Look to the Ant (Proverbs 6:6–11)

Now this week, we're taking a one week hiatus from our walk through the book of Esther.

So if you came eager to find what's next, what are we gonna talk about next on that little bit of a cliffhanger?

You'll have to wait one more week to know. But this week, we are going to look at a familiar passage, hopefully, or perhaps from the book of Proverbs.

And so I'd invite you to turn together with me to chapter six of the book of Proverbs.

We're gonna look at verses six through 11. Now, if you're familiar with the book of Proverbs, you know that it's very much a book about wisdom, mostly written from a father to his sons to teach them how they should aim to live.

Proverbs one, one through four, we read the purpose statement for the book. The Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity, to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man, knowledge, and discretion.

But in reading Proverbs, right, with that objective in mind, it's important that we don't forget that wisdom is more than a concept, it's more than an idea.

Wisdom is more than a test of your choices, whether they can be termed as wise or foolish. Rather, wisdom is a person, and that person is

Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God. The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter one, verses 22 through 24 writes, for the

Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified unto the

Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called, both

Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Christ is the wisdom of God, who as Paul continues in verse 30, who of God is made unto us wisdom.

And why, why did God do this? Why has God sent his son to the personification of wisdom? In verse 31, that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the

Lord. That's why we find wisdom in the person of Jesus Christ, that it may be a glory to us and a glory to our

God. Christ has been sent by God to reveal that wisdom, that hidden wisdom, which

God predestined before the ages to our glory, that we may know him and that we may walk in his ways.

And what's more, Paul is clear in chapter two of first Corinthians, that to understand this wisdom in its truest sense, one must appraise it or discern it or receive it or comprehend it spiritually, meaning that it must be received from the

Spirit, who is from God, the Holy Spirit. Verse 14 of chapter two, again, first Corinthians, he states clearly, but the natural man receiveth not the things of the

Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.

Now, what does this mean? Does it mean that you can't have any wisdom unless you're a regenerate, unless you're born again?

That unless you've been enlightened by the Holy Spirit to understand the true hidden wisdom of God, that is Jesus Christ himself, that you can't have any wisdom?

Right, not exactly. Right, what Paul is claiming here is that it's not possible to know true wisdom apart from knowing

Jesus Christ, who is the wisdom of God. And obviously we agree with that assessment. Right, it'd be better to be thought of as a fool by the world and to have

Christ than to be thought wise by men and not. And yet we cannot deduce from this text that any and all wisdom that can be known is only the product of the indwelling of the

Holy Spirit or that it even must be found in the pages of sacred scripture. Rather, while to be truly wise is a gift of God, we must also acknowledge from scripture that God has woven his wisdom into the creation of the world such that the book of nature also testifies to the true nature and character of wisdom.

And this makes perfect sense because we know that God created the world by his wisdom. Proverbs 3 .19 says, the

Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, by understanding hath he established the heavens.

And in Job 28, 23 to 27, the Lord declares, God understandeth the way thereof and he knoweth the place thereof, for he looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth under the whole heaven to make the weight for the winds and he weigheth the waters by measure.

When he made a decree for the rain in a way for the lightning of the thunder, then did he see it and declare it, he prepared it, yea, and searched it out.

The God who is wisdom has created the world and he has layered his character throughout it.

And man, both Christians and non -Christians alike are able to discern some of that wisdom through observation we call that science, right?

And we also call it natural or general revelation. God in his kindness and in his power has created the world in such a way that the creation in and of itself testifies to who he is.

And man by reason is able to observe some of these things and learn from them as to what is wise, what is right in the ordering of his life.

Now, again, this does not mean that man can understand the mysteries of God required for salvation through this general or natural revelation.

That again must be spiritually appraised and it's revealed to us, revealed to us men for our salvation in God, the word of the

Lord Jesus Christ or the divine or special revelation. But it does tell us that God has created the world in us in such a way as to reveal certain things to us apart from needing to be acquainted with the

Bible, the special revelation. In part, God has done this so that we would be without excuse before him if we were to live in continued rebellion, right?

