In the sermon 'The Cause & Cure of Laziness' by Peter Allison, the speaker explores Proverbs 18:5-9, highlighting the destructive nature of foolish speech and the moral implications of laziness. The sermon emphasizes the connection between laziness and foolishness, suggesting that both lead to destruction of property and relationships. Allison discusses the importance of understanding work and rest in the context of worship, drawing on the fourth commandment to illustrate the balance between labor and Sabbath rest. He argues that laziness is not just a lack of activity but a failure to worship God wholeheartedly, likening it to idolatry. The sermon delves into the concept of innocent versus guilty pleasures, urging believers to identify and refrain from activities that detract from their devotion to God. Ultimately, Allison calls for a recognition of the eternal rest and pleasure promised by God, encouraging a life of purposeful work and worship.

Proverbs, chapter 18. I would like to read verses 5-9. It is not good to show partiality to the wicked, or to overthrow the righteous in judgment. A fool's lips enter into contention, and his mouth calls for blows. A fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul.

The words of a tale-bearer are like tasty trifles, and they go down into the inmost body. He who is slothful in his work is a brother to him who is a great destroyer." May God write the truth of His Word upon our heart. Word upon our heart. Heavenly Father, I ask that you would sanctify this vessel of clay and cleanse these sinful lips to proclaim what is true and holy and beautiful. To be your messenger.

And I pray Father that you would open our hearts that we may hear. For except You do open our ears, we cannot hear, we cannot understand. Father, we long to sit at Your feet and to be taught of you. So we ask that you would give to us this morning that desire, that hunger and thirst for righteousness that would forsake everything else And simply come with all of our mind to hear you. This we ask in Jesus' name, Amen.

It's been three months since we were looking at Proverbs, and I was thinking about the text this week and planning to talk on verses 6, 7, and 8. Until last night I opened up my file from three months ago and I had in there one summary statement that saw the text very differently from how I had been thinking about it. Of course, that was the fruit of having been thinking about it back then for a whole lot more. So this morning we are going to look at all the way through verse 9 because I believe that they are connected. And they are connected in a rather interesting way.

This passage here, this Proverbs 18 is one of the key passages in Proverbs on the tongue and the mouth. It's not the only one, 17 and 18. This section deals at length with what we say, our mouth, our lips, our speech. You know from all of your reading and proverbs, Proverbs can seem to jump around a lot and it touches on the same topic many different times. In fact, one of the verses in our text, verse 8, is exactly repeated in Proverbs 26-22, exactly, word for word.

But there is also, we see in Proverbs, they aren't just a bunch of pearls on a string all disconnected from each other except for the fact that they are on the same string. But rather there is, we see these structures, these poetic structures, these linguistic structures, these structures of ideas, these continuities of ideas that stretch across these sometimes seemingly unrelated proverbs. And I think that's what we have here this morning between verses 6, 7, and 8, and verse 9. And sometimes it's not our fault, sometimes the translators in their wisdom leave words out that I wonder why they did it. I just found a translation yesterday that I wasn't aware of, it's on the Internet, that has some 60, 000 notes connected with it, and you can read the translation and then you can read the notes and the notes, often several notes per verse, explain what's behind, what was in the mind of the translators and why they chose the particular translation that they did.

It's a very interesting and helpful, I think, way to read the Word of God. But So we have here these three verses dealing with a fool and speech. A fool's lips enter into contention, his mouth calls for blows, then it's the fool's mouth is his destruction and his lips are the snare of the soul. There's the very simple chiasm, simple poetic structure, lips, mouth, mouth, lips. The lips of a fool enter into contention.

The words of a fool it says initiate fights and quarrels and squabbles. That's a characteristic of a fool. It's somebody who leaves in their wake squabbles and fights and contentions and hurt feelings. It's a sign of somebody who is foolish. Doctrinal debates that don't edify, that aren't encouraging and building up people in love and in kindness and in the fruits of the Spirit that are rather provoking people to dissension and disagreement.

That's a fool. His mouth calls for blows. A fool's words bring upon himself blows. They invite people to beat him up. They provoke people to wrath and to anger and to fighting.

A fool's mouth, it says, is his destruction and his lips are the snare of his soul. A snare is a trap. A trap is something that's easy to fall into and hard to get out of. Easy to fall into. You can do it without trying.

