Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Mark Clark podcast here. Hopefully you are doing well. This is our last week in this series on Trapped, a sermon series that I preached up at Canexus church up in Canada on four of the seven deadly sins that ruin our lives and the virtues that can help us flourish. And today we're diving into the last of all four topics that's surprisingly relevant to our lives, the sin of sloth, which is, we rarely talk about this, but when you think of sloth, you might just think laziness, but it goes way deeper than that. As we're gonna explore, we're talking about how procrastination, distraction, and a lack of purpose can actually pull us away from a fulfilling life. We're gonna explore biblical wisdom, practical advice, and how to live a life full of intention and energy. So let's get started on this last sermon of this series called Trapped.
Mark Clark [00:00:53]:
Hope you enjoy it. You know, if you look back to history, there are seven what are called deadly sins. These sins that derail our life, destroy our life. In this series, we're talking about four of those sins. And this week, we're talking about sloth. Okay, laziness. Now, when I started researching this for this series, it surprised me, actually, how relevant this topic was to our life. It actually might be the most relevant of all the sins to us as a culture as a whole because of literally what it's about.
Mark Clark [00:01:26]:
We know that pride, for instance, goes before a fall. We know that anger often leads to violence. We know that lust destroys people from within. Envy put Jesus on the cross. We get that gluttony can lead to your premature death if you're eating really bad. But seriously, has anyone ever died from taking it easy? You know, I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't die. And it goes, hey, cause of death, I slept too much. Sloth may not get to you, to the top of the ladder in life, but is it really so bad? Canadians, Americans, North Americans are probably the most hyper active people on the planet.
Mark Clark [00:02:00]:
We literally run on donuts and Red Bull. We work longer hours, take fewer vacations of most of the industrialized world when we're not on the job, you think about your life. You're making home improvements, you're driving the kids someplace, you're working out at the gym, walking to any health club. 07:00 a.m. on a Monday morning, there's going to be people going hard. You're not going to go, oh, these are slothful people. These are lazy people. It seems to be the least deadly and the least relevant sin that can derail your life.
Mark Clark [00:02:31]:
But actually think about it. We daydream, we procrastinate, we sit in front of television, we run late all the time. We waste hours and days scrolling nonsense on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever. Is any of these sins that the church has talked about through the last 2000 years more relevant to our life than this moment? Maybe not. We start things that we never actually finish. We end up neglecting God or people because of our laziness. Nothing that will kill your spiritual or social life is more maybe than sloth. That thing in your pocket can destroy you.
Mark Clark [00:03:14]:
These are the things the devil uses, distraction from what matters. Sometimes we think, oh, the devil's gonna actually, like, come at me and talk to me in my sleep, and he's gonna, you know, show up in the fog in the mirror in my, you know, bathroom. It's like, no, no, you know what the devil's going to use? Distraction. That thing in your right pocket. This is all maybe why the Bible takes laziness and sloth so seriously. The book of proverbs. Proverbs, chapter six. Here's what the writer says, which is great wisdom, which is we're living in a time where there's a lot of information but not a lot of wisdom.
Mark Clark [00:03:48]:
Proverbs is a book of wisdom. How long will you lie there? Proverbs six says, you sluggered. Go to the ant, o sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise without having any chief officer or ruler. The ant prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food and harvest. How long will you lie there, o sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man. Think about that. The hebrew word for sluggard occurs here and 13 other times in the Book of Proverbs, and it refers to more than laziness.
Mark Clark [00:04:31]:
In other proverbs, the word is actually contrasted with uprightness and righteousness. A slothful person in the eyes of the Old Testament is not only a lazy person, but also an irresponsible person who is undependable and who becomes a burden to his or her family and community. If the slothful person continues in their ways, the Bible says they may eventually engage in wicked or evil behavior. The result is actually personal ruin in your life. Think about that. The word slot is a translation of a latin term which actually means without care. So spiritually, it was first referred to an affliction of a religious person wherein they became indifferent to their duties and obligations to God. So center on that in a big way.
