On another note, I got a big box of books from CBD the other day (Christmas for me!) and I am excited to dive into another good pile of books. I am especially excited about Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck’s, “Why We Love the Church”. DeYoung and Kluck first authored, “Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be)”, which was probably my favorite read of all last year. I am looking forward to this title first because I appreciate DeYoung and Kluck’s writing… straightforward, honest, often humorous and a geniune love for the Word and it’s application to life. Secondly, I think this a topic that so desparately needs to be addressed in the culture we live in as we see a deeper secularization of people, churches and even some branches of Christianity while we attempt to navigate this world in the post-modern matrix. Anyway, anyway… I’m very eager to get into it. Also very excited to read my uncle’s book, “Meet Me for Breakfast” which is hot off the press. Conversational and devotional, I know it will be an encouragement to me, not only as I strive ahead in pastoral life, but as I seek to strive for “a long obedience in the same direction”. Biggest steal of the order, though, was I was able to pick up four classic pieces of Christian writing for under $18 because the were “damaged”. After examining them, I have yet to see what “damage” is evident. Anyway, I’ll take four books that should have been much more for pennies on the dollar. Titles include, “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas À Kempis, “The True Vine” by Andrew Murray, “Answers to Prayer” by George Mueller and “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life” by Hannah Whitall Smith. Pretty pleased.

Well for those who stop by faithfully, please be patient a little longer. I hope to get a post written soon! Thanks for reading and thinking with me!

I suggested that we may in fact be able to consider the stewardship of our resources as ‘currencies’ and of which there are three main currencies for which we are responsible: our finances, our aptitudes and abilities and our time. If we truly strip away the surrounding tissue of life, circumstances and how we serve God, we can begin to see our stewardship ‘budget’. In building the understanding of the topic, I really wanted to drive home the point that, much like a budget in which we operate our lives and businesses, if one area begins to lack, the other areas begin to hurt as well. It is the same… if we want to maintain healthy stewardship, we must understand that we must not only be responsible with our finances, but with EVERY ‘currency’ that God has blessed us with.

To illustrate, I expounded on the Parable of the Talents in Matthew (Matt. 25:14-30)… to the point that Jesus was trying to demonstrate to the crowd gathered that day that being a steward was not just about having something great, but about doing something great that honored the master. The reason that he entrusted these bondservants (indentured servants) with these vast sums of money* was of great intrigue to the crowd Jesus spoke to. It was to illustrate that we, too, are given some great things, things of immeasurable value that don’t belong to us….and we’re supposed to do something about it. Not for own earthly gain, but to “the Master’s joy” as shown in verse 21 and 22. When we use what’s been entrusted to our care improperly, or worse, not at all, to save our own tail or to bring us glory, the reward is despair and heartache.  Our true joy in stewardship, our reward is not that comes from making a bunch of money, or receiving acclaim from our exceptional abilities or being the best time-manager, it is the reward of joy and satisfaction that comes from honoring God by using what He has given to us to His glory.  It’s about hearing the Master say, “You’ve done well with what I left you, as I hoped you would and I have been honored.  You haven’t hold onto it too tightly… well done faithful friend!”   All these currencies have been entrusted to our care for now and are to return to God someday, HOW we use them in the here and now is the choice laid out before all of us.

As I prepare to continue with the sermon series, I am writing what will probably be the most challenging discussion of the three currencies… money. Because our lives (especially as Americans) are interwoven with money so tightly, it is an issue of utmost importance to discuss, but probably one of the hardest to navigate. I pray for both Godly wisdom and guidance as I navigate through the waters of biblical financial stewardship… yet I find encouragement in a quote from C.S. Lewis that I came across in study and in also reading (in what is one of my favorite books) Mere Christianity:

“One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can given and so fail to realize your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God.”

In truth, biblical stewardship is not really about money or ability or time at all… it’s about dependence… it’s about grace…  it’s about obedient love.

*Having a contextual understanding of what exactly Jesus is saying is of extreme importance in understanding this parable fully. The unit of money that a talent is equated to is approximately 20 years worth of wages and a bond-servant is much like an indentured servant, a person who works for no wage to either pay a debt or settle another’s debt. So to the first servant, a sum of 100 years of wages, to the second 40 years of wages and to the third 20 years of wages… or in terms of today’s value… $4.5 million, $1.8 million and $900,000 respectively. The point is Jesus was showing the amazing gap between resource and the man (in that day in age) in His example and by doing so, placed the emphasis no longer on the money or the man, but on WHAT was being done. As you can see by using the extreme examples, Jesus is able to show that we cannot value what we have as our own, but that we have a responsiblity to be faithful with what has been given… and in doing so, not only gives the the dynamics of biblical stewardship of our earthly resources, but the overtures of the Gospel and dynamic between grace and spiritual stewardship of our lives.

I’m serious…

What is it that causes us to judge for ourselves the value of a human being and then deem our extension of love and care to that person as “too important”? Before I dive too far into my thoughts here, I want to make a brief disclaimer, to those who would champion social gospel as the only gospel, we must be concerned with the glory and honor of God (i.e. we show Him love by our obedience to His word) when we consider the love we have for others… in the same vein, we cannot isolate ourselves in the splendor and glory of God for the sake of pure doctrine and neglect the cries of the hopeless because to do so would to stray from the biblical example that Jesus put before us. These two are one… we MUST love God and His glory and we MUST love other people as we love ourselves…

I have spent a considerable amount of time in my recent preaching attempting to establish the centrality of the love of God/love of others or “The Jesus Creed”, as author Scot McKnight calls it, as what is at the heart of our lives as Christians, as new creations in Jesus. (Matt. 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31; Luke 10:27) However, it is an easy thing to say, but is it really an easy thing to do? One of the most interesting things you notice is in the gospel of Matthew where it says all the Law and the prophets hang on these… What is Jesus implying here? It is this: If we cannot love God by our obedience and we cannot love others with an uncompromising love, then the rest won’t truly happen. This is fundamental! We cannot “get” the rest if we cannot “get” this… it is essential that we GET it.

On that thought line it seems to me that this is what generally occurs… we “see” too much. There is some deep truth in Brandon’s lyrics that can be passed off as whimsical turn-of-phrase, but it is true. We need to see others and our relationship with God through a lens that is not our own. When I say, “we see too much” I mean that it is easy to surmise that we see others’ sin and that is what turns us away (which is true to an extent), however, the staggering reality is that we continue to go back and look through the lens of our own sin and it jades what we see. A lot of times the problem is not that we are eager saints who just need help getting past the “icky-ness” of others faults, it’s that we’re sinners who fail to realize we were in the same boat. How the tables have turned! Yes we need to love those who are still in sin, but we cannot be as bold to think that we are so far removed from that! This grace is not of our own making, it is a gift and by it we need to realize that holiness is not a set of benchmarks to be attained, but it is a process by which we are growing in daily in humble obedience to our Lord. The fruit of that growth is what causes us to see as Jesus sees. So to answer my original thought, our own sin is most often the culprit that makes people unlovely to us.

…what a humbling thought…

…but if we seek to honor the example of Jesus Christ, to make central the call to love, then the rest is a watershed… it will trickle down.

As I dwell on the thought that too often I am looking on others as my sin would see them, I desire to look upon others as Jesus saw them… humanity in need of hope, people in need of love, sinners in need of salvation. Not that I might think highly of myself, but as a sinful man who’s tasted grace and wants to share what he’s received.

“Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing.
Give me your love for humanity.”

By His Grace and For His Glory,
Pastor Josh