Sanctification Monday – Episode 21: Action – Stewardship

Welcome to the Two Journeys podcast. This is Sanctification Monday, and my name is Andy Davis. In this podcast, we seek to answer the question what is spiritual maturity? We believe that spiritual maturity can be broken into four main sections, knowledge, faith, character, and action. Today we’re in the action section. We’re going to be focusing on the topic of stewardship. So, we’re nearing the end of our study of An Infinite Journey, trying to understand sanctification comprehensively. And it’s vital for us to see all areas of activity or the actions of the Christian life as built on the prior foundation that we’ve already laid of knowledge, Biblical knowledge, the teaching of the word of God. Faith, the acceptance of the word of God as what it is, the word of God, and not merely the word of men. And the ability to see God speaking these truths into us and believe that he is our King and our Sovereign and our Savior. And then our heart, our character, the transformation of the heart that makes us yearn to do what pleases Him.

And then out of that come a whole lifestyle of actions that are pleasing to him. If those first three things aren’t there, then it’s hypocrisy. We’re just whitewashed tombs. We might do certain external actions, but we’re not doing it for the glory of God. We’re not doing it based on faith. As the scripture says, anything that does not come from faith is sin. So, we’re looking at a very important topic today, and that is this topic of stewardship. Stewardship.

Everything that we have in life has come effectively on loan from God.

Now, when we come to stewardship, we come to a fundamental understanding that everything we have in life has come from God. 1 Corinthians 4:7 says, “What do you have that you did not receive?” That’s a foundational issue or question with stewardship. There is nothing we have that we did not receive. Everything that we have in life has come effectively on loan from God.

And when we think about stewardship, frequently Christians immediately go to the topic of money. And I don’t resist that here. Money is a very important issue. But we’re going to see today that stewardship is bigger than money. However, the issue of money is a vital barometer of the health of our souls. Honestly, if we don’t have a converted wallet, then our souls probably aren’t converted. And if our wallets aren’t being progressively sanctified, then neither are we. So, we need to look at how we spend our money, it’s true.

Randy Alcorn who wrote a book, Money, Possessions, and Eternity, pointed out that the Bible’s author and editor, God, devotes twice as many verses to money, about 2,350 of them, than to faith and prayer combined. Alcorn says Jesus spoke more about money than he did about heaven and hell. And so, we have to see how we’re behaving as stewards. Are we actually doing God’s will with our money and with all of our stewardship resources?

All right, so let’s talk about the question of stewardship, and we go to the issue of what is a steward? A steward is a servant who manages someone else’s property. So, the basic concept is that someone else entrusts property to the servant and asks them to manage that property on his behalf. And then we’ll ask him to give an account for his management. This is the basic structure of many parables that Jesus taught. For example, the parable of the talents or the parable of the unforgiving servant, the 10,000 talents parable. The parable of the faithful or unfaithful servant or the parable of the 10 minas in Luke 19. The parable of the vineyard. The parable of the dishonest manager, that’s one of the interesting ones, where this guy has been dishonest as a steward, and he is about to be fired. And in the narrow amount of time that he has left, he actually calls in some of his master’s creditors or people that owe him, owe his master, and he cuts their bill in half or knocks off 40%. And this way curries favor with them, builds relationships with them, so that he’ll have a place to land when he loses his job.

This is a fascinating parable, but in that Jesus is basically saying, “We need to be like that. The position you have in life managing certain resources, you’re not going to have it forever. You’re going to actually lose it. So, the best thing you can do with your resources is to build relationships with other human beings for the glory of God.” That’s kind of the basic premise of that parable. But anyway, the point remains. All of these parables have this basic stewardship motif of a master who entrusts property and goes away. Leaves the servant to do as he chooses, but then calls the individual to account for what he has done as a steward.

So, what are we stewards of? Stewardship relates to anything that God entrusts to us for use for his glory. Now generally, as I’ve said, most Christians, first and foremost, think about money. And that’s appropriate. Money is very important. Godly stewardship of money is a vital barometer of the health of your soul as I’ve already said. If by faith we are living for the future world, then our giving patterns will show it. We will use our money to invest in eternity. But we must also consider ourselves stewards of more than just money. We have to look at other things as well. We are stewards of our bodies, our physical health for example. We’re stewards of our time. We are stewards of our opportunities, unique opportunities that God crafts every day. We’re stewards of spiritual gifts and talents. We’re stewards of the earth. We are stewards of our national advantages.

As for me as an American citizen, there are certain advantages that come from being an American citizen and that’s a stewardship from God. Really any temporal resource that God gives us, we are stewards of those things. And God expects us to manage them wisely for his glory and he will ask us to give a detailed account for that stewardship on judgment day. The more aware we are of that, the better. So, when it comes to stewardship, we have to have a more comprehensive view. We have to have an eternal perspective. We need to look at the future. We need to realize, as Randy Alcorn said about money and possessions, “You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.” I love that saying, that stuck with me when I first heard it.

