Series: Stewardship
Category: Core Seminars, Money, Work & Vocation, Giving
Detail:
Faithfulness PRAYER
I. Introduction Good morning and welcome to the second week of the stewardship core seminar! Last week, we used Jesus’ parable of the talents in Matthew 25 to explain our job as stewards. We learned two big things. First, we don’t own what we own! Everything we have—our money, our job, our family, our body, our time—they all belong to God. And second, we’re stewards. Our job is to use what we’ve been given for God’s purposes.
Unfortunately, we don’t always do this. Here’s what I mean. Before you became a Christian, life was all about you. You got things for yourself—like money and success and relationships. Then when you become a Christian you think, “Okay, I get it! It’s not about getting stuff for me—I need to get stuff for God.”
Well, that’s still not quite right. You see, God doesn’t need our help. In Acts 17:24-25 Paul says, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything.” Our Sovereign God isn’t sitting up in heaven helpless, hoping that we’ll wake up and lend him a hand. No, he’s able to do everything we can do—and do it better! That doesn’t mean he won’t use what we do, and it doesn’t mean that what we do is unimportant. It’s just that God’s thoughts aren’t our thoughts, and God’s ways aren’t our ways (Is. 55:8).
So then why did God give these things to us? What’s his purpose for our stewardship? Well, to answer that question, let’s go back to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 and listen to Jesus. Keep in mind that today’s class is about God’s goals for our stewardship generally. Our money? Yes—but also our time, our jobs, our families, our bodies—every stewardship God has entrusted to us.
Why Does the Faithless Servant Go to Hell?
So if you remember the parable from last week, a master went away on a journey, but before he left, he entrusted different amounts of money to his servants, according to their abilities. The master gave five talents to the first servant, two talents to the second servant, and one talent to the third servant. Then he goes away. When he returns, he calls each servant to account and finds that the first two servants have used the talents given to them to make more. The master tells each, “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.” But when the third servant comes up, the master’s response is different:
He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard[1] [2] Here you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
The action of this third servant is what gives the twist to the parable. So what happens to the third servant? He goes to hell! He goes to “that place [where] there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Really? But he didn’t lose the talent, did he? No, he gave it back! So he gets hell…just because he didn’t return more than he was given? That doesn’t sound fair at all. What’s going on?
Well, believe it or not, what’s going on is the gospel. It’s not just a moral fable that Jesus is giving us—you know, do a lot for God and he’ll bless you. If we can figure out why the third servant’s actions deserved hell, then we’ll be able to read this parable the way Jesus intended.
The key to figuring all this out is understanding what the third servant’s actions said about his master. This servant tried to have it both ways. He hedged his bet. He thought he’d be okay if the master returned because he still had the talent he was given and could easily give it back—no loss, no harm. And if the master didn’t return, well, that was fine too because he wouldn’t have wasted his time and was glad he was able to do what he wanted. But his actions spoke volumes about his master! His actions said that his master couldn’t be trusted to return. And if he did return, he wasn’t good but overbearing and oppressive and wouldn’t reward his servants’ loyalty to him. But that just wasn’t the case, was it? This master was totally trustworthy and good and incredibly generous! After all, the master represented God. So when the third servant said, “I knew you to be a hard man,” he showed he didn’t know his master at all.
Contrast that with the actions of the first two servants. They gambled everything on the master’s promises. They bet with their lives that he was good to his word. They believed that risking everything on their master was the best thing they could do for themselves—and they were right!
This twist at the end with the third servant shows that this is a parable about faith—faith in the master. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, no one can serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). We can’t have it both ways—living for myself and living just enough for God to slip into heaven. This servant’s double-minded life showed he had no faith.
James tells us that even the demons believe in God—and shudder (James 2:19). So what’s the difference between demonic faith and saving faith? Well, saving faith doesn’t simply believe facts about God, that he exists. It believes that God’s good for us, that his rewards are worth having. Saving faith believes that God’s so good, we can trust him with our whole lives, leaving everything behind. And when we live like that, we become a living billboard, showing the world how good and desirable God is. But when we say, “I want to get into heaven, but I don’t really want to go all in because I don’t fully trust God’s plans for me,” then our lives say that God’s not good, that he’s not trustworthy. And we lie about God.
