The Way of Wisdom: Do Good Work- August 2, 2026

Big Sky Christian Fellowship Summer Series on Proverbs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

This evening we continue our series called The Way of Wisdom. We will continue to be in the book of Proverbs. If you're just joining us, you can still make this happen. We have a couple more weeks in the book of Proverbs, and I would encourage you to read through Proverbs, 31 chapters. Read a couple chapters a day. It will do your soul good. Uh, and you will become wise and walk in the way of wisdom. This evening we have a sermon called Do Good Work. We'll be in Proverbs chapter 10, verse 4, and we'll be jumping around a little bit in Proverbs. The the verse simply says this. It says this, lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. I'll say that again. Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Proverbs 10, verse 4. Last week, Friday, uh, there was a group of us that went uh to the crazy mountains. And you've heard me talk about this before, some of you. Uh, we went over to the crazy mountain 100. And so, Robert, you were there. Uh, and you cooked meals all night long uh for runners, and we had 150 or so, 140 that came through our camp throughout the night at mile 70 of a hundred-mile ultra-marathon race through the crazy mountains. They did almost 24,000 feet of elevation gain, and we got to meet them at three or four in the morning when they were zombies uh looking for food and trying to find their way around in the dark. And and we've been doing this for quite a few years, and it's super fun. We just love, love doing it, love serving and and caring for these folks. Um, but there are some crazy things that happen on the Crazy Mountain 100. And one of those is that that I can kind of follow it because we had Starlink at our place, and I could kind of follow where the runners were going based upon their beacons. And if you're watching those beacons, something that happens from time to time is you notice that a beacon is not on the trail anymore. And you hear these stories throughout the night of, oh yeah, we went a half a mile in the wrong direction down this other trail, had to backtrack, and we actually are doing the 101 mile uh now, Crazy Mountain 100 and one, because if you get off the trail, it's hard to find your way back to the trail. There's one trail that you got to be on to complete the Crazy Mountain 100. And that's a picture of what we are learning together throughout this summer. There is a trail that we are supposed to be on, this way of wisdom. But there are other trails along the way, trails that entice us and invite us into places that we maybe should not be. And that is the way of folly. And so, like Jesus told us that the way to life is narrow and few find it, and the road to destruction is wide and many find it. We want to be those who stay on the narrow path. We want to walk in the way of wisdom. And so throughout this summer, we've been looking at the book of Proverbs to say, what is, what is the way of wisdom? We started on week one. With the way of wisdom, week one, we said, fear the Lord. Fear the Lord is where we start with the beginning of wisdom. And we spent some time considering all the other things that we give more weight to in our lives, that we actually fear more in our lives, that we put above other things in our lives. And we said, when we do that, we live in foolish ways, we walk in foolishness rather than walking in the way of wisdom, because the way of wisdom starts with humility. It starts with fearing the Lord, who is above all other things. So we said, week one, fear the Lord. Week two, we said the way of wisdom, week two was to invite discipline. Once we put God in his proper place, only the place that he gets above all others, then we actually want to invite discipline into our lives. It's really hard because most of us just really want to be comfortable, don't we? We'll be really comfortable, but we we want to walk in the way of wisdom. So we want to invite God, who is above all things, to correct us, to shape us, to mold us. Yes, to discipline us as a good and perfect father would guide and direct his children. We want to be children like that who would say, help us be disciplined and live disciplined lives. So we invite discipline. Week three, you got to hear from Jim Kina, that was two weeks ago. And Jim Kina came and graced you uh with an incredible sermon about aging with grace. And and what he unpacked for you was a whole bunch of different aspects of how you grow in wisdom. And when Jim gets up here, right, you know this. He's just wise, isn't he? Like I called him and said, You you gotta preach that one. One, because I got to take my daughter uh to Big Sky Bible camp and I won't be there. I need somebody to preach. But two, I can't preach that sermon. I don't have enough gray hair yet, dude. So I need you to come because you just walk in the room and you're wise. And what he shared with you was little trinkets, little facets of all the pieces it takes to run the race well, to incrementally take steps with Jesus, to walk with him on that path, in what Eugene Peterson would call a long obedience in the same direction. And in only the way that Jim Keenick could do that, he helped you understand that wisdom is something we grow into over time. That when we that when we grow older, that wisdom becomes more and more available to us because of our walking with Jesus all of those years, He gifted us with a picture of a life that encapsulates