Mark Clark [00:05:18]:
As we think about this mentally, sloth has a number of distinctive components, of which the most important is a lack of any fear, feeling about self or other, a mindset that gives rise to boredom, apathy in a passive or sluggish mentality, and a sluggish life. Physically. It finds expression in laziness and idleness, one writer says. So theologians through history have seen it connected closely with self pity, which is fascinating because that's what it is. Aquinas actually defines sloth as sorrow about spiritual good and as sluggishness of the mind, which neglects to begin good. It is evil in its effect. If it is so oppresses man as to draw him away entirely from good deeds, it goes so far as to refuse the good that comes from God and to be repelled by divine goodness. Mic drop right.
Mark Clark [00:06:11]:
So good. And that's what it's all about. Think about this. When we're called to virtue in life, the slothful person reacts with sadness or drags themselves toward virtue. The slothful person does everything in their life in regard to their spiritual growth, with reluctance, assuming they do anything at all. There's no joy in doing God's will. That's what the slothful person is. They're living a spiritual life, loving life, all of those.
Mark Clark [00:06:38]:
It's a burden, and soon they give up on the necessary tasks to lead a virtuous life. This type of lifestyle is devoid of love for God and neighborhood, and in the end focuses on the self. That's the problem with laziness, or what theologians have called sloth. It's wasting our life and time on useless stuff, social media, video games, shopping, entertainment. You think that's relevant to your life? Richard John Neuhaus, who's a theologian, talked about contemporary sloth, and he said it's evenings without number obliterated by television, evenings neither of entertainment nor of education, but a defense against time and duty, he said. Clinical psychologist doctor William Backus has pointed out the similarities between sloth and depression. He says this depression involves aversion to effort, and the moral danger of sloth lies in this very characteristic. The work involved in exercising one's will to make moral and spiritual decisions seem particularly undesirable and demanding in the life.
Mark Clark [00:07:52]:
Thus the slothful person drifts along in habits of sin, convinced that he has no willpower, and aided in this claim by those who persist in seeking only biological and environmental causes and medical remedies for sloth. Think about that for a sec. That's what happens to all of us. There's a kinds of depression which feels like sloth, and sloth feeling like depression. Those who've gone through some of that in your life, you'll know these are similar things. Not that they're the same, but sloth is the kind of thing that can actually make us so that we're not even getting up in the morning and facing the tasks of the day. Because we're lazy, we've chosen to be slothful in our life. So what does the Bible have to say about sloth? Romans chapter twelve.
Mark Clark [00:08:39]:
Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Colossians, chapter three. Whatever your task, put yourself into it as done for the Lord and not for your masters. Proverbs 13. The appetite of the lazy craves and gets nothing, while the appetite of the diligent is richly supplied. Proverbs 15. The way of the lazy is overgrown with thorns, but the path of the upright is a level highway. Proverbs 21, the desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hand refuses to labor.
Mark Clark [00:09:15]:
All day long he craves and craves. Here's the thing. We must not cling to comfort when God calls us to be for greater things, and that tends to be what we do. The laziness or sloth of our life, spiritually, physically, emotionally, comes from the place of comfort that we're in. It's not comfortable to lay down our lives in service for others. Living a life of love is not easy, but it's completely fulfilling. Colossians three talks about this. Whatever your task, put yourselves into it has done for the Lord and for your masters.
Mark Clark [00:09:50]:
When I worked at Michael's arts and crafts store growing up, 685 an hour, red apron, trying to, you know, make money for some gas money or whatever I was doing, I would go in and pray that prayer. Every time I went in, I was like, I am not working for my master. All right, Joe, my manager. I am working for the Lord. As I put these googly eyes away and put these Christmas wreaths away in August, all right, I am working for the Lord, not my man. This is the idea. It's interesting because the narrative of our culture is that we all need to slow down. Even in christian culture, we all need to slow down.
Mark Clark [00:10:28]:
We all need to take a break. We're all workaholics we need to stop working, right? And we got to be, you know, we're famous. We have books about Sabbath, right? A book recently talks about the idea that, I agree, hurry isn't of the devil. It is the devil. Devil. And we need to often slow down our lives so we can catch up to God, et cetera. And I get that message. And we go away and we breathe and we chill and we stop all the labor.
Mark Clark [00:10:55]:
And, of course, there's a legitimacy to that. There's a Sabbath thing that needs to be part of our life with our phones. We need. The temptation is that we work too much and we keep going, and we're nonstop. We never get a time to chill. Even as a pastor, ministry is an endless hole of stuff, right? There's always someone to help. There's always an idea to get out. There's always a marriage to save.
