Proverbs 12:11 & 16:3
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Faithfully work the field, but don’t do it alone.
Faithfully work the field, but don’t do it alone.
You know what is really annoying? When your fridge stops working. This is something all of us have experienced at some point right? Maybe it was during the ice storms and electricity was lost for several days or for whatever reason the fridge just decides it’s done being a fridge. If you have not experienced and non-refridgerating refridgerator consider yourself blessed… it is no fun. Over the past week there has been a storyline occuring in my family group chat. My parents got this brand new, beautiful fridge, real top of the line unit, six months ago and last week, it stopped working. You can feel the frustration right, this is a brand new fridge now its’s not working. So my parents try to troubleshoot it but nothing is working, they have to go out of town for a couple days so they end up just giving up, the company brings over a temporary fridge they can use until a technician can come out. A few days later I get a text from my mom that said this… “Family you are not going to believe this. Our refrigerator was in Shabbat mode. So basically it was not allowed to work.”
Somehow their fridge had gotten into a “Shabbat setting” referring to the weekly Jewish sabbath. Now I was familiar with this because when I visited Israel me and my friends ate dinner with a Jewish family during Shabbat and their appliances had these Shabbat modes. When I asked about it they explained that anything that uses electricity is off limits because that would be considered “working” and the law was you could not work on Sabbath. This seemed confusing to me because I don’t feel like I work all that hard to keep my refridgerator running. But the family explained that working wasn’t about labor but about creation. See the act of using a refridgerator requires the creation of electricity and because of that, you refrigerators have to stop using electricity on shabbat. Now why would creation go against the shabbat? Well, we find our answer in Genesis chapter 2. God creates everything in 6 days and then, Genesis 2:3
God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation.
Now, we don’t follow the Jewish law, and we have profound and greatly important differences with the Jewish faith, but here they got something right. Not that we shouldn’t use our refridgerators on Saturdays, but that work, as God sees it, is creation. Work for God, was creating. And He rested from that work.
This tells us something important. Work is good. God worked, and he said that it was good, furthermore, when God creates man this is what scripture tells us. Genesis 2:15
The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.
So God gives man a creative task to work in the garden, to plant, and water, creating and maintaining all sorts of life. This act of creation, this work God had given man to do was good. In fact it was one of the ways in which God created man in his image.
Man uniquely, apart from all of creation, can create. Now, man creates within the bounds of his human capabilities given him by God, but as God created and watches over the earth, man’s job is to join God in that creative work by keeping the garden and watching over it.
So, work is good, it is one of the ways in which we reflect the image of God, AND it was established pre-fall. Work was there, and it was good, before sin entered the picture. Humanity was always made to work. Work is a gift, the act of working alongside God in the garden he is building is beautiful and purposeful, it is uniquely fulfiling and good.
We feel this even today, we all love that sense of satisfaction knowing we worked hard and did good work. That is something God has put in us.
But, while work was present before the fall of man, once sin entered the picture, the experience of work changed. We see this as God tells man his consequence for sinning in Genesis 3:17-19
And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’:
The ground is cursed because of you.
You will eat from it by means of painful labor
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow
until you return to the ground,
since you were taken from it.
For you are dust,
and you will return to dust.”
Notice, Genesis 3 doesn't curse work directly, it curses the ground. The effect of this punishment is that work becomes frustrating, resistant, and toilsome. There are thorns and thistles. We will form sweat on our brow. The thing you were made to do, to work to create, one of the things that reflects the image of God in you, to work, create, fill, form, name, evaluate, that work still has dignity, but now it fights you. In other words, the ground God created you to work now pushes back.
Before, the ground was something that worked with you now it is something that pushes back against you.
And so now we exist within this tension. We were created for work. Work is good, and yet on this side of eternity, work at times is hard, it’s toilsome, it’s unfilfilling, and frustrating.
We create spreadsheets, relationships, presentations, budgets, impact reports, shareholder value, food for our families, and so on. We create, we work, and yet the project fails, the budget doesn’t balance, the stock market drops, and dinner gets burned in the oven. We feel the ground pushing back against us.
And when that happens, we tend to respond in two ways. We grip harder onto control, working within our own strength to beat the work into submission. Or, we neglect the work in front of us to chase the fantasy of some other work that won’t push back.
Both of those responses make sense. AND both of them make it worse.
What both of these responses miss, making the tension all the more unbearable, is the truth that WE were created FOR good work. Work itself is not the enemy. Work is where we find purpose and reflect the image of our creator. So we need another way to thrive in our work.
So, this morning we're going to look at two Proverbs about work, and they're going to tell us what to do when we feel the ground pushing back against us.
So if you would open to Proverbs chapter 12 and stand in honor of God’s word. We have one verse from chapter 12 and one from Chapter 16.
The one who works his land will have plenty of food,
but whoever chases fantasies lacks sense.
Commit your activities to the Lord,
and your plans will be established.
