Stewards, Not Owners

In Luke 16, Jesus tells a perplexing parable. It’s a story of a dishonest manager who uses his master’s wealth to serve those around him. While Jesus’ doesn’t praise the manager’s dishonesty, he credits his ingenuity. This manager saw himself as a steward, not an owner, of his master’s possessions. When we examine our own perceptions regarding our money, most of us view ourselves as owners — we are the sole owners of our money, wealth, and material possessions. But the way of Jesus is the way of stewardship. By seeing ourselves as stewards of all of the things God has blessed us with rather than owners, we’re free to live generously. At the tail end of this parable, Jesus makes a startling claim: if you trust God with fiscal matters, He will entrust you with spiritual matters. Our goal is to become a church of stewards who generously give what our Master has given us to expand the Kingdom and bring others into communion with Jesus.

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 Open your Bibles to Luke 16. Man, that story is so much better than any sermon could ever be, but I do this for a living, so let me do it, okay?

I’m gonna preach on Luke chapter 16. I’ve been excited for it all week. Uh, now three times a year, our church dedicates a month to study and to begin a practice of a lifestyle of Jesus, and hopefully we learn enough and we pick it up and it becomes our way of life. In February of we decided, hey, as a community of Followers of Jesus.

This is not some siloed thing. We’re doing this together. We learned about hospitality And so you’ll see the hospitality display just over there in the lobby Every single ping pong ball there represents a meal with the saint stranger or sinner to encounter the loving grace of god I’m, so proud of our church.

We’re so close to filling that all the way to the top And what a joy that has been we also in may went through the really hard work of practicing peacemaking So this is forgiving our past and Reconciling with those that, who have hurt us. And man, has that been a hard, but fruitful work. And now here in August, we’re talking about.

And it’s all around this idea of Jesus. He’s our savior, but also he’s our rabbi. He’s our Lord. If he’s really our rabbi, then we must really become his disciples. And disciples have to be completely formed by the love, lifestyle, and leadership of Jesus. This, this is what we do. And so we believe we’re supposed to become like him.

Not just to be saved by him, but to literally become just like Jesus. And we think we do that. by doing the things he did. Now, here’s the warning though that I feel like I have to share at least once every time we do these practice based series is we muddy these practices when we think they are means to attain right standing with God.

Right? So like giving to the poor doesn’t gain you entrance into heaven, right? Like taking a Sabbath rest doesn’t all of a sudden make you saved. Uh, hosting a dinner for a sinner. doesn’t get you like huge accolades and now you’re in different levels of heaven. We want to make sure that it’s very clear putting your faith and trust in the person and work of King Jesus is what saves you.

Amen. That is what completely secures your salvation. So we never want to be misinterpreted there. With that in mind though, the culture, churches even say, well, if it’s not what saves us, why do we even do it? If, if I, if being generous doesn’t get me into heaven, why do I do it? And we would answer, well, being generous isn’t what gets you into heaven, but oftentimes it’s what gets heaven into you.

We’re supposed to embody the kingdom of God in the here and now. We’re supposed to actually become more and more like him. I’m going to put it this way on the screen. Practicing the lifestyle of Jesus does not attain right standing with God, but it does maintain light living with God. And that distinction is so important.

Let me use theological terms. Uh, in other words, our union with Christ is forever secure, right? We are forever united to him. The Romans 8 says nothing can separate us from the love of God. That’s right standing. We can say we are righteous no matter what you’ve done in your past, your present, or your future.

The blood of Jesus covers, covers over that. So we have to say that very, very loud and clear. But our communion with Christ, Well, that kind of comes and goes depending on our obedience, depending on where we put our attention. If we are abiding in Christ, we experience his joy. If we become more like the world, it doesn’t mean we’re not saved anymore, but we are not living in the fullness of the joy.

and the happiness that he has on offer, to which I would call that light living. As we see in Matthew 11, when he says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Agent Rogers, one of my favorite pastors growing up, he put it this way. He says, the most miserable person on earth isn’t the sinner, but the saint who is living in sin.

Conversely, the happiest person is the saint who is following the way of Jesus. So let me just be loud and clear. Every practice at Passion Creek is an invitation. It’s not a coercion. We’re not forcing you. We’re not saying you’re going to go to hell if you don’t do these things. Okay? But it is an invitation to light living, the life that was always on offer in Christ.

