A steward is one who overseas the possessions of another,
taken care of. For us as Christian stewards,
it's taken care of and managing what God has loaned to us.
And that's our life, it's our finances, that's our time, all
of that. So stewardship begins with
acknowledging God's ownership over everything.
We are not the owners, but managers entrusted with his
possessions. Someone once said owners have
rights, stewards have responsibilities, God is the
owner. Psalm 24 verse one says the
earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and they that
dwell therein. So it's all owned by God.
And so besides the finances, though I talked about
stewardship of time, we are to be wise with our time, which is
a gift from God. The days are short and we are
called to use them purposefully for His glory.
Ephesians 5/15/16 says See then that ye walk circumspectly, not
as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are
evil. Another Scripture, Psalm 90,
verse 12 says, so teach us to number our days that we may
apply our hearts unto wisdom. So when I think about time,
there's a couple ways you you can look at look at time as a
Christian. OK, are we we tithing our time?
So if we tithe our time, well, there's 168 hours in a week.
OK, well then we're, we, what do we, we give God 17 hours.
And so if you look at it that way, well, 17 hours, that's not
a whole lot. But you know, you go to church,
say 5 hours on Sunday between Sunday school, church and Sunday
evening church, two more hours Wednesday, 2 hours on Saturday.
OK, you're down to, you know, 8-9 hours.
Then you think of devotions in the morning.
So maybe that's 6-7 more hours. So you still have a couple
hours. OK, So what would you do with
those two hours? Well, at least maybe spend the
time more in Bible study or prayer.
But another way to look at really look at it is you have
168 hours in the week. If you sleep 8 hours a night,
that's 56 hours you work. If you're working, you work 8
hours, 840 hours. So you're down to 170 ish or 70
hours and then your church time and then your commute time and
all that you so you have a lot more time than just that 17 hour
tithe of your weekly hours. So there's a lot more time and
we should probably be spending doing a lot more for the Lord
than we do. I know I waste a lot of time.
God doesn't want us to waste that time.
So if you think about it, just be thinking about ways you can
control your time, know where you're spending your time, look
at where you're wasting your time and should you be doing
something for the Lord when you're wasting time, It's easy
to waste time on the computer. You know, YouTube, it's you
start watching animal videos or whatever, it's, it's easy to
waste a lot of time. So, so be thinking about that.
The other thing is the stewardship of talents.
God gives every person unique gifts, abilities, and spiritual
gifts. As good stewards, we are
expected to use these talents to serve others and to build up the
Kingdom of God. Oh, and I meant to mention I
have most of these verses typed out so you don't necessarily
have to look it up, but I am going to read first Peter 410 in
a minute here and I don't have that one typed down, so I got to
look that up. But when I think of the talents,
you know, it can be talents with an instrument in the orchestra.
It could be the IT the choir or whatever, teaching a Sunday
school class. So it my question to you about
that is, are you supposed to be in the choir or are you supposed
to be in the orchestra playing in history?
If you play an instrument, you're supposed to be doing that
for the Lord. Only the Lord can tell you that.
So if you, if God wants you to be doing that, you ought to do
it. We, we still have a little more
room for our choir up here. So, and we definitely have room
in the orchestra. And if you play an instrument, I
think, I think Bill plays a juice Harper.
So don't you? So, so he's going to get up in
the, in the orchestra with the juice Harper.
We'll do that. That'll be great.
That would be exciting to have him up there, but when I think
it's abilities, I was thinking about Todd and up here doing
sign language and he was going to be my illustration.
And of course I thought he was going to be here so I could joke
with him about it. But the Lord had better plans
for him. He's in heaven.
So. And, you know, the Bible tells
us, I was thinking about that and this was not part of my
lesson, but it just came to my mind that the, you know, the
Bible tells us that God's going to wipe away all tears in
heaven. And so I think probably, you
know, Todd's happy. He's he's there with Jesus, but
he probably has some sadness because he knows that we're sad
because he's not here. So yeah, we just just that just
popped in my head anyway, that was not part of my illustration.
But I think it's Todd giving his time.
