In the sermon 'Hard Truths Poignantly Spoken,' Peter Allison explores Proverbs 26 and examines the characteristics and implications of being a sluggard or lazy person. A sluggard is described as someone who is wise in their own eyes, a talker rather than a doer, who makes excuses to avoid work, and is driven by fear and feelings rather than duty. This laziness leads to a spiritual stupor, making one insensitive to God's word and judgment. The sermon also contrasts sluggards with busybodies, who meddle in others' affairs without wisdom, and mischievous bodies, who cause harm under the guise of joking, emphasizing the importance of truth-telling and the dangers of deceit. The sermon concludes with a call to be bold and faithful like the righteous, who are described as being as bold as a lion.

Proverbs 26 this morning. I'd like to begin at verse 12, but we'll be looking at verse from verse 13 and on Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him the lazy man says there is a lion in the road A fierce lion is in the streets. As a door turns on its hinges, so does the lazy man on his bed. The lazy man buries his hand in the bowl.

It wearies him to bring it back to his mouth. The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly. He who passes by in metals in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a dog by the ears. Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, I was only joking. May His commandments be our delight even when trouble and anguish overtake us.

Almighty Father in heaven, Your Word is true. It endures forever. It is a Word of life. It is living and powerful, dividing even between soul and spirit joints and marrow. We pray Father that your word may be active and living within us.

May ask that you would sanctify these sinful lips that they may proclaim what is true and beautiful and holy. Through Jesus Christ, Amen. Last week we looked at this passage before what we just read, dealing with fools. We noted that it was one of the more focused and lengthier passages in Proverbs bringing together many aspects of fools that have been introduced in various places throughout the rest of the book. And we saw that fools, the characteristics of fools in dealing with fools are that they should not be honored, that they are not able to handle the truth, that physical punishment is reserved for fools.

It's the consequence of foolishness. And the Bible gave us that instruction on answering fools. That we were to not answer them according to their folly lest we be like them. But we were to answer them lest they be wise in their own eyes. And so, because this folly is contagious and it is addictive.

Contagious and addictive. The addictive aspect was like the dog returning to its vomit. Well, this capstone description of the fool as being somebody who is wise in his own eyes is a sort of a verse that it's a literary device that looks back at the passage last week, and it also ties into this passage that we're looking at this morning, dealing with laziness and the sluggard. I'm gonna call him the sluggard this morning. Sounds better than lazy, lazy man.

The sluggard. Okay. Somebody who is lazy, lazy bones. And this text gives us some characteristics of sluggards. And it ties these characteristics, It ties this section back to the fool by this characteristic of being wise in his own eyes.

So what are these characteristics then of a sluggard? Well, a sluggard is a talker, not a doer. The lazy man says, he's all talk, but very little action, very little work that gets accomplished. If there really was a lion in the streets the diligent would be out fighting it They'd be out taking care of it not Cowering at home just talking about it Proverbs 14 23 Says In all labor there is profit, but idle chatter leads only to poverty. The lazy man is a talker, not a doer.

Talking about what they will do or they might do or they want to do or they hope to do but never actually doing much. It's a sign of laziness. Lazy people also make excuses to justify they're not doing anything. There's a lion in the streets. I can't get out to work.

It's an excuse. They lazy people are reluctant to work and they are ingenious at inventing excuses to justify a lack of work. Someone said once, when an excuse is needed, anyone will do. It doesn't have to make sense. If you need an excuse, anyone will do.

In this case, this lazy person came up with a lion. There's a lion out in the streets. That might be a little unusual, very unusual for our culture, unless you live in our neighborhood. They've had some lion in the street once But in some cultures, it's a little more common might be a little more common Nevertheless, it's an ingenious. It's a clever excuse See the excuses of the lazy person are not an explanation of why what they attempted to do didn't succeed as planned.

There's a place for that kind of explanation. You actually did something. You tried something. You worked at it and at the end it failed. And so you have an excuse.

