Amen, thank you, Lighthouse Singers. Take your Bibles this morning. I actually turned to Proverbs 14, 23. The screen says Romans 14, but it's actually Proverbs 14. I get the text and the title, and I give it to Brother Randolph, and he does those slides. And so we're both sitting here wondering who messed up now, because I'm not sure if I gave him the wrong text or he just came up with a different text he wanted me to use this morning. We'll figure that out eventually here. So Romans, Proverbs, Proverbs, Proverbs. We may have found the culprit. We're off to a good start. Proverbs 14, 23. Wow. Okay. Can only get better from here. Proverbs 14 and verse 23. In all labor there is profit. The talk of the lips tendeth only to penury. Title of the message this morning, The Profit of Labor. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your goodness. Thank you for this opportunity we have again today. Lord, I pray that we would steward this time wisely. Pray that you'd make it profitable to us as we look at your word, that you'd speak to hearts as only you can. Lord, work in lives, we need you. We need you now and Lord, we ask that you would work in a great way. Bless this service. Use it to honor yourself in Jesus name. Amen. This is Labor Day weekend. And so we're taking a break from our series in Romans to deal with labor. I'm glad that you stayed in town and came to church. That's good. The Bible has an enormous amount to say about work, about labor. It has a lot to say about people who won't work. The Bible has the answer, by the way, to every problem that plagues society, if we would just follow it. And because we ignore the Bible for the most part in society, we continue to have overwhelming problems throughout society. God made man to work. His plan and His design were both very good. Genesis chapter 1 and verse 26 and God said let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth so God created man in his own image in the image of God created he him male and female created he them and You can almost get the idea there are only two genders but that's a different message. Verse 31, and God saw everything that He had made and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. In chapter 2 it says the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight. and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." Now this was before the fall, before man sinned. Man was made to work. God could have made the garden where it didn't need tending. where the bushes didn't need pruning, and the trees didn't need trimming, and there was no care needed, the plants just all were self-sufficient, but he didn't, he made it where man needed to tend the garden, man needed to work. Now after the fall, work got a lot more difficult. God was going to keep man even busier, if you will. Genesis 3 verse 17, 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, and sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also, and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. 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 into dust shalt thou return." So what happens when a man doesn't work? a lot of things and none of them good. Hippocrates said, idleness and lack of occupation tend, nay, are dragged towards evil. A man will not work dragged towards evil. Thomas Fuller said, he that is busy is tempted by but one devil. He that is idle by a legion of devils. Samuel Beckett said, Sloth is of all the passions the most powerful. Not working is so destructive that God established some serious consequences to shake man from his lethargy. Paul would write to the church at Thessalonica in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 and say, For yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we behave not ourselves disorderly among you. Neither did we eat any man's bread for naught, but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you, not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an example unto you to follow us. For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat." Now, he's not talking here about people who cannot work. God made provision for them. God made provision for the poor of the land and their sustenance and all of that. Rather, he is talking about those who will not work. they don't want to work in verse 11 he go on to say for we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly working not at all but are busybodies they're involved in things they shouldn't be because they're not doing the things they ought to be now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness they work and eat their own bread work for their living Psalm 128 2 says for thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands happy shalt thou be and it shall be well with thee Proverbs 15, 19 says the way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns. It's supposed to be painful. It's supposed to be difficult if a man is slothful. Proverbs 13, 4, the soul of the sluggard desireth and hath nothing. Proverbs 20, verse 4, the sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold, therefore shall he beg and harvest and have nothing. That's God's solution to laziness. It's a wonderful solution. It's wonderfully effective. Hunger is a great motivator. It's a great teacher. Proverbs 28, 19, He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread, but he that followeth after vain persons, idle people, people that just want to waste time, shall have poverty enough. Proverbs 12, 11, he that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread, but he that followeth vain persons is void of understanding. He's