My dear readers,

Do You Have Heavy Hands? 

Proverbs 12:24: “The hand of the diligent shall bear rule: but the slothful shall be under tribute.” 

Laziness is a sin. A lazy person is untrustworthy because he cannot be trusted to get things done on time and correctly. To be untrustworthy is to be unfaithful.

When God created Adam, He created man to work. The God-assigned task was “to dress [i.e. serve] it and to keep [i.e. guard] it” (Gen 2:15). It was easy to work without sweat because God provided “a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground” (Gen 2:6). But when Adam sinned against God by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, God punished man. Genesis 3:17-19: “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast 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; 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Man has to work hard by the sweat of his brow until he dies!

Before sin entered into man, he was good. He did not indulge in sinful thoughts and behaviour in his free time since work in the Garden of Eden was easy. There were no thorns or thistles to plague the earth! After man fell into sin, he became a servant, i.e. a slave, to sin. His good nature was transformed into a sinful nature. Only after salvation in Christ can this sinful nature be put to death and a Christ nature replace it. In his free time and state of sin, man would plan and design new ways to sin. God had to stop man from his sinful ways of hurting himself and others. Hard work was the key to solving this, temporarily, whereby he would have less time to sin and think of new ways to sin. If he spent 8 to 10 hours a day working hard in his field, planting seeds for the coming harvest, he would have less time to sin after subtracting his sleep and eating times. Furthermore, after a hard day’s work, man would be too tired to sin and think of ways to sin.

Man will sin the most when he has free time and is controlled by his sinful nature. After 1656 years, man sinned so grievously against God that He had to intervene by destroying the old earth with a global flood. Despite the hard labour of eking out a living, man still found ways to sin, especially when he lived eight to nine hundred years. Genesis 6:5: “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” God made it difficult for man to find food, for his own good. Hard work was meant to help man to sin less. But man would try his best to work less and eat more. An example was the invention of the air conditioner to make his work life easier so that he need not “sweat” so much. He will strive to have more play time and work fewer hours. He came up with the “work-life balance," a euphemism for having more time to indulge in the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes. He has succeeded marvellously, evidenced by his global obsession with sports such as the Olympics, world football, and many other multi-billion-dollar businesses, as well as entertainment of every kind, non-stop partying, and carnivals on ships that sail worldwide. 

“Work less and play more” is the new normal. The warning from Proverbs 12:24 is that the slothful will be under tribute, i.e. debt. Credit card debts, housing loans, buying things on hire purchase, borrowing money to invest, and gambling debts are the deadly plagues of the 21^st-century lifestyle. The world exists on borrowed cash and credits that men and women cannot pay, and many do not intend to pay. Children inherit the debts of their fathers. The attitude of working less and playing more is another way of saying, “I am lazy!” 

Laziness is the bane of today’s society. 

However, the child of God should be diligent. He works hard and wisely for the glory of God. He knows that his life must always reflect the holy testimony of Christ. To be lazy reflects the image of a lazy Christ! He will not let that happen. His hard work will bear fruit. 

In the Old Testament context of a national witness, the LORD would bless him with abundant material wealth. He would “bear rule” (Prov 12:24), i.e. carry on his shoulders the responsibility of ruling over his business. Many lives depended on his diligence and wisdom as they worked for him, like the families of all his employees. He was to make decisions based on God’s truth as he managed his business in the Promised Land. 

The people around him would know that God blessed him because of his obedience to God's Word (cf. Lev 26 and Deut 28). His family would be blessed by his diligence, including all who worked for him. People would love to do business with him because of his honesty and equitable dealings. He would be just and fair in all his business dealings. He cared for the physical and spiritual well-being of his employees. He would lend money and not borrow. He knew that managing his business according to God's Word would bring glory to God. 

His diligence would be unlike the diligence of unbelievers; beginning with a holy motive to glorify God. He trusted in his LORD to provide for all his needs. Every bumper harvest came from the LORD. He would ascribe all that he owned in his land to the true Owner of the Land, the Creator God. He was only a steward of his heavenly Father’s Land. One day, he would have to give an account of how he had worked on his heavenly Father’s Land. A holy life marked his diligence. He would pray without ceasing, knowing that the blessings would flow only by God's grace and mercies. He would have been consumed if not for the mercies of God in his life. 

He would honour God by ensuring that his tithes and offerings were given to the Levites and the first fruits given to the priests as they served the LORD in the Temple and studied to teach God’s Word faithfully. He cared for their physical needs as these religious Levites cared for his spiritual. 

Diligence with holiness brings glory to God.