Tag Archives: stewardship

Sermons

Shrewd Stewardship

Click on the Camera to view the full message

Whenever a pastor preaches on stewardship, people tend to get nervous. But Jesus frequently taught about using our resources for the Kingdom of Heaven, and like with Jesus’s teachings on other topics, his instructions are not meant to be chains that induce nerves but invitations that bring joy.

As Jesus taught, he was surrounded by mostly poor people, people who probably thought that getting more money would solve their problems. Nothing has changed in the twenty-first century; we still tend to think more money is the answer to many of life’s problems.

But Jesus taught about sacrificial generosity and when we read Acts 2, we see that the early church got it.

A Confusing Story

In Luke 16, Jesus taught the confusing parable of the Shrewd Manager. It is a hard parable to understand, but it has eternal lessons for us.

In this parable, Jesus seems to be encouraging theft and deceptive business practices. But looking at the context can clarify our understanding of the parable.

In Luke 15, Jesus had been addressing tax collectors, the financiers of the day. Jesus tells them three parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son. All three are about possessions, losing them or squandering them.  

Then in chapter 16, Jesus takes his disciples aside and begins to teach them about money. But the parable is strange; the central character is a crook, a thief.

In this parable, a rich man has a manager over his estate who has been stealing from him. The rich man understandably decides to fire him.

However, the manager decides to get ahead of his fate by making crooked deals with his master’s debtors so that he will have a roof over his head when he is fired. He doesn’t even use his own money; he uses the money of his master to buy favors and temporary security. The debtors quickly agree to this dishonest scheme to benefit themselves.

But there is a twist in the tale; the rich man is so impressed with the shrewdness of his manager that he re-hires him.

Is Jesus teaching that it is commendable to be devious? The words of Jesus in verse 9 add to the confusion, “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9).

A Kingdom Wealth Management Strategy

So, what are we to make of this parable?

Jesus is not commending criminal behavior; that would be contrary to the teaching of the rest of the Scriptures. Rather Jesus is pointing to the shrewdness and characteristics of a criminal and saying that as children of the light, we should be as driven to do the will of God our Father as the manager was to secure his future. Only instead of leveraging shrewdness for self-preservation, we should look for opportunities to gain eternal wealth.

Jesus encourages us to use the resources of this world to invest in eternity. We can take the unrighteous riches of this world and use them for eternal purposes.

We will leave 100% of our possessions behind when we die. But I don’t think we fully grasp the truth that how we steward our earthly resources affects our eternal rewards.  

Jesus continues to teach his disciples with cutting clarity in Luke 16:10-13, shedding light on this parable. Jesus makes it clear that true riches will be entrusted to those who faithfully serve the eternal kingdom of heaven and not the temporal kingdom of this world.

A Holistic View of Riches

God has entrusted each of us with a number of resources to steward. True riches are more than our bank account; there are other resources we are called to steward.

Finances

We tend to view stewardship as an optional extra in Christian disciplines.Some people assume it; others aren’t aware of it. Traditionally it has been taught that we are to give 10% of our income to the Lord’s work, beginning with the local church and then giving above and beyond that to local and international missional causes.

But I believe that these percentages are the training wheels of greater spiritual discipline. Jesus always raised the bar when it comes to the moral teachings of the Mosaic law.

I believe that the foundation for our stewardship is found in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Dead people have no possessions. When we commit our lives to Jesus, he becomes Lord over all our resources. When it comes to the question of tithing, 10% is a good starting point, but that doesn’t mean the other 90% remains for us to use selfishly. I believe God is looking at how we are stewarding that 90% for His glory.

Time 

Time is a constant; you cannot make time, but you can waste time. We are called to make the most of every minute that we have been given. We can be challenged in this respect when we have an unexpected interruption in our day, when someone comes to us in need. Are we willing to shuffle our priorities to be used by the Lord?

There are a multitude of ways we can steward our time for God’s glory. It is an eternal investment.

Spiritual Gifts

Spiritual gifts are given to us by the Holy Spirit for the glory of God. Gifts are not given for our benefit or enrichment; they are given for the work of the ministry and building up of the Body of Christ.

The Gospel

Believers who have believed in the Gospel are entrusted to steward that message and share it with others (see 1 Thessalonians 2:4).

An Invitation to Stewardship

Everything that we have been blessed with should be stewarded to further the Kingdom of God. We are God’s stewards, managing His resources. Just like the wicked and shrewd manager, we need to be discerning in how we use the Master’s resources, only Jesus invites us to use them for eternal purposes.

How are you doing as an investment manager for the King of Kings?

Sermons

Sermon – Starting Over Part 4 – February 5 2017

 

startingover-image1

Part 4 – The Discipline of Giving.

