Episode Transcript
Proverbs 14, 4, the title of the message tonight is A Clean Crib.
A clean crib.
As I prepared for this message, I marveled at how practical these proverbs are.
And this one is just so down-to-earth practical.
Proverbs cover a myriad of issues that all the issues, in fact, in some way that we deal with every day.
But we may never think about them every day until it comes up.
And then, when that particular matter comes up, then the proverb may come back to our mind and remind us, as the Holy Spirit reminds us.
The Proverbs take the everyday, the mundane, and they cast great light upon those subjects, causing us to see things the way they were intended to be seen, the way things really are.
And the way God sees them.
In our proverb tonight, Solomon discusses cattle and how cattle The principles of cattle and their relationship to man apply to our everyday lives.
Solomon begins this proverb by saying, Where no oxen are.
And that means there are some places where no oxen are.
The Hebrew word translated oxen here is sometimes translated as family.
And the reason is not because Some people are obese in a family, but the reason it's translated family sometimes is because the Hebrew word here has the idea of binding together.
So as a family is bound together as a family unit, so oxen are sometimes bound together under a yoke. and they will hook that yoke to a plow and they'll pull that plow or to whatever implement they're bound to.
Whether it's threshing instrument or plowing instrument or whatever it is, grinding instrument.
And so when we're looking at oxen here tonight.
We have to understand that we're not looking at the beast in the sense of its beastly attributes. but in the sense of its ability to perform work for mankind.
Work.
Oxen were yoked together to perform this particular task, agricultural task and otherwise.
And speaking of a battle, That was that the 1 Samuel chapter 14, 14 talks about.
The Bible says, and this is a battle that was won, the Bible says, and that first slaughter which Jonathan and his armor-bearer made. was about twenty men within, as it were, in half an acre of land which a yoke of oxen might plow.
So, just as we describe or calculate distance sometimes, and I remember when I was a little boy hearing this, or at least recognizing this for the first time.
Some would say, How far is such and such city from here?
And someone would say, Oh, it's about two hours.
And I think, two hours?
Well, why aren't they saying so many miles?
Why are they saying so many hours?
It doesn't make sense to me.
Hours isn't distance, hours is time.
But as we would say that today, we would calculate distance and not just the number of miles that you would travel, but the number of hours or minutes it would take for you to get there.
So they calculated in this text a plot of land by how much a yoke or a team of oxen could plow in a day.
To plow it properly and hook them up about a half acre of land, get it all plowed up real well.
And this reinforces for us that we should be viewing tonight the word oxen in the sense of working beasts, beasts of burden that men harness together to get work done.
Now, with that in mind, the Bible says here, where no oxen are, look back in your text, the crib is clean.
And the crib is speaking of the stall.
Stall that a plowing ox would stay in.
These are not grazing cows that are just sent out to pasture to graze and then later slaughter for meat.
These are animals that they depended on that were trained to perform certain tasks on command. whenever they hook them up to these these implements and not every cow can just do that.
If you've ever watched y'all ever watched anyone plow with a a team of animals, they have words they use on what to do and when to go and when to stop. and sometimes when to back up even.
And so they kept these animals in stalls because their livelihood Dependent on it.
And so the statement is simple enough.
If you don't have an ox, then your stall is obviously going to be clean.
If there's an ox in the stall, then the ox is going to make a mess in that stall.
Y'all ever clean stalls out?
You Jeremy kids?
You clean stalls out and make messes.
And so it would wouldn't it be great, what do you all have in the stalls?
Goats?
Horses and goats?
Wouldn't it be great if your stalls were always clean?
Yeah.
Now, how many of y'all drink milk from the goats?
Huh?
Right now, though, in the valley.
But we all have you all have drank milk from the goats.
All right.
So the goats have y'all ever eat the goats?
Okay.
If you ever want someone to eat them, just let me know.
I'll cut them up and eat them.
But goats are edible, and you can drink the milk from a goat.
And so if you got rid of the animals, you wouldn't have a messy stall.
And that's what the Bible's saying tonight: where no oxen are.
The crib is clean.
You might think of Brother Richard.
Why would Solomon write something like that?
What does that have to do with our life?
What does that have to do with our everyday life as children of God?
Well, If there's an ox in the stall, that ox is going to make a mess.
And if you have no ox, then you're free from the burden of having to clean that stall.
The stall is clean, and the stall is going to continue to be clean as long as there's no ox to dirty it up.
And that is perceived as an advantage by many people in life.