But it was something ability that he had to sign language and
he was spreading the gospel and sharing the gospel through song.
Each choir, each choir. And I wasn't here last Sunday
and I came in after because I had been sick and I didn't want
to share it. So I came in after the
fellowship time. And so last week he signed I'll
fly away. So he got to fly away this week.
But anyway, so that's just a couple areas that stewardship of
our time, stewardship of our talents.
And it's important that we use those things for God.
Now we'll we'll get to what we typically think of stewardship
as as money. And as I thought of that too,
I'm just thinking, you know, we have a, we have a pretty full
auditorium, especially Sunday mornings.
And we, we really need to be making sure we're, we're doing
what we're supposed to be doing with our finances.
Because, you know, I know God can do a miracle and give us a
building or give us the property, but under ordinary
circumstances is going to be the church that is paying for the
property or the new building. So it's important for us to be
right with our money and making sure that we're doing what God
wants us to do with our ties and offerings.
The tithe Bible tells us the tithe in, in Leviticus and
Deuteronomy, multiple places, you know, that the Israelites
were giving tithes and offerings of their, their animals and
everything like that. And it tells us that it, it'll
say what they're what they're tithing and it say it is, it's
the Lord's, that's the tithe is the Lord's.
And that's easy. It's an easy thing, easy thing
to teach, especially your, your kids start when they're young.
You know, if they go mow somebody's yard, they make, they
make $10 whatever a dollar goes in offer, they should give it.
Just get them in the habit of giving.
It's an easy, simple thing. 10% is Lord said they make $10 give
a dollar to the Lord. Then we should use our money
wisely as well. It's not just it's not just
giving, it's what we do with the rest that we have leftover.
We don't want to waste our money.
Let me, I'm think I'm getting ahead of myself here, so let me
just slow down. The purpose of stewardship is to
manage the owners resources so that we already talked about God
owns everything. So everything belongs to God.
Though we have that we may have worked hard to earn what we
possess. It is God's and it is God that
gives us the ability to do the work to earn what we have.
I think about, I think like our house when we moved here and
then we bought a house and we, our house is too big for us.
It really is. But we did that on purpose
because we have extra bedrooms, extra bath.
And so when Pastor Whitaker's here, if the house, somebody
else is in the house, and we had a couple of pastors here, you
know, the pastors can come to your house and stay.
Missionaries that are coming through, you know, when we need
that, we have the room for them to stay.
And so we did it and we've always done that as we were back
in Indiana as well. We always had extra room for
someone to stay with us. And it's a blessing.
It's a blessing for your kids to see that and they get to meet
these people that are out serving the Lord all over the
world. You know, it's not just when
you're in church, when you're in your home, it's a little bit,
you know, a little bit different, little more relaxed
and you really get to know people.
And so if you have an opportunity to do that, use your
home for that and God will bless you for that.
Our vehicles. So right now our bus ministry is
not growing and we can't really, we don't have the room to really
grow it like we'd like to see it grow someday.
But we used, yeah, I drove a bus for a long time.
And then, and I'm not trying to brag on myself, I'm just telling
you how how we can use the things that God gives us.
So we had what we would, we would call shuttle cars.
So when I wasn't driving a bus, then I would be going where the
bus can't go, picking up people in the car and bringing them to
the bus. And so, and we never had
problems doing that. And I, I mean, I was always
like, well, I hope this the kids aren't all muddy and, and
they're not getting their treats all over the seats.
But you know, you'd think those things, but you know, God bless.
And in the way he often blesses, whether it's with our giving of
our money or giving using our house or cars, things are our
time. It's not always like giving and
Oh yeah, God's going to bless me financially.
It's not always that it's, it's blessing in other ways.
It's blessing maybe seeing somebody saved or seeing
somebody come to church with you.
So it's a it's a lot of other ways that God blesses us.
So another area or purpose of stewardship is to multiply the
owner's resources. So how do we multiply God's
resources? Well, we can't do anything with
the trees and the animals and things like that.
But but I, I think 1 area and Brian and I were talking about
this yesterday by making sound investments.
So sometimes God gives us money that we have and he may not want
it right. He may not want it right now in
the offering plate or anything like that.
