Stewardship: God Owns Everything
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My cookies!
My cookies!
A traveler, between flights at an airport, went to a lounge and bought a small package of cookies. Then she sat down and began reading a newspaper. Gradually, she became aware of a rustling noise. From behind her paper, she was flabbergasted to see a neatly dressed man helping himself to her cookies. Not wanting to make a scene, she leaned over and took a cookie herself.
A minute or two passed, and then came more rustling. He was helping himself to another cookie! After a while they came to the end of the package with one cookie left, but she was so angry she didn’t dare allow herself to say anything. Then, as if to add insult to injury, the man broke the remaining cookie in two, pushed half across to her, ate the other half, and left.
Still fuming sometime later when her flight was announced, the woman opened her handbag to get her ticket. To her shock and embarrassment, there she found her package of unopened cookies!
That is funny.
And … it is interesting how the story gives us a peek inside human nature. We may learn to share when we’re in kindergarten, but it sure is hard to do when we’re adults. Our human nature wants to cling to what is ours. My cookies!
Well, no; they’re God’s cookies. God owns everything.
Today, we’re going to start talking about sharing; or put another way: stewardship.
What is stewardship?
What is stewardship?
When discussing stewardship, the topic that usually dominates the conversation is tithing. Tithing is definitely commanded in the Old Testament Scriptures, but the word or the command is not included in the New Testament. So, did tithing go away with the New Covenant? Of course not. The Books of Acts, 1 Corinthians and other New Testament passages contain instructions and reports of people giving an offering to the Lord, as a responsibility of membership in the body of Christ and for the purpose of funding the ministry and mission of the church. So giving was still expected in the early church, and instructed in the holy Scriptures. The term tithing is just not used to describe the giving.
My concern, in the first place, is that the word stewardship in the Scriptures is not limited to money. In fact, the word is not so much an economic word as it is a management word. The word literally means “manager.” When the Bible calls us a steward, it implies two things:
Everything we own has been entrusted to us from someone else; and that someone else is God. Again, God owns everything. So whatever “property” or resources (or “cookies”) I have at my disposal, they were entrusted to me by God.
I am responsible to God, who owns everything, to manage the resources he has given me in a biblical, ethical, and godly way.
I can bring a "tithe" to the church every single week, but still not fully comprehend the biblical meaning of stewardship, if I am not managing the rest of my resources in a way that pleases God. We’ll explore what the rest of those resources are in the next few weeks. Furthermore, we need to remember that giving my tithe every week, or every month, depending on your budget and system of giving, does not mean that I can use the rest of it any way I want. The 90% still belongs to God, and I have a responsibilty as God’s steward to spend it well.
So, this sermon, and the sermon series, is designed to educate and inspire us, as members of CBC, to be good stewards of all God's graces. And that’s what our resources are; they are gifts of God’s grace to us.
The beginning of stewardship
The beginning of stewardship
To discover what the Bible says about stewardship, we start with the very first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). As the Creator, God has absolute rights of ownership over all things, and to miss starting here is like misaligning the top button on our shirt or blouse—nothing else will ever line up. Nothing else in the Bible, including the doctrine of stewardship, will make any sense or have any true relevance if we miss the fact that God is the Creator and has full rights of ownership. God owns everything.
That’s difficult for us American Westerners because our culture places so much emphasis on private ownership. The architects of Western civilization believed that protection of private property was essential for the preservation of individual freedom. When individuals do not possess secure property rights, dependency on kings, lords, and governments for the essentials of life is inevitable. But freedom and dependence, we believe, are antithetical; one cannot be free and simultaneously be dependent. In fact, the Bible teaches the value of private ownership rights. A large section of the Book of Joshua includes the doling out of Canaan to tribes and familes. The eighth and tenth commandments make it unlawful and sinful to take what is not ours or to even covet what belongs to another. The problem in our culture, though, is that while we live in a society that protects private ownership and property rights, we neglect to understand that ultimately, God owns everything. And what is worse, material possessions have become the criteria by which we measure a person’s status and value. And what is even worse than that, what we possess becomes an idol that we worsip.
