The Arithmetic of Reality: Diligence vs. Haste Text: Proverbs 21:5
Introduction: Two Ways to Live
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is God's inspired instruction manual on how to live skillfully in the world He made. It does not give us sentimental platitudes or abstract spiritual notions that float three feet off the ground. It gives us the hard, unyielding grain of reality. It teaches us the spiritual physics of the created order. And in our text today, we are given a fundamental law of economic physics. It is a law as certain as gravity: thoughtful, diligent work leads to abundance, and frantic, hasty shortcuts lead to ruin.
We live in an age that is defined by haste. We want instant coffee, instant communication, and instant gratification. And this lust for immediacy has thoroughly corrupted our economic thinking. Our culture is saturated with the spirit of the lottery ticket, the get-rich-quick scheme, the crypto-currency longshot, and the multi-level marketing mirage. It is the spirit of the hasty man, who wants the fruit without the labor, the harvest without the planting, and the crown without the contest. He is always looking for an angle, a shortcut, a way to game the system. He despises the slow, plodding, faithful work of turning one dollar into two, and then two into four, over the course of a lifetime.
But God, who designed the world, tells us plainly that this is the path to the poorhouse. Haste is the sworn enemy of wealth. Not just financial wealth, but the wealth of a well-ordered life, a stable family, and a flourishing community. The Bible does not condemn wealth; it condemns the love of money and the foolish pursuit of it. God is a God of glorious, overflowing abundance. He desires to bless His people, and He has hardwired the universe to reward a certain kind of character and a certain kind of work. This proverb sets before us two paths, two mentalities, two kinds of men. And we must choose which one we will be.
The Text
"The thoughts of the diligent lead surely to profit, But everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty."
(Proverbs 21:5 LSB)
The Diligent Mind (v. 5a)
The first half of the verse lays out the principle of godly productivity.
"The thoughts of the diligent lead surely to profit..." (Proverbs 21:5a)
Notice where the profit begins. It does not begin in the hands, but in the head. "The thoughts of the diligent." The Hebrew word for thoughts here is machshabah, which means plans, designs, or purposes. This is not idle daydreaming. This is careful, cognitive, strategic thinking. The diligent man is a planner. He thinks before he acts. He considers the end from the beginning. He maps out his course. He is like the man in the parable of Jesus who first sits down and counts the cost before he builds a tower (Luke 14:28).
And he is diligent. The word for diligent, charuts, carries the idea of being sharp, decisive, and persistently hard-working. It describes a man who has honed his skills and his mind. He is not lazy. The sluggard in Proverbs is the diligent man's opposite. The sluggard desires, but his hand refuses to work (Prov. 21:25). The diligent man also desires, but he yokes his desires to disciplined action. He gets up early. He puts in a full day's work. He finishes what he starts. He is faithful in the small things.
And the result of this combination, a thoughtful mind and a working hand, is sure. The text says it leads surely to profit. The word here is ak, which means surely, certainly, only. This is not a roll of the dice. This is a description of how the world works. God has designed creation to respond to this kind of intelligent, faithful labor. "In all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty" (Prov. 14:23). This is the creation mandate of Genesis 1:28 being worked out in the economic sphere. When we exercise wise dominion, when we steward our time, talents, and resources faithfully, the result is fruitfulness. It is increase. It is profit.
This profit is not limited to money, though it certainly includes it. It is the profit of a well-tended garden, a well-run business, a well-ordered home, a well-taught child. It is the abundance that comes from living in accord with God's created design. This is the path of building something solid, something lasting, something that can be passed down to your children's children.
The Hasty Fool (v. 5b)
The second half of the verse gives us the stark and tragic contrast.
"...But everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty." (Proverbs 21:5b)
Here we meet the other man. He is "everyone who is hasty." The word for hasty is uts, and it means to be pressed, to hurry, to be frantic. This is the man in a rush. He doesn't have time for careful planning. He doesn't have the patience for slow, steady growth. He wants it all, and he wants it now. He is driven by greed and impatience.
This is the man who buys a lottery ticket, believing it is a financial plan. This is the man who sinks his savings into a speculative venture that promises overnight riches. This is the man who goes into debt for frivolous things, assuming he can pay it back later. He lives by the thrill of the long shot, not the certainty of the harvest. He is always chasing a fantasy. "He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment" (Prov. 12:11).
And where does this haste lead? The text is just as emphatic as it was for the diligent man. It leads surely to poverty. The same word, ak, is used. It is a certainty. It is a spiritual law. Why? Because haste is a form of foolishness. It ignores the process that God has ordained for growth. It tries to reap where it has not sown. It is an attempt to get something for nothing, which is a form of theft from reality itself.
This poverty is, first, financial. The get-rich-quick scheme implodes. The speculative bubble bursts. The borrowed money comes due. But the poverty is deeper than that. It is a poverty of character. The hasty man becomes a man of anxiety, of desperation, of envy. He is always looking over his shoulder at what others have, instead of building something with his own hands. His life is built on sand, and when the rains of economic reality come, it collapses.
The Gospel for the Diligent and the Hasty
Now, we must be careful here. This proverb is not a promise of automatic, worldly prosperity for every Christian. And it is not a simplistic formula that says every poor person is lazy and every rich person is righteous. The Bible is clear that the righteous can suffer and the wicked can prosper for a season. Job was a righteous and diligent man who lost everything. Asaph was vexed when he saw the prosperity of the wicked (Psalm 73).
This proverb is describing a central principle of how God's world generally operates. It is a maxim, a truth that, all things being equal, holds true. But we are all sinners living in a fallen world. And this means two things. First, even the most diligent among us have our moments of haste and foolishness. We have all chased fantasies. We have all been lazy when we should have been working. We have all made foolish financial decisions. Our diligence is tainted with sin.
Second, the hasty fool described here is a picture of every one of us in our natural state before God. We are all, by nature, trying to get to heaven by a shortcut. We want the reward of righteousness without the work of perfect obedience. We try to build our own towers of Babel, hastily trying to make a name for ourselves and reach God on our own terms. And the end of that road is not just poverty, but eternal bankruptcy. It is the wages of sin, which is death.
Into this reality comes the Gospel. The Gospel tells us of the one truly diligent man, the Lord Jesus Christ. His thoughts were always of His Father's will. He was diligent to do all that the Father commanded Him. He worked the work of righteousness perfectly. And the profit of His work is an infinite, eternal treasure of righteousness that He earned not for Himself, but for His people.
And He took upon Himself the poverty that our haste deserved. On the cross, He became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9). He paid the debt we could not pay. He settled our bankrupt account.
Therefore, our diligence now is not a way to earn God's favor, but a response to it. Because we have been saved by the unmerited grace of God, we are now free to work, not out of frantic haste or greedy ambition, but out of grateful love. We are free to be diligent, to plan, to build, to save, to invest, and to create, all for the glory of God. We can work patiently and faithfully, knowing that our ultimate security does not rest in our 401k, but in the finished work of Christ. He is our treasure. And when we know that, we are freed from the haste that leads to poverty and are empowered for the diligence that leads to true, lasting, and eternal profit.