Somewhat frequent, people ask me, Chris, how do you come up with what you're gonna preach? It's a good question, and I wish there was just one answer that I could give, but there's not just one answer. Wherever God speaks to you, however He leads you, you may think that Pastor Bill or myself sits in our study time and we have the Bible open and we're just reading and praying and that's always how it happens. It doesn't always happen like that. This past week, on Wednesday, went to lunch with Pastor Bill and Thomas and Jim Knott and Jeff Larson, and Pastor Bill said one statement to me, that the Lord has not allowed to get off my mind ever since that. And it was the statement this, it was this, everything tends to die. That's it. But when you think about it, At its core, that's a pretty powerful statement. Everything tends to die. And so I've been pondering this and meditating on this scripture for some time this week and looking forward to what God has for us today. So Proverbs 24, verse 30 and 31. What he said is summarized in this passage here. Verse 30 says, 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 therefore was broken down. May we pray before we look into this. Lord, we thank you again for your kindness, for your love towards us. We thank you for this time of year as we specifically remember the birth of Your Son, Jesus Christ, how He came to this sin-cursed world for us, endured all the shame and the reproach that He did for us, endured the cross, became victorious over death for us, that we could have our sins forgiven and new life in Christ, and we're just thankful this Christmas season. We do ask that as we look into this passage this evening that you would, as always, remove distractions from our minds, that we would hear from heaven today, that you would speak to every heart individually, and that you'd give us exactly what we need, because we need help tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. He says, this is Solomon, by the way, he says, in the first verse we read, verse 30, he says, I went by, I went by. Solomon was walking, or maybe this was figurative, I assume it could have been literal, where he says he went by a certain person's plot of land, a field, and he learned something here today, something that I hope is going to help every one of us, simply by looking around. And a lot can be learned simply by observation. A lot can be learned by simply observation. A wise person will look around. A wise person will learn from the experience of others. Someone said years ago, and I don't remember sadly exactly who the person who said this was, but it was this, gain wisdom as cheaply as you can, for others have paid a high price for it. Once again, it says gain wisdom as cheaply as you can, for others have paid a high price for it. And God gave you two eyes for a reason. not only worry about what you have going on, but that we could get our eyes up and look at what's around us, and see other people, and see where they've failed, and see where they have succeeded, and that we are not doomed to repeat the same mistakes that they have. It's a shame generation after generation after generation makes the same mistakes as the one before it. It shouldn't be. I mean, we live in the day of technology. We have all the resources available. How many books and articles and things that are written that people have spent countless time and lifetimes composing together that we can glance at easily? If only we would look around and we would see. So, don't only learn by trial and error. Years ago there was a video circulating around and it was shared among some friends of mine, and it was a video of a little toddler who didn't want to eat his food. And so the mom is sitting there at the table, and she's got the little boy, you know, she takes a scoop of that nasty slop that, you know, toddlers eat, tries to shovel it in the boy's mouth, and you know, his lips were just locked as tight as they could be. It was not happening. And so she put the spoon down and she picked up this little stuffed animal. It was a little bear or a little dog or something. She picked up this little stuffed animal and she reached down and she scooped up a little spoonful of food and brought it over to the little teddy bear's mouth and went like this with the head. No. So she put the spoon down and she took the little bear and began to beat it on the table. And she punched it a few times, real aggressive. And she put the bear to the side, picked up the spoon, and went over to the toddler, and he opened his mouth right up with eyes about this big. Put it right in his mouth, and he ate it. Why? First of all, I don't condone that type of parenting. First off, I have never done that with my children. Seems like it works, but. That could be pragmatic, right, Pastor Bill? Could be pragmatic. But the little boy learned by the experience of others. Why? Because certain people have to learn by experience. Solomon came by the field of this lazy man who left it unattended, and the slothful man, and the man void of understanding, had to learn the hard way. He had to learn by his field becoming overrun with thorns, and the wall becoming broken down, and he had to learn by experience, whereas a wise man learns by the experience of others. So tonight we're gaining into the life of this man, whom thousands of years ago made some terrible mistakes, and over time ruined his property. So tonight I want to encourage you not to learn the hard way. Unfortunately, there's going to be some in this room that still are just determined they want to learn that way. But I'll say this, learning the hard way and having severe consequences for it is the best teacher. You remember the best. However, if we can tonight look at this, it'll be help to you and save you all sorts of trouble. The first thing I noticed from this passage these two short verses here, is that everything drifts towards disorder. This is the law of entropy. The law of entropy that the natural order is disorder. And things naturally fall apart. They don't get better. All you have to do is you have to ask Miss Camerad. I think she may be here tonight. Miss Camerad maybe. She's our kindergarten teacher. She knows about