not real bright, he's gonna follow those vain people around, but he will get understanding when he gets hungry enough. Now we've messed up God's program, and so we're in a mess. A few weeks back the chaplain of the sheriff's department in San Dimas contacted me and asked if I could come to a meeting with the city planner and some other individuals. And I went thinking it was a meeting where law enforcement would be there. We're trying to do everything we can to connect with them and get to know them and all of that. And so I went to the meeting without understanding. Well, when I got there, it wasn't that at all. And they were actually trying to get a task force together to deal with the city's homeless population. And so they talked about it for a while, and the ins and outs of it, and how many homeless people San Dimas has, and how many homeless people La Verne has, and they've got them numbered and all of this. And so after a while, the city planner turns to me and he says, Pastor Dunlop, he said, what would you see as the solution? And I said, I said, man, I said, I'm sorry. I did not know the nature of this meeting when I came. I said, honestly, the Bible has the solution, but you're not going to want to do what it says. I said, the city, I can guarantee the city does not have the backbone or the will to do what God says to be done. And then I gave him some verses. And they didn't implement my plan. That's all well and good. I didn't think they were going to but I gave him the Bible anyway, so but God's Word extols diligence industriousness and hard work Proverbs 22 29 CSL man diligent in his business and He shall stand before kings. He shall not stand before mean men. And by mean, it doesn't mean how we would use, oh, she's so mean. It's talking about base men, obscure men, men that have never accomplished things. He says the man that's diligent, he'll go somewhere in life and he'll accomplish some things in life. Proverbs 12, 24, the hand of the diligent shall bear rule. He'll have some responsibility, but the slothful shall be under tribute and under bondage, if you will. 1 Kings 11 28 it says the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valor and Solomon the king seeing the young man that he was industrious he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph he saw that he was industrious that he knew how to work and work hard and so he got a promotion he got a good position because of his industriousness Nehemiah, the king's cupbearer, was industrious, and he would stand before Artaxerxes, an unsaved Persian king. And in Nehemiah 2.4, then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven. And so Nehemiah is before the king and the king said, what request do you have? And so he instantly just praise God, give me wisdom or whatever he asked for from God that God would give him the answer. I said unto the king, if it please the king, and if thy servant have found favor in thy sight, that thou wouldest send me unto Judah, unto the city of my father's sepulchers, that I may build it. And the king said unto me, the queen also sitting by him, for how long shall thy journey be? And when wilt thou return? So it pleased the king to send me, and I said him a time. Moreover, I said unto the king, if it pleased the king, let letters be given me to the governors beyond the river, that they may convey me over till I come into Judah. and a letter unto Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the palace, which appertain to the house, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into. And the king granted me, according to the good hand of my God, upon me." Because Nehemiah had been industrious, and he did find favor in the king's sight, and so he could say, this is my request, and I would like this, and I would like this, and I would like this, and the king says, okay. Because he'd already established a reputation to be industrious and to work hard, to be dependable. Remember back in the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis, and Pharaoh said unto his servants, can we find such in one as this, a man in whom the Spirit of God is? And they were needing a ruler, because the land of Egypt, if you recall, was gonna have seven years of plenty, and then there was gonna be seven years of famine, and Joseph had laid out for them the plan that they might survive the famine. And Pharaoh said, man, we need somebody really sharp. that I could appoint to head up this program. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath showed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art. Thou shalt be ruler over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled. Only in the throne will I be greater than thou. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt, Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph's hand and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck. And he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had. And they cried before him, bow the knee. And he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt. And Joseph was 30 years old when he stood before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went throughout all the land of Egypt. He was industrious and worked hard. He was dependable. He was wise. At the age of 30, a foreigner, an alien, if you will, and he's made second in command over the most powerful empire in the world at that time. Daniel again a POW in a foreign land the land of Babylon and Daniel 6 it pleased Darius to set over the kingdom and 120 princes which should be over the whole kingdom and over these three presidents And so the king is setting up his cabinet, if you will, and he's got 120 princes that are gonna help him govern the whole land, the vast holdings of the Babylonian Empire. And over those 120 princes, there were three presidents of whom Daniel was first. Again, an alien. This wasn't his homeland. He didn't grow up here that the princes might give accounts unto them that the king should have no damage. Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes because an excellent spirit was in him and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. May God give us industrious young people who are persuaded there are more important things in life than video games. May God give us some adults that are persuaded of the same thing. In Proverbs 10, verse 4, he becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand, but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. Now, the Bible says that's not to be our goal in life, to be rich, but we're to be diligent. He says just by being diligent, you're going to be blessed and promoted. In verse 5, he that gathers in summer is a wise son, but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame. One of the factors that led to Sodom's great sin and subsequent judgment, the Bible tells us that there was in the land an abundance of idleness. An abundance of idleness. A lot of free time to just kinda hang out and do nothing. A lot of time in their schedule where there's nothing going on. It hurt them badly, as you know. Lord Chesterfield said, know the true value of time. Snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Thomas Jefferson said, determine never to be idle. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing. As we lose our aptitude and appetite for work, all of society suffers. Anton Chekhov said, whenever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, premature old age, grumbling youth, and there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms. A few years back, The Los Angeles city government employed 37,000 people. 37,000 people. In a 15-month period of those 37,000 city employees, six got fired for doing a poor job. The rest were doing fine. Hard to believe, isn't it? The system institutes what they call the dance of the lemons, moving incompetent workers from one job to another, losing none of them. So this lemon dance perpetuates the problem. In fact, it compounds the problem because it guarantees that the worst workers will work in multiple departments. Because laws, civil service regulations, and city ordinances protect incompetent workers, the city doesn't get the service it needs from its employees who can't be fired. Now because of widespread laziness and incompetence, LA actually now employs tens of thousands more employees. Some of which are good, by the way. There are some good employees. But there's a lot of incompetence because you don't get fired for being incompetent. And so as I was researching how many have gotten fired recently, I saw where several hundred had been let go. I thought, well, they're making some progress, but then I read more and they were all let go for not being vaccinated for COVID. None of them were let go for being incompetent. One of the signs of the deterioration of a society and of the judgment of God is that society loses its men of excellence. and virtue. It loses its great leaders. Isaiah chapter 3 and verse 1, For behold the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honorable man, and the counselor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. He says, I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them, and the people shall be oppressed. Everyone by another everyone by his neighbor the child shall behave himself Proudly against the ancient and the base against the honorable and we see all of that today As a sign of the deterioration of society If you talk to managers and bosses and owners of businesses, you will find that they all have a similar complaint It's hard to find good workers nowadays That's what they'll tell you Proverbs 10.26 says this, as vinegar to the teeth and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him. Vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes. Those are irritants. Those are things that irritate you and make you feel bad And the Bible says that you send a sluggard you give him some responsibility You give him a job to do and and he's just going to irritate you. He's not going to get it done He's not going to get it done on time He's not going to get it done in the right manner or he may not even try to do it at all. I It's like vinegar to the teeth and a smoke to the eyes. Proverbs 25, 19, confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth and a foot out of joint. You can't put any weight on it. You can't depend on it. And he says this unfaithful man, this man that cannot be depended on is gonna cause you problems in the end. You can try to reason with him. You can explain why he should work. His life will go better if he works. He needs to quit being lazy and on and on and on. But verse 16 of Proverbs 26 says, the sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason. Verse 13 says, the slothful man said, there's a lion in the way. A lion is in the streets. Can't go to work today. Any excuse will do. He's going to find some reason why he can't work and why he can't get the job done. I was listening to the news in Argentina. And of course, they've had a lot of unrest there in the capital over a lot of issues. And one of the issues in the capital city, people marching in the streets, is the government is basically bankrupting itself. Inflation