Becoming A Man - Part 4

Transcription (unedited)

[fiddle music]

Announcer: Slothfulness leads to a miserable life. Parents, raise them to work.

[music stops]

Michael Pearl:  I looked up the word in the Bible, "slothful." It's just got a sound to it. "Slothful." Sounds like somebody sleeping in a bed. "Slothful." Sounds like someone lying on the couch punching a remote. "Slothful." Sounds like someone eating potato chips and little yellow pretzel things and sipping Coca‑Cola. "Slothful." [laughs] Words have often follow the sound of the thing they describe. Listen to what the Bible says, some of the things about "slothful."

Proverbs 12:  24. "The hand of the diligent shall bear rule: but the slothful shall be under tribute." They end up paying the taxes.

Proverbs 12:  27. "The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in the hunting: but the substance of a diligent man is precious." Said a slothful man will go out and kill something, come home and lay it up out there, and say, "Well, I'll go out and clean it in a little while." He comes home with his fish, and he just leaves them in the cooler. Next morning, says, "Well, I just don't think I want to clean them. Maybe I'll clean them this afternoon." He goes to work, comes back, opens the cooler and the ice is melting. They're all rotten, he just pours them out. He's just too lazy to ever get around to cleaning the fish or cleaning the game. He lets it spoil. That's a slothful man.

But the diligent man counts what he has as precious, whatever it might be. I have a boy working for me, he's slothful. Put him out with a weed eater and a pair of goggles and a pair of earmuffs for his ears, and when he gets through weedeating, he lays the earmuffs down on the ground, throws his glasses down, drops his weed eater, and goes in to eat or goes home for the day.

The dog comes over and gets the earmuffs and chews little holes all in them. Chews them up, maybe carries them off. The glasses, the grass grows up around them. You're lawn‑mowing. [noise] You look and there's pieces of goggles fly off somewhere. Your weed eater picks up a little moisture, and it begins to deteriorate. He's slothful. You have to stay on him all the time.

Now, you say, how do you take care of slothfulness? You make it more painful to be slothful than to do your duty.

Fathers, what you do, you tell the boy, "OK, you left the glasses out there, so I want you to buy a new pair with the money you made weed eating." "But they're out there somewhere." "You left them, so we're just going to put those up in case I break mine sometime. You'll have to buy a new pair."

"The earmuffs, the dog chewed a hole in them." "Oh, they'll still work." "No, I threw those in the garbage. I want you to buy a brand new pair and I want a better pair than those." "But that will cost $25 and I only made $10 weed eating." "Yeah, I know, you'll be in debt for a while."

You say you'll end slothfulness like that. You say, "My son will hate me." He might be aggravated with you for a little while, but in the end you'll make a man out of him.

Proverbs 15:  19. "The way of the slothful man is a hedge of thorns: but the way of the righteous is made plain." See, the slothful man says I can't walk there, it's full of thorns. Slothful man says I can't go there, it's too difficult. The way of the righteous, his way, he can see plainly his way is made plain.

Proverbs 18:  9 says, "He that is slothful in his work, is brother to him that is great waster." See, slothfulness is like waste. It is waste. Slothfulness creates wasting your energy, wasting your time, wasting your tools. Wasting your house. See, if your house begins to leak, and you just stick a bucket under it and let it leak, you're going to be getting rot up there in your rafters. Your sheetrock is going to start pulling apart and coming down. You just keep letting it leak, and it deteriorates more and more, and you say, "One day I'm going to fix that." You see, you're wasting your house by not getting up there and fixing that leak in the roof.

He said slothfulness, in Proverbs 19:15, "Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall suffer hunger." Slothfulness makes you sleepy. Makes you just need to rest all the time. Lazy people are sleepy, drowsy people all the time.

I get sleepy if I don't get enough sleep, but a slothful person can sleep nine hours, get up, eat a little while, then need to go back to bed and sleep a little longer. I know some adult women who are slothful. They have all the time sick, and feeling poorly. Eating and sleeping and sleeping and eating and sleeping and going to doctors and taking medicine and eating and sleeping and resting and complaining and eating and sleeping and complaining and going to doctors, and that's their whole life, and the reason is because they're big, fat pigs. They're slothful pigs. There's men married to them having to put up with them. Mothers, don't let your daughters grow up slothful animals hanging around with no responsibility or no duty.

Proverbs 21:  25. "The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refused to labor." Just can't put 'em and make 'em work. Then he says, "He coveteth greedily all day long: but the righteous giveth and spareth not." The righteous man has to give. The slothful man is marked by unwillingness to give, because he doesn't produce. He's not a producer. And so, he doesn't give.

Proverbs 22:  13 says, "The slothful man sayeth, there's a lion without. I shall be slain in the streets." Everybody stay in the house, just can't go to work today. Bad out there. There's a lion out there somewhere. In other words, he expects bad things to happen. Can't go, liable to get hurt. Can't do that. Nope. He stays home, always makes excuses.

Proverbs 24:  30. "I went by the fields of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it and received instruction." Here's his conclusion. "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall that poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man." He walked by and saw this man's field of grass growing in his garden, weeds growing up in his arm, and saw the fence was broken down and not repaired. He said, he concluded that a little slumber, a little sleep, a little folding of the hands to sleep, so shall that poverty come. That's the way people are poor.

[fiddle music]

Announcer: We hope this has blessed you today wherever you are. As always, remember to check out our special deals on books and CDs and more on the website.