Through powerful biblical illustrations, listeners are invited to explore principles that influence spiritual growth and personal development. Focusing on the concept of giving as described in the Scriptures, this episode paints a compelling narrative about individuals who lived by these divine laws, like Boaz, and the blessings that ensued. Dive into discussion on how these eternal truths can transform not just individual lives but entire communities, fostering a spirit of sharing and cooperation that echoes through time.
00:27:30 Conclusion: The Character of Godly Generosity
SPEAKER 02 :
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 03 :
When people talk about the laws of success, They often overlook the little laws, the not-so-obvious principles that have so very much to do with how your life works or how it doesn’t work, if that’s the way it is. The truth is people give lots of attention to the big stuff, like setting goals and objectives. But there are small principles that, well, they get overlooked because they have to do with the spirit of a man rather than his bank account. They have to do with the way you think, the way you are, the kind of person you are. And it’s far more important, frankly, than so many of the things and so many of the objectives that we pursue. Another reason why I think they are overlooked is because they involve a discipline. Now, if I could offer you a book with a distillation of these little laws, would you be interested? Now don’t tune out, I am not selling a book. Chances are, you already own this book. You just don’t know where in the book to look. The book is the Bible. Specifically, the book of Ecclesiastes in your Bible. The book was written by King Solomon, a man with supernatural wisdom. Given to him long ago when he prayed and asked God for guidance in carrying on the kingdom and God gave him one wish. Instead of asking for riches or gold, he asked for wisdom. so he could rule God’s people. So God gave him wisdom like no one had ever had before. The book is not hard to read, especially if you get a more modern translation. It can be read in one sitting. But I’ll warn you ahead of time, it takes a lifetime to digest this book. It takes a lifetime to really grasp it, understand it, but it’s worth every effort. Have you ever heard the expression, just to illustrate what I mean by these little laws, these small principles, have you ever heard the expression, cast your bread upon the waters, or someone speak of casting his bread upon the waters? It comes from the 11th chapter of Ecclesiastes. Now we’re in a series of broadcasts here talking about what makes life work and what doesn’t make life work, what messes things up. And King Solomon in this 11th chapter says this, Cast your bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days. Now that’s a very obscure statement, and yet it still has managed to pass into our language. What does it mean? I think it’s kind of interesting that modern slang speaks of money as bread. And the comparison is made there, and I think this is very close to what Solomon is talking about. But oftentimes, as I’ve said before, these things are set in couplets. They’re set poetically, and oftentimes you can understand what a given set of phrases are saying by the set of phrases that follow. For example, cast your bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days. Then it says, give a portion to seven and also to eight, for you don’t know what evil shall be upon the earth. What he is saying, I think, is this. He is saying, and when he says, cast your bread upon the waters, he said, leave. Let your money go on out to people. Let your goods go on out to people. Let your time go out to people. Give a portion to seven. Oh, give it to eight. Give to people because you don’t know what kind of friends you’re going to need sometime in the future. Jesus, on one occasion, said that we should make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. It’s an odd statement that he makes, and people often look at that and say, what does this mean? Well, it’s fairly obvious. When Jesus speaks of mammon, he’s talking about, well, the shorthand for it is money. He said, make yourselves friends with the money of unrighteousness, so that when the money fails, when everything else comes unstuck, you’ll have some friends out there that might take you in when the going gets rough. So this is the idea of what Solomon is talking about when he says, cast your bread upon the waters, give a portion to seven and also to eight. It’s going to come back to you sometime when you really need it. Now, what it is calling for is generosity, unselfishness, patience. The adjective in our language to describe this person is magnanimous. He is a big guy. Magnanimous, look it up. It means generous, free