It’s like Jesus’ parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13-21. This guy is blessed with a large crop and plans to build bigger and bigger barns to hold all his wealth. Then suddenly he dies and finds he has nothing, and God calls him a fool. Why? Well, because he, too, was lying about God. His hoarding said that we should trust in our worldly wealth more than our heavenly Father!
So what are God’s purposes for our stewardship? This parable in Matthew 25 holds the answer. His purpose is that we be faithful, that our lives proclaim how excellent, good, trustworthy, and satisfying God is. Every decision you make says something true or false about who God is. And as you grow in faith, the picture that your life paints of Jesus becomes clearer and clearer. Because God is conforming us to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:29).
And that’s why all this matters so much. Stewardship isn’t just about doing things better in the Christian life—how to use our money better or how to use our time better. No, the call of stewardship is so much higher! That’s the point of these parables. Stewardship isn’t about separating the good Christians from the better Christians. It’s ultimately about whether we have saving faith or not. That’s not an issue of betterment; it’s an issue of eternal life and death!
Questions or Comments
III. Faithfulness Proclaims Who God Is
Let’s look a little more closely at this idea that our faithfulness proclaims who God is. What we do—or how we steward—matters because it shows off what God’s done in us. So we forgive because we’ve been forgiven much. We give because we’ve been given much in Christ.
At the beginning of creation, we’re shown to be given value as human beings because God created us in his image. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” We uniquely represent God. Well, the servants in Matthew 25 also represented their master, and their representation was shown through their choices. A faithful servant is one who makes the master’s desire his own. The purpose of God making us in his image was to make us into living mirrors, reflecting his image and glory. God says, “Be holy because I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16).
But how do we reflect God? Well, it’s through what we do in faith. The very next verse in Genesis 1:28 says, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” We image God through relationships—in marriage we create life to fill the earth. And we image God through work, as we exercise dominion. But these things only matter because they’re how we image God—that’s the key! We’re given value because we’re created in God’s image, and we glorify God through what we do in reflecting his image accurately.
That’s not how our world sees it though. The world’s obsessed with what we do! The world says your value is based on your relationships and your work—it’s about who you know and what you do. But, friends, Genesis 1:28 without Genesis 1:27 is idolatry; we can’t remove God from what he’s called us to do. God always intended for what we do to be valuable because it’s meant to be a reflection of his glory.
As a quick side note, do you remember what God curses in Genesis 3 after Adam and Eve sin? In 3:16, he curses our relationships, and in 3:17, he curses our work. Why does God curse the very things he commanded of us back in chapter 1? He did it, in part, to teach us that relationships alone will never satisfy; that work alone will never satisfy. In his mercy, he protects us from looking for value in what we do, absent who we are as God’s image-bearers. Why? Because we’re made ultimately for him, and it’s in God where we’ll find true joy.
After Genesis 3, our mirrored reflection of God becomes bent and twisted from sin. But when you become a Christian, you become a new creation. You’ve been created once in God’s image in Genesis 1. And then you’re recreated, being reborn into his image a second time as a redeemed human being. This means that your life now has opportunity to speak even more loudly about the excellence of our God.
Do you realize that this is the main reason God’s given you all that he has? Think about all the gifts you’ve been given. For some of you that might be musical or artistic talent or a gift with languages or numbers. For some of you that might be your family or your friends or the school you attend or your bank account or your job or your work ethic. 1 Corinthians 4:7 says, “What do you have that you did not receive?” Why did God give you these? To glorify him, so that by using them you can show off how good and amazing he is. And there’s nothing more satisfying, more desirable, more delightful than spending our gifts to exalt Christ!
How many of you have a resume on hand? A resume lists our worldly accomplishments. But when God looks at your life, what accomplishments does he see? In every act of faithful obedience, he sees his own accomplishments. Through faithfulness, your life becomes his resume. It shows off his goodness, his value, his worth. What you do matters because it shows off what he’s done in you. That’s why Jesus says in Matthew 5:16, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
Faithfulness Matters More than Results
Now all this may seem quite straightforward. But that’s not always where we live. Most of us evaluate our lives based on results and what we do rather than on faithfulness and what our day-to-day lives say about God. Don’t believe me, let’s just answer a simple question: As you consider your life, which are you more afraid of—failure or faithlessness? Failure is about you, not living up to your potential. Faithlessness is about God, not living in a way that speaks truthfully about who he is.
