Stewardship: Dedicate It
Here is the second thing to do with your money.
2. Dedicate it.
Proverbs 3:9-10: Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. Did you catch the first word of this passage? Honor. That means to give weight to, set aside as the top priority, don’t forget it. Give honor to God with your money. As soon as you get it, remind yourself that it is not yours. When Proverbs mentions wealth it isn’t talking about the day you become a millionaire. It is just talking about your stuff – your paycheck, your apartment, your car, your DVD collection, your sweet video game suite, your computer, all your stuff. Give proper weight to God first.
Remember, it isn’t yours to begin with. God, your Master, is appointing you to distribute it according to his directions. So make sure you are honoring your Master by first dedicating all of it to Him.
Stewardship: Earn It
So what do we do with money? If all of it belongs to God, and he has established us as his stewards, what does he tell us to do with it? He has not left us without instructions. He has given us careful, detailed directions for how to handle his money in a way that honors Him. Here is the first of those directions.
- Earn it. We have to get money if we are going to steward it, and to get money we should earn it. It isn’t wrong to make money; it isn’t wrong to make lots of money. In fact there are men and women in Scripture who are noted as people of wealth, both from the Old Testament and the New Testament. Here is how the father in Proverbs tells his son to make money:
- Earn it through faithfulness. Proverbs 28:20: A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished. Proverbs 13:11: Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. For many of you in my parents’ generation you are thinking in your minds right now, “Amen! That’s true!” And for many of us in my generation you are thinking, “Ahhh, crud. Even the Bible says that. I thought it was just my grandma.” I know I definitely don’t like to read that in Scripture. I want it to say, “Be faithful to God and he will suddenly give you millions of dollars.” Bing! Bang! Boom! I am done with work and toil and waking up to go to the office. But God tells us that we must earn our money through faithful, ongoing work.
- Earn it through hard work. Proverbs 14:23: In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. Furthermore, consider Proverbs 13:4: The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. Talking about getting a job doesn’t get you a job. Talking about your dream self-started business that is going to make you millions doesn’t make you millions. Hard work leads to profit. Hard, tenuous, toilsome, tough, painful, laborsome, back-breaking, sleep-missing, sometimes-wish-you-could-fire-your-boss, sometimes-wish-the-lottery-odds-were-better kind of work is what leads to profit. The soul of the diligent is richly supplied. Be diligent and work hard.
- Earn it with great caution. Proverbs 23:4-5: 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. We have all experienced this, right? You get a paycheck and it is gone in a moment to this bill, that bill, that debt, this debt, this meal, that meal. It seriously took wings and flew away.
This is the balance to the hard work described earlier. Don’t kill yourself or your family because you work too hard. Your paycheck will be gone soon. Do not put your trust in your money or your paycheck.
Stewardship: Intro
[Recently, I had the opportunity to preach for our church, again. This time I was charged to share about stewardship, specifically financial stewardship. I will post the transcript from that message in the coming days. Please note: it was a very practical message.]
Introduction: I don’t know if you realized it when you woke up this morning, but today is a workday…kind of. We are talking about stewardship this morning. Before you immediately check out, though, please know that this isn’t about you giving more money to our church. God has been very gracious to our church; we are financially stable for our stage of life. We aren’t preaching on money because we need you to rescue us from a crisis we are in. So we aren’t after your checkbooks for church’s sake. We are after your checkbooks for Jesus’ sake.
Stewardship is a big church word. You might be wondering what that word means and where it comes from. Let me explain briefly and then zoom in especially on money. A steward comes from the Greek word oikonomos. It specifically refers to the manager of someone else’s property and stuff. In the Roman world – which included masters and slaves, large estates and people to run those large estates – the masters of a household would set up someone who actually ran the place. While the master would be working at work, the steward would be responsible to take care of paying the bills, distributing an allowance to kids, making sure other slaves finished their jobs, keeping the house in excellent condition, and in many ways calling the shots. Paul said it was absolutely essential for stewards to be trustworthy (1 Corinthians 4:2). Why is that? Because stewards were entrusted with all that the master had. Their decisions had a large impact on the success of the master’s family, house, and business. They basically managed life for their masters. It wasn’t their own stuff; they didn’t own anything. But they were responsible for just about everything.
So when God begins to talk about how we handle the green stuff, the cash, the checkbook, the paychecks, our purchases and expenses and bills…when God begins to talk about that stuff, what word does he use to describe us? Stewards. His stewards. God is the benevolent, kind, loving Master who owns everything, and we are the servants he has appointed to manage his resources. We are God’s stewards. Today we want to look specifically at how we steward money.
Money is one of the biggest parts of your life. I don’t have to tell you that it literally affects everything you do or don’t do. It affects how you feel about your job, your family, and your future. It affects what you buy or don’t buy. It affects where you move or don’t move. It affects what house you live in, what car you drive, when you get married, where you go on dates, how long you stay at your current job, what kind of degree you get. It affects so much of our lives. But most importantly, money affects our worship of Jesus Christ. Let me say that one more time: money affects our worship of Jesus Christ. It does. Jesus himself said, “No man can serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can not serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). That is shocking. Jesus, in essence, is saying that money wants to be your master, but God must be your master. Money makes a painful master. So we must see ourselves as stewards who use God’s money in the way God, our Master, wants us to use it.
So what do we do with money? If all of it belongs to God, and he has established us as his stewards, what does he tell us to do with it? He has not left us without instructions. He has given us careful, detailed directions for how to handle his money in a way that honors Him. I want to point out 6 of those directions.