from pettiness, noble. It comes from two Latin words, one meaning great and the other meaning soul or life force. This is a person of a great soul, a big person as opposed to a small and a petty person. Now, to illustrate what I’m talking about, this is a discipline in both the Old and the New Testament. No matter where you turn in the Bible, the principle we’re talking about today is there. It was from the beginning. It was in the law of Moses. It’s in the law of Christ. It’s in His instructions to His disciples. It’s everywhere. But just to illustrate what I mean, back in Leviticus 19 and verse 9, the commandment is given to Moses like this, “…and when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest.” Now, what gleanings means is this, that whenever you’re going through there with a big sheaf cutter and you’re cutting down all kinds of grain and you’re gathering it up into bundles and stacking it, a lot of stuff just falls off and falls on the ground. This is what’s called the gleanings, and what it means by gleanings is that this commandment says, when it falls out of there, you leave it lie on the ground. You don’t gather all that stuff up. You don’t get out your rake and get every last grain off the ground and take it in with you. You leave it there. Why? Well, it goes on to tell you why. You shall not glean your vineyard, neither shall you gather every grape of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord your God. So, if you’re out there with your cutters and you’re working your way around a square field, you come to the corner, you don’t reach back into that corner and get every nook and cranny. You leave it there. What do you leave it there for? You leave it there so the poor of your community can come by your field, go into that corner, and gather up a little something for themselves and for their family. They can follow along in the rows and find bits of grain that have fallen to the ground or heads of grain that have fallen and not been gathered up by your harvesters. And so they are there. This was Israel’s version, folks, of food stamps. The difference is that the people who got the food stamps had to go out and get them. I mean, they had to go down to the field. They had to work. They had to bend over and pick it up off the ground. And it was hard work. You had to get down there and make your way along the row. But that hard work was left for them. It was free. There was no charge. They could take it home. And they could go across into another field where it was a vineyard, and they would find clusters of grapes that had been left. And they were allowed to pluck them and eat them. They were there for the poor and for the stranger. Now, they had to get up early, and they had to work a good part of the day to meet their family’s needs. But this was provided for them by God. And so when we read in Ecclesiastes where it says, cast your bread upon the waters for you shall find it after many days, it’s saying don’t grab at everything. Don’t hold on to everything. Let some stuff drift downstream for someone else to pick it up. It’ll be to your good in the long run. Now there were other laws back in that time that provided you could not steal from your neighbor. But if you were passing through his field or vineyard, you could eat while you were there. We’re in a watermelon patch. We can’t bend over and pick up a watermelon and take it home with us. But if we’re hungry, we can sit right down there in a row, break that thing open, scoop the meat out of it with our hands and eat it, and fill our empty belly. If you were hungry in Israel, you could eat. And no one was supposed to give you a problem for it. So they would leave something in the gleanings. They would leave something in the corners. And if you happened to be passing through a field before it was harvested, you could eat it there. You just couldn’t take it home. Now there is in the Bible a really fascinating illustration of a man with a truly magnanimous spirit. I want to talk to you about it after these words.
SPEAKER 02 :
Join us online at borntowin.net. That’s borntowin.net. Read essays by Ronald Dart. Listen to Born to Win radio programs every day, past weekend Bible studies, plus recent sermons, as well as sermons from the CEM Vault. Drop us an email and visit our online store for CDs, DVDs, literature, and books. That’s borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 03 :
