Does Working Hard Matter?: Proverbs 12:1-28

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey, good morning everybody. Oh talent, yes, wow? Did you ever do that low ranger? Yes? Yes, so glad to the Bible Guys. I'm Chris. This is Jeff and we are here today. And clearly he's the most talented of the two of us are here, yes. And uh and Seymour movies and the better looking and what what else can draw better? Come on? Mand that doesn't feel good? Stage? One time? We're on stage one time when I first got hired, and you know, he gives me a hard time, like behind the scenes. All the time the time, and I'm my love language. We're on the stage or I said something like, oh body want to marry you or something and he goes, oh, that was hurtful, Chris. So anyway, and I was like what I was like, you're going to take the high road. Sometimes it's fun because you know, I've developed that that reputation that just dig and dig and dig everybody that I love. I just kind of poked fun at and you know, don't take myself too seriously and whatever. So yeah, well you did it publicly. But on that one, on that one, what what I like to do on occasion is because that reputation is dig dig dig dig dig. Then when I have a sense that somebody's working hard to dig at me, sometimes I'll just give it to you. And it's like pulling the rug out from under me because you're expecting this two way banter thing, and say you go oh, and then everybody goes, oh, poor Chap Right, Chris, why is he so mean? He's let's take all these things. He's better at Monday and he woke up all grumpy. All right, Well, hey, there's a segment today that says it's really good. I'm so good, I'm super good at move. There's a segment that says winter stories. This is what Desiree wrote. She said, now that Thanksgiving is behind us, we've officially entered December, we can talk about Christmas. Tell us a funny story. About Christmas, or about a time when Christmas preparations went horribly wrong. Hey, do you allow Christmas music before Thanksgiving? Yes? I love Christmas music, but I don't allow Christmas decorations. Don't allow it. Yes, it's forbidden. You're the lion tamer in your cage. Well you forbid. Well, here's the thing the women in your house to put up Christmas. No Thanksgiving music. So I like to think that. That Christmas kind of worship music. But yeah, oh jeez, that's that's all that Christmas is that Christian music stuff that's all the time. Whenever you get in Liz's car. Yeah right, that's right, it is it is. Christmas music sets the tone for Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving? Yes for me, oh okay. Yeah, I think it's it. It feels holidays. Yeah, we kind of have a family thing where we really resist turning on Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving. Yeah. I do that with my lights, with your lights, lights, lights can't be turned on Christmas tree, you can't go up before then. Okay, so all right, so here you go. So we're telling winter stories. Yeah, so I got one real quick, Okay, go ahead. My my mom made ravioli every Christmas or mannicotti or spaghetti. I never knew, by the way that people didn't do this because my whole, my whole town and Youngstown is all Italian. I mean it's really like heavy Italian. You can make Italian jokes from the from the stage and people, the whole crowd is a lot. Didn't you ever watch Christmas movies? You never noticed that. It was always like roast ham and turkey. It wasn't Manicotti and I as nice moves as you watch. Dude. I guess I just because like movies are your north star. It never paid attention. I never paid attention to those things. Okay, so I guess I just never understood it's. A wonderful life and they're all sitting there on there eating their lasagna, is right. Yeah, that's that's really it's a ridiculous thought. It is a ridiculous thought. But I was only eighteen. I went to college and we were sharing like favorite meals, and I was like, doesn't everybody have what are you talking about? And I said those are those? Are? Those are Thanksgiving items? And they're like, yeah, they're both. And I was like, oh, I had no idea. So anyway, my mom made homemade ravioli and we're talking like with. Flour and water. It was like a one day, twenty four hour like labor of love. And she made this three pound bowl and you know, she put the ravioli in there, and then a layer of sauce, another reveoli layer sauce, layer sauce. Then she put cheese on it. This is massive bowl. She sits in the middle of the table. She's let's let's go downstairs and grab everybody. So we go downstairs to the big family room area, gathering area. Hey, everybody, dinner served. We come back upstairs and my dog is standing on the table with a snout and the raviolis and he's been eating for like six seven minutes. That's fantastic. He is going to town like this. Literally, good guy. And it must have been