You can do it if you're in a moment of carelessness, in a moment of inattention, you fall in and it can be very hard to get out. I'm sure you've all been there, I know I have. You say something and now it's hard to extricate yourself from what you've just said because it takes humility to acknowledge that what you said was wrong, what you said was not helpful even if it wasn't right. A trap is easy to fall into and hard to get out of. When anger is aroused, when there is a rapid anger that arises within us, it is very easy at that point to resort to biting words.

It's very easy to say far more than what we want to say or should say. It's very easy to sin and that's why we are warned in the Scriptures not to speak quickly or to be angry quickly. It's not that anger in and of itself is always wrong. Sometimes it is. But we are actually commanded in the scriptures to be angry and don't sin.

Sinful anger is a rapid anger. It's an anger that is suddenly aroused. Righteous indignation is not suddenly aroused. Remember, the Lord is slow to anger. He is patient.

He is abounding in loving kindness. He doesn't immediately become angry at our sin. He doesn't immediately destroy. If the Lord should mark our sins, who could stand? But no, the Lord is slow to anger.

The Lord is a God of vengeance. The Lord does become angry. Jesus even became angry. What would Jesus do? People ask.

It's a good question. Sometimes Jesus became angry. But it's not quick to anger. It's slow to anger. It's only when there is no other option, When there is continued wickedness, continued refusal to acknowledge what is true and right.

When anger is aroused it is very easy to fall into sin. When anger is aroused at all, it's easy to fall into sin. And this is a bad place, this is a bad condition for our soul to be in, to be rapidly and quickly arouse to anger. It leads to greater sins, that of bitterness, that of grudges, that of refusing to yield, of malice even, and of hatred. These are the things that are the fruit of quick anger.

Quick anger is anger that is because of our own inconvenience, because of our own sinful heart being provoked quickly to anger. And that is a bad place for our soul to be in. When we stay there, it produces worse fruit. A fool is somebody who brings destruction. Bible says elsewhere that you take the scoffer out and it is like taking the wood out of a fire.

The fire goes out. When they are removed, Bible says when you take away that fool who brings contention, when you take them out of the midst of a body, the contention goes away. It's just like taking the wood away from a fire. You want to end a fire, you take the fuel away. And the fire goes out.

Bible says a fool is the same way. A fool is like wood to a fire. A fool brings destruction like wood brings a fire or sustains a fire. A fool brings destruction to relationships. They leave in their train broken relationships.

Whispering, The Bible talks here about whispering in several places. In the last chapter, chapter 17, and in previous chapters, it talks about whispering. Separates friends. Fighting usually starts from what people say, from what someone says. Those words then escalate into actions.

So fighting, fools destroy relationships, but fools destroy property as well. Because where do wars between countries come from? They just come from words that people spoke that escalate into actions that escalate into full out war. And you know the destruction, the devastation that comes from war. When you just have two armies that are simply intent on destroying each other there is massive grand destruction comes from from fools bringing contention with their words.

A fool's lips enter into contention, his mouth calls for blows, a fool's mouth is his destruction, And his lips are the snare of his soul. The words of a tale bearer is one example here of a foolish speech. One example of the work of a fool to destroy property and relationships. The words of a tale bearer or somebody who is bringing what we might call gossip, are like tasty trifles. Now if you have the King James, it probably says wounds there.

I think this is one example where the modern translations, and actually I have to add the Geneva as well, which is even older than the King James, has it I believe right, and it has it as something that is good to eat, something that's like, in a sense, candy, a delicious morsel. So, the Geneva has it too, it's not just the modern translations, but I think the ones that see this as not wounds, but something that's a delicious morsel. And the difference came because this is the only place this word is used in the Bible, and the other verse in Proverbs that's identical to this verse. It's the only place it's used, and so it becomes difficult then to translate these words that you can't get a sense of what they mean. Hard to get a sense of what they mean.

So the people that have translated it as wounds were looking to a different root word than those who see it as tasty trifles or a delicious morsel. But I think the couplet fits better, delicious morsel, than a wound. The Words of a tale bearer, a whisperer, a gossip are like delicious morsels as they go down into the innermost body. They go down into the inner rooms of our insides And they sure taste good on the way down. Now, what are the words of a tale bearer?

This is the words of a gossip. What is gossip? It's difficult to give a simple definition, but I'll many people have tried and I think a good one is news usually bad About someone not present that is not necessary to share news usually bad about someone not present that is not necessary to share. You can see that there's all sorts of judgments in there. Somebody could say, well I think it is necessary that I share this.

