It’s not how you begin, it’s how you finish. Maybe you stumbled out of the gate. Maybe apathy, anger, or addiction robbed your children of the father they needed. You don’t have a time machine to rewrite the past. But you do have today. You can repent. You can ask forgiveness. You can start building again.

For the last several weeks, we’ve been studying the book of Proverbs. Not chapter by chapter, but guided by one question: What does it mean to be a wise builder? That’s a question worth asking, especially here. We’re a young church, not even five years old, filled with young families. Day in and day out, we are building: careers, households, and reputations. We can’t help it. God made mankind to worship and to work. It’s in our bones. Six days of labor, one day of worship. It’s the rhythm of creation itself.

When God placed Adam on the mountaintop in Eden, He told him to subdue the world: to bring it under control, to shape it for God’s glory. That’s why little boys dig in the dirt. God made them to shape the dirt. That’s why we want to climb to the tops of trees and mountains. That’s why we build bridges across creeks or carve wood into a flute or a guitar. It’s why we want to harness and master this world for some good and productive end. That’s dominion. We were made for it. We were made to build.

But not all builders build with wisdom. As we’ve said, wisdom is the art and skill of living in harmony with God’s moral, social, and spiritual order. God has made the world to work in a certain way, and wisdom recognizes and submits to that reality. It even knows how to deal with a cursed world where things don’t work as they were first designed. Wisdom navigates that brokenness in a way that still honors God. Folly, on the other hand, disregards God’s order and acts as if creation has no King.

So the very first step toward wisdom is bowing before the King Himself. To know Christ is Lord. As Proverbs 1 tells us: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.

Proverbs shows us what it looks like when a soul who fears the Lord builds with wisdom. That’s why it’s so helpful. But Proverbs also gives us the negative examples—the fools who don’t build, but destroy.

Life is not neutral. Nothing stays stable for long. Your house is either improving or declining. Your finances won’t take care of themselves. You’re either managing them or they’re wasting away. Your children must be disciplined and trained; if you’re not doing it, something else is. Maybe it’s media. Maybe it’s their peers. Maybe it’s simply the godless world around them. But one way or another, they are being formed.

Life is always moving; it never stands still. A house must be maintained. The lawn must be mowed. Leaks must be fixed. Roofs must be replaced. Ignore these things and your home falls into disrepair. That’s what we call entropy; everything in creation moves from order to disorder. Things rot. They break down. They require attention and effort.

And so it is with our lives. Many start out well. They build with energy and purpose in the beginning. But they don’t finish that way. Some fall into neglect. Others plunge into outright foolishness. Often it’s arrogance… they think they can coast. And when they do, everything they built begins to crumble.
It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. Take the 2017 Super Bowl. The Atlanta Falcons were up 28 to 3 in the third quarter. Victory looked certain. But then the Patriots rallied, the Falcons crumbled, and what looked like triumph ended in overtime defeat.

Or consider Bernie Madoff. He built a reputation as a brilliant financier, even chaired the NASDAQ. To the world he looked like a model of success. But behind the façade, he was running the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Billions stolen. Thousands ruined. And when the house of cards collapsed, he lost everything: his freedom, his family’s name, his place of honor. He died in prison as a cautionary tale of greed and ruin.

We’ve seen the same pattern in the church. Pastors who became household names, authors, conference speakers, men who seemed to start so well. And then it all came crashing down. An affair. Embezzled funds. Secret sins that burned their ministries to the ground.

The lesson is sobering: you can spend years building, and tear it all down in a moment. Sometimes it happens slowly, through neglect. Other times in one reckless act.

Proverbs 11:29 says, “Whoever troubles his own household will inherit the wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise of heart.”

Last week we looked at how women tear down their homes. Today, we’re going to look at men and how they can trouble their own households. There are three major areas I want us to consider: apathy, anger, and addiction.

Let’s begin with apathy.

Proverbs 24:30–34:

“I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense, and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down. Then I saw and considered it; I looked and received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.”

By apathy, I mean indifference. To be apathetic is not to care. The sluggard of Proverbs 24 is a picture of this. He’s lethargic, which is a form of practical apathy. He doesn’t give things the attention they warrant. His vineyard goes untended, and he becomes comfortable with it falling apart. It doesn’t happen all at once—it happens little by little. He sleeps when he should be working, and when he works, he doesn’t work with the vigor he should. He lacks drive.

To be a man, to be a laborer, is to work hard… not just in one area, but across many. Maybe you don’t have a vineyard. I don’t. But your life is a vineyard. Your household is a vineyard. Your wife and children are a vineyard. Your vocation is a vineyard. You cannot neglect these things. They require your energy, your care, your discipline.

Many men lose the hearts of their wives and children little by little. Not all at once. You don’t lose your son’s heart because you missed one baseball game. You don’t lose your wife’s heart because of one argument or a short rough patch. But a consistent pattern of apathy and lethargy will hollow out your household.

Children left without discipline will grow proud and reckless. Finances left unmanaged will eventually collapse into sudden poverty. Health ignored will decline beyond recovery. A wife denied tenderness will harden or turn elsewhere. This is the slow decay of a man who will not hustle.

The faithful life is a busy life. And I know some of you are thinking, “But I already work hard. I just don’t have enough time.” I get it. I’m sympathetic. But the truth is, you’ve got to be wiser. You’ve got to pick and choose what you spend your time on. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that when he became a man, he put away childish things. What are the childish things in your life? I don’t mean sinful things. Childish things aren’t necessarily bad. Kids need to play. It’s how they learn. But as a man, you don’t have the same time to play. You still need some recreation, but you also need to pray like David in Psalm 119: “Turn my eyes away from worthless things.” Some of your distractions are killing your time and starving your household.

If you really want to know where your time is going, track it. Track your money, track your hours. You’ll find you probably have more time than you realize… time you could be spending sleeping well, working diligently, and investing in what matters. Here’s a practical tip: I call it stacking. Stack tasks together. If I need to fix a fence but also want to connect with one of my kids, I take them with me to Home Depot. We grab a burger, then come back and fix the fence together. That way, the work gets done and the relationship grows. That’s how I make bivocational ministry work too—I use travel time for audiobooks, sermon prep, and phone calls. So ask yourself: what can you cut? What can you stack? What are your real priorities?

God gave us six days for labor and one for rest. That pattern is not arbitrary. It’s a calling. Work hard six days, rest one. Most of us are blessed to work Monday through Friday, with Saturday free for our homes and Sunday set apart for worship. But don’t miss the point: coasting will destroy you. Indifference, neglect, and laziness will dismantle your household piece by piece until there’s nothing left.

So look at the sluggard. Look at the apathetic man. And learn: you cannot afford to live like that.

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