Sermons on Proverbs — Charles H. Spurgeon
The Sluggard’s Reproof
A Sermon (No. 2766) intended for reading on Lord’s Day, February 16, 1902 delivered by C.H. Spurgeon at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark on a Thursday Evening, during the Winter of 1859.
“The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold;thereforeshall he beg in harvest, andhavenothing.” {cold: or, winter}— Proverbs 20:4.
Laziness is the crying sin of Eastern nations. I believe that the peculiar genius of the Anglo-Saxon character prevents our being, as a nation, guilty of that sin. Perhaps we have many other vices more rife in our midst than that, but in the East almost every man is a lazy man. If you tell a Turk in Constantinople that his street is filthy— and it certainly is for there the offal lies and is never swept away —he says sitting with his legs crossed and smoking his pipe, “The Lord wills it.” If you tell him there is a fire at the bottom of the street he does not agitate himself, but he says “God wills it.” If you were to tell him that he was sitting on a heap of gunpowder and that he had better take heed lest a spark should blow him up, probably he would never move or take his pipe out of his mouth, except to say “God wills it.” Some of the most extraordinary instances of idleness are told us of those people by travelers in the East to this day. The further you go East, the less activity there is; the further you go West in the world, the more restless does the human mind become, and consequently I suppose, the more active.
Yet, while the fact of the superabundance of idleness in the East is a great explanation of the reason why Solomon speaks so much against it in the Proverbs, and seeing that this Book was meant to be read not only in the East but everywhere else, I should fear that there must be some laziness in the West also, and as this Book was meant to be read in England I should imagine there must be a few sluggards in England; and this happens to be not a matter of imagination with me at all, for I know there are many such. You can brush against them at the corners of our streets. There are to be found many such who are slothful in business, who certainly are not worth their salt, who do not earn a livelihood for themselves even with regard to the things of this life. There are still far too many to whom the familiar lines of Dr. Watts may be applied,—
“Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,
‘You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.’”
It sometimes happens too that these idle people are religious people, or profess to be so, though I have no faith in that man’s religion who is lazy. He reminds me always of a certain monk who went to a monastery determined to give himself up entirely to contemplation and meditation. When he reached the place he saw all the monks at work tilling the ground, ploughing or trimming the vines round the monastery, so he very solemnly observed as he entered “Labour not for the meat that perisheth.” The brethren smiled, and they still continued their labors. He thought it his duty to reprove them a second time by saying, “Martha is cumbered with much serving, but I have chosen the good part which shall not be taken from me.” However, it was taken from him, for the bell did not ring for him at the usual time for meals; and our brother, after waiting some few hours in his cell in prayer, beginning to feel certain calls within, came out, and accosting the prior of the monastery enquired, “Do not the brethren eat?” “Do you eat?” said he; “I thought you were a spiritual man for you said to the brethren, ‘Labour not for the meat that perisheth.’” “Oh, yes!” he replied, “I know I said that, but I thought the brethren ate.” “Yes,” answered the prior, “so they do, but we have a rule in our monastery that none eat but those that work. There is such a rule to be found in Scripture, too,” he reminded the monk; “Paul himself hath said it, ‘If any man would not work neither should he eat.’” I think the master of that monastery acted and spoke wisely. A man must work in this life. He was sent to this world that he might be diligent in his calling, in the position in life in which God has been pleased to place him.
However, I do not intend to treat now of this phase of the subject. I am about to direct your attention to spiritual things. I am no legalist; I know that the works of the law can save no man, for “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified.” I know that the work of salvation is by grace alone, and that all our good works are not our own, but are wrought in us by divine grace; yet at the same time I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that, although Scripture continually denies that salvation is by works, it always speaks of the work of grace in the heart of man, and of the experience of the believer as being a hard worker. For do we not continually hear the Christian described as a pilgrim, as one who is on a long and a weary journey? He is described not as a gentleman who is carried on other men’s backs, or who is borne along in a vehicle, but as a pilgrim who has to toil along the road; and he is told not to be weary and faint in his mind; he is warned that the road will be very rough and very long, and that he will have to run with endurance the race that is set before him. The very use of such a figure as that does not look as if religion were a lazy thing. Then again, we find religion described as a battle. The Christian is continually exhorted to take unto himself the whole armor of God and to fight the good fight of faith. He is told to resist even unto blood striving against sin. That does not look as if it were a very easy thing to be a Christian— as if Christianity were a kind of thing to be kept in a band—box. It looks as if there were something to be done, some foe to fight, some great task to be accomplished. When I also find another figure used, which is perhaps yet more forcible because it combines the idea of pressing forward with that of fighting—when I find the figure of agonizing used—“Agonize to enter in at the strait gate”—press, push, labor, strive, toil—I cannot imagine that to be a Christian is to be an idler or a sluggard. No my brethren, though salvation is not by our works, yet as sure as ever the Lord puts divine life into us, we shall begin to labor for the meat that endureth to eternal life, we shall strive to enter in at the strait gate and we shall run perseveringly the race that is set before us, and we shall endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.