* When we make our work worship, God responds favorably.
* He opens up the land - it yields to us!
* He blesses our work.
* Remember two curses:
* The curse of Adam - work would be hard, but still fruitful.
* The curse of Cain, however - work would be hard and unfruitful.
* Cain didn’t offer his best to God.
* His work wasn’t worship.
* If you do your own thing your own way, you run the way of Cain.
* You work hard but you don’t feel fulfilled in the work you do.
* EX: Mowing lawns - I knew I wouldn’t be there long, but it was fulfilling.
* Backstory:
* This psalm exhorts God’s people to give thanks for God’s gracious act of redeeming his people from Babylonian exile and gathering them back in the land.
* It talks about the difficulties people went through on their way back to Jerusalem…
* …and about what happened to the land before they left:
* vs 33-34 - “He turned rivers into a desert, flowing springs into thirsty ground, and fruitful land into a salt waste, because of the wickedness of those who lived there.”
* God can do whatever He wants with the place we inhabit.
* If we work with a heart to please Him, He will “bless the land.”
* 70 years later…
* vs 35-36 - “He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs; there he brought the hungry to live, and they founded a city where they could settle.”
* The land itself was ready for their return.
* Matthew Henry - “The goodness of God has often mended the barrenness of the soil, and turned a wilderness, a land of drought, into water-springs.”
* They got to work, and look how God blessed:
* vs 37-38 - “They sowed fields and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful harvest; he blessed them, and their numbers greatly increased, and he did not let their herds diminish.”
* Imagine trying to dig a well in the middle of the desert - not gonna happen.
* Now think about it in the middle of a field located between two rivers.
* God is saying that if you worship Him and obey His commandments, what was once a dry land will be turned into a fertile place.
* EX: REO space in real estate.
* Sometimes the land doesn’t yield because you haven’t made your work worship.
* But other times the land doesn’t yield because God wants to move you somewhere else.
* Either way, we do Godly work, and God will respond.