Mark Clark [00:11:17]:
There's always some theological thing to solve, a staff to text and encourage, right? We got to figure all of that out, and we got to fight, and we got. And I'm a driven person. I want to get stuff done. I work all the time. I want to influence people. I want to help people. I want to move stuff forward. And I need the message of Sabbath.
Mark Clark [00:11:36]:
Chill. Breathe. All right. During COVID we, as a family, we just. Before, it was so chaotic, we never knew if everyone was going to turn into zombies. At the beginning of COVID what was going on in the world. I got young kids to raise, and they're like, daddy, what's actually happening in the world? And every night we'd gather and we put in this YouTube video, and it was just stretches and breathing, and it just centered us before bed. We need that.
Mark Clark [00:12:00]:
I get it. Jesus slept in the boat, right? That happens sometimes. The most spiritual thing you could do is take a nap. Yes. And amen. Some of you are saying right now, some of you are like, I'm napping now, right? You need rest. I get it. But for some reason, working too hard is not actually one of the seven deadly sins.
Mark Clark [00:12:20]:
When you look back at it, it's the opposite. It's sloth, it's laziness. That's where we get trapped. We don't produce. Not working, not adding value to the world, just being a non contributing zero with your money, with your time, with your energy, with your gifts. That's the massive problem the church has pointed out through history. Look at our culture in regard to men. Young men often just playing video games, watching porn, blaming their bosses, blaming their parents, living in their parents basement.
Mark Clark [00:13:01]:
Hoping to marry a girl with a good job. That's who this sin despises and actually ruins. It's that spirit and it can happen in anyone at any age and stage. It's not just that guy, of course. It's all of us who procrastinate. It's not just like work, like a job. It's kingdom work. Slumbering and sleeping on the work that really matters in the universe.
Mark Clark [00:13:31]:
See, sometimes I find myself, I'm sitting around with my friends and I'm sure this isn't true about you, but I'm sitting around and we're just talking about boats and cars and vacation homes and we're just talking about stuff. What did you get that for? How many v's in your engine or whatever? It's like, I don't know anything about cars. Some of you can correct if that's a thing. All the time. We're just talking about this stuff all the time. Think about what you talk about. You gather together with friends for a meal, sitting around having some chill time, and you're, what do you go to bed and track what topics you talked about? Cause that can be sloth too. Think about the teenager who never goes, man, what does God want from my life? I gotta, what does he say about this? What does he say about that? What does he call me to? How do I supposed to feel about this or live like this? What is God actually calling me to? Because that can be sloth and laziness too.
Mark Clark [00:14:32]:
As a mom, if you don't go, what does Jesus want me to tell my kids? About money? About a future spouse, about using my time to love the poor? About raising kids who are actually disciples of Jesus as a father, being able to actually disciple your kids in the ways of kingdom. That we don't just sit around and scroll all day and try to get ahead in our work and buy things at Amazon, arriving at the door every day. See, all of this is sloth. And yet it affects our life in such a way that we don't even notice it. We don't even sit back and do what proverbs does and goes, you know this can ruin you, right? Because you get to the end of your life, you get to your 86 years or whatever, and people are sitting around talking about you after you're gone. And what do they say to find your life? Sometimes I get to the end of my day and I remember my wife and I were speaking at a conference recently and we were sitting in this hotel lobby for most of the day, for like five, 6 hours. I was sitting there reading a book. She was sitting there working on some stuff she was writing, and I looked around this lobby, and there was, like, 100 people in there, and they were having meetings.
Mark Clark [00:15:52]:
And you'd watch people. When you're sitting there that long, you'd watch people come and go and come and go all day. And then I'm talking to my buddy. He calls me up, and we're exegeting some nuanced thing from the Old Testament that we learned 20 years ago in Bible college and trying to figure out what Esau meant when he said this. Oh, it's great. Amazing day. At the end of the day, I kind of stood up and looked around. I'm like, how many people pass through this lobby right now that don't know Jesus? What did I do with my time? Because if you looked at my life, you might not go, he's slothful.