this idea of a lifelong pursuit, passionately following Jesus. So we said, fear the Lord, invite discipline, age with grace, and then tonight we're gonna add to that. But before we go to tonight's way of wisdom, we're gonna go to tonight's way of folly. So today's way of folly is this be lazy, be lazy if you want to invite foolishness into your life, foolishness into your home, foolishness into your future, it's easy. Be lazy, just be lazy. The verse is very simple. It says this lazy hands make for poverty. Lazy hands make for poverty. Now, does now is is Solomon saying that that all poor people are lazy? No, that's not what he's saying, right? Because Jesus, what he he said, foxes have holes to live in and sleep in, but the son of man, talking about himself, doesn't have a place to lay his head, right? Jesus is a homeless rabbi, okay? Now, would anybody in here argue that Jesus was lazy? No, Jesus was not lazy. In fact, he was locking step every single moment, every single breath, every single opportunity, every single second. He did not waste. And be lazy is the opposite of that. Be lazy is the way of foolishness that has all different types of consequences. I'll read you a couple excerpts from Proverbs that go along with this. Proverbs 6, 6 through 8 says this. I love this one. Go to the ant, you sluggard. Isn't that an encouraging one? You're like, I'm gonna put that on my coffee cup. Okay. Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. Have you ever watched an ant just pick up 10, 100 times its own body weight and carry that into the hole for the rest of the ant colony? What the writer of Proverbs in this verse is saying, we need to consider that ant, how tireless it works, and how it works in the way of wisdom. And the opposite of that is the sluggard. So don't be a sluggard. He continues Proverbs 20, verse 4, says this sluggards do not plow in season. So at harvest time, they look but find nothing. My father-in-law would love this one. He makes he plants potatoes in the ground every single spring, waters them throughout the summer, and we harvest them in October, and you guys eat them in November at Thanksgiving, right? And y'all love it. But if he didn't plant at the proper time, you know what he would find in his ground? Nothing. He'd find nothing in the ground because he would be foolish for not planting in season so that he could gain the crop that was meant for him. It's easy to live in the way of foolishness. Just be lazy. Proverbs 26, 14. As a door, I love this. As a door turns on its hinges, you can almost hear it. So a sluggard turns to his bed. Isn't that awesome? That's so good, right? A lazy person rolls over in bed and says, I'm not dealing with today, not today. I'm not doing it today. They they roll over like a creaky hinge in their bed. And so the way of folly is be lazy. Be lazy. And so the question is, how lazy are you? How lazy are you? I'll go first. I'll go first. Okay. And I'm gonna back up in time. I'm gonna back up to college because I when I was in college, I thought I was really busy. I really did. I thought I was really busy. Turns out I was wrong. I was not very busy at the time. Um, but I remember sitting around on Saturdays and I would like to go to the store, get a Tostitos pizza. I they sold them for like a buck or like two dollars. I didn't, you know, we had nothing. It's college, right? And then a bag of Doritos or Tostitos or whatever they are, and a huge thing of queso. And I would just sit there like Thor in the later movies when he's not Thor, you know, um, eating chips and watching football all day long, not getting out of pajamas and then getting to the end of the day and just being like, I should probably shower at some point today, right? Like I have laziness in me. There's moments where I want to be like that creaking hinge. Any of you feel that? You're like, man, there are days where I don't want to get out of bed and I make noises when I'm trying to get out of bed because my natural tendency is that I actually want to be lazy. I actually want to be lazy. Now, does this mean no more vacations? No more naps? That's not good. I like naps. I'm gonna be honest with you, I like naps, no more movies, no more relaxation, no more vacation for those of you who are on vacation here. Is that what that means? No, it means that Proverbs paints this picture of a way of being, a way of being, being lazy, embracing laziness, never doing the hard good thing, and finding that as your pathway in life. And make no mistake, we are all enticed to come into that house and eat from its table and feel its consequences on our life. So, what's the flip side of that? What's the flip side of be lazy? Well, the flip side is today's way of wisdom. Today's way of wisdom is this do good work. Simple. Do good work, don't be lazy. Instead, do good work. The second half of that passage says this diligent hands, on the other hand, bring wealth. So lazy hands bring poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Let me read you a few more excerpts from this. Proverbs 12 24 says, Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in forced labor. Proverbs 14 23 says, All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk only leads to poverty. Proverbs 22 through 29 22, verse 29 says this. Do you see someone skilled in their work? They will serve before kings, they will not serve before officials of low rank. What the biblical principle here is saying that the way of wisdom is doing good work. You have good work to do. We've