It is difficult to follow consecutively a series
of talks because of the interruptions that come
from other speakers and from conventions and an
occasional absence.
But I feel that I would like to
continue to talk a little for a Sunday
or two yet about the dangers to the
Christian, dangers that lie in the Christian's path.
And as a kind of text, I have
here in the fifth chapter of Ephesians these
words, See that ye walk circumspectly, not as
fools, but as wise.
Don't be foolish, but be wise, and walk
circumspectly.
Circumspectly is one of those easy-to-figure
-out words, circle meaning round, where we get
our words circle and circumference and all such
words.
And spectly, of course, means look.
We talk about spectacle, we used to call
them that.
And so we are exhorted here to walk
looking around, not plunging foolishly headlong, but walk
looking around.
Now, I repeat that I do not wish
to make my hearers danger-conscious, because if
you become danger-conscious excessively, that will slow
you down.
Scripture says, He that observed the wind shall
not sow, and he that regarded the clouds
shall not reap.
The farmer who never looks at the wind,
or observes the wind, or looks at the
clouds, will be a very foolish farmer, and
he will not have a very good crop
at the end of the year.
But the man who becomes so cloud-conscious
and wind-conscious that he gets up and
moistens his finger and holds it up to
see which way the wind is blowing every
morning, and then sneaks back away if there
is a cloud overhead, he will get nothing
done.
He that observed the wind shall not sow.
There are times when you must pay no
attention to the wind, and he that regarded
the clouds shall not reap.
There will always be a cloud warning you
to stay indoors.
But the wise man will know which cloud
to regard and which to disregard.
So we Christians are not to become so
conscious of the wind and the clouds that
we don't do anything.
But on the other hand, if we are
unaware of danger, we increase that danger a
hundredfold and almost guarantee disaster.
For that reason, I have given this series
on the dangers in the way.
Today I want to talk about the danger
of idleness and the danger of busyness.
First there is the danger of idleness.
You see, God made us for creative activity.
There is a notion abroad in the day
in which we live that labor is a
sin, or at best it is a curse
resting upon us.
I think some Christians even have that notion,
that labor is a curse, that it is
a disciplinary punishment which the Lord laid upon
the world at the fall.
Nothing could be further from the fact than
this, for if you will read the Bible
before the third chapter of Genesis and the
fall, you will remember that God told the
newly created couple that they were to replenish
the earth and subdue it.
Replenishing the earth meant there were to be
children born into the world, and anybody who
imagines that there can be children brought up
in the world without work has never had
any children, or even been where they are.
And the command to subdue the earth certainly
embraces the idea of work.
Then it says that they were placed in
a garden to dress it and to keep
it.
They were not there to be idle.
God the Creator made man in his image
and made him to be something of a
creator, too.
So that man was to labor, he was
to subdue the earth.
They were to bring children into the world
and work to bring up those children, and
they were to dress the garden and keep
it in shape.
So that meant work.
So that work is not a result of
the fall.
But sin brought sorrow and thorns and thistles
and sweat.
There are four words that didn't occur in
the first and second chapters of Genesis.
Sorrow and thorns and thistles and sweat, they
did not occur.
But the word work occurred, or its equivalent,
dress and keep and subdue and care, those
words occur in the first chapters.
But the words sorrow, thorns, thistles and sweat,
they were added when man sinned.
So remember that work is not a result
of man's sin.
But to work in sorrow, that's a result
of man's sin.
To work with thorns and thistles around you,
that's the result of man's sin.
And to work until we sweat for our
daily labor, that is a result of man's
sin.
So remember that God made us to be
workers.
Our Savior was a worker, and idleness is
very un-Christlike and contrary to the high
will of God.
For it is avoiding of our commission, and
it is an invitation to temptation.
You know, our fathers had a little saying,
I think Isaac Watts wrote it in his
little book for children, that the devil always
finds some task for idle hands to do.
And the word idle was in other days
a very evil word, a very evil word.
Our fathers scorned the word, they hated it,
and they wrote poems about it, as Isaac
Watts did.
The devil always finds some task for idle
hands to do.
Now, I have no statistics on this, but
I think I'd be safe in saying that
ninety-five percent of the deviltry of the
world is thought up by people who have
nothing to do at the time.