things falling apart. She knows about her children's shoelaces in her class, that they don't get tighter over time. They end up becoming more loose as time goes on and she spends probably the majority of her day tying those little kids shoes. See it all the time. Things tend to disorder not to order, and things left to themselves simply go south. So disorder is the natural result of neglect. And these thorns that were there on this man's property, as Solomon went by and saw that they had overtaken the property, these nettles or weeds, we would say, had taken over his property. Do you know that nobody went by and planted thorns there? Nobody planted thorns. It happened over time. Slowly happening. You know, no one went out there day after day with a watering can and put water on those thorns and on those weeds. Nobody came out with Miracle-Gro and put Miracle-Gro on them so they could take over. No, it simply happened by doing nothing. And by doing nothing, disaster came and trouble came. It says that the wall of his property was broken down. I spent a summer up in New England and up in that area, at least where I was. This was southern New Hampshire. They have, many of the properties have stone walls, sometimes only a few feet high. And they have stone walls along the property lines. I guess it was a way back then where they could determine whose property was whose. However, as you drive up in that area, you'll see some that are pristine. They're up kept. All the rocks are in their rightful place and however there are others like this man's property line that had a stone wall that rocks had fallen off. It had begun to decay and how did that happen? How did those rocks up there in New England fall? Did some little kid go out there and kick them all over? I don't think so. Although little kids like to do that, cause destruction. I don't think that's how it happened. I think over time poor weather, you have snowy seasons up there, erosion that happens, all sorts of things. And over time, things tend to get worse. Unfortunately, life does not mean staying in neutral. It is often said that standing still means falling behind. Have you ever heard that? If you stand in one place, you're actually losing ground, you're not gaining ground. Someone else said if you are not Yeah, if you're not gaining ground, you are losing ground. This whole idea for this message came behind a very short, brief conversation that us five people had. As Pastor said, everything tends to die. And I believe we were talking about the bus ministry, how it tends to die. If it's left to itself, it's gonna die. We talked about our need for bus drivers. And we do need bus drivers. It's like this, if we're not constantly getting new bus drivers, we're losing. There was some time where we made a big push and a lot of people got their license and it was great because there's always people that have reasons why they can't drive or maybe they move away, all sorts of things. And so, If you're not gaining ground, you are losing ground, and everything tends to die when left to itself. And so disorder, sadly, grows faster than order. It takes more time and energy to get something back up than it does just to leave it alone. Think about it this way. How hard is it to lose weight? Some of you would say, it's real difficult. How about this? How hard is it to gain weight? You say, easy, especially this time of year. It's easy. It's because muscle, for instance, muscle, it's harder to build muscle than it is to lose muscle. What do you have to do to lose muscle? Do nothing. You just have to do nothing. However, it takes countless hours at the gym, weeks, months, years to be able to build muscle, whereas to lose it, it's easy. Those of you that have children know that kids can make a mess in about five minutes. Five minutes. Just the other day, we started out Christmas break wonderfully. My kids woke up like 6.15 in the morning. What is wrong with them? So I said, you guys go play. We're sleeping in for a little bit. Five minutes later, we come out and it was like a bomb went off in our living room. And I'll tell you what, it took them a lot longer than five minutes to pick all that up. Things tend to disorder and disorder grows faster than order. That's just the way it is. It's like living your life for God. It's hard staying faithful to the Lord for years and years and years, but you can throw it all right down the drain in about five minutes. You can build up a reputation at your work to be an upstanding Christian and have integrity, that you have character. However, you can throw it all in the trash with just a few short words. It takes a lot more to build something than to just let it die. Disorder, it slowly advances. We're gonna read verse 31 again. It says, and lo, he says lo, Solomon, like he's surprised that leaving something to nothing, that decay is more shocking than what he was expecting. However, it was grown over with thorns and nettles that had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall therefore was broken down." Thorns don't invade overnight. This man, this slothful man, he didn't wake up one day after being in his field the night before, wake up one day, rubbed his eyes and looked out over his property and saw that it was overtaken and it was overrun. and that his rock wall, his stone wall, had crumbled down. It happened over months and weeks and maybe years of time in order for the whole thing to get to the place it was. Sometimes, I mean, we all hear about churches that close. Do you know that there's more churches closing than opening? I hope you realize that and you know that. Churches don't close overnight. Oh, it's something that happens over a long period of time. Often it happens to a field, we would say, that's left unattended. A field where, little by little, things are left undone that should be taken care of. And unfortunately, it happens. Ministries, they don't die immediately. If you're a Sunday school teacher, your Sunday school class doesn't die right away. It happens slowly. If you're in the bus ministry, your bus ministry doesn't die overnight. It doesn't. It happens with a few kids leaving here and a few kids leaving there. It happens with not going