You have an explanation of why your work didn't work out right. But that's very different than what's going on here. See, the lazy man's excuse, the sluggard's excuse is a reason why not to do something instead of looking for ways to do it. A diligent man's excuse on why something didn't work is an explanation of what they actually did. A lazy man's excuse is a reason why not to do something instead of looking for a way to do it.

Thirdly, lazy sluggards are cowards. He came up with this lion in the street as an excuse not to act. They're not, these sluggards are not bold and courageous people. They fear many things. They fear taking risks.

They're afraid because they're afraid of dying. In the companion verse in Proverbs 22, and by the way there's two of these things that we read, One about the lion in the street and the other about the burying their hand in a bowl. These two verses are actually pretty close repeats of verses elsewhere in Proverbs. But in the companion verse to this one about the lion in the street, that's Proverbs 22, 13, the lazy man says there is a lion outside, I will be slain in the streets. He is a fear of dying.

There's a lion in the street. He's afraid of death. And so he's unwilling to take any kind of risk. He's cowering in his home. Might have some comparable people today.

Cowardice leads to the fear of taking any risks. We cannot avoid risks, and the more we try to avoid all risks, the less and less we will do. Until if you want to avoid all risks, you wouldn't be able to do anything. Just getting in your car and driving involves taking some risks, some well worth risks. And we take actions to mitigate the risk.

We drive safely, we follow the rules of the road, but we take risks when we drive. And almost anything worthwhile doing is going to involve taking a risk, because There are lions out in the street. There are things that can harm us. Those who are diligent evaluate those risks and take prudent precautions, but recognize that we can't mitigate, we can't remove every single risk. And after all, there isn't in the diligent a fear of dying.

There isn't a fear of dying because we recognize that our life is in the hand of the Lord, and that our time to come will come in the Lord's time, not one minute before and not one minute after. And so we don't have to be afraid of the lion in the street. We don't have to be afraid that we will be slain by it. See, that's a fourth characteristic of sluggards. It's that they follow their feelings and not their duties They live life they based on what they feel like doing and not what they ought to do Notice that the there is a fierce lion There's a fierce lion, the slugger says, in the streets.

Fierce. He looks at this lion and he has feelings of fear because of the ferocity of the lion. So he doesn't move because he doesn't feel like moving. He's driven by fear. And so following their feelings, the sluggard will only do what they feel like doing instead of their duty and they will find an excuse to avoid doing anything they don't feel like doing.

And they can be, as we've noted, very ingenious at coming up with all sorts of excuses. They also have a victim mentality. More bad things seem to happen sluggards than ten industrious people. See, they are very skilled at making mountains, impassable mountains, out of ant hills. Proverbs 15-19 says, the way of a lazy man is like a hedge of thorns, but the way of the upright is a highway.

Now there's no difference between In the highway, it's the same road. It's the person going down that road. The one finds his way is a hedge. He can't make any progress. To another person, he sees a highway in front of him on which he's able to, he sees a highway, a free road.

The difference wasn't in the road, it's in the person traveling that road. This lazy man sees a lion, and it's an impediment to him, and it becomes his excuse for why he can't do it. Why he's a victim of this whoever's fault it was that let the lion out and maybe it's just a wild lion. And so he's a victim of this and it's the reason he can't do anything. The sluggard is someone for whom things just don't seem to work out.

They sort of get all the bad luck. A sluggard also, sixth characteristic, is someone who can't get out of bed in the morning. They toss and they turn. See they don't feel like getting out of bed. Remember, a sluggard is somebody who is led by their feelings.

They do only what they feel like doing. And they don't feel like getting out of bed. Even though they don't need sleep. It's one thing if you're tired and you need sleep. If you're tired and you need sleep, you're probably not tossing and turning.

It's a very poignant image. As a door turns on its hinges, so the sluggard turns on his bed. And you can just see them, One shoulder to the other shoulder, stomach to the side, side to the back, back to the stomach, and so on. Because they don't feel like getting out of bed. There's lots of activity, but there's no progress.