Mark Clark [00:16:26]:
He seems pretty busy, but is it busy in the right things, y'all, is this you? Oftentimes, as a church, we talk about the idea that there are two kinds of boats that you could get on. You could get on a cruise liner where you go and you sit and you order drinks, and you get a red face from the sun, and you sit around, and people in suits come around and serve you, and you're basically a non contributing nothing. Or there's a battleship where everyone knows exactly their role and where they're supposed to be, and if you're on it and you're just sitting around, you get kicked off, because everyone, there's a war going on. We need to know what we do and that our church is a battleship, not a cruise liner. You can't just sit around and do nothing. This is true about our life. Are you just coasting through life, letting other people serve you, or are you a member of a battleship that has 80 years on this planet, and you need purpose and value and meaning, and you're going to change the world around you. Even if it's a small microcosm of the macrocosm that is the world, you're going to change it.
Mark Clark [00:17:31]:
And that takes energy and intentionality. The opposite of sloth. The advancement of technology is not helping us. It is one of the enemies to the point of doing nothing in our life, where all of life is automated and we just click our way through things, thinking we're making a contribution. But it's a lie. Sloth is seen by our culture not as a vice, but as marketing stuff to us. Right. The great pitch to us right now is buy this product and you won't have to do this thing anymore.
Mark Clark [00:18:13]:
You don't have to move, you don't have to work, you don't have to think, because this thing, this product, this react will do it for you. It's great. It makes me coffee, it warms my food. It's good stuff. It saves me time. And I love that as a guy in a hurry. But think about what it might do to us being not busy doing the kinds of things we were designed and built to be busy doing. It frees us up to be busy doing things that may shrink our soul.
Mark Clark [00:18:47]:
See, all this stuff is embraced as more free time, as if that's the greatest good. And I'm not sure that's true. It may free you up to add stuff to your life. If there's margin, then we just fill it. We don't just sit around and breathe and think, man, what's my place in the world? See, all this stuff is embraced as if it gives us more free time, as if that's the greatest good. And I'm not sure that's true. A, because it just frees us up to add stuff. Like if there's margin, we just fill it.
Mark Clark [00:19:18]:
We don't just sit around and breathe and think. But b, because even if it did free us up, is that always good? There could be a gravedigger effect. Meaning, do I. I do a lot of marriage counseling, right? And I hang with men a lot. And these men, they tend to have a lot of free time. And what do they fill it with? Some of them said it's the free time that I had that led me to cheating, looking at stuff I shouldn't be looking at, traveling with my buddies. Oftentimes becoming somebody I'm not actually God's calling me to be because they aren't going to bed tired. They got too much free time.
Mark Clark [00:19:53]:
200 years ago, we would farm, we would kill what we ate, and then we'd be tired and go to bed. Now what do we do? We go to the store. People drop it off for us. Now we're not making it. We're not spending any money, just no energy. It's scary. We're not doing the stuff, the atom stuff. We aren't being human anymore.
Mark Clark [00:20:14]:
That's what technology has taken from us, even spiritually. Instead of the mission Christ has for us to work and think and love, here's what we end up doing. As one writer has said, some people are so lazy, praying is their plan. A, now that might sound weird. But here's the example. So I got this friend who has a brother and they got kids and they're always running around and he's constantly like, hey, I'm going to go pray for 3 hours in the room and the wife will come in and like, open the door, go, dude, you're sleeping. You're having a nap in the middle of the day. He's like, no, no, I was praying.
Mark Clark [00:20:51]:
I was praying. It's like taking the easy path sometimes can lead us into the sluggard mentality. And that's what ends up happening. See, in this Covid time, we've been stuck in our house and we do nothing. And it feeds into doing nothing. Even more like a vicious cycle. Add to that irrational fears, like stuff not even based on anything, data, anything anymore. We're just coming up with stuff and we're just getting, like, I was talking with someone the other day about their life decisions that they're making right now.
Mark Clark [00:21:22]:
They're trying to, like, fix their marriage and make huge life decisions about money and their parents. And then we're talking, I'm like, hey, so what's really behind it? And they're like, yeah, Trump's a jerk. And I'm like, what does that have to do with anything? Like, this is your life we're talking about. We have started living in a dream world. We watch the news and we think this is the most meaningful stuff in the world. But guys, it's not. There's bigger stuff going on in the cosmic plan of God than the daily news cycle of the same tweet that some politicians sent out. And that anxiety, that false sense of reality equals non action and not doing anything.