Romans 1 20, Paul writes, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power in Godhead so that they are without excuse, right?

This is one of the reasons why God created the world the way that he did. A few paragraphs later in Romans 2 14, for when the

Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves.

The Lord has in his wisdom given all of the world a revelation of himself in this book of nature.

No one has an excuse before God. This is important for us today because we're gonna see in our text that there is much that we can learn about living a godly life from the book of nature.

Now, while we are certainly adherents here to the principle of sola scriptura, meaning that scripture alone is the highest authority for faith and practice, we do not adhere to the idea of solo scriptura or the idea that scripture is the only authority.

We want to interpret nature in the light of scripture. And I think that we see today we see that today in our text, a great example of Solomon doing just that for us.

Again, Proverbs chapter six, verses six through 11, if you would turn with me there.

Hear the word of the Lord. Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise, which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provided her meat in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest.

How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.

So shall thy poverty come as one that travaileth and thy want as an armed man.

Thus endeth the reading of God's holy word. May he write it on our hearts by faith. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you again for your word. And we ask today that you help us in our understanding of this passage that you would grant to us by your divine work, your spirit's work in us to discern what it is here that you have for us, that you would help us to be a people who do spiritually appraise in our time today.

The wisdom of God help us, we ask in Jesus name and amen. Now, as we begin,

I wanna do so with an outline of how we'll approach this text today. First, we're gonna note that there is a main character in this short story.

While you may be tempted to think that it's the ant, it's actually the sluggard, right? That's who is mainly in focus here in this passage.

The sluggard is the one who we are gonna pay attention to, we're gonna observe first, while the ant serves as a type of antidote, if you will.

Yeah, pretty good. So we'll focus first on the sluggard, and we're gonna consider his character, his consequences, and his cure.

Again, we said that the ant is that cure. And we'll also examine the ant's character and her consequences before ultimately closing with how we can see these things cultivated in each of us.

One of the things, again, we'll start with the character of the sluggard. One of the things that Lena and I often talk about as a goal for the education of our children is that they would be interesting people.

And I don't mean interesting in the way the world envisions homeschooled children to be. I mean, interesting in the sense that these are people that other people want to be around, right?

That they wanna hear from them. They wanna hear from them. They wanna hear how they think about things, why they do the things that they do, what makes them tick, what their thoughts on matters are.

We want our children ultimately to grow up to be the kinds of people that other people want to be around.

And the way to do that, the way to raise children who will grow up to be interesting is to teach them to be interested, to teach them to be learners, curious to know about the way things are, to care about learning about other people and asking questions and how to engage knowledgeably in different subjects and disciplines.

The way to raise interesting people, in my estimation, is to raise interested people. Interesting people are interested people.

There's a complexity, a weight, a gravitas to a person who has the ability to engage in many different conversations with many different types of people in meaningful ways.

Again, I would call those people interesting. They're the people that you enjoy being around because they make you feel like they care about you.

They're engaged in conversation with you and they bring more to the conversation than a head nod and sound effects as you go on on certain diatribes.

But if there's one thing that we can say about a sluggard, one way that you know you may have met one is that they're just not that interesting.

Sluggards, by definition, are lazy and that laziness carries forward into all areas of their life, their relationships, their interactions, their work.

And the reason that I'm starting here is because I want us to be careful not to think of this passage as merely having to do with work, right?

That it's only about work ethic. It certainly has that in view, and of course, it's part of what the definition of a sluggard, but it has so much more than that.

As Solomon points us to the ants, he's not pointing us to only the way that she approaches her work, but even more so to the entirety of the ant's life.

And so sluggards are ultimately uninteresting people, right? They have nothing new going on.

They have nothing of substance to add to a conversation or to a relationship. Their laziness has made them one -dimensional, one -trick ponies, right?

