Living Wise: The Eye of Wisdom

Proverbs 24:30-34
Cascades Fellowship CRC
June 3, 2002

In the Harry Potter series, there is this enigmatic character called “Mad-Eye

Moony.” Mad-Eye is the Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwartz, the

school of wizardry that Harry Potter attends. He is called Mad-Eye because he has this

magic eye that rolls around in its socket and allows him to see what is going on behind

him. His eye sees more than just what meets the eye. Now I know that this all sounds

like strange fodder for sermon material, but bear with me a bit.

At any rate, Mad-Eye apparently has gained his extensive knowledge on how to

combat the dark arts by testing his theories in the field – and not always with ringing

success. J.K. Rawlings describes him as a character with more than a few battle scars. In

one of his first classes of the year, Mad-Eye offers the single most important factor for

defending against the dark arts. In a voice rumbling with intensity he states “You must

maintain constant vigilance!” “Constant Vigilance” becomes Mad-Eye’s mantra

throughout the book for defending against the dark arts.

It seems to me, that Mad-Eye Moony is on to something. The idea of constant

vigilance can be applied far beyond the realm of combating the dark arts in the fictitious

world of Harry Potter. Although there is no real Mad-Eye Moony, his mantra should be

very real – particularly in the life of the Christian in defending against the darkness.

Up until this point in the Proverbs series I have been speaking mostly about how

to read the Book of Proverbs. Although I have included some practical application, by
and large I have been teaching on how to understand the Proverbs so that we get the most

out of them. And I have also continually encouraged all the members of this church to

have the Book of Proverbs as a regular part our reading diet. Why? Because much of the

wisdom we find elsewhere in the Bible is encapsulated in the concise verses of Proverbs.

This morning, we delve a little deeper into the sayings of the wise. We go beyond

how to read the Proverbs and think a bit about what the proverbs have to say to us

concerning our life before the face of God. Like Mad-Eye Moony, this morning we take

a lingering look at a passage in Proverbs so that we can see a bit more than what meets

the eye.

Our passage this morning is Proverbs 24:30-34 – a proverb that has almost a

“nursery rhyme” feel to it. We’ll begin our discussion with a quick review of the passage

and where it comes in the Book of Proverbs. Then we will consider the text in light of

some applications.

As you might recall from some of our previous studies, the table displayed behind

me is an overview of the structure of the Book of Proverbs. The red and blue lines

marking out the two major divisions of the book and then the letter color corresponding

to the speaker of the Proverbs. The center section shows the flow of Proverbs from

prologue to epilogue. Underneath that section is a description of the type of literary style

or device used in a particular section. Running underneath that is a description of whom

a particular Proverb is intended to address. By looking at our table, then, we can see that

the proverb we study this morning comes in the section known as the Words of the Wise.
It is general sayings – exhortations or warnings – intended for all to teach us about the

wise way to live.

What all this means practically is that the Proverb we study this morning has a
wide range of application on a particular subject. Now what would our subject be that
the proverb addresses? Well let’s take a moment to read Proverbs 24:30-34 and see if the
answer is forthcoming.
I went past the field of the sluggard,
past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment;
thorns had come up everywhere,
the ground was covered with weeds,
and the stone wall was in ruins.
I applied my heart to what I observed
and learned a lesson from what I saw:
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest—
and poverty will come on you like a bandit
and scarcity like an armed man.

John Calvin must have loved this Proverb. I can imagine he quoted it often to his

students. Calvin held that the two primary afflictions of mankind were pride and sloth.

Our pride estranges us from God, our sloth works to keep us estranged. This proverb is

all about sloth. Okay, great – what is sloth?

Well let me begin by saying that we aren’t talking about some goofy little mammal

found in the tropics that moves at the blazing speed of ten feet per minute. Certainly this

is one type of sloth, but is not what this passage has in mind. A working definition for

the sloth this proverb addresses is habitual idleness. Another way to think of sloth is a

profound avoidance of doing what we should by doing something else in its place. If

sloth is too antiquated a word and requires too many mental gymnastics let me offer

another word which comes close to fitting the bill – laziness.

 This proverb is about what the wise man saw when he looked past the thorns and

thistles in the field to what caused such disrepair. He carefully considered what he saw

and then with the eye of wisdom, his mind penetrated the through to the root of the

problem: a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands and boom, disaster.

Let’s take a moment to apply this proverb to three concentric spheres of influence in our

lives. We will begin with the inner-most sphere and work our way out.

Our first sphere is our inner-life – that life we live on the inside that isn’t visible to

the casual passer-by. One of the beauties of the inner-life is that it is just that: inner.

Jeremiah laments “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure, who can

understand it?” To which the Lord answers, “I the LORD search the heart and examine

the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds

deserve.”

That none, save God, can see the heart – that inner-person – beyond what we

reveal means that the person walking by most likely won’t see the breaches in our walls

and the weeds and briars growing amok. Our secrets, for the most part, can remain secret

from prying eyes – or so we like to think. We have already learned in this series about

the insidious nature of sin. But the real problem is not whether someone else sees our

thorns; it is that they are always visible to our God. He sees our wrecked vineyard and he

knows the cause –

…a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and
barrenness of spirit comes on you like a thief.
 How do our lives get so out of whack and God get shuffled to a Sunday – only

player? Why do we continue to struggle against that pet sin, that issue of forgiveness,

that persistent failure of obedience? In a word – sloth. We fill our lives with so much

stuff that we push the really important things out. Instead of spending time feeding our

spirits on the Word of God, we are busy feeding our appetites for entertainment with

television, with internet, with computer games, with sports, you name it. Like the hare,

we keep finding diversions along the race course and it costs us.