Luke 12:13-34

As the final discipline in this series, we are going to briefly look at the discipline of giving. More often than not, the one discipline we struggle with the most is the giving of our financial resources.

From time to time we all worry about our finances, but many pastors don’t want to preach on money and the rewards of giving for fear of sounding like the prosperity gospel peddlers. Those who preach this way teach that we must become transactional in our dealings with God. But we cannot bribe God, He doesn’t need your money, he already owns it all (see psalm 40:6 and Psalm 24:1). The bible tells us that ‘God loves a cheerful giver’, but if we give out of our selfish ambition and self-interest, God sees it for what it really is.

Stewardship is a term that has been in the church for centuries. In our modern English, stewardship seems to have been assigned to building campaigns or fundraisers. But The word comes from an old English concept of being a steward of the property owned by the lord of the land. The lord owned all the land, the buildings and all the commerce that took place in his realm. The stewards didn’t own anything, but they managed the crops, the labor, the taxes and all the day to day running of the land. In return for this service the lord of the land gave protection, food, housing for the steward.

God owns it all, he owns everything that you think you own. But just like the old stewards, we are called to be stewards for our Lord. We are going to be called on to give an account for what He has given us to manage or to steward. That is what Stewardship is. This is a huge paradigm shift for most people, as we have been raised and taught all our lives that we own things, that we have things and money because we deserve them. But the reality is that everything we have is only ours to steward or manage for God, because after we die, we no longer have ownership over it.

There is a fundamental connection between our spiritual lives and how we think and act about our finances. Fifteen percent of all the teaching we have recorded in the Bible from Jesus relates to money.

The passage of scripture found in Luke 12 is a passage that the western church finds uncomfortable. This is one of those passages that we try to rationalize and water down, because the raw truth is hard to take. Is Jesus saying that we shouldn’t save for a rainy day, or save for retirement? Our culture says that is not wise, it is simply not prudent. This wealthy man had wealth stored up for years, and God said, “you fool!” Now, I am not saying that it is wrong to be wealthy and to have wealth, but this man’s error was that he looked at his wealth as his security, he no longer trusted God for his daily bread, his wealth took the place of God in his life. His wealth had become his idol, his prudence had become his idol. And in many cases in our lives there is a very fine line between prudence and idolatry.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” ― Jim Elliot

As Jesus turns aside to his disciples in verse 22, and in the next few verses Jesus uses the words, “do not worry” or “do not be afraid” four times. Jesus isn’t suggesting this, he is giving a command; “do not worry”. It is a directive from the creator of the universe, therefore, if we worry about possessions, food, clothing or that rainy day that may never come, it is a sin that we need to repent of.

(see also 1 Timothy 6:17-19)

Randy Alcorn in his book “the treasure principle” breaks down this teaching and Matthew 6. As we give away what we cannot keep, we literally are putting treasure in heaven.

The legalist will tell you that you must give, but in reality, you don’t have to give, but you will be so glad you did. You will be eternally blessed as you give.

Imagine you were Alive during the civil war, you are a northerner, however you were living and doing business in the South. During this time you had accumulated a lot of confederate currency. As you saw the war coming to an end you planned to go back home to the North. So what do you do with all the confederate money you had saved up? After the war it would be worthless as it was not official US currency. Well naturally, you would cash in the money and change it for US currency. You would keep only enough confederate money to meet your immediate short term needs. As Christians, we have inside information, knowledge of how this all ends. We know that when Jesus comes again, all our hard-earned currency will be worthless. Everything you have will be worthless to you when Jesus comes again, or you die. Either of those could happen today.

Some years ago I obtained a real treasure, it is a 500 million Zimbabwean dollar, however it has an expiration date. At the time the country had an inflation rate of 3000%, and the money became worthless after a certain period of time. We may laugh at this, but do you realize that every dollar you have has an expiration date; when you die, it becomes worthless to you.

500 million zim

We have this false idea that as long as we get through this life and believe in the name of Jesus, then we will get wonderful blessings and rewards in heaven. The bible is clear that there will be different rewards given to different people. Those who have not invested in eternal treasures will get a meager reward in heaven. Those who have little regard for temporal treasures, but rather choose to invest them eternally, will receive a return on investment that will make any wall street stock market gain seem miniscule.

“Gaze upon Christ long enough and you will become more of a giver. Give long enough and you will become more like Christ.”  Randy Alcorn

Sermons

Sermon series on Stewardship Part 2 – Finances, October 2, 2016

 

stewardship-pt-2-title-2-01There are 2350 verses on finances in the Bible, and 15% of all the recorded words of Jesus were on money. Finances are obviously an important topic in the Word of God, and stewarding our finances well is vital to our Christian walk.