Mark Clark [00:22:04]:
And that's scary. And that's what God wants to wake us out of. See, here's the thing. Laziness grows on people. That's the biblical teaching. Proverbs says sloth equals no money and poverty in your life. Now, that's not, of course, always the case in regard to, like, a math equation. People are poor for all kinds of reasons, but as a general principle, they're saying you have generally a good situation in your life.
Mark Clark [00:22:31]:
Sloth will lead to poverty in the sense of poor management of money, life, kids, time in front of the tv, in front of your, scrolling on Instagram, whatever it is. And Covid, like, during this moment, do you have the kids around all the time? And you start having to drink through the day? And it's like, oh, my goodness, this sitting around doing nothing, this idleness has created bad patterns in my life because there's no purpose and meaning and thing that I'm working on. See, here's what sloth is then. A settled attitude of idleness. And that's a scary word, idleness. But such people are consistently condemned throughout scripture. And yet this almost defines our culture. See, we know why people are so jacked up on social media all the time and so stressed sharing all their links and fighting online all the time.
Mark Clark [00:23:25]:
Literally. I will share an article to inform. Not be political, not be partisan, nothing. Just a normal whatever tweet or whatever. And people just get vile. They have these crazy responses. You support this theology, you support that ideology, you support the end of America. And I'm like, what? I don't understand.
Mark Clark [00:23:43]:
What are you talking. This is the Antichrist. You should quit now. And they start a position petition against to you. And you're just like, I don't even know. Everyone calm down. It was just an article about Jesus walking on water. It had nothing to do with your world and what you think.
Mark Clark [00:23:58]:
See, we only think in political categories now, left and right. Why does this happen? Why all of these things? Like, the other day, I was. We were doing an event and a guy saw a picture of me and I was wearing these particular shoes, and he said, I can't be part of village church. I can't support, support Pastor mark anymore because he wears Gucci shoes. And we're like, what do you mean, Gucci shoes? And he's like, well, I can't follow a guy who wears thousand dollar shoes. I'm out. I'm leaving. And literally, guys, they were from Aldo.
Mark Clark [00:24:29]:
They cost me dollar 45. Like, what is everywhere? Everyone needs to calm down. What drives that idleness? Sitting around with too much time in your hands to read stuff that isn't real. And it gets us all mad and angry and jacked up. And now we have this world of people sitting around groups and churches or whatever and just talking about people, slamming people, making up stories. It's called gossip, and it destroys people. We love it. It feels good to slam others because we feel good.
Mark Clark [00:24:59]:
We talk and we talk and we criticize and we text and we email, we yap and we spread rumors. Why? Idleness. Too much time on your hands. People are out working, and we're sitting in our lululemon pants between workouts and your 02:00 p.m. rose. You don't think your mind's going to be filled with ideas? Idleness, sloth. The Bible hits this exact thing over and over and over again. Nosy, busy bodies peering into everyone else's business.
Mark Clark [00:25:36]:
Here's what the Bible says. As for younger widows, this is one Timothy. Do not put them on such a list. They get into the habit of being idle and going from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to. This happens to all of us. It feels good. See, where this all of a sudden, a sin that you didn't think had anything to do with your life has everything to do with your life.
Mark Clark [00:26:11]:
In one Thessalonians three, Paul says, in the name of the Lord Jesus, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. See, this lands directly on our lives as we live them in 2021. Is this our sin? Okay, so there's these three kinds of sloth that end up ruining us. The first one is physical sloth, which can actually kill the body. So when we think of sloth, most of us immediately think of people who work hard at their jobs and people who don't, who work hard around the house and people who don't, who are lazy on the couch and non contributing. And that's something the Bible cares deeply about. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this. The first hour of the day belongs to God in worship.
Mark Clark [00:26:56]:
The other hours of the day belong to God in work. I love that because there's always going to be people who don't live like that, who don't want to work. They have, look, I have other sins, but not working hard is not one of them. Like, I don't get it. It gives me joy. It gives me purpose. Right? First Corinthians 15. Paul gives 58 verses on resurrection, and by the end, he goes, nothing that you do, no work that you do is in vain.
Mark Clark [00:27:22]:
I, meaning everything you do, is building toward an eternal purpose, make the world better, influence. And there's days when I don't do that, and I actually get depressed. Like, if I sit on my couch and watch golf for 4 hours, I love it. I'm sitting in my. But once it's over, I'm like, gosh, I'm a waste of a person. Like, wow, I'm sitting here in my jogging pants. I've just contributed nothing. What is life about? I suck.