Let’s pray
Now, in order to properly interpret what these two Proverbs mean we have to first understand what Proverbs is. Now the majority of scripture follows a clear structure whether that be a plot, like a storyline, or there is a clear argument such as in the letters of Paul. Proverbs lacks both plot and clear argument. Instead, Proverbs functions as a reflection of God’s created order. Let me explain.
God created the world and he created us. Being that he created all of this, he knows how best Man fits into creation. There are certain ways in which we live that push back against God’s created order, and those things will lead to breakdowns. Alternatively, there are certain ways in which we live that are in line with God’s created order and those ways lead to flourishing.
imagine it like a one way highway. Following God’s created order is driving north on 1-24 on a day with no traffic. You may hit some slow spots but you are gong to get where you need to go. Going against God’s created order is like trying to north on 1-24 south at 4pm on a Friday. It’s not going to end well.
Proverbs are the road signs that point us in the direction of that which will lead to human flourishing. They are general guidelines we would be wise to pay attention to. Now, we must read them that way or we will get all sorts of confused.
For instance, we cannot read Proverbs as Promises, they are not a guaranteed contract with God. For instance, Proverbs 16:3
Commit your activities to the Lord,
and your plans will be established.
Is not a guarantee that just because you pray or devote whatever you are doing to God it will succeed. Plenty of people in History have commitited their activites to the Lord and failed. But generally speaking, in line with God’s created order, you are better off having committed your activities to the Lord than not. Right?
Same with Proverbs 12:11
The one who works his land will have plenty of food,
but whoever chases fantasies lacks sense.
Unfortunately, in this fallen world, there are many places where just because you work your land doesn’t mean you will be able to feed your family. But, you definitely won’t be able to feed your family by sitting around all day.
See, Proverbs are general principles that we would be wise to follow because they reflect the way God intended humans to operate. Aligning your life with God’s good created order leads to flourishing.
So, we would be wise to listen as proverbs speak. Now that we understand how to read Proverbs let’s look closer at. Proverbs 12:11
The one who works his land will have plenty of food,
but whoever chases fantasies lacks sense.
It is important to remember this was written to an agrarian society. Everyone was a farmer, you basically had to be.
And here in this proverb we have two men. One man works his land and has plenty of food, the other man chooses to chase fantasies. The key to this Proverb is that the second man has a field but isn’t working it. At first it may seem this proverb is about laziness, but that’s not what it says. It says the man is off chasing fantasies.
This is not a condemnation of ambition, entreprenurship, or anything of the like, The man chasing fantasies isn't being condemned for having dreams or ambition they're being condemned for not working their field.
See, as people who were created for good work but live in a fallen world where the ground pushes back against us oftentimes we can find ourselves avoiding or slacking on the work in front of us because we are focused on the fantasy, the illusion of a different kind of work that doesn’t push back against us. We begin to imagine a career, or another life, where the work before us is frictionless.
When you feel that tension of the work pushing back against you, its okay to ask the question “do I want to do this work” it’s okay to consider whether a career change is the right next step, but in the moment, the God honoring thing to do is work your field. To be faithful to the work that is in front of you knowing that work is good, and it is a part of God’s good design for you.
So the guiding principle here, how do we live in line with God’s created order, how do we thrive as people created to work the ground that pushes back against us, we faithfully work the field in front of us. Whether that be in a cubicle or in the home, we faithfully work the field in front of us.
This Proverb is giving us a picture of steady, faithful, consistent work, that ultimately leads to floursihing. See Flourishing comes when we embrace work as a gift rather than treat it as something to escape.
So we faithfully work the field in front of us.
Now, let’s look at the second proverb,
Commit your activities to the Lord,
and your plans will be established.
The Key word here is “commit.” This proverb doesn’t mean you pray in your car before you go into the office and then do wahtever you were going to do anyway. No the hebrew word translated as commit here means to roll onto. So essentially it is saying to roll your work on to the Lord.
This is an image of the weight you bear from work, being rolled off of your shoulders, onto the shoulders of our God. If we are to live lives of flourishing, if we are to do good work living into the purpose God has given us it is not enough to pray before we work, then rely on our own strength to get the job done.
See, when the ground pushes back against us, some of us instead of chasing fantasies, we grip the wheel of control harder. We dig our heels in, we work longer hours, we neglect family, we put all the pressure ourselves we are wound so tight that one comment from our spouse could crack us.
But see when the ground pushes back against us we cannot bear the weight. If we are going to flourish we must roll it off on the Lord.
It’s easy to say right, but how do you roll it onto the Lord? You get specific. Not Lord bless my work, but Lord I am writing this report and it has me wound so tight I’m going to snap. God would you give me peace. Would you give me self control. Would you give me patience. I cannot honor you in this on my own strength, for I am weak, but when I am weak you are strong.
Then you give it your best, and let go. Trusting God with the harvest of your labors.
So if work is good, but the ground pushes back, how do we flourish? We faithfully work the field in front of us, but we don’t do it alone.
That tension…