Who find cleaning stalls, so to speak, a hindrance to their life's ambitions.
I mean, who wants to get tied down with an ox?
Getting tied down with an ox when you're young will interfere with your life ambitions, with your college, with your dating life.
With whatever you're wanting to do, getting tied down with an ox when you're old is going to interfere with your golden ages.
I mean, you can't go off and travel if you have to stay home and clean stalls.
So there's clearly an advantage in not having any oxen.
There are others who view their life goal as having a clean stall Rather than having a strong ox.
So they have much pleasure in sitting back and admiring their clean and tidy stall.
But being clean and tidy is not always such a good thing.
Speaking to rebellious Israel in Amos chapter 4, verse 6, Amos chapter 4, verse 6.
God said, And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities.
And want of bread in all your places, yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.
Before we came to church tonight, we were face timing with a little granddaughter of ours.
And we had to take the our video device into our bathroom because we had to brush our teeth before we came to church.
And so grandma and grandpa are brushing their teeth and talking to the grandbaby.
I pulled that phone up real close to my mouth.
I said, look, Grandpa has clean teeth.
She thought that was funny.
And I love having clean teeth.
But I want you to notice something in Amos 4:6.
There's something that goes along with these clean teeth.
Let me get my good old-fashioned pointer out here, Brother Neil.
Because there's something that goes along with them.
You have cleanness of teeth.
And want or lack of bread.
Do you know why their teeth were clean?
They didn't have any bread to eat to dirty them up.
That's why their teeth were clean.
And so being clean and tidy is not always such a good thing.
Because of their rebellion, God had given Israel cleanness of teeth.
Teeth that are clean are great.
But shouldn't we you know shouldn't we think the other way around?
I mean, should we not eat?
So that our teeth can stay clean?
Or should we clean our teeth so we can keep using them to eat?
Which one?
Would it be better to simply not eat so our teeth will always be clean?
Or would it be better to clean our teeth so that we can continue to eat with them into our old age?
You see, the reason why Israel had clean teeth is because they had no bread to chew.
Bread wasn't made for teeth.
Teeth was made for bread.
So it's better to have bread in your belly.
Than teeth in your head, right?
It's better to have bread in your belly and to have no teeth at all.
Because the purpose of the teeth is to get the bread in the belly.
Likewise, the ox wasn't made for the stall.
The stall was made for the ox.
It's better to have a plowed field than an empty stall.
If you're hungry, If you want a nice crop and your livelihood depends as Israel's did, they were an agricultural nation.
In fact, we used to be an agricultural nation before industry took everything over.
My grandfather You ask almost anybody what their grandfather did at a certain age, they'll say, Well, he was a farmer.
And if he wasn't a farmer, they at least farmed some.
And so if your livelihood depends on it, if eating depends on it, then it'd be much better to have a plowed field than to have a clean stall.
So it's true, where no oxen are, the crib is clean.
Look back in your text, but much increase is by the strength of the ox.
So look where we're getting at here.
Yes, it's true.
If you don't have an ox, that crib is going to be spotless.
You're not going to be tied down and encumbered with having to clean that thing every day or twice a day and having to mess with that smelly old crib.
However, even though that's true, there's much increase by the strength of the ox.
And this word increase here means profit or gain.
And every one of us operate based on profit.
If we have no profit, if we spend more than we take in, we have no profit, then we have no means to live.
We have no means to get food.
We have no means to pay our medical bills.
And so, in the sense of agriculture, the ox makes a handsome profit for the farmer.
Because, why?
I mean, for me, I have a small little garden in my backyard each year.
And I'm kind of like the Green Acres fella.
If you ever watched the old sitcom Green Acres, I'm just like that.
My wife would tell you, I'll have a small plot of whatever I'm raising, but to me, man, might as well be Fulton farms, you know.
But you know how I till it up?
I'm too cheap to go get a tiller because it's just going to be for me and my wife.
I take an old shovel out there.
I do like that and I just turn it over and I just turn it over.
And that shovel, I don't have to worry about starting it.
I don't have to worry about a leaky fuel line.
I don't have to worry about working on it. it gets the job done.
However, if my livelihood depended on agriculture and how much fruit of the ground I was able to produce then my strength alone would not produce enough vegetables to make a profit.
Because what my little backyard puts out doesn't even feed us all year long.
It just supplements it.
And so it says much increases by the strength of the ox.
In other words, that ox makes a profit for the farmer because the ox can plow more ground.
The ox has that team of oxen.
They have more strength.