covered this in other sermons. Right at the beginning of Genesis, God, what does he do? First thing God does, he does good work. He does what he does. He does good work for six days. And there's beautiful poetic language of God working and working and working and earning his Sabbath, right? Like if you love, if you love Sabbath sermons, you probably should listen to this one a little harder, okay? And and if you love this sermon, you should probably read a book about Sabbath this week. Okay, that was just for somebody. Okay, so but God works, and then what does he do? He creates Adam, which literally means the man. So he creates Adam and Hava, life giver, Adam and Eve, and he what puts them in the garden to what? To do good work, to do good work with him. And we think, oh, work's so bad, it's got to be bad. Like, I don't like work. No, no, no. Work got hard. Yes, labor got hard, but that didn't come until Genesis 3 with the curse. How it was intended for you was that work would be redemptive, work would be restorative, work would give you life, that you would join in co-creation with God, with putting things in order, with dividing and separating and organizing and making things better in this world, doing the good work that God has for you. Make no mistake, you were built for good work. You were built for good work. Ephesians 2, verse 10 is one of my favorite verses. It just keeps coming up over and over in my life, where it says simply this that you are God's workmanship. You're God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works. That's where I stole it from from the Bible. Good place to still from, okay? Do good works, which God prepared in advance for you to do. So you don't get to have an ego about it. God prepared those things in advance for you to do, and then said, Go do the things that I already prepared for you to do, I already gifted you to do. You have good work to do. But we need to make a little bit of a distinction there, don't we? Because there is a word there that's an important word, and that word is good. So there's an important distinction we need to make between good work and bad work, right? There's laziness, that's the easy one, right? Lazy's over here. So we're not gonna be lazy, we're gonna do good work. But I want to spend just a moment as we start to close up here to think a little harder about bad work versus good work, because the temptation to get off course doesn't happen just one time. Folly doesn't just show up one time and go, hey, come over here. And then you don't follow folly, and folly's like, I'll go away now. No, no, that's not how folly works. Folly's like, I got another path for you, right? And so we have to make a distinction between good work and bad work, good work and bad work. And I think that is challenging for us because we have some broken thoughts around working, don't we? I'll go first. I'm a bit of a workaholic. You can ask my wife. It's not, it's not a good thing for me and my family. There are moments where I don't even know why I'm working. I'm like, I don't even, I don't want to work, but I don't know how to not like we went on a little mini vacation this week, and I was just like, I just gotta get back to work. Like, I I just need to, I like, I need to get back to work. And you guys, you gotta understand there's something in that for me that's bad. When I'm finding my validation in what I can produce, when I'm finding my my solid ground in the money that I can provide for my family, if I'm putting myself, go back to week one, if I'm putting myself in the God seat and I'm not fearing God, I become a workaholic and I'm a I'm a crummy God. Anybody else a crummy God in here? I'm looking at all y'all. Y'all should be raising your hands. You're terrible. Ask your spouse, okay? Right? Like, so we need to do a little more work than that, right? Because that's challenging. Some of us in the room are workaholics, and and there is a thing underneath the thing that makes good work bad work. There's something else that could make good work bad work. See this a lot in the younger generation. And it's not quite laziness, but it's it's like this. I want to um work the four-hour work week. There's actually a book called that. Millennials love it. They're like, four hours a week, that's awesome, right? And there's this word called passive income. Like some of you are like, somebody's gonna argue with me on this later. I don't care. It's fine. Um bring it. Um, so like, but it's like we got passive income, so I don't have to work very hard anymore. And it's not quite laziness, but it's like doing the least that I can do to get what I can get out of life. And you have to dig underneath the surface of that a little bit and go, what is that? Yeah, you're doing work, but is it good work? Is it is it serving a greater purpose than you? Is it serving the purpose of the kingdom of God? I had a conversation with a guy this week and he was just burning out from work. And he was like, This, you know, I was working on a sermon and we were talking about it, and he was like, I just feel like this is bad work. And I said, Yeah, but let me let me ask some questions. And so I started asking him some questions. And what we dug up was he's doing hard work that he doesn't enjoy. But at the end of the day, uh, he is able to support six children. He has six kids. I was like, you know how that happens, right? I was like, I was checking, that's a lot of children, right? And a lot of mouth to feed. But he was like, I love having a