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Proverbs 12:11

Farming is a real job. It is boring, hard, hot, dirty. It requires patient waiting for crops to grow, and it has no glamour of fancy titles, fine suits, and big meetings. It involves long hours, manual labor, much practical wisdom, risk, no paid vacations, and only modest financial reward. Farming requires self-discipline and self-motivation. It provides food to sustain human life and provide eating pleasure. Farming is a real job.

And it is a good job. In a perfect world without sin, God gave Adam the work of dressing the Garden of Eden; and in a sinful world, his first son was a tiller of the ground (Gen 2:15; 4:2). The LORD gave man the internal knowledge of agricultural wisdom thousands of years before our witty inventions (Is 28:23-29). And He blessed men with great returns from tilling the ground and sowing seeds (Gen 26:12). But it is a hard job. Sound too much like work? Don't want to be a dumb farmer? Can't imagine getting dirty every day and never becoming someone important? Vain persons want to help you.

Call a number in the "Business Opportunities" section of your newspaper, and you can learn hard work is for idiots and how you can start getting rich this afternoon. They have a "business opportunity" for you to be "financially independent"; they have a "little known investment" that yields ten times what working peons like farmers get. Hooray!

Instead of working hard and getting dirty, you can drive a sports car and use a cell phone to arrange your next "sales meeting"! After all, if you can get a thousand people working for you, trying to become you by buying your overpriced product, then you won't have to work at all! Sounds great, doesn't it? Help yourself to the American dream!

But what does Solomon say? What does the man, who knew more about economic success than any ten men living today, say? What does God say? They say that the farmer will have plenty to eat - he will be successful; and the greedy fellow looking for Easy Street is an empty-headed fool and a loser. He's going down to poverty (28:19)! And this rule of economic wisdom applies to every honest and useful profession.

What is the secret to success from this proverb? Get up, go do a boring job, and do it well; forget foolish ideas of easy money or "business opportunities." Plowing your field will put you far ahead of men chasing dreams of easy riches and high-return investments.

Consider tilling, which is plowing and preparing land for raising crops. It is done in the spring along with a major investment in seed and fertilizer, when there is no evidence of fall's success. It is boring, hard, hot, and dirty; and you must live on credit or savings for six months, getting financially poorer every day, while your back grows sorer every day.

But one day you come home sweaty and filthy to discover an escape. A vain person in a fine suit and driving a new BMW is there to charm you and your wife about his exciting life with a "business opportunity." He says, "Join us, surely you don't want to be a loser all your life! Sign up to be a 'distributor,' buy my overpriced products, and get rich!"

So you attend a "sales meeting." After a prayer, the pledge to the flag, and singing "God Bless America," a beautiful couple claiming to be millionaires prance across the stage flashing Rolexes and photos of fancy houses. Beaming with happiness, they tell about quitting farming and spending half the year sailing their custom yacht in the Caribbean.

What is vain about this "success"? They don't show fifty thousand poor "distributors" in their down line, who were extorted into buying overpriced products to pay for the yacht through high-pressure tactics, product misrepresentation, and promises of quick riches. Grow up! Overpriced soap doesn't make anyone rich, unless someone lies somewhere about something. If you believe their story, become a billionaire like Bill Gates! Or better yet, play the lottery. You have more chance winning a lottery than owning a yacht.

What made Bill Gates a billionaire? Time and chance of God's providence (Eccl 9:11)! For every Bill Gates, there are ten million men who make an average income and one million losers who hurt their families chasing his illusionary "success." But you can reduce chance and harness time for plenty of bread by working your farm each day and trusting the Lord to apply His rain and sunshine for a harvest.

In all labor, like working a farm, there is profit; but the talk of the lips, like rah-rah stories of get-rich-quick schemes, tend only to poverty (14:23). Repeat, only to poverty! Many lose money, peace, and reputations chasing "success" (13:23). Though news stories are daily revealing more boom-and-bust businesses and investments, the only reason more schemes have not yet gone bust is God's judgment of deceiving prosperity (1:32).

Skepticism is wisdom! Only fools believe stories of easy money and super investments (14:15; 4:26; 22:3; 27:12). Things sounding "too good to be true" are just that, too good to be true! Only fools believe them. Wise men prove all things (I Thess 5:21).

But vain persons will resent your sober objections, for their conceit is too great (26:16,12; 21:2). They have seen success! They are copying their mentors, who rent Rolexes and lease sports cars; and they expect you to foolishly believe their story like they did others'.

There are no secrets to success. It is only by hard work, self-denial, patience, time, and God's mercy. There is no free lunch, or even a cheap lunch. Lunch is by getting wheat from the ground and meat from the herd. But vain persons hate skeptics, for they need you to join quickly and easily to make their next house payment. Dreams hate questions!

Avoid vain persons who are always looking and talking about "business opportunities" (9:6; 13:20). What is a vain person? Simple, someone trying to tell you there is an easy way to make a living. Following vain persons is reading their materials, listening to their ideas, and thinking about their investments. Go plow another acre instead of listening.

Starting as a trash collector and working hard with basic principles of godly wisdom will always bring more success than following another bright idea for easy riches. Compare:

Hard work + savings + safe investments + patience = prosperity. This is tilling your land.

"Business opportunity" + "super investment" + rah-rah stories = poverty. This is vanity.

Young man, there are Ponzi schemes (if you don't know what one is, you better learn), stock tips, buying real estate with nothing down, insider information, "business opportunities," sure-thing commodities trading, swamp land in Florida, "ground floor" opportunities, miracle products, multi-level marketing programs of all kinds, and other lies to relieve fools of their money, especially in a greedy and excessive generation like the present. Grow up, buy a farm, and get to work. You will be far ahead in the long run.

Love your job! Thank the LORD for it! Work hard and faithfully at it! You will be satisfied with plenty of bread, and you will live to see the vain persons in bleak poverty.

Our Lord Jesus had Easy Street offered to Him by the devil (Luke 4:5-7) and the Jews (John 6:15); but He remained totally committed to the hard work of the cross, for He saw the true riches that were set before Him for patiently enduring (Heb 12:2-4; Ps 16:8-11).

Itching-ears call for a shiny, new form of godliness (II Tim 3:5; 4:3-4), but continuing in the old paths will fill our souls with bread (II Tim 3:14-17; 4:1-2; Jude 1:3; Jer 6:16).

Cross-references: Proverbs 13:4 Proverbs 13:11 Proverbs 20:21 Proverbs 27:23-27

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