And welcome back. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. I want to thank you for joining me again today. We are in the 7th episode of a 30 part series on biblical wisdom for business leadership. This content comes from my book, Biblical Wisdom for Business Leaders, 30 sayings from Proverbs, which you can pick up at Amazon or really any online retailer that you might want to use. Today’s episode is about knowing when to stop working. And before we get going in this, I’d like to just invite you to head over to Bible and Business and take a look at my website, some of the podcasts, and the many articles that I have over there. And I would appreciate it also if you would take a moment and just subscribe to this YouTube channel as well. Okay, let’s get going here in Proverbs 23, verses one through three, we’re going to talk about knowing when to stop working. And the verses read like this do not toil to acquire wealth, be discerning enough to desist when your eyes light on it, it being wealth is gone. For suddenly it sprouts wings flying like an eagle toward heaven.
Now that Hebrew word for toil there.
Means to become depleted of strength or energy. And so with the negative there, it means do not become depleted of strength or energy. In other words, especially with effort and toil, let’s not become weary. Let’s keep some energy, some strength, some margin in reserve, as it were. So do not become depleted of strength.
Or energy in order to acquire wealth.
So don’t work too hard to be wealthy. Why? Because wealth is fleeting. It can go away at any time. Look, when we serve before kings, we’re introduced to their delicacies a lifestyle of wealth and power. We saw that in the last lesson and in the previous lesson before that. The reason that we’re serving before kings is because we’re highly competent.
So this saying here reinforces the phrase, do not crave his delicacies, which appears.
In the last saying and will appear again in the next saying, okay? And it’s emphasizing the wisdom of not putting too much effort into accumulating that which is temporal. In other words, wealth. When wealth is gained through righteous ways such as diligence or self control, then it’s considered a blessing from God. But when our raw ambitions drive us to work harder and harder to gain wealth and sometimes power, our efforts are really going to become a curse, and over time, they’re going to work against us. So this whole American notion of pull myself up by my own bootstraps mentality is really a godless mentality that leads to idolatry of ourselves, our businesses, and our success. This is a quote from my book.
It is sheer folly to keep working.
Harder and harder to acquire more and more of that which is temporal. And I think Jim Elliott said it best. He said he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
So you give away your wealth, you give away your life, really, which is.
Temporal, but you gain the presence of God and rewards in heaven things that you cannot lose. Ecclesiastes four, seven and Eight says this I saw something meaningless under the sun. There was a man all alone. He had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. For whom am I toiling? He asked. And why am I depriving myself of enjoyment? This too is meaningless, a miserable business.
What we pursue reflects what we love.
Show me your calendar and where you spend money, and I’ll show you what you love.
We will work hard to acquire what we love.
So let’s remember that rest is modeled in God’s creation. And when we rest, we show our trust in God’s provision. When we rest, we show that we love God more than our wealth. When we take time away from our.
Work, we show that we love the.
Presence of God more than our wealth. And we’re going to come back to this first point we pursue.
What we pursue reflects what we love.
When you pursue the heart of God, when you pursue the face of God, then you are pursuing that which you love. But if you’re only just kind of giving God a cursory look, maybe, just maybe, you read your Bible once in a while and you sit down and pray every so often, but it’s not a big thing for you, then chances are you don’t love God. Chances are really good that you love something else.
You love your career, you love your.
Profession, you love your vocation or avocations, whatever it is. But let’s remember that we pursue what we love, and I’ll just come back to it again. Show me what’s in your calendar, and show me what’s in your checkbook. How you spend your money, where you spend your time, how you spend your money, and you can know pretty quick what you love. So let’s recall that working for something temporal like money is really unwise and.
It’S not a characteristic of a Biblical.
Christian or a disciple of Jesus Christ. Let’s look at Ecclesiastes nine, verse eleven. Solomon writes this I have seen something else under the sun. He says, the race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise, or wealth to the brilliant, or favor to the learned, but time and chance happen to them all. So what is he really saying there? He’s saying, yeah, we have a responsibility to act wisely and prudently, but even if we do everything right, we have no guarantees that we will experience financial success, or that our learning will give us success, or that we’ll have any kind of security. So what this really means is that whatever success we do experience is only due to the generosity of God. We’re going to think it’s due to our own hard work, to our own.
Efforts.
To what we did right. We did these things and therefore we have these goods and this wealth and that kind of thing. But what Ecclesiastes says is you can do all that hard work and you’re still not going to be wealthy because time and chance happen to them all. And of course what he’s really saying is that time and chance are under the direction of God anyways, because other scriptures make that abundantly clear. There is no such thing as luck. There is only God’s sovereignty and generosity. And so we have to remember that.
Whatever wealth we do have is strictly.
Due to the generosity of God and he gives it to us to steward for his purposes and for his kingdom. A couple slides on conclusion. Here we go. The good life that America offers is a life of working harder and harder to achieve more and more so that we can have more and more wealth to spend on ourselves. But this is an endless treadmill that never stops. It is a fruitless life of diminishing returns. In the end, we may have a pile of money and a lot of accomplishments and a lot of prestige and all the cheers and clappings of everybody else, but ultimately we’ll realize that we have nothing. So a life lived in a covenant relationship with God where we are the stewards and he is the owner of everything we have, and he becomes the organizing principle for our lives. That is the kind of life that you want to lead because it’s the life where you gain that which you cannot lose. So we trust God for our financial security and we throttle ourselves to have time and energy to enjoy his presence and to focus on the non monetary things that money cannot buy.
So let’s not wear ourselves out to get rich. Let’s not wear ourselves out to acquire that which is so easily lost. Let’s not toil more and more to gain that which we cannot keep. So know when to stop working. Rest demonstrates trust and confidence in God’s provision.
Let’s remember that wealth is fleeting. And even if we do everything right.
We still may not be wealthy. It’s only because of God’s generosity that we even have what we have. So let’s be content to borrow from the last or the last episode. Let’s be content. Let’s want what we have and not want what we don’t have. Now, in our next episode, we’re going.
To be looking at Proverbs 23, verses six through eight.
And the title of that next episode is avoid Those Who Are All About the Money. That’s what we’re going to talk about in the next episode. So I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. Thank you for joining me today. If there’s anything I can ever do for you. Just reach out to me by sending me an email. Bill@bibleandbusiness.com, I’d love to chat with you. I’d love to interact with you. I’d love to just see how I can be of assistance to you. So until we see each other again, thanks for joining me today, and I hope that you go out and make it a great day. It take care.