“Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.” Proverbs 3:9-10 NIV
When we decided on the “Door Frame” theme for the blog, I began thinking about if my family had a central verse over our house, what would it be? I love the idea of having scriptures decorating the walls of my house as consistent reminders, but so far, I have not made that a reality. There are a lot of great verses throughout the Bible to be reminded of as we go about our day, but what single verse or small passage should I choose? I eventually began thinking about what verses come up often in conversations around our home or ones that we reference regularly. God brought to my mind these verses in Proverbs because they are the inspiration for a password we type frequently and remind us of how important faithful stewardship is.
These verses come from a section of Proverbs in which the father is teaching his son about wisdom. This section is a veritable treasure trove of golden nuggets of instruction and there is almost nothing that is cryptic or difficult to understand. We’ll dive into the components of these verses a little bit, but just reading them makes it pretty clear what the author is saying.
Honor the Lord: Honor is to hold in high respect, glorify, revere. It is not doing the bare minimum so you can check the box. Honor gives the best and does it with a generally good attitude.
With your wealth: When we hear “wealth” we almost certainly think of money and not much else. While I do think the writer was indeed referring to monetary possessions in this passage, God gives us wealth in a variety of areas. Wealth can simply be “plentiful supplies of a particular resource”. So, if you’re a skilled teacher, or have an abundance of compassion and the ability to see people’s needs, or you can make people feel welcome and loved like few can, those are resources God has given you in plenty. Any fruit or gift of the Spirit is a gift from God in which we can be wealthy.
With the first fruits: The idea of first fruits is introduced in Genesis 4 when Cain and Abel bring their offerings to the Lord. While we don’t know why God rejected Cain’s offering, we know his offering was contrasted with Abel’s acceptable offering of first fruits. God then solidifies the command to the Israelites to give first fruits when they are delivered from Egypt (Exodus 13:2, the firstborn male of every womb) and repeats it as they are receiving directions about life in the promised land (Leviticus 23, the first gleanings of the harvest). God is worthy of our best and first, not our leftovers.
The promise: God promises an increase in the wealth we have honored Him with. He doesn’t necessarily promise extravagances; He promises more for us to use well and continue to honor him. Matthew Henry puts it, “Those that do good with what they have shall have more to do more good with.”
These verses are my family’s reminder of Who our gifts come from and what we are to do with them. The first three categories in our budget are tithe, mortgage, and groceries. Setting aside money for our tithe before anything else is one way we make sure it’s our first fruits going to God. They also show us the correct order of events in that we first have to step out on faith to give or use our gifts and then the blessing comes. But when we are consistent with verse 9, God has never failed to come through with verse 10.
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