Proverbs 24

Proverbs 24:30-31

Lazybones I went by the field of the slothful . . . And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, The face thereof was covered with nettles, And the stone wall thereof was broken down.—Proverbs 24:30-31.King Solomon must have had very sharp eyes, and he must have been very good at “noticing,” for though he had no camera, and I don’t suppose he could paint, he has left us a whole gallery of portraits of the people who lived in his time. He has described the people so well with his pen that they seem real, and when we read his word pictures we feel as if we really saw the persons we are reading about. One end of King Solomon’s marvelous picture gallery is filled with portraits of a lazybones, only Solomon does not call him a lazybones; he speaks of him as a sluggard or a slothful man. Let us look at a few of these pictures.Here is number one. You see it is the picture of a man in bed with the blankets well drawn up over his head. The sun is shining in at the window and someone is knocking at the door and telling him it is time to get up, but he is only rolling himself over and groaning out, “Ten minutes, just other ten minutes!

There’s plenty time for other forty winks.”We don’t know how often he said to himself, “Just other ten minutes!” for the next picture shows him at breakfast. He looks not more than quarter awake, half washed, and three quarters dressed.

He is not eating his breakfast as if he were enjoying it. You would almost imagine he thought it too much trouble to carry his food from the plate to his mouth.Now look at picture number three. Our friend has not started his day’s work yet. He is just lounging around. He is looking out at the window and he is saying, “It’s a beastly cold wind this morning. I don’t see why I should go out and plough in such weather. There are plenty days to come.”In the next picture you see him with some of his friends. They have come in to try and induce him to go to his work, but he is arguing with them and proving to them all how quite impossible it is for him to go out, and how altogether wrong they are to want him to go.

That’s the odd thing about the sluggard —he uses as much energy arguing as would drive half a dozen ploughs. He is grand at making excuses.Would you like a peep at this gentleman’s field six months later? Here you are! “Dear me!” you say, “is this a nettle farm?” Well, certainly, it looks rather like it, for nettles and thistles are everywhere. The nettles fill the field, and the thistles are sprouting from between the stones of the tumbledown wall. All the other fields and vineyards have their crops of grain or grapes, but the sluggard’s field has only weeds. Not much use for eating, are they?

So I fear he will have to bestir himself soon whether he likes it or not, for with no harvest of his own he will have to beg from his neighbors; and that is the hardest work of all.Now it isn’t exactly easy to be a “Do-it-today” if you have got accustomed to being a “Do-it-tomorrow,” but I want to give you two reasons why you should make up your mind this very minute to be a “Do-it-today.”1. The first reason is that the lazy way is the hard way.

It seemed much easier for the lazy man to stay at home and do nothing, but all the time he was doing nothing the thorns and the thistles were busy growing, and when he did try to tackle them—for no doubt he tried too late—they were ten times as difficult to get rid of.And it is the same with all the things we should do at once and don’t. You find a tiny hole in your tooth, and you know you should get it filled, but then there’s that horrid dentist’s chair to consider, and that little buttonhook thing that picks at the hole, and that sharp thing that drills into your head, and it might be sore— and so you put it off, and try not to remember. Then one day the tooth begins to ache and you have to go, and it really is sore, and the dentist says, “You should have come six months ago and this would not have hurt.” And you feel pretty angry with yourself. The longer you put off doing anything you think hard or disagreeable, the harder it becomes.Suppose you have a big examination coming off a month hence; and suppose you know there’s a lot to grind up for it, and that you should begin straight away and do a little each night; and suppose you say to yourself, “Oh no! not to-night. There’s plenty of time to spare. Some other night will do!” Suppose you go on saying that every night until the last night before the examination.

Don’t you know too well that to grind up that examination in one night is far harder than to have studied a little for it all those other nights? Yes, the lazy way is always the hard way in the end.2.

The second reason is that the lazy way is the dangerous way. It is dangerous because you never know what it may lead to. Have you ever heard the story of the lazy apprentice? His master was a famous sorcerer and the boy had learned from watching him how to bewitch things and make them do his will. One of this boy’s duties was to find water from the river because there were no water-taps such as we have in the house. The boy didn’t like this task at all, and one day when his master was out and he was grumbling away to himself about it, a brilliant idea struck him.

Why should he not bewitch something to do his work for him? He looked about and the first thing his eye lit on was the broom, so he said the magic word, and no sooner had he spoken it than the broom whisked across the floor, picked up the pails, vanished in the direction of the river, and returned in a twinkling with two pails full of water.

It kept on doing this till every jug and basin in the house was overflowing.By this time the apprentice, who had been chuckling to himself and calling himself a clever fellow, was beginning to get rather anxious, for he couldn’t remember the charm to stop, and still the broom went on busily finding and emptying water. In desperation the boy seized it and broke it in two, but to his horror each broken half started out on its own, so that twice as much water was now being brought into the house and all the rooms were being flooded. Happily, when things were at their worst, the sorcerer returned, and a word from him set things right again.Laziness is exactly like that—you never know where it may end. It doesn’t seem so very wicked to be lazy in little things when you are only a little person, but if you let the laziness grow, you will find one day to your astonishment that you have grown up into a big person lazy in big things. And the chances are that you will want very badly to stop the laziness, and, like the boy in the story, you won’t be able to do it.If lazy ways are both hard and dangerous, how are you going to get rid of them? I think you must do as the sluggard should have done with his nettles and thistles—pull them up at once.

