Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready; after that, build your house.

Proverbs 24:27

Proverbs has a lot of wisdom to offer on a myriad of subjects. Many proverbs focus on our spiritual condition while others deal with the practical aspects of day-to-day living.

Proverbs 24:27 is more practical. It does not focus on our relationship with God or the people around us. Nor does it address any particular area of sin in the human heart. Instead, this verse simply offers some sound financial advice in the Bible which, if heeded, will undoubtedly make life far less stressful this side of heaven.

Maybe it is this lack of spiritual emphasis that makes our church leaders skirt around or even shy away from such verses. This is a pity as these pragmatic proverbs are just as much part of the Bible as, say John 3:16 which is undoubtedly one of the most often-quoted verses in Christendom.

Yes, I acknowledge that Proverbs 24:27 may not carry the deep spiritual weight of Jesus’ words in John 3:16… but it is still in the Bible. Clearly, God put this verse there for a reason. It may not affect our salvation directly but it offers wise instruction on how we should live.

At the very least, we should acknowledge that God has taken the time to put this financial advice in the Bible and help us make wise life-choices rather than poor ones.

So what does the verse actually say?

Financial Advice in the Bible

In a nutshell, it instructs us to put our assets to work (i.e. make our money work for us) before we invest in our creature-comforts.

To understand this, we first need to understand what “fields” were to God’s people in Bible times. The short answer is, fields were assets. Land was an asset in Biblical times, just as property and land are today. Of course, we have many more asset classes in our modern economy including:

• Commodities
• Equities
• Bonds
• … etc.

In Bible times it was land and livestock.

So how should this inform our decisions in the modern economy?

Let us look at this, fairly common, middle-class story in today’s world and hold it up against God’s financial advice in the Bible.

How Modern Spending Patterns Ignore Biblical Advice

Jeff and Sarah married and soon discovered they had a bundle of extra cash now that they only had one rent to pay. Having previously each rented their own apartment, they had been paying two rents between them but, as they were now married, this was no longer the case.

Here was an opportunity for them to follow the financial advice in the Bible and buy an income-producing asset; their ‘field’. However, Jeff and Sarah disregarded the wisdom in Proverbs 24:27.

They built their house…

With the extra income, they pooled their combined savings and purchased a nice house which was bigger than either of their previous apartments had been.

It was a stretch but they both had good jobs and, as their income grew, the monthly payments became easier. Within a few years, Jeff and Sarah were expecting their first child. Having progressed in their careers and now earning more money than they had when starting out, they figured a bigger house would be in order – especially in light of their impending new arrival.

Within a few months, they sold their home and used the profit, along with their higher income, to purchase a bigger home in a nice suburb where they could raise a family.

A few years later, they were expecting their second child. While they had three bedrooms, they now began to realize that their garden was really quite small even for their three-year-old. Imagine having to cope with two children in such a small garden?

Fortunately, Jeff had recently received a big promotion at work. The accompanying salary increase meant they could consider buying a bigger home. So they traded up once more, as before. The new home was lovely, and spacious. Most of all, it had a massive garden that the kids could enjoy as they grew older.

However, within two years, Jeff received another major promotion. While great news for the family, it meant that they would have to move halfway across the state, to a much bigger city, where the company’s head-office was located.

Of course, the family did not want to down-size but equivalent accommodation was far more expensive in the big city. No matter. They used Jeff’s increase, stretched themselves financially, and found a similar home in an outlying suburb not too far from the company’s head-office.

Within a few years, Jeff was earning even more money and the family decided to build a small apartment above the garage. This meant that they had extra accommodation when their parents came to visit. They remortgaged their home to pay for the alterations.

When the next increase came, they used it to remortgage again and this time, they built a swimming pool.

Sadly, a year after their youngest child started college, the economy took a down-turn. Jeff lost his job and, unable to find other work, he was no longer able to make his hefty mortgage payments. With no other options available to them, they were forced to sell the family home.

The problem was that, in the current economic climate, Jeff and Sarah actually owed more than the house was worth. House-prices had dropped, which meant that, after settling their mortgage and the agent’s commission, there was still a balance outstanding on their mortgage.

They used Jeff’s redundancy package to pay off the balance and moved to a small town across state where rents were cheaper. He and Sarah struggled for a time, finding odd jobs here and there until the economy recovered. Unfortunately, this happened too late for Jeff’s career as he was now approaching retirement age and found employment increasingly hard to come by.

He eventually took a low-paying job at a local family-owned grocery store and slowly worked his way up to assistant manager. It was hard work as the store was open seven days a week. This meant long hours, often in evenings and over weekends.

He and Sarah eventually settled into a small rented apartment. Jeff’s pension helped towards the rent but both he and Sarah were forced to continue working long after reaching retirement age.

At eighty-two, Jeff was finally forced to stop working due to ill health. He and Sarah lived frugally on the small income she earned working at the local library along with the limited support they received from their children.

In short, Jeff and Sarah worked hard their entire lives and died poor.

Were Jeff and Sarah’s choices so wrong? Not really. They were an upright, hard-working couple just trying to do the best for themselves and their children. They were not filled with avarice or taking advantage of others in order to enrich themselves.

The only thing we could accuse them of is a lack of planning and some rotten luck.

How different might their life have been if they had followed the financial advice in the Bible? Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready; after that, build your house.

This would have generated additional streams of income for them so that, when disaster struck, they would have been better equipped to weather the storm. Had they only followed this financial advice in the Bible, their ‘fields’ would have continued to sustain them through their adversity.