Somebody else could say, well why did you need to share that? But news is usually bad about someone that is not present, that is not necessary to share. This is evil. This is evil. The scriptures are very clear on this.

It's listed among the serious sins in Romans 1. Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, and whisperers. Haters of God, spiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, backbiteers, whisperers, gossip, people who gossip, people who share news, often bad news, about someone who is not present when it is not necessary, that is not necessary to share. That is equated with murder, with fornication, haters of God, and all other manners of sin. This is evil.

Whatever it is, it's evil. News that is usually bad news about someone. Gossipers, whispers, speak about the faults or failings of others or they reveal potentially embarrassing or shameful details regarding others' lives without their knowledge apart from them. Proverbs 11.13 says, Tail-bearers reveal secrets. They betray a confidence.

But he that is of a faithful spirit conceals a matter. Looking ahead to chapter 20, he that goes about it as a tail bearer reveals secrets. You can even share something good in a negative way. That's why I say it's news usually bad. Because you can actually share something true and good in a bad way.

How is so and so today? Well, at least he wasn't drunk today. It might be true. It's actually good that he wasn't drunk today. You see, the way that it's shared is a bad, it's shared in a bad way.

It produces a negative effect. It's as if you shared something that wasn't good. Or you could say any number of things in there. Or, at least he smiled today, or something of that sort. It's news about people that aren't present.

That's why it's called whispering. There's a need to keep it close. New Testament uses the word whispering and again it's when the New Testament uses that word it's the only time it uses that word but 2nd Corinthians 12 talks about debates not having debates envying wrath, strife, backbiting, whispering, swelling, tumults, whispering so that someone else doesn't hear, someone who is not present. And thirdly, it is Something that is not necessary to reveal. It is not necessary.

It is not edifying. It is not helpful. It is not constructive. There are times when bad news is needed, needs to be shared. It needs to be communicated.

It needs to be told. There are times. Gossip is not one of those times. Paul told Timothy, or in his letter to Timothy chapter 5, especially warning him about widows. They learned to be idlers going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies saying what they should not, saying what they shouldn't say.

That's the key element there. It's bad news, usually, shared about someone when they are not present that is not necessary to share. That's what Paul describes these gossips in his letter to Timothy. They say what they should not say. There was no constructive reason, no benefit.

It wasn't edifying. It's not helpful. It's not solving a problem. It's not building people up. And sometimes confrontation of sin, sometimes dealing with sin is necessary to our sanctification.

Sometimes discussing that is necessary, especially between parents and children. If your family has seen something that isn't good, it's not gossip for mother and father in the privacy of the home to address that behavior. Yes, it is bad news. Yes, it is about someone that is not there, but it is necessary to instruct our children about the things that they might see. Now, there is a way that we can do it that is honoring to that person, and there is a way that is dishonoring, just like that comment about how so and so.

You can answer that question in a way that honors them, you can answer it in a way that is dishonoring, that is a gossip way. And likewise, as parents we can instruct our children and teach them from bad examples in ways that are helpful and edifying, and in ways that are not. Gossip is harmful to those who hear it. It's like a piece of poisoned food. It might taste good, but it brings destruction inside of us.

That no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace to the hearers, that's Paul's admonition about how our speech should be to one another. No corrupt communication, nothing which is not necessary to come out of our mouth except that which is good for edifying, for building up, for strengthening people, for encouraging, for blessing, for honoring, that it may minister grace to the hearers. So all of this we've talked about before. And everybody, we can all nod our heads up and down. Yes, fools are destructive.

Their mouth is a snare, easy to fall into, hard to get out of, they, their mouth calls for blows and so on. We can all say, yup, yup, yup, yup. And we probably all think of examples, maybe not often enough of our self in there. But here's what comes next. He, also that is slothful in his work, is a brother of him that is a great waster and a destroyer he also see there's that tie there just as you've been agreeing with all of this about the fool and gossip and the fool bringing contention and so on.

Just as we are saying yes, yes, yes, we see all that. He says, well in the same way, in a like manner also, another destroyer is the person who is lazy, the sluggard. Laziness. Proverbs has more to say about it almost than anything else except maybe sexual immorality. It has a lot to say about laziness.

That's a specific sin. It has a lot to say in general about evil, about unrighteousness, but this is a specific sin of laziness. It has a lot to say. The whole book does. The roots of laziness are very far reaching.

