Proverbs to Live By – Honor the Lord with Your Wealth

“Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.” –Proverbs 3:9-10 (ESV).

Why does God ask us to honor Him with our wealth?  Paul had advice to his son in the ministry, Timothy (and for us as well) about this subject:  “But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.  But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.  For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.  It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs” (I Timothy 6:8-10, ESV). This advice followed Paul’s saying, “Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world” (I Timothy 6:7).  The writer of Proverbs was advising his son to give proper perspective to wealth.  Offer the “firstfruits” of everything to the Lord.  This was in keeping with Jewish law.  To bring firstfruits indicated that the people recognized God’s provision, that the offering to him (firstfruits) was a sacred pledge and all that remained would be sufficient for the family’s needs: “your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine.”  This promise reiterates what is taught in Malachi 3:10:  “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.  And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”  Paul substantiates this teaching about money and giving:  “The point is this:  whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.  And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.  As it is written: ‘He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever’” (II Corinthians 9:6-9, citing from Psalm 112:9).

Money and earnings seem a necessary part of our lives.  The Bible has many teachings about our perspective on wealth. In biblical times, barter was often the means of financial survival.  That was practiced somewhat even in the days when I was a child.  We took our eggs and chickens to the country store to exchange them for items we needed on the farm that we could not produce ourselves.  Oftentimes, we even gave our preacher of the “firstfruits” of our crops and the fryers we’d reared in our chicken lot.  And too, sometimes we would ask for money for the chickens and eggs we took to barter so that we could have a tithe to place in the offering plate at church.  I can remember well in my husband’s early ministry, when he had what we called “student pastorates.”  We would leave our church fields on Sunday nights with a live chicken strapped in a box, eggs carefully packed, fresh vegetables shared from a garden, and a gallon or two of milk.  We knew we would eat well the next week as we gratefully took these items, prepared them for eating and stored them in our small refrigerator.  The Bible has much to teach about our regard for money and how we handle it.  It warns us against greed.  Remember Jesus’ parable of the rich man who kept building bigger barns to store the surplus of what he harvested?  The dire warning was, “Thou fool!  This night your soul shall be required of you” (Luke 12:20).  The beauty of this parable to live by is that when we early-on in our Christian experience decide to tithe and to honor God in how we use the remaining nine-tenths of what we earn, we are assured that this promise will be fulfilled in our lives: “I have been young and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.  He is ever lending generously, and his children become a blessing” (Psalm 37:25-26).  How, then, can we afford not to honor God with the firstfruits of our earnings?  To be a blessing to others as we give according to God’s plan assures that we, in turn, receive the blessings of God.  However, we give because we love the Lord, not to have Him “pay us back” or recompense us.  But in His grace, He provides for those who honor Him.

Blessed Are the Meek

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”  Matthew 5:5 (NKJV).

Meekness is by no means to be construed as weakness.  The Greek word for meekness, praus, denotes gentleness and mildness of manner but strength of character.  So important are meekness and gentleness that both are listed in the nine fruits of the spirit in Galatians 6:22-23:  “:But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance;  against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23, KJV).  Noting both meekness and gentleness, two words so closely akin in meaning, Paul was giving emphasis to the importance of meekness as a Christian virtue.

One of the dear professors who instructed me as I was taking Bible courses in college used an illustration for explaining the third beatitude that has remained with me for many years.  He asked us to picture a wild stallion, caught and brought under submission through the taming process.  The stallion had strength and grace as he was wild, but under constant training and with the good treatment and love of his master who trained him, he became obedient, gentle and mild.  The rippling strength of the horse was still present, as when he roamed the plains freely before becoming domesticated, but he became meek and gentle under the training and restrictions of the taming process.  So it is with the Christian.  Under the dominion of Jesus Christ, our character is genuinely changed to become meek and gentle, fit for the Master’s use. Jesus was teaching in the third beatitude that meekness is a greater attribute to seek and cultivate than pride.  This idea was a revolutionary doctrine to the Jewish disciples Jesus taught.  They had pride of their Jewish inheritance, a called-out and set-apart people.  They were familiar with the pride in power that was evidenced through Roman rule that exercised political and military dominion over the world of their day.  They would likewise have been familiar with the Greek pride in  culture, much learning and the arts.  And then Jesus put forth the revolutionary doctrine, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth!”  Can’t you imagine the disciples thinking, “How can this be possible?”  In comparison to how they normally considered pride, meekness was not a desirable characteristic.  Was Jesus asking them to be weak and compliant?