So, What a joy to live lightly together at Passion Creek. I love that story. I love the stories we’ve been having in groups. I just want to highlight a few of them. One is we’ve been getting word that many of you, I don’t know if many is the right word, but there’s several of you who have taken the step of giving to a church for the first time ever this month.

I think that’s incredible. Thank you for trusting us with that. That is so good to see people taking next steps. Also, some people normally give, they’re just kind of new to this church and they have decided, okay, let’s be on mission together. That is wonderful. We’ve already met our budget for this month and it’s only august 18.

So that’s so good and so helpful for us in our mission. But also like this last week we had a medical need arise. Uh, I can be a little more clear about it because they just shared the story, but Julie reached out in humility, and I love her spirit, and I don’t know if they ever mentioned this, but Julie serves at our church, Alex serves at our church, they’re members of our church, and so they just expressed the need, and I just even went on my personal Instagram to start, I didn’t even send a church wide email, said, hey, we have a need, there’s a certain number, please reach out to me, four people from our church, says, Hey, here’s where the Lord is leading me to give.

And it, of course, you know how God works. That led to the exact amount that was needed for this procedure. Uh, you know, all of them said they want to be anonymous except one. So we need to highlight the one person who gate and I’m just kidding. Thank you. Nobody lied. It was such a bad joke last service, but I had to try it again.

So Jeff, good job, Jeff. No, I’m kidding. So. But it’s so great. I love the heartbeat. They’re like, don’t say it was me. I just, I got it covered. I’ll help with this much. Even one guy said he was praying, saw the need, was like, God, I would love to do this. I’d love to help him. And then he said he went to his mail to his mailbox and there was a random check for 300.

And he’s like, cool, there you go, God. And gave it right back to our church to meet that procedure need. It’s just so fun guys. We can just, we’re, we’re becoming Jesus people. We’re being formed by generosity. And I love just these real life examples to show that it’s possible. It truly is better to give than to receive.

And so if you’ve missed any of the weeks, if you’re new here today, let me just, we’ve kind of built been building a case here each week builds off of the last. So go to formed by jesus. com slash generosity to catch up, but it’s okay. You can learn a lot today. Let me recap the first two weeks quickly.

Week one together. So we learned greed is an invisible poison that puts us in the impossible position to love God and others. So we learned that it’s like, it’s killing us and we don’t even know it. It’s this poison. And then we learned, Jesus talked about in Luke 11 and 12, there is one antidote to greed, to this poison and it’s generosity.

So it’s generally the idea we had in week one. Week two, last Sunday, we said your perception of reality is running and often ruining the your practice of generosity. And so if you’re struggling giving, it’s probably, it’s because you have a perception of reality that’s a little bit off. So then we asked two questions.

One, do you depend on God or stuff? Two, do you have an abundance or a scarcity mentality? I’d encourage you to go see the message on YouTube online. We showed a little graph. I really was encouraged how helpful it was for our people and I got a lot of good feedback on that graph. So I’m going to keep making tweaks on it.

And it’s so fun to just kind of wrap our minds around where are we at and where can we grow in our journey of understanding generosity? Well, today is week three and I cannot wait. I feel like it’s whole, just a whole nother day. Uh, next step towards becoming generous people. So the working definition is up on the screen.

Here is our working theory of the practice that me and Pastor Caleb put together. The practice of generosity is living like disciples who trust the God of abundance by giving like stewards who tithed to God’s generosity. kingdom. I really encourage you to come next Sunday. We’re going to talk about tithing.

Is it biblical? Is it old covenant or new covenant? We have a lot to talk about there, but today I want to talk about this topic of stewardship. We need to become stewards and we’re going to address that by reading one of the most difficult parables of all time. In Luke chapter 16, even Craig Blomberg in his commentary says that this is the most perplexing parable of all time.

He argues a lot of people misinterpret this passage. And so I think I’ve done the hard work figuring out what this means, and so I’m excited for us to learn it together. What’s kind of startling about this passage is on one hand, uh, this steward is a terrible person. We’re going to learn about a guy who’s just awful.

But on the other, Jesus says he does something great and it’s kind of confusing. So buckle up with me. We’re going to read about that in Luke chapter 16. Let’s pray to just remind ourselves this is God’s church and we’re here to Father, Son, Holy Spirit, thank you for your word. Thank you for being so generous to us.

Not just with this word that gives us life, but also with your one and only son and help us see today, Jesus, no matter what we have, it’s all a gift from you. May we leave here really changing our perception of reality when it comes to stewardship and may it lead us to live a life of joy and kingdom impact in Jesus name.

