Honor the Lord With Your Wealth

*The following post was originally written as a meditation for our Confession of Sin during Lord’s Day worship.

Confession of Sin

Acknowledging our guilt, resting in His grace.

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

In this verse, “honor” is just another word for worship. Simply put, we are called to worship the Lord with our wealth.

Worshiping God with our wealth has, in broad terms, two essential aspects:

First, it means obeying God’s command to tithe at least 10% of our income back to him by faith, (Mal. 3:10; I Cor. 16:2).

Now, we are not the first people to struggle with this commandment, nor are we the first to seek lots of ‘creative’ ways to avoid its full weight.

But our chafing against it only goes to show how much we need God to command this of us; how we need him to teach us to put our trust in him and not in our wealth or the things wealth can buy.

Second, honoring God with our wealth means being wise, discerning, and generous stewards of how we use the remaining 90% he has granted to us, (Matt. 6:19-24).

The Scriptures uniformly teach that God’s people are to be unique and clearly distinguishable from the world in the way they relate to and manage their wealth.

Unlike unbelievers, Christians show forth God’s glory, holiness, mercy, generosity, and Lordship over their lives by their peculiar financial practices.

We visibly demonstrate that our treasure is not of this world by happily, rigorously, and lavishly investing in those things which will endure unto the world to come.

These commands are true whether we are children or adults; whether we have a piggy bank full of pocket change or powerful stock portfolios yielding compounding dividends.

God does not require us to honor him with our wealth because he is hard up for money and needs our help––God is never our debtor.

Nor does God take pleasure in those who try to use his promised rewards for financial giving as a means of manipulating him for their own pleasures––God is not a vending machine.

He calls us to honor him with our wealth because he knows that we need to be continually reminded that money, possessions, and other resources are not our source of security and peace; they are not our god.

As the Lord spoke to his chosen people in Deuteronomy 8:17-20, so his word continues to speak his soul-sustaining wisdom to us today:

17 Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ 18 You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. 19 And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. 20 Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God, (Deuteronomy 8:17-20).

Beloved, let us receive the wise and kind instruction of our loving Father. He calls us away from the sinful illusion of finding lasting security and peace in the idols of money and things.

And in their place, he offers us something far better––he holds forth his own gracious, generous, strong, sovereign and eternal hand of blessing to each and every one of his beloved children in Christ.

Let’s take that hand; let us go to him in prayer.

(A TIME OF SILENT CONFESSION) — We invite you to privately confess your sins before the Lord now.

Assurance of God’s Forgiveness

(These are our congregation’s memory verses for the month of March, 2021)

1 Thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior, (Isaiah 43:1-3a).