All men judge one another by the quality of their work. Except for sloppy, lazy men. And they aren’t even worth talking about.”
                    –John Deacon  (Conn 2)

       “Making the very most of your time [on earth, recognizing and taking advantage of each opportunity and using it with wisdom and diligence], because the days are [filled with] evil.”
                    –Ephesians 5:16(Amplified)
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The verse for the thought today you can feel.  Oh, what vivid imagery!  My jaws ache when I read it.  “Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him.” (Proverbs 10:26, ESV).  The sluggard, not one who is just tired, but the person who is habitually lazy, the couch potato, the one who has no ambition and wants everything handed to him.  “Work” to them is a four-letter word.
     Vinegar!  I remember tricking my cousin one time into drinking a small glass of vinegar with her thinking it was apple juice.  All kinds of expressions appeared on her face.  Lazy people cause many kinds of expressions on peoples’ faces just like vinegar.  Hire a sluggard and soon you will be making faces, soon you will be gritting your teeth.  Perhaps, if they stay around they will even fray your nerves and cause the bile to rise.  Perhaps you have had to do group work, either in school or in a crew on the job.  There’s always the slacker–the sluggard–the person who allows everyone else to do the work.  Sometimes, just to get rid of him, he is the one sent on an errand.  These lack-luster individuals just make you jerk your jaws.
     I love to camp, but I don’t much care for the smoke that gets in my eyes around the campfire.  Annoying to say the least, but it also burns and reddens the eyes.  “The eye is the light of the body,” J.L. Flores reminds us, “if vision is in any way obstructed or impaired, delay and vexation must ensue.”  That’s what the sluggard does.  The sluggard’s employer and colleagues become the victim of perplexity and annoyance.  Trust is gone for the sluggard is not dependable.  They delay in the performance of their duties, if they do them at all, and to carry their part in the workload is a hindrance and greatly affects the attitudes of other workers.  
     Where are they?  “The want of punctuality sometimes is as disastrous as not doing the thing at all.” (Flores)  You wait and wait for them to show up.  Then after the work starts you wait for them to show up again.  Oh, he might be physically present, but he is a slug.  His presence not only hinders production, but hurts quality as well, and often, if he does any work it has to be redone.  This person deserves the “right foot of fellowship” as I often put it.
     Attitudes are soured, often to the point of anger.  Plus a crew can lose good workers if the sluggard is allowed to stay too long.  There is a key Scripture which we should all take to heart where the Master asked, “Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?” (Matthew 20:6, NIV)  It is very dangerous to remain idle, to be a sluggard not only in work, but in the mind.  What is the old saying, “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop”?  The sluggard is without purpose, without productivity.  Look at the rolls of the unemployed.  I have had business owners and managers tell me several times, “there’s a reason they’re unemployed.”  Could it be that they are sluggards?  Wanting pay for work not done?  Forbid!  Listen, there’s work to be done!  There is a war going on, a battle to be won.  Why waste the opportunity in front of you?  Why waste your gifts, talents, and abilities?  Are you a good and faithful servant–or a sluggard?  William Arnot states, “Sluggishness is a cutting vexing thing.”  
     Good question then, are we an integral and valuable part to the kingdom or do we cause God to grit His teeth?  We are to be living letters, what then does your resume say?  Sluggard!  I trust not. That would be a poor testimony for the cause of Christ.  See, it is a sin to waste another person’s time, as well as the time the Lord has given to you.  Think of this:  Now is the day of salvation, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, do not be weary in well-doing, work while it is light.  Get the picture?  In other words, avoid the path of the sluggard.  Eternity is in view; will Jesus say “well done” or “go away”?  

It sure seemed bad to die in a place that ain’t got no name. But some boys did.”