But you can waste that money or you can invest it for a later
use where we may need a large offering for the building fund
or we may need something like that.
I had AI had an account from an old job and transferred it into
a Schwab trading account and I was just messing with it myself.
But that wasn't that's important money.
And so I was just messing with it myself and I would lose money
and then I would gain money and then lose and gain.
But I was always just kind of, it was just kind of like, you
know, down, up, down, up. So it was really kind of
wasteful with an investment that, you know, God still wants
us to take care of that. Excuse me, whether we're giving
it to him or holding it for the future when we may need it or he
may need it. So finally I was like, this is
crazy. I've I've just got.
So I got up to a certain level where I wanted it.
And then I said, I don't have time to mess with that.
So I put it with a, a guy that's taking care of our investment.
So, so we want to invest wisely, make sound investments.
I already mentioned this, but don't be wasteful.
So really think about your spending, what you spend your
money on that's above your tithe and offerings.
And I, I don't know, it's just you can just frivolous spending.
I mean, you can go out and maybe you should or shouldn't be going
out to eat at a really fancy restaurant and it's OK.
Nothing wrong with doing that. But maybe you're going to take a
fancy vacation and the Lord maybe doesn't want you to do
that in a particular year or something like that.
Just just think through your spending, how you spend your
money. And a good way to do that is to
be on a budget so you know where your money is going.
It's hard. I, I struggled for years and
I'll, I'm just going to tell you my own example.
We struggled for years. I tried to get out of budget and
our pastor back in Indiana was big on preaching on finances and
a budget was a big, a big deal to the, you know, and they did
like cash budget. And there's something called
envelope system. If you ever read any Dave Ramsey
stuff, that's what he, that's what he talks about.
And I tried for years, you know, all the time I was in school and
I accumulated a lot of debt, which that's another point.
Don't, don't be irresponsible with, with debt, overloading
yourself with debt. Well, I did that with school.
And so we had this big school loan when I got out of school.
And then I was making no money when I was first started in
practice. And we're just treading water.
And actually, my school loan was growing instead of getting paid
off because the government #1 when you have a government loan,
a professional loan, you don't have to pay anything back for
two years after you get out of your training.
But the interest keeps growing and the interest was 7 1/4% to
my, my school loan grew. So I got out of school with
$120,000 in debt, which is not big compared to today, but that
was a lot. It was a big school loan and
we're paying our work or no, I, I didn't pay because I was
making no money. It was first year or so,
whatever. And then when we did start
paying, we're making minimum payments.
So the minimum payment was still less than the accumulating
interest. So by the time I got to where I
was actually really paying on that loan, I was lost my train
of thought. By the time I got paying on the
loan really and making some principal payments, it had gone
up to 160 something $1000. So that's how fast interest can.
And that was, I mean, we just, we're treading water.
So my wife worked at the church while Sarah was growing up.
And once Sarah graduated from high school, she went back to
work a job. She worked for a law firm in
Chicago. She made really good money, but
we were still just, you know, making minimum payment and
making just a little bit of principal payment.
And that school loan was staying 160,000.
So finally after quite a few years, yeah, we have about 10
years after I was out of school and paying on that we're like my
Tammy was like, what are we doing and why am I working?
The whole reason I'm working so we can pay that school loan off.
So that was, this is 2011, almost 2012.
And so I went to school later, if you didn't know that I was in
my 30s, I don't, I was almost 40 years old when I got out of
school and I'm out of my residency.
And so we, we paid that or we start what we're paying, but
we're paying minimum. And then she's, she was kind of
upset. So finally I went back all those
years, I tried to get on a budget.
I don't, I don't know what happened, but it, it worked this
time it clicked. I said, we got to do this and we
got on the cash budget. And I'm not kidding.
So here it's 2012, 2016. I had that $166,000 school loan
paid off because we just got serious about it.
And then as soon as I like, we paid that loan off, Tammy went
to work, I think the next day she said, I'm, I'm quitting.
So I'm going to be quitting. So she gave her, she gave her
notice, but they said, could you stay for two months?