It's just get together with a person and they're talking about the same thing over and over again. You may have met a sluggard in that moment because they have one thing that they can focus on.

That one thing is all they can really bring to the table. They're boring people. If that's not enough, we have a few other markers from our texts as well.

Again, looking at verses nine and 10. How long will thou sleep, O sluggard? When will thou arise out of thy sleep?

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. That verse 10 is the sluggard's answer.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. You'll notice that, again, the sluggard's laziness is noticed by his peers.

You can usually mark one out when you meet one. How long are you gonna lie down? When are you gonna get up? When are you gonna move?

When are you gonna do something? The sluggard doesn't do much moving around. He's the one hanging out and chatting it up while everyone's working.

The one that you have to ask about that thing that they were gonna fix a few months ago. The one that it almost seems like you have to figure out exactly what they need just to get them to be willing to do anything to contribute.

Again, it's noticeable. The sluggard is not only boring, but he's disengaged from the work.

He's a non -factor to progress. He's the one that, when he's not around, people say it's addition by subtraction.

And what's the response of the sluggard? When people confront him, how does he answer? He makes excuses. He procrastinates.

He says, I'm tired. I need a little rest before I can finally start. Ironically, I think similar to Sabbath principles, this might be a little difficult for us to understand how insane of an answer this actually is when we consider the context of when this is written.

It's hard for us in the economy of excess that we live in, in 21st century America. But in the ancient world, we have to understand something about work, that it was utterly necessary to their survival.

Nowadays, if you're not feeling up for work one day, you can take one of your sick days. You have to paid day off to recharge your batteries, or you join a company that's piloting the four -day work week.

This idea is totally foreign, though, to the ancient world. A day off from work was like putting your life and the lives of your family on the chopping block to see what might happen.

This is why God's command to the Israelites to keep a day every week as set apart for the Lord as a day of rest, that's why that was so significant.

It was hard for them to say yes to that. They didn't hear that and say, oh, great, day of rest. That sounds wonderful. It was hard for them to obey that command to not work.

He was commanding them to put their lives on that one day per week fully into his hands to trust his provision and his protection.

We struggle with the idea of Sabbath today because we think that God's kind of taking something from us. We want to be able to go out to a restaurant and have other people wait on us, but they struggled because they didn't want to die.

We struggle because we think that God is keeping something good from us when we should be struggling to see all the good that he's already given.

And it's similar here with a sluggard, right? We hear a man say, I just need a little rest. And we think, I get that. I've been there.

I've had a case of the Mondays before, but we forget that it's our modern privilege to be so protected from the consequences of that kind of laziness.

And you'll see this with children a lot too, right? If you hold them to high standards when their grandparents or their cool aunts and uncles are around, they'll say like, oh, go easy on him, he's just a kid.

They'll excuse away their unwillingness to do their part. But one of the great troubles of our society today is that that's how children were raised, right?

We have adults today who want to be coddled in that very same way. They want people to make excuses for them, why they weren't able to do it, but they did their best, right?

That's the spirit of the sluggard. And so what we need to understand is that by saying a little sleep first before getting to work is essentially him saying,

I'd rather take a nap than live. And it's not because he's depressed. It's because he's lazy.

And it's the same for most instances we see today. Again, instead of calling the teenager lazy and telling him to repent, we call him depressed.

He's been through a lot. He's had a hard life. We offer a medication. Instead of telling the grown man to get out of bed and go to work, we give him a 12 week paternity leave so that he can watch his wife recover from giving birth.

There's a real plague in our society that tries to call sins everything but sins. I'm not a sluggard.

I'm just feeling sluggish, right? We call it a disease. We call it the perks or the benefits of the job and so on.

But all it really is, is excuses. And that is the sluggard. He's lazy. And so he's become an uninteresting, unimportant excuse maker.

Now, God in his wisdom, he oftentimes makes it so that the consequence of our sin is the sin, right?