People who are engaged in some kind of
productive activity may sin, but they are not
as likely to as those who have nothing
to do.
It was when David had ended his labors
and was on the housetop taking a little
idle walk that he looked down and saw
the scene that led him to the great
temptation into adultery and murder.
So that ninety-five percent of the deviltry
of the world results, in my estimation, from
people who have nothing else to do.
Now the idle Christian is in great danger.
He's in danger because, as I say, he's
unlike his Savior.
Our Lord went about doing good, and there
is no excuse for idleness.
We're not thinking at the moment of recreation.
Personally, I think that recreation racket is greatly
overdone.
But I do grant that there should be
some recreation, some exercise.
But while we're not speaking of recreation, we
are speaking about idleness.
And our Lord was not idle.
He chose industrious men for his disciples.
He did not go to the Riviera and
pick playboys, whether they be Baudais or Jimmy
Walkers or who.
He picked simple men who were hard workers,
who had something to do, who took an
interest in life and had something to do.
He did it deliberately and purposefully.
Therefore, I recommend to you Christians that you
make yourself available, that you be ready to
do anything.
Don't hold yourself off until you're ready to
do something.
Start doing something now.
Learn to ride your bicycle by trial and
error.
Don't wait until you've learned to ride it
before you buy one.
But get one now and practice on it.
Get something done.
You may make a lot of mistakes at
first, of course.
But do something.
If you can't do anything around the Church,
some people say there's nothing for us to
do.
Had it said your Church has a wealth
of talent and there's nothing for me to
do, well, I suppose that person would mean
that you have your soloist and there's no
solo for me to sing, or no committee
for me to be the chairman of.
Well, if it's to be chairman of a
committee or sing a solo, of course, maybe.
The average Church wouldn't have room for everybody.
But any Christian who is worth his salt
will find something to do in the kingdom
of God.
We learned, and I suppose everybody knows it,
but it came very dramatically home to us
on the farm, that farm machinery seldom wears
out.
If you keep your machinery up, you can
use it summer in and summer out and
all along, seasons over and over and over
until it becomes obsolete.
And some new thing you buy to replace
that which is an obsolete piece of machinery,
not worn out, just old-fashioned.
But one season sitting out in the weather
will wreck any piece of machinery.
The idle machine sitting in the dampness will
go to pieces in one season, but that
same machine used for ten years will only
brighten it up, make it shine.
Maybe a bolt will wear out, can be
replaced, nothing, and the machine will go on.
Now, Christians are exactly like farm implements.
One year of sitting around sulking will do
more to rust your soul than one hundred
years of hard work, if God granted you
that many years.
Don't be afraid of wearing yourself out.
The devil is a master of strategy.
And when a child of God gets busy,
he whispers in their ear, now watch it,
because you're going to have a nervous breakdown.
I am positively sure the nervous breakdowns do
not come from working in the easy yoke
of Jesus Christ.
They come from frustrations and hidden sins and
stubbornness and refusing to hear God and wanting
our own way.
But they don't come from working, his yoke
is easy, his burden is light, I've found
it so, I've found it so.
And I'm sure that there isn't a gray
hair in this head of mine that was
ever placed there by honest labor in the
kingdom of my Savior.
Not any want one.
But I wonder how many are there because
I wanted my own way.
I wonder how many are there because I
wanted the world to obey me and they
wouldn't listen.
Stubbornness, contrariness, resentfulness, those will bring frustration and
illness, but not the late work of the
Lord.
Jesus Christ would never have gotten sick.
He could have lived infinite years working as
he worked.
He did not kill himself by hard work,
they had to kill him on the cross.
Paul became very old in the work of
God and was still going when they cut
his head off.
Peter, when they crucified him.
So it's our human weaknesses and faults that
cause us to break down not working in
the service of the Lord.
So don't be afraid to work.
You'll rust out and some of you may
have rusted out.
It may be too late to do very
much now, it's your time.
The rust is so complete that like the
one horse shay, one good lunge and you're
finished.
But I don't think it's true of very
many, maybe of nobody.
I'm optimistic enough to think that that's an
extreme statement and there's nobody here that's completely
rusted out.
There may be a little rust around here
and there and you can get rid of
that by going to work.
