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How Does the Wisdom of Being Generous Add Up?

I think that most of you here know how math works. If you have six apples, and out of the depths of your generous heart you give two apples away, how many apples do you have left? Yes, four. Four apples. If you have 20 sandwiches, and I take 10 sandwiches away, then how many sandwiches do you have left? – Good, ten. Ten sandwiches. We understand the basic principle, that when we have things, and then we give some things away, mathematically speaking, we’re left with fewer things.

But this afternoon we’re going to see that in the real dealings of human life, there’s a different principle that’s also at work. Though immediately, physically, giving apples away results in the loss of apples, the ultimate outcome is gain.

Tonight we’re going to continue our series in the Book of Proverbs, to better understand the principles of God’s wisdom. So if you haven’t already, please turn with me to Proverbs, Chapter 11. I’ll be reading from Proverbs 11, starting at verse 24. But before I read the text, please pray with me:

[Pray and Read Text]

The Design of God’s Wisdom

God is the architect and engineer of all things. According to his wisdom, he has established the principles and laws for how the world works. And in the book of Proverbs, we get an inside view. We get an opportunity to have the clock face taken off, and he shows us the gears and mechanisms of his wisdom up close and personal.

Tonight we’re specifically going to look at what God’s wisdom tells us about wealth, generosity, and blessing – and also what he has to say about scarcity, selfishness, and accursedness. I just have three simple points that the text draws our attention to. First, the generous person gains. Second, the stingy person suffers. And third, the glorious God gives.

The Generous Person Gains

So first, the generous person gains. When someone is generous, it means that they’re willing to give time and resources. They give freely, without expecting or demanding people to give them anything in return. This is the sort of person that we’re introduced to in the very beginning of verse 24. It’s talking about “One [who] gives freely.”  They aren’t requiring God or other people to meet certain conditions first, before they give. But they initiate giving, with a cheerful heart. They recognize that giving – having the ability and opportunity to give – it’s something of a reward in itself. They’re not giving out of a dissatisfied heart, lusting after more, but they’re giving after a content heart, loving the wisdom of God.

Notice, though, the interesting outcome of the generous person’s life: “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer.”  Again, this doesn’t fit with what we’d expect to see, based off a basic understanding of elementary-age math. Yet God insists that this is how the world works. Some of you might be wondering, “How is this possible?” Others of you, though, have probably experienced this firsthand. You’ve seen that it’s true. In either case, it’s helpful to slow down and to try to understand how God’s wisdom works – how can it be that generous people who give their things away tend to grow richer?

There are four ways we could answer this question.

First, this is possible because of the character of the generous person. Generous people, almost by definition, aren’t absorbed with their own self-interest. Generous people aren’t looking to have lots of “me time,” for lazy leisure and entertainment. Generous people don’t prioritize their personal comfort over the good of others. They know how to labor for the good of others, even when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient. And because of this attitude, generous people tend to be active and industrious. They’re not going to be kept off the farm just because it’s a rainy day. They respect and care for other people. They show up to work, to serve customers or consumers. Their enjoyment of giving has the overall effect of making them productive and prosperous.

Second, it’s possible for generous people to gain because of the people who are receiving that generosity. The generous person – let’s say her name is Jennifer – Generous Jennifer doesn’t exist in a relational vacuum – but her giving heart has an impact on people. When they see her kindness, they’re often motivated to say “thank you” and to respond with gifts of their own. And so this is another factor to keep in mind. If Generous Jennifer has six apples, and gives four apples away to Poor Peter, but then Poor Peter runs across a loaded apple tree on the side of the road, it’s quite likely that Poor Peter will bring four apples back. In fact, he might bring back forty apples. Thus, one gives freely, yet grows all the richer.”

But even though people can have a role to play in bringing richness to generous people, there’s a third consideration that’s even more important. Generous people often gain richly in a material, earthly sense because there’s a God in heaven who knows how to reward good. In mysterious ways, he can bring job opportunities where it seemed like there was nothing. He can bring a college scholarship, where you were expecting a $10,000 debt. He can bring physical safety in the midst of war and natural disasters. On many occasions, God has provided incredible earthly blessings for those who have lived with generous hearts.

But while all three of these things are true, we all recognize that there are apparent exceptions. In this broken world, this proverb doesn’t always hold true with respect to the earthly wealth and well-being of generous people. Over the course of human history, there are godly people who have lost their children, who have lost their eyesight, who have lost their jobs – without any earthly compensation. There are righteous, generous people who were thrown to the lions in ancient Rome. There are righteous, generous people who were burned at the stake. There are righteous, generous people who lost all of their earthly possessions. And if the physical contents of this world were all that there is, we would have to question just how reliable the wisdom of this passage is. Because for every person out there who has gained earthly riches by being generous, you’d easily be able to find someone else who has gained earthly riches by being miserly and heartless.

So there’s a fourth factor, that further explains how generous people do, in fact, gain. They gain things that aren’t just temporary material treasures. But in this life they enjoy spiritual gifts – contentment, peace, comfort – and in the life to come they have a rich inheritance from God that’s imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. This is reflected in what Jesus said back in Matthew 19[:27]: “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”  Jesus indicates that the good things we give up, in order to give generously to others, will be refunded, and added upon. The one who gives freely, as an act of faith in Christ, can expect to have a richly-supplied life, in some respect now, but definitely and fully in the age to come.

Make sure you watch out, though, because some people make it sound like God’s concern here in Proverbs is just to give us a “get-rich-quick” scheme. They claim if you give God $10, God will give you $1000. But to treat God like an ATM or a slot machine – this is a distortion of the text that promotes the love of money rather than the love of godliness. It repackages worldly passions in a pretty box and fantasizes that those desires are Biblical and Christian. But God’s Word here isn’t encouraging us to fuel the greediness of our heart by pretending to be generous. Instead, it’s teaching us to love and value generosity, itself, on account of the good outcome it produces.

