Profit And Fruitfulness

Profit is a loaded word, but Proverbs treats it with surprising honesty and hope. We want our work to matter, our hours to count, and our effort to produce real fruit not just more exhaustion. So we ask a blunt question: what if the missing ingredient isn’t more hustle, but better efficiency?

We walk through a set of Proverbs that connect abundance to diligence, timing, planning, commitment, and skill. Along the way, we tell stories from everyday life: a community garden that thrives because of simple order, a renovation that goes faster when the “demo” is finished cleanly, and why harvest seasons demand urgent action. We also push back on the fantasy of quick wins. Biblical economics frames wealth and profit as long cultivation in the field God has given you, whether that is your job, your business, your marriage, or your calling.

Then we turn to mastery. Skill is not just talent you either have or don’t have. It is developed excellence built through repetition, correction, humble learning, and the right people around you. In a world that keeps replacing expertise with convenience, Proverbs invites us to become the kind of workers who waste less, see problems sooner, and create more value with the same inputs.

If you want to do less and accomplish more, this message offers a practical roadmap and a deeper anchor in Christ, the Redeemer who wastes nothing in your story. Subscribe, share this with someone who feels stuck in their work, and leave a review with one habit you’re going to practice this week.

Transcript

Proverbs On Work And Wealth

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Our scripture reading today comes from a selection from the book of Proverbs, beginning in Proverbs chapter ten, verse four, the Word of God reads this way A slack hand causes poverty, but by the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a prudent son. But he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame. Proverbs twelve eleven whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense. Proverbs 21 5 The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. And finally, Proverbs 22 29. Do you see a man skilful in his work? He will stand before kings, he will not stand before obscure men. This is God's word. Thanks be to God, you may be seated, and may God bless this reading and preaching of his word. Our neighborhood has a community garden, and a number of years ago I rented a plot where we planted tomatoes. And I don't know much about gardening, so I did some research. I Googled it. Google is uh something that we used to use before ChatGPT existed. And I learned that I should lay out my plot in a grid and plant my tomatoes in neat rows a certain distance apart from one another. So I went out there with my tape measure and I did just that. And our garden plot looked different from all the others. It looked like a Presbyterian had cooked here and uh not like a hippie like the rest of my neighbors. And one neighbor later told me that he laughed when he first saw me with my tape measure out there. But once the plants grew and started to yield, he admitted that our plot was the most fruitful of all. We were all working with the same soil, we were all trying to grow the same things, but that year my plot was most fruitful for one simple reason, and that is efficiency. We're in a series on biblical economics, and today we're looking at the important subject of profit, everybody's favorite part of economics. Or another way to think about it would be fruitfulness. Profit and efficiency are closely related. They're two sides of the same coin. So what are these things? What is profit? Well, profit is the gains left over once all the expenses are paid. Even the Hebrew word that we've read in Proverbs simply means whatever is left over. So after the cost of labor, the cost of materials, the cost of production, after we've paid all of our scientists and all of our lab coats, what have we gained? And that is the profit. And so what is efficiency? Well, efficiency is getting the most out of what we put in. And in the case of my garden plot, it's getting the most possible tomatoes out of my limited space of my garden plot by reducing waste and maximizing opportunity and using all of it to its fullest potential. That would be efficiency. And they're very closely related. And this is important for us to learn because we all want to be more profitable, as Aaron prayed just a few moments ago. But we live in a fallen world in which it is very difficult to make a profit. By the sweat of our brows, we put in long hours at work or on our businesses or raising children, and the earth produces thorns and thistles rather than fruit. And it often feels like we get very little accomplished and very little is gained compared to the amount of effort that we put in. What we learn from Proverbs today is that the key to becoming more profitable or more fruitful in anything that you do is not necessarily to work more or to work harder, but it is to become more efficient. We all want to learn how to do less and yet to accomplish more. Who here would like to do less and yet accomplish more? We want our efforts to make an impact and to count and not to go to waste. And the key to this is efficiency. Profit and efficiency are two sides of the same coin. So how can we become more efficient and as a consequence more profitable? And there's three things that we learn from what we looked at in Proverbs this morning: intelligence, commitment, and skill. Intelligence, commitment, and skill. So first, intelligence. Profit comes from learning to work smarter and not necessarily harder. And I know that you've all heard that before, uh, to work smarter and not