But in God’s economy, our job is a matter of faithfulness, not results. Faithfulness shows off who God is; the results are up to him. Maybe an example would be helpful to see the difference. Let’s say that you live on the top of a hill—perhaps, Capitol Hill—and so you don’t buy flood insurance. That’s a very reasonable, good-stewardship decision to make. Then a crazy flood hits and overruns your house. You lose everything! Another serious implication of this is that you can’t go on the mission field like you planned. Have you failed? Well, from a results standpoint—absolutely! But from a faithfulness standpoint—not at all! You can stand before the Lord some day and give a good account for your life, even though God clearly had different plans than the good you intended.
Here’s another example. Let’s say you’re working at a job and are offered a promotion, and your new job duties give you the opportunity to help a lot of people in some important ways. Great thing, right? But unfortunately, this new job requires you to travel nine months each year, and you’re married with two young children at home. Our temptation is to weigh the significance of the work and make your decision based on that. “How can helping around the house, changing diapers, and taking kids to their school events be more important than helping so many people in such significant ways?” But that’s the wrong question to ask.
Instead, we need to ask, “What would being a faithful steward look like here?” God’s called you to be a spouse and parent. How do you know? Because you have a spouse and children! And while God calls you to work, you don’t have such a divinely-revealed calling on your life for that particular job. So of first importance is to be faithful to your calling as a spouse and parent. Now I know there are a lot of other factors that could go into this scenario, but you get the point—God cares about our faithfulness more than our results. Ultimately, God decides what’s most important. He’s the chess master; we’re simply the chess pieces. We go obediently where he puts us, with the goal of being faithful. And we leave the results up to him.
In general, there are two problems with living for results:
We can’t always measure value in results. Here’s what I mean. Let’s look at the lives of two people. As I describe them, think about which life is more valuable from the perspective of heaven? The first is a man who heads up a large charity and fights for faith to give glory to God as his organization prospers. The second is a woman who spends her life successfully fighting for faith in Christ as she struggles through mental illness? She never thrives, never holds down a job for long, never invests in the lives of others. She just survives to the end. How can we possibly know which is more valuable? But figuring that out isn’t our job, is it? Our job is to faithfully obey in whatever situation God puts us in whether we have five talents, two talents, or one talent.
Now it’s true that results can be a data point for us in discerning faithfulness, but they’re not ultimate. So if you serve as a missionary in a closed country for 10 years without seeing any converts, it’s possible that you’ve been faithful. But it’s also quite possible you’ve been lazy, which is why there’s no fruit. Again, we can’t always measure value in results.
We’ll be disappointed. Why? Because results are temporary. Proverbs 23:4-5 says, “Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.” If you’re a doctor, everyone you’ll ever save will eventually die. Every bridge you design as an engineer will eventually collapse. Parents, your kids will forget much of what you teach them. Our city is full of monuments to important people you’ve never heard of. Results don’t last…but faithfulness does! Because faithful obedience shows off the glory and goodness of God, it’ll last forever.
When the Apostle Paul nears the end of his life, he writes to encourage Timothy and says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7-8). Notice that Paul didn’t say, “I won the fight” or “I won the race.” No, Paul’s speaking in terms of faithfulness. And it’s this faithfulness that will be rewarded on the last day to Paul and all of us who have longed for the return of our Master Christ Jesus.
So Paul’s a great example of faithfulness, but can anyone give an example of someone you know who chose faithfulness to God over success in the world?
Questions or Comments
What Does Faithfulness Look Like?
So we just spent a large part of our time considering why faithfulness is important. But what’s it look like? Let me suggest two things:
First, we see faithfulness in obedience. Sometimes, being faithful is as simple as obeying God’s clear command. For example, let’s say you really want a promotion at work. And it becomes clear that you could get that promotion if you lied on a sales call. But because you fear God you choose to tell the truth, and so you don’t get promoted, even if that means you can’t be as generous with your money. Although you weren’t commended on earth, you’ll certainly be commended on the last day as you stand before the Lord because you were faithful.
Obedience in areas like this commends the gospel and is a testimony to what kind of God we serve. For example, when we thank God for what we’ve received, we glorify God as the giver of all good things (Eph. 5:19). And when we give back our firstfruits, we glorify God as being trustworthy (Matt. 6:33). When we’re content with our wealth, we glorify God as being sufficient to meet our needs (Phil. 4:12, 19-20). When we use our wealth sacrificially to help others, we glorify God as being loving and merciful.