I spent most of the time here on the first part of verse 24 – but similar ideas are repeated in verse 25: “Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and the one who waters will himself be watered.” The repetition of ideas like this is a way that Hebrew culture doubled down and highlighted the importance or truthfulness of something. So you should be convinced and assured tonight, from God himself, that this is how the world works. This is the right way.

But I just want to draw your attention briefly to one more comment under this point – in verse 26. “The people curse him who holds back grain, BUT a blessing is on the head of him who sells it.” Though we’ve already talked about generosity, and how we gain from it – verse 26 is important in helping us to have a broader understanding of what generosity is and what it looks like. We often think about generosity in narrow terms of “how much money do I have in my bank account? And how much can I give away.” But here in verse 26, generosity is even described in terms of selling our surplus resources. Having a generous heart means that we won’t just pile things up for ourselves. We won’t clear the shelves of toilet paper and stockpile it before a winter storm. Even though it’s true that “someday this might be useful for you” – there might be someone else out there who needs that resource now.

And when people who are in need see wealthier people stashing away money, or piling up resources – they don’t say, “Wow, I really appreciate how much useful stuff you have.” Instead, it can cultivate grief or resentment. “The people curse him who holds back grain, but a blessing is on the one who sells it.”

This isn’t suggesting that it’s wrong to have a savings account, or that it’s wrong to save up for retirement. Having those resources actually enable us to be more generous as needs arise around us. Instead, God wants to make sure we understand here – it’s foolish and unprofitable to be selfish. It isn’t the miserly person who gains, ultimately, but the generous person.

The Stingy Person Suffers

The stingy, miserly person is, in fact, the person who suffers, which is my second point: The stingy person suffers. Go back to verse 24 with me: “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.”

Now, the interesting thing you’ll notice in the second half of this verse, describing the stingy person, is that he withholds what he should give – or literally in the Hebrew, he’s withholding what’s right. And so God, in his wisdom here, is indicating that there’s a certain measure of generosity that’s right. You’re not giving so much away that you’re endangering your survival or functioning in society, but at the same time you’re also not grasping on to every last dime with an iron claw. The standard of generosity that’s right – that’s appropriate – generally lies in between the two.

And so when we hear Scripture say, “another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want,” it’s wise for us to reflect on what right generosity should look like, in our case. If we’re finding that we have a hard time giving time, or money to help our neighbors, or the ministries of the church, or the people on the other side of the world who have never heard the name of Jesus – if we have a hard time helping these people, because we depend too much on our money to give us security, or because we depend too much on our recreation and travel time to give us satisfaction – then these may be signs that we’re spiritually impoverished.

Now certainly, there’s a real sense in which people who like to spend money on themselves are more likely to be in poverty, in a physical, earthly sense. If people are always trying to satisfy themselves by buying toys, outfits, and the latest iPhone, their bank account will perpetually be close to empty, and, frankly, their satisfaction with life will be, too. Being fixated on self-gratification will just about always leave you feeling ungratified. The one who withholds what he should give will only suffer want.

But this principle is also true spiritually. A day is coming when those who have been rich toward themselves will suffer eternal poverty. The person who holds back his storehouses of grain for himself, won’t harvest blessing, but a curse.

There are many places in Scripture where the danger of this miserly, stingy love of wealth is warned about. But one of the most vivid and heart-wrenching is in the book of James, Chapter 5: “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.”

The way of selfishness, of close-fistedness, of hard-heartedness toward the needs of others – this is not the way of wisdom. It isn’t a reflection of the mind and heart of God, but is instead an act of evil and rebellion against his character, and it leads to suffering want.

The Glorious God Gives

Generosity, on the other hand, is a reflection of God’s own character. God’s word teaches us that generosity is wise and good because it aligns with the very nature of who God is. And this brings me to my third and final point. The glorious God gives.

It would seem rather disingenuous if God said, “Giving is good,” and then he went off and was always taking and exploiting. But as history unfolds, from the beginning of the Bible, all the way through, what we see is that the great God who created the Universe, who deserves the allegiance and worship of every creature, who is Sacred and Authoritative and clothed in glory – this God is a God who gives. Who gives generously. He placed the first man in a beautiful garden, with a buffet line of delicious fruits, with abundant, clean, fresh water. And even before the man recognized his need for a companion, God provided him with a wife – bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh. And even after the man and woman, Adam and Eve, rebelled against God and plunged the world into sin, God generously gave to them a promise of a Savior. God generously initiated a covenant of grace with Abraham. He gave promises – he gave signs to display and confirm and foreshadow the grace that had been prepared for them in Christ. And in the fullness of time, God gave His Son.

So when we hear this Proverb, as Christians, we recognize that God has already acted to give eternal riches for us, now and in the future. He has given his Son, Jesus Christ, to take care of all our needs, casting away our sins, giving us joy and peace and eternal life and favor with God. And if God was willing to give us His only, precious Son – to suffer and die for us, there isn’t any other gift more precious that he’s going to withhold. Over and over again, God has given. And He’s going to continue to give forever. Because generosity is wrapped up in who God was, and is, and always will be, according to the riches of his wisdom.

So the call to generosity here isn’t just about developing a new attitude. The call of generosity is instead to more deeply know and appreciate your God. The call of generosity is to be so profoundly confident in the realness of God’s generosity toward you, that you are joyfully set loose to give freely to others. So let’s ask God together that he would give us wisdom – and that we ourselves would excel in the grace of giving. Please pray with me: