Proverbs 12:11, He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread: but he that followeth vain persons is void of understanding.  Part I

 In the beginning when God made Adam and Eve He set them not in a place of ease, a place of just sitting back and reaching up to a fruit tree for a tasty apple or peach, but He set them in a place where work was to be required of them.

 For our Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and out of the ground He made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

 But this garden was not to be self-sustaining for God chose to give purpose to his creation of man by giving the first Adam charge of the garden to dress it and to keep it.   

To dress the garden means to control it, and to keep the garden means to guard or protect it.

 So from the beginning God impressed upon man His image, an image of a working Creator.  

 And God chose to be a Creator who not only works, but shares in the work with his creation.  

 God’s part was in the planting of the garden, and man’s share was in the dressing and keeping of the garden. 

 All of God’s creation where there is life is a creation where that life becomes part of the sustaining of God’s creation.

 The Apostle Paul wrote in:

I Cor. 3:9, For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building. 

So we are privileged to work together with God, He doing His part and we doing our part.   

As God’s husbandry, as God’s building, He has a part and we have a part, His part always first and our part follows.

 Upon every occasion when you work to move toward a finished product, whether in the kitchen, the shop, the field or the office, you can thank God for doing his part toward that finished product for everything we do begins with God.

 God works with the Atheist (little does he know), the unbeliever, the fool, the wise for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.   

God is faithful, for in everything, He does His part. 

And in our proverb for today “He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread: but he that followeth vain persons is void of understanding” it is clear that God has a part and you have a part, for God provides the land for tilling, but God will not till the land for you, for He has given you the wherewithal to do your part.

 You have heard the saying:  God will not do for you what you can do for yourself.   

(Child rearing principle Mothers and Fathers.  As soon as your child can do a thing don’t do it for them! Don’t do their homework, don’t do their science project, don’t clean their room, don’t take the gift of work away from them, be laborers with them, you do your part in training them but they do their part in doing what you have trained them to do)

 The scriptures teach this principle but as usual Satan rejects this truth, sometimes thought of as harsh, in favor of a god who provides all and requires nothing of you. 

 God has given us the privilege of working with him to accomplish His purpose but the world system, Satan’s system rejects this with a message that he will provide for you with little if any contribution on your part. 

 Today we are seeing a rapid move away from personal responsibility to group responsibility. 

 This is orchestrated by Satan for it is against God’s principle whereby we are laborers together with God. 

 Satan’s program includes the elimination of God in the equation until our minds are convinced that we are laborers together with the group.

 It is to be no longer “In God we trust”, but it is to be “In Group we trust”, the group in our case being the government of the people, by the people and for the people. 

 We are in the Social Security group, the Medicare group, the Obama care group, the food stamp group, insurance groups which all tend to take away from “In God We Trust” to promoting “In Group We trust.”

 It is easy to be caught up in this kind of thinking but what Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 4:3, to break up your fallow ground and sow not among thorns, is required of God’s people. 

 We are given to be thinking people, thinking according to God’s word which clearly promotes personal responsibility and self-reliance, in union with our maker who is to be our help in time of need.

 Break up your fallow ground means don’t think according to the world system. 

 It is so easy to sit back and not think of what is going on as ground sits back that is not tilled. 

 All kind of things enter such ground defiling it and keeping it from bearing fruit. 

 Sowing among thorns always decreases or eliminates fruit bearing.

 So “sow not among thorns” means separate your mind from the world system which promotes everything as good that God declares as evil. 

 And this can only be done by continually walking in the light of the Word of God.

 So God declares this profound truth:  “He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread:

 Cause and effect.  God promises reward for labor.

 When God does this He is telling us that work and labor is honorable for He honors work with bread.

 This has always been true since the Garden of Eden and it will always be true throughout all the endless ages of eternity for our God is a working God.

 All of us have been given a calling to work. 

 Work is a purpose of God for man.

 Those who are in God’s kingdom are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, and have or are being thoroughly furnished unto all good works that we may be a peculiar people, zealous of good works. 

 So God brings to mind the task of tilling the land as the first basis of work. 

Adam taught his son Cain to be a tiller of land.

 It is recorded in 2 Chron. 26:10 that Uzziah’s reign of 52 years was occupied with the work of the land for he: digged many wells: for he had much cattle, both in the low country, and in the plains: husbandmen also, and vine dressers in the mountains, and in Carmel: for he loved husbandry.

A Scottish preacher named Ralph Wardlaw said this about husbandry: 

 Of all the arts of civilized man, agriculture is transcendently the most essential and valuable. Other arts may contribute to the comfort, the convenience, and the embellishment of life. But the cultivation of the soil stands in immediate connexion with our very existence.  The life itself, to whose comfort, and convenience, and the embellishment, other arts contribute, is by this sustained: so that others without it can avail nothing.

