3-1: Stewardship

Good morning! My name is Bill Connors, and I’m the senior pastor of the Eastern Hills Baptist Church family, and I’d like to welcome everyone who is here in the room and those who are online to Family Worship. If this is your first time visiting Eastern Hills, thanks for coming and our hope is that you’ve found in this church family a warm, friendly, even family atmosphere of people who love Jesus and love each other. I’d also like to ask a favor of you if this is your first visit: there is an information card in the back of the pew in front of you. Would you mind taking a moment to fill that out, just so we can drop you a note thanking you for being here today? If you’d rather fill out an online card, you can text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link to our digital communication card. Either way, I’d like to invite any of you who are guests this morning to come and meet me at the close of service today, as I have a small gift for you just to say thanks for being here.

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Opening

This morning, we begin the third part of the series that we started at the beginning of the year: We Believe. We’re going article by article through our church Statement of Belief, so that we as the church of Eastern Hills are all on the same page theologically and doctrinally. In January was Part 1: God & His Word, and in it we considered The Scriptures, The Trinity, and each Divine Person of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Then we considered Part 2 in April, entitled “Old & New.” That part looked at the doctrines of man and salvation, as well as the ordinances of the church: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Part 3 is about the church itself, and we are putting the six messages of this part of the series under the heading “Called.” We will reflect on the concepts of stewardship, the church, God’s purpose of grace, the family, evangelism & missions, and the importance of the Lord’s Day. We will be in this part of the series through August, and then will finish the series in January of 2023, Lord willing.

For this morning, we are going to be in what for many of us will be a very familiar passage in Matthew: the parable of the talents. Let’s open our Scriptures or Bible apps to Matthew 25:14 as we stand (as able) in honor of God’s Word, and read this parable together:

Matthew 25:14–30 CSB

14 “For it is just like a man about to go on a journey. He called his own servants and entrusted his possessions to them. 15 To one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent, depending on each one’s ability. Then he went on a journey. Immediately 16 the man who had received five talents went, put them to work, and earned five more. 17 In the same way the man with two earned two more. 18 But the man who had received one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money. 19 “After a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 The man who had received five talents approached, presented five more talents, and said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents. See, I’ve earned five more talents.’ 21 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.’ 22 “The man with two talents also approached. He said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I’ve earned two more talents.’ 23 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.’ 24 “The man who had received one talent also approached and said, ‘Master, I know you. You’re a harsh man, reaping where you haven’t sown and gathering where you haven’t scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went off and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’ 26 “His master replied to him, ‘You evil, lazy servant! If you knew that I reap where I haven’t sown and gather where I haven’t scattered, 27 then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and I would have received my money back with interest when I returned. 28 “ ‘So take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have more than enough. But from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 30 And throw this good-for-nothing servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

PRAYER (East Mountain Cowboy Church in Edgewood, Curt Miller Pastor)

Whenever I heard the word “steward,” I think of the Lord of the Rings. Denethor, son of Ecthelion was the Steward of Gondor in the white city of Minas Tirith in the Two Towers and in The Return of the King. In the film version, Gandalf is speaking with Pippin, and says, “Lord Denethor is not the king. He is a steward only, a caretaker of the throne.” And this is what a steward is. A caretaker of something that belongs to someone else. And the practice or quality of being a steward is called stewardship.

This morning, we are going to consider the concept of stewardship in light of the parable of the talents from Matthew 25. To set this up a little bit, we need to give a little thought to the nature of parables. Sometimes, we might have a tendency to make parables into allegories: where everything in the fictional parable symbolizes or shares its identity with something in real life. However, this is a dangerous way to approach these stories. This is because if we do so, we could easily arrive at thinking that Jesus never intended in them. We might think that it’s okay to steal from our employer to bribe people (Luke 16: The parable of the shrewd manager), that we can wear God down into giving us what we want just by praying about it constantly (Luke 18: The parable of the persistent widow), or that God is dishonest in His dealings like the master in today’s parable.

