Proverbs 3:9-10

Honor the LORD with your possessions, And with the firstfruits of all your increase; 10 So your barns will be filled with plenty, And your vats will overflow with new wine.

It is difficult to read just these two verses without first making note of the context of chapter 3. The entire chapter is an exhortation of Solomon to his son. He first exhorts his son to cleave with joy to the righteous and just law of God for in obedience to it, one finds peace and long life (v. 2). This is an allusion to the 5th commandment, "Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you" (Deut. 5:16). Solomon wants his son to love the Law of God just as his father David did, who in Psalm 1:1, 2 wrote "Blessed is the man ... [whose] delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law he meditates day and night."

It is within this context that we can fully appreciate these two verses. Verse 9 is a restatement of God's Law as given in Exodus 23:19 and Deuteronomy 26:2. The command is to give God from your first fruits. By doing so you honor God with your possessions and you affirm that He is the giver of all things. In his commentary on the whole Bible, Matthew Henry writes:

God, who is the first and best, must have the first and best of every thing; his right is prior to all other, and therefore he must be served first. Note, It is our duty to make our worldly estates serviceable to our religion, to use them and the interest we have by them for the promoting of religion, to do good to the poor with what we have and abound in all works of piety and charity

(Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. III [Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company], 804)

It is also important to note that there is a promise tied to Solomon's exhortation. This promise is found in verse 10. I believe the promise is two fold. It is first a promise of abundance so that we may enjoy the fruit of our labor and give charitably to those in need. And second it is an acknowledgement that God provides the increase. History has shown us that when man fails to acknowledge God as the Almighty Sovereign over all creation, he is driven to ruin. This is true whether we are speaking of the individual, church, or nation. King Nebuchadnezzar was driven to insanity for 7 years because he refused to acknowledge God as the source of his greatness. Israel was repeatedly ransacked and finally destroyed by pagan nations because she played the harlot with other gods.

While the overbearing tax of the State is a witness to its tyranny, God's tax, the tithe, paves the road to temporal freedom.

The Holy Spirit and God's enscriptured word possess a wisdom far surpassing man's wisdom. If we pay God's tax, the tithe, we can create God's government: churches, schools, hospitals, relief agencies for the poor, and more. We can provide for godly arts, and we can create Christian arbitration courts, and so on. This was done once, and it can be done again.

The earth is the Lord's and so too is man (Ps. 24:1). Out of the increase of the earth God's government is to be financed. To by-pass the Spirit and the tithe is to depend on a humanistic state for God's Kingdom.

(R.J. Rushdoony, "The Holy Spirit and the Tithe," Systematic Theology, Vol. II [Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1994], 994-995.)

If we can trust that God will keep His promise regarding our salvation and eternal life , we can also trust that what He promised here will also come to pass.