I pray. Everybody says. Amen. Amen. So the first half We’re gonna read Luke 16, 1 through 13. The first half’s a story, and then Jesus is a brilliant teacher. He segues into application. So let’s start with the story. We’re gonna read it all the way through and then kind of go line by line. Verse 1, Now he being Jesus, Jesus said to the disciples, There was a rich man who received an accusation that his manager was squandering his Possessions.

In the Bible, we have chapters, which makes us think that they’re different, totally different segues into new stories. But when Luke was written, it was all one big thing. And what helps us know that chapter 16 ties into 15 is that line squandering his possessions. We actually looked at this passage as a faith family last Sunday, just before this story.

Jesus shares the story of the prodigal son who squanders his father’s possessions. So that’s a cue to you and me that that lesson from Luke 15 also kind of ties into what we’re about to learn in Luke 16. So that’s a context clue. Verse two. So he called the manager in and asks, what is this? I hear about you give an account of your management because you can no longer be my manager, AKA he got a two weeks notice.

So then the manager said to himself, what will I do since my master is taking the management away from me? And I love this, I’m not strong enough to dig and I’m ashamed to beg. So he’s too white collar to pick up a shovel, but also he’s, he’s too proud to be asking on the streets, which is a very common thing that they would do in this day.

And so now he’s in a pickle, but let’s see how he responds. Verse four, I know what I’ll do so that when I’m removed from management, people will welcome me into their homes because he’s about to be homeless. So he summoned each one of his master’s debtors. How much do you owe my master? He asked the first one.

100 measures of olive oil, he said. Take your invoice, he told him. Sit down quickly and write 50. Pretty good deal. Next, he asked another, how much do you owe? 100 measures of wheat, he said. Take your invoice, he told him, and write 80. The master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly.

That’s a pretty interesting line that we’ll get to, but let me A couple other important lines that we see in this, these verses to help us understand the context. Notice, first of all, in verse one, it says, he said to the disciples, what does that mean? This parable is for believers. So when we’re reading this, this is for the church.

Sometimes there’s parables for the lost to get found, for non believers to become, uh, believers. But in this one, okay, you’re in the household of faith. Here’s a lesson for you. Now, of course, we know on looks, Onlookers were listening. You see in verse 14, the Pharisees were listening and scoffing at this lesson, but this is primarily for the church.

The next thing I want to point out is this word manager. Now, some of you may have like an older traditional translation like King James, and they use the word steward, which I think is kind of more helpful, but either way, both work. I will say this gets lost in translation for us. I think we’re in an era where leadership is the buzzword.

We all want to become leaders, and managers doesn’t seem that great, but managers are so important to any organization, and managers is really important, uh, for this rich man’s wealth. Let me describe, because when we hear a manager or a steward, I think there’s a lot of, uh, context clues we miss out on that I think they would have understood in this day.

So a steward, the Greek word is oikonomos, say it with me, oikonomos. Okay, I won’t make you do it again. Now, oikonomos has two Greek words that are smashed together, oikos and namos. Oikos means household or like circle of influence, some pastors will say. And then namos means law. You’ll notice Deuteronomy, namos is there, the law written for the second generation.

Okay, so namos, law. Uh, Oikos household. Essentially what a steward was, he was the law of the house. He was the one who set forth how the house was operating. Another way to put it, he was the number one slave in a really great mansion. So if you’re going to be a slave, you might as well be the number one one.

Okay. Um, Tim Keller describes it this way. He said back then a steward is a slave towards the master, but as a king towards everyone else. Pretty interesting position. And if you think of your Bible stories that maybe if you grew up in church and meet, we even talked about this in February, Joseph is a great example of somebody who was a steward.

He was a steward multiple times. Remember when he was a steward in Potiphar’s house? He was in control of everything, right? He ran the whole thing and he was stewarding Potiphar’s resources and helping that company or that place, that house to succeed. In the same way Joseph then did that stewardship for all of Egypt.

He only had one person to answer to, and that was Pharaoh. Right? And for the rest he ran everything. So stewardship is a good word. To be a steward I think is the best position. ’cause it’s like, Hey, I don’t own this. So I sleep well at night. Like at the end of the day, it’s really the owner who has to have all these possessions.

