How to be a Faithful Steward

1. Utilize our earthly wealth to make eternal friends

Who are these eternal friends?

Jewish literature often refers to God in the divine plural, they, to avoid using the name of God.

People who have been spiritually benefitted by your wealth.

This word, δέχομαι (dechomai) meaning to be recieved in the plural, in direct relation to the friends receiving you. φίλος (philos) someone in whom you have a close bond with.

This plurality in the friends made who will receive you in the eternal dwellings gives scholars the idea that God himself, and redeemed humanity welcome the newly departed and generous believer to glory.

What a beautiful image, that those who have heard the gospel because of our generosity greet us at our eternal dwelling.

Listen to this: St. Ambrose said, “The bosoms of the poor, the houses of widows, the mouths of children are the barns which last forever.”

R. Kent Hughes, Luke: That You May Know the Truth.

Our money should be tied into the Mission of the Kingdom.

So then this is the first key idea: Our wealth and possessions are to be used to win eternal friends.

I.e. We give generously of our resources for the furtherance of the gospel, if we are not, we are not being good stewards of what God has given us, Our generosity is an intensely spiritual matter!

2. Be trustworthy with money

vs. 10-12 states that whoever is trustworthy with little will be trustworthy with much. Our use of money and our spirituality are inseparably bound together.

If we cannot be trusted with the material possessions God has given us to manage, how can he give us eternal possessions of our own. We are simply stewards of our material wealth. God is the true owner.

Martin Luther wrote this: Therefore we must use all these things upon earth in no other way than as a guest who travels through the land and comes to a hotel where he must lodge overnight. He takes only food and lodging from the host, and he says not that the property of the host belongs to him. Just so should we also treat our temporal possessions, as if they were not ours, and enjoy only so much of them as we need to nourish the body and then help our neighbors with the balance. Thus the life of the Christian is only a lodging for the night, since we have here no continuing city, but must journey on to heaven, where the Father is

R. Kent Hughes, Luke: That You May Know the Truth, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998), 151.

3. Serve God, not money

No servant can serve two masters. Either e will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

There is no half way point.

Our struggle often is that there is a tension in our lives. Our duty to serve God through our resources, our material possessions and the pressures of our daily lives.

Wealth is not wrong in itself, but a focus on our wealth increases our risk of danger.

Application

Utilize your Resources to support the Mission of God.

Be a trustworthy steward of the resources God has provided for you.

Be accountable to someone else with how you steward your resources.

So that you are able to efficiently serve God and not money.