It's a complicated thing to get our hands around. There are many different ways that we can get there. For those that are younger, maybe there's a lack of skill. We're not very good at something yet. And so we're not very efficient at our work, because we're not skilled yet.

And so being inefficient because we're not skilled means our work doesn't go very well. We put a lot of effort into it and there is not a lot of return back. And there is not a lot of success for all of our pain and effort. And that is discouraging. That can produce frustration.

We poured our heart into something and it's not going very well. We just don't have the skill. We look over at other people and they can do it so much, it looks so easy to them. Can watch things and just see how easy it is to other people. And that frustration then produces a desire to quit, a desire to give up.

And so then a lack of activity perpetuates the lack of skill, because how do you get skill by doing it? And so a lack of skill can can lead to can get us into a lazy pattern We could be overloaded just have way more work than what we know what to do with. And so that our effort doesn't really seem to make a dent in the labor. And we can get the same place. We can get panicked.

We can get discouraged that we've poured all this work into it, And it's just way more than we can handle. And so what happens sometimes? Well, we get a, what's the use? If I can pour all my work, all my effort into this and I don't make a dent in the work, well really what's the use? What's the point?

And so we can quit. Of course, once we quit, the work just gets more. And we get more overwhelmed, more overloaded, and more discouraged because we can't make a dent in it. And so we can get that way into a root of laziness, or say, battle with laziness. Or we can have a lack of meaningful purpose.

We can feel like our work is just a never-ending cycle of effort. It's just, we feel like we're just on a hamster wheel, going round and round. We get up every day, we shower, we eat, we do some pattern of work in the home, out of the home, in a tree, on the road, wherever we work. And we go to bed at night and do the same thing all over again, and that cycle of activity seems to lack any sense of purpose. Because we lack a sense of purpose about what we're doing, it just doesn't seem like it's worth it anymore.

Why are we doing all this? We might as well just stop. What's the point of putting ourselves through all of this effort? And when you get to that point, That kind of a lazy person, the Bible says, they look for any excuse, any excuse whatsoever, to stop work. The one given in Proverbs 26 is, the sluggard says, there's a lion in the street and I can't go to work.

I can't go out in the street, there's a lion out there. That's a lazy excuse. Maybe it's too much rain, there's too much rain, it's too cold. And so inactivity, Whatever the excuse is, we grab it and we justify inactivity. And that inactivity makes the work seem all the more harder the next time we go to do it and even less worth the effort.

Now here's the interesting thing, laziness destroys property and relationships just like the fool and the gossip. Laziness destroys property. The homestead falls apart. And that is described a couple of chapters later in Proverbs chapter 24 and verse 30. It says, I went by the field of a lazy man, and by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding, and there it was, all overgrown with thorns.

Its surface was covered with nettles, its stone wall was broken down, and when I saw it, I considered it well. I looked on it and received instruction, a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest so shall your poverty come like a prowler and your need like an armed man. The destruction of the homestead, it went back to the wild we say. It happens very quickly. It's the sign, it's the fruit, the result of laziness.

The destruction of property. The lazy person doesn't plow in season. Then he comes to look for the harvest and he has nothing. So there is famine, Which leads to the destruction of life, the lack of food. Proverbs 21 says, the sluggard's craving will be the death of him because his hand refuses to work.

Hand refuses to work. It results in destruction. But just like the fool, laziness destroys relationships as well. Because it brings poverty. Proverbs 10 verse 4 says, He who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligence is rich.

What is one of the biggest sources of marital conflict? Isn't it money? Money? Financial stress. A lack of money.

Isn't it one big source of conflict? It's one source, one thing that destroys a relationship between a husband and wife. The next verse says, he who sleeps in harvest is a disgraceful son. What do you suppose the relationship between a father and a disgraceful son is? It's probably not a good relationship.

And so there, laziness destroys a relationship between a father and a son. A little later in that same chapter, verse 10, it says that the lazy, the sluggard, is like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes. Did you ever try it? What do you suppose would happen if you put smoke in somebody's eyes? They probably won't react very favorably.

You do that in a beehive and you get them all excited. If you put enough of it in there, you can also make them drunk and let you get in and get out. But smoke is an irritant. A lazy person is described as someone who puts smoke in the eyes. If you have friends putting smoke in each other's eyes, that's not going to foster a good relationship.

It tears down that relationship. And so, this laziness is just, as the proverb says, it's also like the fool. It brings destruction. The laziness is fundamentally a moral problem. It's a moral problem.

