TILL YOUR LAND

Proverbs 12:11 (KJV)

He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread: but he that followeth vain persons is void of understanding.

I looked up the word “till” or “tilleth” in my Webster's dictionary and found out that the word means,

"To work by plowing, sowing, and raising a crop."

According to Webster's then, the word “till” describes all facets of working the land from turning over the sod, right up to harvesting the crop!

I also looked up the Hebrew word that is translated, tilleth here.

That word means;

"To work in any sense of the word.”

 It describes

·   A servant,

·   A slave, (have you ever felt like a slave to your land?), and

·   A worshipper

I am of the opinion that we must not worship the land we work.

God has told us to worship the Creator rather than the created.

But I think we would do well to see the strength of this verse;

·   It is not the one who dabbles at the land that shall be satisfied

·   It is not the one who plays at the land that is satisfied but

·   It is the one who devotes himself to work the land that will be satisfied

I think we are in trouble in America today.

  

We have raised a generation who knows little about the work ethic.

·   We want everything now

·   We want it easy

·   We want it free

And we have got to get back to teaching Americans to work.

Let’s till the land.

Let's get back to being devoted about the things that matter.

Let's till the land,

I. AT WORK

The American Farmer is the symbol of what I am trying to say right here.

  

Nobody puts in more hours in a day, and more days of the week at their occupation than the American Farmer.

But it doesn't matter what kind of work we do,

We can apply this idea of tilling the Land.

Whatever we do, we ought to be devoted to our work.

A. By giving good hard work

I am by trade, a journeyman Ironworker.

I come from a small town in Washington, in the middle of the wheat fields, but several of the men of the town are ironworkers.

 

When I was an apprentice, a journeyman from my hometown took me under his wing.

He told me that I was from his hometown, and I had to be a good ironworker so I made all the others from my hometown look good.

As his apprentice, I had to do pretty much whatever he said, if I wanted to ever become a journeyman.

    

He told me I was to be

·   The first one on the job in the morning,

·   The last one in the lunchroom at noon,

·   The first one back to work in the afternoon, and

·   The last one to quit every night

I think that should be the Christian’s testimony at work too.

While we are working,

B. We ought to do our best work

A friend of mine (who was also from my hometown) was hired to weld a Crane Monorail in place.

      

After he finished the job, he learned how much weight the crane would have to lift, and said to me, "If I have known that before I would have paid more attention while I was welding it!"

      

He should have done his very best even if it had not had to hold that much weight.

We ought to be the kind of people that do our best at whatever we do, whenever we do it.

If we want to succeed , if we want to be satisfied, God says we had better till our land at work.

But, I believe we need to till our land

*II. AT HOME

I am talking about our families here.

   

The statistics concerning the American family today are alarming.

I am convinced that America is only as strong as her families.

If we are going to see the family unit become strong again, we are going to have to become devoted to building strong family relationships.

·   Both between husbands and wives 

·   And between parents and children

Till your land at home.

One final place that I wished people would apply themselves more today;

I wished people would till their land

*III. SPIRITUALLY

I can't imagine that God would have created us, and sent His Son to die on the cross for us only to have us ignore Him in our daily lives.

I wished that people would devote themselves to the things of the Lord more than many do these days.

A. We need to be devoted to build a relationship with the Lord

If you know that you know God tonight, may I ask you, “How well do you know Him?”

I judge my personal relationship with the Lord, whether I am close to Him or not, on how easy it is for me to talk about Him.

If I can talk about Him freely, and He comes to mind as I speak to folks, it is a pretty sure thing that I am close to Him at the moment.

And

B. We need to be devoted in our service to Him

He created his people, according to the Bible unto good works.

I am of the opinion that each of us ought to find that way, that God wants us to serve Him, and devote ourselves to it.

He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied.

Let’s devote ourselves to the things that really matter.

·   To honest work

·   To our families and

·   To the things of God