The idea is you can’t bring your wealth with you. You can’t bring your gold and silver and all of those things. Your material possessions are going to go. But if you give them away for the glory of God, if you use them for the kingdom, then you will store up treasure in heaven in the record book of God. He will remember what you did with your money, and they will show up in heaven as rewards. As Jesus said in Luke 12:33-34, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys, for where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” So, faith-filled, generous giving on earth is actually stored up in heaven in purses that will never wear out. This is the kind of faith perspective we need to have, an eternal perspective. Picture what this will look like on judgment day and out into eternity.

I think it’s good for us to have role models in terms of Christian giving. I know that Jesus said that we need to be very careful to not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing when it comes to giving to the poor and needy. And I think we need to heed that. That’s important teaching. But I think it’s beneficial for us to learn what other great men and women who have been faithful and faith-filled stewards did with their money. One role model for me is John Wesley. John Wesley is a fascinating character, an individual who was transformed by the gospel and then began a really long life of faithful service to the Lord in England and also in America. He was the leader of the Methodist denomination, although he didn’t choose that name. It was more of an insult, the word Methodist. But he was a faithful evangelist, a powerful preacher, a great organizer of that denomination.

And he wrote a lot of books, and he made a lot of money. But he made a commitment early on. He went to one of the poor houses there in England and that’s places, debtors prison, where people who could not pay debts were thrown in prison. And they had no way to get out because they couldn’t make any money. And so, they might actually owe just a shilling or some small amount, a trifle. And when that debt was paid, they could walk away as free. And Wesley went into minister to some of these people and realized the tiny sums that it would take to just set a person literally free from debtor’s prison and he never looked at money the same way again.

And he determined, and I think in the 18th century in which he lived, it was a non-inflationary age. So, the earning power of a pound or a shilling was the same at the end of his life as it was at the beginning. His income continued to increase every year because of book sales, other things like that. He continued to live on the same salary that he had as a single man at the beginning of his life. And his income just kept increasing but his lifestyle never changed. And so, he just gave the rest away. And when they took an inventory of his possessions at the end of his life, they expected to find some huge amount of silver hoarded up because of how simply he’d lived. But he had given so much away. There was just a few silver spoons and a few other things. There was almost nothing.

So, Randy Alcorn picking up on this example from John Wesley said that sometimes God gives you more money and increases your income and all that, not so that you’ll have a higher standard of living, but that you’ll have a higher standard of giving. And that’s what John Wesley did. So, he’s a role model for me, somebody I want to emulate.

Jesus said fundamentally when it comes down to stewardship, if we’re faithful in little, we’re going to be faithful in much. Jesus said in Luke 16:10-11, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So, if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?” Wow, that’s interesting. “And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?” (Luke 16:12). Now that’s very provocative. Jesus is saying, “I’m watching you to see how you handle money because that’s not even true wealth. True wealth is eternal wealth. True wealth is the wealth you’ll have on judgment day and beyond. And your possessions that you have right now, they’re not really yours. You don’t have them forever because death will take all of them from you. Your own possessions will be in the next world.”

It’s a very provocative and powerful statement. So, we should be thinking about true wealth, which happens in eternity in heaven, and our own possessions which will be given to us by God and truly be ours in heaven and live for that. But Jesus is looking to see if we will be faithful in little, namely in how we handle money. We want him to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful in these little things. Now I’m going to put you in charge of many things.” So that’s what we’re looking for. We want to be good stewards of our money and our other stewardship resources so that we will have a vast reward and responsibilities in heaven.

So, what are our financial responsibilities as Christians? Handling money properly means we have to care for the basic ongoing needs of our family. 1 Timothy 5:8 says, “If anyone doesn’t provide for his relatives and especially for his immediate family, he’s denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” So especially if you’re the breadwinner, the head of the house, you’re a husband, a godly man, you need to be certain that your family’s needs are met and not burden the church with them. That’s Paul’s logic there in 1 Timothy 5.

Now these necessities come down to the basics of food and clothing, and we would add shelter, those basic things that we have in life. He’s not talking about luxuries. And if we have those things, Paul said, “We will be content.” Sometimes God gives us pleasures and things well beyond that and those things are given for our enjoyment, it says in 1 Timothy 6:17. But they can also be snares. We can get addicted to the good life. “The love of money,” he says in 1 Timothy 6:10, “is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people eager from money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” So, I would commend 1 Timothy 5-6 as important chapters on the question of stewardship for Christians who are growing in maturity. Money is given to us to provide for our basic needs and some of our wants. And then the rest we are either going to save up for the future or we’re going to give away.

Now how much we save for the future, like it says, “Go to the ant, you sluggard. It stores up in the summer so that its needs are met for the winter” (Proverbs 6:6). That commends saving. So how much money we should save and how much money we should give away is a judgment call. And I don’t think we can judge anybody else on what they do. Both of those are reasonable Biblical things to do. But we need faith to know how much is enough for retirement or for the future, for future needs, to have a rainy-day fund to repair your car or some other things or for medical needs. That’s reasonable. But to go beyond that can become selfish. And so, we want to be able to give more money away to the church through tithes and offerings, to Christian missions, to the poor and needy. These kinds of things we want to be active, and we want to be involved in.

