Text: 1 Chronicles 29:1–3, 6, 9–18; 2 Corinthians 8:1–7; 9:7–8; Luke 12:41–48
Facebook live: Stewardship 2
“Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” Luke 12:48
This morning’s message is the second in our overall stewardship series. The important principle we’re exploring today is:
God’s Stewards Are Managers, Not Owners.
This means, as our synod has said, that “God’s stewards have been entrusted by God with life and life’s resources and given the privilege of responsibly and joyfully managing them for him.”
When the word stewardship is mentioned among Christians, many of us immediately turn our thoughts toward the subject of money. However, that’s only one aspect or one piece of the topic, and we are the poorer if we think of stewardship only in terms of money.
As I mentioned in our sermon last week, St. Francis of Assisi astutely said,
“Stewardship is everything I do after, ‘I believe.’”
That is, we have been made God’s own not simply by means of our fleshly birth but also through our rebirth by his Word and Baptism, and as his stewards, each of us has been:
“Entrusted by God with life and life’s resources and given the privilege and responsibly of joyfully managing them for him.”
Have you ever given much thought to the truth that God has entrusted you with very precious things? To begin, you have been entrusted with life. Not only are you alive today but Jesus’ death on the cross has given you, life in heaven that will never end. In other words, you have been blessed with infinite resources and blessings beyond your wildest imagination.
Then, have you ever thought that our house, car, furniture, appliances, clothes, computers, televisions - all of our wealth - really aren’t ours but rather belong to God, who has entrusted all of them and more to you and me?
For most of us, that’s a totally foreign concept because in our sinful nature we naturally think that all we have is ours, or, for some, yours and your spouse’s. We believe we’re the owners. After all, we bought it, made it, or were given all we have. For much of it, we did do the labor to earn the money. We saved, invested, took risks, worried, sweated, and sacrificed for all we have. So even to entertain the idea that it all was just entrusted to us as stewards is something many don’t want to believe.
We can understand; accepting that it’s all been entrusted to us would mean there are implications.
It would mean a drastic change in our viewpoint on many things.
It would mean a change in the perspective from which we operate our life and use our resources.
And yet as much as it goes against our self-centered natures, the truth is that all we have or will have has been entrusted to us. It’s been given over to us for our care, our protection, our use, our performance with, and our enjoyment, and that includes our life and all of life’s resources.
We are managers, accountable to God, who is the Creator-owner.
If you think carefully about all that you have and trace it back, you really can see how everything goes back to its Creator-owner, God.
Ps 24:1 states this truth beautifully:
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.”
In the meaning of our second stewardship principle, “God’s stewards are managers, not owners,” we learn not only that we’ve been “entrusted by God with life and life’s resources,” but that we’ve also been given the “privilege of responsibly and joyfully managing them for him.”
I’ve noticed that in today’s culture the word privilege seems to have been overcome by the word right.
Perhaps that’s due to an increase in entitlement thinking. It seems the word privilege may be fading into antiquity. But no matter how entitled our cultural thinking becomes, there are still those who are more privileged and those who are less privileged.
You don’t have to travel to Latin America or Africa to find people who are poor or don’t have much food or enough money to pay rent or other bills. In our own community, in our own neighborhoods, or even travel to St. Paul’s in Pontiac, to see that there are those who aren’t as privileged as others.
In our Gospel, we heard Jesus saying,
“Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” Luke 12:48
We all have been entrusted and privileged with a differing variety of tangible and intangible items in life - life’s resources , and we each will have to give an account to the Lord of how we managed the things he’s entrusted to us, as the apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Christians in Rome:
“For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” Rom 14:7–8
And St. Paul further writes,
“So then each of us will give an account of himself to God” 14:12
We have been richly privileged by God in many and diverse ways. But who are we or what have we done to be so blessed? Again, Paul writes,
“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’” Rom 11:33–35
God graciously entrusts and privileges us with all we have—including our intellect, education, talents, and experiences—in order that we may joyfully manage those resources for him. And even though we manage life and life’s resources for the owner, we are also beneficiaries of them.
Even though all our money is the Lord’s, yet a portion of it is for us—for our needs, such as food, clothing, shelter, and the other necessities of life.
Additionally, the Lord privileges us with luxuries—all the things through or with which we experience joy and that we could otherwise live without. It’s part of the privilege God’s given us, and it’s a witness of our stewardship.
But the Lord does also expect us to manage the money and other resources he has entrusted to us to help the truly needy in our midst—those who can’t work, those who do work but get paid so little they can’t afford the necessities of life, and those who fall into a crisis period that puts them under great financial stress. All these we should be prepared and ready to help.
Additionally, the Lord blesses us with more than our needs require so that we can support his ministry and mission, which are really to our benefit as well as to our neighbor’s.
The reason this building is here, the reason we have the pavilion and all the land our church sits on is to use them and their contents to carry out Christ’s ministry in this place and in this neighborhood. The building, pavilion and property are working facilities, not monuments, and the Lord has privileged each of us in such a way that we can joyfully support all of this. If we aren’t managing what the Lord entrusts to us and blesses us with personally and collectively then no one will.
In our country, there are many programs to help people get money, get fed, have a place to sleep, and get medical help—inadequate and abused as those programs are—but there is no one to build and support Christ’s ministry and mission except the Lord’s children.
What’s more, our work here is but one small part of Christ’s ministry. An important reason our church body, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, exists is to pool a portion of the resources the Lord provides to each of us so we can do much more mission and ministry work together than we can on our own as an individual congregation.
The Old Testament Reading this morning was written and preserved for us, the Church, by the Lord and serves as a witness and example for us. In it, we heard about how Israel provided for the building of the temple. Everyone made his or her freewill offering gladly and abundantly, including the king. Literally hundreds of tons of gold and silver were given, along with bronze, iron, wood, stones, marble, colored stones, and precious stones.
The text says they willingly and freely offered it to the Lord. And in v 14, after the Lord was praised by David and everyone, King David put what happened into proper perspective, pointing out that his people were only giving back a portion of what had come to them from the Lord, saying,
“But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you” 1 Chr 29:14
Our Epistle from 2 Corinthians speaks of the marvelous example of faith and gratitude that the Macedonian Christians were. The text points out that they were in extreme poverty, yet out of the abundance of joy they had on account of their being saved by God’s grace through Christ, their poverty overflowed into a wealth of generosity. They actually begged Paul and Titus to let them support the relief efforts for the saints in Jerusalem, and they joyfully gave beyond their means.
Remember the old widow who put a penny in the temple offering box? Remember what Jesus said when he saw what she did? He said,
“Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:3–4)
In faith and gratitude, there are those who strive to give to the church while still giving to charity, and then there are people and families who are happy to give much more. We have been “entrusted by God with life and life’s resources and given the privilege of responsibly and joyfully managing them for him,”
And here’s an important something else to remember: you are the object and beneficiary of God’s love! He will only ask, command, or encourage you to do and to think in ways that will bless you and your neighbor and that will enhance both of your lives. You know that with absolute certainty because on the cross Jesus has already graciously taken and suffered all of our punishment and in exchange has given us everlasting life and the promised hope of benefiting from his love forever.
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit
Amen
Sermon Rev. Rexford E. Umbenhaur III, pastor, Our Savior Lutheran Church, Los Angeles, California Modified
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