Uproot them while they are still tiny weeds. Make up your mind that every time a lazy thought pops up in your mind—out it comes!

It’s the only way. “Oh!” but you say, “that will be horribly difficult. I don’t know howI shall keep on doing it. I’ll get so tired trying.” No, boys and girls, you won’t get tired trying, if you ask Christ to help you. He will give you the strength and patience you need. Every time you feel like giving it up, call Him to your aid. He will never refuse to come, and with His help you can root out the weeds, both large and small, from the garden of your heart.

Proverbs 24:31

Nettles Nettles.—Proverbs 24:31.I think everybody—even the tiniest body here— will be able to remember the text today; first, because it is only one word long, and second, because if you have ever met it and shaken hands with it you won’t have been able to forget it. I wonder what the text is? Well, if you turn to the twenty- fourth chapter of Proverbs and look at the thirty-first verse, about the middle of that verse you will find it. Now, can you guess? Yes, the word is “nettles.” We are going to take “nettles” as our text today. “Nettles” is an old English word that means “thistles” or an “herb plant with stinging hairs.” The entire plant is covered with long, highly specialized hairs that can puncture the skin. Each hair is really a miniature hypodermic needle ready to spring into action.

At the tip is a lopsided like a bulb that is easily broken in certain area. With the slightest touch, the tip falls off leaving the sharp point which can easily penetrate skin.If you look at this verse and the one before it you will see that the writer is describing the field or vineyard of the lazy man.

And I’m afraid that field was a very sad sight. The wall was all broken down in places and the ground was covered with weeds. Thorns choked the corn and the poor vines couldn’t get room to breathe for nettles. If you have a garden of your own I hope it isn’t a copy of the lazy man’s field, because I’m afraid you won’t be able to grow very many flowers in it if it is.Barely anybody has good to say about the nettle.We call it “that nasty nettle” or “that horrid nettle.” When we see one we carefully avoid it, and if we don’t see it—well, it soon lets us know where it is! Yes, barely anybody has a good word for the nettle, but before we have done with it today I hope you will think it. isn’t quite such a bad sort after all.1. We shall begin with its faults first, and of course its biggest fault is its sting.

How does the nettle sting? If you look at it you will see that the leaves and the stem are covered with fine hairs.

These hairs are hollow, and at the place where they are joined to the nettle there is a little sort of pocket filled with poison. The points of the hairs are sharp and hooked. When we touch the nettle lightly these sharp points prick our skin. Then the poison flows down the hairs, gets in under our skin, and forms those white blisters which are so painful.But now comes the interesting part. Why do you think the nettle grows those poisonous hairs? It isn’t just to annoy you when you go picking wild flowers. No, it wears them for very much the same reason as the bee and wasp carry their stings—just to protect it. If it weren’t for the sting the nettle would be eaten up by rabbits and other animals.

These creatures have learned to avoid a plant that blisters their tongue and their lips, and so the nettle goes on its way flourishing.Now there are some people very like nettles. They have sharp, stinging tongues, and they say things that hurt and rankle and make their friends feel sore for long after. Well, I hope there aren’t any of those people here, but if there are, I want to say to them that there is just one thing they must do. You know if we want a nettle not to sting us, we must grasp it firmly, and if we want our tongues not to sting we must keep tight hold of them too. It will be hard work sometimes, for that kind of tongue often stings in spite of us, but if Jesus is on our side holding hard too we are bound to win in the end.2. But now I want to say something nice about the nettle, because nettles have their uses like everything else.

Some people make very good, nourishing soup out of them; others use them as a vegetable, which tastes not at all unlike spinach. But that was not the use of which I was thinking.

It was of something much more wonderful. Do you know that the nettle is a sort of protector of other plants? Shall I tell you how?Have you ever seen a plant called a dead nettle? It has a white flower and it generally grows among the stinging nettles. Perhaps you mistook it for an ordinary nettle, and if it was not in flower that was not surprising, for the dead nettle has made itself look so very like the stinging nettle that it is difficult to distinguish them. The only difference between them when they are not in flower is that the leaves of the dead nettle are a little lighter in color, and that the stem of the dead nettle is square while that of the stinging nettle is rounded.The dead nettle has no sting and it is really quite a different plant from the stinging nettle, but why do you think it pretends to be like it?

Just to protect itself from being eaten by animals. When a rabbit comes along he says to himself, “Oh, there’s one of those horrid stinging things.

Catch me touching it! No, no, I know one better than that!” So off he bobs to the nearest clump of clover, little knowing what a treat he has missed.Do you see how the stinging nettle protects other plants? It takes all the blame so that they may go scot-free. Don’t you think he is rather a decent sort of fellow after all? I’m afraid few of us are very ready to take the blame for others. Sometimes we aren’t even ready to take the blame for our own foolishness or wickedness. And it’s a fine sign when a boy will stand up and take the punishment for another rather than get that other into a row.I think the nettle in this way is rather like Jesus Christ. He took the blame for us.

He stood between us and the consequences of our sins. But there is just one difference, and it is a very big one. The nettle is at fault itself—it has a cruel sting, and it is taking the blame for its own faults too. But Jesus was utterly blameless. He did no sin, yet He took the whole burden of our sin upon Him so that we might go free. I want you to understand and remember that always—Jesus took the blame for us.We can never, never repay Him for that, because it is so big a debt that nobody could ever pay the thousandth part of it. But there is one thing we can do, and it is the thing He wants most of all. We can love Him, and in loving we can serve Him all the days of our life.