywhere, though? Not under normal circumstances.

They move, and they give off the appearance of doing something, but then they swing right back to where they started.

Here’s where I want to challenge some of our harder working folks—Take a look at all the activity of the last week. Are you actually accomplishing anything of eternal significance, or did you just spend your week staying busy?

Busyness for the sake of activity isn’t beneficial!

Apparently, there was a New Testament church that struggled with slackers, both those who were outright lazy and those who appeared busy.

Here’s how Paul addressed them:

2 Thessalonians 3:10–13 CSB

In fact, when we were with you, this is what we commanded you: “If anyone isn’t willing to work, he should not eat.” For we hear that there are some among you who are idle. They are not busy but busybodies. Now we command and exhort such people by the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly and provide for themselves. But as for you, brothers and sisters, do not grow weary in doing good.

There are some who are outright lazy, and there are others who are known for being busy, but when you look closer, they are just filling their time doing worthless things and not actually taking care of themselves or their family or the concerns of the kingdom of God.

Have you ever been that kind of person at work? They always had a clipboard or a notebook in their hand, and they hurried from place to place, but when you stopped and looked at it, you couldn’t see that they actually accomplished anything?

That isn’t wisdom; it’s slacking!

The antidote to that is to put your head down and get busy doing the things that God calls you to do, not the things that you do just to make yourself look busy.

Do the hard work, asking God for the strength and wisdom to do the things you don’t want to do and the courage to stand when everything in you wants to quit.

Slacker’s don’t do that. They make excuses, and they never really accomplish anything.

Not only that, but we see a third mark of a slacker in this passage:

3) A slacker doesn’t take care of himself.

Look back at verse 15...

The picture is of someone who has stuffed themselves with more food than they could ever need, and they are so full and lazy that they can’t even pick their hand back up to feed themselves anymore, kinda like Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars.

It’s not a pretty picture, is it?

As you think about following God in different areas of your life, how often do you think about the way you take care of your body as an act of honoring God?

In the New Testament, there were people at a church in Corinth who used their bodies in very immoral ways.

To correct that, Paul reminded them:

1 Corinthians 6:19–20 CSB

Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.

In that context, he was talking about sexual sin, but the principle goes farther than that.

God has given us physical bodies, and when we don’t take care of them, it hinders our ability to be used of God in certain ways.

What if we looked at exercise, eating, and even sleep as stewardship of the bodies God has given us? What if we made it our goal, as much as we can control, to live physically healthy lives to the service of God in his kingdom?

The motivation here isn’t to become famous on Instagram or look like you just stepped out of a Marvel movie. The motivation is to keep your body in a condition that you are ready to serve God whenever, however, for as long as he gives you life.

By seeking to glorify God this way, you are trying to develop strength, stamina, and health so you can go where he sends you, you can work hard without getting sick or exhausted, you can be present with others instead of having to fight against sickness.

You can’t always control what happens to you. Injury, disease, and age happen to everyone.

You can, however, push back against the laziness that would give in and give up, limiting the ways in which God can use you.

Slackers don’t do this. When we get to this place, we stop caring and stop trying to honor God with our bodies.

We don’t even take care of our needs.

Where are you slacking in caring for the body God has given you? What adjustments do you need to make?

Here’s the kicker, though: If you are here, and you really are a slacker, you probably have rejected everything I have said so far.

Why? Because the fourth mark of a slacker is that...

4) A slacker is filled with pride.

Look at verse 16...

Slackers have perfected making excuses and appearing busy, so they think they know better than a group of men and women who could actually give a wise answer.

The idea of being wise in your own eyes is especially important in this context.

You see, the first 12 verses of this chapter have dealt with a fool.

Let’s skim through some of those to see what the Bible says about fools...

It isn’t very flattering, is it? It would be terrible to look back at your life and realize you were a fool, biblically speaking.

Fools hurt everyone around them, and they keep going back to their sin time and time again.

Now, what does verse 12 say?

There is more hope for a fool than there is for a person who is wise in his own eyes.

Didn’t he just say that a slacker thinks he is wise in his own eyes?

In our laziness, our pride blinds us to our need for correction and instruction.

There is more hope for a fool, because there is a chance that a fools heart will be opened to see how far he is from God.

However, the slacker has already made up his or her mind, and no one can talk them out of it.

Their pride has blinded them to their need for God to work in their lives.

How have you responded to what you have heard this morning? What has your gut reaction been?

“Well, I’m not lazy. I just have this issue or that problem or this going on...”

It may be true that you are working diligently for the Lord and his glory in every area of your life, but I would imagine that if we really take a look, we are prone to slacking somewhere.

You may feel like you are crushing it at work, but when was the last time your poured real energy into getting to know God better by spending time alone with him in his word and in prayer?

What about your marriage, or your parenting—are you on autopilot there, or are you striving to honor God in every aspect?

Are you taking care of the body God has given you, or do you just figure that you will get around to that eventually?

When you show up to work tomorrow, are you going to come in with a lazy attitude to do the bare minimum, or are you going to ask God for the strength to have the tough conversation you have been avoiding or tackle the difficult project that you have pushed off?

What if we made it our aim and our goal, in every area of life, to live out this command:

Colossians 3:17 CSB

And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

You see, when we really slow down and look, all of us are slackers in one way or another.

At the very least, there isn’t a single one of us who lives up to the biblical standard of perfection God has given us.

None of us are fully faithful to him, and we cannot be.

This message isn’t intended to drive you deeper into a funk about how you will never be good enough; instead.

God knew that you would make excuses, be lazy and selfish, and do your own thing in pride.

Yet, he loves you so much that he died in your place to save you from your sin and he was raised from the dead to draw you back to himself.

Now, as he sits enthroned in heaven as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, he calls you to serve him diligently through the strength he supplies.

We are working hard, not because we are trying to earn our favor with God, but because we have already been given favor with him through Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.

That is the source of the joy and hope that leads us to do everything we can in his name, giving thanks to God the Father for loving us, saving us, rescuing us, caring for us, and ruling over this incredible creation he has made.