Stewardship

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely, that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

We don’t use the word “stewardship” very often in today’s culture. But all of us are certainly familiar with the concept. The most relevant dictionary definition of stewardship I found this week was this:

the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care

Let me share just a few of the ways we do this in our lives.

If I ask to borrow your pickup truck, I am in the position of steward. You still own the truck, but while it is my position I am responsible for managing it carefully and returning it to you in the same or better condition that it was in when I received it.

If you’ve ever rented a car, you are a steward. The car rental company still owns the car, but you are responsible for managing it while it is in your possession.

Some of you have been placed into the possession of administering someone’s estate after their death. In that situation, the assets are still owned by the estate, but you are responsible for managing them.

Many of you are in positions of stewardship in your jobs. You don’t own the business, but you are responsible for managing some of the assets and employees that belong to the owner.

Tension

So I think we’ve all been in positions of stewardship at some time in our lives even though we may not have called it that. And for the most part, we don’t really get bothered by that idea. But for some reason, when we bring up the word “stewardship” in the church, a lot of people immediately tend to either just tune out or get defensive. That’s probably because they associate stewardship with some kind of appeal to give money.

There is no doubt that what we do with our money and other financial resources is important. Close to half of the parables that Jesus told dealt with wealth and property, including the one we’ll look at today. And giving to the local church in order to invest in the kingdom of God and bring it near to others is also important and is commanded in the Bible.

But as we’re going to learn this morning, Biblical stewardship is about so much more than just our money. In fact, I think we’ll see this morning that in many ways the rhythm of stewardship is actually central to all the rhythms of grace because it involves using every good gift that God has entrusted to us for His purposes.

Truth

This message is the fifth in our current series - Rhythms of Grace - in which we are studying 8 different rhythms that God wants us to incorporate into our lives in order to help us become more like Jesus and grow in our relationship with Him. So far we’ve covered the rhythms of meditating on God’s Word, prayer, fasting and solitude. Today we will tackle the rhythm of stewardship.

In order to do that we’ll be looking at a familiar parable of Jesus that we find in Matthew chapter 25. While you’re turning in your Bibles to that chapter, let me put this passage in context.

This entire section begins in chapter 24 where Jesus is talking to His disciples about His second coming. In verse 3 of that chapter, the disciples ask this question:

English Standard Version Chapter 24

“Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

Jesus responds by telling them about the signs that will precede His return and then he tells two parables that are intended to reveal how His disciples are to live as they wait for His return.

The first is the parable of the ten virgins at the beginning of Matthew 25. In that parable, Jesus teaches that we are to be like the five wise virgins who had prepared to meet the bridegroom by making sure they had oil for their lamps. The clear implication in that parable is that since we don’t know the hour or day of Jesus’ return we are to always be ready for it.

Then Jesus tells the parable of the talents which we will consider this morning. Please follow along as I read beginning in verse 14.

[Read Matthew 25:14-30]

Here’s the big idea we want to take away from that passage this morning.

Stewardship is managing God’s blessings for God’s glory

Although this particular passage deals with the managing of financial assets, Biblical stewardship is much broader than that. It deals with every single blessing that I receive from God - my material possessions, my abilities, my spiritual gifts, my body, and even my life.

Let’s begin to develop this idea by looking at...

FOUR ASPECTS OF BIBLICAL STEWARDSHIP

that we find in this parable.

I possess, God owns

We see clearly in verse 14 that the property the man entrusts to his servants is his property. He owns it and it still belongs to him even after the servants take possession of it. This idea is really at the heart of Biblical stewardship and until we embrace this idea, we will never be able to incorporate this rhythm of stewardship into our lives.

The idea that God owns everything, including my life, is evident throughout the Bible. Here are just a few places we see that:

Leviticus 25:23 ESV

23 “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.

Haggai 2:8 ESV

8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts.

Psalm 24:1 ESV

1 The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein,

1 Corinthians 4:7 ESV

7 For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

1 Corinthians 6:19–20 ESV

19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

As you can see from these verses, it is not only our material possessions that are owned by God, but every blessing that He entrusts to us - our time, our abilities, even our bodies.

And just in case you’re tempted to think that what you possess belongs to you because you earned the money to buy it, you might want to consider this passage:

Deuteronomy 8:17–18 ESV

17 Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ 18 You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

So even whatever ability you have to earn a living is a gift from God that belongs to Him.

God has the right, I have the responsibility

Because He is the owner, God has the absolute right to allocate resources however He wishes. In this parable, it was the owner of the resources who decided how much to entrust to each servant. They didn’t get to choose how much they received because it didn’t belong to them. So we see here that the kingdom of God does not operate based on what is “fair” - it operates based on what is “best” for the furtherance of the kingdom.

