CHS Downtown sermon | Landon Dermott

So this is Landon. I'm the area director of Roanoke Young Life. If you're not familiar with Young Life, you should hang out with me and learn more about it. But I'm gonna preach to us tonight and bring God's word.

Yeah. Like Eric said, I work full time for a ministry called Young Life here in Roanoke. We work with high school and middle school students, and I love what I do. It's a blast.

And I know what you're thinking when you first lay eyes on me. Most people say to me after the fact—they look at me and they say, "Man, you must be a football player, right?" I know that's what you're thinking when you look at me. It's something between my tiny little hands or my short stature or these toothpick arms. You're like, "Man, that guy must play football." And you're probably thinking maybe he plays defensive end, defensive tackle, linebacker, something like that. That's kind of the build I have.

So you're gonna be shocked when I let you know that when I was in high school, I actually was the kicker on our football team. I went to Hidden Valley High School down the road, and I was the kicker on the football team. I loved that gig. It's a pretty easy spot on the high school football team. You stand on the sidelines, and then every once in a while, you jog out, you kick the ball, no one really hits you, and you jog off the field, and you're done. It's a great gig.

And I loved it, except for in my third football game ever. We were playing Lord Botetourt High School, and we got late into the game, and we had started to beat him pretty handily. Our coach was getting to this point where he was starting to put some subs in, doing some experiments with the roster, and he called my name. He said, "Landon, come here."

So my first reaction, of course, is to think he's talking about someone else. Even though there's no one else named Landon on the team, I look around thinking, surely on our own 20 yard line late in the game, he's not talking to me. But he was.

So I went over to him and he said, "Hey, Landon. I want you to run in there. Tell Jimmy, who was the running back at the time, that he's out and you're gonna run 48 sweep right."

I didn't know what any of that meant, but I jogged onto the field because in that moment, I had two choices. I could stay on the sidelines, or I could take the play call and jog out on the field. And because I'm crazy, I went out on the field not knowing what I was doing.

I get in the huddle and I said, "Jimmy, you're out."

And Jimmy looked at me like I was a lunatic. He's like, "Why are you in the game right now playing running back?" So he jogs off the field, kinda checking over his shoulder, seeing if it's a prank, if he's getting punked.

Then I got in the huddle and I said, "Alright. We're gonna run 48 sweep right. Ready? Break."

We break the huddle, and my best friend who was playing quarterback at the time—his name's Nick Ralph—he grabbed me by the face mask and he pulled me in real close and he said, "You know what this means, right?"

And I didn't know what it meant, but I was like, "Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."

And then his eyes got real big and he said, "I'm gonna pitch you the football. You're gonna run that way and run as fast as you can."

So my eyes got real big at this moment. I'm not just a figurehead out there. He's gonna throw me the ball. I gotta figure out what I'm doing. And I started to get pretty nervous.

If you know anything about football, the guy who receives the ball—the running back—is usually five, six yards back. I'm like 20 yards back, standing there waiting. And Nick waves me up, and he gets under center, and he goes, "Red eight. Red eight." He said hut. And he pitches me the football.

And lucky for you, I actually dug up some old footage, and you're gonna get to see that football play right here, right now.

[Video plays]

So you probably figured out pretty quickly that wasn't actually footage from me. But that story is true. I promise you.

Except for when I ran the football that day, I ran about seven yards, someone touched my foot, and I fell on my face, and I got up and ran off the field as fast as I could to make sure that they didn't call any more plays with me in at running back. But in that moment, I had two choices. I could stay on the sidelines or I could jog out on the field. And I would venture to say that every single day of our lives, we're faced with the same decision, maybe even every moment. There's a play call for our lives, and we have a choice to either jog out on the field or stay on the sidelines.

Thanks to the Holy Spirit, we're in a sermon series on the book of Proverbs, and we're taking a look at the idea of wisdom for our lives—the design that we have for our lives. And Proverbs is chock full of themes of wisdom, of the way that life is meant to be lived. Tonight, what I want to take a look at is a theme that runs throughout the book of Proverbs, and it's the theme of sloth.