So that's the sluggard's character. Now consider the consequences he gets from that. We receive it ourselves, the due penalty of our error.

And a sluggard is a great example of this in the scriptures. He's lazy. And so he has borne the fruit of his laziness with now having less to do because no one really wants to be around him.

No one really needs him. No one expects anything of him. Again, we see this wisdom throughout the scriptures.

Galatians chapter six at verse seven, be not deceived. God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.

Right? The consequences don't end there though for the sluggard. Returning to our text, verse 11. So shall thy poverty come as one that travaileth in thy want as an armed man.

The sluggard claims to be looking for rest, right? That's why he can't work. He needs rest.

He needs peace. But instead, what he invites into his life is chaos. Instead of this life of leisure leading to calm, he is invited into his life chaos and poverty.

The vagabond, the wanderer, the gypsy moves in because of his lack of vigilance and squats himself down in his home.

Right? Oftentimes we look at people who don't have anything going on and we think, oh, they're just really relaxed. They're really peaceful people.

They are only bringing about a great chaos. Most of the time, great chaos under their lives.

And when you look at people who are always busy, oftentimes if you look underneath the hood, they have great peace and rest in their life.

Especially if they're Christians, they find ways to rest and to trust in the providences and provision of their

God. Honestly, it's like some of the horror stories I hear, though, when you think about the consequences for the sluggard, again.

Horror stories I've heard from people over the years who own rental property in Massachusetts where renters have many rights in light of different landlord -tenant laws here in the state of Massachusetts.

Basically, people will move into an apartment. They'll refuse to pay rent. But instead of being able to have those people evicted, in Massachusetts, you have to go through drawn -out legal processes that usually end most affordably for the landlord.

By the paying out of a settlement to the squatter so that they'll leave. And so what you have is this vagabond, this squatter, letting themselves in and refusing to leave, never paying rent, and you have to pay them to leave.

Right, and that's what's happening to this sluggard. Right, he has let sin move into his home.

And now to get him out, it's a terrible effort to get him out. Poverty has come in like a vagabond and he's not going anywhere.

Right, this illustration's not enough. Poverty comes in armed, meaning that you're outgunned.

Poverty and need are those things that when they come in, if you're not prepared to fight them, they will not leave.

Once debt begins to accumulate, it becomes very difficult to break free from its weight. It becomes your master and you become its slave.

Poverty and need fall upon the house of the sluggard and only chaos, not rest, flow from this.

It's important to remember in the midst of this though, that desiring rest is a good thing.

Right, it's a human thing even, because God has made us to desire rest and to find it in him.

But the sluggard's sin was not that he wanted rest, it's that he wanted rest without work.

And so God gives him his sin of laziness and he withholds the good that the sluggard is trying to steal and he brings chaos to him instead.

And further evidence this again, Proverbs 19 at verse 15, slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep and an idle soul shall suffer hunger.

You don't plan anything, you don't plant anything, excuse me, nothing will grow. The fruit of laziness is nothing.

An idle soul will suffer hunger with no fruit to satisfy him. You understand that?

If you don't plant anything, then nothing will grow. Right, there is no fruit for the sluggard. The apostle

Paul writes further on the consequences of idleness. And if you'd be tempted to think, yeah, men really need to start working harder.

This is particularly for women here in 1 Timothy chapter five at verse 13, as far as consequences for idleness,

Paul writes, and with all they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house and not only idle, but tattlers also in busy bodies, speaking things which they ought not.

Right, men and women both can be sluggards. And the end of that laziness is destruction ultimately, for men as they passively watch their lives crumble into poverty and need, and for women as they go about tearing down houses with gossip.

But at the end of the day, what we see is that this sluggard brings upon himself and others chaos.

And so look for the chaotic life, right? If you are wondering, am I around a sluggard or am I a sluggard?

Look for the chaos, the fruit of desiring rest without works. And if you find one, right, if you find chaos, you're likely to met a sluggard.