It's not the result of not enough sleep, it's not the result of just a lack of skill, it's not the result of just being overworked or feeling purposeless. So fundamentally, it's a moral problem. Now, it's not Commandments 5 through 10, directly, initially, which deal with how we treat our neighbor, respect their chastity, their life, their name, their property, respect authority, and so on, but rather it's a sin related to the fourth commandment. How we utilize our time, the choices that we make on what to do and what not to do, The choices that we make every hour of every day of every year. The fourth commandment speaks to our use of time, but it does so, It addresses our use of time in terms of our relationship to our Creator.

The fourth commandment addresses the use of our time in relationship to our Creator, in relationship to the God who made us, whom we are called to serve. The fourth commandment calls us to worship and serve the Lord God who made us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, 366 to leap year. And so laziness is a manifestation of a fundamental problem with our worship. Laziness is not as much about inactivity as it is about worshipping a false god, worshipping an idol, being enslaved to it, pleasure, comfort, sleep, or our own selves, worshipping, serving ourselves, or our self-image. You see, a workaholic has the exact same problem.

They are really the same moral thing. They look like they might be opposite ends of the spectrum, but they are not. They are both fundamentally a problem with our worship, who we are serving. The workaholic is enslaved to himself for whatever reason. You see, the fourth commandment Unites our work and our rest together It teaches us how these two things go together To it so that we can rightly worship our Creator and we cannot Rest if we have not properly worked.

And we can't properly work if we haven't properly rested. Six days each week, the fourth commandment calls us to work. Six days shall you labor and do all your work." That's a command regarding the six or the seven days of the week. We are to work those days offering our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto the Lord. And whatever grace that he has given to us, whether it's in service, in showing mercy, in leading, in teaching, in ministering, that's a whole host of things.

Whatever it is, those six days that we are to work, we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. The seventh day, though, is a day that is set apart. That's what holy means, is to set apart. It's different from the other six days. And that's a day that God has called us to rest.

So one day each week we are to rest from our work, offering our bodies as a living sacrifice to the Lord on day seven as well. We serve our Lord by working well and by resting well. To get work right and pleasure right or rest right is to properly enjoy the Lord God who made us and redeemed us. Here is something very interesting. You know the Ten Commandments are given twice.

The first time is where? Anybody know? Exodus 20. It is good to know that. These are the ten words that God spoke from heaven.

And The fourth commandment says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates and it gives the reason why. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day. That's why we are to rest on the seventh day and work for six days because we are to follow the example of God.

He's our Creator. He worked six days and rested. That's the example that we are to follow. He is the one who made us as well. He is the one who owns us.

He created us for his glory. He created us to enjoy him. He created us so that we can serve Him. I'm sure all of you have made things. Maybe you make a meal.

Maybe you've made a piece of furniture. Maybe you've made a quilt. Maybe you've made any number of things. Why do you make those things? You make them so that they can be of service to you.

You make them so they can fulfill some function that you would like them to fulfill, whether it's keeping you warm or feeding you or enjoying holding your books or some other enjoyment. God created us out of nothing and breathed into us the breath of life. He created us so that we can enjoy Him. He created us so that we can glorify Him. That's why we exist.

It's the only reason we exist. That's our calling and it will be our calling for all eternity because we do endure. But look over in Deuteronomy 5, that is the other place where God gives the Ten Commandments. Moses gives them forty years later. He recounts.

In Deuteronomy it's a recounting again of the law. It's a second law. That's what the word literally means. And this is what he says forty years later. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work but the Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God in it you shall do no work you nor your son or your daughter nor Your male servant or your female servant nor your ox nor your donkey nor any of your cattle Nor your stranger who is within your gates that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. Male and female servants are all those people that we pay to serve us in some way. Now what's the reason? It doesn't say four and six days the Lord made. No, it says, remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

Therefore the Lord commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. That's a very different reason that's been given here. The reason that's been given here is that God is their Redeemer, that God has delivered them, He saved them from bondage, from slavery. And therefore, because He is our Redeemer, because He's our Savior, we are to set this day aside to rest and to enjoy him. Two very important reasons Why we are to rest and to work because each command has both were to work and were to rest Because the Lord is our creator and that's the pattern that he created And because the Lord is our Redeemer and He has redeemed us.