I’m reminded of what Paul wrote in Romans 1:25
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.
More biblical evidence that God owns everything
More biblical evidence that God owns everything
Before we unpack our passage in Genesis 1 today, let’s take a look a the following verses that express God’s rights of ownership as Creator of all things.
Now if you will carefully listen to me and keep my covenant, you will be my own possession out of all the peoples, although the whole earth is mine,
The heavens, indeed the highest heavens, belong to the Lord your God, as does the earth and everything in it.
Job 41:11 (CSB)
Who confronted me, that I should repay him? Everything under heaven belongs to me.
Psalm 24:1 (CSB)
The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord;
Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,
You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of people.
The whole earth is God’s. Everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to God. The world and its inhabitants. We are not our own. There is more biblical evidence of God’s ownership of everything, but those six verses should suffice.
Now let’s explore the story of creation and see what we find
God gives everything form and meaning
God gives everything form and meaning
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Verse 2 seems to indicate that when God first created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless, empty and dark. Let’s unpack those words.
Formless refers to a wasteland, an uninhabited wilderness.
Empty also refers to a wasteland, but adds the dimension of chaos.
Darkness, of course, is an absence of light.
What Moses describes is a completely desolate place. An old rabbi, Rashi, wrote that it was so great a desolation that one would be shocked and astonished at seeing the sheer emptiness of it.
Just a side note here: This description of the early stages of the creation of earth instructs us that God created everything ex nihilo: “out of nothing.” Have you ever started baking a cake and then discovered you didn’t have eggs, or sugar, or some other ingredient? Frustrating. So, we have to lay everything aside, run to the grocery store, and purchase what was lacking. That’s us. But that’s not God. He didn’t need a grocery store or any other resource.
Now, back to the sheer emptiness of the earth. We know that God was not finished because here we are on earth, with all kinds of stuff on it, including eight billion people. We can no longer describe the earth as formless, empty and dark. That wasn’t God’s plan in the first place.
Isaiah 45:18 (CSB)
For this is what the Lord says—the Creator of the heavens, the God who formed the earth and made it, the one who established it (he did not create it to be a wasteland, but formed it to be inhabited)—he says, “I am the Lord, and there is no other.
The rest of the story in Genesis 1 describes how God gave the earth and the heavens form, how he filled them with life and beauty that speak of his glory and power, and how he placed a “manager” in it to rule it, keep it, and protect its order and beauty. But right now, I want to draw attention to this profound reality. Those three words in verse 2 — formless, empty, and dark — pierce my heart with this reality:
I not only have nothing, I am nothing, apart from God.
Formless, empty and darkness all describe our life without God.
Recall what we learned from Paul in Ephesians:
So, then, remember that at one time you were Gentiles in the flesh—called “the uncircumcised” by those called “the circumcised,” which is done in the flesh by human hands. At that time you were without Christ, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world.
Contrary to the claims of atheists and agnostics through the centuries, man cannot live without God. Man can have a mortal existence without acknowledging God, but not without the fact of God.
As the Creator, God originated human life.
As the Creator, God originated human life.
Genesis 1:26–27 (CSB)
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.
To say that man can exist apart from God is to say that a watch can exist without a watchmaker or a story can exist without a storyteller. We owe our being to the God in whose image we are made. Our existence depends on God, whether we acknowledge His existence or not.
As the Sustainer, God continuously gives and sustains life
As the Sustainer, God continuously gives and sustains life
In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
He is life
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
All creation is held together by the power of Christ (Colossians 1:17).
Colossians 1:17 (CSB)
He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.
Even those who reject God receive their sustenance from Him:
Matthew 5:45 (CSB)
For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
To think that man can live without God is to suppose a sunflower can continue to live without light or a rose without water.
As the Savior, God gives eternal life to those who believe.
As the Savior, God gives eternal life to those who believe.