harder, but what does that mean? How does Proverbs give a unique insight into that? Well, there's at least three aspects of working intelligently that we encounter here in Proverbs, and the first is diligence. Proverbs 10, 4 says, a slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. So what Proverbs is saying here is that profit comes from diligence. And diligence is the opposite of laziness or the slack hand. So the diligent does not procrastinate and put things off, the diligent does not leave things unfinished. We just started remodeling Henry's bedroom. We are remodeling each of our children's bedrooms to give them the rooms that they will live in for the remainder of their time in our house. And I spent a few days on the demo portion of the project. And during demo, I am always tempted to leave the demo mostly finished, where all the big stuff is done, but maybe I can just leave uh the little details for later. But I've learned over the years that a clean demo, a clean step one, is absolutely everything for the productivity and the efficiency of the rest of the job. If I do not diligently pull every nail and sweep up and throw away all the waste and make sure that all of my drywall is cut in straight lines, then I will be fighting with the project and continuing to demo all the way to the end. And every time I go to install something and realize that there's a nail that I forgot to pull or something in my way that should have been removed, it just makes the rest of the project unnecessarily difficult. Diligence. Diligence always seems slower in the moment, but it always saves time in the end. Timing is another one that we see. In Proverbs 10, 5, it says, He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame. So what Proverbs is teaching us here is that profit comes from good timing. In Israel, the summer time is the harvest time. So he who gathers in summer, the prudent son is gathering during harvest. The smart, efficient son does not only work hard, but he works at the right time. He knows the right time to apply his most intense efforts. In Israel or in any agrarian economy, you could break your back working year-round to prepare for the harvest, to get everything ready and to make your harvest as successful as possible. But when the harvest comes, you have a narrow window of time. It's a limited amount of time where an intense amount of work is needed immediately. And if you sleep or if you are slack during that crucial time period, and if you miss that window, then it doesn't matter. All of that work done during the year could amount to nothing, and much of the crop could be wasted. So being profitable is not about working more hours or working all the time or working around the clock, but it is about working at the right time, knowing what is the right time to apply my most intense efforts, recognizing the right moment, and acting diligently while the opportunity is present. Sensitive military operations, for example, often take years of planning, but must be executed in a very narrow window of time. On May 2nd, 2011, the conditions were just right. It was nighttime, there was a cloud covering, it was dark, but it was not too dark. The climate was cool enough for helicopters to be able to operate properly. And the compound where Osama bin Laden was hiding was known and it was mapped, but since he was constantly moving, the opportunity was ripe. It was now. And it took years of careful planning and gathering intelligence and training. But SEAL Team 6 went in and eliminated the terrorist and then disappeared into the night. And the operation took 40 minutes. Years of planning, years of gathering intelligence for just minutes of execution. If they missed that window, then years of work would have been wasted in a moment. And finally, we see planning. Proverbs 21:5 says, the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. And what we are learning here is that profit comes with planning. Those who are hasty, who throw themselves into a venture or a project without thinking much about it, without counting the cost, without formulating a plan, will not, or probably will not, profit from their work. The Hebrew word for plans can also be translated calculations, which means doing homework and research, understanding all of the knowable information, having some kind of game plan, and even attempting to account for the unknown. When I'm bidding a project, the first thing that I do is make sure that I understand the plan. How is this going to get accomplished? What is the plan? I never bid a project without a plan. And then I estimate how much time it will take me to execute the plan. And if I think it will take me three days, I will bid it for four or for five, budgeting for the unknown, and that's why I'm expensive. But then if I sell it for four days, and if it only takes me two days to complete, well, you're not getting your money back. That's all the more profit for me. That is my reward for efficiency, and it's a win-win. You get it efficiently, and I get more profit because I've done that more efficiently. Profit comes with careful planning. So I know that there's many in this church, myself included, who want to become more profitable, who need to become more profitable. It's a tough economy. And for some people, the answer is simple. The answer is that they just need to work more. They need to work harder. Instead of working 20 hours, they need to be working 40 hours a week and to be more profitable. But for most of us, the answer is not more hours. And I know this because I've I talk with you. I know what you're doing. I know how what kind of hours you're working. And for many, we are already working 40 or 50 or sometimes 60 hours