The Destructive Power of Doing Nothing Text: Proverbs 18:9
Introduction: Two Brothers in Arms
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is God's inspired wisdom for navigating the real world, a world He made and a world He governs. And in this world, there are fundamentally two ways to live. You can build or you can demolish. You can plant or you can tear up. You can be a creator, reflecting the image of your Creator, or you can be a destroyer. Our modern sensibilities tend to think of destruction in very active terms. We picture a man with a sledgehammer, a vandal, or an arsonist. We think of loud, overt acts of rebellion. And those are certainly destructive.
But the wisdom of God, distilled for us in this proverb, reveals a far more subtle, and therefore far more insidious, form of destruction. It is the quiet, passive, creeping destruction that comes not from a malicious act, but from a culpable failure to act. The Bible tells us that the man who takes a hammer to his own house and the man who simply lets the roof rot and the foundation crumble are brothers. They are kin. They belong to the same family, the family of fools, and they arrive at the same destination: ruin.
This is a truth our generation desperately needs to hear. We live in an age that has elevated ease into a cardinal virtue. We have confused "rest" with "idleness." We have mistaken a lack of strenuous effort for a state of blessedness. We have a culture that produces men who are not actively malicious, perhaps, but who are slack, negligent, and passive. They are not tearing the house down, but they are not fixing the leak in the roof either. And Solomon, speaking by the Holy Spirit, looks at both the active vandal and the passive sluggard and says, "There is a strong family resemblance."
We must understand that in God's economy, neutrality is a myth. You are either building up or you are tearing down. There is no middle ground. Inaction in the face of entropy is a vote for chaos. A failure to cultivate is a decision to let the weeds take over. This principle applies to your work, your marriage, your children's education, your church, and your own soul. The sluggard is not just a lazy man; he is an agent of destruction by default.
The Text
He also who is slack in his work
Is brother to him who destroys.
(Proverbs 18:9 LSB)
The Slack Man (v. 9a)
Let's look at the first character in this brief drama.
"He also who is slack in his work..." (Proverbs 18:9a)
The word for "slack" here in the Hebrew carries the idea of being loose, feeble, or letting your hands hang down. It's a picture of someone who has lost his grip. His work is characterized by half-measures, cut corners, and a general lack of diligence. He is not necessarily unemployed; he has a "work." But his approach to it is listless. He is the employee who does the bare minimum. He is the student who aims for a D minus. He is the husband who doesn't actively abuse his wife, but who certainly doesn't cultivate her. He is the father who provides a paycheck but not a presence.
This slackness is a sin because work itself is not a curse. Work is a pre-fall institution. God gave Adam the task of tending and keeping the Garden before sin ever entered the world (Genesis 2:15). Work is a central part of what it means to be made in the image of a working God. God worked for six days and then rested. To be slack in our work, therefore, is to mar the image of God in us. It is to fail at our basic human calling. The curse in Genesis 3 was not work itself, but the toil, the thorns, and the thistles that would now accompany work. To refuse to engage in that toil, to be slack, is to rebel against the created order.
This is not just about your nine-to-five job. The word "work" here is broad. It encompasses all your assigned duties and responsibilities under God. Are you slack in your prayers? Are you slack in the study of God's Word? Are you slack in the discipline of your children? Are you slack in the fight against your own sin? A man can be a whirlwind of activity at the office and be utterly slack in his far more important duties at home. He can be diligent in his hobbies and a sluggard in his spiritual life. The principle is universal. Where God has given you a task, slackness is not just inefficiency; it is a form of rebellion.
The Great Waster (v. 9b)
Now we are introduced to the sluggard's brother.
"...Is brother to him who destroys." (Proverbs 18:9b)
The King James Version renders this as "brother to him that is a great waster." The Hebrew word for "destroyer" is often used for a vandal or someone who brings ruin and corruption. This is the man who actively tears things down. He is the prodigal son who squanders his inheritance. He is the rebellious son who brings shame on his family. He is the fool who tears down his own house with his hands (Proverbs 14:1).
