MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Proverbs 24:30-34
THE SLUGGARD’S VINEYARD
I. We have here a precious possession in the hands of an unworthy proprietor. A vineyard is not a heritage of little or no value—if rightly cared for and cultivated it will yield to its owner the means of obtaining an honest living, and, it may be, put him in possession of wealth. Many a toiling, struggling man without an inch of ground on God’s earth to call his own would feel as if he had nothing left to desire if he had such a barrier between himself and poverty, and would joyfully toil from dawn to sunset to make the best of that which God’s providence had entrusted to him. But here is property which would be prized and cultivated by many in the hands of one who neglects and wastes it. The picture of our text is a parabolic representation of what is before our eyes every day. A vineyard of bodily strength is given to a man who by dissipation breaks down its wall and invites disease to enter. A vineyard of opportunities is inherited by a slothful youth who is too indolent and careless to improve them. The vineyard of a vast fortune or of a position of great influence is entrusted to one who is “void of understanding”—who does not realise his responsibility to God or to men.
II. We have man, by neglecting to use God’s gifts, limiting God’s power to bless him. It was God’s purpose that this vineyard should bring forth better things than thorns and nettles. He desired to see it covered with choice vines, whose branches should be loaded with clusters of refreshing fruit. But this could not be unless man would be a co-worker with Him. God did his part. The rain watered the soil, the sun shone upon it, but man refused to dig and plant, to weed and cultivate. And by withholding his power to labour he limited God’s power to bless. Men do the same in other fields of labour, and in connection with other opportunities of receiving the Divine blessing. Many good gifts come alike to the slothful and to the industrious man—to him who diligently “keeps” his vineyard and to him who neglects it. God makes His sun to shine, and sends His rain upon the fields of both. But in the one case sun and rain find a soil prepared to receive the full benefit of the blessings they can give, and in the other they can only strengthen the hold of the weeds upon the earth, and so increase the unfruitfulness of the vineyard. So men often limit God’s power to bless them by His providence. Opportunities are given to them of bringing great blessings upon themselves or upon others, but only on condition that they labour earnestly and diligently at some work which God gives them to do. They may be called only to the special cultivation of their own intellectual and spiritual powers, or they may also be in a position to transform others from weeds in the social and moral vineyard into plants of beauty and trees yielding fruit. But whether the field open to them is a wide one, or comparatively narrow, all God’s willingness to give the increase will be of no avail if they refuse to till the ground and sow the seed.
III. We have a swift and sure-footed avenger advancing to awaken the slothful sleeper. That slumber, though long and deep, will not go on for ever. It would indeed be unjust to the active and industrious man if the slothful never felt the consequences of his indolence. But this would be contrary to the laws by which God governs the world. One of these laws is, that bodily want, or intellectual or spiritual beggary, will in due time overtake him who neglects to exercise the faculties and capabilities which God has given him to enrich every part of his nature.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
This is a picture of sloth. At the same time it is a picture of sloth under attacks upon our faith. The world moves on, and, in our laziness, our garden gets all choked with new dogmas against the gospel. The writer has already said that we are not to yield to “them that are given to change” (Proverbs 24:21). He has also said that we are not to answer them with deceit (Proverbs 24:23): and, now, what remains? Why, that we baffle them, that we work as hard as they do. I know no proverb more useful for the men of our times. We lie upon our lees till we think philosophy a sort of wickedness; till we think quiet under its advances a sort of Christian faith. We let science work on, till, by sap and mine, it is near our citadel. Great bodies of learned work are built up while the Church sleeps. If she fights, it is with a sort of chicane, with the gongs and bright paper, like a Chinese troop; when duty plainly is, to work up abreast of science. If the Church has more light, she must expect more contest. If she has better arms, she must expect more battles; with more mind, of course more to oppose; otherwise she has less to do than less capable believers. The world’s science must be met by the Church’s science, and new, sturdy brambles in her prolific fields must be ploughed under by improved implements. Otherwise, old-time arguments, and a sort of a chicane of a retort; responses like those of women, rather intended to say No than to be an actual reply, become indicative of a sluggard-Church, and of a garden cumbered like that before us. Slothful, literally sluggard man. Man is here the better sort of man (see Miller’s comment of Proverbs 24:5); in the last clause it is “a common man.” The first has a field, the other a vineyard. All classes of men are bound to read up and get rid of occasions for cavil.… “The wall;” necessary to keep a church at all. Let scientists trample in upon the vineyard with nothing but a few old clothes to scare them, and presently we will have no Church whatever. Not “stone wall” (E. V.), but “the wall, as to its stones,” “pulled down.” It will not slowly crumble, but interested parties will help it when it begins to totter. “I saw, or looked.” Seeing such things requires an effort. Not the slothful man’s business alone! but mine! I am sufficiently like him. A vineyard with brambles, like that of Geneva, or England, or that of the cis-Atlantic Socinian States, is a picture for all mankind.… “Come, etc.,” “sauntering along,” Hithpael of walk. “Armed man.” Both these descriptions mean
(1) slowness, and
(2) certainty;
(1) unobserved ease of gait; but,
(2) doomlike certainty in coming. A Church that enjoys her ease may super-eminently prosper. Her foe may be behind the hill, and her doom may be sauntering noiselessly up, but their coming is as certain as the dawn.… A “little sleep” more, and the thing has been actually achieved.—Miller.
Let us learn from the scene described:
1. How gradual may be the approaches of the evils of sloth, while, at the same time, they are irresistible in the end. This is the lesson of the thirty-fourth verse. The traveller approaches by degrees. When comparatively at a distance, he appears harmless; but, when he has advanced a certain length, he is discovered to be “an armed man,”—all resistance to whom is too late, and consequently vain. Famine, though gaunt, is irresistibly mighty. Who can stand before it? Not the man of habitual sloth. The very habit has the more thoroughly incapacitated him for plucking up any spirit to ward off the final ravages of the frightful enemy. He succumbs, sinks, and dies.—
2. Our souls are committed by God to our own spiritual cultivation. This is no sinecure. They will not thrive themselves. If we would have them “as a watered garden, and as a field which the Lord hath blessed,” we must apply spiritual activity and labour, to stock them with the appropriate graces, affections, and virtues, and to promote the growth and productiveness of them all. We must sow the seed, and seek by prayer the showers of the Divine blessing—the promised influences of the Divine Spirit. We must watch over the germination, the springing, the growth, and the fructifying of the seed. Without this all will be stunted and sterile. The noxious and unsightly weeds of sin will spring and luxuriate, and overspread the soil; all growing that ought not to grow, and nothing growing that should. Let parents apply the principle to the spiritual instruction of their children. Your families are as vineyards committed to your care and culture. Imagine not that, when left to themselves, they will spontaneously yield good fruit. The experience of all generations reads you an opposite lesson. You must enclose; you must dig, and sow, and water, and watch, and protect the springing blade, till it comes to the ear, and the full corn in the ear. You must train from their earliest germs your tender plants, and guard, and support, and prune them, and clear and manure the soil around them. The incessant care of both parents must be bestowed upon this; and all little enough. They must look for the help and for the blessing of God. O see to it, that the verses before us be not a just description of any of your families—from your parental negligence, indifference, and sloth. Let every family be as a sacred enclosure for God; fenced in from the blasts and blights of the world, where the “plants of his right hand’s planting” are reared from the seed, for future productiveness.—Wardlaw.
Proverbs 24:32. The owner did nothing for the farm, and the farm did nothing for the owner. But even this neglected spot did something for the passing wayfarer, who had an observant eye and a thoughtful mind. Even the sluggard’s garden brought forth fruit, but not for the sluggard’s benefit. The diligent man reaped, and carried off the only harvest that it bore—a warning. The owner received nothing from it; and the onlooker “received instruction”.… People complain that they have few opportunities and means of instruction. Here is one school open to all. Here is a school-master who charges no fee. If we are ourselves diligent, we may gather riches even in a sluggard’s garden. He who knows how to turn the folly of his neighbours into wisdom for himself, cannot excuse defective attainments by alleging a scarcity of the raw material.—Arnot.