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I’ve had a wisdom affair with the book of Proverbs since High School. I never really read the Bible for myself until the summer before my junior year and, as I started the process, one of the recommendations my youth pastor gave me was to read a chapter of Proverbs every day. It’s a great book packed with sense for young people. Solomon targets sons as his frequent audience since the young are most likely to be benefited by knowledge and discretion.

Sadly, exercising wisdom is not the same thing as memorizing proverbs. Learning proverbs by heart is great and, since proverbs are usually short and memorable, they easy to parrot. But learning a proverb by heart doesn’t mean that one has learned the proverb in heart. Proverbs are so much easier to borrow than to own, easier to share with someone else than to keep.

Maybe my all time favorite proverb isn’t found in the book of Proverbs, but in Job.

But a stupid man will get understanding
when a wild donkey’s colt is born a man!
(Job 11:12, ESV)

Proverbs 14:4 is a close second.

I may, at a subconscious level, have grown a goatee many years ago so that I could have something to stroke on my chin while chewing the proverbial cud. If any of us lacks wisdom, as the apostle James might have said to someone, let him ask of God who gives proverbs to all men liberally and with a bit of sarcasm when deserved.

All of that leads me to one verse, one proverb that is so much more than a proverb. It is wisdom. It is exhortation. It is conviction. It is promise. It is exhaustion. It is exhilaration. It is personal. It is economical. It is worship. It is world-view. It is war. It is marriage. It is parenting. It is Christmas. It is gospel. It is necessary.

I’m really not kidding. If we mastered the glad practice of this verse we wouldn’t recognize ourselves. I get how hype-y and overstated that sounds since, after all, it’s not even a New Testament verse. I mean, where’s Jesus? Well, He is here. Jesus is wisdom, and He is this word incarnate.

I expect that it won’t be a new idea to anyone here tonight. I hope it isn’t. I hope it’s just a different way of weaving the typically thick thread into the TEC fabric. That’s a great assignment given to us every week, to be transformed by the things we already know. And here we go.

The verse is Proverbs 11:25.

Whoever brings blessing will be enriched,
and one who waters will himself be watered. (ESV)

Admittedly, the ESV falls flat. That translation makes it sound like the sort of verse that makes it really easy to ignore and glide into the following verse. It might as well be a genealogy. There’s no big vocabulary bump, no reason to slow down or look up or shout out. That’s the ESV’s fault. Boo on making it sound more boring than it is, for giving verse 25 the impression making affect of an old piece of balled-up insulation.

We’d do well to dust off the version of the King named James. It will rattle in our ears.

The liberal soul shall be made fat:
And he that watereth shall be watered also himself. (KJV)

Now, I’ve built this up. I’ve leaned a bunch of preachy superlatives against the verse that may push it over. I’m about to give some translation, some exegesis, some context, and some illustrations. It’ll all be good and I’m happy to do it. But this challenges every fiber of our faith to actually try it. I think that we’re a people who are satisfied with Metamucil. We’d prefer to give anything to not need to do anything. But God may be gracious to give us a real desire to get fat like this and keep it on.

Whoever brings blessing (ESV) is a (bland) way to say a generous person (NAS) which is a (thin) way to say the liberal soul (KJV) which are all attempts to translate nephesh barakah (Hebrew), “the soul of blessing.” This is a heart that can’t keep the blessing-blood in, a can’t-stop-from-giving soul.

Whatever comes in the rest of the proverb belongs to this character, the man with a bestowing-overflow soul.

So we’re talking about a kind of giver, not necessarily a kind of gift. We’re talking about the soul out of which the giving comes, not about the gold value assigned to the giving. In fact, in this first part of verse 25, no possession or monetary unit is referenced. That doesn’t mean that blessing can’t take tangible form, it means that it isn’t required to. Being a blessing isn’t restricted to bank accounts of a certain size. It depends on the soul.

Because we’re talking about the liberal soul, it also means that we’re talking about giving with a certain sort of spirit. There is a distinct vibe that flows and follows from it. A liberal soul blesses all the way through, including the mood in the room. There are some givers who give more grief with their present or their service. A liberal soul doesn’t look like his pants are too tight. His face isn’t bunched up at the nose.