And so she worked two more months after this school loan
was paid off. But that was and all that to
talk about a budget and that being wise with God's money.
And so since then, we pretty much we've been on a budget.
It's it's easy. We did the envelope system and
you just, it just seems like you always have money.
I mean, and there's, you know what, what money's going where.
So your house payments in this envelope, your car payment.
The banks think you're funny because you're always, you're
bringing in a, you get a direct deposit and then as soon as you
get a direct deposit, you're going here withdrawing all this
cash. But but it works.
It works. And Dave Ramsey, I mean, I don't
agree with Dave Ramsey on everything, but he has a good
budgeting system. And if you file that, so it will
be a real help and a blessing to your family.
Anyway, that was extra. I don't know that was it's not
on my notes here, but it's OK. So by not by not becoming
irresponsibly overloaded with debt, kind of like a big school
loan. The way to get the best return,
however, on your investments is to give it right back to the God
that is investing our temporal dollars into God's eternal work,
especially when it helps people here and receive the gospel of
Jesus Christ. So really, that's what it's all
about. So that's why it's important to
really be praying about what God wants you to give.
Our financial resources are not ours, but gifts from God to be
managed wisely. This includes giving generously,
avoiding debt, saving money, and avoiding the love of money.
Proverbs 39 says Honor the Lord with thy substance, and with the
first fruits of all thine increase.
Matthew 624 says No man can serve 2 masters, for either he
will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to
the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon,
Mammon being money. Excuse me, I forgot my lozenges.
Malachi 310 says bring ye all the ties into the storehouse.
Storehouse being for us. Now this Malachi's Old
Testament. But this is the storehouse for
us is the church, that there may be meat in my house.
And prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not
open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing,
that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Christians who start tithing begin to see the blessings of
God. Tithing is where we start.
That's where we start and then, as you you see, got and when I
again, I'm not talking about necessarily financially
blessings, although sometimes that happens and I can only go
by my own experience, but we always gave and we we we were
always faithful with ties since we've been married with our ties
and offerings and I when I I remember when I first started
school, good lessons learned I had.
You know, I wasn't, I wasn't, I was working like every other
weekend or something like that or every weekend.
But I'm in school the rest of the week.
And that was school was like a job, you know, it was 40 hours a
week. I'm staying up all, you know,
late at night. But Tammy would go to bed, Sarah
would go to bed and I'd be up till two or three in the morning
studying. Then I'd get up at 7 and get on
the train, take train to Chicago.
Just used to 1st year I studied on the train.
Second, third, fourth year, I slept on the train, but I, I
learned that I can study at home and all that.
But so Christians who start tithing begin to see the
blessings of God. So what happened was we, you
know, we had been, we've been tithing still, even though I was
in school and worked a little bit, we, we were still tithing.
And it came at some point was like, man, I was out of, I was
just out of money. I mean, I had, I had nothing.
And however we had, before we moved to Indiana, we lived in
Alabama. And before we moved, I had, we
were considering building a house down there.
And I, I had bought a lot And out of the blue someone called
me said hey, and it wasn't, you know, I didn't pay very much for
that lot. It was 1/2 acre little lot in
this little country subdivision out of the blue.
And I'm like, man, I don't know how I'm going to pay these
bills, but the guy calls and says, hey, I want to buy your
lot. And he offered me twice as much
as I had paid for it. And I said, Oh yeah, we'll take
it. And I mean, I got to check like
really quick. That guy was really well, I
found out later was Mercedes-Benz was building a
assembly plant right by where that property was.
So it was probably worth a lot more than they'd pay me, but God
gave us what we needed and that that just seeing God take care
of us was just that's a huge blessing.
The other thing is when we moved here and I, I took a worked with
a practice and that practice just I had, I know what it was.
I would have stayed in Indiana for a few more years that but I
didn't know that, you know, and he they were hiring doctors.
I, there were three others besides me that got hired in 23
by the end of 23 that, that, that job, it just shut down.
He shut ten of our offices and put most of us out of work.
And so we ended up opening another practice.
But I had no income for five months.
This and you know, thankfully I hadn't been done with that for a
long time. So I didn't have that.