So parables are not allegories, but they are analogies: they are used to make comparisons. It’s okay for something in a parable to compare to something else, but it’s not okay to say that it IS that something else. Does that make sense? A good example of an analogy is from the movie Forrest Gump. Forrest’s mother had an analogy about life that she passed on to her son: “Life is like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re gonna get.” This is analogy. She was comparing the unpredictability of life to the unpredictability of the box of chocolates (at least one without a handy map, right?). We do not hear this comparison and draw any other conclusions about life based on the comparison: we don’t think that life is full of caramel or nougat, for example.

Generally speaking, a parable is a physical story that explains a spiritual truth. Parables normally have one main theme, and there might be a couple of other minor themes in there, but one main theme that defines the parable. This parable in Matthew 25 comes near the end of a block of four parables in chapters 24 and 25 that follow behind Jesus’ teaching about His second coming: that no one knows the day or the hour of His return. Then He gives the parables of the wise servant (wisdom), the ten virgins (preparedness), and then follows the parable of the talents with the parable of the sheep and goats (service).

So instead of us trying to take every little piece of this parable and make it mean something, we instead take a step back and look at the big picture. So what we see is that this is a parable about faithfulness in the opportunities that we are given. Each of the servants was called to faithfully steward what the master had given to them. And that is the direction that we are going to go with this study this morning.

Article 9 of our Statement of Belief says this about Stewardship:

EHBC’s Statement of Belief, Article 9: Stewardship

God is the source of all blessings, temporal and spiritual; all that we have and are we owe to Him. Christians have a spiritual debtorship to the whole world, a holy trusteeship in the Gospel, and a binding stewardship in their possessions. They are therefore under obligation to serve Him with their time, talents, and material possessions.

Since there are aspects of parables that are used for the comparison of the analogy, we find that there are four points of comparison that we can use here: the master, the talents, and the servants, which come in two varieties. We will consider the first two comparisons in our first point:

1) The role of the master

In this parable, the authority of the master is compared to the authority of God. The master isn’t God in any sense, but as far as the context of the parable goes, he has all the power. He has a great deal of wealth as we will see momentarily, and he holds the lives of the servants in his grasp because they are, after all, his servants. Jesus begins by setting the stage of His parable:

Matthew 25:14–15 (CSB)

First, we need to consider the concept of the talent. Scholars differ a little bit on how much a “talent” was worth. Most commentators agree that a single talent was a weight of silver equal to 6,000 denarii. A single denarius was equal to what a laborer would make in a single day of work. So a talent would have been worth nearly 20 years’ wages. We can see that the sums that the master is entrusting to these three servants is massive: 100 years’ wages to one, 40 years’ wages to another, and 20 years’ wages to the third. So none of them received a pittance… they all received a substantial treasure to manage.

And while it is certainly not wrong to apply this parable to the concept of money itself, this is not the only way to apply it. Instead, we should see the talents as opportunities, and that is the role of the master.

It is the master who gives opportunities. When he gave the funds to the servants, he actually gave to each one three opportunities:

the opportunity to use their time (to diligently work while he was gone);

the opportunity to use their talents (which he knew and planned for beforehand); and

the opportunity to use his treasure (since it is not theirs; it’s on loan from the master).

Given that they were the master’s servants, all of everything (time, talent, and treasure) were his anyway, but he chose to give them the opportunity to utilize these three aspects through a kind of partnership: they are to give themselves to the use of his resources for his purposes.

In the beginning of Deuteronomy 8, the Israelites were being prepared to go in and take the Promised Land. Through Moses, God reminded them of all the opportunities that He had given them and was planning to give them when they took the possession of the Promised Land. And several times in that passage, He warns them that once they arrived and began to prosper, they might be tempted to forget that God had provided them the opportunity to be in that good land that He had promised to their ancestors. Here’s a couple of examples:

Deuteronomy 8:14 CSB

14 be careful that your heart doesn’t become proud and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.