good. Oh my gosh, he got through an entire layer. Of course, my mom busted out crying. We all laughed, and then we realized it wasn't funny. And then my mom had no choice but to scrape off the first layer and then to add more sauce than and we ate it. Okay, we all ate it. Yeah. Well you can't waste you know, three days worth of work. Yeah. So wow, there you go. That's something. That's my Christmas story. That is really something. Yeah. So it seems to me like if you're ever looking for a new Christmas theme for you know, because you're part of the creative team looking for it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you could do like a very Mafia Christmas. Oh yeah, Mafia Christmas. Sure, yeah you have. You know I've had a Mafia Christmas story. I bet you do tell us that one. No, No, we're at a time, Okay, I'll do it tomorrow maybe. Yeah. Uh. My My worst Christmas story is and I've told this before. I started have to tell it again, but we got married over Christmas break and my junior year in college, wife and I did and so we had to move down to Indiana from Michigan, and we borrowed a really terrible rental truck and it broke down on Christmas Day driving home, that is, And so we our Christmas. Our very first Christmas dinner together was speedway hot dogs, Doritos and Mountain dew. That is horribly sad. Yeah yeah, yeah, that was our We sat in the speedway. Wow. And that's what we are waiting for. Somebody coming help us. Now here's the question, and I'll tell you you haul's not available on Christmas Day, right right now. Here's the question. Have you ever recreated this speedway event on Christmas? No? It was It was horrific. Enough that you know, the PTSD is just now calming down. But okay, so we're gonna we're gonna try to avoid it if we can. That's so funny. Yeah, well, speaking of PTSD. Wow, okay, we are reliving the repetitiveness of Solomon's wise teachings. Oh that was a terrible transition. That's actually pretty brilliant. I didn't know where you were going with that, because we're talking about wisdom again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So this whole week we're just in. What we're trying to do for our listeners is really kind of download how incredibly practical the Bible is, particularly in the Book of Proverbs with regard to everyday living. So everything he talks about here, because sometimes preachers talk and it's all this ethereal stuff, heaven and eternity and Holy Spirit and angels and all these things, and it feels like the whole faith idea is out there somewhere, right, it's this mystical thing. And Solomon approaches faith as being an everyday whether you're banking or building a house, or parenting your children or dealing with a crazy neighbor or that's how he approaches faith. It's just practical wisdom every day. That's great, and so that's what it's all about. So I don't know that that's PTSD, but reliving over and over and over again. Yes, here we are. So we are. In Proverbs, chapter twelve and verse one says, to learn, you must love discipline. It is stupid to hate correction. Wow. The Lord approves of those who are good, but he condemns those who plan wickedness. Wickedness never brings stability, but the godly have deep roots. A worthy wife is a crown for her husband, but a disgraceful woman is like a cancer in his bones. The plans of the godly are just. The advice of the wicked is treacherous. The words of the wicked are like a murderous ambush. But the words of the godly save lives. The wicked die and disappear, but the family of the godly stands firm. A sensible person wins admiration, but a warped mind is despised. Better to be an ordinary person with a servant than to be self important but have no food. The godly care for their animals, but the wicked are always cruel. A hard worker has plenty of food, but a person who chases fantasies has no sense. Thieves are jealous of each other's loot, but the godly are well rooted and bear their own fruit. The wicked are trapped by their own words, but the godly escape such trouble. Wise words bring many benefits, and hard work brings rewards. Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others. A fool is quick tempered, but a wise man stays calm when insulted. An honest witness tells the truth, a false witness tells lies. Some people make cutting remarks, but the words of the wise bring healing. Truthful words stand the test of time, but lies are soon exposed. Deceit fills hearts that are plotting evil, and joy fills hearts that are planning peace. No harm comes to the godly, but the wicked have their fill of trouble. The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth. The wise don't make a show of their knowledge, but fools broadcast their foolishness. Work hard and become a leader. Be lazy, become a slave. Worry weighs a person down, and encouraging word cheers a person up. The godly give good