Monday, March 19, 2012

Sluggard………bondage…..

“As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed.”  Prov. 26:14  NIV

The Bible describes the “sluggard” as someone who is hinged to his bed.

A “Sluggard” is a person who is habitually lazy.

The sluggard is conceited and refuses to face the reality of what he is (Prov. 26:16). The sluggard could change, but he will not listen to anyone.  He really thinks he will change one day and that there is no hurry. In the mean time, he knows what he is doing and will not listen to anyone who tries to correct him.


The Bible does not tolerate this man.  In Proverbs 26:14 it almost makes fun of him: “As the door turns upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed.”  When you go to wake him, he says, “Just a little more sleep, just a little more slumber,” and then he rolls over in his bed like a creaking door hinge.  A few minutes later, his alarm rings again, he presses the snooze button and he rolls over one more time, creaking like that door hinge.  This is the figure and the picture that the Scriptures give of the lazy man.

The lazy man needs to learn a lesson and we need to learn a lesson from the lazy man. The lesson that we should learn is that his laziness will result in poverty.  First of all, it will result in a physical poverty.  If you are sleeping, and the armed man has been in your house during the night, you wake up in the morning and your possessions are gone. The lazy man will awake someday to find out that he has nothing—that the world and its opportunities and the things that he could have had for himself have passed him by.

But this poverty is not only physical.  The poverty that will come on a lazy man is a spiritual poverty.  There is an old saying that “idle time is the devil’s playground.” That means that if a man is not productive, if he does not work, Satan will soon fill that void with temptation and with sinful thoughts.  

This makes you think of the parable that Jesus told of the prodigal son.  Jesus builds that parable around the Proverb in 28:19, “He that worketh his land, shall be filled with loaves; he that followeth idleness (but he who is idle, or lazy), shall be filled with neediness.” (WYC)

This does remind you of the prodigal son because he followed vain persons.  Not only was his time occupied with the wasting of his goods, but his time was also occupied with partying and being slothful, and he came to a spiritual dearth. There is a great danger for your soul.  

As we think about the sluggard, we should recognize that his attitude and his sinful inclination are in every one of us.

The sluggard’s position will be one of bondage.






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