The story is in the book of Ruth. It seems that a woman named Naomi who lived in Moab with her husband and with her two sons, her husband died and her two sons had married Moabite women. Her sons died and she’s left there all alone and wants to live among her own people, so she heads back to Israel. Her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who was Moabite, decided to go with her. And they returned to the land. And here you’ve got two women with no men to support them. And this is not a world where women normally go out to work and get a job. You couldn’t go down to manpower or someplace like that and get them to assign you to some office. It was a bad time to be a woman alone and without a supporter. So here they are. They are poor and living back in Israel again. And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, you’ll find this beginning in the second chapter, verse 2. And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, let me now go into the field and glean ears of corn after him in whose eyes I shall find grace. And she said, go, my daughter. So this is what you do. You say, we don’t have any food in the house. I’ll tell you what, I’ll go down and I’ll find someone who is willing to allow us to glean in his field. So she went, and she came, and she gleaned in the field after the reapers. And it just happened that she lighted in a part of the field belonging to Boaz. And lucky for her, Boaz was a very big man. I don’t mean necessarily in stature. We don’t really know that much about that. But he was a big-hearted man. Boaz came up from Bethlehem, and he saw what was going on out there, and he saw Ruth. And he said, Who’s this girl? And the servant that was set over the reapers answered and said, It’s the Moabitish damsel that came out with Naomi out of the country of Moab. And she said, Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves. So she came, and she’s continued from morning even to now. She’s been out here all day working hard and getting her food together. So Boaz went over and spoke to Ruth. And he said, listen, my daughter, don’t go and glean in another field. Don’t go away from here at all. You stay close to my girls that are here. Let your eyes be on the field that the girls are reaping in, and you go after them. I’ve charged the young men that they’re not to touch you, and I suspect that that was something that often happened, unfortunately, when a young woman went out to reap in fields. I have little doubt that some of the young men took advantage of them. Boaz was not having any of that. And he told her, when you’re thirsty, you go to the vessels and you drink of that which the young men have drawn. He treated her just like one of his own. And she was really, really moved by this. She fell on her face and bowed herself to the ground and said, How have I found grace in your eyes that you should take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger? Now, this word stranger, you know, essentially what she did, she played the race card, as we’d say today. She said, Look, I’m of a different race. How is it possible that you have looked upon me and you’re willing to let me do this? People don’t do what you have done here. Well, Boaz answered and said to her, I already know all that you have done to your mother-in-law since the death of your husband. I’ve heard the whole story. I know how you’ve been loyal to her. I know how you’ve stayed with her. You left your father. You left your mother. You left your country. And you’ve come to a people that you didn’t even know before now. He said, I hope that the Lord will recompense your work and he’ll give you a full reward because you have come to trust under the wings of the Lord God of Israel. And she said, let me find favor in your sight, my Lord, for you have comforted me. I have taken a great deal of encouragement from this and you have spoken friendly to your handmaid, though I be not like one of your handmaidens. And Boaz said to her, At mealtime you come here and you eat of the bread and you dip your morsel in the vinegar. So she sat there beside the reapers and she was able to eat there. He gave her parched corn and she ate and was sufficed and left. And when she was risen up to go back to work, Boaz commanded his young men, said, Let her glean among the sheaves. Don’t reproach her. Right? Even among the sheaves that they were cutting, mind you. Now, this is something that was not normally allowed to be done. You know, you’re cutting them, you’ve got them bound up, and you’ve put them there. The poor are supposed to be out there where you cut, not where you have put the sheaves. He said, let her come even in there. And let some of the handfuls fall on purpose for her and leave them so she can pick them up and don’t rebuke her. In other words, he just said, I want you to go out of your way for this young woman to leave something for her. Now, why am I telling you all this story? Well, it’s because here we have a really magnanimous spirit in a man who understood the discipline in the law from two different perspectives. One is you’re going to leave something here for the poor. And when you find somebody who is in