And this is a dangerous place to find ourselves, or to find yourself. Now, as sinners, right, it's important that we acknowledge that we all fall short of where we should be to some degree, right?

We've all had moments, days, weeks, where it's been tough to keep going, tough to not try to squeeze in more leisure than we should.

We all fall short, right? But as Christians, hopefully, we're seeing God's grace at work in us to grow in these things as he sanctifies us.

One of the ways that he does this is by pointing us to the cure for the sluggard, the ant.

Again, looking at verses six through eight. Go to the ant, thou sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise, which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest.

The Lord in his wisdom directs us to look at one of his smallest, seemingly most insignificant creatures to teach us something about the character of the wise.

The ant is referenced again later in Proverbs chapter 30, verses 24 and 25. There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise.

The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer. The ant is a wise creature.

And God has created the world in such a way that we should learn from them. And I'll note three things in these verses that we should take away.

First, the ant understands the role of work in life. As I mentioned earlier, there are people in our culture who are desperate to find a way to make the four -day work week and universal basic income work, right?

Just so that they don't have to work 40 hours per week in their 168 -hour week. And while sin is obviously the cause of that,

I think the root of that sin is a rejection of the image of God. It's a rejection of the way in which

God created us to be workers for His purposes on the earth. In Genesis chapter one, at verse 28, the

Lord God says to man, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

This command from God to man is often referred to as the creation mandate or the cultural mandate.

And it refers to the specific work that God created man for, right? He created us to work, to be fruitful, to have children and raise them, to rule over the creatures, to fill the earth with the image of God and to subdue the chaos with rest.

And yet we've lost sight of this fundamental reality of life. Instead, we'll often think that work is the product of the fall, right?

That it's the product of sin that we have to work as hard as we do. But the truth is that the curse on man was not that he had to now work after he sinned, but that his work would no longer bear fruit easily.

And instead it would bear thorns and thistles. Again, Genesis chapter three, 17 through 19.

None to Adam, he said, because thou has hearkened under the voice of thy wife, it has eaten of the tree of which

I commanded thee, saying thou shalt not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for thy sake.

In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.

And thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Till thou return unto the ground for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

What we learn here from a proper reading of Genesis one through three is that man was created for fruitful work.

And yet in the fall, the ground and the work has been cursed and the fruits will be much more difficult to come by.

And so we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to work, commiserating over the need to work at all.

When we should be embracing work as a gift of God and trusting that God in Christ will make our labors faithful again.

We read in Psalm 128 verses one and two, blessed is everyone that feareth the Lord that walketh in his ways, for thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands.

Happy shalt thou be and it shall be well with thee. God has promised great blessing to the work of his people, no longer under curse, but blessing for the work.

But the aunt understands the purpose of her work. She prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest.

She understands the need to work today so that she'll be provided for in the future.

She's not working to live or living to work, so to speak, but rather she rightly sees her work as a part of who she is.

She is a worker because she is human. She isn't, no, she's not human, but because she's a creature of God, she's made for work.

She is a worker because you are human. You are a worker. And the Lord would have us observe the aunts in this way and see that as wisdom, right?

That we are made by God in his image and for his purposes. We are definitionally workers.

And the way in which we live our lives should reflect that sense of purpose. We are made to work.

And that leads to a second observation from the aunt. The second takeaway, again, we've already alluded to it in part, but it's worth stating on its own that the aunt understands that her work today is connected to her future.

She prepares her food in the summer, not to eat in the summer, but to be gathered for her provision in the harvest.

I think it has become so much more common in our culture of instant gratification, but people just expect results so quickly that if a certain work requires extensive levels of effort, they just won't do it or they'll quit, right?

If I can't be the CEO in my 20s, then I'm not working at this company. They don't get me. They don't understand how valuable I am.

