Too Lazy to Plow

This article will be a blast to read. It kicks hard but gets to the point. It is one of my favorites by Bob Jones Sr.

I HAVE a verse of Scripture about which I want to talk to you. I want to drive it home to your hearts. I pray God to bless us as we try to think about it together. It is the 4th verse of the 20th chapter of Proverbs.



"The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing."



That is what God's Word says. You talk about good, common sense! You won't get in all other literature as much common sense as you get out of the Bible. If you want to know how to succeed, learn how from the Bible. If you want to know about salesmanship, study the Bible. You can get out of the Bible more good, practical, common sense than you can get in all the other literature in the world.

Now, get this text this morning. If you turn back from difficulty you will go hungry some day, or somebody else will have to feed you. All the failures I've ever met in my life were people who turned back when they met difficulties. Here is a student who comes to Bob Jones College and gets up against it. Then he begins to try to find an excuse to back off, an excuse to get home, an excuse to go back to mama. Occasionally a student will build up the most pious reasons. "The Lord has led me to go back to take care of my mother. I shouldn't stay here, I should go back and be kind to my daddy, my poor old daddy! He needs me so bad!" The only thing wrong with that student is that he is too rotten lazy to study. You know there is nothing in the world that makes me so disgusted as to have a fellow offer a pious excuse for doing something that is not pious. I get so tired of the shams and humbugs I meet along life's way.

The worth-while things in life are difficult. You show me the kind of difficulty you can drive through, and I'll tell you what you are, what kind of character you have. We read here in the Bible in one of these Proverbs that a fellow wakes up in the morning and says, "There is a lion in the street." He won't get up. He is a sluggard. The very thing that should make him get up, keeps him in bed. If there is a lion in the street he ought to get up. He ought to do something about it. But he wakes up and sits up in bed. There he is with the cover tucked about him. He says, "There is a lion in the street! There's a lion in the street! There is a lion in the street." And he lies back down. He lets the lion eat up somebody. Say, if there is a lion in the street, get up! That is the very time you ought to get up. Do something!

The sluggard wakes up and says, "Well, it is too cold to plow today. I don't like this kind of weather. I will just stay in bed." All right, buddy, wait until harvest time when folks around you have a good crop. You will be starving, and the fellow who plowed in the cold will have something to eat.

Do you know that a big percentage of the human race are dependents? And the reason usually is, they didn't plow when it was cold. They turned back from the difficulties of life. You are going to meet difficulties. Listen! The greater God's purpose in your life, the greater will be the difficulties you will have to face. If you study the records of the men who have moved the world for God, you will find they were always men who drove through great difficulties. There is no royal, easy road to success.

I never shall forget the time I heard Paderewski play. Somebody said I couldn't enjoy classical music. I didn't know anything about classical music. The reason people don't enjoy classical music is that they just don't get much of it. Even ordinary people like the classical when they get it. Some things are palmed off for the classical when they are not classical. But I went to hear him play, expecting to be bored to death. I sat back there just a poor, old, blundering country man without any knowledge of music; but my soul was thrilled. I never shall forget how as I watched him play my heart was moved. Somebody said to me, "Did you know he travels on the train with his piano in his special car and spends hours and hours a day practicing?" Just think of it! Some people don't make musicians because they are too lazy to practice. They have musical hearts but lazy fingers!

You know, downright laziness is what is the matter with most people. Just too good-for-nothing, no-account, lazy-that is all. Somebody has to feed them, has to bring them something to eat. Now, this is what God says about it. I am just telling you in modem words what God says in classical language, God says the sluggard who won't plow when it is cold, begs when harvest comes. That is what God's Word says about it. Now you are going to have to learn to plow when it is cold. Don't be looking out for your comfort. Don't be looking for a nice place to sit down.

Sometimes a student comes here all pepped up. He is going to do big things. He uses Christian language -talks pious. But once you put him to work, his spiritual barometer drops. You say, "Now, buddy, you are going to get down and work today. Hit the routine!" He won't be shouting when he gets his nose in a mathematics book. Personally, I never could shout over a problem in geometry! When you get to digging into Greek you won't be "Amen-ing" much. But there is as much religion in working a problem in mathematics as there is in saying "Hallelujah" at a camp meeting. And I haven't any respect for a young man who says "Hallelujah" at a camp meeting who won't dig out his lessons in an honest, faithful way when he is in college.

You are in one place that believes in "the old-time religion" and good, everyday common sense. "Amens" don't take the place of sweat in this school. Buddy, you will mop your brow many a time this year. You won't know it is cold! If you don't like to work, you are in the wrong pew. Listen, listen! We won't see you for dust, you will be moving around here so fast. You will be running around and you will be so tired your tongue will be dragging almost between your legs when you go across the campus. I am telling you about it, and I am not overestimating it. This is going to be the "out-workingest" working year you ever worked in your life! We have made up our minds to it.

