Verses 9 and 10 contain--+I. An exhortation to a right use of temporal riches.+ 1. _Those who honour God with their gifts honour Him who has first honoured them with their stewardship._ The man who is entrusted with the property of others, has an honour put upon him by the trust. Potiphar put a great honour upon Joseph when he committed all that he had into his hand, and Joseph felt that it was so. This of itself should be a motive to a strict integrity and to devotion to the interests of One who has thus honoured us with confidence. All temporal, material blessings are given to men as stewards of God's property (Luke xvi. 1-12), and in this light they ought to regard themselves. 2. _If men honour God with their substance, they turn what would otherwise be a snare into a blessing._ The tendency of wealth is doubtless to make men god-forgetting, self-confident, selfish (Mark x. 23; Luke xii. 16; Jas. v. 1). But those who use it for the advancement of God's kingdom--for the alleviation of human suffering--make a _friend_ of this "mammon of unrighteousness" (Luke xvi. 9). 3. _God cannot be honoured with our substance unless we first give ourselves to Him._ The great desire of a true father in relation to his children is to secure their love. Having that, everything else that is theirs will be his. Without that, no offering, no service, can be acceptable. God must have the man before He will accept his wealth. +II. The promise annexed to this exhortation.+ This cannot be the _motive_, but it is the _consequence_. Any man who gave his wealth because he believed it was a good investment in this sense, would not be honouring God with it. We must _give_, as we are commanded to _lend_, hoping for nothing again (Luke vi. 35). And, although the material rewards which are appended to a certain line of conduct under the old dispensation do not invariably follow it in the new and more spiritual one, there is probably no Old Testament promise of earthly reward which is, and ever has been, fulfilled with so few exceptions.