I just get to play with it and do what I want and I don’t have to pay rent. ’cause I live in this home. It’s wonderful. What a gig. In Genesis, you actually see this theme of stewardship all throughout the Bible. In Genesis, uh, actually when God created Adam and Eve, essentially what he did was he made them stewards.

He said, okay, here’s the garden. You don’t own this, but you’re gonna run it. So you have authority over all creation. You’re supposed to, you know, produce and multiply. Just steward all the gifts I have given you. But what did Adam and Eve do? They said, I don’t want to be a steward. I want to own the whole thing.

I don’t want to have to answer to God. I want to become God. And so when they believed in the lies of the serpent, And trying to become an owner rather than a steward, destruction entered into the story, death, division, and now we’re in the mess we’re in because they did not want to be stewards. And so that’s a helpful context that I think most Hebrews would understand when they’re reading Luke 16.

So now what’s happening with the story? We have this manager, he comes to his senses because the boss finally figured out he was sleeping on the job and now he has two weeks to figure out. How is he going to get his next job? Because his reputation is squandered. The other thing about a slave is they didn’t own anything.

So he had a wonderful house, but when he loses the job, he loses everything. It’s not like he has a savings account. It’s not like he has another home by the bay. He has nothing. So he gets creative. So he reaches out to some people and he talks to a guy who owed a hundred measures of oil. Now, this likely for today, it means like a thousand gallons of oil.

which equals three years wages. So this was a huge debt and this would be the product of at least 150 olive trees. So this is massive. And what does he do? He cuts it in half. Interesting. Now, I think a lot of people misinterpreted this. They think that half was, uh, the one that was owed to the steward, but that’s a misunderstanding of how the economy worked.

The steward never gained any of the money, it was just always the owner. So, study that on your own. Uh, I shouldn’t have even mentioned that. That was a side bonus story. Pay attention. Next thing is a hundred measures of wheat. This would be about a thousand, um, A thousand, uh, bushels of wheat, and it would take a hundred acres to produce and about eight to ten years of labor to make this much wheat.

So you can imagine how expensive this was, and he slashes it, he takes a 20 percent off discount. So what is this guy doing? Well, he’s waking up to what he should have been doing this whole time, but he’s helping people in an honor culture. Now, in an honor culture, if you help somebody, they have to help you.

So he’s thinking, I don’t have a house, but I just saved this guy a year and a half’s worth of money. So when I, in two weeks, ask him if I can sleep in the guest bedroom, what is he probably going to say? Of course you can sleep here. And so he is investing in his future. What is he doing? Write this down.

The steward is making friends by being generous with his master’s wealth, which is a key principle you see all throughout. The Bible. Growing up, my family, we actually spent way more time at restaurants than we did at our dinner table. So like home cooked meals are so beautiful to me because I never had them as a kid.

My mom was a school teacher. My dad became a pastor, but also did construction. And so we were never home. And so we’d always go out to eat. And it was not always healthy places, but something I figured out quickly is the van camps were just really cool people. At least that’s what I thought. Because every restaurant we’d go to, we had like four that we would, you know, Monday is this place, on the border was a big one for us.

Anybody, oh, so good. So we’d go in there, and every time we’d go to these restaurants, we would, you know, We would cut the line. We didn’t ask for it. The waiters would be like, Oh, yeah, yeah. Van camps are here. They would just move everybody out, out of the way. And we sit the best place and our orders were already run.

They wouldn’t even have to say what we wanted. We just showed up and everything was awesome. So my whole life growing up as a kid, I just thought we just have vibes, you know, Van camps are just awesome people. I don’t know. So I went to college and randomly every, you know, once in a blue moon, I go to a restaurant and I never got that same kind of service.

I thought, Oh, what happened to the Van camp vibe? Is it just my parents? Am I not cool? And so I remember one Christmas, I came back home, uh, from California. We went to our usual, uh, dinner place and we got seated right away. Everybody was super nice. And you know, when you’re in college, you start to worry about money way before, you know, way more than you used to.

And so I was like, I wonder what the bill costs for this, you know? And I looked down and I noticed, oh. Waiters don’t like us for our charm. They like us for the check. My dad’s a very generous tipper. So that reputation precedes you. You don’t have to wait in lines if you are a generous tipper. And that principle really rang true.

And I understand that to be true today. And the Bible says that all the time, if you want to make friends and love other people, this is why generosity fits within this overall framework for our vision of 2024. The best way to make friends. Proverbs says is to be generous. Proverbs 19 six says everyone is a friend of one who gives gifts.

