THE DISCIPLINE OF STEWARDSHIP

-{Ephesians 5; Luke 16}

-Tonight I want to start by considering some scenarios and what they might have in common. First, in the early 20th century there was a wealthy landowner who held a significant portion of property that could be developed and turned into something magnificent. Instead of doing something with it, he disregarded the potential of the properties. Instead of cultivating the land, he allowed it to go fallow, and just neglected it so that over time it began to lose its value and its potential.

-Or, consider a college student who receives a monthly allowance for her college expenses. Instead of budgeting and spending the money on what is actually needed for college, she spends extravagantly on non-essentials. She quickly realizes she is not left with any money for books or supplies that she needs for her classes. (By the way, that is not a personal example…)

-Or consider a biblical example. A son goes to his father and asks for his portion of his inheritance. He runs away with his inheritance, and instead of trying to use it to make a living for himself he squanders his inheritance through the party lifestyle, reckless living. As a result he is left poor and destitute, longing for food, working for almost nothing.

-What do all of these have in common? Each of the people in these scenarios demonstrated themselves to be terrible stewards of what they were given. There was hardship because of bad decisions and missed opportunities because of poor management of resources. And the Bible has a lot to say about what we do with the resources that God has blessed us with.

-What do I mean by the term steward or stewardship? One pastor defined and explained it this way:

a steward is a manager who administers that which belongs to someone else. If you own a business and hire an administrator to oversee the finances of that business, you have hired a manager. The money they manage is not theirs; they cannot spend it as they please. It goes without saying that the money they manage belongs to the company, and if they misuse it we call that embezzlement, something we all recognize as a criminal offense.

-Something that I emphasized during my Thanks & Giving sermon series is that everything that we have been blessed with was given to us by God. If we have it, God gave it to us. But the Bible is also clear that God is the true owner of everything that exists. So, even though we might possess something, that doesn’t mean that it is ours. In actuality, it belongs to God. My truck is God’s truck. My house is God’s house. Any resource that is mine, whether tangible or intangible, belongs to God. I am but the steward, the administrator of what I have. And since I am but a steward, I answer to God with what I do with what I am given.

-And how I use my stewardship is a reflection of my spiritual maturity. But my stewardship is also an opportunity for my spiritual growth—the more I learn to manage my resources in a God-honoring way, the more I grow and mature. So, there is a spiritual discipline of stewardship.

-There a lot of angles that we could come with to the subject. We could talk about the stewardship or the talents or spiritual gifts that God has given to us. Are we using our gifts within the local church for the good of the church and the spread of the gospel? But because of limited time, I wanted to look at two passages and consider two topics in the area of stewardship. So first, let’s look at:

Ephesians 5:15–16 LSB

15 Therefore look carefully how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

-In this latter half of the epistle to the Ephesians, Paul talks about how a Christian is to live in light of the many spiritual blessings that are ours through Jesus Christ. He tells Christians to walk in unity, to walk in love, and the like. Part of what he encourages is to walk in light because there is a whole lot of darkness in the world. There are a lot of evil things that happen in the darkness, so walk in the light of the Lord.

-But part of the darkness is what happens with time—the days are evil. That doesn’t mean that time was created evil or that there is something evil inherent in time itself. However, due to the Fall and the presence of sin and the curse, time no longer works for us, but it works against us. Because of sin, and death that is introduced into the world because of sin, we have a limited amount of time on this earth to serve the Lord. Each moment that passes by brings us closer to our death, after which we will not have time on earth to do what we ought to have done.

-And so, it is from this angle that the days are evil. We can’t buy more time. We are limited to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and only a certain number of years to accomplish whatever it is that God wants us to accomplish. So we are told to redeem the time. We are told to be intentional about how we spend our time. That is part of looking carefully at how we walk, being wise not unwise. We look at our use of time through the filter of Scripture and we think strategically about how we will spend the moments, hours, and days so that they are not used in idleness or frivolousness.

-That doesn’t mean that we have no down time whatsoever. Our bodies and brains definitely need some of those times. But we don’t use our time constantly on our pleasures and entertainments. We come to our use of time looking to use time as a tool for eternal value—we think about what is going to make the greatest impact on eternity, using time to seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness.

-Where your heart sets itself determines what you do with your time. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that where your treasure is there also is your heart. And as true as that is with money and the like, it is also true with your time. Where your heart truly lies will determine where you spend most of your time. If your idol is sports, that’s where your time will go. If your idol is entertainment, that’s where your time will be spent.

-Of course, we also have to consider if we are spending our time in the best places instead of just good places. What I mean by that is that we can busy ourselves with good things, but they might not be the things God wants us doing. So, sometimes the good things keep us from using our time in the ways that God wants us to use our time. Sure, we’re doing stuff and maybe even doing stuff for the Lord, but it’s not truly furthering God’s purposes or will. So, one part of good stewardship is managing our time well. But then there is also what we probably first think of as stewardship—managing our money and resources. Consider the warning Jesus gives in this parable:

Luke 16:1–13 LSB

1 Now He was also saying to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a steward, and this steward was reported to him as squandering his possessions. 2 “And he called for him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an accounting of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’ 3 “And the steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the stewardship away from me? I am not strong enough to dig; I am ashamed to beg. 4 ‘I know what I shall do, so that when I am removed from the stewardship people will take me into their homes.’ 5 “And he summoned each one of his master’s debtors, and he began saying to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 “And he said, ‘One hundred baths of oil.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ 7 “Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ And he said, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ 8 “And his master praised the unrighteous steward because he had acted shrewdly, for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light. 9 “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves from the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will take you into the eternal dwellings. 10 “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much, and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. 11 “Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you? 12 “And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? 13 “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

-Focusing in on the teaching and warning that Jesus gives us here at the end, He tells us that if we cannot be trusted to steward something as temporary and fleeting as money and resources, why would we be trusted with something that is spiritual and eternal? If we can’t even handle the little that we have been given, why would we be entrusted with more? We can’t be a slave to money and to Christ.

-One Baptist Pastor stated that we are to think about money in four simple terms (and I know that were Baptist because it is alliterated).

-First, think of money as a trust. It is something God has entrusted to our care, something which belongs to Him but which He has given us to invest on His behalf. The idea here is that He will get a good return on His investment. If He trusts us with a little, and we use it wisely, He will trust us with more. That's why He says, "He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much…" Money is something God has entrusted to us. It is a trust.

-Second, it is a tool. He expects that we will use it to further His kingdom here on Earth, using it as best we can to reveal His glory and to relate His gospel to those around us. To the one who is spiritually minded, money is never something that should become an end unto itself, but rather it is merely a tool, something which is to be used to accomplish a greater good. Like a rope thrown into the water to save someone from drowning, the rope is not what is of real value, the life being saved is what is of real value. So it is with money. It has value, but only to the degree that it is used properly, only to the degree that it is used to further the kingdom of God.

-Third, it is a test. God often gives us something of lesser value to see if He can trust us with something of greater value. If He cannot trust us with something as fleeting as money, why should He trust us with spiritual things of eternal value? If He cannot trust us to make good decisions with the small amount of money that we have, it stands to reason that we cannot be trusted with the large amount of money that we may want.

-Fourth, it is a thermometer. How we spend our money reveals the truth about our spiritual lives.

-So, the way we steward what God has given us shows us where our heart really is at. But if we work on our stewardship, desiring to use God’s gifts for God’s glory, it will help us grow in our faith and service to the Lord. So, we want to pray that we would be good stewards of everything that God has given us, whether talent, time, or money...