“Whom to Avoid” – FBC Morning Light (9/27/2023)

The Danger of Excuses for Laziness

Well, a good Wednesday morning to you. I hope your week is going well, and your work week is almost half over, isn't it? Well, today we're reading in Isaiah 61 and 2, 1 Timothy 3, and Proverbs chapter 22.

We'll look at a couple of different ideas that are brought out in Proverbs 22. They're unrelated, but I was kind of interested in sharing both of these. One is in verse 13, where the writer says, the lazy man says, there is a lion outside.

I shall be slain in the streets. Now, you've got to ask yourself the question, is there really a lion outside? Or is there just the threat of a lion outside? Or is this just a figment of this guy's imagination?

Well, you know, the answer to the question doesn't really matter. You get the point of what the writer's saying here. And that is, lazy people always seem to come up with some kind of an excuse to get out of doing their work.

Have you ever known anybody like that? I won't ask if you've ever done that, come up with an excuse to get out of work. I'm sure all of us have at some point or another, maybe in childhood, if nothing else, you know, dad says, I want you to mow the lawn today.

And you have all kinds of reasons. Oh, it rained and the grass is too wet. You know what, you know, you don't get it yet. If you've had somebody who worked for you, that you gave a job to do, a responsibility that they needed to do, and you needed them to do it, and tell them it's got to be done in 24 hours, you come back 24 hours later, and it's not done.

And they can give you three reasons why. And the problem is, you find that that is a recurring theme with that particular individual, then you got a pretty good sense that this is just a lazy person that doesn't want to work.

Now, if you've ever had a boss like that, that can be just as frustrating, can't it? When, you know, he doesn't follow through, doesn't get stuff that you need to do your job, and doesn't, you know, doesn't make the plans that need to be made so that you can do your work and so on.

It can be very, very frustrating. And he's got all kinds of reasons why. Just too much, too many interruptions, too much going on, da-da-da-da-da-da. The lazy person has no shortage of excuses to get out of his work.

The Influence of Bad Company on Good Morals

Well, the other couple of verses I wanted to look at remind me of a verse in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 33, that is translated a couple of different ways. In the King James, it says, evil communication corrupts good manners, which sounds like if you say bad stuff, it means you're an impolite person.

That's not really what that means. A better translation would be something like, bad company corrupts good morals. That's what the verse is really talking about. Bad company corrupts good morals. Proverbs here in chapter 21, verses 24 and 25 bear out that verse.

It says, make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go. Don't have an angry person be a good, close friend of yours. Why? Verse 25 says, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul.

Have you ever had friends like that, had a friend like that, that may not necessarily have been the angry man that is a furious man, but has some kind of a character, a terrible character problem, that you learned after a while hanging out with that person, you're becoming more and more like that person?

So you weren't rubbing off on him, but he was rubbing off on you. Well, I hope if you recognize that, you recognize the importance of distancing yourself from that kind of an acquaintance, and keeping someone like that from becoming a really good friend, somebody who's a close associate that you're always around.

Because, well, evil company, bad company corrupts good manners, corrupts good morals. You hang around with the wrong kind of people, you're going to become like those people, and is that really what you want to do?

Now, when we think about our children and bringing up our children, we are very careful, I hope, I trust, in vetting their friends and the kind of people they hang around, because we know they'll have a bad influence on them.

But do we think about it for ourselves as adults? And you can broaden this to all kinds of applications, right? Somebody who is constantly critical and bad-mouthing, someone who is just a really negative person, doesn't have a good thing to say about anything or anybody, is that the kind of person that is going to help you?

Maybe somebody, well, we could go on with illustrations like that, but I think you get the point. Bad company corrupts good morals. Don't make friends with an angry man, with a man who's given to fury, lest you learn his ways and become like him.

A Prayer for Diligence and Wise Associations

Our Father and our God, I pray that you would help us to be careful about those we consider our closest associates, and Father, we also pray that you would help us to be diligent and hardworking in the responsibilities that you've given us to do, and we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Wednesday. May the Lord bless you in it.