Mark Clark [00:27:48]:
And it's like, chill, bro. You just didn't produce for a few hours. All right? This is a thing for some people. For the vast majority of westerners that I know, there's this physical sloth, work sloth. It's not a huge problem. The most recent reports actually show that productivity continues to remain high in the western world. The typical canadian and american employee outwork our european friends. Actually.
Mark Clark [00:28:13]:
Like, if you're an average worker, you put in 50 hours a week at your job. Some of you put in far more. You got the protestant work ethic that built kind of canadian and american culture. It's alive and well in most of us. It's good because work is actually a spiritual activity. It's God given. It didn't come after the fall. It was part of paradise.
Mark Clark [00:28:33]:
We had tasks, and it benefits the individual and society as a whole. It's actually a beautiful thing I love. So we all know the physical sloth can literally lead to the death of the body, where we don't get the energy that we need to actually be healthy and move forward. And then there's intellectual sloth, which is just that. We don't pour into our minds. We kind of approach life lazy. We have a generation of people that are kind of like that at times. And it's all.
Mark Clark [00:29:01]:
The scary thing about intellectual sloth is actually the biblical and theological illiteracy that comes about. Because like 50 years ago, even non Christians had a knowledge of the scriptures and biblical history. Today, in and outside the church, most are totally ignorant of the Bible. History, facts, theology. Any ideas? Actually, there's a recent poll of christians reveals that 40% of them cannot tell you how many apostles Jesus had. It's twelve, y'all. So let alone name them. All right.
Mark Clark [00:29:30]:
More than 10% of christians believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. 52% of christians do not believe that the devil is a real spiritual being. 35% of christians do not believe that Jesus was resurrected. You can't even be a Christian if you don't believe that. So that stats out. Five years ago at Southern Baptist theological, Sun Mary, the dean of the school of theology, asked incoming students to list the ten commandments. And only one out of 50. We're able to list all ten.
Mark Clark [00:30:02]:
The seminary now requires all incoming students to take a course called introduction to the Bible. See, this is why we try to do Bible at Connexus church, right? Because not every church is great at everything. Not every church is perfect at everything. But we try to be a Bible church and to teach it and the principles, and to preach it and derive our lives and theologies from the text itself. The Bible tells us that we are to love goddess with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength and all our mind. That's the opposite to laziness and sloth when it comes to our christian lives. The christian faith was never meant to be a faith devoid of thought or intellect or intentionality or effort. Right? Dallas Willard says grace is opposed to earning, but it's not opposed to effort.
Mark Clark [00:30:51]:
Can I get an amen? Let's throw it down, y'all. Like this in this is to be our life, as one writer has said on the mission of Christ, to die with our boots on, to not mail it in in life. Proverbs, chapter one. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. It's discipleship of the mind. It's a thing. It's needed.
Mark Clark [00:31:20]:
We need to know. We need to be able to know how to defend the christian faith as well. So just as physical sloth can kill the body, intellectual sloth, theological sloth, can kill the what? The mind. If you're to love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, strength, that's the definition of a life of intentionality. The Christian who has not cultivated his or her mind by cultivating the mind of Christ as a Christian who ultimately is useless to their family, their church, their community, to their city, to the kingdom of God, knowledge is indispensable to christian life and service, and especially the knowledge of God and spiritual matters. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to superficiality, cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God's grace, knowledge, the intentionality, the effort to study is given to us to be used to lead us to a higher worship, greater faith, deeper holiness, better service. The gospel is actually not about just the soul, but it offers a new mind as well. It's all connected.
Mark Clark [00:32:23]:
God is redeeming it all. Body, soul, mind, everything you are. He promises to do nothing less. Now, lastly, there's spiritual sloth. And that, of course, if the first two can kill the body and the mind, spiritual sloth can kill the soul. And this is the most important one. So the other day, I was writing this sermon. It was up on the screen.
Mark Clark [00:32:45]:
It said, sloth. And my ten year old walked up to me. She goes, why are you writing a sermon on an animal? I'm like, what are you talking? Oh, sloth the animal. Yeah. See, picture that image. You know that a sloth spends 20 hours a day sleeping, right? Somebody just went, oh, living the dream. Right? 20. It travels at a top speed of zero, one, 5 miles an hour.