Deuteronomy 8:17–18 CSB

17 You may say to yourself, ‘My power and my own ability have gained this wealth for me,’ 18 but remember that the Lord your God gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm his covenant he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

Their prosperity was dependent upon the authority and provision of God, just like the servants’ ability to prosper was dependent on the authority and provision of the master in the parable. So if the authority of the master is compared to the authority of God in this parable, we see that God has the authority to provide opportunities for us to use the time that He gives us, the talents that He gives us, and His loaned treasure for fruitful service to Him, and He chooses to give us those opportunities to partner with Him in the work of the Kingdom. Jesus doesn’t just save us and take us, but He calls us to serve Him in bearing the fruit of Kingdom work and growth through relationship with Him:

John 15:4–5 CSB

4 Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.

So we have to ask ourselves the question: What opportunities does the Lord give to us to use the time He has given to us, the talents He has provided us, and treasures He calls us to steward in His Kingdom? How responsive are we to His instruction and calling in those opportunities?

This takes us to the other comparison: the servants themselves. There are, as I said, two varieties: faithful and faithless.

2) The response of the faithful

Even though there are three servants in the parable, there are only the two varieties. This is because the point of the parable is neither how much they were given nor how much they earned. The master was a wise investor, and only gave to the servants what he knew they were capable of managing based on the abilities that he knew they possessed, as we saw in verse 15. These two act on this investment immediately:

Matthew 25:16–17 (CSB)

15 Immediately 16 the man who had received five talents went, put them to work, and earned five more. 17 In the same way the man with two earned two more.

So why is the issue faithfulness and not profit? It’s easy to look at the money part, but notice a couple of things: the point wasn’t profit. What we see is that these two servants were both 100% faithful. Since the return for both was exactly 100% of what they had been given, this points to what Jesus was getting to in the parable. These two servants were truly faithful in using their talents with the master’s treasure.

Not only that, but in order to have the kind of return that they experienced, they had to have done more than mere investing. They had to have actually conducted business. They had to take risk and put in real work to see the kind of success that they experienced. They truly partnered with the master in his investment by using their time with the master’s treasure.

And finally, when the master returns, there’s this almost positive anticipation here for these two servants: they were excited to see the master and report what they had done:

Matthew 25:19–23 CSB

19 “After a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 The man who had received five talents approached, presented five more talents, and said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents. See, I’ve earned five more talents.’ 21 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.’ 22 “The man with two talents also approached. He said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I’ve earned two more talents.’ 23 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.’

Notice that they receive the same reward: their reward is even phrased in exactly the same words. They each are put in charge of many things (increased responsibility and authority), and they each are called to share their master’s joy. Because they had been faithful woth “little”, they would be given much. This seems like a logical response, doesn’t it?

If we are in Christ, we haven’t just been rescued from sin and death. We have certainly been that, because Jesus died on the cross and took the punishment that we deserve because of our sin, and then defeated death and rose again, and by doing so, broke the totality of sin’s power over us. But when we come to faith in Christ, we come to Him not just as Savior, but as LORD: we belong to Him by faith. Paul would instruct the Romans regarding this:

Romans 12:1 CSB

1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.

We belong to Him, and He has the complete and total right to us. We are to offer ourselves to His will completely as a response to His incredible grace in saving us and as an act of worshipful adoration.

One thing that brings me peace is that God knows how He’s made us. He knows our capabilities, and He doesn’t call us to partner with Him in Kingdom things without empowering us to partner in them by His Spirit’s work in our lives.

Let’s take a moment to unpack how this looks to be faithful in partnering with God in our time, our talents, and His treasure.

Time

In his epistle to the Ephesians, Paul wrote:

Ephesians 5:15–17 CSB

15 Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.

The one who is faithful in their utilization of time is the one who pays close attention to how he or she lives in this evil world. The one who chooses, like the faithful servants in the parable, to give himself to understanding and doing God’s will. She is the one who has the time to serve or makes the time to serve God in whatever way He calls. The one who strives against sin so that they won’t be ineffective or unprepared when the Lord calls for his or her time is the one who is faithful in this regard.

