The sluggard
“The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets. As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed.” (Proverbs 26:13-14)
The proverb is a form of ancient poetry in which there is a rhyme of thought. Something that is familiar and something that is profound are placed side by side that the difficult thing might be understood from that which is common. It is an Eastern form of argument, in some ways like the parable, or the metaphors we use today.
If we were then to consider the pictures suggested in Proverbs as scenes from a play, we can see immediately the two primary players, The Wise Man and the Fool. But the wisdom of this book is the deepest and most enduring kind, ultimately about being right with God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10)
The fool is the unbelieving godless sinner.
The primary issues are not about human intelligence but the problems of sin’s blinding effect, its intoxicating influence and its power to enslave humanity.
We need the proverbs to make us face the facts of what is true wisdom in light of eternity. The proverb exposes the insanity of the sinner.
Further, the fool in Proverbs is not just one kind of person but a family. There is an entire cast on the pages of Proverbs that stand in opposition to Wisdom.
One such person is the sluggard, the slothful man. Solomon uses what we know of the self-destructive ways of laziness to point out the way of the spiritual sluggard, who just will not stir himself up to deal with his problem of sin and seek the Lord.
The slothful man refuses to go out and face the rigours and challenges of life and justifies it by naming real or imagined dangers that stand in his way. “There is a lion in the street.”
In the same way unbelieving men prefer to stay away from the truths of God’s Word that will challenge them.
They prefer the “easy” life of just not thinking about such troubling things as God’s judgment, and the need to exercise their hearts and turn to the Lord.
A man may be a workaholic in this life and yet be a spiritual sluggard and neglect the things that have to do with heaven and hell.
Salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ alone. No amount of good works will get anyone to heaven.
But slothfulness can be part of the road to hell for the person that is too averse to the rigour of being stirred up by God’s Word to deal with his sin problem before the Lord.