At first glance, these two men seem very different. One is passive, the other is active. One destroys by neglect, the other by aggression. One is characterized by what he doesn't do; the other by what he does. The sluggard leaves the fence to rot; the vandal kicks it down. The sluggard lets the weeds choke the garden; the destroyer salts the earth. They seem like opposites. But God says they are brothers.
Why? Because the end result is precisely the same. A ruined fence, a barren field, a collapsed house. The law of entropy dictates that anything left to itself will decay and fall apart. Order requires constant energy and attention. Neglect is all that is necessary for chaos to triumph. The sluggard accomplishes by his inaction what the vandal accomplishes with his malice. Both men preside over a pile of rubble. And since God judges by results, He sees them as family. They share the same destructive DNA.
This is a profound spiritual principle. In the great cosmic conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness, there are no conscientious objectors. Jesus said, "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters" (Matthew 12:30). Notice the parallel. Not being with Christ is the same as being against Him. Not actively gathering is the same as actively scattering. Passivity is opposition. Slackness is destruction. The man who sits on the couch while his family goes to hell is brother to the man who actively leads them there.
The Family Resemblance
So, what unites these two brothers? What is the shared family trait? It is a profound disrespect for the gifts of God. Both the sluggard and the waster despise what God has given them. The waster despises the gift by actively smashing it. The sluggard despises it by letting it rot from neglect. Both are terrible stewards.
Think of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. The master gives talents to three servants. Two of them work diligently and double their master's money. The third, the "wicked and slothful servant," does nothing. He doesn't lose the talent, he doesn't squander it on riotous living. He just buries it. He is slack. And what is the master's verdict? He is cast into the outer darkness. His inaction, his slackness, was a damnable sin. He was a destroyer by default.
The sluggard's sin is rooted in unbelief. He does not believe that his work matters. He does not believe that God will bless his diligence. He does not believe that the consequences of his inaction are real. He lives for the moment, for present ease, and has no regard for the future God has commanded him to build. He is a functional atheist in his work. He may profess faith, but his hands betray him. Faith without works is dead, and a slack faith is a destructive faith.
This is why the Protestant work ethic was such a powerful force in history. It was not born out of a desire for personal wealth, but out of a theological conviction that all of life is to be lived "coram Deo," before the face of God. Every task, whether preaching a sermon or sweeping a floor, was an opportunity to glorify God through diligent, excellent work. To be slack was to offer God shoddy worship. To be a sluggard was to be a bad priest in the temple of your vocation.
Conclusion: Pick Up Your Hammer
This proverb forces us to ask some hard questions. Where in our lives are we being slack? Where are we allowing decay to set in through our neglect? Is it in our physical health? Is it in the maintenance of our homes? Is it in our marriages, where we have stopped cultivating and started coasting? Is it in our relationship with our children, where we have outsourced their instruction to the world? Is it in our church, where we consume but do not contribute? Is it in our own souls, where prayer has become a formality and the Word remains a closed book?
We must see our slackness for what it is. It is not a personality quirk. It is not simple tiredness. It is destructive. It is a sin that makes us brothers to the vandal and the waster. It is scattering what Christ is gathering.
The good news of the gospel is that Christ came to redeem both wasters and sluggards. He is the ultimate builder, the one who is building His church, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. He is the diligent Son who always did the will of His Father. And through His death and resurrection, He offers not only forgiveness for our destructive past, but also the power of His Spirit to make us diligent builders in the present.
The grace of God does not lead to slackness; it leads to stewardship. It makes us want to work, to build, to cultivate, to create, to bring order out of chaos, just as our God does. It makes us pick up the hammer not to destroy, but to build a home, a business, a church, and a culture for the glory of God. So let us repent of our slackness, which is destruction, and by the grace of God, let us get to work.