Not all giving is truly liberal. There may be strings attached, strings such as expectation for recognition or “That’a boy!“s. This is dad dragging his jaw on the ground all day after paying for tickets to Disneyland. “Can you believe how much that cost?!” This is mom sighing strong enough to blow chunks off the dishes in the kitchen when the rest of the family runs to play Wii bowling or do something more fun. Both are making sure that everyone knows how much they gave. This is giving that is not from a liberal soul.

Imagine how much blessing we could give if we didn’t care if we got the credit. When we give to get credit, we are not going to get fat. We are going to get famished. We are going to end up emaciated. We will look like cancer patients, eaten up by our expectation treatments.

This isn’t to say that givers don’t get. The liberal soul shall be made fat . Will be enriched (ESV) makes me embarrassed as an ambassador for language. Don’t ruin my interest by removing the guts. Will be prosperous (NAS) is no better, for all the condescending buttons the NAS wears about being a better word-for-word translation.

Yes, the idea of fatness is the idea of prosperity, of being enriched. But that may count as interpretation, definitely not as translation. Growing fat, now that’s a mental picture not soon to be trashed.

The fat is a measure of abundance, of goodness. Fat is tasty. Fat keeps you warm. Fat means something is going well. There’s meat on the bone.

Fat souls are liberal souls. Souls of blessing get bigger.

Hoarders grow spindly and shrivel. Hey, at least they fit into their skinny jeans. They are lean souls, not fat ones. You can see the bones sticking out of their hearts. They stockpile their stuff, their minutes, their health, their sleep, their attention, their affections. In the name of wise stewardship, they become fools sitting on an empty reserve.

The second half of verse 25 provides a complimentary example. He who watereth shall be watered also himself . The setting appears to be agricultural, as in watering another man’s herd or flock. But it doesn’t say that he who waters another man’s flock will get his own flock watered later. It says that he, the man himself, will be watered, which has to be more than having a bucket of water dumped over his head. The waterer’s soul gets watered. The soul gets fat and wet. The soul is abundant and meaty and desirable.

The context of verse 25 supplements the point. Start in verse 22.

Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout
is a beautiful woman without discretion.

Okay, that was just a gratuitous cross reference that doesn’t relate. But verses 24 and 26 do.

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer;
another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.
(Proverbs 11:24)

The people curse him who holds back grain,
but a blessing is on the head of him who sells it.
(Proverbs 11:26)

Free givers always win over stingy keepers. Note that verse 26 describes the grain seller as a generous, blessed man. Apparently, a soul of blessing can give a good deal, not just a good give-away.

If all this is so obvious, why don’t more people live this way? Does anyone really play Hungry, Hungry Hippo to because we appreciate grabby mammals? Who would you rather be, Ebenezer Scrooge or Tiny Tim Cratchit? Dickens described Scrooge as follows in A Christmas Carol:

“The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice …”

Who would you rather be in Genesis 13, Uncle Abram or nephew Lot? Whose soul would you rather have? But how can you get a liberal soul? The answer to that question is why more people don’t have one.

A liberal soul belongs with wisdom. Wisdom is true, not easy. What is the beginning of wisdom? The fear of the Lord. More people aren’t getting fat because they fear losing their stuff or their comfort or their credit more than they fear the Lord.

Consider the connection in Proverbs 28:25.

A greedy man stirs up strife,
but the one who trusts in the LORD will be enriched.

Will be enriched is the same phrase as in 11:25, “will grow fat.” The contrast is between the greedy man who causes fights to get what he thinks he deserves with the fat soul who depends on the LORD. Faith is the opposite of greed. Again, this greed can be greedy for preferences, greedy for comfort, greedy for family time, greedy for dollars, greedy for credit, all are ways of the fool.

Conclusion

If you want to be fat you need a liberal soul. If you want a liberal soul, you need grace. And God is glad to give grace so that we can give blessing because that’s what we’re called to do. We’re called do give grace because we’re called to be imitators of God. We see Him giving His only Son. We see the Son giving up His privacy, giving up His place in heaven, giving up angelic adoration, giving up His life. But who has a better name than He? Who has more fat than He?

This is the gospel. This is Christmas. This is wisdom. This is our calling. It isn’t about immediate glory, it’s about being fat souled people who give like our God. Imagine what your L2L would look like if people got fat by coming to give rather than losing soul weight with every expectation they bring to receive. Imagine what Sunday morning worship would be. What Tuesday night at the dinner table would be. What kind of fat kids and grandkids you would raise.

Also, no one gets fat overnight.

This doesn’t make sense to fools. Let’s be wise and fat in the fear of the Lord.