MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 14:23
THE PROFIT OF LABOUR
1. The profit of social honour. It is both natural and right that a man should desire the respect and good-will of those around him. Nothing is more certain than that he who lives without working in some form or another, either for himself or for others, will not receive this reward. Those who are poor, and do nothing, sink into beggary and consequent dishonour; those who are rich, and have nothing to do—or rather, who do nothing—are not held in honour, either in life or after death. “Pray, sir, of what disease did your brother die?” said the Marquis Spinola one day to Sir Horace Vere. “He died, sir,” was the answer, “of having nothing to do.” “Alas!” said Spinola, “that is enough to kill any general of us all.” Honour cannot come from idleness, but labour brings not only honour while living, but gives us a title to be regarded with respect after we have left the world. Of no man who has lived to any purpose can it ever be said that he died of having nothing to do.
2. The profit of bodily health. A body which does not labour, either with brain or hand, is an easy prey to disease. The brain if used becomes strengthened for further use. The whole bodily frame is kept in health by wholesome work.
3. Profit to the moral nature. Labour calls for some form of self-sacrifice. It developes habits of painstaking and diligence which are helpful to a man’s moral nature. It helps the spiritual part of the man by helping the bodily, inasmuch as a strong and healthy body is the best instrument for a morally healthy soul.
4. The profit of material gain. In all free countries a man gets some wages for work. It may not be a fair remuneration, but there is some profit of this kind attached to it. There are, of course, exceptions to this proverb, as for instance, the labour of the man who devises evil in the former verse, or that of those whose poverty compels them to work, even to the injury of soul and body, for a miserable pittance which is not worthy the name of wages. Such, alas, is the lot of many even in our own country. The antithesis of this proverb, simply states that talk will not do instead of work. When men do nothing but talk, their talk is certain to be of that worthless kind condemned in chapter Proverbs 10:19 (See Homiletics on page 168).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Get leave to work
In this world—’tis the best you get at all;
For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts
Than man in benediction. God says “Sweat
For foreheads,” men say “Crowns” and so we are crowned,
Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel
Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work, get work;
Be sure ’tis better than what you work to get.
Be sure, no earnest work
Of any honest creature, howbeit weak,
Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much,
It is not gathered as a grain of sand,
To enlarge the sum of human action used
For carrying out God’s end.
Mrs. Browning.
There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness in work. Where he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so mammonish, mean, is in communication with nature: the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to nature’s appointments and regulations, which are truth. The latest gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. “Know thyself:” long enough has that poor self of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to “know” it, I believe! Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual; know what thou can’st work at; and work at it, like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan. It has been written, “an endless significance lies in work,” a man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle and foul unwholesome desert thereby. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, as of every man: but he bends himself with free valour against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and sour smoke itself thereby is made bright blessed flame?—Carlyle.
Industry need not wish; and he that lives upon hopes will die fasting. There are no gains without pains, then help hands, for I have no lands, or, if I have, they are smartly taxed. He that hath a trade hath an estate, and he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honour; but then the trade must be worked at, and the calling followed, or neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay our taxes.—Franklin.
He that labours is tempted by one devil; he that is idle by a thousand. Italian Proverb.
As in religion, it is not the man who speaks but the man who does that gives proof of his sincerity; so in earthly business, it is not the man who talks fluently, and lays down plausible schemes of business, but the man who labours and does all his work that has reason to expect the blessing of Providence. Those that wear their working instruments in their tongues are always the most useless, and sometimes the most hurtful members of society.—Lawson.
A busy tongue makes idle hands. If the mouth will be heard, the noisy loom must stop; and he who prefers the sound of his tongue to that of his shuttle, had need at the same time be a man who prefers talk to meat, hunger to fulness, starvation to plenty.—Wardlaw.
Rich beyond conception is the profit of spiritual labour (chap. Proverbs 10:16). “The Son of Man gives to the labourer enduring meat. The violent take the kingdom of heaven by force. The labour of love God is not unrighteous to forget” (John 6:27; Hebrews 6:10). But the talk of the lips gives husks, not bread. Where there are only shallow conceptions of the Gospel, and no experimental enjoyment of Christian establishment, it is “all running out in noise.” Says Henry: “There is no instruction because there is no ‘good treasure within’ (Matthew 12:35). “What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another?” is a searching question (Luke 24:17). Ministers, doctrines, the externals, circumstantials, disputations on religion—all may be the mere skirts and borders of the great subject, utterly remote from the heart and vitals.… A religious tongue without a godly heart tendeth only to penury.—Bridges.
This is a difficult sentence. We have found it hard to vindicate its sense. The grammar is all obvious, and on that very account the reading is singularly fixed. But “all labour” is anything else than “profitable;” and the “talk of the lips” (chap. Proverbs 31:26) is one of the grandest ways of doing good among men. We understand it in a religious sense. All these proverbs might be worldly maxims, some of them actually in use; all of them with a show of wisdom; some of them utterly unsound; but all of them, when adopted by the Holy Ghost, and turned in the direction of the Gospel, true, in their religious aspect. So, now, in this peculiar instance, “all labour” might seem to promise well among the thrifty, but sometimes ruins men, even in this world, and is sure to ruin them, if worldly, in the world to come. But now, as a religious maxim, it is without exception. “All labour” of a pious kind is marked, and will be gloriously rewarded out of the books of the Almighty. “All labour” of the impenitent, for their soul’s salvation, has “profit;” literally, something over. It brings them nearer. If continued long enough, it will bring them in; that is, if it be honest (Hebrews 11:6); while “the talk of the lips,” or, possibly, “an affair of the lips,” that is, mere intention, does “only” mischief. Mark the balance between “all” and “only.” Seeking is “all” of it an advance. Intending is “only” a retreat. One gains a step, the other loses one. Starting up actually to work, if honest, is an advance towards wealth; while intention, which is but an affair of the lips, tends only to make us poor indeed.—Miller.
When God gave man this curse, in labour thou shalt eat, he gave labour this blessing, to increase and multiply. It is a plant that prospereth in any soil, it is a seed that taketh well in any ground. For the labourer’s hire is never kept back by God … Talking is not truly labour, the labour is rather to hold one’s peace. According as St. Ambrose speaketh “It is a harder thing to know how to be silent than how to speak. For I know many to speak, when they know not how to hold their peace.” But it is a rare thing for any man to hold his peace, when to speak no way doth profit him. But no labour is so well spared as this, and sitting still is nowhere so commendable as in the lips.—Jermin.
They that painfully and conscientiously employ themselves in any vocation, how base and contemptible soever it seem to be, are in the Lord’s work, and Him they serve, as the apostle speaketh even of bondmen, and is it possible that His workmen shall work without wages or sufficient allowance? He reproveth those men which neglect to give to the hireling his recompense for his travail, or fail in due time to discharge it, and shall we think then that He will be careless of His own servants Himself? They have God’s word for their security that they shall not be unprovided of so much as is expedient for them. If He say once that in all labour there is profit, they shall never have cause to contradict Him.—Dod.
It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy; and the two cannot be separated with impunity.—Ruskin.