need, you leave some extra. Cast your bread on the waters. It’ll come back to you after so many days. Go ahead. Give a portion to seven. Give a portion to eight. It may be the time will come that that will be more important than you could ever realize. You know, what’s interesting about this, that Boaz, an Israelite, married Ruth ultimately. You never know how things are going to work out. And Ruth, who was a Moabitess, turned out to be a mother in the lineage of the Messiah. Yeah. So generosity, open-handedness, magnanimous spirit. It pays off. It’s a part of what makes life work, as opposed to being a pinched, dried up, wizened little guy who won’t leave anything for anybody. You know, in Exodus 22, there is another one of these little laws, small commandments, that are so important. It says in verse 22, “…you shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child.” If you afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry. And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children shall be fatherless. Now, I don’t know about you folks. I take that very seriously. I know someone who used to be a real estate agent, who whenever she came into a real estate deal with a widow, who had children whose father was not there. She bent over backwards, did everything in her power, looked after them, and she almost cited the Scripture. The passage in Exodus 22, 22 that says, You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. And she, apart from the fear of not wanting God to come back upon her, well, there’s also the matter of not wanting to fail to cast your bread upon the waters, to be generous. You don’t have to squeeze the last drop out of people. He then goes on to say, If you lend money to any of my people who are poor by you, you shall not be to him as a usurer, and you shall not lay upon him usury. In other words, if you lend money to a person who is poor, you’re not allowed to charge him interest. Now, if you lend me money to help me out in my business, and I’m going to use your money to make money, there’s not a thing in the world wrong with me letting you share in the profits. We call that interest. But if I’m lending to a person who is poor and trying to dig his way out of a hole, I am not allowed to charge him interest by the law. Just don’t do it. He goes on to say, If you at all take your neighbor’s raiment to pledge, you’re to give it back to him by sundown. For that’s his covering. It’s the raiment for his skin. What’s he going to sleep in? It’ll come to pass when he cries to me, I’ll hear because I, God says, am gracious and you are not. Well, I think I’d rather be gracious myself. Here’s a time in which, you know, a poor guy, all he’s got is clothes. And clothing in that time was far more valuable than you and I realized. There was an enormous amount of labor and cost that went into the making of a garment. Today, they’re knocked out by machines in such abundant numbers that anybody can afford them. You can go buy Goodwill and buy some, or you can stop off probably some churches and get clothes free. So clothes are no big deal. But I will tell you, in this time, it was. And when it got cold at night… All a poor man had to wrap himself in to sleep warm was his cloak. So if you lend him money in the morning and he says, I’m going to pay you back on this. Here’s my cloak. I’ll leave my cloak with you as a surety. It’s okay to take it. But by sundown, you’re supposed to give it back to him. Why? So he can sleep in it. Now, I realize that doesn’t sound like very good collateral. I realize it doesn’t sound like very good business practice, but that’s not what God’s talking about. What God is talking about is casting your bread on the waters, being generous to the poor. You know, open your hand, you tightwad. Let somebody else have a little bit of life’s good for a change. You don’t have to gather up everything that’s around you. You don’t have to pull in every last dollar, every last cent, every last grain of wheat, or every grape off the vine. Leave something for someone, would you please? It’s his covering. Give it back to him. I’ll tell you this, God said, if he cries to me about you, I’ll hear him, for I am gracious. Now, if you’re worried about that, and you’re afraid, well, if I lend to the poor, I’ll just never get it back. Well, let me give you another thing from King Solomon, Proverbs 19, verse 17. He that has pity on the poor lends to the Lord grace. And that which he has given will he pay him again. You want a cosigner? If you lend to the poor, the Lord cosigns on his note. You’ll get it back. You may not get it back today. You may not get it back tomorrow. You may not even know when you got it back. But you will get it back. God is gracious. I’ll be back in a moment with what Jesus had to say about that.
