I Will Go: Stewarding God’s Gift

Offering

Bible College - Jan 5th.

Marriage Event Jan 10th

Introduction

What has God put into your trust and care? What are you in charge of?

Do you think you are in charge of anything at all? Perhaps you may think, God wouldn’t put me in charge of anything because he knows I’d mess it up! Or perhaps you realize that God has put you in charge of some things, perhaps you feel that way about your children or your money.

What are you doing with those things he’s entrusted to you? What is your attitude towards those things?

Today we are continuing our series I Will Go by looking at the idea of being a steward. Let’s read our text together…

Main Text

1 Peter 4:8–11 ESV

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Peter says in our text today that we are “stewards of God’s varied grace.” Now, the only place in our society today that we see the term steward, is in the Bible. So for many of us, it’s a hard term to relate to, so let’s define it. The term steward is used throughout the Bible and history to mean someone who manages the affairs of the master’s house for Him.

We could closely relate this to a manager of a business. The manager doesn’t own the business, but he is in charge of the affairs of the business and should treat that business as if it was his own. Which is why Karen always asks to see the manager. They are in charge of the business while the owner is not around.

When the possessor of heaven and earth brought you into being and placed you in this world, He placed you here not as owner but as a steward. —John Wesley

John Wesley (Founder of the Methodist Movement)

Wesley is saying the truth here. In the garden, Adam was not put into the garden to own it, but to care for it, to steward it well. The garden was already fruitful, he just needed to manage the garden well.

There are many different layers of stewardship, I’ve mentioned a few:

Time

Finances

Relationships

Our giftings and talents

That’s the one we are going to focus in on today. God has gifted you and given you talents. You are unique to this world. He made you with certain skills and then, if you are Christian, you have also been given certain spiritual gifts.

God expects us to use these talents well. Now what does it mean use our talents well? It means to offer up ourselves as living sacrifices to God, allowing Him to work in us and through us to accomplish his will on the earth.

But before we can get there, let’s look at the foundation, which Peter mentions in our text.

Godly Stewardship Starts With Love

Above all…Love - This command gives us the foundation for godly stewardship. Love is the foundation for anything we do for Christ. It’s the foundation of our service to Jesus and it’s the foundation of our service to our neighbors. Without love, we everything we do is in vain.

Loving Earnestly - Peter says to keep on loving one another earnestly. This is a Greek word that means intently, fervently and constantly. Our love should not wane, it should not be out of compulsion, it should be a zealous love. A love that is true, sincere and steadfast.

Peter ties this to the covering of a multitude of sins. In our minds, this might be tough to understand, but most commentators link Peter’s statement to the Proverbs. And these verses shine some light on what Peter has in mind.

Proverbs 10:12 ESV

Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.

Proverbs 17:9 ESV

Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.

The first verse show us a connection between hate and strife. When we hate others… which hate is an internal feeling, but it has an external manifestation…when we hate, we stir up strife. We cause problems with others. But love is willing to overlook our disagreements. Love is will to cover up where others have fallen short.

The second verse agrees with that, but it draws a connection to our speech. When we love someone we won’t talk bad about them behind their back and we won’t use our words to tear them down. Love in this case will keep its mouth shut and not talk bad about someone either to their face or behind their back.

Peter links love to hospitality. This idea of our words must have been in Peter’s head, because in the next verse he commands us to show hospitality without grumbling. One of the repeated sins of the Israelites in the wilderness was grumbling and complaining. Anyone else in here a complainer? How about a grumbler?

I used to love an old Windows screensaver that showed a guy stuck on a deserted island and constantly attempting to find his way off. When things would go bad, he would grumble or murmur.

Peter here says to show hospitality, which means invite people into your homes. How many of you practice this regularly? The idea here is that in order to form true loving relationships, we should be inviting people into our homes. Hosting them, feeding them and enjoying their company. This is a basic tenet of the Christian faith.

In our world, this is soooo needed. Loneliness is sky high. Even though we are more connected than ever, people are lonelier now more than ever. In Clayton, this is especially true, we have people moving here from all over and they don’t have family close by, maybe you do, but they don’t. Love puts others ahead of ourselves. A beautiful ministry of this church could simply be inviting new neighbors into your house for dinner and trying to build long lasting relationships with them.

In fact, an early Christian ritual may be what Peter has in mind here. One of the things the early church did was celebrate what they called “The Agape Meal” also known as the “Love Feast”. It was a meal that served to meet the needs of the poor, the widows and the orphans. They would break bread together, have prayers, scripture readings, maybe sing a hymn and they would distribute goods to the poor. What if you started doing something like that?

Love is the foundation for stewardship. If you don’t love the person you work for, you aren’t going to steward his stuff well. Peter says above all. Everything else you’ve got going on, above that, love others well. Love them passionately. Love them constantly. Show them hospitality, not because you are commanded to, but because you want to.

Next he gives his reasoning and I think this is the focal verse for this passage. He says this…

We Are Stewards Of His Grace

Good Stewards Of God’s Varied Grace - Now this doesn’t mean what we think of when we first read this sentence, but this really is the linchpin for understanding this passage.