I know that when I say we're going to talk about Proverbs and we're going to talk about this thing called sloth, you're probably like, how in the world could that relate to me? But I would venture to say that if we could take a closer look at what sloth actually is and how to avoid the way of the sloth, as Proverbs would tell us, it might just be one of the most important things we could ever take a look at.

The Sluggard in Proverbs

What I want to do first is do a quick survey of the book of Proverbs and some of the places we see this theme of sloth or a sluggard come up throughout it. There's a lot of these that come up in the book of Proverbs. We're just specifically going to look at three.

The first is Proverbs 6:6-11:

Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provision in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man. — Proverbs 6:6-11

So the first one, we see this idea that if you live your life in the way of the sloth or the sluggard, we see poverty and scarcity.

The next one is Proverbs 15:19:

The way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway. — Proverbs 15:19

The last one is Proverbs 21:25:

The craving of a sluggard will be the death of him because his hands refuse to work. — Proverbs 21:25

This one is kind of the most severe, and we see this warning that the cravings of the sloth will be the death of him.

So through this overview, we see this idea that to live your life in the way of the sloth is a bad thing. The wisdom of Proverbs would say to avoid the way of the sloth is the wise way to live. But the question would be, what does it actually mean? What is the sloth?

Sloth isn't something that we talk about often, and I think there's two reasons that we don't really talk about it much. The first is sloth, as you might know, is on the list of seven deadly sins. That's not actually a list from the Bible. That's kind of been this adopted list throughout the history of the church of seven big hitters—things that people typically deal with or struggle with in a more serious manner. And sloth is kind of at the end of the list, and I think we don't talk about it much because when you look at that list of seven deadly sins, there's some big hitters at the front end. We've got anger, envy, pride, lust. When we hear those, we think, okay, we've got a lot of stuff to fix over here, and we don't often make it down to this thing called sloth.

The second reason I think we don't talk about it much is because I don't think we fully understand what the sin of sloth actually is. What does that really mean?

For me, when I think of sloth, I think of me and some of the guys I lived with in college on a Saturday, and we wouldn't leave our couch. We'd order pizza, we'd just play PlayStation, watch football. We didn't move. Or someone who can't get work done. When I think of sloth, and I think we often think of sloth, we think of laziness. So we think that if sloth is laziness, then the way to avoid it would be to be busy. And so we think the antidote to the poison of sloth is actually busyness.

And if you're like me or anyone in our culture for that matter, we're busier than we've ever been. If you're like me, you're checking emails at the dinner table.

You're answering calls in between meetings. We're taking on more volunteer assignments. We've got our world spinning at a million miles an hour, and we think if sloth is laziness, then the antidote is busyness. But what if sloth were actually more? What if there was more to this sloth?

See, the translation of sloth in this list of seven deadly sins is actually a word called acedia, and that comes from a Greek word, and it means without care. I'll read the definition that's behind me. It says lacking engagement, concern, commitment, or zeal. And a word probably we use more today that would make sense for what is sloth? If sloth is actually this word, then what that really is is apathy.

And so sloth, instead of just simply laziness, is actually this word or apathy. Apathy being to know what needs to be done but choosing not to do it. To go to my example on the football field, it's when I got that play call to know that I was going to go on the field and run 48 sweep right, but instead of going and running that play, to choose to stay on the sidelines. So sloth is this idea of knowing what needs to be done but choosing not to do so, to choose a safer or easier or more cautious route. And if that's what sloth is, frankly, for me, I'm guilty of that a lot more than I'd like to admit.

So if that's our problem, if sloth is this idea of apathy, then what's our solution? What I venture to say is the best place to look is a guy named Jesus, a guy who walked the earth two thousand years ago, whose life we still talk about today, a man who knew no sin, thus never fell into the sin of sloth. See, Jesus knew the play call for his life. Jesus knew that when he came to Earth, he came to live the life that you and I should have lived, and he came to die the death that we deserved to die. His life was a rescue mission for me and for you, that he knew he was going to the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, to reconcile us back into relationship with the Father, the relationship we were designed for all along.