The disciple needs to learn that meekness is a virtue which can be exercised toward God and toward man.  Meekness is not a weak but a heroic quality.  A meek person is patient and forbearing, not easily provoked nor irritated.  And the amazing teaching of Jesus is that the meek “shall inherit the earth.”  Was this a paradox too wonderful to comprehend?  Scholars hold this promise to mean not only inheriting “the new heaven” which is eternal and perfect but having the best of the present world.  This was certainly an extraordinary doctrine and one that the twelve who surrounded Jesus on the Mount of Olives needed to hear and heed; it is one we need to adopt into our manner of thinking and living .  The meek are the gentle who do not assert themselves in order to further their own cause.  And with such meekness they will be rich indeed, inheriting the best qualities of even this present world, because they trust in God to direct the outcome.  This teaching of Jesus was a reiteration of what the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 37:4-5:  “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”

Prayer for Daily Bread

“Give us this day our daily bread.” –Matthew 6:11 (KJV).

This petition in the Lord’s Prayer sounds very simple but it bears so much weight.  It acknowledges our dependence on God.  “Lord, we turn to You for our daily bread.”  To the God who made the world and all things in it, we look for daily sustenance.  The Bible tells us that He ‘owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10b).  We also are taught “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17a).  This petition for daily bread does not imply that we lead a lazy, unproductive life, that we not work for our sustenance and needs.  But it does teach us that God in His providence will allow our work to be productive so that we can reap the benefits of our labors and have what we need to sustain us.  We can agree with King David in his prayer of praise:  “I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread” (Psalm 37:25).  The position of the prayer for daily bread is noteworthy as well.  We have just prayed, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” (v. 10).  The next petition following the daily bread request is for forgiveness:  “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” (v 12).  In between seeking God’s will and begging His forgiveness is the prayer for the most basic of human needs:  food, daily bread.  Does God care that we have what we need to sustain life?  Yes.  Think of the children of Israel after their escape from Egyptian bondage.  They wandered in the wilderness with no means of feeding the array of people.  God provided manna from heaven day by day and they survived the rigors of the desert.

In his book entitled Living the Lord’s Prayer (Minneapolis, IN: Bethany House, 2008, p. 135), David Timms writes of this petition for daily bread:  “This short, earthy request corrects any effort on our part to separate the sacred and the secular.  Daily bread bridges any gap we may create or encourage between the spiritual and the material.  Thus this fourth petition—the hinge of the prayer in many ways—guides us to consider the materiality of our lives.”  We need to examine the deeds as well as the teachings of Jesus to see that He did not separate the spiritual and the material.  He fed the soul with truths that revealed God, but when the hungry crowds surrounded Him to listen to His teachings, he also provided the food they needed to assuage hunger.  He poured out his heart in prayer to God, but he also associated with publicans and sinners.  His life was a demonstration of how the spiritual and the physical can be integrated into wholeness.  Both aspects are sacred.  Both are gifts from God who created us as we are.  Our bodies need nourishment for good health.  “Give us this day our daily bread” then becomes a necessary and proportionate part of the person God created us to be.

Notice the first person plural pronoun “Give us…our daily bread.”  We are community, and if one in the community goes hungry,.all are affected.  The plea is not to satisfy an individual’s hunger, but shows our responsibility for our fellow human beings who, oftentimes because of circumstances over which they exercise little control—famine, loss of work, illness, dire poverty—cannot feed themselves or their family.  Jesus taught us to live compassionately and share with others.  In recent years the need for food has risen in places to disastrous levels.  A crust of bread is a feast for many who can find it.  As we sit at our well-laden tables, let us be aware of the gnawing hunger which is a way of life for many people.  If we are to do the will of our Father, we will find a way to share our own daily bread—our bounteous provisions of not only food but money, clothing, time and prayers—with those who stand in dire need of help.  We are invited to go to our Heavenly Father daily and ask for our daily bread, and at the same time think not only of ourselves but of others.