Don’t you love those people? You hang around them because they’re just generous and life is great when you’re with them. Okay. So that is one principle we’re already learning from him, but it’s still weird that this guy’s a hero. It’s still a little bit strange that Jesus is commending the steward. Let’s read verse eight again.

The master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly. Okay. What does that mean? Because he acted shrewdly. Shrewdly is kind of, it sounds like a negative word. It just simply means wisdom. It means they leverage their situation. I think the best way to describe what’s happening with this master and the manager.

Um, like for me, I’m a big NBA fan and so, but I am not a LeBron James fan. There’s a lot of reasons for that part of partly my loyalty to Michael Jordan, but also because I love the Phoenix Suns. But like during the Olympics, I had to be like, well, I respect him and I’m kind of glad he’s on our team. There is a, there is a sense where you look at somebody and you know that they’re not good, like you don’t like them, but you have to respect them.

You still have to salute. Good job. You’re really good at this, even though I don’t like you. I think this is the. Master with the manager. I don’t like what you’ve done. These are my resources, but I have to give it to you. That was smart. You just set up your future. You just took, you were being a steward finally.

And I think that’s what’s happening here. And so hear me, I want to make sure this is clear. Jesus isn’t commending the steward for robbing his master or being a dishonest. Okay. We all know that’s wrong. And Jesus would say that’s wrong, but Jesus still finds something to commend here. He’s commending the steward for leveraging his opportunities wisely.

See, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And Jesus has the wisdom and maturity and the love to point out the one thing we should all be learning. So he’s going to make us uncomfortable here. I imagine the whole crowd is feeling weird because he is finding a good lesson from a bad example. Cause look at the next line for the children of this age.

Who do you think that is? Just non believers pagans, right? For the children of this age are more shrewd. more wise, more leveraging than the children of light, which obviously are Christians in dealing with their own people. So this is a wake up call. Jesus is saying, Hey, disciples, you guys, you’re children of light.

Obviously you are coming to heaven. These aren’t unless they’re changing, but he still says, notice how the world leverages money and is like smart and wise and figures out their resources. You can learn a thing or two from them. Um, I think the reason why Christians maybe aren’t the best at stewarding our resources is because we know the best life is the next one, not this one.

Right? I know for me, I have a little less urgency cause it’s like, well, like, you know, I want to pursue dreams. I want to do great things. But ultimately I know I got heaven waiting for me. And so I think this is my life’s going to be okay. But Pagans, they live with urgency because in their minds, this is the only life they get.

And so with that, they’re leveraging, they’re maneuvering, sometimes I’ll be it unrighteously manipulating people, but they are getting things done and leveraging what they have. And so Jesus is saying, you too, you need to learn a lesson from these pagans. They’re leveraging, they’re wisely using opportunities for greater impact.

Let’s look at verse nine. And I tell you, make friends. Notice the make friends level. I just love that. I love that little segue there. Make friends for yourselves by means of worldly wealth so that when it fails, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings. If you’re like me reading this on first glance, it’s a bit confusing.

I think you need to meditate on it time and time again and read some commentaries to understand. But here’s what it is quickly. He is saying you can make friends by worldly wealth. So do that. Like be generous and people will take care of you. It’s just a fact of life. But now he’s also saying, but that stuff eventually fails.

You’ll die. Things don’t work out. Like money could only go so far. But then he says, but if you use your money to make eternal friends, that’s the best deal out there. What is he saying? Okay. Invest in the kingdom of God. If you give your money to the church who reaches and makes disciples, you are investing.

You are making friends in the long run. In heaven, when you’re giving to charities and to missions, it’s this idea that when you die and go to heaven, it’s like there’s this parade of people who will say, thank you because, because of God’s sovereignty, I have now been told I’m only in heaven because you sacrifice your money to give to this missionary.

And that missionary shared the gospel to me. So thank you. Cause if you weren’t generous, I would have never heard the gospel. Isn’t that like such an inspiring way to give money when you think about it in heaven? Like every time you give, you should think, I want a bigger crowd in heaven. Like I want to make even more friends where they’re saying, thank you because of what you did.

I’m here. And imagine too, who you’re going to thank because their generosity, you are also in heaven because you got access to the gospel. This is supposed to be a really inspiring metaphor that Jesus is sharing with us. But I want us to see the point Jesus is making over and over again. You can stew on your money or you can steward your money.

