Proverbs 6:6-11 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:
So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.
I’ve told you about the guy that worked at Payless Shoes in Warrenton, Oregon haven’t I? My family and I was in the Payless Shoes years ago.
After we had picked out the shoes we were going to buy we stepped up to the counter where another customer, a woman we knew, a member of one of the Pentecostal Churches in the area, was already standing and obnoxiously badgering – she would have called it witnessing to – the man at the register.
As I approached, she called out to me and said, “Pastor McKenzie, tell this man that he needs to be saved.” I can’t recall the entire exchange but it ended with him saying, “I don’t have time for God. I am 25 years old. I have to save for retirement!”
I was pretty young myself, maybe 32-35 years old. As a Christian I inwardly jeered at his lack of sound priorities.
•He did not know he would live until retirement
•His retirement account isn’t nearly as important as his eternal destiny and
•He was 25! He was way too young to be thinking about retirement
If I was 35 he’s now about 48. If he is still alive, his retirement is a lot closer now than it was back then.
I come from a generation of pastors who didn’t think a lot about their future years.
• Jack Hyles aggressively told us he had no retirement
• Most of us had opted out of Social Security
• We all planned to pastor until we died and
• Jesus is coming before I need to retire anyway
I can remember reading passages like,
Matthew 6:27-34 (KJV)
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
And really struggling because I had started a retirement IRA account when I was 24 years old. It wasn’t much money I was setting aside, but with as little as we were living on back then, it hurt a lot to put that money away each month.
Did I lack faith in God?
Years have passed since then – much more quickly than I would ever have dreamed they would.
• Jack Hyles did die while still pastoring but
• A whole bunch of preachers lost their health and had to quit pastoring way before they died.
• A lot of preachers opted back in to Social Security when offered a window to do so and
• A bunch of preachers realized that there are other verses in the Bible besides Matthew 6:27-34
Verses that present a different side to the whole saving for the future thing.
Verses like Proverbs 6:6-8 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
I. A LESSON FROM NATURE
Proverbs 6:6-8 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
We would be mistaken to take from this that ants have no organization.
There is a great deal of:
• Order
• Structure and
• Organization
in an ant colony.
• There is an ant whose job is to be the queen
• There is an ant whose job is to be a drone and mate with the queen
• There is an ant whose job is to be a worker whose job is to care for the colony’s needs
• There are even ants who are born specifically to fly off and start new ant colonies
There is a lot of organization.
What there isn’t is an ant whose job it is to make sure all the rest of the ants have a solid savings plan. None of us can force another person to save for the future. But a wise person does do it.
Notice secondly
II. A LESSON FROM GOD
Proverbs 6:6-8 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
The lesson of the ant is a lesson from God on at least two levels:
A. It is God who gives the ant her instinct to save
The ant colony works, I think, similarly to the involuntary organs of our body.
• Nobody tells the heart to pump
• Nobody tells the stomach to digest
• Nobody tells the liver to filter
They just do what they were made to do.
Ants, like almost all creatures except man, just do what they were made to do.
We were made to love and fellowship with God. We would be much better off if we did that.
B. It is God who teaches us to “consider her ways”
By the way, in preparation for this lesson I read up a bit on ants.
Did you know that the majority of ants in a colony are female?
All of the ants that we see outside of the nest are females. This REALLY explains why they get in such a panic when you mess up their house!
God tells us to consider her ways and then points us to one specific “way.”
III. A LESSON ABOUT THE FUTURE
Proverbs 6:6-8 (KJV)
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
The ant prepares in the summer for the coming winter.
Now here is the lesson:
Someday is coming.
The future, which seems so far off when we are younger, gets here much more quickly than we will wish it did. Preparing for that winter of our life is not a lack of faith because that winter will come.
I do not recommend you quit church and start putting everything you have into some sort of retirement account. But I do recommend you put something into a “someday account.”
It does not have to be a huge amount – especially if you begin early.