The three toes of Sloth Matthew 5:6, 25:14-30 Crossroads March 23, 2014 Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled Are you hungry. What are you hungry for Page 1 Set up against Hungering and thirsting for righteousness is Sloth Let me start with a story. Let s imagine that you work for me (I like this game!). In fact, you are my executive assistant in a company that is growing rapidly. I m the owner and I m interested in expanding overseas. To pull this off, I make plans to travel abroad and stay there until a new branch office gets established. I make all the arrangements to take my family and move to Europe. And I leave you in charge of the successful organization. I tell you that I will write you regularly and give you directions and instructions. I leave and you stay. Months pass. A flow of letters are mailed from Europe and received by you at the national headquarters. I spell out all my expectations. Finally, I return. I drive down to the office and see that there are all nice cars in the parking lot. It seems from first glance that everyone is where they are supposed to be. Then and I am stunned. In front of the building, grass and weeds have taken over. Some of the windows along the street are broken. I walk into the Receptionist s room. There are a pile of notes on her desk and at the moment, she is texting away on her phone and on her desk are what she will need to do her nails. I look around and notice some the wastebaskets are overflowing, it is obvious the effort made is one of just keeping up the bare minimum no one has really made much of an effort to strive for excellence even more alarming is that nobody seems concerned that the owner has just walked in the door and wants to speak to them. I asked where you, my executive assistant, were and someone in the crowded lounge area points down the hall and yells, Down there I think." I move in that direction and bump into you as you and our sales manager are finishing an Xbox game on a 60 inch flat screen TV.
I ask you to step into my office, which has been temporarily turned into a video Theater. "What in the world is going on?" "What do you mean?" "Well, look at this place! Didn t you get any of my letters?" "Letters? Oh yes! I got every one of them. As a matter of fact, we have had a letter study every Friday since you left. We have even divided the personnel into small groups to discuss many of the things you wrote. Some of the things you said were really interesting. You will be pleased to know that a few of us have actually committed to memory some of your sentences and paragraphs. One or two memorized an entire letter or two - Great stuff in those letters." Page 2 "OK. You got my letters. You studied them and meditated on them; discussed and even memorized them. But what did you do about them?" "Do? We didn t really do anything about them but rest assured your company is as healthy as we are!" Put most simply, Sloth is indifference toward what God has given us It is apathy toward what matters to God. Not caring about what God is cares about. It starts with indifference toward God. Not loving God with our whole hearts and lives, not caring about God in the every-day need of my own spiritual health and growth and well being as a follower of Jesus. It begins in me then it is not caring about the well being my neighbor. Not caring about what happens in our world. It is an un-responsive, held back, un-submitted, untransformed, un-changed, un-challenged, hunger-free life. Sloth is not just laziness. It can be business too. I can be the fastest 53 year old guy on a bicycle and be slothful I can be the wealthiest man around - and be slothful I can have a nice car and a beautiful house and a comfortable retirement and be slothful I can be busy and stressed and financially successful and be slothful I can go to church every Sunday and be slothful I can go to Bible studies and be slothful Sloth puts a name on our tension - if in the things that occupy my time, talent and resources I do not find the passion of God s heart - they lead me to sloth because I am not filled by God s passions but something else. But I cannot be hungry and thirsty for God s righteousness - and be slothful. Sloth distracts from everything that ultimately matters and directs us toward the pleassures of our world. It is escapism of the deadly sort. It saps our time and emotions, attention
and resources through distractions a favorite sport, a new pair of shoes, a business, obsession over our appearance, our bank accounts and homes while leaving little time for what God is passionate about The state of our relationship with him, being a follower of Jesus, marriage, family, our money, this community of faith, our world: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, providing a drink for the thirsty, taking care of the sick, visiting the imprisoned,. i We get distracted by too much zeal over petty matters that mean little or nothing to being a follower of Jesus. Page 3 Jeff Cook writes in The Deadly sins and the Beatitudes that, Nothing is so clearly modern, so clearly Western, as is sloth. Despite our fast-moving, success-worshiping, ulcer-ridden society, we invest our energies, [resources] and talents in what is trivial. Despite our frantic pace, our eyes are seldom focused on what is actually good. ii He goes on to say that sloth is content to aim us toward either apathy or fanaticism. All that matters is that the target [of our living] is of no Kingdom value. Our living becomes significant and meaningful according to our terms and the worlds definitions but rather meaningless to God s Kingdom. Sloth. The three toes of sloth Apathy indifference to what God is passionate about Distraction allowing the passions and pleasures of this world to hold my focus Self-indulgence defining life, success, significance, meaning in my own terms Recognizing sloth is the easy part. Sloth is in our sinful nature. We have a nature that wants to believe the deadly, life draining, deceptive lies about true, lasting, significant, successful, and meaningful life the lie that life is not found in the passions of God s heart but is found in the passions of my own The hard part is to challenge it to get hungry for God. This is what Jesus means when he says my disciple will die to himself, pick up his cross daily and follow me. Pastor Kyle Idleman says that the problem with dying and picking up a cross is that it is so daily. In 1 Corinthians 15:31 Paul writes I die daily. The antidote to sloth is to die daily to ourselves, pick up our cross and follow Jesus with the passion and life God has invested in us to seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness and then ALL will be added to us. The hard part is to allow God to re-train our hungers to seek what will truly satisfy. This morning s beatitude promises us, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled satisfied.
