Romans 12:11

Romans 12:11

The Results of Slothfulness.

I. We frequently meet people who, on extraordinary occasions, or stimulated by some special inspiration, will exert much diligence and take great pains to produce something excellent and commendable, but who at all other times are slatternly and indolent, caring nothing, so long as a duty be performed, how slovenly may be the performance. It is against such a temper as this that our text directs its emphasis. You are not to be slothful in business in any business whatever. Let us prevail upon men to be industrious, and we shall have called out the powers and formed the habits which religion most tasks in its commencement and demands in its progress. The industrious man, no matter what lawful objects have occupied his industry, is comparatively the most likely man to receive the gospel, and certainly the fittest, when it has once been received, for its peculiar and ever-pressing requirements. Every man takes a step towards piety who escapes from a habit of sloth.

II. God may be served through the various occupations of life, as well as through the more special institutions of religion. It needs only that a man go to his daily toil in simple obedience to the will of his Maker, and he is as piously employed, aye, and is doing as much towards securing for himself the higher recompenses of eternity, as when he spends an hour in prayer or joins himself gladly to the Sabbath-day gathering. The businesses of life are as so many Divine institutions, and if prosecuted in a spirit of submission to God and with an eye to His glory, they are the businesses of eternity, through which the soul grows in grace, and lasting glory is secured. If men are but fervent in spirit, if, that is, they always carry with them a religious tone and temper, then they are serving the Lord, through their being not slothful in business.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1793.