is out of control, just incredibly destructive to the economy. And so the government is trying to rein in all of the just government checks they've sent everywhere to everybody, and they're going bankrupt. And so they were interviewing this girl, and she literally said, why should I go to work for eight hours every day when the government has been paying me as much to not go to work? So she didn't see any reason to go work. Why take my day working when the government will pay me not to work? In Scotland, my wife and I talked to a young lady and she was telling us that as soon as you turn 18 there, the government just starts paying you money. If you don't have a job, they just pay you money. And so a lot of the young people are conditioned right from the get-go, get out of school and just start getting a check from the government. Why go look for work? One of our boys worked at a sporting goods store and he was telling me that Sometimes customers would come in and ask an employee, like in the shoe department, hey, can you go find this shoe? Do you have this in size eight and a half or 10 and a half or whatever? So they'd take the shoe, go in the back, and they'd just sit there and text their friends for a few minutes and come back out and say, no, we don't have that size. Never make any attempt to help the customer. And that level of customer service and that level of working is rampant in our society. It's widespread in our society. Proverbs 6, go to the ant, they'll slugger. Consider her ways and be wise God has given us so many things in nature that can teach us so much And one of the greatest is the ant and I don't know if as a kid you ever had an ant farm and you know watch them build tunnels and Our ants always died for some reason. I don't know if we gave them too much water or too little or whatever, but it's fascinating to watch them build tunnels until they die. But they're always working. And if you find them out in society, they're just working. They're always working. They're always going somewhere. You never see a bunch of ants just sitting around taking a little Coke break or something and just sitting around. They're always going somewhere and they're carrying stuff. If you put something in their way, they either will go up and over it or they'll go around it. They don't just sit there looking, oh man, I guess we gotta go, no, they're gonna find something. So he says, go to the ant, consider her ways and be wise, which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, doesn't have any, there's no boss out there, there's no supervisor, but she provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. And so they're always working, sometimes they're carrying big old things over their head that weigh way more than they do, and they keep on going, and they don't let anything stop them. In fact, if you get a whole train of ants, and you just step on about three of them, The other ants that come along, they'll kind of look at them, and, huh, Charlie, that's too bad. And they keep on going. I mean, really, they stop for two seconds and just check it out, and that's my cousin. Well, I've got thousands of them, good thing. And they keep on going. There's no OSHA department that comes and shuts down the plant for two months and does an investigation as to why did this guy get crushed right in the middle of this assembly line. No, they just keep working. So he says, if you're lazy, then go to the aunt and just watch him for a little bit and say, man, that guy just keeps going. And there's no aunt supervisor with a whip keeping him going. They just work. He says, consider her ways. Consider her work ethic and be wise. Learn from her. She doesn't have a boss even. And she keeps on working. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come, as one that traveleth thy want as an armed man. Proverbs 30 says, There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise. The answer are people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer. They keep on working, and they get the job done. Proverbs 20, verse 13 says, Love not sleep. lest thou come to poverty, open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread. Proverbs 23, 21 says, drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. That was God's plan. If you're not gonna work, there's some consequences with being lazy, with being a sluggard. When God was judging Israel, part of His judgment was, Psalm 78, 33, therefore their days did He consume in vanity, and their years in trouble. Their lives were just wasted as a result of their sin. Michael Levine wrote a book entitled Broken Windows, Broken Business. And the premise of the book is that little things add up to big things very quickly. And being too lazy to fix a broken window is going to cost a company a lot more than that one window ultimately. And he writes in the book, The Broken Windows Theory states that something as small and innocuous as a broken window does in fact send a signal to those who pass by every day. If it is left broken, the owner of the building isn't paying attention or doesn't care. That means more serious infractions, theft, defacement, violent crime might be condoned in this area as well. At best, it signals that no one is watching. This is the heart of the broken windows theory. Wilson and Kelling write that social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. Why? Because the message being sent out by a broken window, the perception it invites, is that the owner of this building and the people of the community around it don't care if the window is broken. They have given