Posted on 03/19/2022 8:49:24 PM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing. Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Proverbs 20:4).
This man is just looking for a reason to be lazy, “therefore, shall he beg in harvest.” Now, sometimes it isn’t any fun to get out there in the springtime and plow that hard ground. You just can’t wait for that 60-70-degree weather—it’ll be too late. That old Farmer’s Almanac will tell you when to get out there and plow that seed and you’d better get out there. If you want the crop to come up right and have the best possible conditions and the most rain—there is a good time to plant corn and there is the best time to plant beans—and that is when you need to do it. You have to do it at the right time, whether it is cold, or it is warm. Farming is not a lazy man’s calling.
“The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold,” if a lazy man is looking for a reason, any reason is good enough for them.
“. . . therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing,” this is a good soul-winning text. Some personal workers will not plow in the cold. That certainly applies to the folks that you will be trying to reach. Now, I really that not everyone is going to be warm toward you. But the faithful soul-winner is still to plow and plant seed in those men’s hearts. Now, it can’t always be helped. If a person flat out says no to you and is not interested, well, you can always ask them if you can help them carry their groceries. You can always try to break down that wall that is built up so that you can plant some seeds of faith.
The coldness may turn warm one day and you will be able to plant that seed—and it will germinate.
“The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing” that is the Bible principle, “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat” (II Thessalonians 3:10).
Of course, that is not true in America. If a man refuses to work here they will put them on the welfare plantation and the taxpayers can pay for them.
In verse 4, it is all about character. Character is doing what is supposed to be done simply because it is the right thing to do. It is right for a man to feed his family, and himself—and not depend on someone else to do it. It is done because it is needed to be done, not because it is pleasurable, or you like to do it. Character produces the right results.
“Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water,” it is just hard to fathom. To get clear counseling from some people, it is like deep water. It takes a man of understanding to draw it out. Sometimes it is hard to understand, and even harder to apply. Bible study can be like that sometimes and that may be because we jump into it without acknowledging our need for spiritual help from the Author of the Book. It is the Holy Spirit’s ministry to shed light on the Word of God. What a unique opportunity we have to be able to go the Author of a Book and ask Him to help us understand what He has written. Some books are easy to understand, but we must ever recall that the Bible is “spiritually discerned.”
Maybe a man’s counsel is to do wrong, and a man of understanding will draw it out, or expose it to the light of day as we read in Revelation 2: “I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars” (Revelation 2:2). There are plenty of false apostles and preachers in the world today and sometimes the counsel from their heart is murky and dark in the sense that you cannot see what was going on and what their motives are. When they are tested by a “man of understanding” they are found to be untrue and their lies are exposed.
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