Did you know that Christian men need money? We do not float from heaven to Sunday service and back again. We are not disembodied “spiritual” beings. We need money to do the things every man needs to do: get a spouse, buy a house, and fill it with children. And in the economic conditions of the 2020s, you probably need more money than you earn right now, especially if you want your wife to work inside the home rather than outside it.
Praise the Lord, it is possible, even in this Babylonian society, to be the man you need to be. But only if you do it on God’s terms. And the terms are laid out with devastating clarity in sixteen words from the book of Proverbs: “In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury” (Proverbs 14:23).
These sixteen words will change your world if you understand them and put them into practice.
Be, Do, Have
Throughout the book of Proverbs, there is a contrast between two ways of life: the wise and godly way, and the foolish and ungodly way. Effective life transformation never starts with just doing different things. You have to go deeper, to who you are in your inner man, because identity determines action, and action determines outcome.
If you are wise, you do work, and you have profit. If you are foolish, you do talk, and you have poverty. This is the law of “Be, Do, Have,” and God’s Word cannot be broken. We are all bound by it.
You cannot simply do more and expect to have more without first working on your inner life. You need to become a different man, not through NLP or self-help techniques, but through the wisdom of God’s law and covenant. Wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, and the fear of the Lord is built on the knowledge of God’s law and His covenant sanctions: blessing for an obeying heart, chastisement for a disobedient heart.
The Lie About Wealth
Many men have internalised the lie that wealth comes from wickedness, that you have to break the rules to get paid, and that nice guys finish poor. This belief produces paralysis, like the wicked servant with only one talent who buried it in the ground out of fear.
But the Bible reverses this lie entirely. The wise way, the way of work, brings profit. The foolish and ungodly way brings poverty. We need to rewire our brains to realise that the money we need to be full men will be unlocked when we start fearing God, fearing His negative sanctions for sin, and walking in His ways. Holiness brings God’s blessing, and God’s blessing means sorrow-free profit.
The Diagnosis of Poverty
This verse functions like a thermometer. If you are too poor to attract a mate, buy the house, and support a family, that is a symptom. It may sting to hear, but a good diagnosis is the first step towards treating the disease.
God’s diagnosis for too much poverty is simple: there is too much empty talk happening in your life. The Lord has forged an unbreakable chain that forever links poverty to idle chatter. You can ignore it, deny it, or write a doctoral thesis on it, but the link will not break.
Mere talking takes many forms. It is not only the man propping up the bar in an Irish pub, perfecting his blarney aided by stout and whiskey. People can be mere talkers about difficult, interesting, and important subjects: geopolitics, theology, sport, cultural commentary. But if you are always talking about things that are not your business, God’s appointed reward for all that vapour is plenty of need. And in the age of social media, too much vain posting and meaningless memeing guarantees you lack in place of plenty.
The Hebrew Word That Changes Everything
The moment we look up the Hebrew word translated “labour” in this verse, something unexpected happens. The word is esev, and its first meanings are not “work” but “pain” and “hurt.” Only the third meaning is “toil,” which means hard, hard work.
Why the focus on pain? Because the first mentions of esev in the Bible are in Genesis 3:16-17, the curse upon man’s work and the woman’s labour in childbirth after the Fall. That knot in your belly when you face a hard task is not a signal to retreat. It is the echo of the curse, and it is your God-given profit detector.
Most of us have been hypnotised by the culture to believe that work should be easy and learning should be fun. We believe that if something is hard, we must be doing the wrong thing. But the Lord demands the opposite. He is asking us to rewire our nervous system entirely. When we feel that gut-wrenching pressure in the course of our work, the correct response is not “stop!” but “yes, I am on the right track. Profit is surely coming my way.”
Think of a metal detector. When the pitch intensifies, that means metal is present. Likewise, the Lord has given us built-in profit detectors, but instead of a screaming tone, our being lets out a groan of pain. If we stoop down and dig into that signal instead of running from it, the profit will come. Painful pursuit of your God-given profession means promised profits.
Work Your Land
Proverbs 28:19 says: “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.” You have to know what your land is. God has given every man a particular calling, a specific field of skill and service. If you follow worthless pursuits or try to work your neighbour’s land instead of your own, poverty is guaranteed.
Your calling might not be glamorous. The richest man some of us have ever dined with is a junkyard owner. Where there is muck, there is brass. Do not despise the work God has uniquely fitted you for through circumstances and aptitudes. Labour at it, and the profit will come, sooner or later. Let God be true and every man a liar, no matter how piously they tell you that earthly wealth is sinful.
Pain Now, Reward Later
The analogy of childbirth is illuminating. The woman’s labour is real pain, often accompanied by months of nausea. But the outcome is a son or daughter, and the pain is forgotten as the mother looks into her child’s eyes. Man’s labour is analogous. His lot is to bring forth profit through toil, and once the profit is reaped, the pain fades.
Christians are not Stoics who see life as nothing but suffering. We are not without God and without hope in the world. We have a hope of labour and then a God-given reward. And as we grow wiser and our obedience becomes more complete, something remarkable happens: the effects of the curse progressively fall away. Thorns and weeds give way to a broad place where we can work more freely. That is the power and promise of getting true wisdom.