Right, you mean you have to put in work to make your marriage good, to make it be a successful marriage? Well, I never wanted to get married anyways, or it's up to her to really do that.

It's up to him to do that. You mean it takes effort to raise obedient children? Well, then we just won't have any, or we're trusting

God with them. We've become so used to instant results that we've forgotten that it takes effort to get things that are worthwhile.

We don't see the value of today's plodding to tomorrow's blessings. We struggle to see that our labors today are used by God to provide for us and for our families tomorrow.

We've lost the vision to believe that God could use small things today for great purposes tomorrow.

As the Lord Jesus shows through another example in the book of nature, he says in Matthew 13, verses 31 and 32, another parable put he forth unto them, saying, the kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs and becometh a tree so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

The Lord uses these small labors for great purposes. And so why shouldn't we believe that he's doing that with us, right?

In our homes, at our jobs, in our church. We have large aims here and rightfully so, we wanna build something significant and weighty.

And it may be a little early, right? To be thinking about some of these things, right? We may be a little too small for now at the out setting or the beginning stages of where we are.

But if we believe that this is a good work, if these are important works that we have in mind and works that God would use to bless his people here, then why wouldn't we put in the effort towards them?

Why wouldn't we labor for that future, for ourselves and our posterity? Why wouldn't we put in the work and ask in faith for God to bless the work and have it bear good fruit?

We have not because we ask not, right? We don't have the vision for what God might do. And so we don't ask for his favor, but we need to get this if we as a small church are going to last beyond our lives.

We have to believe that God would do something great and start working toward that end, right?

Many of us have been around a lot of postmill talk for a long time, but we need to make sure that we're not merely hearers of the word, but doers also, and we need to bring postmill action to this church.

We need to believe in the promises of God that he's made to his church, and we need to act like we believe it.

That means to work. So the aunt understands that work is a part of who she is and sees how its work connects it to the future.

And the third thing that we learned from the wisdom of the aunt in this text is that the wise man is self -led, looking at verse seven, which having no guide, overseer, or ruler.

There's a time in all of our lives when we need to be told over and over again what we should be doing. We call that time childhood, right?

For all who are parents, you know how frustrating it can be to have to repeat the same requests every day or even several times in a single day.

The children are children, right? And they're hopefully growing into maturity. They're learning, but it's a process.

It takes time and repetition and discipline for that wisdom to set in and to overtake their nature.

Even still for some adults, this can be a challenge, right? For recent converts, those baby

Christians, as they can be referred to, they're being sanctified. They're growing in their wisdom in time because it doesn't just happen all at once.

It doesn't just download at salvation. Rather, the Lord works wisdom into us through His ordinary means, through discipline by His Spirit.

But the aunt doesn't need this type of constant management, right, and the Lord calls this wise, right?

It's a sign of maturity. It's a maturity of wisdom that when you look at a man or a woman or a child, it doesn't need to be told over and over again, told umpteen times what is required of them.

That is a sign that you've met a mature man, a mature woman, a mature child. They don't need the threat of force or discipline or punishment to do their duty.

They just do it. This is helpful, I think, for those of us in positions where we manage other people, whether in work, at home, or elsewhere, in that sometimes the issue is not incompetence or an inability to do a certain thing, but it's laziness.

And how you minister to that, right? How you try to solve for that as a manager or a parent or a teacher or both is quite different, right?

And so it's important for us to be able to identify these issues biblically and address them accordingly. Right, the answer, you know, homeschooling, the answer isn't always, you know, another lesson or a new curriculum, right?

Because they're not seeming to get it. Maybe the issue that needs to be addressed is not a lack of ability, but a lack of effort, right?

It's a lack of wisdom. They don't need more teaching on the subject. They need to grow in their fear of the Lord. And they need to acquire the wisdom that works hard in their labors.

Again, this is important for us to remember because oftentimes parents, whether it's parents or in marriages or at work, people are correcting the wrong thing.

Societally, laws that are made to correct the wrong thing. They're not dealing with the real issue.