Loyalty is one thing. Stupidity is a whole other ball of wax.”
                    –P.W. Moore  (The Devil’s Edge)

       “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”
                    –2 Timothy 2:15 (ESV)
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One thing that cannot be denied is that Peter loved the Lord.  He declared, as Luke recorded, “Lord, I am ready to go with You, both to prison and to death.” (22:33, NKJV)  Don’t be quick to deride Peter.  He may have spoken in haste, not understanding the larger picture.  It may have been an emotional response to heart-felt feelings, not realizing that we are not to be guided by emotions.  In fact, emotions should follow decisions, not make them.  Nevertheless, Peter did speak out of love and loyalty.
     Every time we fail, we sin, we fall short in our obedience. We are doing the same thing Peter did.  Does that mean you are not loyal to the service of the Lord?  Does that mean that your heart is not right?  How many times have you promised not to sin, and you do?  Know this, that does not negate the promise.  It is still there to be kept.  Peter for sure, followed through with his promise to follow Jesus even if it meant death.
     You may have read the book or seen the movie, “Lonesome Dove.”  It is a story loosely based on Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight moving a herd of cattle from Texas to Colorado.  I want to look a little more closely at what actually took place.  Oliver Loving lay at death’s door in a bed at Fort Sumner with Charles Goodnight as his side.  Loving was shot in the wrist, shattering it by a Comanche weeks earlier.   But now, the stinking decay of gangrene was killing him.
     The story varies at this point.  Some say the doctor amputated, but was inexperienced thus causing the problem to accelerate.  Other accounts read that because of his inexperience the doctor would not amputate.  Either way, the death sentence was pronounced.  Loving said to Goodnight, “I regret to have to be laid away in a foreign country.”  Goodnight promised–a sacred vow–to take him home to Texas.
     Loving died and was buried in New Mexico.  Goodnight had to fulfill his obligation to deliver the herd which took months.  Then he rode six hundred miles back to fulfill a promise.  A lesser man, with little integrity, may have gone on his way, after all Loving was dead and buried and would never know.  Proverbs 20:6, declares, “Many will say they are loyal friends, but who can find one who is really faithful?” (NLT)  Goodnight was fulfilling his promise to his friend, but more importantly maintaining his integrity.  It is as Bryce Dominic Valor says, “By keeping every promise, I make my word as reliable as the sunrise, and my character as solid as bedrock.”
     He had Loving’s body exhumed, sealed in a tin casket filled with charcoal, and loaded into a wagon.  Now get this, it wasn’t just Charles Goodnight, but the entire outfit formed a five-six hundred mile funeral procession to Weatherford, TX.  Any one of those men could have found a reason, an excuse not to be there.  It took nearly six months.  That’s what is called stubborn loyalty.  Six months to fulfill a promise, plus the months that it took to get the herd to Denver and ride back to Fort Sumner.  Goodnight’s word was solid, not just a promise, but it was who he was.
     The question is, how loyal are we?  We do know One who was loyal.  Loyal to His Father, loyal to His mission and He carried it out to the finish.  Jesus could have said, “phooey,” that night in the garden.  “Look at the bums over there sleeping.  I’m coming home Father.”  No, He was true to endure the cross, to endure the cruelty, to endure the awfulness of man’s sin coming upon His righteous body.  There is little known regarding Peter.  There are a few verses in Acts, we have his two letters, and there are some in church history.  But I am convinced that his love for the Lord never wavered; his loyalty could never be called into question.  He gives us this advice, not emotional, not out of haste, but out of the depths of his character, “Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless.”. (2 Peter 3:14, NKJV)
  
(information regarding Loving-Goodnight taken primarily from “Brand & Backbone” by Bryce Dominic Valor)

Towns were the breeding-ground of greed and avarice, treachery and injustice, the places where men preyed on men and where corruption rose up with its ugly head and tried to swallow all that was good and decent, all that was precious and rare.”
                    –Jory Sherman  (Death Rattle)