Bill Hybels wrote a book called “Too Busy Not to Pray.” And he’s right. Today,

more than ever before, we have to cut out sacred space in our life every day and give it

priority above everything else. Our bent, however, is to do the opposite. Instead of doing

what we know we should do, we find other things to occupy us and then lament that we

just don’t have the time. Soon, the house we were building on the Rock becomes the

hovel on the Rock. The foundation is as good as ever, but the material we are building

with is dry-rotted. Our lack of prayer and study has left our spirit arid and stale.

There is only one way to avoid having the walls of our spirit disintegrate or thorns

and thistles growing where there should be a thriving vineyard – constant vigilance. We

must be a people dedicated to prayer. We must be a people committed to studying God’s

Word. There is no substitute – not even catechism. Catechism is meant to be a tool to

prepare us for a lifetime of reading the Scriptures, not a once for all inoculation against

spirit rot. Rather than sluff off our times of prayer until the Sunday morning

congregational prayer, let’s turn off the tube and spend a little time talking with God.

Instead of saying “I’ll read two days worth tomorrow” or “three days worth” the day
after, let’s set a time for daily reading and no excuses. Don’t give up that sacred moment

for anything – not NASCAR, not a tee-time, not our garden, not even sleep. The truly

wise person knows that man doesn’t live by bread, by sleep, by exercise, by money, or by

anything else. He lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

The second sphere is closely connected to the first. It is the sphere of the family.

We live in an age of the erosion of the family. An age where the ties that bind us together

are no longer binding and a family is more defined by its dysfunctions rather than its

strengths. Interestingly enough, when one studies pastoral care, he is taught to look at the

family as a system and then to diagnose the peculiar weaknesses of the system. The

working assumption for most counseling – including pastoral care – is that dysfuntion is a

part of every family to some degree. And the impact this has on the spirituality of people

cannot be overstated.

When you look throughout the Scriptures, one of the things that you notice is that

the primary teacher of faith was the family. The excitement of knowing God, a zeal for

his Word and the knowledge of how to worship and live before God every single day was

passed on by the family, generation after generation. Parents were to rehearse the story of

God’s deliverance with their children. In every activity of life they were to be thinking

about the God who delivered them.

One of the primary contributors to the break down of the family is the very

busyness that distracts us from God in our everyday life. If the parents cannot find the

time to read and to pray, what are the chances that the children will? If the parents are

not rehearsing the stories of faith with the children, what are the chances they will get to
know them? And without a commonly held faith to draw the family together, what is to

keep the parents and the children from straying off into their own interests?

In our day the generation gap is more like a chasm. It seems that parents and

children hardly speak the same language. How did we get like this?

… a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and
meagerness of spirit will come on you and your family like dangerous
criminal.

Let me assure you, I am not trying to be simplistic here – rather I am being realistic.

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not

depart from it.” In other words, if as parents we are conscientious in teaching our

children to walk with the Lord – teaching them the way of faith in Jesus Christ – the most

probable result will be that the child will grow into a faithful adult.

We have a number of young families in this church, my own included. So the

words I say now, I say with fear and trembling. One of the unfortunate consequences of

the nearly frantic pace of our society is that the academic training of our children gets left

up to the schools – be they public, private or Christian. And their spiritual training gets

left up to the church.

But in Deuteronomy 6, the parents are charged with the task of passing on the faith

of the fathers on to the children. The major feasts and holidays of the Hebrew faith –

including the Passover – were family events. In the Book of Acts, the early church

gathered in homes, sharing meals and the teaching of the apostles. All this to point out

that as parents, if we are going to keep our families together, we need to be active in

promoting faith in Jesus Christ in the lives of our children – regardless of age.
 Parents, if you are not now praying with your children, start today. If you are not

having a time of devotion with your children – what used to be called the family altar –

start today. If you are not sharing your faith with your children and asking them about

theirs – start today. I cannot stress the importance that these three seemingly minor

activities have on the spiritual formation of our children. And where there is a common

faith there is a bond that goes beyond blood, a bond strong enough to keep our families

together.

The final sphere of influence I would like to consider this morning is the church.

Out of the three spheres that I have talked about this morning, the church is the one most

susceptible to scrutiny. If our vineyard wall is in disrepair, it will be evident to any that

pass through. If we have let brambles and thorns flourish instead of cultivating a fruitful

harvest, it will be clear to any who pass through our doors. And the discerning eye will

be able to see the root of the problem.

…a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands and poverty will
come upon us like bandit and scarcity like an armed man.

People of God, there is only one way to keep the vineyard wall from becoming

delapidated, only one way to keep the thorns and weeds at bay – constant vigilance. We

must never grow weary of doing good. It is when we become complacent, when we

become satisfied with our worship, our size, our educational programs, our preaching that

we face the greatest danger. It is when we think we have given enough, done enough –

when we think it is time for someone else to step up to the plate so that we can rest – that

the slide into destitution begins. We must not cease making every effort to tell people the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is when we believe that it is the responsibility of someone else

to tell our neighbor about Jesus Christ that the thorns and thistles begin to appear. We

must never forsake the gathering together. It is when we begin to consider gathering

together with the elect as one option among many that scarcity comes and poverty

threatens.

Let me take a moment here to say something that’s on my heart. The summer time

is coming up – a time when people get scattered to the winds. Let me plead with you to

make every effort to be here on Sunday mornings. I say this for no other reason than my

concern for you. I know that I am not the greatest preacher in the world, but I have every

confidence in the power of God’s Word to shape and change lives. Where my preaching

is weak, the power of the Spirit is strong. Don’t miss any opportunity to have the Word

implanted.

In the final analysis, the faithful life before the face of God is lived by constant

vigilance. Nothing else will do, regardless of the sphere of influence you are talking

about. It is the only way to live wisely.