 It is easy to see in our modern culture Satan’s system to isolate us from the tilling of the land, but more so from the use of our hands in general as technology takes over many of those things that God purposed us to do.

 It is the desire of the old sinful nature to avoid that for which God has made us, and instead to do and to seek pleasure.

 So many products you see today are developed because we are a comfort seeking people.    

 We are told that in the last days men will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. 

 Loving God is doing God’s will and doing God’s will means a life of working for God.   

 But in our day, the message of technology, the message of our culture is to lessen your work, decrease the value of your hands and mind in order to occupy yourself with pleasure.   

But bread is connected with the tilling of land, and never connected with the seeking of comfort and pleasure.

 God’s word teaches us that we ought to have a useful profession or vocation and to perform it with diligence doing it with all our might and heartily as unto the Lord.

 You were not designed to be idle, you were not designed to be perpetually comfortable.

God was not slack in calling Adam and Eve to dress and care for the Garden of Eden.

And after their fall because of sin God said: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.

In our sinful nature God in His love and wisdom has so arranged things that unless we are diligent we will suffer loss, we will become poor. 

Now this does not mean that if you are poor you are not diligent.

There are many reasons for being poor but one of the reasons for being poor is an unwillingness to work.

God has made hands to push, to pull, to lift, to grasp, to hold, and to grab.

Hands that hang down do none of these things for in order to have bread they must be hands willing to push, and willing to pull, and willing to lift.

Hands are not made to be idle.

Hands are not made to seek the comfort of warm pockets to hide from the cold and the work.

Ecclesiastics 10:18 tells us this:  By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through.

Drive through the neighborhoods and it is easy to see hands that are hiding from work.  

God’s principle of tilling the earth to get bread cries out from every home where there are idle hands.

Just look at the greatest financial investment that people make in their lifetime, their house, as it yields to gravity.

Instead of a hammer or a paintbrush in the hand the idle hand operates the foot rest of the lazy boy or the remote or the iPad or the cell phone.   

Or maybe the hand is simply wiping away the tears generated by watching too many soap operas.

Perhaps it is because of someone who is simply a dreamer, one who wishes for the best but the fact is that wishing will not bring bread, for God has so ordained fatness will come by the sweat of your brow.

God has filled his word with this truth.

Proverbs 13:4 tells us, The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.

Here is the preacher’s proverb:  Proverbs 27:23, Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.

In other words, Till the land of your flock and it will bring forth bread.

And in Proverbs 10:5,  He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.

And from Paul in II Thess 3:6-12, Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. ⁷ For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you; ⁸ Neither did we eat any man's bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you: ⁹ Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us. ¹⁰ For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. ¹¹ For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. ¹² Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.

So Paul tells us to withdraw ourselves from the crowd that will not work by the sweat of their brow. 

In other words be among those who tilleth their land, be among those who operate according to God’s word and be not a follower of vain persons who are void of understanding.

Now to be void of understanding is to operate according to the world system. 

It is to love the world and the things of the world and the course of the world. 

God’s word says seek not to be rich, the world says seek to be rich and those that fit into this category the Bible declares to be vain persons.  

 My, how the lottery brings out those who seek to be rich by means other than work. 

 Be careful what you wish for, for along with every realized wish comes unintended consequences.

 Now God may bring you to be rich by hard work but to seek to be rich by hook or crook is vanity. 

 Vanity is a balloon puffed up. 

 A balloon without air, shows its reality but pump air into it and it inflates to a size many times larger than its reality. 

Vanity is the inflation of the mind upon insignificant grounds.

 It is the thinking of oneself more highly than one ought to think.

 It is empty pride, inspired by a haughty conceit of one's personal attainments or decorations.

 It is emptiness. It is desire without any real substance to realize the desire. 

 It is trifling labor that produces no good.

 It is a lack of knowledge of God’s kingdom caused by a filling of the knowledge of Satan’s kingdom and its rules of operation.

 Every creature of God proclaims that God has made all things to be working things and to proclaim otherwise is to proclaim yourself to be without understanding.

 God’s word, and God’s word alone brings understanding which means to hold in the mind, to capture a truth. 

 But capturing a truth only comes by God’s Spirit. 

 Jesus said “Ye must be born again” which among many things means ye must be born to the truth. 

 Ye must be born again in order to understand the kingdom of God and His righteousness.   

 And only by this act of God in union with your yielded soul, will you escape being in the company of those who follow vain persons void of understanding.