A Word in Season: The Soul of the Diligent (Proverbs 13:4)

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In my garden there's a plant called speedwell. The purple flowers are not particularly beautiful but the local bees seem to love them and this morning as I watched there were a number of them clustered around the plant all of them searching over the flowers and gathering the pollen and if you could look closely you'd see these little golden sacks attached to each of their back legs with the fruits of their labor.

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It put me in mind of Proverbs 13 and verse 4 where we read that the soul of a lazy man desires and has nothing but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.

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Now what's striking about the proverb here is that both the lazy man and the diligent man actually desire the same thing.

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They're working towards or at least looking toward the same end. The difference is that the lazy man the slothful man isn't prepared to put in the effort that's required to realize the goals that he would quite like to attain.

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Now Matthew Henry puts this in his usual striking fashion talking about the foolishness and absurdity of the slothful.

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They desire the gains which the diligent get but they hate the pains which the diligent take.

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They desire the gains that the diligent get but they hate the pains that the diligent take.

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They want the same things but they won't work the same way in order to get them and we see that writ large in any number of situations in the world in which we live.

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There are people who desire sometimes even for good reasons, good things. They'd like a stable job, a good salary, a nice home, a reasonable car, food on the table, clothes on their backs, whatever it may be.

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They may even want to be able to use money or other good things in order to do good to others but they're not interested in doing what it takes to actually get those gains and so they're full of perhaps dreams and schemes even good intentions and yet despite their desires they have nothing.

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By contrast there are diligent people who set out to work for what it is that they actually set their heart on and very often because of the way that things are in this world they actually do make progress toward their goal.

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They don't necessarily get everything and we know from other parts of the scriptures that riches are unreliable.

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They have wings and fly away but there's a general principle here.

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Good intentions and grand desires don't accomplish anything without diligent labor.

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But the second striking thing here is that the wise man speaking to his son seems to be focusing on spiritual blessings.

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The soul of a lazy man desires and has nothing but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.

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The same principle that is true in our material and practical pursuits is equally true in our spiritual pursuits.

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The soul of a lazy man desires and has nothing but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.

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And there are many people who would say I I'd love to be closer to God. I'd love to be able to pray more intelligently and with more understanding and insight and fervor.

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I'd love to be more holy. I'd love to conquer this particular sin. I'd love to be able to instruct others.

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I'd love to be able to serve in some particular way. And their desire goes no further.

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The intention is good. The expectation is legitimate. But they will not use the means that God has provided in order to accomplish those ends.

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And so they remain static or drifting, never making real progress.

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If you said to them if you want to be able to teach, study the word of God. If you want to draw closer to God, then spend time in prayer and in fellowship with other saints and in meditation upon the truth.

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If you want to be able to pray with insight and understanding and earnestness, contemplate heavenly things and dwell upon the passages of Scripture that teach us how to pray.

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But no, no, that's all too much work. On the contrary, the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.

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They will be like those bees around the speed well with the golden sacks hanging from their back legs with all the fruits of their spiritual labors.

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So whether it's in the world at large or in our pursuits of God, let's remember that the soul of a lazy man desires and has nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.