a week, and we still need to be more profitable. It's it we are putting in so much effort, and the returns seem small. The answer is to become more efficient, to make the hours that we work count for more. And we Proverbs gives us these three ways to grow in efficiency that we just looked at. How can I better plan and go into my days and weeks with a realistic game plan, and we could all stand to grow there? How can I be better with timing, not missing windows of opportunity? And then how can I be more diligent in my work day in and day out, not um not procrastinating, but bringing each task to completion. Each of these things will cost us in profitability if we don't press into them. And one more note about timing, especially for parents, and this is something we might not think about, but is very closely related. Julie's parents, my wife Julie, never had the birds and the bees talk with her growing up. She had lots of questions, but she never got any answers from her parents. And a few days before we got married, Julie's mother attempted to initiate that conversation, but at that point, Julie was not interested in having it. She was 24 years old. The window of opportunity had closed long ago. Parents, if you want to train your children, if you want to build a healthy, lifelong relationship with them, if you want to instill your values in them, the time is now, and the window will not be open forever. We have to appreciate the right time and to act at the right time. At some point, you cannot work any harder, but you can learn to work more intelligently, to work smarter, more efficiently, and more profitably. That's point one. But point two, commitment. We also need commitment. Profit comes from long-term faithfulness in one field. Proverbs 12, 11 says, Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense. Proverbs teaches that the path to profit comes from a long-term commitment to your field. Every family in Israel had a plot of land as their inheritance from the Lord. It was assigned to them by God. And their prosperity was tied not to finding a better field, but to faithfully working the one that God gave to them. And that land that God gave was full of potential. If they would diligently work their land day by day, year in and year out, this was the path to profit and wealth and to success for them. A long obedience in the same direction as Eugene Peterson would say, a commitment to the mundane tasks day by day and brick by brick. The opposite of this would be to follow what Proverbs calls worthless pursuits. And there's many ways that we can unpack that. To expect wealth to suddenly appear, to get rich quick, as we sometimes say, whether this be through some kind of breakthrough or windfall or inheritance or just good fortune, or maybe simply just to be pulled from one thing to another, constantly getting bored with our career or our job and just chasing the next exciting thing and moving into different fields and just never zeroing in on one thing and making it successful. Proverbs teaches that neglecting to work your land in favor of these other things is lacking sense and will lead to poverty. Breakthroughs and windfalls may come, but fortune typically favors the diligent, those who diligently work the field that God has given to them. Profit and wealth seldom come through good fortune, but they most often come through long-term cultivation. I started my business the same year we started the church back in 2021, and each year during tax season I have to do accounting for the business. Year number one, I did about$35,000 in sales, and of that I enjoyed about$10,000 in profit. So very modest, very small, but still, but a decent uh sales to profit ratio. But each year it has grown a little bit. Each year my sales go up and my profits go up a little bit. I'm not doing anything radically different. I'm just continuing to work my field, hopefully making small improvements along the way. In the church is the same story. Since we started this church, each year we've grown a little bit. We have never grown exponentially. Thank God. I don't know what we would do if suddenly next week we doubled in size. We probably wouldn't be able to handle it. But each year we've grown just a little bit, adding a few new families, uh, growing in revenue a little bit. And both enterprises are still small and humble, but from the objective measurements you can see that cultivation and growth is happening. And I promise you that I'm not getting rich quick, and the church isn't growing quick, and I don't expect a sudden windfall of good fortune, but I am convinced that the key to success in this or any endeavor in the church or in the business or in any of your endeavors, the key to success is commitment. Commitment, not giving up. And if we work our field, the calling that God has given to us and don't give up, it is far more likely to lead to success than if we quit and just jump to the next thing and start over. The Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 6 9, he says, Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. If we do not give up. So what is the field that God has assigned to you? Maybe you're in a career or in a place in life that you never planned to be, and it feels like you stumbled into whatever you're doing, and that this isn't what that five-year-old kid said that he or she wanted to do so long ago. And I think we all feel that way. I certainly didn't carefully plan to be where I am today, but the Lord does plan these things, and the Lord assigns to each of us a field. He gives us a set of experiences that set us up to be able to be successful in a certain field. He gives us an education, even if that's in the school of hard knocks. Um