Always before this year we opened school on a Wednesday morning. We opened on Tuesday night this year. We never got down to red business in past years until about Monday. This is what-Friday? This is Friday, and we are running on full schedule. And we are going to do next Tuesday's work tomorrow. That is going some! We are getting down to business! And we don't want you begging us for some of our wheat when harvest comes. If you are not going to work, don't hang around here. Don't you be a lazy loafer around here and then when we get a good crop come up and say, "I'd like to have a biscuit." We want to eat our own "grub." If you are too lazy to plow when it is cold, then just starve. You know St. Paul said, "If they won't work, don't let them eat." Mel Trotter said, "I have seen many a religious 'bum,' but I never saw a Christian tramp in my life." Listen, I never knew God to let any man down who worked and prayed and trusted. The college word this year is "Pray!" Pray! Pray! Pray! PRAY! But we haven't taken that word "Work" out of our vocabulary.

"Work wins." God won't do for you what you can do for yourself. I have told these old students-and now you new ones listen: God Almighty is not going to master mathematics for you. One day a student came to me and said, "I've been praying the Lord to help me pass my examinations." "Well," I said, "He's not going to do a thing for you. Do you suppose God Almighty is going to endorse your laziness?" Think about a fellow who doesn't study coming to God and saying, "Now, Lord, I was too rotten lazy to study and I want You to help me out." God would say, "I won't help you. I don't endorse your laziness." God won't do for you what you can do for yourself.

You go out and start to walk across the street out there. You say, "I'm going to trust the Lord. I am going to shut my eyes and walk across the street. Now, Lord, take care of me; I am trusting You." You try that, and some fool will run over you. You will get hit on both sides! If you get out there and start walking across the street, the thing to do is to use both eyes and pray, too. Even then some fool may run over you.

Amanda Smith, that great colored woman whom God raised up and used in such a wonderful way-just a poor washerwoman, a maid-one time found that she couldn't hear in one of her ears. She got anointed and asked the Lord to heal her. She just kept on asking the Lord to heal her. But she got worse and worse. One day Amanda went to see the doctor. She said, "Doctor, I asked the Lord and He didn't do anything for me; see what you can do." She had good sense. She had asked the Lord, but she went around to see a doctor and said, "Look in that ear, Doctor, and see what is in it." The doctor just got a little wax out and she could hear. Old Amanda said, "The trouble was I wanted the Lord to wash my ears for me!" There are some people who want the Lord to wait on them. God is not going to clean your ears for you. Wash your own dirty ears! Don't you ask God to press your pants. He is not your tailor! If you are too lazy to press your pants or get them pressed, He will let them bag off you!

There was a woman one time who had a boy in our school. He was in high school. (Warning bell rings) Just a minute-I want to finish with this boy. That woman sent that boy here to our Academy. He was a little "ornery" fellow. The mother wrote me a letter and said she was praying he would come out all right. I said, "Your boy doesn't need prayer. He needs an energetic mother with a stick." God won't whip a mother's "kid" for her. He will let her heart break sometimes because she didn't whip him! The God I worship has good sense. The God I serve is a God who is infinite in wisdom. God sends the sunshine, God sends the rain. God gives the soil. God gives you the physical strength to plow; and if you are too lazy to plow, God won't send you any wheat when harvest comes.



Now, let's get down to business. You know, all of us are lazy. I've always been lazy. If I am lazy, what about you? Nobody ever accused me of being lazy, but I am. I have been accused of everything in the world but being lazy and running. I never ran away from a fight and never was accused of being lazy. But I'm lazy. Everybody is lazy. I don't like to study except what I like to study. I don't like to work. I sweated here this summer in my office, when I would have given almost anything in the world to have had a vacation.



If you start off in life backing off from everything except just what you want to do and leaving undone what you don't want to do, you will never amount to a "hill of beans." God won't let you make good. Some young people go off to school and take just what they want to take, just what they like. That is what is the matter with the world now. Everybody in this school ought to take some subject he hates. Every student ought to have to do something he despises to do, and then do it well. If you haven't taken some subject this year that you don't like, there is something wrong with your character. Under the old educational system we were told what to take. We were told that what we disliked most, we needed most. That old system worked, too.

Now, what did God say, What did God say makes men beg? He said men beg because they will not go out in the cold. They will not plow unless the weather suits them!

Prayer: "Our Father, save us from being lazy. Save us from mental laziness. Save us from physical laziness. Save us from spiritual laziness. Some of us are too lazy to pray. Help us to learn to plow when it is cold. Help us not to turn back when the sun gets hot. Help us to not turn away from mathematics, or science, or literature, or history, or whatever we ought to take. Help us to do what God wants us to do. And may we go through with Thee this year to victory so after a while when harvest time comes we can gather in the sheaves for the glory of God. We ask it in Thy name! Amen."

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