Nothing useful gets accomplished. And so come the end of the day, slogans may be weary, But they don't feel like they accomplished anything because they really haven't. And so there's no satisfaction of a job well done. No satisfaction of having actually done something fruitful and productive. Now laziness also begets laziness.

See a door on hinges swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And something that goes back and forth and back and forth and back and forth is like something that will wear a rut and wherever it's going back and forth. If it's a car going back and forth, it you know you just get deeper and deeper ruts where the tires are. Anything that's just swinging back and forth is going to wear itself into a rut. And so when you're in a rut, it's harder to get out.

It's harder to break free. And so the more, so this is why laziness begets more laziness. Because as a lazy person swings back and forth, back and forth, developing a rut, it becomes harder and harder for them to break out of the rut that they have fallen into, and that their laziness is creating. Laziness casts one into a deep sleep. Lazyness casts one into a deep sleep, Proverbs 19.15 says.

Now that might sound contradictory here about the sluggard tossing and turning on his bed like a door swinging on its hinges. It's actually not this usual word for sleep in Proverbs 19.15 where it says laziness casts one into a deep sleep. It's a word that's used only a few times in the Old Testament. It's used when God said of Adam that God caused a deep sleep to come on him when he took the rib from his side to fashion Eve. It said of Abraham that God caused a deep sleep to fall on him when God cut covenant with him.

And you remember the smoking oven passed between the divided carcasses that Abraham had set out. God caused this special sleep, this deep sleep, the Bible calls it, to fall upon him. And it's also used, the other time it's used, is when God caused a deep sleep to fall in King Saul and all his army Remember when David went into the middle of his camp with a couple of his mighty men and they were able to walk right up To the head Saul's bed right at his head where his spear and jug of water were, and they were able to take those and walk right out, and nobody in this whole army heard them, saw them, or woke up. Now that's an amazing sleep. The Bible says that they were able to do that because God caused this deep sleep and it's uses the same word It's almost like it's a trance.

It's almost like in every case It is something that God brought on these people specifically God caused this to happen to them so that they became insensitive. Completely like being under general anesthesia. Have no memory. They had no recollection. And when Saul got up, He had no idea that David had been standing right at his head.

But David could show him the proof, look I was there. And so that's the word that's used here. This deep sleep, or used in Proverbs 19, laziness casts one into a deep sleep. The laziness creates a further stupor, a further inability, an insensitivity to everything that's going on. The lazy person, the sluggard, is somebody who wonders what happened.

They're not making things happen, they're not watching things happen, they're just wondering what happened. That's the sense here. Laziness begets more laziness. Laziness is also aggravating to other people around them. The sluggard is aggravating to others around them.

A door that swings back and forth in the wind. Creek, creek back. Most people would get very annoyed at that and they would quickly get up and fix it. So Proverbs 10-26 says, as vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the lazy man to those who send him." He's an annoyance. Smoke to the eyes.

It's just an annoyance. They're aggravating. Sluggards are aggravating to people. And a sluggard may tempt somebody to respond sinfully to their aggravation. See sluggards then can become a problem, a temptation.

Now the ninth characteristic in verse 15 of a sluggard is that they don't finish things. Sluggards don't finish things. This picture there is really graphic and really a real slam on a slugger. It says he buries his hand in a bowl And then he's just too lazy to put the hand to his mouth to eat what he took. It's just, you can't even move it.

You can't even get it out. And we all laugh because it is absurd. That's what the Bible says a slugger is like. This absurd person. It's too lazy to put their hand back to their mouth.

Or another place, a parallel passage in Proverbs says that the slugger doesn't even bother to roast what he captured in hunting. He doesn't value his possessions. Doesn't finish things. Because they're always following their feelings and deciding what to do based on how they feel, they may be interested in something, it looks wonderful, and they think, wow, that would be great to have that or to do that, and so they start doing it. And then they find out that it's not quite what they thought it was, It's not as easy as they imagined it would be.