First off, it’s not saying we are stewarding what we think of grace - God’s unmerited favor. God gives his favor to all who put his trust in Him, we don’t need to limit that. As in, we don’t withhold grace from some people and give grace to others. Or that grace itself needs to be managed.

This is talking about the grace or gift that you’ve received from God, as in Spiritual gift. In the Greek language, the word that we translate Grace and Gift are the same word in some cases or variations of that word in others. The two most common are “charis” and “charisma”. Both of these are referring to something that is freely given to you from God that you don’t deserve.

Peter is saying we need to steward that which God has given us. In other words, all of us have been given a gift. What are you going to do with it? Peter’s admonishment in this context is that we should use our gifts to love, show hospitality and serve one another.

So what types of gifts have you been given?

Two Types Of Gifts - Speaking & Serving

There are two categories for gifts given in this passage. Peter talks about speaking gifts and serving gifts.

Examples of speaking gifts found in Scripture:

Prophecy

Teaching

Encouragement

Words of Knowledge

Words of Wisdom

Tongues and Interpretations

Examples of serving gifts:

Acts of Mercy

Giving

Administration

Helps

Healing

If we are good stewards of God’s varied grace, that “varied” part means that some of us have some of these giftings and others of us have different giftings. Not all of our giftings are the same and none of our giftings are more or less important than others.

Example - I am a pastor. My giftings are mostly in the speaking kind. I do serve quite often, like taking out the trash or cleaning up around here, but my primary gifting is a speaking gift. My gift is not more important than anyone else’s around here. Whoever is running the slides this week, is just as important as I am. There’s no distinction to God as to the importance of one’s gifting.

What God does care about is whether you are using your gifting or not, which is why Peter is encouraging us to be good stewards of our giftings. Treat it seriously.

He says whoever speaks, as one who speaks the oracles of God. This means that if you are speaking, treat it so seriously that you realize you are speaking God’s word to someone else. In other words, they are hearing God speak through you, so don’t take it for granted, don’t treat it with contempt, don’t do it with a bad attitude. Do it with love and passion in your heart as someone speaking for God.

He says whoever serves, should serve by the strength that God supplies. In other words, God is the one who has given you the ability to serve well and our job is to do our very best. Serve in His strength, because your strength isn’t enough. If we serve we should recognize we do that through the very empowerment of God. We don’t get the credit in this. We yield to Him, allowing Him to work and speak through us for the betterment of others.

As Unto The Lord - Peter’s point in all of this is that God should get all of the credit for what we do. He says “in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. In other words, if we do this in the strength that God supplies, God will be getting the glory for it.

1 Corinthians 10:31 ESV

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Whatever you do - The key here is that everything we do should be done for God’s glory. When you eat your breakfast in the morning, do it to the glory of God. When you work your job, work in a way that God get’s the glory from it. When you parent your children, do that in such a way that God is glorified in your parenting. When you spend time with your spouse, do that in a way that brings glory to Jesus.

When I hear this, I say how do I do that? It goes back to the beginning. It goes back to loving others. Above all, love one another earnestly. The way we bring glory to God at our work is by loving our co-workers well. The way we bring glory to God in our home is to love our spouse well, to love our children well. Now there’s a lot of implications into what this looks like individually, but needless to say, the important part here is that we seek to love on another.

This is important because…

Stewardship Is A Matter Of The Heart

It Always Comes Back To The Heart - The motivation of why you do what you do is always the most important thing to God. This is why Peter focuses on love at the beginning of this passage. It comes back to Christ!

We are to serve others because Christ served us. We should love others because Christ loves us. We should show hospitality because we want to because Christ showed us the ultimate act of hospitality! He dies for his enemies and invites them to come live with Him!

We speak with love toward others because Christ did that.

We serve others by the strength God has supplied, because Christ did that.

Christ is our example. He shows us how we should live as Christians. We are called by his name, we should do as he did.

But what happens when we don’t? Let’s be honest, if we look at the list of people I’ve been talking about, our co-workers, loving our spouses, our neighbors. If we are honest, we don’t love them well. We struggle. We give in to the sins of “self” - we are self-centered, self-focused, selfish and so on. WE don’t do the “one anothers” of Scripture well. So what happens when we struggle?

God gives us grace. Love covers sin. That’s the principle of why we love, and it’s also the answer for when we don’t. Love, the love of Jesus, covers up your shortcomings. Love washes you clean when are selfish and conceited and go your own way. God’s grace is always the answer to when we fail.

That is the gospel.

Closing

Perhaps you’ve failed this week. Perhaps you look back at Christmas and you see where you have been self-centered or self-pleasing. God’s grace is here for you. He loves you and cares for you.

Perhaps you are here today and you realize that you have not been a good steward of the things God has given you. Today is a new day. You can start over and start using your time, talent and treasure for his glory.

Perhaps you are here and you aren’t a Christian today, I’d beg you to repent and put your trust in him. If that’s you, I would encourage you to make a public confession of your faith by coming forward and praying with me.