Mark Clark [00:33:05]:
Algae literally grows on its front coat, right? So picture that in relation to our spiritual life. Just what do you do? Just watch church and leave? Show up late, leave early, watch online, and that's it. You don't read, you don't pray, you don't do your devos. You might not fast. You don't evangelize, you don't give. You're a passive person in regard to your spiritual life, and it contributes nothing and produces nothing. Too busy to be on mission to reach people. Oftentimes we talk about this.
Mark Clark [00:33:37]:
We've had about 1700 baptisms, a village over the last bunch of years. And whenever I announce that, our people clap and they're like, yes, baptism, 1700. Whoo. And then I do a follow up question, which is, how many of those people were baptized because of you? See, that's a convicting question, man, because are you and I just too busy? That's the scary part of this stuff. See, these are the common pictures of sloth. Flat, idle, unresponsive. The reason our early spiritual forefathers considered sloth to be so deadly of a sin was because of the proximity of physical laziness to spiritual laziness. In the writings we see, they were concerned that believers not be sloth in their secular work.
Mark Clark [00:34:29]:
We also see that they were concerned that believers not be slothful in their spiritual lives. Matthew, chapter 25. Jesus looks at these people in this parable, and he says, you wicked and slothful servants. And I'm not going to tell you the rest, but the rest of the story is them getting beaten and thrown in prison. Right, you wicked. See, we most times hone in on the wicked part. Wicked people are going to not go to see God. Wicked people? He says, slothful sir servants.
Mark Clark [00:34:58]:
See, what we got to understand is this spiritual life is a rigorous life, and not for the spiritual lazy. Many believers have no zeal for the faith. Some Christians say they have enough faith to carry them to heaven when they die. But it hasn't even carried them to the church in years. It hasn't carried them to serve others. It hasn't carried them to love their families. It hasn't carried them to sit in a chair and pray and read the text and worship. And Jesus said that the path of the christian life is narrow and difficult, and very few are those who actually travel that road, that it's a life that demands each believer each day take up their cross and follow Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:35:37]:
There would be times in life when all of us are tempted to lay down our cross and become spiritual sluggards and stop dragging it. And that's the image of God going by your grace. Get me up. Let me focus. Let me. So I do a lot of, like, traveling to the states and Canada, and I love Canadians. But to be honest, our service industry compared to the american service industry is lame. All right? I don't know what it is, especially, even Australia, because there's no tips.
Mark Clark [00:36:07]:
Australia. I traveled to Australia. There's no tips. It takes you 20 minutes to get someone to come give you a drink. It's like, what's going on here? They're like, and in Canada, people realize in America, they're honest. Hello, sir. And they're serving. It's like they get it.
Mark Clark [00:36:20]:
There's an intentionality. There's an effort. There's a focus. There's a heart. And then I come back to Canada, I'm like, can I get service at all? See, this is what I see from people. There's people who invest in their christian life and people who don't invest in their spiritual development. Not investing in your relationship with God, having no prayer life, not fighting for godliness, not killing sin, not serving others, being a non contributing zero. The temptation is exactly that.
Mark Clark [00:36:45]:
Especially now, because we've been sitting on our couches for the last 18 months. We've given. We've done nothing. We raked the sermon out of ten, and we go play another church's sermon. No group of people that are sitting around us going, this is what it means to love. This is what it means to serve. You're my people. These are my leaders.
Mark Clark [00:37:00]:
I'm coming for discipline. I'm coming for exhort other people. I'm bringing my gifts to the table. There's vision, there's theology, there's all of it. We just don't have that. So slothfulness thrives actually in busyness. Now, here's what I mean by that. Frederick Buchner, who's a theologian, writes this of the zombie.
Mark Clark [00:37:22]:
He says, sloth is not to be confused with just laziness. We've been talking about laziness in this trap series and sloth. But a slothful man may be a very busy man. He's a man who goes through the motion, who flies on automatic pilot like a man with a bad head cold. He has mostly lost his sense of taste and smell. People come and go, but through glazed eyes, he hardly notices them. He's letting things run their course. He is getting through his life honestly.
