Some have been wondering.
Some have been asking.
Some may have even been speculating.
About what?
How long can he go without?
How long can he go without it?
Without what?
If you did not know, it is written into the fabric of my DNA, into my unique nature, into who I am that I must teach, study, or preach from these powerful verses at least twice a year. So far this year, that hasn’t happened, but don’t worry, before the year is out, I will be ahead of schedule.
This is the first of three messages about Christian Stewardship in which I will reference the Parable of the Talents. I will frame stewardship in three general areas: time, talents, and treasure. I was going to use time, talents, and money, but treasure is more encompassing, and just plain sounds better.
Some people hear the word stewardship think, “Here comes the money speech.” Well, money is addressed in Christian Stewardship, but if money is our only consideration, then we have been cheated.
Cheated out of what?
Purpose.
Freedom.
Good works.
Bringing glory to God.
Personal blessings.
Enriched relationships.
Love.
Life.
Now ignoring or truncating stewardship to just money won’t deprive us of our salvation, but it sure takes a chunk out of abundant life.
For everything that we do should be done in response to God’s love—his grace that we know through Christ Jesus. We have considered this several times previous: worship, communion, sacraments, freedom, and good works are all done in response to God’s love.
He loved us first.
He loves us more.
His love is more than we can comprehend.
So we go second. We are privileged to respond to God’s love. Stewardship is responding to God’s love with gratitude by sharing all of God’s gifts with others.
Let’s consider the parable.
After a long time, the master returned to settle accounts.
What is a long time?
· 5 minutes at a traffic light
· 5 hours in labor
· 5 days waiting for Fall Break
· 5 weeks waiting for my rebate from the cell phone company
· 5 months waiting to be seen by a specialist
· 5 years waiting for an enlistment to be up
· 5 decades waiting to retire
· 5 generations before peace returns to today’s battlefields
· 5 centuries to see if the Grand Experiment is a success
The master was gone for a long time. The first two servants put their talents to work immediately. They put their money to work; they didn’t put it on the 60:1 long shot at the track to make a quick fortune. They didn’t double their money overnight.
We know this parable is about more than money. It is about being good, productive stewards of everything we have been given: talent, abilities, Spiritual Gifts, money, resources, position, influence, and every other good gift from above.
We have considered the question which the first two servants surely knew they would be asked: What did you do with what I gave you?
In the parable, the servants don’t even have to be asked. They come and present their account to their master without any prompting. They knew when he returned that he would settle accounts. He returned. They made their accounting to him and he was very pleased.
They did more than put the money in the bank and earn interest. We know from the master’s remarks to the third servant that this would have been at least minimally acceptable. These first two servants, however, put the talents to work. We don’t know exactly what they did, but it doubled the money with which they had been entrusted.
If you invest, or start your own business, or buy and sell commodities, there is daily work involved. It may not be heavy lifting, but you can’t turn your back on your investment. Markets change overnight. Whether it is a dot.com crash or an emerging empire uprooting your well-established trade routes, you have to keep up with your investment.
So it is also with our gifts, talents, and abilities other than money. We are to put them to work immediately but with the realization that our Master may not come to settle accounts for a long time.
He might be here tomorrow. I hope he could put it off until October or November when we are handing out coats and food baskets. I would like him to come back and catch us in the middle of doing something wonderful, but he may be here tomorrow.
This is insight into the paradox as to how we are to live.
We are to put our talents to use like there is no tomorrow and we are to live as if it will be a long time before our Master comes to settle accounts.
We are to act with urgency while concurrently living with the perseverance to sustain ourselves and our ministry for a long, long time.
We are to be ready for our Master’s return, yet not anxious for anything.
We are to live like it’s 4th and 1 and but have life like it’s 1st and 10.
Urgency without anxiousness
Fearful of God and fearless in the world
Excellence without obsessiveness
Working tirelessly without growing tired
Being poured out but always being filled
Sometimes we ask, how much more does God expect me to do?
The answer is less than you might think, but more than you can imagine.
For our Master wants to reward us upon his coming but wants us living fully when he arrives.
In the desert, God’s chosen people received their bread daily except for the day prior to the Sabbath. We can only live this day. We should not worry about how many challenges the future holds—tomorrow has enough challenges of its own. God only wants us to live this day as fully as we can by using what he has given us to please him as much as we can.
And we need to observe a Sabbath—a day dedicated to God and to our rest, so we can sustain ourselves for as long as it takes to accomplish what God has in store for us.
As we try to look upon our life and consider how we will manage it all, it appears complex. As we face life one day at a time with God, it is a wonderful journey where paradox after paradox reveals truth.
We must put our talents to use at once and continue to use them day by day until our Master comes to settle accounts—for as long as that takes.
As we use what God has given us, we are wise to consider:
That tomorrow is not promised to us. Eternity is promised, but not tomorrow. And the trust placed in us, the rewards we receive, and the greater purpose given to us for eternity hinges greatly on what we do today. The day itself is entrusted to us. What will we do with it?
"Four things come not back: The spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, the neglected opportunity."
Arabian Proverb
Now to that I have also added the Facebook post, but our immediate focus is that we can live only in one direction. We go forward. While Cher may sing it, we can’t do it. We can’t turn back time.