big family. And I love being able to support them. And I think God put that on my heart. And I'm like, well, then you're then the work you're doing is then good. Even if it's hard work that you don't actually really like, it's serving a greater purpose around your family and how much you love them and how you want to take care of them, how you want to provide for them, and then and then you are mirroring how God is as a good and perfect father. You are mirroring the good work that God does for a greater purpose in his kingdom and in that guy's particular family. And so we've got to, we gotta, you need to do some work on this. You need to do some work on this, right? I already told you I gotta do work on this, okay? I went first, you got to do some work on this too. I'll pick on one more and then we'll go. Retirement. Oh, I got some eyeballs. Okay. Retirement. Is retirement biblical? You should probably study that. You should probably study that. Here's what I want to say to you some of you have the best days of your life ahead, and you're like, nah, those were big, those were big back there. And I want to challenge you on that. Some of you, like Jim Kina, have more to offer than you've ever had to offer before. I'm running out of time, but I got to tell the story. Um, John Piper, John Piper famously got in front of this group uh of uh uh young leaders, and he got out an ad, uh, like a newspaper that had an article about uh this couple that and I'm not trying to pick on somebody if you like seashells, but I'm going there, okay? And he he got this article about this couple that likes to live in Florida and just pick up seashells every morning. And every morning they go and they walk and they pick up their seashells. And he just said, When they get to heaven, what are they gonna tell God? Here's my seashells, God. See, we need to dig a little harder on that. I'm also blessed within this congregation, by the way. Um, some of you are doing really, really good work. So let me just add that word of encouragement. Um doing really good work, but there's always more good work to be done. Good work in your family, good work with your spouse, good work as a neighbor, good work within this community, good work of loving your neighbor. Yes, even that neighbor. Good work of spending more time in scripture, even though you're like, I don't have the time for it, and I want to be like, stop being lazy. Stop it. You got plenty of time to scroll Instagram. You can give Jesus an hour. You can. You can. Like, pull out your phone, let me see your screen time, and then we can have a conversation. Okay. So I know you looked at it this morning. So, so then how do we weigh that? Good fruit, bad fruit. Let me give you one tangible, actionable, and then we'll close up. How do we weigh good fruit, bad fruit? Because that's kind of hard, and you've got to do that work on your own. I think we use something called the fruit test, the fruit test. So Jesus says this every good tree bears good fruit, but every bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Each tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit, you will recognize them. Good fruit. Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, that's good work. Loving your spouse sacrificially, that's good work. Disciplining your children, that is good work. Loving your neighbor, working hard at your job, coming in early and staying late. That is good work. And what I want you to do is consider what is the fruit. That's where we'll end. That's where we'll end. We'll end with this laborious question. What is the fruit of my work? I'm gonna ask the worship band to come back up. What is the fruit? What is the fruit of my work? I want to give you some more time. And I want you to think about this. I want you to I want you to ponder this a little bit. Just gonna go into a time where we quiet ourselves a moment and we really ask that question. We really ask that question. What is the fruit of my work? Jesus, unveil the bad work, unveil the good work, unveil where I'm lazy, unveil what opportunities you have for me. Holy Spirit, speak to us right now. Heavenly Father, let's pray. Heavenly Father. I do pray in this moment that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear. I pray, God, uh that you would convict our hearts of where we might be, where we might be lazy right now. Where, God, we are seeking comfort more than we're seeking you. Where our hearts are drawn toward toward laziness and apathy. And God, I I pray that you'd unearth that in us and that you would challenge us on that. And Holy Spirit, I pray that you would unveil uh the good work that is happening in our lives right now. I pray that we'd even begin to hear the whisper of well done, good and faithful servant, for the good work that we are participating in right now. God, thank you for the good work that's going on in this church and in this community and in these families and neighborhoods. And we thank you, God. We thank you for the good work that you've given to us. Show that to us. Allow us to see that clearly and allow us to do more of that. And God, would you please also in this moment, would you unveil the bad work that is in our lives? The places where we're missing the mark, places where we're wasting. God, we thank you that you have given us good work to do. I pray. I pray that you would make this super clear to each and every one of us the work that you have for our hands, for your glory, and for your kingdom. It's in your name we pray. Amen.