And, and then God took care of us and met our needs through all
that time. And so that's just a couple
areas where just being faithful, I think over the years, God
still takes care of him just because you have a, a degree.
You know what it's not, it's not always eat life's not easy.
And sometimes things happen and unexpected things like that was
totally unexpected. But, but man, God took care of
us good. And so that's, and I believe,
honestly, I believe it's for me by being faithful and, and
giving. And so that's important, Yeah.
But we need to understand that God blesses.
But it, like I said, it's not always financially, but often it
is. We're not giving an expectation
of receiving a financial blessing.
We should give because we love God.
That's why we give, and that's why we want to give and we want
to take care of the needs of the church.
So that's, you know, our pastor needs live, this is his, I don't
know how he puts a lot more than 40 hours a weekend that we do in
our jobs. So yeah, he we have to take, we
need to take care of him. I think we're going to have an
assistant pastor before you know it and we need to take care of
them and we need to take care of our ministries.
We have a lot of a lot of things going on for the size of church
we are, we have a lot of things going on.
So we need to make sure that those are all the materials that
we print, all of those things, the tracks, distribution of
those tracks, especially mailings, whatever it is, any of
the finances of church, we're it's our responsibility.
And we should feel that responsibility.
Just like when we're paying our electric bill at home, that's
our responsibility, our paying our house payment.
Well, this is our respect. If you're a member of this
church, this is your responsibility.
So we need to really, really take care of that, make sure
we're right with our giving, right doing what God wants us to
do. So ultimate I'm I'm faster than
Josh and Brian, so I'm almost done.
So I look at this a little little slower here.
I think I read this first. Let me every man according as he
purposes in his heart. So let him give not grudgingly
or of necessity for God loveth A cheerful giver as God prospers
us for keeping him first in our lives.
We give back to him according to his blessings, not because of
his blessings. We we should give because we
love Him and we're not giving an expectation of a monetary
blessing. 1st Corinthians 16 two says upon the first day of the
week, let everyone of you lay by him in store as God hath
prospered him, and that there be no gathering when I come.
That's Paul speaking to the church there.
Ultimately, biblical stewardship extends beyond just money,
beyond just time, beyond just talent.
It encompasses our entire being. We are bought with a price and
called to glorify God with our lives, and giving is just one
way that we can glorify God. First Corinthians 6/19/20 Say
what? Know ye not that your body is
the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have
of God, and ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price.
Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which
are gods. So that price that we were
bought with is the blood of Jesus Christ and we ought to
really love him, love God and show that with our generosity
toward the church and taking care of the needs of of our our
church. And I, I just think of the the
building situation. It's just going to be that's
going to be a big responsibility that we'll have.
And Lord willing, we keep growing and keep seeing we need
some rich doctors. That's all we need.
So, so, but I praise the Lord for his goodness and and giving,
but stewardship of every area of our life.
And so I hope that this blessing too and encouragement and we got
through it without too much difficulty here and help you
under understand where I'm coming from.
I'm not a I'm not a you know, I've actually never taught a
Sunday school class before as long as I've gone to church most
of my life and I had never taught.
I taught some children's junior church class and on the bus, but
I've never taught an adult adult Sunday school class.
So, so I hope that was on your level and not on just Alex's
level. All right, let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for your goodness to us.
We thank you for how you've blessed our church in a special
way and you've blessed our giving in a special way.
Lord, I see it on the bulletin each week.
And it's just so exciting to see that.
And we see how you take care of our needs.
We do have a big need with our, our building situation, Lord,
And you know that. And I pray God that you'd help
us, but help us to be cognizant of our other areas of our life,
Lord, that we need to be stewards of our time and, and
our talents. And, and Lord, that we would
give our lives to you and then allow you to bless us through
that. We thank you for our pastor.
I pray, Lord, that you would bless him and give him Miss
Becca safety as they're traveling home this week and
thankful that they had the opportunity to be there.
And pray you'd be with the Hamptons, especially.
Lord, just be close to him and comfort them and comfort our
church. Lord God was a special blessing
to us and we pray these things now in Jesus name, Amen.