Than what that farmer alone could afford to invest in that land to plow it up.
And so the farmer could never break up that much ground by hand.
Thus, the ox yields a great crop of food for him to eat and to sell, to make profit.
The Bible says in Psalms 107, verse 37, Psalms 107, verse 37, And sow the fields, that is, plant your seed in the field And plant vineyards that is, you know, plant grapes which may yield fruits of, there's our word, increase, increase.
And so where it says much increase is by the strength of the ox, well, before you sow the field, you have to plow the fields.
And how do you plow the fields?
By the strength of the ox.
So the fields, after they're sown, They yield fruits of increase.
And so you have to have that ox to get the increase as you need.
The ox brings increase by pulling the plow.
The ox also brings increase by producing more livestock.
Livestock that you can butcher.
Deuteronomy 28:4, and livestock that you can sell.
Deuteronomy 28, 4 says, Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy ground.
And the fruit of thy cattle, the increase, there's our word increase again, the increase of thy kind, which is cattle, and the flocks of thy sheep.
So, with all that said, we're going to get down to the root of what we're looking at now.
The stall is clean.
When there's no ox in it.
But much increase or much profit is by the strength of that ox.
If you want to have a big farm, then you're going to need some big oxen.
Or, to put it in modern terms, if you want to have a big farm, then you're going to have to get yourself a big tractor.
And here's the deal: whether you have a cow or a Kubota.
Whatever you're plying your field with, it's going to require maintenance.
That's all there is to it.
It's going to require maintenance.
Here's a kingdom truth for you tonight.
Things that take care of you must be taken care of.
Man, I tell you what, that is a truth you can take home to the bank.
Things that take care of you must be taken care of.
I remember one time someone was showing me how to service a lawnmower.
So here now each time before you mow the grass, this man said, he said, you take this air filter out here and you clean it.
And you do this here, you check the oil, and then every so often you're going to change the oil in it.
He said, You take care of this lawnmower, and it'll take care of you.
And we've said the same thing with our vehicles as well.
But things that take care of you must be taken care of.
Everything that produces Requires maintenance.
That's what Solomon's saying.
Everything that produces, there's much increase, there's much production.
By the strength of the ox.
So everything that produces requires maintenance.
And for that reason, God commanded Israel to take good care of their oxen.
To maintain their oxen, because the oxen were working hard to take good care of them.
Things that take care of you must be taken care of.
And this not only applies for oxen.
In fact, the oxen is just the most basic concept of the proverb.
And let me explain what I mean.
If something is true in the small things, then it's much more true in the greater things.
Does that make sense?
If something is true on a small scale, And we can all agree with the small scale, then it's much more true on the greater scale.
And so Solomon is simply taking concepts.
That are easy for us to understand.
And then once we understand that principle, we then apply those concepts across the board to the greater things in our life.
So it not only goes for oxen, it also goes for people.
1 Corinthians 9, 9 through 11.
1 Corinthians 9, 9 through 11.
And And infer in in this passage The Apostle Paul is referencing or quoting the Old Testament law where God told them to take care of their oxen.
He says in 1 Corinthians 9:9, For it is written, talking about in the Old Testament law, in the law of Moses, thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn.
So if you have an ox.
And that ox is tied to a pole, and you've got corn out here, and that ox is walking, and grinding, and walking, and grinding that corn.
And there happens to be corn laying around while the ox is stepping on it and walking around and grinding.
God said, when that ox is grinding that corn, don't put a muzzle on that ox so that he won't eat any of that corn.
Why?
That ox has to have something to make it go.
I mean, it's a very simple principle.
Even when I was a little boy, I had a thriving lawnmower business.
There's some neighbors that They could have got a much better quality job if they'd hired somebody else.
But I was cheap.
And they would hire me to go cut their lawn.
Well, you can't just go over there and cut a lawn and figure your profit.
Because you're going to have to pay for gasoline, aren't you?
You're going to have to pay for you know, when when I drive back and forth to to Tyler, I've got to figure in how much in my wearing material, my vehicle and everything else, is it really worth This, you know, and how much I'm making versus how much I had to put into it to make it.
You've got to figure all that out.
And so it's the same way here with the oxen.
God says, don't put a muzzle in that ox's mouth because that ox has to have something to keep it going.
The corn the ox eats is the cost of doing business.
And if you starve your ox, Then you're not going to get your corn ground up.
You're not going to be able to have any cornbread.
And so he says, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn.
And then Paul asked this question: Does God take care for oxen?