we we come up, we learn things that prepare us for a certain calling. He has opened up certain doors of opportunity, and we each have a field that if we will work it, we can be profitable. So commit yourself to that field and don't move on from it until it doesn't need you anymore. If you're building a business, make it work, make it profitable, make yourself replaceable, and don't move on from that to a new endeavor until it can run without you, and you can sit back and just enjoy the profits. If you're married, make it work. Invest in your spouse, invest in this relationship. When we run into conflicts in marriage that seem unresolvable, Satan likes to lie to us. And he makes us believe that we are the only marriage that has ever run into this problem and that no one else has ever figured this out. And he tempts us that we should just give up and we should part ways and move on to the next thing because these are irreconcilable differences. But the truth is that, I mean, that's such a lie. The truth is that there is no marriage problem that you could run into that 1,000 other marriages have not also experienced, and that a thousand other couples have not learned to overcome. The trick to a lifelong marriage is not winning the romance lottery and meeting someone who's perfectly compatible. That's a complete delusion. There is no such person. But the trick to a lifelong marriage is not giving up. Continuing to invest, continuing to work the field. Work your field and don't give up, for in due season we will reap a harvest of blessing if we do not give up. And finally, skill. Proverbs draws our attention to skill. Profit comes from being very good at what you do. Proverbs 22 29 says, Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before obscure men. When a king wants something, he wants the best. Only the best stonemasons will build the palace. Only the best cooks will prepare the food. Only the best seamstresses will make the royal robes. Only the best gardeners will keep the king's garden. He the king wants the best. He's looking for excellence, and he will pay for it. And Proverbs says this is where skill leads. Skill cannot be hidden. It is sought out like gold, and it will reveal itself, and skillful people will be invited in and will be given opportunities that others never get. But we need to define skill carefully because skill is not just natural talent that you uh either have or don't. It's not something that you are born with or uh that you cannot develop. It's it's anybody. Anybody can be skillful. Skill is developed excellence, and it's what happens when repetition meets intentionality, when practice meets correction, when time meets a discipline. Skill is not something that we find within us, it is something that is forged over years of doing the same thing again and again and again and getting a little better each time. And Proverbs pushes us further because skill is not just about the quality of the outcome, but it's also about the efficiency of the process. Because a skilled worker wastes less. They can do the same amount of work with less material and less waste. They move faster. They solve problems instinctively. They see the problems and immediately they know the solution because they've seen it a hundred times. And they produce consistently. They can do in hours what it takes others' days to do. And that kind of person, a skillful person, becomes incredibly valuable. And each of us can become skillful in whatever it is that God has given us to do. When I first began preaching about 15 years ago, it took me 20, sometimes 30 hours to develop a sermon. And that's very common for many preachers and especially for young preachers. Today, however, 15 years later, my sermons are much better than they were back then, and I'm just comparing myself to myself. And on a good week today, I can produce a sermon in five to ten hours, especially at great need. I can do it quickly, and it's it's simply because I have done it so many times. Simply because I've studied the scriptures for so long, I've preached for so long, I don't have to reinvent the wheel. I just have developed an efficiency that comes from a mastery that comes from doing things many, many, many, many times over and over again. But here's the tension: most people do not become skillful. They don't become masters in their trade. They just get to a certain level and they kind of plateau and they don't because skill requires submission to the mundane. Doing the same thing over and over and over again when no one is watching. Choosing improvement over comfort, choosing mastery over novelty. And that's why Proverbs says that if you want profit, don't chase opportunities that come up and uh entice us. Don't chase the hype, don't chase shortcuts, chase mastery, chase skill, because skillful people are rare, and skillful people will always be in demand. Tucked away in a subway station in Tokyo is a small 10-seat sushi restaurant called Suki Abashi Euro. And it has been in operation in that little subway station since 1965. If you want to get a seat there, you need to make a reservation several months in advance. It has long maintained a three Michelin star rating, which is the highest possible rating, and people travel from all over the world to visit this humble sushi place tucked into a subway. The apprentices that work under him famously are not even allowed to touch the fish for the first ten years of working under him. Before they can do this, they must learn how to perfectly cook the rice. They must learn the standards for wringing out hot towels, even how to stand as a sushi chef before they can ever even touch the fish. One thing I love about Japanese culture is their appreciation of mastery. And he will never have a lack of work because he is a master. Now, you and I may never become the Euro of whatever it is that we do, but we can become local masters of our craft. If you want to become more profitable, you must become more skillful. So how do you do that? Well, here's just a few notes, uh reviewing some of the things we've already touched on. Uh first is commitment. Again, this dovetails with our point on commitment. You can only become skillful at something you're committed to because mastery takes a long time, even a lifetime, to develop. And this is one more reason to pick one thing and to stay committed to it. Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. Secondly, attitude. Skillful people do not see themselves as masters. Masters don't see themselves as masters, but as lifelong students. In order to grow in skill, you must have a humble attitude, always asking questions, always seeking to learn more each day, willing to be surprised, always willing to learn from your peers in the field. I think it was C.S. Lewis that said where two tradesmasters meet, they will not agree about anything because they do things differently. But they're both masters and they can learn from one another. We should be able to learn from others in the field who do things differently. Someone who knows it all can no longer grow in skill. An environment, being in the right environment, you can only grow in skill by working around people who are more skillful, people whose standards are higher than yours, people who have been in the game for longer than you. So you can find people in your field who are better than you, who've who have been in it longer than you, who can mentor you, and perhaps you can work alongside them. I'm a carpenter, but if I wanted to become a better finisher, a better painter, I would willingly go and get paid apprentice wages,$25 an hour, to work alongside my finisher as his helper, just so that I could learn from him. That's the only way that I could possibly learn how to be a better finisher, and that I would pay for my education in that way. Working alongside highly skilled people and gaining their mentorship is an incredible opportunity, even if you make less money for that season. And at the end of the day, there is no replacement for repetition. To grow in skill, we must commit ourselves to the mundane and do the same things over and over and over and over again, day by day. Nothing can replace the reps needed to become a master. We live in a world where expertise and mastery is dying. We have delegated so much to technology and to our iPhones and to artificial intelligence that we no longer need mastery. We no longer need experts. And as a consequence, we live in a world of great convenience, but not in a world of great value and great glory. But this doesn't have to be true for you and for your contribution to the world. Proverbs is teaching in these verses how to become more profitable, more fruitful, and it doesn't come from working more or from working harder, but from becoming more efficient, more intelligent, more committed, more masterful. And as we talk about that, I want to take this opportunity to remind us that no one is more intelligent and committed and efficient in his work than our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is called in Hebrews the author and the perfecter of our salvation. He came to live, to suffer, to die, and to rise again in order to do a work in your life, to do what he does best, to be your redeemer. He intends to save you from your sins and to cultivate your life in order to bear the fruit that he wants to see, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, that you would become more joyful and patient and peaceful and kind and truth-speaking and loving and resemble him more, that you would bear the fruit of his spirit in your life. And in this work, he is incredibly efficient because he does not waste anything. He uses everything that happens in our lives to this end. He uses our successes and our failures. All of it becomes raw material for his work of sanctification in our lives, and none of it is left on the scrap pile of our lives. All of it is put to use to lead us to more repentance and to more faith and to fit us for his heavenly kingdom. As the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 8 28, he says, We know that for those who love God, all things, everything, the good and the bad, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purposes. All things, no part of your story will go to waste. He will use all of it for your salvation and for his glory if we will trust him. To this end, let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for these verses and Proverbs that give us wisdom on being fruitful and profitable. And we pray that you would help us to take these things to heart. Help us to be uh to be more fruitful, Lord. Help us to um to do less and yet to accomplish more because our work is more efficient and more focused. Help us, God, to be diligent, uh, to be intelligent, to work at the right time. Um, help us, Lord, to be committed to the uh to the field that you have put us in and the callings that you've placed on our life. Um and finally, Lord, help us to grow in skill. Surround us with people who can who can help us to mature in the things that you've given us to do. And we pray, God, that uh for this church here, that this place would be profitable to you, that it would be a fruitful place for the kingdom of God where your spirit would be at work, where you would be growing your kingdom in and through this church for generations to come. And we ask all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen.