The Law of the Harvest: Haste, Inheritance, and the Unblessed End Text: Proverbs 20:21
Introduction: The Get-Rich-Quick Gospel
We live in an age that is drunk on the wine of immediacy. We want everything yesterday. We want our coffee instant, our news in real time, and our sanctification to be a one-time download. Our entire economic and cultural superstructure is built on the flimsy foundation of 'now.' And this lust for the immediate has thoroughly infected the church. We have a generation of Christians who want the fruits of a godly inheritance without the slow, patient, multigenerational work of planting, watering, and tending the orchard. They want the crown without the cross, the resurrection without the grave, and the inheritance without the labor.
This is the spirit of the age, and it is a spirit of profound folly. It is the spirit that drives lotteries, crypto-scams, and prosperity gospels. It is the spirit that tells a young man he can build a global platform with a few viral videos, bypassing the need for character, wisdom, and faithfulness. It is the spirit that tells a young couple they can have the house and the lifestyle their parents took thirty years to build, and they can have it now, financed by the bank of presumption.
Into this frantic, grasping world, the book of Proverbs speaks with the calm, steady voice of a seasoned farmer. It does not offer life hacks or shortcuts. It offers wisdom, which is the knowledge of how God built the world. And God built the world with seasons, with process, with sowing and reaping. God is a farmer, not a magician. He works through process. To despise the process is to despise the God who ordained it. Our text today is a sharp, pointed rebuke to our entire culture of haste. It warns us that some things, when acquired too quickly, come with a hidden curse attached.
The Text
An inheritance gained hurriedly at the beginning
In the end will not be blessed.
(Proverbs 20:21 LSB)
The Principle of Process (v. 21a)
Let us consider the first clause:
"An inheritance gained hurriedly at the beginning..." (Proverbs 20:21a)
The key words here are "inheritance" and "hurriedly." An inheritance is, by its very nature, something that is received at the end of a process. It is the culmination of a life's work, passed from one generation to the next. It presupposes the faithfulness of the fathers. A good man, Proverbs tells us, leaves an inheritance to his children's children (Prov. 13:22). This is a long-term project. It requires diligence, patience, and a view of time that extends beyond one's own lifespan. It is the opposite of the "live for the moment" creed of our pagan age.
But this proverb speaks of an inheritance "gained hurriedly." How can this happen? It can happen in a number of ways. A young man might manipulate his aging father for an early payout, like the prodigal son who demanded his portion of the estate before his father was dead, a profound act of dishonor. It can happen through a lawsuit, where family members tear each other apart to get their hands on the money faster. It can happen when a young man, through some speculative venture or a stroke of dumb luck, comes into a great deal of wealth without having developed the character to manage it.
The word "hurriedly" points to a violation of ordained process. It is an attempt to leapfrog over the season of sowing and labor directly into the season of harvest. But God will not be mocked. A man reaps what he sows, and if he sows nothing but impatience and greed, he will reap a harvest of wind. This is a spiritual law, as fixed and unalterable as the law of gravity. To gain something hurriedly is to get it out of season, and like fruit picked green, it will be bitter to the taste.
This applies not just to money, but to every area of life. A ministry that explodes into prominence overnight, without the slow maturing of theological depth and personal holiness, will not be blessed in the end. A reputation gained through clever marketing instead of faithful service is a hollow gourd. A church that grows by theological compromise and a consumer-friendly gospel is gaining an inheritance hurriedly. It is building on sand, and the end thereof will not be blessed.
The Inevitable Curse (v. 21b)
The second clause gives us the certain outcome of this foolish haste.
"...In the end will not be blessed." (Proverbs 20:21b)
This is not a possibility; it is a certainty. "Will not be blessed." The blessing of God is not an arbitrary sprinkle of cosmic pixie dust. A blessing is God's favor that makes something prosper in the way He designed it to prosper. It is when a thing fulfills its telos, its created purpose. God's blessing on Adam was "be fruitful and multiply." God's blessing on the fields is that they produce a harvest. God's blessing on wealth is that it enables a man to be a source of stability, generosity, and dominion for his family and community for generations.
But the inheritance gained hurriedly is stripped of this blessing. Why? First, because the man who gets it is not ready for it. Character is forged in the furnace of patient labor and faithfulness in small things. The man who has not learned to manage a hundred dollars will be destroyed by a million. The wealth will own him, not the other way around. He will become its slave. As another proverb says, "A stingy man hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty will come upon him" (Prov. 28:22). The wealth itself becomes the instrument of his ruin. It is a feast that sickens, a gift that poisons.
Second, it will not be blessed because the means of acquiring it were likely sinful. The haste betrays a heart of covetousness. It often involves dishonoring parents, cheating a brother, or some other form of treachery. God does not bless the fruit of sin. "Making a fortune by a lying tongue is a vanishing mist, a deadly pursuit" (Prov. 21:6). The money may be in the bank account, but the blessing of God is not on it. And if the blessing of God is not on it, it is a curse waiting to happen. It will be a source of strife, anxiety, and ultimately, loss.
The end of the matter is what counts. The world is full of stories of lottery winners who are bankrupt and miserable a few years later. The initial gain was spectacular, but the end was ruin. The prodigal son got his inheritance hurriedly, and his end was a pigsty. God is concerned with the end of a thing. He is the Alpha and the Omega. Wisdom is the ability to see the end from the beginning, to look down the path and see where the shortcuts lead. And the shortcut to wealth leads off a cliff.
Conclusion: The Blessed Inheritance
This proverb, like all of Proverbs, drives us to the Gospel. It shows us the bankruptcy of our own get-rich-quick schemes for righteousness. We all want a spiritual inheritance hurriedly. We want to be justified by our own frantic efforts, our own shortcuts to holiness, our own attempts to bypass the slow, patient work of God.
But there is an inheritance that is truly blessed, and it is the one we do not gain hurriedly by our own efforts. It is the inheritance that was secured for us by the patient, faithful, life-long work of another, the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not take a shortcut. He walked the long, dusty road of obedience, all the way to the cross. He fulfilled the law, He honored the Father, He finished the work.
And because of His perfect, patient work, we who are in Him receive an inheritance. Peter tells us it is "an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1:4). This inheritance is not gained hurriedly by us; it was earned slowly and painfully by Him. We receive it as a gift, through faith.
But receiving this ultimate inheritance should transform how we view our earthly inheritances. Because we are secure in Christ, we are liberated from the frantic, greedy haste that characterizes the world. We are free to be patient. We are free to build slowly. We are free to plant trees whose shade we will never sit in. We can labor faithfully in our callings, knowing that the real inheritance is secure. We can be the kind of men who leave a blessed inheritance for our children's children, not because we are grasping for it, but because we are faithfully stewarding the gifts God has given us, according to His timetable, for His glory.
The world says, "Get all you can, as fast as you can." God says, "Be faithful. Sow righteousness. Wait for the Lord." The path of haste leads to an unblessed end. But the path of faithfulness, the path of patient labor in the Lord, leads to an inheritance that is blessed, both in this life and, gloriously, in the one to come.