You can wear your rust off awfully easy
and you'll not wear yourself out in doing
it.
So there's the danger of idleness.
So many idle Christians who say, I have
nothing to do.
There's intercession to be made.
There are calls to be made.
There are letters to be written.
There are booklets and tracts to be distributed.
There's singing to be done.
There are many things to be done.
I remember, I'll tell this again, because the
sermon won't be long anyway, but a man
who asked me whether he could do something
around the church, that was when I was
in Indianapolis.
And I said, Elmer, I don't know anything
you could do.
Well, I thought he wanted, of course, to
be chairman of something.
But he didn't.
He said, well, can I take care of
the lawn?
I said, yes, you can take care of
the lawn.
So Elmer took care of the lawn.
And that lawn never prospered as it did.
He varnished the sign out in front.
He kept the little pipe fence up nicely.
And the thing positively began to look like
a golf course.
Elmer had just been converted a short time,
and something in him wanted to work.
And he was humble enough that he was
willing to take care of a lawn, anything
to look after the work of God and
do something.
Well, the story is, it wasn't very long
until Elmer was preaching on the street.
And after that, he began to preach in
institutions here and there.
And a little later, he began to go
to another town out from Indianapolis and hold
meetings.
And that formed into a little group.
And then came a church.
And now there's an alliance church there, preaching
the gospel and giving commissions and praying for
missions and sending out missionaries, all because a
man, newly converted, was willing to do anything.
If he had sought and told his wife,
there's too much talent around here.
I can't be chairman of anything.
I have nothing for me to do.
He'd have rusted out, and that church never
would have been established there.
But Elmer Durant was too much of a
Christian to want to head something.
He did head something later on, as I've
explained.
But he began by cutting a lawn.
So let's not be idle.
The devil always finds something for idle men
and women to do.
So there's a danger in idleness.
Let's walk circumspectly and watch that.
That's a ditch on one side of the
road, but over on the other side of
the road, there's another ditch, and it's called
busyness.
And there's a great danger in busyness.
Now, there's a time for everything, says the
Holy Ghost.
To everything there is a season, and a
time to every purpose under the heaven.
A time to be born, and a time
to die, and a time to plant, and
a time to pluck up that which is
planted.
A time to weep, and a time to
laugh, and a time to mourn, and a
time to dance, and a time to cast
away stones, and a time to gather them.
A time to embrace, and a time to
refrain from embracing.
A time to get, and a time to
lose, a time to keep, and a time
to cast away.
A time to rend, and a time to
sow, a time to keep silence, and a
time to speak.
There's the middle-of-the-road Christian realizing
that he's not to be extreme on anything,
but that he is to be wise.
And the wise man will know the time
and the season.
Now, there is no time for idleness.
And the Scripture doesn't say there's a time
for idleness here.
But there is a time for relaxation.
There is a time to realize that that's
a time to camp, that you pitch your
tent there and you don't go on for
that day.
You've gone far enough that day.
There's no time for idleness because idleness assumes
lack of purpose.
If I have no purpose, I will be
idle.
It assumes disinclination to be inconvenienced, and it
assumes addiction to pleasures.
We have so many gadgets invented in our
day to minister to idleness.
Just idleness.
I mean, there's no place for that in
the kingdom of God.
But there's a time to cease activities, even
the creatures beside the fire, up yonder in
the heaven, as revealed in the first chapter
of Ezekiel, those creatures let down their wings
and waited on God.
Now, Daniel prayed three times a day.
And it's possible to be so busy in
our secular work or even busy in the
Lord's work that we have no time to
pray, no time to wait on God or
get still and sew up the raveled sleeve
of care and adjust ourselves and orientate our
soul toward God in heaven.
And when that happens, there's danger.
Daniel prayed three times a day.
The Prophet sought the silences.
You will find that God looked for his
men in the silence.
Men who can't be silent might as well
be silent, because they won't say anything when
they talk.
It is only out of the silence that
the Word speaks.
In the beginning was the silence.
Before the beginning was the silence, said the
old writers, and then in the beginning was
the Word.
The idea was that God spake out in
the everlasting silence of his own holy self
-contained being.
And we're so likely to be so busy
that we don't get anything done, and so
talkative that we never say anything.