The foundation of everything relating to a discussion on finances is that God owns everything. He is the creator and sustainer of all things (see Psalm 24:1). Everything we have comes from God, we are not owners of it, we are stewards of God’s wealth. That is such an important paradigm shift we need to make in our lives.

The second reality is that we cannot take any of our material possessions with us into eternity. When we die, all our accumulation of wealth stays behind and gets divided up according to our estate. This sounds obvious, but so few live according to this reality. The Bible clearly states that what we do with our time and resources here on earth will store up for us riches in heaven. In a currency that we know nothing about.

We use the term tithe or tithing when we talk about giving money to the Lord’s work. This is not simply a modern Church word, rather tithing has been a part of many different cultures and religions throughout history. And in fact it pre-dates the law of Moses. A tithe is ten percent of one’s earnings or crops, set aside and given to God. In the OT book of the Prophet Malachi, we read how God rebukes the nation of Israel for their lack of tithing (see Malachi 3:6-12). You may argue that Malachi is in the Old Testament and it doesn’t apply to us today, we are under the new covenant and we are under grace. It is true that Jesus ushered in the New Covenant by his death and resurrection, but he also said in Matthew 5:17 that he did not come to abolish the Law, but rather to fulfill the Law.

People who view tithing as simply an Old Testament law whereby one is paying a debt back to God, miss the point entirely. The early church in the book of Acts understood this and were an extremely generous people.  Tithing was never meant to pay a debt to God, in the Old or the New Testament, rather tithing builds our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Notice verse 10 of Malachi 3; “Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty….” God challenges the people to test him, this is the only time in the Bible where testing God is seen as a positive action. God encourages us to test our faith in the giving process.

When one gives a tithe to the local church it is never simply to meet a church budget. Rather, you are tithing to the ministry of reaching the lost, sharing the Gospel and bring the light of Jesus to our community. Not simply meeting a budget, who wants to give to that? No as we seek to diligently steward the gifts and tithes, we seek to make an eternal difference for the kingdom of God. Eternal souls are at stake. Give to that.

Looking at one of the lessons Jesus taught on money we read of the rich young man in Mark 10:17-25.

Notice the posture of this man as he runs up to Jesus and falls down, begging Jesus for an answer. There is a desperation. He knows that there must be more to this life and he wants to have eternal security. But notice the question he asks; “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”. This man is looking for a set of rules, a checkbox that he can tick off to say that his eternal salvation is secure.

Jesus knowing his heart lists some of the ten commandments, to which the man responds that he has kept these laws since he was a boy. But notice the commandments that Jesus mentions. Jesus only focuses on the Commandments that relate to our relationship with our fellow man. Jesus saw deep into the heart of this man and saw that he was trying to follow a set of rules rather than seeking a relationship with God.

This is a trap we so easily fall into, we want a set of rules, but God wants a relationship and then out of that relationship we seek to do the will of God. Again it is reinforced that we cannot possibly earn our way into heaven.

Jesus looks at the man and the Bible says, “he loved him”, and then Jesus raised the bar and told him to sell everything he had and give it to the poor and then come and follow him. Jesus loved him, but let him go, because Jesus knew that he loved his money more than he loved God. His money was his idol. It doesn’t mean that all of us are required to sell everything we have. But if we hold on to our money as our security, as our peace rather than Jesus, it has become an idol and we need to rearrange our priorities.

Again, the kingdom of God is not about a set of rules, it is about a relationship with our Heavenly Father.

We don’t give in order to get something from God, even though there is tremendous blessing in a life of disciplined tithing, no we give because he first gave everything for us.

So Jesus raised the bar and made it clear that our response to the Gospel is much more than 10% of our income or following a set of rules. This man lost everything because of his wealth. His wealth robbed him of the greatest wealth of all, eternal life. Today people are still being robbed by wealth, by letting their finances become and idol and it is preventing them from a relationship with the provider of all wealth.

The truth is that God doesn’t need your money, He wants your heart.

God wants you and I to understand that a closed hand is unable to receive his blessing, but a generous hand is open to receive from God.

The challenge for us as followers of Jesus is not if we should be giving 10% of our income, the real challenge is what about the other 90%?

One may argue that after tithing 10% the rest of the money is yours to use as you wish. But is that really true?

As we look at our spending habits, how much of the 90% do we waste? You may not be wasting money on lottery tickets or cigarettes, but what about things like cable TV or high interest rates on debt.

This is vital for us as Christians, we need to do everything we can to get out and stay out of debt.

Live according to a budget. Living according to and within a strict budget is the very definition of what it means to be a good steward.

When we meet people who have a close walk with God and those who have strong faith in God, if you dig a little and find out their story, you will discover that 95% of their faith lessons were lessons on finances.

If you want to grow your faith, it starts with realizing that everything we have belongs to our Father in heaven, and then trust him for the future.