up and anarchy reigns here. Do as you will because nobody cares. He goes on to write, he said, when Rudy Giuliani, the newly elected mayor of New York City in 1994, announced his intention to eliminate graffiti on subway cars and move the prostitutes and pimps out of Times Square to make Manhattan more family friendly, critics practically laughed in Giuliani's face, intimating that the law and order mayor, quote unquote, who had been elected largely based on his experience as US Attorney General for the New York area, was dealing with the small crimes because he knew he couldn't contain the larger crimes. They were proved wrong. Giuliani and his new police commissioner, William Bratton, believed that if they sent out clear signals to criminals and to New York citizenry generally, that a zero-tolerance policy would be applied to all crime in the city. The result would be a safer, cleaner city. And the statistics bore them out. Over the following few years, the numbers of murders, assaults, robberies, and other violent crimes all went down dramatically. And it had all started with graffiti on the subway cars. Goes on to say the shining example of the broken windows theory was the spectacular turnaround accomplished in New York City by Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton. While the two, along with others, focused on such broken windows as what Bratton calls squeegee pests, the men who wash car windows as a method of begging, fare jumpers who leap over turnstiles in subway stations to beat the fare, and when they begin to prosecute all those, the murder rate also in the city fell from more than 2,200 to fewer than 1,000 per year. And even jaded New Yorkers began to believe their city was more livable than it had been. In 1962, two different men each opened a store in a different state. First man opened his store on March 1st, 1962, and the second man opened his store on July 2nd, 1962, just four months later. The first man soon opened another store, and then another, and then another, and then another. The second man did the same. By 1994, the first man had opened 2,323 stores in the United States alone, and many more around the world. He assembled a team to oversee this vast empire of thousands of stores, and over time, however, the team that now oversaw and ran that chain of stores grew complacent and lazy. They thought they were too big to fail. And so they were full, fat, dumb, and happy, and they grew sloppy and wasteful. And so only eight years later from their peak of success in their 40th anniversary year, ironically, they filed for bankruptcy protection. And today, there are only three Kmart's left in the entire country. In January 2002, George Chamberlain wrote in the San Diego area North County Times, five years ago, the betting money might have favored Kmart. as the store that would be the store that would succeed above all else. They had just signed up an exclusive distribution contract with Martha Stewart, a sure magnet for baby boomers. And supermodels like Kathy Ireland and Jacqueline Smith were hawking merchandise every Sunday in the Kmart newspaper supplements. But it didn't turn out that way because of laziness and slothfulness. The other guy who started his store four months and one day after the first man, Well, he never got lazy, he never got sloppy. And today, there are 10,593 Walmarts all around the world. At one time, Kmart was much bigger than Walmart, but they got lazy. Proverbs 24, I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding. And lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well. I looked upon it and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep, so saw that poverty come. It's one that traveleth I want as an armed man. So he's taking a walk one day, and he's walking along, and he comes across a property, and then there's a walkway and a stone wall, and somebody at some time in the past has gone to great lengths and great effort to create this beautiful property with a stone wall and this walkway and everything, and somebody put some effort into it. But then somebody, maybe the heir, or maybe got sold to somebody, but he said, somebody quit taking care of it. He said, just by looking at this, as you can look at the ant and learn, just by looking at this property, it's a little sleep, a little slumber, somebody quit being diligent and somebody quit working hard. Proverbs 27, 23, be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks and look well to thy herds. Now that represented their finances. We don't do that today. How many sheep do you have now? How many cows? Anybody in here have a sheep? Nobody have a sheep, do you have a sheep? Nobody. We have chickens. Three, three now, right? One died the other day, tragic. But that's not our wealth now. Sheep and cows, but when it was, he said, be diligent. Be diligent to know how the flocks are doing. Be diligent to know how your herds are doing. Take care of your finances, if you will. Look well to thy herds, for riches are not forever. Does the crown endure to every generation? No, it doesn't. How many times a man has risen to a position of a good businessman, or maybe a ruler, a reigner, a king, and then his son is a derelict. and will not manage the kingdom, or he'll not take care of the business that gets given to him, handed to him. The hay appeareth, the tender grass showeth itself, herbs of the mountains are gathered, the lambs are for thy clothing, the goats are the price of the field. Thou shalt have goat's milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, for the maintenance for thy maidens. He said, if