It's not quite as thrilling as they imagined it would be. For whatever reason, they don't feel like going on, and so they don't. Something looks nice, They think it would be nice to learn they jump in then they learn it's a little more difficult So they lose interest just as quickly as they became interested and they move on to the next thing. They don't finish things. What you accomplish in a day, or a week, or a year, or your lifetime, is not how many things we start to do, but it's how many things we finish.

That's what determines what we get done in our life or in our day. And so one characteristic of a sluggard is they start many things but don't finish them. The sluggard is also self-deceived. He thinks himself wiser than seven experts, but in reality he is devoid of understanding. The lazy man is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly.

Seven men who can answer sensibly are people who know something. But he thinks he is wiser than all of them. Proverbs 24.30 says, They went by the field of the sluggard, and by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding." It puts those two together. A sluggard is devoid of understanding. They're self-deceived.

They think they know something, but they really don't. And so they reach conclusions without the ability to support what they believe, because they're too lazy. They're too lazy to do the hard mental work of figuring something out. Did you know that the brain is the biggest calorie burner in the body? Just the brain, it's a very light organ, uses up a quarter of the energy that your body burns just under normal non non-active periods just keeping your body running.

Brain uses up a quarter of the energy your body burns. And it's more if you're doing something that's hard, mentally difficult. It's even more. In other words, it's hard work. You can get tired.

You can get tired sitting at a desk, engaging in strenuous mental exertion, thinking things through, working things through. It can make you very hungry because your brain is burning up a lot of glucose for all those synapses to be firing. Well, the sluggard isn't willing to engage in that kind of intense mental exercise. It's just too hard for them. They don't feel like it.

And so they're not able to defend what they know. They're not willing to give a reason for what they believe. They are too lazy to think. And they won't listen to reason. They won't listen to reason, and so Solomon resorts to these very poignant metaphors to, in a sense, shame the lazy person into some action.

A lazy person is like a door turning on its hinges. Like this person that puts his hand into the bowl and just can't seem to get it back to his mouth again. Like somebody who sits in their house and cries out, there's a lion in the streets. In the streets. Maybe these graphic, almost humorous images will shame a sluggard into doing something.

One of the ways this self-deceived thinking shows up is that a slugger can expend more energy to keep from doing something than it would have taken to do it in the first place. They spend more time and effort trying to think of reasons or trying to avoid doing something that they could have simply done in the first place quite easily. That's a characteristic of a sluggard. They're self-deceived. They don't think straight anymore.

They don't think rationally or logically. The sluggards are also spiritually lazy. Eleventh characteristic of a slug, spiritually lazy. He is wise in his own eyes, verse 16 says. And this is a verse that ties this section right back to the previous passage on fools that we looked at last week.

There is more hope for a fool than for someone who is wise in their own eyes. You see, a sluggard has a spiritual blindness. Remember that deep sleep we talked about that the sluggard falls into? This sort of a trance that produces an insensitivity and an ability to respond to what's going on around them? Well, that word is used, besides being used in Job, it's used in one other place in the Bible.

And guess what it describes? It describes a spiritual blindness. In Isaiah 29, Isaiah describes the Israelites as a people where the Lord has poured out on Israel the spirit of deep sleep and has closed their eyes, the prophets and the rulers, the seers he has covered." The same word there is used to describe the spiritual condition of apostate Israel as that of being spiritually lazy, spiritually in a stupor, spiritually asleep, blind, their eyes are covered, They're insensitive to their condition. A spirit of deep sleep. So, sluggards are spiritually lazy.

The physical laziness of the sluggard produces a spiritual stupor, a spiritual blindness, a spiritual laziness called a deep sleep that makes a sluggard insensible to the Word of God. It makes them insensible to the judgment of God. And that's really what we're under today. We're under a nation of people who are insensitive to the judgment of God upon them. Just like being in a deep sleep, like Adam was or Abraham was when God took the rib out of his body, or God passed through the divided carcasses.