It's important for us to be able to look at our lives, look at the lives of those around us, especially the people that we need to care for.

We've been given the responsibility to care for, to be able to understand what is the issue and to address it biblically and lovingly and not to just blindly throw solutions at problems that don't really exist.

Again, that's a really important example. I think, especially with young children, as we raise them up at home or in a school in the future, that we don't address the wrong issue.

We don't continue to try to find a new solution to answer a problem that's not there. It's a problem might be a lack of wisdom, a lack of maturity, laziness.

We have to be careful. It's a good principle for us to learn. From another perspective, I think this is a good litmus test for young men as well, as to what you might be ready for professionally.

Starting a business can be a lot of fun. It's great to be the boss, but it's a lot of work. Not everyone has the maturity to do it right away.

Sometimes it's the better course for the young man to take direction for a while, to learn how to do things well and consistently before stepping out on their own, to gain wisdom first, and then when you're mature, step out into entrepreneurship if that's what you want to do.

But don't do it too soon before the sluggard has been rooted out. The fool is a sluggard.

He is in constant need of direction and redirection. But the wise are self -led.

They don't need a chief or a leader or an overseer. They understand their duty and they work for the future and to the glory of God, just as the ant.

Now, unlike the sluggard who invites chaos and poverty into his life, the ant reaps the reward for her sowing, gathering the provision in the harvest, as she receives her reward in due season.

And if this is true, that the ant receives their provision in season, how much more then will the

Lord reward the work of his people? In Luke 12, verse 24, the Lord says to his disciples, consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which neither have storehouse nor barn, and God feedeth them.

How much more are ye better than the fowls? How much more valuable are you than the ant?

And if so, then how much more can we have license for a hopeful expectation that God will meet our work done in faith with reward?

The only reason why this would be a struggle for us to accept is because we're afraid of falling into the idea, this belief that God would somehow be in our debt, right?

That because we work, he now owes us something, but we forget something far too often, that God is our father, that he loves to give good gifts to his children.

It pleases him for us to work in the fear of the Lord and to be blessed by the riches of his kindness in return, not because he owes it to us, but because he loves us and he loves to reward his children.

Again, we read from Psalm 128, verses four through six, behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the

Lord. The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion, and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem, all the days of thy life.

Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children in peace upon Israel. And so as we close today,

I want us to be reminded that the call here is not that we should go home today, right? And try to find all the ways that I might be a sluggard before going to work tomorrow, right?

We all fall short of the glory of God, including here. So yes, look to the ant, but look with the aim of correcting your sinful attitude, seeing the ant as an example to us of how the wise, the mature approach their life and work, seeing it as part of God's good purpose for you to make you more like him.

It's a seed that connects you to the future, your work. And as an example of how to be self -ruled and mature, that's what the ant is for you.

And in doing this, I think that we would reclaim that famed Protestant work ethic that not only labored so ardently, but did so because of the deep seated belief that God would bless the work and that he would establish it for generations.

And so yes, look to the ant, but also look beyond the ant. Because in looking to her rightly, when we are turning away from our sinful attitudes and towards this attitude and this hope, what we're actually doing is looking to Christ, into his blessed gospel.

Because in so many ways, the ant is a picture to us of him. He worked with eyes on the future and he endured the cross, despising the shame.

And why? For the joy that was set before him. He worked for his people, for our salvation, knowing that we would fall short.

He chose from before the foundations of the world to redeem his people from their sin and to give purpose to our labors.

That is not for our salvation, because he's done that for us, but so that we may glorify and enjoy him in the work.

He has overcome the curse that we may be fruitful once more in our work. Don't waste that gift that God has given to you in Jesus Christ.

As the apostle Paul wrote in Colossians chapter three, verses 22 through 24, servants obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as man pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fear in God.

And whatsoever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men, knowing that of the

Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance for you serve the Lord Christ. Amen.