Jesus in Luke 12. Remember the rich fool last Sunday? That fool stewed on his money and then he lost it all when he died and nothing of it was shown in eternity. The rich young ruler last week in Luke 18 stewed on his money, given an opportunity to follow Jesus and possibly become an apostle for the kingdom of God.

Instead, he missed out. Because he wanted to keep all of his money for himself. Also, Matthew 25, you have that one talent man who stood on his money. Now, let me just say everybody misinterpret, not everybody. That’s, that’s braggadocious to say. A lot of people misinterpret the one talents and the five and the 10 talents.

Can I just explain that quickly? We almost preached that for this sermon, Matthew 25, there’s one talent. Did you know one talent, first of all, is not that you can sing. Okay, when the guy has one talent, it’s not like, Oh, I just have a gift and I’m not showing. That’s not, that’s such a bad interpretation.

The amount of people I see, they’re like, I’m not, I’m a one talent man, I can’t do anything good. I’m like, that’s not what that passage means. One talent equals 20 years worth of wages. So even the one talent guy was balling economically. But what did the one talent guy do? He hid the money. He stood on it.

Never leveraged it. Never used it for kingdom purposes. That’s And Jesus in that story said take away that one talent and give it to the man with ten. This is the kingdom economics. Let me put it this way. History is made by those who steward, not stew on their money. Look out the next screen, Gospel Patrons is a book that just enraptured my heart this summer as I studied for this practice.

It’s a collection of stories of people who invested their wealth for the kingdom and they are people you’ve never heard of, but I promise you people in heaven are celebrating it. For these people’s generosity, if you know church history, you may have probably heard George Whitfield. Can you raise your hand?

Anybody ever heard of George Whitfield? Awesome. Revivalist, really popular in his day. He was actually the one that spearheaded the Great Awakening in America. And what he did mainly is he revolutionized the way the gospel was preached. It used to be you had to get in a building and Kind of like this and with the right, you know, uh, the, uh, the right audio, uh, situation so that everybody can hear.

But apparently George Whitfield was blessed with just an amazing voice. And he can preach the gospel to a field of like 5, 000 people at one time. And so the gospel really began to spread. It’s funny, uh, Benjamin Franklin. Who’s heard of Benjamin Franklin? I think a lot more hands should be raised, right?

You’re like, I’ve never owned one, you know? Anyways. Okay, so Benjamin Franklin, he actually has in his journal about George Whitfield, how he was just like had a silver tongue and every time he preached, he couldn’t help but take all of his money and put it in the offering. And so that’s just a fun little side American history lesson.

But George Whitfield preached more than 500 sermons a year, 34 years in a row. Did incredible things. But did you know he was funded by a rich widow named Lady Huntington? At 39 years old, she became a widow. She lived in London, she had four children, and had massive wealth. So what happened is she saw revival spreading to the poor in London, but her elite friends who were super wealthy were very far from God.

And so she heard about Whitfield and asked him to come and preach at a special rich person dinner and to show George Whitfield’s just charisma and confidence. You know, the sermon he preached, the parable of the rich young ruler. He said he saw a bunch of rich people and said how hard it is for you to enter the kingdom of God because of your wealth.

He says, I’m coming here to bring you the gospel so you can be set free from mammon and live a life here and forever that lasts, that has an eternal impact because of King Jesus. And it’s incredible what happened. There was a beautiful partnership that stemmed from there. Turns out she covered the bill for George Whitfield to preach 18, 000 sermons to roughly 10 million people.

And that’s just how God works. He finds somebody with bold vision, pairs them up with people with generous provision and incredible things happen for the kingdom. Also in that book, he talks about William Tyndale. Many of us are reading our Bibles today because of him. He translated the first ever English Bible for 6 million English speakers because for a thousand years it was only written in Latin and you can never read the Bible on your own.

But did you know Tyndale couldn’t do it without a rich, generous donor? There was a man that you’ve never heard of, Humphrey Monmouth, a wealthy cloth merchant. He funded Tyndale, strategized with Tyndale and helped smuggle Bibles into England. This is what people do. They take their resources, who steward, they are remembered throughout history.