John Piper summed up our problem well with his statement, The weakness of our hunger for God is not because he is unsavoury, but because we keep ourselves stuffed with other things In Matthew 25 we read another story about a master going away and leaving his slaves with significant holdings to manage for him. To one he gives 5 talents, to another 2 and a third he gives one talent. The first two worked doubled what was left with them. The master says to each of them, well done good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share you master s happiness. Page 4 Let s stop there. I want to recognize a few things before going on. The first two shared their master s passion and responded by putting his investment in them to work. What they had been given was very significant. Some say a talent was the earnings of 20 years, some say the earnings of a life time, a talent was the price of a slave. The exact worth doesn t matter but it was of more value than a worthless slave would ever, ever hope to receive, it was the price of a life and the value of a life time. This comes as an undeserved and unexpected gifting that all who believe in Jesus are given. God s favor. Being made a son or a daughter. Eternal life. grace, mercy, love, joy, faith, and hope we take these gifts that God has invested in us and diligently multiply them into others by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving a drink to the thirsty, taking care of the sick, the orphans, and widows, visiting the imprisoned all of those who lack God s grace, mercy, love, joy, faith, and hope. That s what God is passionate about. You and the world. The end of their story is truly astounding. well done good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share you master s happiness. Come and share you master s happiness. The last thing a slave would ever believe he would live to hear, the unthinkable gift though I believe was the greatest, deepest most hidden hope is that he would share life equally with the master be elevated from a plastic cup to family, all that the master has his happiness, His goodness, His fulfillment, His satisfaction as a son or daughter and that s exactly what happens. The thing is that this gift is defined and determined on the masters terms not by the servant who can only respond to the master s passions. And that s what sloth drains away
Following the story The third slave buried the talent given to him. He tells the master that he buried it saying, I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you. The master replied, You wicked and lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers so that when I returned I would receive it back with interest. Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside in the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Page 5 This, the man knew what had had been given and entrusted with was very valuable. He feared losing it so he buried it. You know he buried it very, very carefully so that no one could tell it was there. He did that because he did not believe the master had a right to demand such a risk of life for his own purposes. He resented that the master considered everything the servant had was his own to use for his benefit. He resisted the lordship of his master even though the master had paid the price for his life. How many opportunities to invest ourselves for God have we buried? Because we resisted the Lordship of Christ over us? Because we have felt that God has no right to ask such a thing of us, that God is too demanding Because we believe that it is our life and God has no right to use it or what HE has given for his purposes and for his glory? So we take the immeasurable gift of God in our lives and burry it and go on living in such a way that no one can tell that it is there. Because of his belief about the master and his indifference toward the master s passion ends up losing the gift of the master and then even what he had prior to the master s entrusting life. Life within the favor of the masters house was taken from him and he was cast out. Those who neglect what God has entrusted end up away from the life of the master. It suggests that what you and I do now is of supreme value in God s eyes because of the supreme value of what we have been given. And God takes that life investment in you very seriously. We cannot wonder why we do not experience the God filling in life
we long for that is waiting for us the filling that is answered by the question what are you hungry for Hungering and thirsting for righteousness is about life being remade on God s terms and living for Him. Those who desire the right ways of God, a right soul, to those who hunger for life to be remade like a person starved of food and parched for water you will be filled. Page 6 Jesus did not say blessed are you who have been filled yet act like they are still hungry who do all the right things but inside are not hungry. Or blessed are those who have their junk in order. He said blessed are those who lack. Who hurt. Who are empty who need God and know it so they hunger and go in search of his food that fills... Who are willing to give it all up to know the filling passions of the giver of life. The one who doesn t like what is spread on God s table is the one that isn t hungry they are already full of other things. Only those who are alive can know hunger and thirst. Rejoice if you are hungry for more of God for you are alive. The dead don t care. We all fail. At best we find our lives and deepest places caught in cycles we wish we could break, and it is then that we prove, show that we are truly alive when we stand up, even after years of starvation and say there is more, more life in Christ than I am living I want the more God has offered I want his righteousness and not my own or the counterfeit righteousness that this world offers Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness those of us who limp away from sloth with deep aches and pains and struggles, who push into hunger for God knowing that a fire and a meal are waiting - will be blessed by God for only he has the power to fill. I hope you see by now that hungering and thirsting for righteousness leads to a life that fills it satisfies our deepest, greatest and most hidden hope for meaning and significance. It is found in being made right with God through the immeasurable gift of forgiveness and in Christ then dying to ourselves every day to live in God s passion for us, in us and through us. Sources: CEO Illustration: http://www.sermoncentral.com/illustrations/searchresults.asp?scripturebooka=matthew&scriptureverse=25:14-30 i Jeff Cook, The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes (Zondervan) pg 69
ii Jeff Cook, The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes (Zondervan) pg70 Page 7