Ecc 11:1-6 Get It Out of Your Hands CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO

There is a common thread in these verses and it deals with one topic manifested in two ways.  There is something to eat in your hands (bread) [or something that yields something to eat (seed)] and you have to get it out of your hands for it to do any good for you and for others.  If you give it away it is likely to prosper – at a minimum it is going to help the one who received it.  If you plant it, it is likely to produce a harvest that you can reap.  And you can expect to reap more than you sowed. If you give it away, it is then available to help you in your lifetime.  In each case, you don’t know exactly how God is going to use it and bless it but he will.

And about this principle, Solomon makes two observances from nature [v.3].  He compares men to clouds [Prov 25:14, 2 Pet2:17, Jude 12] and he compares them to trees [Ps 1:3, Mk8:24, Zech 11:2, etc].  Clouds empty themselves and they rain on the just and the unjust.  So, they are a testimony to liberality.  Trees die and fall and remain where they fell.  So, they are a testimony that you have to apply this principle in your lifetime for it to affect you in your lifetime.  It’ll have no effect on you after you are dead.

This principle of getting it out of your hands works in three particular areas of your life.  It works with:

Seed and Bread – 1 Ki 17; Lk 12:15-21 and Lk 6:38

Money – 2 Cor 9:5-11, 1 Tim 6:17-19 and Eph 4:28.  See Mk 12:41-44 for an extreme example

The word of God – Matt 13:3-9, 18-23; Is 55:10-11 – in the case of the word of God, we are to sow locally through preaching, witnessing, and giving tracts and Bibles and we are to sow nationally and internationally through giving to missions