visiting like we probably should, or not staying in touch with people like we should, or not having our eyes up and looking around the neighborhoods to see young people and who may want to come. It happens over time. Happens slowly. You don't just wake up one day. How many marriages do you know that have failed? I can promise you this, it didn't happen in one night. Most of the time. It did not happen in one night. Marriages fail because for years, it's slowly, thorns and weeds have slowly been creeping into the marriage. And they've been left unattended. And it ends in disaster. Many of you have children in your lives, adult children that you're not even on speaking terms with. How does that happen? happens because thorns creep in over time. Weeds creep in over time. Things that should have been dealt with aren't dealt with. And unfortunately, it ends in disaster. Neglect rarely brings alarm. It's like this. Oh, you know, I see those thorns, they're kind of starting to encroach on my property. It's not that, I'll get it later. I have more important things that I should be attending to. Oh, I see those weeds. Yeah, they're kind of coming up the vines in my vineyard, but it'll be okay. I'll get to it later. More important things that need to be done. There's no big alarm that sounds. There's nothing that screams at us and says, do it now or there's gonna be trouble. Sometimes we get to go, Thomas or I or Pastor Bill, we get to go visit some other churches. And I'll say this, there's a lot of churches that don't look like our church. And what I mean by that is I'm not talking about the design in which we have. I'm not talking about the color of the carpet, or the color of the chairs, or the type of furniture that's in them. I'm referring to the condition of them. If you haven't been to many churches in your life, you'll realize that not every church puts a priority on taking care of things. Now here's the thing, you don't have to have all new stuff. You agree with that? But it can be clean, and it can be fixed, And it can work properly, absolutely. But sadly, there's churches that I visit, and they're dilapidated. I'm talking about everywhere you look, I'm adding up the cost. That's 100 bucks, that's 500 bucks, that's 300 bucks. Soon enough, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of maintenance that needs to be done. How does that happen? It's because little things like thorns and weeds, they don't sound a big alarm and say they need to be taken care of. They don't. But it's letting one thing slide here. Oh, it's not that big a deal. I have some other things that need to be tended to. So I'll just leave that alone. Won't take care of it now. Soon enough it builds up to where the best thing that could happen for that church is a good old fashioned fire and burn that thing down to the ground. And I wish I could tell you I was joking, but that's how bad it is in some places. Right out here in our foyer, you may have seen when he came in, there's a little emergency light that's left on. I don't know why it's on, but I can tell you this, you're not gonna come here Christmas Eve and it's gonna be on. Why? Because we're gonna fix it and take care of it so we don't have three, 400 things around the property that end up needing being fixed Absolutely. Because it gets out of control quick. It's easy just to let something like that slide and say it's not that big a deal, we'll get to it when we get to it. Soon enough you've got a hundred of those little things to do. So stay on top of things. Don't let the little things pile up. Unfortunately, the longer you neglect the field, the more difficult it is to get it back, to get it back to restore it. It's like this, if you've been out of the habit of being in church, It's real difficult getting back to being in the habit of going to church. You may think to yourself, oh, no, it's not. It is, I promise you, because you've already developed a schedule and a lifestyle of doing that, and now you have to uproot all those things and all those plans and all those tendencies that you're used to, to be here where you're supposed to be. You may say, well, I've just neglected my prayer life a little bit. You used to pray every day, make it a priority. However, the thorns have come in, the weeds have come in, the wall's been broken down. And I'll tell you this, if it's been like that for some time, it's going to take a long time to get your prayer life back to where it used to be. Try to read your Bible after you haven't for a long time. Oh, you're going to struggle. It's not as easy getting back on the horse as it is getting off the horse. So, life is sustained by consistency. Everything tends to die. Steady attention is better than short-term passion. We all probably have heard about a deadbeat dad over at some point in time where The dad never shows up, maybe he's never part of a child's life, and instead of showing up regularly for the child, they wanna do big things for him from time to time. So they may only see the kid once or twice a month, sadly. This is the world which we live in today. And so whenever they see the kid once or twice a month, they'll bring a big present to him. It's about consistency, not about short bursts of effort and passion. How do you think that relationship between that father and that child is going to work? It's not. Absolutely not. It's like two people who at one time were happily in love, but over time have drifted apart because they've neglected their marriage. And then in a moment of passion on Valentine's Day, the husband goes out and buys a bunch of gifts and buys a nice new necklace with a big shiny diamond in it and maybe some fancy jewelry and buys some roses and has to go and find where they actually sell flowers now because it's been so long. And thinking that if I just go ahead and do that and lay it on real thick and real heavy on Valentine's Day, that's gonna save my marriage. I'm sorry, it's not. Because there's something to be said about consistency over time, rather than short bursts of passionate effort. How do we know this? Well, it's like out here in the property, in these rocks out here, in the parking lot, they are constantly growing weeds. I can tell you that