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7/6/08- Stewardship
7/13/08 - Prayer
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Preparing for Rain Series is available for immediate download.
7/6/08- Stewardship
7/13/08 - Prayer
Click here to listen via ITunes.
July 7, 2008
Categories: Sermons, preaching . Tags: giving, prayer, stewardship . Author: Zach Terry
1 Comment(s)
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I enjoyed the sermon! A great blessing on a great passage of Scripture. I would like to add a few comments about the passage.
First, I think the parable is about investing in the kingdom of God with all the resources we have. It includes money, yes. But it also includes our time, ability, talents, energy, etc. If this passage were only about money, it would be more of an example since the story itself is about money. But the elements in a parable usually represent something bigger than themselves. So I think the money in the parable represents all our resources. I think churches need to be careful not to communicate the idea that stewardship is only about money. Often, we have “stewardship campaigns” and yet the stewardship of money is all we’re talking about. There are many resources besides money that we can use to invest in the kingdom of God.
It would be like if you were a European country before one of the last world wars. You could see all the countries beginning to line up and take sides. If you knew that if you wanted one side to win, you better join their alliance. You better invest your resources with them. Investing is all about taking some risk to take resources from one spot, and put them in another spot where you think the future is. And Christians believe that future is in the kingdom of God. To invest our resources in the future of this world is “putting money down a rathole.”
And we are one day going to be evaluated by how we invested those resources for the kingdom of God. The parable gives us a basis for understanding how the Lord is going to evaluate our investments. In the parable we see 3 “R’s”- resources, results, and rewards. I think it’s very important to distinguish between the three. Neither the resources nor the results are the rewards. It’s not about what we’re born with or even about the blessings we think God is using us to accomplish on this earth while we are here. The rewards are said to given “when the Master returns”. And not before.
It’s interesting to compare this parable in Matthew 25 with its parallel passage in Luke 19. The 2 parables are very similar, but there is one important difference. In Matthew, the servants start with unequal resources, obtain unequal results, but receive the very same reward. This is easy to understand in light of life. People are born with varying degrees of opportunity to invest in the kingdom. They have different talents, time, money, etc. Some get a good head start by being born into a Christian family. Others do not. And having a better opportunity can lead to better earthly results. But the results are not the basis for the reward here. Faithfulness to the opportunity you have is.
But what about the parable of the minas in Luke 19? There the servants are all given the same resources, obtain unequal results, and receive different rewards. It seems to be an entirely different scenario with an entirely different lesson. What is it in life that we all receive the same of? It’s not time because some lives are shorter than others. Maybe it’s life itself. We all have one life to give to our Lord. So maybe the lesson here is that in some ways our results and rewards are not dependent upon our resources. We have all we need to glorify Him and invest in His kingdom.
I just think churches need to be careful not to confuse the 3 R’s. We are not superior or inferior because we have more or less resources to work with. And we are not superior or inferior because we “think” we see greater or lesser results than some people. Who has more opportunity to glorify God and invest in His kingdom- us or Billy Graham? I think the message of the both parables is that even though we may have been given differing resources, we have equal opportunity to be rewarded in the coming kingdom.
What about the servant who buried his talent? When asked why he buried his mina, the lazy servant claimed that he was afraid that the Master would judge him harshly if his investment failed.
The Master, though, was not fooled. Had the servant really been afraid like he claimed, he would have at least done something that was without risk and within his comfort zone- like putting the money in the bank. That was a no risk, little effort investment. But he didn’t do even that.
Far from being afraid of the Master, the servant was actually presuming upon the master’s kindness in doing absolutely nothing. He trusted that he would be able to talk his way out of punishment when the time came. Why else would the servant have the gall to turn the whole thing on the Master and insult Him to his face?
In addition to accusing Him of being cruel, he also accused the Master of being lazy. I don’t think he was accusing the Master of stealing that which everybody knew belonged to the Master. He was accusing Him of being lazy. He was accusing Him of living off the labor of others. This accusation was designed to make the Master feel guilty for holding him accountable. It was a defense mechanism designed to conceal the real truth.
Not that I think that the servant didn’t at least partly believe in what he was saying. While it was clear that he was not really afraid of the Master, I DO think he really felt that the Master did not really understand the difficulty of the job he had been put in. It’s easy to feel that way about an employer some-times, isn’t it?
The question is whether or not the servant was right in that accusation. Does man do all the work while God takes all the credit? In the context of Christian service, we might say, “God, I’m sick of serving you, because whenever I work hard in your kingdom, you are the one who gets all the credit in church! Everybody’s praising you instead of me!”
The servant could no longer get excited about seeing His Master glorified. He saw the Master as being selfish and lazy and thus undeserving. Is that the way our Master is?
Even though the parable only poses the question, I think that is by design, too. I think the question of the parable is would be answered later by the essence of the gospel itself. Our God is not lazy and uninvolved. The incarnation proves it. Christ’s suffering and death on the cross proves it. Our salvation and sanctification prove it. Christ is now in us, and we are in Christ. We labor, yes, but according to His labors within us. One day our glorification will prove it as well.
Our God is not the liberal’s god of the endless handout. Somebody must work so that there be something to give. And He is not the Deist’s uninvolved god either. He is not just sitting up there waiting to judge us. He is a generous Giver. God is giving and God is working. He is not selfish or lazy.
It is this kind of servant who is the selfish and lazy one. He didn’t want to put out any effort for what did not immediately benefit him. He is in Christian service primarily for what he can get out of it for himself. He is really interested in the visible resources and the visible results. He has no faith for the eventual rewards. So he is the poster child for the health and wealth gospel. In other words, he accused the Master of being like he was himself. We often project ourselves and our own motives onto others and that’s what I think he did.
The basic problem the servant had was that he did not have a true understanding of who the Master was. He misread Him at every turn. Show me a person with Christian burnout, and I’ll show you a person who is viewing God in much this same way. I think there are a whole lot of people out there like that.