In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
Jesus explained why he came in the first place:
A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.
All who place their trust in Him are promised eternity with Him
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
For man to live—truly live—he must know Christ”
This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ.
Without God, man has physical life, but a formless, empty and dark spiritual life.
Without God, man has physical life, but a formless, empty and dark spiritual life.
God warned Adam and Eve:
but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
As we know, they did disobey, but they did not die physically that day; rather, they died spiritually. Something inside them died—the spiritual life they had known, the communion with God, the freedom to enjoy Him, the innocence and purity of their soul—it was all gone. Adam, who had been created to live and fellowship with God, was cursed with a completely carnal existence. What God had intended to go from dust to glory now was to go from dust to dust. Just like Adam, the man without God today still functions in an earthly existence. Such a person may seem to be happy; after all, there is enjoyment and pleasure to be had in this life. But even those enjoyments and pleasures cannot be fully received without a relationship with God.
Without God, man is unfulfilled, even though he has many possessions.
Without God, man is unfulfilled, even though he has many possessions.
Jesus made this very plain in the parable of the rich fool:
Then he told them a parable: “A rich man’s land was very productive. He thought to himself, ‘What should I do, since I don’t have anywhere to store my crops? I will do this,’ he said. ‘I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones and store all my grain and my goods there. Then I’ll say to myself, “You have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.” ’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is demanded of you. And the things you have prepared—whose will they be?’
“That’s how it is with the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Crime, injustice, wars, violence and other miseries that plague the world show that man is not at peace with his fellow man. This is so because he is not at peace with himself. Man is restless with himself because he has no peace with God. The pursuit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake is a sign of inner turmoil. Pleasure seekers throughout history have found over and over that the temporary diversions of life give way to a deeper despair. The nagging feeling that “something is wrong” is hard to shake off. King Solomon gave himself to a pursuit of all this world has to offer, and he recorded his findings in the book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon discovered that
knowledge, in and of itself, is futile (Ecclesiastes 1:12–18).
He found that pleasure and wealth are futile (2:1–11),
materialism is folly (2:12–23),
and riches are fleeting (chapter 6).
Solomon discovered that life is God’s gift
I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and enjoy the good life. It is also the gift of God whenever anyone eats, drinks, and enjoys all his efforts.
Solomon concludes:
When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity. For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.
In other words, there is more to life than the physical dimension. Jesus stresses this point when he was tempted by the devil:
He answered, “It is written: Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Not bread (the physical) but God’s Word (the spiritual) keeps us alive. It is useless for us to search within ourselves for the cure to all our miseries. Man can only find life and fulfillment when he acknowledges God.
Without God, man’s destiny is hell.
Without God, man’s destiny is hell.
The man without God is spiritually dead; when his physical life is over, he faces eternal separation from God. In Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31), the rich man lives a pleasurable life of ease without a thought of God, while Lazarus suffers through his life but knows God. It is after their deaths that both men truly comprehend the gravity of the choices they made in life. The rich man realized, too late, that there is more to life than the pursuit of wealth. Meanwhile, Lazarus is comforted in paradise. For both men, the short duration of their earthly existence paled in comparison to the permanent state of their souls. Man is a unique creation.
Listen once more to wise old Solomon:
He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts, but no one can discover the work God has done from beginning to end.
God has set a sense of eternity in our hearts, and that sense of timeless destiny can only find its fulfillment in God Himself.
So you see, without God, we are bankrupt corpses.We are born into this world with our hands empty, and we leave this world not only with empty hands but empty pockets.
Without God, life is formless, empty and dark.
Without God, life is formless, empty and dark.
With God, life has form: the image of God. Life has meaning: the blessing of God. And life has light: the life of God.
Verses 3-25 describe how God created this world for inhabitants: humankind. Created in his image, we were placed here to have fellowship with God and to manage all that God made.
Understanding this is the beginning of stewardship: God owns everything; but he has invested it in us to be his good stewards.
The question we need to answer over the next five weeks is:
What will we do with it?