While each man was entrusted with a different amount, even the man entrusted with only one talent was given a very valuable asset.

Although I have often seen people misuse this passage and equate our human talents with the talents mentioned in this passage, the talent Jesus talks about here is actually a measure of weight. Therefore a talent did not have a exact value associated with it. For instance, a talent of gold would be more valuable than a talent of silver, which is probably what Jesus has in mind here.

But in any case the amounts entrusted to the servants here are huge. Many scholars believe one talent of silver would have been equivalent to 20 years’ worth of wages for a common laborer. Just to give you an idea of how significant that was, at today’s minimum wage of $12 per hour here in Arizona, that would amount to roughly $500,000.

We also see here that the talents were distributed based on each man’s ability. The master knew his servants well enough to know how much to entrust to each one, and that wisdom is borne out by the results that each of the servants produces.

For us, the implication is that God will only entrust us with what He knows we have the ability to handle rightly. Sometimes that doesn’t seem fair to us. We think that we deserve to have just as much as someone else who might have more of some blessing from God - some talent, some ability, some material resource. But we need to understand that God, who is sovereign and wise, will give us exactly what He determines is best - for us and for His kingdom.

In this parable, two of the servants handled that responsibility well. The first one took his five talents and put them to work “at once” and as a result he made a profit of five talents. The second servant also put his two talents to work and made a profit of two talents.

The third servant, however, failed in his responsibility. He just dug a hole in the ground and hid the money rather than putting it to work. If we’re not careful we can fall into that same trap of thinking that we don’t really have a whole lot from God and therefore what we do with it really doesn’t matter. But the next aspect of stewardship that we see in this passage makes it clear that it really does matter.

I will give an account to God

The master did not return for “a long time”. It would have been easy for the servants to begin to think that maybe the master wasn’t going to return so that they didn’t need to be diligent in managing his assets carefully. This is obviously a picture of how we could be tempted to think that our stewardship really doesn’t matter because we’re not sure that Jesus really is going to return one day.

But when the master did return, all three servants had to give an account to the him, in the very same way that one day all of us will have to give an account to our Master. We’ve seen this idea before, most recently in Romans:

Romans 14:12 ESV

12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

Although the first two servant had earned different amounts of profit because they had been given different amounts to begin with, they both received the same reward fro their faithful stewardship. They got to hear the words that I am confident that most of us look forward to hearing one day:

Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

This is not the only place in the Bible where we see that those who are faithful stewards of the blessings of God here on this earth are going to be entrusted with much in the eternal kingdom we will enter into one day.

The third servant, however, does not receive the same commendation. The master calls him “wicked and slothful”. And the master takes what has been given to him and gives it to the one who had turned five talents into ten. And then that servant was thrown into outer darkness, where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth - a description that Jesus had used frequently, especially in Matthew’s gospel account - to describe a horrible place of eternal punishment.

Although it is not really the main idea we’re developing today, I do need to address a misconception that we could easily take away form this passage. Jesus is not in any way teaching salvation by works here. He is not saying that this man was condemned to hell because he failed to be a good steward. As we’re going to see more clearly in a moment, that man may have appeared to be a disciple, just like the other two servants. But what he did with the resources entrusted to him by his master revealed that he had a heart problem. He was rejected by the master not because of his actions, but because of what those actions revealed about his heart. That leads us directly to our last aspect of stewardship in this passage...

My stewardship reveals my view of God

We see clearly here that what we do with what we have reveals what we really think about God.

The first two servants were eager to give an account to their master because they knew that he was a good master who would delight in rewarding their faithful stewardship. They were faithful because they had a right view of their master.

The third servant, however, had a completely different view of the master. We can see the contrast here immediately. The first two servants begin their response like this:

Master, you delivered to me...

Their response was focused on who the master was and what he had done for them.

Contrast that with the response of the third servant:

I knew...

That third servant was focused on what he thought he knew about the master, which was completely wrong, by the way. He accused the master of being hard and of reaping what others had sown. As a result, he was not a good steward of that which the master had entrusted to him.

This passage illustrates what A.W. Tozer wrote in the opening words of his book, Knowledge of the Holy:

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

If we see God as He truly is - a God of grace and mercy, as well as a God who is holy and righteous - then we won’t have any problem receiving the gift of eternal life that He offers to us through His Son, Jesus. And we will also understand that the gifts that He bestows on us belong to Him and are to be used for His glory, not just to satisfy our own desires.

On the other hand, if we see God as unloving and harsh, we will reject the gift of eternal life and we will view the things that we possess as belonging to us and we will use them for our pleasure rather than God’s glory.