advice to their friends that we could lead them astray. Lazy people don't even cook the game they catch, but the diligent make use of everything they find. The way of the Godly leads to life. That path does not lead to death. Were you go, Hey, every one of them, just a little nugget. You know, what stands out as one of the themes here is that you're created to work hard. Yeah, over and over and over again. Yeah. He refers to hard work. Yes, yeah, and that is you know, it's interesting because when God made Adam, you know, and then eventually Eve, he gave Adam an assignment, and that is to tend to the garden. Right. So Adam was obviously created with a purpose in mind. And one of the purposes obviously, I mean, obviously the ultimate purpose of relationship. But the other one is, you know, it. Brings meaning to his own life as much as it does helping the garden. Right. So I think I think it's interesting. How it talks about hard work over and over because some people view hard work as a curse, and they would say, oh, hard work is a curse from the fall it's a curse from sin, right, so is it? So here's the question. The question is, is now that Solomon is you know, hundreds of years actually how many years since Adam? Probably thousands of years, probably him lean years, so a couple of thousand years removed from Adam? Is God? Is Solomon talking about hard work being a blessing because they're under the curse or would it have been this way always? That's a good question. Well, God blesses hard, God blesses work. That's why he gave it to him. We view work as a bad thing, but it was a gift to humanity, gave humanity purpose. Right, But then under the curse work becomes a drudgery because it's so difficult. But Solomon doesn't really refer to the difficulty of work. Working hard and difficult work or two different things. Right. Oh yeah, working hard and difficult work er two different things. Right, that's a good statement. Right. So being diligent is what Solomon is talking about, which is really extraordinary when you think of when we think of a king. When you were growing up thinking man, if I could ever be a king, what you thought was it was going to be pleasure all the time, super easy. Just sit on your throne, make cool decisions, be super rich, have whatever you want, go on vacations. And Solomon doesn't really approach being a king that way. Solomon approaches being a king is I'm a servant of the people, and I have to work hard. And by the way, hard work pays off. If the king works hard, everybody else would work hard. If you're working hard, you're going to prosper. If you don't work hard, you're going to struggle. And then of course in their day. You know, a lot of our work in our society today, unless you're like in construction or farming or being a mechanic or something, most of the work that we do in the US now is indoors office stuff and it's easy to kind of go. I don't know if my work really matters. But when you're a farmer, you have to be diligent and plow your field at the right time. You have to be diligent and get the rocks out of the field so the plows can roll easy. You've got to be diligent and dig your trenches so the water drains well off of your field. You've got to be diligent, plant the seeds at the right time, pull the weeds at the right time, fertilize at the right time, harvest at the right time. There's a diligence to farming, and every little bit of work you do, you very quickly see the results of it, whereas you know when you're pushing paper in an office sometimes it might feel like right. And so what he's saying is diligence. It's not the physical work. It's the diligence of the work that will always pay off. And if you're a diligent worker, a conscientious worker, you put in the time, you do the hard work. You're not just mailing it in. He says, you're going to be successful. And so sometimes he's saying, hard work is how you're going to be promoted. Right, you're gonna be a slave. If you just mail it in. Hard work, you're gonna be promoted. Those are all things we tell our kids when they start getting jobs the first time. Yes, hey, hey, you step up, you go the extra mile, you do the extra thing, you think of good solutions, you jump in and volunteer to do the hard work nobody else wants to do. You're going to get promoted. That's exactly what Salom is saying there. Right, Yeah, So we were talking about this very briefly in the parking lot when we were walking up here. But so my son is in the trades, right, So he's studying to be an electrician and he works hard, so physically hard every day. Right, it's physical and it's. Hard in his body. Well, I had bought this bed at Ikia like literally fifteen years ago, and so this nasty old bed that he's been sleeping and he comes home and he's like, Dad, He's like, this bed is broken. He's like, I can't sleep more than a couple hours a night. I'm