Proverbs 23:6-8. 6Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy; do not desire his delicacies, 7for he is like one who is inwardly calculating. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. 8You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten, and waste your pleasant words.
Here is the third warning for those who wish, more than anything, to be upwardly mobile. The first warning cautioned us concerning dining with the powerful. Their delicacies were deceptive. Here we are warned about eating the bread of the stingy. Their delicacies are calculating. In between these two warnings about who we connect our lives to, we were warned to not toil after fleeting wealth.
All three of these warnings are connected. Each of us will decide in this life who we will receive “favors” from, and what we will pursue as our greatest good. To eat bread with a person is to do daily life with them. To surround yourself with this kind of person. What kind of person? The stingy person. The selfish and withholding person. Note too, his deception – “Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. What he says, and what he is thinking are two very different things. He speaks as though he is generous, but everything he does is done for his own benefit, not the benefit of others. When the stingy person’s true character is revealed, all their words now taste like vomit in your mouth. All the pleasant words you have spoken about them were truly wasted words.
Have you been around this kind of person? Jesus was too. Jesus ate bread with Judas, the stingiest of men. The scripture tells us that Judas would steal from the ministry’s purse. He spoke about giving to the poor, but his heart was not with the poor at all. In the end, it appears that all of Jesus’ pleasant words to Judas were wasted. Judas was deceived by power (Prov. 23:1-3), he chased after wealth (23:4-5), and he became a stingy person, constantly calculating to his own benefit.
Jesus, obviously, stands in stark contrast to Judas. Jesus gave up power to become a servant. Jesus left behind wealth to become poor. Jesus was never selfish or stingy, not even for one second of his life. He was never duplicitous. Never calculating to his own gain. Because he knew that he had all he needed from his Father, Jesus never had to use others to get what he wanted or needed.
And neither do we in Christ. In Christ, we share everything with Jesus. Not just his literal bread, but the bread of his life. Christ has given to us everything that is his, even his own life, his own perfection. And not just because he HAS TO, but because he WANTS TO. His heart is with us. His love is with us always, and one day we will be with him always and he will share with us the whole universe. The more we believe all this, the less need there is to ever be stingy, calculating, or selfish.
You: Can you see yourself falling for the deceptions of any stingy people? What about you? In what ways have you been acting stingy and selfish?
You in Christ: How does knowing that we have all that is Christ’s allow us to defeat stinginess in our hearts?
Christ in you: What form of stinginess do you need to identify and reject today by the power of Christ’s generosity in you?
Pray: Father, I don’t want to be stingy, calculating, and selfish. Help me to see that all I have is from you and meant to be shared with others. Amen.
To Live is Christ 