B. Faithfulness in Discerning What Is Best
But as we often discover, things aren’t always this clear. After all, the master in Jesus’s parable never told his servants exactly what they should do with his money. Yet God’s glorified when we pursue what’s valuable in his economy, even if this world doesn’t think much of it. That means that, as Christians, we need to discern what’s best. Every time we spend time or money on something, there’s always an opportunity cost associated with it—we could have invested in something else for a different purpose. Some decisions and actions honor God more than other decisions and actions.[3] So if we want to be faithful stewards, we need to choose wisely.
Sometimes this involves discerning what’s best between things of worldly value.[4] So should I pay a plumber to fix my sink or should I fix the sink myself? Should I spend my evening working or getting dinner with a friend? Should I eat oatmeal for breakfast or chocolate chip pancakes? Well, the bible doesn’t provide a lot of guidance for us in these types of decisions, and there’s a lot of Christian liberty. We’ll usually need to consider other factors. So maybe I’ll pay the plumber to fix my sink so that I can go to Bible study because I’m feeling a bit dry spiritually. Or maybe I’ll work tonight because I’m behind on things. And maybe I’ll eat the pancakes for breakfast because…well…they’re yummy!
Sometimes this involves discerning what’s best between things of worldly value and spiritual value. We see a lot of these types of comparisons in Proverbs. For example, we see that wisdom is more precious than rubies (Prov. 8:10-11). Fear of God is more important than great wealth (Prov. 15:16). A good reputation is more important than great riches (Prov. 22:1), and righteousness is more important than money (Prov. 15:6, 16:8). Elsewhere we see that our faith in God is more important than gold (1 Peter 1:7), and that salvation is better than gaining the whole world (Mark 8:36).
And this also involves discerning what’s best in light of eternity. What would you do if you saw on the news that 10 days from now we’d abandon the U.S. Dollar and start using the British Pound? Wouldn’t you convert all the money you had into British currency? You’d abandon what’s about to lose value and invest in what will maintain value. Well, Jesus has told us that’s exactly what will happen in Matthew 6:19-21. He says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Sometime in the next century, every dollar you own will become worthless to you (either because you’re dead or Jesus has come back). But you have opportunity now to use that money to invest in eternal treasure that will never lose value. Same thing with your time and your skills, your energy and your relationships. We glorify God by trusting him and using what he’s given us now to store up treasure in heaven that we can’t yet see. This “living by faith” is what Moses was commended for in Hebrews. He left Egypt’s wealth “because he was looking ahead to his reward” (Heb. 11:26). God will reward us for believing His word and acting out in faith with all he’s given us (Matt. 16:27).
Money can’t buy salvation. It can’t even buy faith or hope or love, but it can certainly be used to build these things up and exercise them. This is what the widow understood in Mark 12:41-44 when she gave her two mites, all she had to live on, into the temple treasury. She used her money to not only show that God can be trusted but to grow in faith in God, and this brings God glory. So when you lend to a friend in need, even though you don’t know if they’ll ever pay you back—you’re using your money to build faith and to set your priorities straight. When you give time to be friendly to someone who has mistreated you, you’re displaying the love of Christ. And in God’s economy, that’s discerning what’s best!
Conclusion
Just like the faithful stewards in our parable, we’re called to put all our eggs in one basket—we’re banking on God being true to his promise. If an unbeliever got underneath the hood of your life and saw what you do with your time and things and money and why you use these things the way you do, what would they think? Would your life commend God as a faithful master? I hope so!
But friend, if you’re a Christian, you’ll fail in this life. You’ll sin. You’ll struggle. You’ll doubt. You won’t make wise choices. But the good news is that God promised a Savior in Jesus, and God kept his promise, forgiving our sins and sanctifying us through his Spirit to be more like Christ. Yes, we’ll be faithless from time to time, but God will always be faithful. And as we go back to him again and again in faith and repentance, submitting all that he’s give us under his lordship, using all that he’s given us for his purposes, our lives will show off the One who is eternally faithful. And God delights to use the faithfulness of broken, normal people like you and me to bring his purposes to fruition for our good and his glory.
PRAYER
[1]
[2] It’s having a master that requires more than what he gives the power to perform and punishes for not meeting his expectations.
[3]
[4] At the end of the day, they’re just created things, but we can use them to build spiritual treasure.