Is the focus of your life 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, 66 if it's a leap year, is the focus of your life, to serve the Lord who created you and who redeemed you. Perhaps, you know, you're seeing relationships be slowly eaten away, struggling. Maybe there's arguing, maybe there's indifference. Maybe there is arguing, maybe there is indifference. Perhaps your work day does feel monotonous, trapped.

The Bible says that a lazy person is like a lazy bag of bones turning on his bed. As a door turns on its hinges, so a lazy man turns on his bed. You can imagine the resentment that would build if somebody that you are in a relationship with is just turning on their bed like the hinges of a door while you are working away. Remember Martha was frustrated and resented Mary because Mary was sitting at Jesus feet and she was slaving away. And Mary was doing a wonderful good thing and Jesus said, no Mary's actually chosen the right thing to do in this case.

But just imagine if Mary was turning in her bed like a door on its hinges. Imagine Martha's resentment. The message of the fourth commandment is, let a Sabbath rest for God's people, is the answer, is the cure for laziness. What are your most innocent pleasures? What are your most innocent pleasures?

Have you asked yourself that? What gives you the most greatest innocent pleasure? By innocent pleasure, I mean that which is good, that which is wholesome. Because God has given to us many pleasures. At His right hand are pleasures forevermore.

What are the pleasures that He has given? Try writing them down. To be an innocent pleasure, of course, it has to be lawful, something that God has commanded or allowed us to do. But it also has to be something that doesn't own us, something that we can enjoy and easily put it down. We put it down when we've enjoyed it.

A meal can be a wonderful pleasure. But we're able to eat, enjoy it, revel in it, and then move on. We don't stay there, you know, our hand isn't stay there at the ball. We don't linger. A wine is another example.

It can be a wonderful pleasure, but we don't linger there. We don't tarry there. It doesn't hold us. It doesn't own us. An innocent pleasure is something that doesn't give us identity or meaning.

We don't look to it for our meaning. Some people look to a job for their meaning. And when their job ends they die Because they were getting their identity out of that job. And innocent pleasure is something that is not going to give us our identity or meaning in life. It is a gift that does not displace our primary affection for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Innocent pleasures can be in that sense very subjective. Like Bruce Ray in his work on the Sabbath, his book on the Sabbath, illustrates this very well. And he talks about this subjective nature of what's an innocent pleasure. And he talks about a family of bike racers. Some of you may know a family of people who race bikes.

And Bruce says for them, maybe what is a resting on the Sabbath is to rest from their bike racing. But there's this other family that have small children and the mother is working in that phase of life where she is tied to home, not quite to where Dana is and can handle the affairs of the home while the mother goes away. And so Sabbath afternoon is when dad is home and between the services in the morning and evening, maybe that's a good time just to get out of the house and for everybody to take a little bike ride around the block. And that's a restful pleasure and it's something they can enjoy as a family. And see that's a totally different thing for them.

It's the exact same activity. That's why you can't come up with a, it's very hard to come up with a list of do's and don'ts and anybody that tries often falls off the wagon on one side or the other. You see when we recognize these good pleasures, these pure, innocent pleasures that are restful to us, then we can see and better identify those things that are guilty pleasures. Guilty pleasures can be things that are unlawful, but they don't have to be just unlawful. Guilty pleasures can be things that we look to as a refuge from pain.

Instead of looking to the Lord Jesus Christ for deliverance, we look to some pleasure. Maybe alcohol was given to make our heart glad. So the Bible says it was given for us to make our heart glad, to rejoice. In fact, in Deuteronomy it talks about go buy strong drink even, and whatever your heart desires and rejoice before the Lord it says. But if it becomes something that we turn to in our sorrow and pain as a solution, then it becomes a guilty pleasure.

You see trials and tribulations and pains are meant to draw us to the Lord, To find our comfort and our solace in Him. To find our solution in communion with Him. And when they draw us to something else, and that becomes a guilty pleasure. If it's something that causes us to hide it. Now we obviously hide evil things, open things, you know, we don't do blatant sins out in front of everybody, but Sometimes there are things that there's nothing wrong with per se, but we still want to hide it.

We want to hide it probably because there's something wrong. We feel guilty about it. There's something wrong about it. Maybe it's the wrong time to be doing what we're doing. Maybe there's nothing wrong in and of itself, but it's the wrong time to do it.

It's not what we should have been doing, so we want to hide it because there's guilt in our heart about it. It's mastered us in some way, And our conscience accuses us. It knows that this has mastered us. We know that it has mastered us. So we want to hide it.

