Proverbs 27:23-27 (KJV)
Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.
For riches are not for ever: and doth the crown endure to every generation?
The hay appeareth, and the tender grass sheweth itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered.
The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of the field.
And thou shalt have goats' milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance for thy maidens.
There are two things the Bible indicates are equally dangerous for us concerning possessions:
· Not having enough
· Having too much
I don’t know that either one is better or worse than the other:
· I know people who have what some would think is more than enough and yet they are very faithful
· I know some people who have just barely enough[1]and are very faithful to the things of God.
Conversely,
· I know some who rebel against God because they have what they perceive to be too little and
· I know some who are lifted up in pride for what they have accumulated and refuse God, seeing no need for Him
The Bible teaches us to pray for enough; for that which is convenient for me.
I want to examine this passage then under the heading, How To Have Enough.
First then,
*I. BE DILIGENT WITH YOUR BUSINESS
Proverbs 27:23-24 (KJV)
Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.
For riches are not for ever: and doth the crown endure to every generation?
The words diligentand to know, in this case, are the same Hebrew word, to know. The word is repeated for emphasis, a common practice in Hebrew writing.
It means, “know that you know.”
Is it not true that we think we know a lot more than we know we know.
The other day my wife needed a package of these little magnetic buttons.
She knew we had them but when she looked for them, she could not find them. So she bought some more of them.
As soon as she got home and opened the package, something clicked in her head; she had seen this before.
Sure enough, there was an open package that looked exactly like the one she had just opened.
· She thought she knew we had them then
· She knew she had looked for them so
· She knew they are not there
She had looked right at them when searching for them, but she had a different shape in her mind so, while she thought she knew we did not have any of them, she did not know that she knew we did not have them.
In the case of the passage we have before us, the business was tending to flocks and herds.
The Bible says, “be diligent to know”-“know that you know” the state of thy flocks.
Whatever your business. Whatever you do to supply the needs of your family, know that you know how its going.
The reason is because “riches are not forever.”
It’s the law of entropy. Everything decays with time. Order falls into disorder unless new order is added to it.
When I was in Bible college I learned the phrase, “If you aren’t green and growing, you’re ripe and rotting.”
It applies practicallyas well as spiritually.
· It applies to our Christian life
· It also applies to our career and work
In other words, you can’t know for sure you can slide along until you retire.
The only way to know that you keep a job is to constantly improve yourself so that you are too valuable not to have.
Be diligent in your business.
Two
*II. BE BUSY WITH YOUR HARVEST
Proverbs 27:25-26 (KJV)
The hay appeareth, and the tender grass sheweth itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered.
The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of the field.
The word I am focusing on right now is “gathered.”
The Bible says, James 1:10-11 (KJV)
But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.
The thing about the those fields of grass and grains, they don’t wait for us to be ready to gather.
They are here and they are gone.
If we want to profit from them, we have got to:
A. Recognize when they are ready
I told you that the worddiligentmeans to know….
Strong’s Concordances says it infers the words:
· Care
· Observation and
· Recognition
You care enough to be on the look out and you know enough to recognize when there is potential for harvest or profit.
B. Be ready when they are ready
To be ready to harvest when the crops are ready to harvest you must be:
Focused
My first summer of wheat harvest I wasn’t aware of what would happen. I just knew that the farmer, Turk Ely, would let me know when the harvest was ready.
So I killed time fishing.
My buddy Dale Lambert and I had gone camping and fishing along the Snake River by Little Goose Dam, about 1 hr 45 minutes from home.
While we were there, I caught a 5 foot sturgeon, the first one I had ever seen.
It was getting near to dark in the summer time, so about 9:30 pm when I caught it.
We packed up our camp and drove back to Waitsburg so its getting close to midnight but we found my parents at a local tavern and showed them the fish and woke up Dale’s parents to show them.
Probably about 1 or 2 in the morning, I stuffed this 5 foot long fish in an ice chest and went to sleep, expecting to clean it the next morning.
Mom and I got up – I don’t know what time and went out to start cleaning him when, without warning, Turk Ely pulld into the driveway and said “Harvest is ready, let’s go.”
· He didn’t care to see the fish
· He didn’t care if Mom cleaned the fish by herself
· He didn’t care if the fish rotted
If I wanted to work for him in the wheat harvest I had to drop what I was doing and get in the truck.
Imagine if I had still been camping!
I would have lost my summer job.
People loose opportunities all of the time because they are doing something else when their harvest is ready.
C. Gather them when they are ready
Back to my story about Turk.
· If I had chosen to clean the fish, or
· If I had stayed in bed because I was up so late or
· If I had decided I was too tired to get in his truck when he pulled up
The harvest would have happened without me.
Thirdly
*III. BE AWARE OF SOURCES
Proverbs 27:25-27 (KJV)
The hay appeareth, and the tender grass sheweth itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered.
The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of the field.
And thou shalt have goats' milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance for thy maidens.
I see five sources of income represented in these three verses:
· The farmer puts up the hay for his own animals and to sell to others
· The gardener produces food for people to eat
· The shepherd tends his sheep to sell the wool for cloth
· The goat herder produces either meat or milk
Every one of these is a different opportunity for income.
· Some people might do a little bit of all of those things.
· Someone else might specialize in one or another of them.
I worked in the wheat fields for Turk Ely.
Turk didn’t have a lot of land of his own so he could not make his living just growing wheat to sell.
What he chose to do is invest in the best harvesting equipment available at the time, Combines that were way out of the price range of most of the farmers.
Then he would hire his equipment and crews out to harvest the wheat for these other guys.
· They focused on tractors and the equipment to plant the crops.
· Turk focused on combines and trucks to bring in the crops
In High School, I chose to work wheat harvest.
Other kids my age chose to work in the Green Giant Cannery in Waitsburg.
Still others got a job waiting tables or washing dishes at one of the two restaurants in town.
We don’t all have to grab the same opportunity but we all do need to grab an opportunity.
And if we are:
· Diligent and
· Busy and
· Aware
God will bless and see to it that we have enough.
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