Even Jesus was bankrolled by generous stewards. Look at Luke eight, one through three, it’s on the screen. Luke chapter eight, after Jesus was traveling from one town and village to another preaching and telling the good news of the kingdom of God, the 12 were with him. And also some women who had been healed of spirits and sicknesses, Mary called Magnolene, seven demons had come out of her, Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod’s steward, talk about a steward having all of Herod’s wealth, Susanna, and many others, look at this line, who were supporting them from their possessions.

fundraise, yeah, cause he had women like Joanna and Susanna rolling around, footing the bill. Do you know most of the disciples were teenagers? Have you ever met a teenage boy? They ate a lot and they were funded so they can continue on with the ministry. Pastor John Tyson in New York City, he recently said in a message, quote, we have been so co opted by the world.

We have been co opted by the world. If our vision of the good life is the same as our pagan neighbors, what if our vision boards became giving boards? See, the world stews on their money. But the church stewards her money. And I just can’t help but wonder, do we have a Lady Huntington in the house? Or a Joanna?

I believe we have bold vision here at Passion Creek. I believe we have a bright vision here at Passion Creek and future. But we need people who are generous. For the first two years of our church, we had an incredible What I would call Joanna. I can’t share her name. She wants to be, uh, you know, not listed.

But, um, the first year of our church, we only made about 4, 000 a month on giving. Now, when you realize that rent at Harkin’s Theatres was 2, 600 a month, we had a bit of a problem. and actually feeding my kids mouths and everything else. And so it was an interesting issue and a problem that we found ourselves in.

And we never told anybody, uh, people had no idea that we were struggling financially, but I wasn’t like the steward. I was willing to pick up a shovel. So I worked concrete and try to make ends meet. And we always had just enough, but mainly it was because there was this lady in our church. I never shared my problems with her, but she was a single mom that had some wealth.

And she would randomly, she, oh, it’s just like the spirit knew, me and my wife would look at our bills and think, how are we going to pay the mortgage this month? We would look and say, how are we going to feed our kids? And all the time she would hand us a Benjamin and it’s like, great, we can eat this week.

Or she would hand us a thousand dollars and it covered our mortgage. She would randomly bless us personally. And let me just tell you. It made it where I couldn’t give up. I had to keep trying this thing called Passion Creek Church because I had no excuse. God was providing for us even though the budget looked terrible.

God was good. This is what God does. This is how God’s economy always works. And I kind of want us just to sit there, but the next line is the most famous and I think the most misunderstood of this passage. Verse 10. It says, whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much.

So if you’ve not been faithful with worldly wealth, who will trust you with what is genuine? Now, the thinking goes typically, okay, God, if I am trusted with 50, 000 and do well, you’re going to give me 500, 000. Now, at some point, this is kind of a faithful interpretation. Sometimes that’s true. That’s like the reality of life.

If you are faithful with a little bit of money, you can be faithful with a lot of bit of money, but that’s not a guarantee. What’s more important in this passage, I think a deeper application is if you trust God with fiscal matters, he will entrust you with spiritual matters. See that? Why would he do that?

Did you know, you probably do, being generous and giving money to the church is really hard, requires a lot of faith, surrender, and agape love? Did you know running a ministry, serving people with the gospel, is really hard to do, requires a lot of faith, surrender, and agape love? So when you learn how to do that with your money, it empowers you to learn those principles to do that for your ministry.

This principle always holds true, write this down, the vitality of your life and leadership It’s directly correlated to your mentality on money and possessions. How you deal with money is how you’ll do in ministry. We’ve been going through Acts as a faith family this year. And so I want you to think about Barnabas.

How is Barnabas described? We’ve preached on him a few times now. Well, he’s a son of encouragement, full of faith and the Holy Spirit. We read, uh, last month in Acts 11, he helped start the church. And Antioch does incredible things. And what does this generous man do? He says, okay, I got a great ministry. I need Saul, who’s going to become Paul.

Hey, come let’s do this together. I can’t do this alone. And then he has the humility to send Saul out and make him number one. Barnabas says, I’ll take a step back. Paul, you need to do this ministry. Now this guy’s incredible. Do you know why God entrusted Barnabas to have such an effective ministry and be mentioned in the Bible?

Where did Barnabas get his start? What’s the first thing we learned about Barnabas? It’s in Acts chapter four. What does he do? He sold his field and brought all the proceeds to the apostles feet. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Barnabas was generous with fiscal matters, and God said, Great. Now I could be generous to you with spiritual matters to faithfully lead people.

You must be patient, humble, trusting in God’s invisible work, and you learn that every time you sacrificially give. See, I’ve heard some of the feedback in groups, and I just want to encourage you. Some of you have been disappointed. that you’re giving hasn’t led to an increase in income. But what if it’s because he is developing you to increase your impact?