Before we leave this last aspect of stewardship, I think it is important to point out that good Biblical stewardship does not preclude the use of the resources that God has provided for our own enjoyment. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul confirms that good stewardship does not mean that we can’t enjoy the things that God provides, as long as we don’t focus on only our own desires:

1 Timothy 6:17–19 ESV

17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

Because He is a loving Father, God does provide us with much for our own enjoyment, just as we do for our children. But that doesn’t minimize our responsibility to be good stewards.

These four aspects of stewardship certainly confirm our main idea:

Stewardship is managing God’s blessings for God’s glory

Application

So what are some practical ways that we can cultivate a rhythm of stewardship into our lives? Let me briefly share four things.

HOW TO CULTIVATE THE RHYTHM OF STEWARDSHIP

Be thankful

Pretty much every genuine disciple of Jesus that I know wants to understand the will of God is for their life. Fortunately, there are some things that are clearly spelled out for us in the Bible as being the will of God. Here is one of them:

1 Thessalonians 5:18 ESV

18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

The fact is that if I truly understand that everything I have - and remember that is not just my material possessions - is a gift from God and belongs to Him, then I can’t help but constantly be thankful , regardless of my circumstances. When I begin to look at life like that, I will begin to see that even if God has only blessed me with one talent, that is a tremendous and valuable gift for which I must give Him thanks.

Several weeks ago when we talked about the rhythm of prayer, we developed the “A.C.T.S.” model for prayer in which the “T” stands for thanksgiving. So once again we see how these various rhythms tend to intersect and complement each other. When I am constantly giving thanks to God as I pray to Him, that is going to help me to be a better steward.

Be content

This principle is closely related to being thankful, but there is a distinction.

None of us are immune to the tendency to compare our lives to those of others. All of us are prone to look at the lives of others and see what they have that we don’t and then long for those things rather than just being content with what we already have.

Here in the United States I don’t think we’re very content as a culture and one of the best evidences of that is the amount of debt that we incur. In 2017, the average American family had $137,000 in debt, including over $16,000 in credit card debt, while at the same time the median household income was less than $60,000 per year.

The Bible does not prohibit all forms of borrowing. In fact, in this parable we see that Jesus has no problem with the idea of someone investing their money and earning interest, which implies that there are bankers who are also lending money. But certainly the levels of debt in this country indicate that we have a lot of people who are buying things they don’t need with money that they don’t have.

But our material possessions are not the only area where we can lack contentment. We can also be dissatisfied when it comes to our talents, our abilities, our looks, our health or a whole other list of things.

But as Paul reminds us, the good news is that we can learn to be content.

Philippians 4:11 ESV

11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.

Notice here that being content is something Paul “learned”. That is good news for any of us who aren’t content with what God has entrusted to us. There are probably a number of ways that we can learn to be content, but here is one of the best ways I’ve found:

Whenever I begin to desire something I don’t have, I stop and make a list of the things that I do have - of all the blessings that have been entrusted to me by God. Usually I do that mentally, but on occasion, I’ll even write down that list. And I always find that list is really long because it doesn’t just include my material resources. It also includes my abilities, my spiritual gifts, people that God has brought into my life as well as my time. And as I consider all those blessings that I already have that encourages me to be thankful. That list is also really helpful as I engage in the next thing I can do to incorporate stewardship into my life.

Be faithful

One of the important lessons we learn from this parable is that good stewardship requires that we just be faithful with what God has already entrusted to us. So once I’ve made that list of all the blessings that God has entrusted to me, the next step is to consider how I can use each one of those gifts in a way that would bring God glory.

In some cases, you’re probably already doing that. But in other cases, you might need to make some changes in your life in order to be a good steward. And don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to just give money when what God really wants from us is to invest our time our use some ability that He has given to us to serve others in His name. As I hope you’ve seen by now, stewardship is not just about giving our money, it is about offering all that we have been entrusted with to God to be used by Him for His glory.

Be generous

Earlier we read this passage from 1 Timothy 6, but I want to call your attention to it one more time:

1 Timothy 6:18 ESV

18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share,

One of the best ways to cultivate Biblical stewardship is to be generous with what God has entrusted to us. That is certainly true when it comes to our finances. But it is also true when it comes to our abilities and our time. One of the best ways I’ve found to be reminded of this is to think of my stewardship in terms of investing my time, talents and treasure in a way that will glorify God.

Action

By now all of you know how important it is to personally apply what we’ve learned today and so, of course, there is a homework assignment again this week. You’ll find it on the back of your sermon outline. I can’t stress enough how important it is for all of us to take the time and make the effort to incorporate these rhythms into our lives by taking practical, concrete steps each week.

Inspiration

Stewardship is managing God’s blessings for God’s glory

Whether you are a one talent Christian or a five talent Christian, God has entrusted you with tremendous riches so that you can manage them in a way that will bring Him glory. And when you do that, you will one day hear the words that we all long to hear:

Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”