This stupor makes them insensible to the thunder, the earthquake, the storms, the tempest. If you're in a deep sleep, you're insensible to all that. And so the sluggard is also in a spiritual stupor, and he's insensitive to what God is doing, to the judgment that God is bringing. He's insensitive to the truth of God's Word. Paul quoted this verse in Romans 11, 8 in describing the Jews.

He said, according as it is written, According to that verse in Isaiah, God has given them the spirit of slumber, a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear until this very day. See, the sluggard, his greatest problem is a spiritual laziness, spiritual blindness, spiritual stupor, makes them insensitive to what God is doing all around him. You see, faith is the opposite. Faith carries us forward in the face of lions. The Proverb says, the righteous are bold as a lion.

The righteous are bold as a lion. The righteous are bold as a lion. They're not afraid of the lion in the street. The lion in the street becomes the cause for action, not fearful inaction. And so you see the very same thing that produces inaction and stupor on the part of the sluggard produces bold, courageous action on the part of those who have faith.

Now there's another kind of fool that's described here in this next section, verse 17, and that is a busy body. So we have the lazy body, we now have the busy body. Somebody who meddles in affairs that have nothing to do with themselves. That's a busybody. And those are not in good company, busybodies.

You might think of them as relatively harmless, but just a busybody. They're just poking their nose in everybody else's business. They may be an annoyance, but what's the great harm? Or how much harm are they doing? But the Apostle Peter classifies busybodies along with murderers and thieves.

Busybodies, murderers and thieves, he puts together. He says in 1 Peter 4, 15 and 16, but let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other Men's matters. Don't suffer as a murderer, as a thief, as an evildoer, or a busybody. Because a busybody is a fool. Is a fool.

He's somebody who is wise in his own eyes. Maybe busy bodies have lots of reasons for getting involved. One of them is because they think they have the answer to everybody's problems. That's why they get involved. They think that they can bring the solution.

And so they are truly wiser in their own eyes than seven people who really know what they're talking about And busy bodies can do a lot of harm when they get when somebody like that gets involved and tries to help and bring a solution when they don't know what they are talking about. You see, the Ecclesiastes says that the heart of a wise man, the opposite of a fool, The heart of a wise man The opposite of a fool the heart of a wise man discerns both time and judgment because for every matter There is a time and judgment See is not just a truth There's not just a a Propositional statement There is also that that's the judgment of a matter. This is what needs to happen. This is the truth. This is the reality.

That's the judgment of the matter. But the wise man knows that for every matter there is both a time and judgment. There is a right time and a right place to speak the true judgment. And a wise person knows that. A fool doesn't.

A busy body doesn't know the right time or the right place. And so in the middle of a fight, That's what it's talking about here. Somebody who passes by in medals in a quarrel, that isn't their own. So in the middle of a fight, when passions are aroused, that's not the time to bring a word of wisdom. Getting involved at that time is like grabbing a dog by the ears.

You get attacked. See, a wise man knows the right time to say the truth, the right place, the right manner. The busybody doesn't. The busybody is a fool who is wiser in his own eyes than seven people who do actually know what they are talking about. So the wise know not only to discern not only the application, the applicable truth that applies in that situation, but they know the right time and the right manner to apply that truth, to bring that truth.

The third kind of fool is a mischievous body. We have a lazy body, a busy body, and a mischievous body. Like a madman who throws firebrands and arrows at death, is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, I was just joking. Now I know I see that all the time. I even see it among us.

This mischievous body has a lot of names he goes by. It might be a prankster, a joker, a miscreant, a rogue, an imp, a scamp, a mischief maker, a rabble rouser, a pest, a nuisance, a ruffian, a hoodlum, a knave, a vandal, a hooligan, a thug, a troll, and a rascallion. A Rascallion. That is a good Elizabethan King James English word. Rascallion.