SPEAKER 02 :
For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only and request the program titled Making Life Work, number 11. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44 and tell us the call letters of this radio station. So, what did Jesus have to say about all this?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, He said this, Give, and it shall be given unto you. That’s a pretty good deal. I give it out, it comes back. Give and it shall be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over shall men give into your bosom. That’s wonderful. You know, if I’m a generous person, if I’m an open-handed person, magnanimous, there’s that word again. If I’m a big guy and I give, he says, it’s going to be given back to you. Good measure. I mean, you fill up the measure and then you press it down. You bang it up and down and shake it real good and pour some more on and let it run over. That’s the way the basket you’re visualizing. He said, men are going to give this sort of thing back to you. Why are they going to do that? Because of the kind of person you are. They know you’re not trying to stick them. They know you’re not trying to take advantage of them. This principle is bedrock Christianity. And, well, here it was all the way back in Ecclesiastes and Leviticus and Deuteronomy and the law. It’s a fundamental part of the discipline God lays upon men. It’s a fundamental part of the character we’re supposed to have if we call ourselves godly people. Back in 2 Corinthians, there’s an interesting little passage that has to do with an offering that the Corinthian people are putting together for Paul to take to the poor saints in Jerusalem. There had been a famine prophesied and it had struck. And it was time for food to be delivered, not just money, but real goods to be delivered to the poor saints down there because people were liable to die of starvation. And so in this letter, in the ninth chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul writes to them, and he’s talking about what they’re doing and gives a little background material with it. And finally, he says in verse 7, Every man, according as he purposes in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. Yeah, you know what? So do I. I like generous people. It’s fun being around that kind of person. You know, if you go out and you’re having a meal with somebody and the guy grabs the check away from you, that’s the kind of guy you like to go to dinner with, isn’t it? I mean, somebody that’s not trying to always get you to pick up the tab. Somebody you have to fight with. A friend that you have to fight with over the check as to which one of you is going to pay it, that’s a good relationship. It makes you feel good about people. Well, does it ever occur to you that God also feels good about you? generous, open-handed, magnanimous people. Well, he does. At least Paul certainly said he did. God loves a cheerful giver, and God is able to make all grace abound toward you so that you, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound unto every good work. As it is written, he has dispersed abroad, he has given to the poor, his righteousness remains forever. Yeah, God is always giving, always turning stuff over to people. And God wants us to be like him. He actually says that coming back to you because of the prayers of the people you are helping are going to be great gifts from God. And then he says, ending this chapter, thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift. What gift? The gift that allows us to give. The gift of generosity. So if we go back to Solomon, cast your bread upon the waters means be magnanimous, be generous, be big-hearted, exercise the discipline of giving. Don’t assume the government’s going to take care of the poor. I’ll grant you they’ve taken enough money to do it and there’s enough coming out of your taxes and so forth that should be able to take care of every poor person in the country. But there’s one thing you can count on because the government’s in Washington and the poor people are down the road from you. The government will botch the effort. So don’t depend on them. They’ll botch the effort. You won’t. You’ll know the money has gone where it should. You’ll know how the money was spent. You’ll know whether the people really needed it or whether there was fraud because you’re there, right? You can see. Count all the money that the government takes from you for its anti-poverty programs as basically mostly lost. Just write it off and go do something about it yourself. Now, the principle involved in this is also expressed in Proverbs 11 and verse 24. He says this, “…there is that scatters and yet increases.” And there is that withholds more than is proper, but it tends to poverty. Now what does that mean? It means simply this, that there are people who distribute what they have and yet get more. There are people who cast their bread upon the waters and yet they don’t seem to be diminished by it. There are people who are generous and open-handed and yet they don’t wind up being poor for some reason. On the other hand, there are people who are stingy, There are people who are grasping. There are people who are clutching at the things that they have. And he says it tends to poverty. It’s almost like there’s a law, a law of inverse returns, that if you grasp it, you’ll lose it. If you let it go, you’ll gain it. You know how it boils down in life? Don’t squeeze the last drop of blood out of somebody. Don’t eat the last scrap of food on the table. Don’t bargain the last dollar out of every buyer or every seller. Aren’t you bigger than that? Aren’t you a magnanimous, big-hearted, open-handed, generous kind of guy, or a woman who is willing to help and give and open her home and pass things on to children, grandchildren, neighbors, and to see to it that the poor in her community are fed? That’s the kind of person you are, isn’t it? I hope so. Because, in fact, what you’re describing in all this is the character of God in and in turn the character of a godly man and a godly woman. Now we’ve talked a lot over these past several programs about what makes life work. And yet in spite of everything I’ve told you, you can probably get all this right and still be an unhappy person. For there is one more thing that I’ve got to tell you about what makes life work and why it doesn’t. But that’s going to have to wait. Till next time. Until then, this is Ronald Dart reminding you, givers don’t really lose.
SPEAKER 02 :
The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at… Stay in touch with the new Born to Win with Ronald L. Dart app.
SPEAKER 01 :
This app has all of your favorite Ronald L. Dart radio messages, sermons, articles, and it even has a digital Bible. Simply search on the iOS or Android app store to download it for free today.