you'll just take care of business, and know where you are, and don't be foolish, you'll have enough to get by. You'll be provided for. You'll have your needs met. Ecclesiastes 10, 18, by much slothfulness the building decayeth through idleness of the hands, the house droppeth through. Parents, one of the best things that you can teach your children, that you must teach your children, is the value and importance of hard work. Now, they're gonna act like they're dying at first. So brace yourself. I mean, you ask him to take out the trash, here's the trash, here's the trash can in the kitchen, and the dumpster is right over here, right outside the door, and you go about 30 feet. Now, this same kid just played basketball for two hours and had plenty of energy, but when you ask him to take this trash can that weighs about five pounds full of trash and walk 45 feet and dump it in the big dumpster, his body just kind of collapses. And then he magically, it's magic, he all of a sudden remembers he has homework. Forgot it for two hours playing basketball, but all of a sudden it comes to mind, I got homework. That'll take one minute, and you can get right on your homework, son. So, why? Because by nature, we don't like to work. We have to train our kids to work. So just expect it. He's gonna act like it's difficult. He didn't even throw anything away in that trash can. He didn't fill it up. It's not his responsibility. And he'll come up with all kinds of excuses. The slugger said, there's a lion in the way, I can't go to work, there's a lion out there somewhere. Now he could go fishing, he could go have a good time, but if it's work, there's a lion out there. And so when you say, you know what, I'm gonna teach my kids to work, be determined to do that, because that's a valuable trait. That's important. And they won't write you thank you notes. Until much later. But they won't come and initiate this whole work thing either. Just know that. Mom and Dad, can we talk? I sense I'm becoming lazy and undisciplined. I'm way too self-centered and I'm almost obsessed with instant gratification. I need your help. I think I probably need more responsibilities. I need you probably to take away my video games and give me like a list of chores. There's never been a kid alive that's done that. So you have to do that. Kids, aren't you glad you came today? Those of you, especially if your parents are here, some of you are thinking, man, I'm glad my mom isn't here today. But no, you need to teach them to work, that's important. Lamentations 3, 27, it is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth, in his youth. If you wanna go back 100 years, you know we didn't even have such a thing as juvenile hall? We didn't have juvenile probation officers. We didn't have juvenile crisis counselors. We didn't have any of that, any of that, why? Because when the kids got up in the morning, they went out and they collected the eggs, and they milked the cows, and they maybe threw some hay in the barn, and fixed the fences where the cow got out, and then they went to school, and when they came home, they milked the same cow all over again. And then they went and caught a couple cows that escaped, and they worked, they did some things, and they were happier back then. They were. And they weren't getting in trouble. And no one thought about going to school and shooting people. And yet Dad kept his rifle in the pickup truck right there. And there was a gun right over the fireplace. It never crossed their minds to do those things. They knew how to work. And we were a better society because we knew how to work. And we've coddled and babied our kids and then we wonder, well, why are they bored and why are they in trouble? Because we're not following God's plan. You're not gonna disregard God's plan and come up with something better. God's not up in heaven thinking, I wish I would've thought of that, that's good. No, whatever you come up with to replace God's plan is stupid. It's not better, it's not an improvement. Proverbs 13, 19 says, the desire accomplished is sweet to the soul. Proverbs 16, 20, he that handles the matter wisely shall find good. Ecclesiastes 5, 12, the sleep of a laboring man is sweet. You know, there are young people who have never experienced the immense satisfaction that comes from accomplishing a major task. They've never experienced that. Building something big, designing something, fixing something important, learning some major skill, finishing a major project, sticking with something that is hard and seeing it through to its completion. Again, the desire accomplished is sweet to the soul. And there are young people that have never had that experience. They've never done something noteworthy that was worth doing. At the end, they could say, wow, I did that. I learned a new skill. I accomplished something. I did something I didn't even know I could do. And so they're deprived of that. They've never been challenged in that area to work and to work hard. I listened to a man yesterday, he was talking about to-do lists, and I like to-do lists, and a lot of you probably have to-do lists, and you come in, you write a whole bunch of things down, and then as you check them off, there's that feeling. And he said, if I do something during the day that wasn't on my list, he said, I write it on the list anyway, so I can write, cross it off, say, ah, it's something else. Why? The desire to accomplish is sweet to the soul. And it's good to come down to the end of the day and say, I got that done, that done, that done, that done, and they were worthwhile, good things. Sweet to