And it's a word that sounds like what it means. A Rascallion just sounds like it describes a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death. And then just says, I was just joking. I didn't mean that. A Rascallion.

A lot of foolishness is passed off as harmless, practical joking. But Solomon says, not so. Not so! It's just not so. It's not harmless, practical joking.

To deceive somebody and then just say, well, I was just joking, is to be like a madman throwing firebrands. Firebrands and arrows and death. You shoot a firebrand and it goes into a building and it lights the building on fire and it burns down. That's not just a joke. But Solomon says when we deceive our neighbor and then just say, well, that's just a joke, we're like that.

We're like somebody shooting fiery arrows just at random and burning things down. There's a lot of joking also that makes somebody in the midst the butt of the joke. And that I think is a lesser form of what Solomon is talking about here. This kind of practical joking that makes a person somebody the butt of the joke. Now if we're the butt of the joke, then we take it in good stride and we aren't put out by it.

But that doesn't make it right for the person that's doing it. And I think there's a lot of harm that actually is done by that kind of joking. Joking, it's not edifying, it's not building one another up. It's not encouraging one another. It's not blessing one another.

These are not words of kindness. These are words of a madman. Somebody who throws firebrands, arrows, and death. When we make a joke and we make somebody that we ought to be loving the butt of that joke. And I remember very clearly my first patrol on the submarine as a very, you're at sea for three months at a time, together with a small group of other people and in the wardroom which is about 12 officers in the wardroom we eat together we study together and so on there is this rivalry of who can have the best slam on somebody else.

And it's all in good fun. Everybody laughs. And It's, you like being around people that can have witty sayings and witty comebacks. And yet, and I got home out of that, from that environment And I remember sitting one of the first few days a week back and having a very witty comeback for something my wife said. And it made her the butt of that comment.

And I immediately realized this isn't right. I can't treat her like that. It's not very loving and it's not very kind. And I began to realize that yes, there's a lot of this joking that goes on and we take it as well we're part of the guys when they can joke like that with us. But really Solomon says it's really not true.

Those are not kind words, those don't edify, those don't build up, those are firebrands. They're arrows. They're death. Their death. Matthew Henry says, truth is too valuable a thing to be sold for a jest.

The truth is too valuable a thing to be sold for a jest. That's what Solomon is describing here. This guy who deceives his neighbor and then just says, I was joking. He goes on to say, if a man may tell a lie to make himself merry, to make himself happy, if it's justifiable to tell a lie in pursuit of happiness, Why not to make himself rich? If it's okay to tell a lie so that we can have a good laugh and have fun, then why isn't it okay so that we can be rich?

And so he says, truth quite perishes, and men teach their tongues to tell lies. Truth is too valuable a thing to be sold for a jest. If a man may tell a lie to make himself merry, why not make himself rich? And so truth quite perishes, and men teach their tongues to tell lies. May God bless our nation so that we are a nation of truth telling people, so that the truth doesn't perish from our land, and so that we are not those who are teaching our tongues to tell lies.

Father in heaven, we thank you for your word, which is truth. Your word is truth, and we ask that you would sanctify us by it, that you would cleanse our hearts and our minds, and sanctify our tongues and set them apart, that they might be instruments of truth telling, instruments of encouragement, of edification, of tenderness, of kindness, of building up one another in the faith. Words of that our tongues might be instruments of comfort and wisdom. That we may speak the truth in love, that we may speak the truth in season, that we might speak the truth to righteous and godly ends. Father, we thank you for our great Savior Jesus Christ, who with his tongue spoke the truth, who testified to everlasting life, to the forgiveness of our sins.

Who was a man of deeds, who offered himself as a sacrifice in our place, and demonstrated his love for us in that while we were yet in our sins, he died for us, not fearing death, not fearing what any man could do. Well, Father, may You so strengthen us that we might be bold as a lion. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.