Proverbs 3:9-10

Now Solomon walks straight into your wallet — because your wallet is where your real theology lives.

"Honour the LORD with thy substance." Everything you have came through God's hand: the strength to work, the mind to plan, the opportunities that opened (Deuteronomy 8:18). Honoring Him with firstfruits means He gets the first and best portion, not the leftovers after the month is spent. In Israel that was the firstfruits offering — and notice, the instinct is older than the Law itself; Jacob promised God a tenth generations before Sinai (Genesis 28:22). Giving God the first cut is not a ritual technicality. It is a declaration about who owns the farm.

Verse 10's promise — full barns, bursting presses — was Israel's covenant economics, the very deal God spelled out in Malachi 3:10: "prove me now herewith." So what about you, under grace? Here is the straight answer. Today the believer gives, not by tithe-contract, but the way Paul teaches: "Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7). God does not want what's squeezed out by pressure — He can work without your wealth, but He does not work without your willing heart. And the sowing principle still holds in every age: "He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully" (2 Corinthians 9:6). A stingy spirit is just bad farming — shorting the harvest by hoarding the seed corn. No, giving is not a vending machine, and God owes no man a payout. But ask any generous believer you know whether God has been stingy with him. There is hardly a promise men are more afraid to test — "it is hard to persuade a man that giving away will make him rich" — and hardly one with steadier testimony behind it.