twisting, I'm turning, I'm sore. He's like this is awful and uh. And so anyway, he wants to go out and buy a bed because he's made a bunch of money. And he's got some savings and so. He wants to go out there, and you know, he's working hard. So he says, I have to have a good night's rest. So I said, son, Bed salesmen are like car salesman, right, sometimes not always, but like. This one, this one's gonna be even better. Right right, right, right, I said, I said, they'll get you man, they'll get you. And so my son's like okay. And so I trained him, training to train him because I got sales background, and so I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, here's what they're going to say, here's what they're gonna do. I was like, beware of this, don't do this, commit to this, make up your mind about this. So he goes, uh without me, because you know, he had to go without me. I was going somewhere and and he calls me and goes, Dad, don't be mad. It wasn't the salesman fault, he goes, but it was me. He goes, He goes. He tried to sell me. I'm the other one. He goes, and he goes. I just thought to myself, I want I want a good bed. The bed he bought the most expensive thing that was literally in the store. I'm not even kidding. It was ridiculous. Is he sleeping well? He seeks like a king. Yeah, okay, working hard, but so he loves his bed, loves it, and so. Good for him. He's worked hard. Yeah, hard work pays off. That's right. So now he sleeps like a king. If he wasn't working hard, he would never even sept So, you know, my wife and I we were in Europe this past summer. I had a whole bunch of delta miles from traveling, you know, so we cash those in and we went to so we spent an inordinate amount of time in castles. That's what you do, right, You go from castle, castle, palace to palace, cathedral to cathedral. That's essentially your trip through Europe. And so we were in Vienna, and you know, that's the the capital of what was one of the largest empires in modern history, was the habsburg uh Empire, and so Emperor Franz Joseph was famous for his work ethic and so it was really amazing because we're walking through this massive palace, the Schomburune Palace in Habsburg, I mean in Vienna, and I was struck by how many workspaces he had. He had a work desk in his bedroom. His bedroom was very very simple bedroom. You'd think an emperor would have this crazy ornate thing. His wife Catherine, you know, she's pretty famous, a bunch of others. They had some really magnificent stuff, and the palace itself is magnificent, but his room was relatively simply. Had a nice chair, he had a little wardrobe, he had a wash basin, He had a bed, and he had a desk and then an assistance desk next to it, just in case. Right then the room next to his bedroom was a little like dining room, and then the room next to that was another significant office. Then he also had another big like presentation office. When all the people had come into generals or whatever, he had these workrooms. So he had these three offices. And they said that he would again his day every day at four o'clock. He rarely finished his day before ten o'clock as an emperor. And there were a lot of quotes on this tour we were taking. They had all these quotes of him saying that if God gives you great opportunity, it also was a great responsibility. And so I love my people. Sounds like a spider man quo yah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And he said, I love my people enough that I should give my people. They've given me so much. I should give my people everything I can. And so he did, and they loved him. The people loved him because of it. And so when I read this, I think of emperors like that. Every once in a while, you got a good one. You know, I'm not saying he was a super moral person. I'm just saying in that he tried to service people well. And that's kind of what I feel like Solomon is saying through a lot of these things. Yeah, yeah, it's really I love it. I love when he talks about that being a hard worker. I like that verse nine. Being an ordinary person, right, he kinda even though he was a king, the most powerful person, one of the most powerful people in the world, he's still very much in his writings, tried to identify with the average guy, right, trying to figure out how to help the average guy succeed. It's like he's saying, these are the principles God gave me this crazy wisdom. Let me download some of it for you in a practical way where the ordinary guy can benefit and his stuff is so well, what is the one I mean, you read some of these, an honest witness tells the truth, a false witness tells lies. You think Solomon, right, But what he's trying to do is he's just downloading simple principles and we can blow through them because they're one sentence long. We read twenty eight of them, and you can kind of blow through them pretty quickly. But when you get back and dig in and begin to realize how important just about every phrase is, and if we would imply these in our life, apply them, not just know them, I think we would have the success that he talks about so often. Yeah, for sure, that's awesome. And I seem to have lost my place here because this I just realize everything's lumped together from ten to twenty two. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm just like, I've just completely lost six forty five. Six page six forty five there. So the other one I wanted to comment on while you're digging around is verse fifteen. Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to. Others, which is great because you and I and we've been this person ourselves, right that we just convinced. Why is let people listening to others? No, I'm saying, I've been the fool, oh okay, where I've just convinced that. My way is right. And then and then have you ever done that where you're just like, I'm convinced, and then everybody around you're saying one thing and you're not listening to them. And then finally, eventually you're. Like, yeah, I probably should listen to people around me, right, And then there was another one here that talked about boasting up yourself. What was it when you were reading it earlier. There's one that talks about oh, right here where it says better to be an ordinary person with a servant than to be self important but have no food. You know. It just talks about the nature of a person, an ordinary person meaning somebody an ordinary ordinary means you don't even know who that person is, right, they don't have a reputation, but they're diligent, they're putting their they're putting their head down, they're working. They have a servant, meaning they have prosperity, right, right, But a self important person somebody who inflates themselves. And I got to tell you, people who talk about themselves me me ay ay, right, it's just that person. Chances are are not going to go anywhere in life. It's true. That is true, And we've and we've met those people. Which is interesting because here this book is thousands of years old, and yet it's completely relevant for today because you read this and you're. Like, that's true today. Yeah, absolutely, And as much as. Culture has changed, what's not changed is human nature. And so here's Solomon writing about human nature. He's writing about principles of life, and it's like, wow, that's why I love the Bible. The Bible is very practical, is it is relevant for today, and a lot of the stories may seem far fetched or you know, you know, non relatable. Right. We don't live in a country where there's a you know, king, But there are people who. Read this or all around the world who do right. They live in countries with kings. They understand this way better than we do. Another thing that you'll find and we'll pick this up more over the next few days. I'm sure it'll keep coming up. But we've already seen this a few times in Solomon's writings. But how often he talks about wise people don't get caught up in angry fights and stuff like that. Verse sixteen says a fool is quick tempered, but a wise person stays calm when insulted, which is great. Right. Another way to translate that, you find it in the King James to say that a prudent person covers shame. Right, There's a little bit more than stays calm when insulted. Is one thing, the deeper meaning in the Hebrew really is willing to absorb it rather than jump into the middle of the fight. And it's interesting because he doesn't say that you always absorb it, but at the beginning of these things, when somebody wants to fight, it's hard to fight somebody who doesn't want to fight, right, right, And so one of the there's another one the proverbs where Solomon will say, a soft answer turns away wrath. Right. It's interesting how he oftentimes when he's talking about fights or arguments, he most of the time is giving advice that a wise person finds a way to diffuse the fight. You're not conceding the fight. You're going to you absorb the blow, you give a soft answer and diffuse it, and then wisdom can override the emotion. And that's what he's always trying to do, is get you away from the emotion and the heart of the fight and back into the wise logical decisions. The only way you can do that is by diffusing it. So you'll see that being a theme as well. So it's interesting we're starting to pick up on a lot of his themes. A soft answer turns away wrath is Proverbs fifteen to one. And yeah, the reason why I know that is because that verse quite literally changed my entire demeanor of life. There's a life altering moment for me when I discovered that it actually worked. Yeah, well, we're going to be reading fifteen in a couple of days, so cool. Yeah, well, it looks like that is our time. So great chapter, and hopefully we'll see you tomorrow on the Bible gush