So if we are hiding something, that is a guilty pleasure. There is something wrong with that. Or if it is something that captivates us and captures us. If it's something that becomes an obsession with us. It could be a perfectly good pleasure in and of itself, like alcohol.

But if it becomes an obsession, then we become drunk, become addicted. To be obsessed with something is something that takes our mental energy. We just think about it. And it drives us to do something. You know, we're bored so we just surf the internet.

Or we raid the refrigerator. The pleasure of eating or surfing the internet has essentially become our master. It's what is governing us. It's what has captivated us. A good indicator of when this happens is when innocent pleasures don't bring the pleasure to us that they used to.

When we look to them for pleasure in and of themselves, they cease to be pleasurable. Because we can only rest when we rest in the Lord. We can only rest when we are in a right relationship with Him, when we are worshipping Him properly with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength when we have no other gods before Him. And if there's anything that captivates us, then it displaces the Lord from being our God and it becomes a guilty pleasure. How do we redeem these guilty pleasures that corrupt our worship and the use of our time?

Well, you can take a fast from an innocent pleasure. We did, you know, earlier last year, put our cell phones away at meals. We had a little basket and we just stuck them in there. It's hard to do. Try it sometime.

Or maybe whatever it is in your house. You're going to struggle a little bit with it, if it's something that has captivated you. You might wonder, well how am I going to get through the day without this, whatever it might be. Maybe it's food, maybe it's a particular kind of food, maybe it's an activity, a particular activity, something other than Jesus is captivated, our heart. That's what you realize When you put it away, you realize that there is a hole there in my life because this has captivated me.

And that's when we realize that we need the Holy Spirit to break these habits of laziness. And that's when we cry out to the Lord for His Holy Spirit to give us new life, both in our relationship with Him and in our relationship with one another. Laziness in spiritual matters doesn't necessarily mean a lack of activity. We may still go through the motions of reading the scriptures of praying. It's just that those things become rote.

They become things that we just do without all of our heart behind it. It's so easy. So easy. Prayer is just a good indicator. Do your prayers become repetitive?

That's a relationship that's stale. That's laziness. That has seeped in to our spiritual life. Work has the purpose of teaching us and enabling us to truly enjoy rest. And you know, that is our ultimate goal.

That's our ultimate hope, is rest. We work so that we can enter into the rest that God is preparing for us. Jesus created the heavens and the earth and he rested. He performed his work of redemption and he sent it into the heavens and is seated at the right. His work is done.

You sit down when your work is done. And That is what the Sabbath day is for us. It's a foretaste of the rest that we are looking forward to when we will put aside all of our good work even. Good work even. And be able to spend eternity in rest.

There is therefore, there therefore remains a Sabbath rest for God's people. Work has the purpose, it teaches us and prepares us for that rest and we can't rest properly if we have not first worked. This theology of pleasure is one we probably don't hear enough about. We hear that work harder, work harder, but why are we working? We're working in the hope of the rest that God is preparing for us.

The eternal pleasure at His right hand are pleasures forevermore. It's not a work that we're looking forward to, it is a rest that we are looking forward to. It is eternal pleasure. And this is described in Ezra 8. Ezra read the law and all the people wept because they realized they had broken the law and they repented.

And then he said to them, Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet. Enjoy this pleasure because that is what we are looking forward to.

To being in heaven at the right hand of the Lord Jesus Christ where there are pleasures forevermore. If we follow Jesus in His work, then we will be honored in His reward. Jesus said, If any man serve me, let him follow me. And where I am, there shall also my servant be. If any man serve me, him will my Father honor." Are you working now so that you can enjoy that honor then?

And are you resting now so that you can understand what it is to work? Heavenly Father Well, we thank you for The beauty of your word and for the beauty of holiness You are most beautiful most glorious and we desire one day in your courts, then all the years in the tents of sin and laziness. Lord, we ask that you would instill in us a longing for your presence, And a great enjoyment and appreciation of this day of rest that you have given to us as a foretaste of that rest that you are preparing. Help us Lord to rest in this day. And to work in the other six days.

To work not with a purposelessness, but to work as unto you is pleasing you. To work out of our love to you who have first loved us and redeemed us, having created us, mankind fell into sin, and we, or you, have bought back again. So we do love you. We yield ourselves to you. And ask that you might use us.

And ask that you might fill us. And ask that you would give us a sure and certain hope of the pleasures that are at your right hand. This we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.