if you take the weed killer and you go out there and you spray them, when they just start coming up, it's very easy. However, if you start letting the weeds grow up and they're ankle high or higher, you spray the weed killer on there, what happens? They die, but they're still there. And then you got to go with a weed whacker, weed eater, whatever it is, and try to knock them down. It takes way more effort than just staying on top of it from the beginning. So consistency is what really matters. A pastor told me one time, he was talking to me about counseling. He was no pastor, I don't think, here at church. I really can't remember who it was. But this pastor told me that in his ministry, he had a husband of one of his members. The husband called at like one o'clock in the morning. The pastor woke up out of his sleep and answered the phone. And I guess the husband and wife had been fighting all night long. And he said, Pastor! If you don't come over here right now, my marriage is going to be over! And the pastor, in his wisdom, said, How long have you been having trouble? He said, Oh, Pastor, we've been having trouble for ten years. And the pastor said, Okay, well, If you've been having trouble for 10 years, there's no way that I'm gonna fix it in an hour or two of being over there. So I'll see you at eight o'clock tomorrow morning in my office." Hung up the phone and went back to bed. Why? So many people want a magic wand, they think they've had trouble for so long and they've neglected things in their life. They've neglected fields that God has given them and they think in a short amount of effort they can get it back to where it was all those years ago. That's not true. It's gonna take a concentrated time of a lot of effort to get that back to where it should be. Apply that to your marriage, to your relationship with your children, to friendships, to ministries. You apply it. It fits right there. Watchfulness has no finish line. Sadly, it's not like we can get something to a place it should be and we can leave it alone. For the rest of your life, you're gonna have to maintain the field in which God has given you. For your whole life. The only finish line you have is death. How encouraging is that tonight? Here's the thing, you don't need to ruin your life by doing something stupid. Some people think, well, if I just don't fall off the rails, my life's gonna be okay, my marriage is gonna be okay, my ministry, my reputation, my testimony for Christ, it's gonna be okay. If I just don't do something stupid and fail horribly, but I'll tell you this, you can ruin your life in the same way just by neglect. You can ruin your life in the same way just by doing nothing. Sometimes doing nothing is just as bad. There was a preacher a while ago that fell into sin. committed adultery, and another preacher in the area made this statement about what went on. He didn't know all the details about what happened, but he made this statement. Somewhere along the line, he got away from the Bible. He got away from the book. Somewhere along the line, he began to neglect some things that he shouldn't have. Oh my goodness, a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ just doesn't go out and do something like that overnight. It happens. Over a long period of time, weeds creeping in, thorns creeping in, the walls of protection falling down. Ongoing care is the price of staying alive. I like that Solomon noted he didn't just make an observation, here's a field and here is what happened to it. But he actually said, the sawful man, the man void of understanding, give some clarity to the situation. Because it wasn't that this man here simply didn't have the means to take care of that field. It wasn't as if he had a bad accident. and he became handicapped and could no longer go in there and tend to the field like he should. It wasn't that he was financially so poor that he maybe couldn't have hired somebody to take care of it. It all came down to he just didn't do it. And he just didn't want to do it. If God's given you a field in your life, whatever it may be, He has not given it to you and not given you the means to maintain it. I'm gonna say that again. If God has given you a field in your life, He will not give you a field without the means to maintain it. And so if that field of ministry, whatever it may be, that has been overgrown, if that is true of you and your life, it can only be because you're neglecting it. You say, well, I've got all these other priorities. I've got other things that are important. I've got a job and I've got this and I'm busy. You're not focusing on what's important. It's what God gave you to do. What does your field look like? It reveals your priorities. We all talk a big talk. We say, oh, we've got it under control. But when we walk by your field, how does it look? We walk by your marriage, how does it look? We walk by your relationships, how does it look? When we walk by that ministry God gave you, how does it look? What's sad is that this field has the possibility to make a difference. That field has all the potential in the world. It has potential to have vines on it that produce grapes. that produce food and produce beverage and also produce a source of income, but yet it's wasted, absolutely wasted. And if God has given you a field, are you cultivating it for something that's gonna give eternal gain? Or are you letting the thorns and the weeds take over what God has given you? What's amazing about this is the tragedy of this story is not rebellion. It's not this lawful man doing anything radical and crazy and totally, totally against God. The tragedy of this story is simple neglect. Because everything drifts, disorder slowly advances, and life only sustains where attention persists. So the question tonight is not what field have you destroyed, but what field in your life have you quit tending? May we pray. Lord, thank you again for this passage. If you would like to know more about the Lord Jesus Christ, you may contact us at the church website, gospelbaptistchurch.com, or you can go to Facebook and type in Gospel Baptist Church, Bonita Springs, Florida. Also, you could call the church office at 239-947-1285. Thank you and God bless.