Talents

I love Joe Vivian, and he has a heart for God and a fruitful ministry. But I do not believe that God will call Joe to be a member of the praise band, because he can neither play an instrument nor sing. God has not gifted Joe with either of those talents. Joe knew I was going to share that, and he would agree with me.

The fact is that we are designed and gifted for specific works by God for His purposes. Some of those things are gifts of common grace that He gives before we come to faith: talents that are part of our wiring our cultivated through practice and education. Some are things that He chooses to provide in our lives as a part of His work in the body of Christ, the church. Consider what Paul said about this in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 12:12–20 CSB

12 For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body—so also is Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and we were all given one Spirit to drink. 14 Indeed, the body is not one part but many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,” it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,” it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted. 19 And if they were all the same part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

We are each called to use the talents that we have been given, both naturally and supernaturally, for the benefit of the Kingdom where God calls us to use them. When we do that, Jesus uses us to make the church body all that He wants it to be.

Treasure

The financial resources that we have are again just something that are on loan to us. If everything is God’s, then all of our wealth is God’s wealth, and we are simply stewards of it. And the baseline for giving of our financial resources, according to Scripture, is that we give a tenth of it for His purposes:

Malachi 3:8–10 CSB

8 “Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me!” “How do we rob you?” you ask. “By not making the payments of the tenth and the contributions. 9 You are suffering under a curse, yet you—the whole nation—are still robbing me. 10 Bring the full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house. Test me in this way,” says the Lord of Armies. “See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure.

Notice that what the Lord said through Malachi was the payments of the tenth and the contributions. The extra contributions were over and above the tenth, or tithe. We are, as God’s servants, called to order our lives in such a way that we give the tithe faithfully, and then to contribute when He calls us to do so from the remainder, which all belongs to Him anyway. However, in these extra gifts there is not a clear formula for giving, only the requirement of a right heart and attitude:

2 Corinthians 8:12 CSB

12 For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.

2 Corinthians 9:7 CSB

7 Each person should do as he has decided in his heart—not reluctantly or out of compulsion, since God loves a cheerful giver.

The issue here is less about amount than it is about availability. It’s not a dollar figure, it’s about faithfulness. Just like the faithful servants in the parable, the amount they made wasn’t important: it was that they were 100% faithful to the master. Likewise, throughout this church family are those who have a great capacity for giving and those who have a more limited capacity for giving, and a bunch of people in between. If you have in God’s sovereignty been given more of His financial resource to give, awesome! Your gift is important. If you have been given less of that resource but still have a heart and a desire to give it for His glory, awesome! Your gift is important. Remember the widow in Mark 12: it wasn’t the size of her gift that mattered, but the state of her heart.

God is completely in charge of our lives, and He has every right to call us to use our time, our talents, and His treasure for His purposes at any time, just as the master did with his servants in the parable.

But just as there were the faithful servants, there was the one that they are contrasted with: the faithless. And his faithlessness led to his ruin.

3) The ruin of the faithless

There are some things that we might miss about the third servant when we read through this passage. Those things that we miss might make us feel like he’s treated too harshly, or that he hadn’t really done anything wrong. But the way to see why the master’s response to him is so drastic, we only need to consider what he did in comparison to the other two servants. Here’s what he chose to do with the funds:

Matthew 25:18 CSB

18 But the man who had received one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master’s money.

He didn’t LOSE the master’s money, right? Shouldn’t that count for something? No. The issue again isn’t about the money. It’s about faithfulness with opportunity. This servant is faithless—He does the opposite of the faithful servants. Remember that they immediately took the money and put it to work, endeavoring and risking themselves in order to faithfully serve the master. This servant just takes the money, buries it in the ground, and forgets about it. He doesn’t have to DO anything at all. No risk, no work, and thus, no reward.

