The Half-Cooked Life: Text: Proverbs 12:27
Introduction: Two Ways to Live
The book of Proverbs is relentlessly practical. It does not float in the ethereal realm of abstract concepts; it gets its hands dirty with the grit and grime of everyday life. It is a divine manual for how the world actually works. And because God made the world, His instructions are not suggestions. They are the manufacturer's specifications. To disregard them is to live against the grain of reality itself, which is a fool's errand that always ends in splinters.
Our text today presents us with a sharp, almost cartoonish, contrast between two kinds of men, two approaches to life. On the one hand, we have the slack-handed man, the sluggard. On the other, we have the diligent man. These are not merely two personality types, like being an introvert or an extrovert. They represent two fundamentally different worldviews, two opposing religions. One man is a covenant-keeper, and the other is a covenant-breaker. One man builds, and the other wastes. One man exercises dominion as God commanded, and the other is a brother to him who destroys.
We live in an age that despises this distinction. Our culture is dedicated to the proposition that all lifestyles are equally valid. It wants to erase the line between the wise and the foolish, the productive and the parasitic. It preaches a gospel of entitlement, where the fruit of labor is a human right, detached from the labor itself. But God's Word will not have it. The universe has a moral architecture, and Proverbs is like the blueprint. This verse shows us in vivid detail that our habits, our work ethic, and our follow-through are not neutral activities. They are expressions of our worship, and they have consequences that echo into eternity.
The Text
A slack handed man does not roast his prey,
But the wealth of a man is precious for the diligent.
(Proverbs 12:27 LSB)
The Unfinished Man (v. 27a)
We begin with the first clause, a picture of pathetic incompetence:
"A slack handed man does not roast his prey," (Proverbs 12:27a)
The image is striking. This is not a man who is incapable of all effort. He is not inert. He has apparently gone to the trouble of hunting. He has roused himself from his bed, gone out to the field, tracked an animal, and successfully taken it. He has achieved something. He has the raw material for a fine meal in his hands. But there he stops. The project is ninety percent complete, but the last, crucial ten percent, the part that turns the raw potential into actual sustenance, is a bridge too far. The cooking, the final bit of work, looks suspiciously like more effort, and so the prize of his hunt rots.
This is the very nature of sloth. Sloth is not simply doing nothing. It is a profound failure of follow-through. It is the sin of the unfinished project. The lazy man is a man of great beginnings and miserable endings. His yard is full of cars that were going to be restored, his basement is full of half-finished woodworking projects, and his life is full of wasted potential. He is, as another proverb says, a brother to the great waster (Prov. 18:9). He doesn't smash things up; he just lets them fall apart. He doesn't burn the field down; he just lets the weeds take it.
This man's problem is a heart problem. He is "slack handed." The Hebrew word here for "slack" or "slothful" points to deceit and treachery. This is not just about being tired. It is a moral failure. The lazy man is fundamentally dishonest. He wants the reward without the work. He wants the reputation of a hunter, but not the responsibility of a provider. He is trying to cheat reality, to get something for nothing. But God has wired the world in such a way that this kind of cheating is ultimately self-defeating. The man who will not roast his prey is the man who will go hungry. His laziness eats him.
We see this everywhere. The student who crams for an exam instead of studying diligently throughout the semester. The contractor who cuts corners on the finishing work. The Christian who has a burst of spiritual enthusiasm but never develops the steady habits of prayer and Scripture reading. They catch the prey, but they fail to roast it. The result is a half-cooked life, a life of squandered opportunities and spoiled meat.
The Precious Possession (v. 27b)
The contrast could not be more stark. The second half of the verse shows us the opposite principle in action.
"But the wealth of a man is precious for the diligent." (Proverbs 12:27b LSB)
Now, some translations render this differently, suggesting that diligence is a man's precious possession. Both ideas are thoroughly biblical and get at the same truth from different angles. Let us take it as it is written here. The diligent man values what he has. The word for "wealth" is the same as "substance." The diligent man sees his substance, his possessions, his prey, as precious.
Why is it precious to him? Because he understands its source and its purpose. He knows that all good things are gifts from God, given to be stewarded for God's glory. He also knows the effort that went into acquiring it. He is not detached from the process. Because he worked for it, he values it. The sluggard despises his prey by letting it rot; the diligent man honors God and his own labor by seeing the project through to completion. He hunts, he dresses the kill, he builds the fire, he roasts the meat, he gathers his family, and he gives thanks to God. He enjoys the fruit of his labor because he has labored.
This is the foundation of a godly economy. Wealth is not evil. Substance is not evil. But it must be obtained through diligence and stewarded with wisdom. The diligent man builds. He takes the raw materials God provides and, through faithful work, he creates value. He turns a deer in the field into a feast on the table. He turns a plot of land into a productive farm. He turns a business idea into a thriving company that provides jobs for others. This is the dominion mandate in practice (Genesis 1:28). We are called to be fruitful, to multiply, and to fill the earth and subdue it. This requires diligence. It requires roasting what you hunt.
Notice that diligence leads to wealth. This is a general principle woven throughout Proverbs. "The hand of the diligent makes rich" (Prov. 10:4). This is not the crass materialism of the health and wealth gospel. It is the simple acknowledgment of how God has ordered His world. Faithful, persevering, skillful work tends toward abundance. Laziness, corner-cutting, and a failure to finish tend toward poverty. To deny this is to call God a liar.
From the Hunt to the Cross
As with all of Proverbs, we must read this wisdom through a redemptive lens. This proverb is not just good advice for getting ahead in the world. It is a pointer to the gospel and a picture of our sanctification.
In our natural state, we are all slack-handed men. We are worse than the man who doesn't roast his prey. We are the prey, caught in the snare of the devil, dead in our trespasses and sins. We have no ability to finish anything of spiritual value, because we cannot even begin it. We are spiritually inert, unable and unwilling to come to God.
But then the great Hunter, the Lord Jesus Christ, came for us. He did not come on a whim. He was the most diligent man who ever lived. He set His face like flint toward Jerusalem, toward the cross. He said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work" (John 4:34). He did not stop halfway. He did not catch us and then abandon us. He saw the work of redemption through to its bloody, glorious conclusion. On the cross, His final word was not "I have made a good start," but rather "It is finished" (John 19:30). He completed the work. He roasted the prey. He secured our salvation perfectly and entirely.
And now, because of His finished work, we are called to a new diligence. We are not diligent in order to be saved, but because we have been saved. Paul tells us to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13). God has done the decisive work in us, giving us a new heart and a new will. Our part is to now live out that new reality with diligence. We are to be diligent to add to our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and so on (2 Peter 1:5). We are to be diligent to make our calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10).
The Christian life is not a flash in the pan. It is a long hunt, and it requires the steady perseverance of the diligent man. God has given us His Word, prayer, the fellowship of the saints, and the Lord's Supper. These are the means of grace. The slack-handed Christian treats them casually. He starts a Bible reading plan but quits in February. He prays only in moments of crisis. He comes to church when it is convenient. He has caught the prey of a profession of faith, but he is too lazy to roast it. The result is a weak, anemic, and fruitless Christian life.
But the diligent Christian sees these gifts as precious. He treasures the Word. He labors in prayer. He is faithful in fellowship. He sees the whole task through, from beginning to end, because he serves a Savior who did the same for him. He knows that his labor in the Lord is not in vain, and he looks forward to the great feast, the marriage supper of the Lamb, where all the diligent saints will enjoy the reward of the one who finished His work for them.