When we look at time from a stewardship perspective, we ask: “How will I invest the time God has given me?” This is in contrast to saying, “How are you going to spend your time.”
I haven’t spent any time reading my Bible for the past few decades.
What’s that? A preacher who doesn’t read his Bible? That’s not what I said.
I have invested hundreds of hours in reading the Bible. And it is a good investment. It never returns void. It always brings a return.
When I read my Bible, I know that I have put my time to work.
When I pray, I have put my time to work.
When I write, I have put my time to work.
When I worry, I have wasted my time.
When I relive past hurt, I have wasted my time.
When I hold a grudge, I dilute the value of the time I am trying to put to use.
Time is a resource like no other, but a tangible resource none the less.
What will we do with the time that God gives us?
Now God’s time and our time are two different currencies and the exchange rate varies. The psalmist compared a thousand years in our time to a day in the Lord’s time. The market must have changed quickly back then because in the next stanza, six thousand years of our time was only a day to the Lord.
God exists in eternity and we are living on Tulsa Time. And when we are waiting for God to answer our prayers, sometimes it seems like a thousand years. Sometimes it seems like six thousand years.
We are dwelling on something with an “Are we there yet?” mindset when we should be living with an attitude that says, “I’m going to make this minute count.”
We are on this earth for only a short time. James tells us in his letter to the Jews scattered about the know world, that we are just a mist. We are here briefly and then we are gone. We are just a vapor.
We must learn to number our days. We must value the precious time we have been given.
Valuing our time gives us permission to say “no.”
It gives permission to say “no” without feeling like we must provide an extended apology.
We can surely be polite but we need not apologize for saying “no” to things that do not coincide with our God-given purpose.
Are you going to the races tonight? No. ‘Nuff said.
Are you subscribing to the “Direct TV all you can eat football package?” No.
“Wanna text?” No.
There’s nothing wrong with going to the races, watching football games, or texting, but you may decide not to give your time to them. And you can do so without extensive explanation.
We value our time and we value how we invest it.
Does that mean that we can never fall asleep in our recliner watching a movie or a football game?
No. Rest and relaxation and recreation are good things and good investments of our time.
Talking with friends is a good investment of time.
Sitting on a beach and considering the majesty of a God who told the ocean it could come this far is a good investment of time.
We put our time to work to bring glory to God and to enrich the relationship we have with him and with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
That can be many things, but we never devalue our time. Killing time is a term not welcome in our vocabulary.
What are you doing? “Killing time.”
Ouch! Let’s substitute some other commodities for time.
What are you doing? “Burning money.”
What are you doing? “Shredding stocks. They keep going up and down and I’m just tired of them.”
What are you doing? “Turning my cattle lose. I’ve got too many anyway.”
Anyone up for killing a few hours? I didn’t think so.
Worship, work, study, rest, relaxation, singing, writing, reading, sharing, talking, listening, exercising, skipping, shouting, and praising the Lord are all wonderful things to do so long as they are considered investments of our time.
Before the proctor of a test says begin, she often says: “Use your time wisely.”
As we consider the time given us, let us consider how we will use it to produce a good return on investment for our Master. Perhaps taking a moment to consider the stewardship of time from the perspective of others will better equip us to be good stewards of our time.
Be careful to make a good improvement of precious time. David Brainerd
Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself; it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others. Oswald Chambers
The world asks, "What does a man own?" Christ asks, "How does he use it?" Andrew Murray
At the end of your life on earth you will be evaluated and rewarded according to how well you handled what God entrusted to you. Rick Warren
We are called to take time and improve upon it as if it were a piece of land that needed to be cultivated.
We are reminded that we really can’t hoard anything for ourselves or it rots.
We always give God our best—our first fruits—and that includes the best of our time.
It’s not about how much we started with, but what we did with what we had.
It’s about wanting to give an account of how we used our time, instead of dreading the day of accounting.
There are 86,400 seconds, 1,440 minutes, or 24 hours in every day.
Knowing that we are to bring glory to God and enjoy our relationship with him as much as we can, how will we invest our time?
Will our Master settle accounts with us by saying, “Well done good and faithful servant?”
Let us live so that we look forward to our day of accounting and it will be a day that we are invited to share our Master’s joy and happiness.
6.10 Christian stewardship acknowledges that all of life and creation is a trust from God, to be used for God's glory and service. It includes the conservation and responsible use of natural resources as well as the creative use of human skills and energies. These gifts of God are to be shared with all, especially with the poor.
6.11 The motive for Christian stewardship is gratitude for God's abundant love and mercy, accompanied by the desire to share all of God's good gifts with others.
6.12 God gives to the human family a variety of gifts, including gifts to each person for which each person has responsibility. God desires that each person engage in the mutual sharing of these gifts so that all may be enriched.
6.13 Proportionate and regular giving of all that God entrusts to the human family is an act of devotion and a means of grace. Giving to and through the church is the privilege of every believer. Tithing as a scriptural guide for giving, is an adventure of faith and a rich and rewarding practice. The tither not only experiences the grace of God but even the grace of sharing.
6.14 All believers are responsible to God and to the covenant community for their stewardship.
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