       “The LORD within her is righteous; he does no injustice; every morning he shows forth his justice; each dawn he does not fail; but the unjust knows no shame.”
                    –Zephaniah 3:5 (ESV)
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          “God’s threats are designed to be trumpet calls that awaken us from our spiritual stupor, to shake us free of our drunken iniquity, and to sober us up, to open our eyes to our sins so that we fall on our knees, confess those sins, and receive the never-ending mercy of God in Jesus Christ.”
                    –Chad Bird

     I want to use the above quotation as sort of a thesis for a short study on Isaiah 5.  Note, though the prophecy was for Judah, God’s Word is for all times and ages; it is eternal and pertains to all nations.  It is a summary of what God is saying to all men.
     Israel, the combined nation, was set apart by God, for God, to be an example to the world.  Israel then, was unlike every other nation.   “But her constant trouble,” states D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “arose from the fact that she never realised that truth.  She always wanted to think of herself in terms of other nations.”  Israel simply did not want to be different.
     Isaiah 5:1-2 declares, “Let me sing now for my well-beloved a song of my beloved concerning His vineyard.  My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill.  He dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine.  And He built a tower in the middle of it and also hewed out a wine vat in it; then He expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones.” (NASB)  God was making something splendid, beautiful, and unique.  The “Gardener” was God Himself.  He was also the Provider and Protector and the garden (Israel) grew, but look again at the last two phrases from the NLT, “Then he waited for a harvest of sweet grapes, but the grapes that grew were wild and sour.”
     What more could He do, God says through Isaiah in verse 4, “What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?  Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes and did it produce worthless ones?”. (NASB)  The sourness of the people was appalling.  They were to live to a certain standard, honor God’s law, and have fellowship with the Almighty.  Instead the nation was producing nothing of ultimate value; it was a sham, with twisted ideas and morals.  Literally the term, “wild grapes” means “stinking things.”  The smell from the people, instead of a sweet aroma to God, had become a foul stink.
     The Gardener decides.  “So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard:  I will remove its hedges and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground.  I will lay it waste; it will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up.  I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.” (Isaiah 5:5-6, NASB).  They were to be a fruitful vine, instead, however, they produced sour, bitter grapes.  Now He is going to lay it waste.  With the blessings removed what will happen?  The result will be destruction, chaos, waste, hopelessness…
     God expected justice in the land, but instead there was bloodshed.  Justice had become a mockery.  He looked for righteousness, but instead He heard the howls of distress, the moans of the oppressed.  God will warn them later that, “There is no peace…for the wicked.” (Isaiah 57:21, NASB)  Removing the hedge of protection opens the people to evil forces and spirits (know that prophecy involves the spirit world as well as the natural).  Briars and thorns symbolize anarchy and lawlessness.  “All the enemies of mankind are attacking with a mighty and terrible power–the forces of evil and sin and uncleanness and suggestions and foulness.” (Lloyd-Jones)  God is removing His protection because man has declared he does not need it–man is his own god.
     John Winthrop declared in a sermon taken from Matthew 5:14-16, that the colony that was being established was to be a “city on a hill.”  Despite its problems throughout its history, the United States has been a beacon for Christianity.  It has been on the frontlines of mission work and benevolence aid.  People can say bad things about the nation, but they do not realize that they are part of the problem.  A city on a hill also shines its light on its own citizens, exposing their evil and sin, exposing the perversion of justice, and the mayhem on the streets.  God has an expectation!  He has done all He can to bring justice to the sin that besets mankind with the supreme sacrifice that was paid by His Son, Jesus Christ.  However, once Christ becomes Lord, there are still expectations.  We are now to work out our salvation, honoring Him, bringing glory to His name.  We are not to be producing bitterness, hatred, an immoral society, and one in which justice is perverted.
     I close this morning with verse 7, from the NLT.  “This is the story of the LORD’s people.  They are the vineyard of the LORD Almighty.  Israel and Judah are his pleasant garden.  He expected them to yield a crop of justice, but instead he found bloodshed.  He expected to find righteousness, but instead he heard cries of oppression.”  Yes, there are expectations!  Look in the mirror, America!