In other words, did God go And take that effort through man to write that law out because, in God's agenda up there in heaven, He's thinking, we've got to do something to take care of these oxen.
And then Paul said, Now, did he do it?
Did he write this commandment?
So that we would all take good care of oxen only?
Or did he ride it so we could apply it to the greater things in life, to people, for example?
So he asked, Doth God take care of for oxen?
Now in verse 10, or saith it, or did he give this commandment altogether for our sakes?
In other words, so we could apply it to our lives.
And he says, For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he that ploweth should plow in hope.
And he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.
In other words, if you're plowing a field, Should you not expect to have some type of benefit from that field in the end?
Yes.
If you're threshing a field, should you not, after all that labor of threshing that field, should you not expect to eat from that field?
Yes.
And the Apostle Paul goes on to say in verse 11: If we have sown, watch what he's doing, he's taking the greater principle here, if we have sown unto you spiritual things.
Is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?
And so Paul is saying, Look, we have been working your field.
Y'all ever heard of the when someone goes to a foreign land to share the gospel, someone they'll call it the mission Field.
Why do they call it the mission field?
Because when they go to that particular country, they are taking the gospel like seed.
And they are sowing that gospel in the field, hoping that it will take root in some people's hearts, and then they will grow up and bear fruit to God.
And so he says, if we've sown unto you spiritual things, he's talking to the churches.
Is it a great thing?
Is it something marvelous that we would reap your carnal things?
And what Paul is saying is if we apostles are providing the churches their spiritual necessities, Paul had to travel all over the world, setting up churches, preaching the gospel, getting stoned by people.
And beaten and imprisoned for trying to share the gospel in heathen lands.
The apostles were murdered for their faith.
And all he's saying is, if we're going through this effort and we're working like an ox, Should we not get fed from the very field that we're working in?
If we're bringing spiritual things to you, Should we not then receive carnal things from you?
And in other words, if the pastors, the apostles, are taking care of you, then you should take care of them.
And this marvelous truth applies across the board to anything that God has given to take care of you.
Anything.
Suppose a young person says, I don't want to have a baby because the baby will interfere with my career goals, and I'm going to have an abortion.
And what she's really saying is, I don't want an ox.
I don't have time to be cleaning stalls.
Yesterday morning, an elderly woman sent me a text message and asked me to pray for her.
She said she was in such pain.
She's a a a relative of of mine.
She said she was in such pain and her son was taking her to the doctor at that time.
So Tammy and I Called her and prayed with her.
And I was thinking, she's a senior citizen, and her son's taking her to the doctor.
And then her daughter later helped her get something and her son paid for it and her other son went and picked it up and brought it to her that she needed to help get around a chairlift.
And I thought of all the diapers that woman changed on her children when they were young.
All the sleepless nights that she had when they were sick growing up.
In other words, all the time she had to clean their stalls.
And I thought about what a blessing it is that now that she's a senior citizen, She has children that she can call on when she's older, and how sad it must be for those who reach that age and have never had a child.
They may have to rely on a neighbor.
And I thank God for neighbors we can rely on.
I thank God for that.
Thank God for friends we can rely on.
But I'll tell you, there's nothing More comfortable than calling your family and depending on them.
I can assure you.
I would rather have a dirty diaper than an empty crib.
We need to take care of whatever takes care of us.
If you have a car, take care of it.
If you fail to do maintenance on your car because you're lazy and you just don't care about it, you're wrong.
You're wrong.
The Bible principle here is whatever takes care of you, take care of it.
And if you don't, it's slothfulness and it's waste because you could get so much more work out of it if you did apply this biblical principle.
If you have a home.
Take care of it.
If you have a family, take care of it.
If you have a church, take care of it.
The better you take care of the things that take care of you, the better they can care for you.
Whatever profits us should be maintained by us, whether it's a car or a kid.
Whether it's a parent or a preacher, whether it's a tractor or an ox, don't dread cleaning the stalls.
For if we have a little to care for, then we will have a lot to be thankful for.
Man, that is some good, solid wisdom.
I just love the Proverbs.
I absolutely love them.
Father, we thank you so much for your word tonight, for opening our eyes, for calling these things to our attention.
To call us, Lord, to maintenance, not neglect.
To call us to appreciation and not forgetfulness.
To call his father to investment and discipline.
And not just simply expecting something with no maintenance on our part.
We thank you, O God. for not muzzling the oxen.
We thank you, Father, for providing for the small things as well as the great.
You think of everything, Lord.
And we thank you in Jesus' precious name, amen.