Matthew 25:24–27 CSB

24 “The man who had received one talent also approached and said, ‘Master, I know you. You’re a harsh man, reaping where you haven’t sown and gathering where you haven’t scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went off and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’ 26 “His master replied to him, ‘You evil, lazy servant! If you knew that I reap where I haven’t sown and gather where I haven’t scattered, 27 then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and I would have received my money back with interest when I returned.

This faithless servant actually attempts to blame the master for his faithlessness. The truth is that he just didn’t want the hassle. He gets in trouble because he didn’t even do the LEAST he could have actually done: put the money on deposit so it made a little interest. He just buried it and forgot about it until it was demanded of him. I get the feeling that, given the master’s knowledge of their abilities, the faithless servant would have been better off trying something and failing than doing absolutely nothing with the master’s investment and the opportunity he had been given. But he was unwilling to risk his time or his talent to make the most of the treasure entrusted to him.

This part is the place where we would run into big trouble if we were to make this parable an allegory. This is because of how the parable ends for the faithless servant.

Matthew 25:28–30 CSB

28 “ ‘So take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have more than enough. But from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 30 And throw this good-for-nothing servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

If we read this as an allegory, then this servant would either have to be a Christian who is thrown into hell for failing to do what God called him to do, or a person who acted like a Christian, but really wasn’t one. But neither of these work theologically. If we are truly in Christ, then Christ’s sacrifice has fully covered our sin, and we will never be thrown into hell. If we are not truly in Christ, then the allegory breaks because this servant was truly the master’s servant. The master knew him, and he knew the master. Plus, God is not like the master in His dealings. Thus, this cannot be an allegory, because these concepts don’t fit our Lord.

Ultimately, the faithless servant is rejected by the master, loses his place, and loses what little authority he had. His faithlessness has led to ruin in his relationship with the master. This is because the reality of his heart had been made clear by his choices. He cared more about himself than he did about his master. His heart was not in the right place:

Matthew 6:21 CSB

21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The faithless servant’s heart was apparently buried in the ground. Where, brothers and sisters, are our hearts? What do we treasure: the Lord? Or something or someone else?

At the end of the parable of the shrewd manager in Luke 16, Jesus explained the application of it, and it works well with this parable also.

Luke 16:10–13 CSB

10 Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much. 11 So if you have not been faithful with worldly wealth, who will trust you with what is genuine? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own? 13 No servant can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Closing

God calls us to partner with Him in the work of His ministry, and we are called to be faithful and responsible in our walks, using the time, talents, and treasure that God has given to us for His purposes as He asks for them. We each have opportunities that God has given us to use those resources for God’s glory, and the only question is “do we make the most of those opportunities?”

This morning, the first point of our invitation is going to be a call to repentance. If you have been selfish with your time, your talents, or with God’s treasure, and you are convicted this morning that you need to step out in repentance, asking the Lord for forgiveness, and desiring to go where He calls, you can of course pray right where you are. You could come and pray at the steps if you’d like to get on your knees before the Lord.

For those of you who are here this morning or are online who have never responded to the Gospel message, I want to be clear: Jesus didn’t die so that we would give our money. Jesus died and proved that God loves us because we are bound for hell, separated from God for all eternity because of our sin. And the only way to escape that punishment that we deserve is if we belong to Jesus. That comes through trusting in what Jesus did for our salvation, and surrendering our lives to Him as Lord. If today, you have surrendered to Jesus as Savior and Lord, we want to celebrate that with you. If you have questions about Jesus that you’d like to discuss, let us know.

Church membership

Offering

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading: Ezekiel 23

Pastor’s Study tonight at 5:30 in MH.

Reminder for guests

Benediction

As we have reflected on stewardship this morning, the most important thing that He gives us to be managers of is the Gospel. We are called to share the truth of Gospel faithfully as He provides opportunity:

1 Corinthians 4:1–2 CSB

1 A person should think of us in this way: as servants of Christ and managers of the mysteries of God. 2 In this regard, it is required that managers be found faithful.

We are not dismissed. We are sent with a responsibility as faithful managers of the mystery of the Gospel, revealed in Christ. Go and share. See you at Bible study tonight at 5:30

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