Now, if we are given the gift of a home to own, it’s going to involve a lot of stewardship. We’ve got to keep it up. You got to mow the lawn. You got to keep it in good repair. You don’t want to be like the house of the sluggard when it says in Proverbs 24:30, “I went past the field of a sluggard,” and it was overgrown with weeds, and it was ramshackle, and it was broken down. It’s a bad witness. So, we want to keep the things that we have in good repair. We want them looking decent. And this is not a matter of luxury, but just a matter of good stewardship.

There are other realms of stewardship we need to be aware of. For example, our bodies. Our bodies are a matter of stewardship. God wants us to feed and care for our own bodies, as he says in the section to husbands, Christian husbands, “We feed and care for our bodies” (Ephesians 5:29). Our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). He uses that fact to urge us towards sexual purity and not to sin against our bodies. But we need to stay in good physical condition, not be gluttonous, not be lazy. But to, if we’re able, and I know some people have medical conditions and all, but as much as we can to stay in good physical condition. It will not move back one day the day of your death. All the days ordained are written for you in God’s book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16). But what it will do is it’ll affect the energy level and the power and strength with which you can serve God in the days that you have left. So, to be healthy and strong, that’s just a matter of good stewardship and sets a good example For others.

the issue of money is a vital barometer of the health of our souls.

Our time is obviously a matter of great stewardship. We are given days as a gift from the Lord. As the scripture says, “This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 18:24).God gives us days as a gift, and we’re told very plainly in Ephesians 5:16 to “Redeem the time because the days are evil.” So, to redeem the time means that the time, the day, is almost like a captive that’s been carried off by some kidnappers and you have to go kind of rescue the day or it will be wasted. You have to put energy toward the day. You have to redeem the time, make the most of your opportunities. So, stewardship of time is vital. How are you using your time? How do you spend your days?

Also, our physical talents are a matter of stewardship, whether they’re athletic or artistic, maybe musical, intellectual abilities. Remember the story of Eric Liddel in Chariots of Fire. He was an Olympic sprinter, and he had the ability to run. And as he said to his sister in the movie, Chariots of Fire, “God made me for China. He made me for the mission work. But he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” So, God gives you sometimes special abilities and he wants you to use them for his glory. And so, we are stewards of those special talents, those special abilities, and so we want to use them for the glory of God.

Also, daily unique opportunities are matters of stewardship, like opportunities to witness. Like even today we had the opportunity in our building. We had a lunch. And some of the workers that were working in our building (we’re doing a building renovation here at our church), and they sat down with us. And we had the opportunity not just to eat pizza with them, but to share the gospel with them. And we had some good conversations. If we had just talked about the weather or about other things, it would’ve been a wasted opportunity. God orchestrates opportunities and wants us to make the most of those opportunities. We are stewards of them.

Also, positions that you have in life, positions of power. Maybe you have an authoritative position. Maybe you’re the CEO of a company or you have a position in government or some other position of authority. Or maybe you’re just a parent and you are raising your children, and you have authority and you’re raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. All of these things are matters of stewardship. We’re going to give an account for them on judgment day.

And finally, in terms of listing of stewardship matters, we are stewards of the earth. We are stewards of this planet. We were given to this planet. This planet was given to us that we should fill it, rule over it, subdue it, develop it, nurture it. As a matter of fact, in the Book of Revelation, one of the judgments comes on people because they destroyed the earth. And God is going to destroy the earth far worse than we ever could have and clear it away and bring in a new heaven and a new earth. But he holds us accountable for ecological aspects and other things like that. You think about the devastation that the human race has wreaked on certain parts of the planet and it’s quite tragic. We’re looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth that will be so beautiful and radiant. In the meantime, Christians are stewards of the environment, we’re stewards of the earth, and we want to use it well.

Well, this is the issue of stewardship that’s in front of us. There are many things that we’re accountable for. Three in particular come up again and again in my mind, and they are time, energy, and money. These three things we connect with the verb to spend. Our spiritual gifts are not like that because the more you use a gift, the better you get at it. But with time and physical strength or energy, and money, these are things when you use them, they’re gone. You’ve spent them on something. The question is what are you spending your time on? What are you spending your strength on? You may be a young man or a young woman. You’re in the prime of your life. What are you using your prime years for? At some point, you’re going to get older, and you won’t have as much strength or energy. And then you’ll be much older, and you won’t have hardly any strength or energy. So, what are you spending your physical strength on, and what are you spending your money on? Those three things we need to look at continually to be a wise steward of what God’s given to us.

So, as we conclude today, go into your week knowing that God has gone ahead of you, and will be using everything that you experienced this week to sanctify you and bring you more and more into conformity to Christ.