Kathy and I were in Houston last weekend to celebrate a Sunday School Class that spawned a series of smaller groups and to thank the woman who sponsored us when we were young, immature, Christians. We joined the Carpenters Class the Sunday after we returned from our honeymoon. It was in the Carpenters Class, which included and spawned many small groups, that we first learned about Christian marriage, Christian child-raising, and how to manage our money. Members of that class were a part of our first Crown Ministry study on Christians and their money. Members of that class helped us with our first attempt at budgeting, tithing, and planning for retirement. We have been with each other in times of joy and in times of sorrow, in success and in failure, in good times and bad, in hard times and in easy times.

This group and its members have enriched my life in many ways. We Americans like to think of ourselves as independent individuals. We are individuals, but the individuals we become is powerfully impacted for good or ill be people with whom we share out lives. In our case, in every area of life, we have been blessed with friends and small groups of friends that helped us be faithful spouses and faithful stewards of the gifts God has given to us.

Our Call to a Life of Stewardship

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a series of parables concerning the Kingdom of God and our responsibility as citizens of that Kingdom. [1]When confronted by the Gospel and the gracious invitation of God to receive his gracious offer to become citizens of the Kingdom of God, some people reject it. Some people don’t reject God’s offer, but they fail to become very good citizens of that Kingdom. They fail to be constantly filled with the Spirit, live a careful life of stewardship of their time, talent and energy, and don’t care much for those who are suffering. [2] Today, we are going to be visiting about the parable of the Talents. Hear the word of God as it comes to us from Matthew 25:14-30:

For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘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.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘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.’ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. 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.’

Prayer: Eternal God, You are indeed the owner of everything and you have graciously bestowed upon us the privilege of being placed in Charge of your creation. Use this meditation to enable us to become better stewards of your riches. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Today, I want to give my readers there short principles that can help us in managing our money:

Principle One: We are Stewards not Owners!

When I began writing the little two week devotional that goes with the next two sermons we are having in Bay Village, Ohio, I was struck by the relevance of today’s text. All of us want to be “good and faithful servants” and none of us want to be a “lazy and wicked servant” of Jesus. If we do not, then we need to learn a few things. Although the text is about all of life stewardship, all of our time, talents, energy, and money, it not insignificant that Jesus told the parable about money. [3]

We human beings were created for stewardship (Gen.1:28-30; 2:13). From the beginning, God intended us to be careful, diligent, hard working stewards of Creation. Of course, because of the Fall, we are not able to fully become the good stewards God intended us to be. Nevertheless, by the grace of God, we can become much better stewards than we are today!

Many years ago now, Kathy and I went through what became the great oil and gas and real estate collapse in Texas. Up to that time, we had never really had to think seriously about how God would have our finances managed. Then, my income fell, we had three and then four small children, business was not good, and we were in debt. It was at that moment that we began to tithe and to study how we could better manage our finances. One of the members of that Sunday School Class and I were in a small group Bible study together, and he mentioned to me the Christian writer Ron Blue. I purchased Ron Blue’s book and began attempting to put our financial house in order. [4]

The first step I had to take was to recognize that my income, house, cars, bank accounts, possessions, etc. were gifts of God, no matter how hard I had worked to get them. This gets me to the first step we must all take in the life of stewardship: we have to recognize that everything we have, no matter how hard we work or how smart we are or how diligently we plan, everything is a gift of God. We don’t own our lives; we are given them. We are born by God’s grace, we live by God’s grace, we have the abilities and talents we have by God’s grace, and we get the breaks in life we get by God’s grace. Therefore, we are all called to manage those gifts out of the gratitude we feel to a loving God for all he has given to us, however much or little that is.

Principle 2: We Will Never Become Good Stewards unless we Take Stock.

Jesus was, among other things, the wisest teacher in the history of the world. Sometimes we forget that he was both the Wisdom and the Love of God in human form. One of my favorite of his parables goes like this:

For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish” (Luke 14:28-30).

In America, we rarely run out of money when we’re building a new house. We borrow the money from the bank. But in the ancient world, and in much of the world today, people have to build their houses as they earned the cash to do so. Those of us who have traveled in third world countries have seen many half-built houses. Jesus and his hearers would have been familiar with many such homes. In Jesus’s world, only a fool began to build a home that he was unable to complete.

In managing our financial affairs, many of us don’t take that first step of wisdom. We don’t figure out where we are, and we don’t plan and budget so that we can get where we want to go. This is the second point of the day:  If we want to become better stewards of our resources, the first thing we have to do is take stock of where we are and what we can afford!

