THE RIGHTEOUS LABOR

Proverbs 21:25-26 (KJV)

The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour.

He coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth and spareth not.

I am not sure everyone would see a relationship between Proverbs 21:25 and 26.

Humor me a bit.

·   Both verses clearly address a stewardship theme

·   The slothful who refuses to labor seems pretty clearly associated to the “he” that covets all day long so

·   It does not seem like too much of a stretch to associate the righteous with labor.

With that I want to make the following observations

*I. SLOTHFULNESS RESULTS IN COVETOUSNESS

Proverbs 21:25-26 (KJV)

The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour.

He coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth and spareth not.

I see this sort of like the medical issue of treating a symptom rather than a cause.

Several years ago a friend of mine gave me a book called The China Study[1].

One of the things this book points out is that more Americans die of complications from their prescription drugs than we do of heart disease, cancer and (I think) diabetes combined.

All three of those diseases are directly attributable to the Standard American Diet.

But the medical community focuses on medications to relieve the symptoms rather than working to correct the cause.

In our passage we have three negatives

·   Slothfulness

·   Refusing to labor and

·   Covetousness[2]

A. Covetousness the problem

It’s like dying from heart disease.

Heart disease would be a non-issue if no one ever died from it.

It would be like indigestion – a nuisance but not a real problem.

The thing we don’t like about heart disease is the chance that we could die from it!

Very few of us would give poverty or unemployment much of a second thought except for this one nagging problem, people who are working and are therefore impoverished, often time end up stealing from us to meet their needs.

If they don’t violently take it, they beg it from us or manipulate us somehow to get it even if we did not want to give it.

And that is just like stealing it.

Worldly wisdom (that of the liberals and communists) says,

B. Reduce crime by giving to the poor

The slothful person refuses to labor and is therefore in need. Because he is in need, he finds a way to get what he needs by taking it from us.

The government says, “We can’t have poor people taking things illegally.” So the government takes it from us to give to the poor.

It’s like the doctor who says, “We can’t have people dying from heart attacks.” So he trains us to buy prescriptions that he gets a percentage of the profit from to make us feel like we are treating our heart disease.

When all along, the real problem is in what we eat.

The cause of the problem is not that he has no job.

C. The cause is that he is slothful

And that has to be addressed before giving him money or food and before even giving him a job.

I told you not too long ago about a professional baseball player I heard speaking.

He has started a couple of charities – one of them, to help the homeless.

He said when he started out he found this homeless guy, got him a shave, a shower, a new set of clothes and helped him get a job.

Less than two weeks later the company who hired the guy called up this nice guy to tell him that the man had stolen from the business and skipped town.

You see

·   The problem was not that this homeless guy did not have a shave a shower and clean clothes.

·   The problem was not that the guy did not have a job.

The problem was that this guy was slothful. He did not want to work.

He said he learned from that not to give the homeless guy more than he was ready for.

·   He still won’t let them go hungry

·   He still gives them clothes and a safe place to clean up

But they have to earn anything more than that.

Here’s the problem.

Slothfulness is a matter of the nature. It is much more difficult to change a person’s nature than it is to give him what we think he needs.

Truth is, only God can change a man’s nature and

God only changes a man’s nature when the man truly wants it to be changed.

It’s one of the challenges of our HOPE ministry.

We can give people the tools to free them from addictions but we can’t give them the desire to be free.

Bottom line, the way to solve crime is not to tax the wealthy and working people and give to those who are not.

The way to solve crime is to reach the nature of man that is done by pointing him to God and to the two institutions designed by God to address our nature:

·   The family and

·   The local church

II. RIGHTEOUSNESS RESULTS IN CHARITY

Proverbs 21:25-26 (KJV)

The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour.

He coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth and spareth not.

A. Righteousness is a nature

It is the work of God through Christ and strong families of faith who worship and serve God together promote it.

People who grow up in a home:

·   Where mom and dad love each other and express that love

·   Where dad (and in some cases mom and dad) work to pay for the things that family needs and

·   Where the whole family attends church and finds some outlet to be witnesses for Jesus Christ

Those people tend to trust Christ early in life and grow up to do as they saw their parents do.

B. Righteousness tends to labor

People who grow up in strong Christian homes grow up expecting to work, even planning for it and looking forward to it.

·   They think about what sort of work they might like to do

·   They learn the skills they need to get the sort of job they think they would like

·   They take other jobs to help pay for whatever training they need and to get work experience so that

When they are adults they are well able to go to work and hold down the sort of job that provides for their own family.

C. Righteousness results in charity

Everything I have said so far is generally true, but not always true.

·   Generally speaking when a person doesn’t have a job it is because they won’t work

·   Generally speaking when a person is right with God they will have a job

But that is not always true.

And because it is not always true, there are always people who have real, honest to goodness needs.

The righteous recognize that and they are generous to help.

I do not know a believer alive who minds giving to help someone in need.

What we do mind is having what we have earned forced from us to be given to enable someone who will not and has no desire to care for themselves.

By the way, most of us would even give to help people who have no desire to help themselves as long as we have assurances that our help is used responsibly.[3]

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[1] 2005, T. Colin Campbell, PhD. , BenBella Books

[2] In this case greed is an adverb describing the measure of covetousness.

[3] Consider again the example I cited about the pro baseball player. He continues to help those he realizes have no real plan to help themselves. He just wants to know that his help is practical.