the soul. It's not referring to getting to the next level in your video game. No, something worthwhile, something important, something significant. Proverbs 15, 22, without counsel, purposes are disappointed, but in the multitude of counselors, they are established. There's just something about, young people, there's something about having a challenge and say, I wanna learn more about that, I wanna develop a skill, and finding some people, maybe some adults in the church, somebody that's been around a while, say, how do you do this, and how do you build this, and how can I do this? And you get counsel, but without that counsel, purposes are disappointed. You'll never achieve your objective and accomplish something big because you didn't get good counsel. You didn't have the will to go forward with that. But with good counsel you can learn and grow. Proverbs 13 11 says, Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished. He that gathers by labor shall increase. Proverbs 28, 20, a faithful man shall abound with blessings. He that maketh haste to be rich should not be innocent. Proverbs 28, 22, he that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, considereth not that poverty shall come upon him. We don't even have time to deal with that this morning. Do you know how many gambling addicts we have in this country? Tens of millions that think, oh, the next lottery ticket, the next scratch off, the next trip to Vegas, and they want to be a case to be rich, and God says, no, that's vanity, that's not what I bless, and we don't have time for the myriad of stories. I remember reading sometime back that they said 100 seniors a month in Florida, not seniors in high school, seniors, senior citizens, 100 seniors a month in Florida alone were losing their houses to gambling. Every month, 100 seniors on average losing their house. And I know there's a lot of seniors in Florida. The reason they call it God's waiting room. But still, that's a lot. That's a lot of people that lose their house, their life investment gone to gambling, making haste to be rich. Many years ago I was listening, there used to be an old time radio program called This Is Your FBI. How many of you listen to that? Some of you, all right. It was on about 70 years ago. I wasn't listening to it live, I was listening to a replay. And the story, and this was like, again, this was from like 70 years ago. And the story was about the FBI breaking up a gambling ring. And at the end of this story, this 30-minute story radio program, a guy comes on and he's some official with the FBI, and he says, American citizens, he said, with your help, if you will report incidents of gambling to your local law enforcement or to your FBI, we can rid this country of this scourge. in less than six months. That's the way society used to view it. Now we act like it's the cure-all for everything. Hey, wherever casinos go in, wherever the lottery goes in, wherever any of those things go in, suicide rates go up. Homeless rates go up. Divorce rates go up. Child abuse rates go up. It's not a blessing, it's a curse. It's a curse. God honors work. God honors honest effort. We work for, we're to do it with the sweat of our brow, we're to work for our bread. In all labor there is profit. There's profit. But the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury. What's penury? Poverty. We can talk about it all day long, but the Bible says you gotta do it, you gotta work. So as we observe Labor Day tomorrow, by not working ironically, really seems like everyone should have to work overtime tomorrow, but think about your own work ethic. Parents, think about your kids' work ethic. Grandparents, think about your grandkids' work ethic. Work ethic's pretty important. It's more important than I can stress this morning. God himself, from the beginning of creation, planted a garden. to keep man busy. He said, you tended, you work here. And after the fall, God says, okay, you're still gonna be working, but now it's gonna be harder. You've gotta keep busier. You've heard those sayings, that idle hands are the devil's workshop, and idle minds the devil's workshop. And by not keeping busy, by not putting our hand to good tasks, by getting involved, staying busy, We end up with an abundance of idleness, like Sodom had. We end up in all kinds of sin, busy bodies, and mess up our lives. God made us to work. God made us to work. Oh, that we would be busy. In closing, I wanna look at one area where God says, don't work, don't work, don't labor. In Matthew 11, 28, he says, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Titus 3, 5 says, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us. Not by works, not by works. Ephesians 2, 8 says, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works. not of works, lest any man should boast. Galatians 2.16, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Jesus Christ, so we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. So God says we're to be busy and we're to be working. But when it comes to our own soul's salvation, he says don't work. No religion, no works, don't light candles, don't try to get catechized, confirmed, or anything else. It's by grace. God freely offers His gift of salvation to everybody that'll come and ask Him for it. And so even as we would look at our own work ethic, and speaking of physical work, in this area of spiritual things, God says, don't work. Come and accept my free gift. Father, thank you for your word this morning. I pray that you'd bless now in this time of invitation. I pray that you'd work in hearts and lives. In Jesus' name, amen.