The Prophet sought the silence, and in the
silence they learned what to say.
And then they broke the silence by saying
it and relapsed back into the silence again.
We could well cut down the decibels in
our homes and in our churches.
I'm always a cautious and afraid of noisy
people.
It takes a very wise man to talk
all the time and say anything.
So let us learn the scriptural silence.
And Christ himself went into the desert, and
there in the silence.
For days and nights he waited on his
God under the temptation of the devil.
And when he came out from there, he
came out in the fullness of the Spirit
and went out to preach the Word of
God everywhere.
And our Lord himself told us to shut
the door.
He said, Enter into thy closet, and when
thou hast shut thy door, pray unto thy
Father which is in secret.
And thy Father who heareth in secret shall
reward thee openly.
Secular business can ruin men.
A man called me up the other day,
not a member of this church, a member
of some church down south further, and he
said, I have been a Christian a few
years and I want to do God's will.
He said, I have a business, a real
estate business, and I have partners.
And he said, we have made it a
rule to be only open on weekdays and
close on Sunday.
He said, now my partners want to open
on Sunday.
What would you say?
What would you have told him?
I said, by all means, follow the light.
By all means, lose the sale and keep
your good conscience.
And if your partners won't listen, sell out
and start something of your own.
God will bless you for it.
Not that I am a Sabbatarian, no.
Not that I believe that one day is
above another day, no.
But I believe we ought to have some
time for God.
And the man who works seven days a
week has no time for God.
The office that keeps open to get a
few more extra nickels on that seventh day
has no time for God.
Whether he takes Wednesday, Sunday, or Friday off,
he ought to take a day off.
But Sunday would be the day to take
off.
It's a testimony and it enables the man
to get into the house of God and
mingle and raise his voice in songs of
Zion with the people of God.
Now, I haven't heard from this businessman.
I don't know whether he took my advice
or not.
But I think he did, because he felt
very keenly that he should not open on
Sunday.
We're not Sabbatarians, but we do believe that
there is a time for everything.
And secular business can ruin men unless they
take time to cultivate God.
But, as I have said, excessive religious work
can do the same unless we take time
to cultivate God.
Dr. Reuben H.
Horry used to take two weeks out of
every year, put on old clothes, and go
into the hills.
Nobody knew his whereabouts but his wife.
Nothing short of death was to get a
message through to him.
No telephone, no telegram, no cable, no anything.
Two weeks he waited, and relaxed, and rested,
and gazed at the sky, and listened.
And then came back to the busy world
with a heart and a mind filled with
truth.
Too much busyness in the work of the
Lord can destroy the effectiveness of that work.
Now, I want to give you a little
model here.
If you're too busy in the Lord's work
to spend time in the Lord's presence, then
you're too busy in the Lord's work.
So let's be careful.
Walk circumspectly, looking around.
Here's the broad highway of God.
And over on the left, there is idleness.
And over on the right is excessive busyness.
And then there's the great broad highway in
the middle.
And we can follow that highway, and go
along, and have plenty of room, and get
a world of work done.
And still not rust out from idleness, nor
kill ourselves with excessive busyness.
There's a time for everything.
So we wait on God to renew our
batteries.
And then when they're up to full power,
we turn them loose into the work of
God.
And thus we go wisely, not as fools,
but as wise men.
So let us remember these two dangers.
Woe be to the idle Christian!
He'll not grow in grace, even of baby
exercises.
Six months old Ruthie, down at our house,
my wife babysitting.
Stanley's little girl, six months old, and beautiful.
But exercise, she can't walk yet.
She can't even sit up, but exercise.
Exercise, she exercises, she grunts.
Just exercise.
Exercise, you grow when you exercise, and you
stop growing when you stop.
But if we get all worked up, and
allow the world and the tense jitteriness of
the world to excite us, and we're dashing
continually in the work of God, just as
great a danger.
So let's ask God for wisdom, not to
be idle ever, but to be inactive sometimes,
for the sake of renewing our batteries, and
relaxing our nerves, and quieting our minds, and
above all things, seeing visions of God.
And then we'll not fall into either ditch.
Down the great broad highway of Zion, we'll
move toward a predetermined end.
God grant this is my prayer this morning.