I want to look real quick for the last little bit of our time at an account late in Jesus' life when I think the temptation of sloth was whispering in his ear. See, towards the end of his life, even though he knew the play call all along, it started to become more real. And Jesus heads to a garden called Gethsemane, and he takes his friends, and he knows very, very soon he's going to be handed over to his enemies, and they're going to take him to the cross. And in this moment, I want to take a look at how Jesus responds as the sin of sloth or the temptation of the sin of sloth starts to whisper in his ear.

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, sit here while I go over there and pray. He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. And then he said to them, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and he prayed, my Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will. — Matthew 26:36-39

So we see this moment where Jesus, being fully man and fully God, knows what's coming. He knows that his death on a cross is imminent, and he knows the play call. And he's there, and he knows, I can either jog out on the field or I can stay on the sidelines. And in that moment, he says, If there's any other way, would you let this cup pass from me? All alone in a garden, his best friend's fallen asleep on him, sweating blood, full of distress, his enemies so close he could probably hear their footsteps, Jesus asks the Father, Could there be an audible? Could we call a different play? But the answer was no. The play call remained the same, and thank God that Jesus jogged down on the field in that moment for me and for you, to die the death that we deserve to die, to reconcile us back in a relationship with the Father we were designed to be in relationship with.

Living a Life of Passion

How did he do it? He did it by living a life of passion. See, if sloth is actually acedia or apathy, the antidote to that is passion. Jesus lived a life of passion, being that he knew his life was about something bigger than himself, and he was willing to suffer and even die for it. See, the antidote to sloth is to live a life of passion.

But your question is probably, as we close, to be fair, you can't really go into a room one day and just sit there and be like, I'm going to be passionate right now. Right? It doesn't just happen like that. It's a transformation of the heart to become passionate.

So how did Jesus do it? How did he live a life of passion? And I think the answer is in this passage. It's right under our noses, and it's actually riddled all throughout the gospel accounts of Jesus' life. How did he live a life of passion, the inverse of the life of sloth?

It's the same as the clip that I showed from the Little Giants. Johnny caught the ball, and he said, what do I do now? And the quarterback looks at him, and she says, run to him. Run to the father. And it's in doing that we see Jesus in that moment of distress. What does he do? He goes to the father. We see moments all throughout Jesus' life where he pulls away to be alone with the father, and it's there that his heart is transformed. It's there that he lives a life of passion, and the same is true of us. As we run to the father, it's there that he transforms our hearts, that we go from living a life of apathy to living a life of passion.

It's not easy. It's not going to be easy for us. The call is quite challenging, in fact. In Luke nine, Jesus says:

If anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily. — Luke 9

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, When Christ calls a man, he bids him, come and die. See, we could stay on the sidelines and live a safe, cautious, eventless life, frankly, probably void of meaning, living for a long time simply because we're willing to die for nothing. Or we jog out of the field and live into the purpose that Christ has created us for. And, yes, we share in his sufferings and even his death, but we also share in his resurrection.

My challenge is this: don't miss today. Don't miss what the Lord has designed you uniquely for as a father or a mother, as a brother or a sister, as a friend or a coworker or a boss or a stranger. Don't miss what the Lord has designed for you in this space and time. Don't miss the chance to deny yourself, follow him, and live a life of passion jogging out onto the field.

It doesn't start by working harder. It doesn't start by trying to earn it or striving or doing more. It starts simply by running to the Father, by getting alone with Him, just like Johnny did, just like Jesus did. Are we getting alone with the Father?

I'm gonna pray, and then I think Tim's coming up. Lord, thanks for this time. Thank you that you went to the cross for us. Thank you that you jogged down on the field, and that we would live lives of passion for you. It's in your name we pray. Amen.