If Kathy were here today, she would tell you that for a guy that has limited mathematical ability, I am capable of creating an enormous number of spreadsheets. Many years ago, before I knew how to use a computer, I purchased and accountant’s tablet and begin the painful process of creating a balance sheet and income and expense statement for our family. I even created a first basic future financial plan for retirement. Once we had a computer, I begin to use a computer program that no longer exists! Today most of the time I use Excel . I’ve learned it for free I can download almost any kind of template I need to plan retirement, create a budget, find out what our assets are, and solve any other financial problem I want to think about if I look hard enough. For those of you who don’t want to look, there are a lot of programs out there. [5]

I guarantee you that there is not a single person in this room with less native mathematical ability than I have!  If my High School Math teachers were here today, they would stand up with one voice and declare that I have no mathematical ability. However, after years of hard work, I taught myself what I need to know–and so can anyone else in this room.  Figuring out where we are and making a budget and plan does not take a lot of ability, it just takes a lot of hard work and concentration.

Principle 3: We Will Never Save or Give Unless we find Contentment.

Sometimes, people think that pastors are exempt from the feelings that ordinary people have. That’s just not true, especially when your pastor used to be a lawyer! This is where I get to make a confession: I’ve always wanted a Jaguar.  Like all men, I like cars. I even like fast and expensive cars, even though I’m one of the slowest drivers on the face of the planet. When I was a lawyer, I used to think that people made fun of me because I drove less expensive cars than the other members of the firm. It always made me feel inferior. About two or three years after I buy any car, I passed by a new Jaguar and I begin to wish I could have one. It is then I have to remember to be content with what I have!

This is the third and last principle I want to lift up for you this morning:  We will never live within our means, save, or develop generosity until and unless we learn to be content with what we have! In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus puts it this way:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matthew 6:25-34).

When I began this week’s sermon, I learned that the Greek word for lazy has within it the element of fear. [6] The lazy servant was a fearful servant who did not know or trust in the loving care of God for his people and so is not enabled by grace to live in the Spirit of Wisdom and Love. He failed to see the love and mercy, the grace of God, and so fearfully hid his talents. That is why he was not faithful. The same can be true of us. Until we can accept the loving care of our Heavenly Father, we will always worry about and misuse money.

Our society is restlessly materialistic. It’s also restlessly anxious and fearful. As Christians, we can give no better witness to our faith then to live joyfully and contently with what we have. This does not mean that we don’t work hard, plan for the future, try to earn more, or enjoy the good things of life. It means that today we are content with what we have today. Therefore we are not filled with worry.

Conclusion

I’ve been a Christian for more than thirty years, a Christian leader for almost as long, and a pastor for a quarter of a century. I can testify that how we handle our money impacts our marriages, our level of anxiety, our happiness, our health, and our ability to withstand the inevitable difficulties of life, and our future happiness on this earth and in the world to come, I suspect. Financial issues sit behind many divorces and other problems in our society. Therefore, it is important that Christians learn to manage our finances wisely.

Those of you that are in small groups may want to talk about the contents of the devotional and of the sermons for the next two weeks. If you’re not in a small group, please try to take advantage of our emphasis this month and next month on small groups. After Easter, you might want to think about doing a Crown Ministry study with your group or another group. [7]

Most of us think of the life of stewardship as a remnant of the law: Something to remind us of how far short we fall and how sinful we are. There is an element of truth in this. The Torah (Law or instructions of God) was given as a standard by which we may judge ourselves. But, that aspect can blind us to a deeper reality: The life of stewardship is just a part of the life of grace. We will never be the stewards God calls us to be until and unless we open our hearts and allow the grace of God to fill us with the power to be the people God has called us to be.

Amen

Copyright 2018, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] These parables are: the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt. 25:1-13), the Parable of the Talents (vv. 14-30), and the Parable of the Sheep and Goats (vv. 31-46).

[2] The variances of responses to the Gospel are a constant theme in Jesus’ teaching. The parable of the four soils (or “Sower” s it is sometimes known) is about these different responses. See, Mark 4:1-20). In Matthew 25, we are confronted with the problem of foolishly forgetting to be filled with the Holy Spirit and constantly watchful (the Parable of the Ten Virgins), the problem of being poor stewards (The Parable of the Talents), and the problem of being so concerned with our own affairs that we do not attend to the suffering of others (the Parable of the Sheep and Goats).

[3] Carl Blomberg, “Matthew” in The New American Commentary vol. 25 (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 1992), 375.

[4] Ron Blue, Master Your Money: A Step By Step Guide for Experiencing Financial Contentment (Nashville, TN: Thomas and Nelson, 1986, 1991, 1997, 2004, 2016).

[5] Most people are familiar with quicken and other basic programs. There are so many that I am not going to note them all. The advent of tablet computers has spawned numerous apps that can be purchased or downloaded. They are all good if a person will use them. Just take the time to find the one you will use.

[6] Craig L. Blomberg, “Matthew” in the New American Commentary, footnote 3 above at 373-375.

[7]Crown Financial Ministries is one of the best programs and the one used at Bay Presbyterian Church. In my former congregation, the leadership preferred Dave Ramsey. What you do is not nearly as important as doing something. See, Crown Financial Ministries at https://www.crown.org/ and Dave Ramsey at www.daveramsey.com. Each of these organizations has multiple programs for different groups.