Mark Clark [00:37:53]:
That is the sloth piece that most of us are in. It's not that we're sitting around doing nothing, but it's that we're just kind of coasting through life at times. And so what's the solution to it? What's the virtue? In the words of Andy Dufresne and Shawshank redemption, get busy living or get busy dying. That's the idea. We got to get busy doing the right stuff under Jesus. Make some decisions about what you want to do with your hours, right? Recently, I'm going to spend an hour a day on my phone, not four. Like, one of the most difficult things is when your phone tells you how often you're on it, and you get that report, like, at the end of the week or the month. Hey, your time's down.
Mark Clark [00:38:35]:
You've only been on your phone 13 hours a day. It's like, how is that even possible? Don't I have children to raise? Don't I have stuff to do? We got to die with our boots on, doing the work of Jesus. We got to gather. We got to love. We got to serve. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book the cost of Discipleship, said this. The real difference in the believer who follows Christ and has mortified his will and died after the old man in Christ is that he is more clearly aware than other men of the rebelliousness and perennial pride of the flesh. He is conscious of his sloth and self indulgence and knows that his arrogance must be eradicated.
Mark Clark [00:39:17]:
Hence, there is a need for daily self discipline. So when Christ asks us to take up our cross daily and follow him, do we do it with great joy, because that's the only way to kill this sin in our lives, to take up our cross. See, God is calling us to work for him. That's the highest ideal, rather than our own selfish inclinations to either work for just ourselves or work in the wrong stuff. That's the challenge here, based on God himself, the missionary God, the one who never stops moving toward the world in love. Right? Psalm 121. God never slumbers or sleeps. John, chapter five.
Mark Clark [00:40:01]:
My father is always at his work to this very day. We have limits as human beings, yes, but God does not. And there is something we can learn a bit from them. Here's the thing. I think we all. Yes, we're active. We're probably too active with our phones, et cetera. And we need to sabbath a thousand percent.
Mark Clark [00:40:21]:
We're always running the next soccer game, always to the next practice, always to the next trip, always to work. I get that. What I'm saying is, I don't know that that's true about actual kingdom work. Yes, you're busy, but when. When it comes to Jesus, the mission that Jesus has us on, I don't think we're busy enough. That's the question of our lives. You know, on twitter, they say every second there's 6000 tweets, there's 350,000 tweets per minute, 500 million tweets a day, and 200 billion tweets a year. We're busy saying stuff.
Mark Clark [00:41:01]:
That's not the biblical critique. It doesn't say get busy doing and thinking stuff. It's the critique of what we're saying. What is being said by us, that's what matters. See, the opposite to that drivenness is sloth. James chapter one says, religion that is true and undefiled before God the Father is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. That could be the biggest verse as both parts of the virtues response solution to your spiritual life and actually loving and serving the people around you. The other day, I was coming out of my house, and I was so busy, I didn't want my neighbor, none of whom know Jesus, to see me and stop me and have a conversation with me.
Mark Clark [00:41:44]:
Do you know how messed up that is? It's like, if I can hide and get out of the house, then I'm good to go. It's like, really? This is what your priority is? No, no. You can't be too busy to do the kingdom stuff. And so here's the thing. There is hope for slothful people like me and slothful people like you, because God hates my sloth, and he wants. Jesus Christ came on a cross and died for every sin. And I'm not sure. Oftentimes when we're thinking and praying with the cross and the resurrection accomplished, we're like, I think he accomplished my spiritual laziness and he defeated it.
Mark Clark [00:42:22]:
But he did. One writer has said human beings were never designed to flourish in a state of permanent vacation. And that's true even about your spiritual life. The glorious truth is that in Christ, we've been freed from the dominion of sloth. And so my prayer, Lord God, is that we be a people who are not defined by this anymore. But because of what Jesus has accomplished in the power of the spirit, we can be people defined by an energy for the sake of the kingdom that the world will look at and go, where did you get this? Because nothing is impossible with you. You never rest. Give us the power to never rest.
Mark Clark [00:43:06]:
Doing the right kinds of things, being slothful in regard to our soul, where it shrivels and dies and can't feel you and the things of the kingdom anymore. Let us be people who rise up, up and actually awake, o sleeper. Paul says in Ephesians five, and rise from the dead. Awake, o sleeper. I pray that that is the reality of each one of our lives. In Jesus good name we pray. Amen.