I don’t know about you. I’ll take the impact over the income. I don’t need 500 K if my life can last way beyond what I’m doing. And that’s the lesson here. The vitality of your life and leadership is directly correlated to your mentality on money and possessions. Because here’s the reality. How you treat your money is how you treat your ministry.

And I’m not just talking to pastors in the room. I think all of life is a ministry. If you’re a Christian, hear me. If you stew on your money, you would stew on your ministry. If you stew on your possessions, you’ll stew on your people’s mistakes and it will tear you apart. If you stew on gossip, excuse me, if you stew on greed, you will stew on gossip.

How we deal with money. It’s how we’ll deal with ministry, okay? So then Jesus though finishes this parable with another powerful line. And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own? No servant can serve two masters since either he’ll hate one, love the other, or he’ll be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money. We’ve already looked in week one what verse 13 meant. So look at verse 12. What’s the main lesson we’re learning here that Jesus wants us to get? Friends, we are stewards, not owners. I know my attitude towards giving dramatically changed when I realized, because I actually think I was falsely taught this, this is your money and you need to give God 10 percent of it.

My life changed when I realized 100 percent of what I have is God’s. And he is so kind and generous. Maybe he’s only asking me to give 10 percent back. And we’ll even wrestle with that next week, if it should be more or not come next week for the tithing message. But that’s an all of life. My body is not my own.

You were bought with a price. It says, honor God with your body. When we realize we’re stewards of our body, we treat it better. My Children, I’m a such a better dad when I realized they’re not my kids. They’re the Lord’s kids. And I’ve been telling myself that every day so that when they’re 18 and we send them off to college, I don’t just ball, right?

Like I keep telling myself, it’s my job to raise them up and send them out. We call them arrows all the time cause that’s in the songs or we’re called, we’re supposed to launch them out into the world. And I still think I’m just going to cry like a little baby. But you, I’m a such a better dad when I realized, God, this is, these are your children and I’m just here to steward it.

And I learned that lesson with this church a few years ago. I almost left and that’s a whole nother thing that I don’t want to distract you with. But through that process, I realized for way too long, I thought this was my church. And I got anxious and angry and sad because I thought you were my people.

You’re not my people. You’re God’s people. Now I’m a steward. I have to be accountable to you, but I don’t own you. This isn’t my church. This is God’s church. He tells us what to do. I don’t tell him what to do. The amount of freedom I’ve had from that, the amount of risk we’ve been able to take because that principle is true.

We are not owners, brothers and sisters. We are stewards. I think the Proverbs have a really good example of what an owner versus a steward looks like. Proverbs 11, 24. One person gives freely, yet gains more. Another withholds what is right, only to become poor. An owner’s mentality is attached to his possessions.

A steward’s mentality invests in one’s possessions. Uh, Eugene Peterson paraphrases that same proverb when he says the world of the generous gets larger and larger. The world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. What if we at Passion Creek make our world larger and larger by being stewards of the resources he’s given us?

And that’s the vision. That’s the journey that I hope you join me on. Up at formedbyjesus. com slash generosity, we’re going to take next steps together by becoming stewards, not owners through two practices. You’re going to talk about both of these in your, if you’re in a group, you’re going to look at this this week.

If you’re not in a group yet, just go online and kind of work through it as a family. The first step is to learn the eight principles of stewarding money. And It’s on page 21 of your booklet. And so there are a lot of different principles we took from various books. And, uh, let me just mention three and we’re going to like wrestle with it in your groups.

You’re going to kind of talk about, do you believe that? Do you not? One is to buy things that will last, not things you have to replace often. We don’t want to be misunderstood. Sometimes being generous means you actually buy more expensive things for yourself so you don’t have to keep wasting money on buying things over and over.

Also don’t spend money that you don’t have, right? Credit card is one of the worst things to be invented. Nothing you buy is as good as you think. I learned that with a Jeep Rubicon. I wanted one for like three years and I kept telling myself, it’s not as good as you think, Trey. It’s not as good as you think.

We rented it one day. It’s not as good as I thought. Praise the Lord. I saved a bunch of money, right? Talk about this in your group. It becomes a framework for your financial decision. And number two is to make margin for your ministry. I want you to really wrestle with God this week. What things do you own that are actually owning you?

I’ve talked to many of you. You actually want to be giving, but your mortgage and your car payment literally makes it impossible. So what can we do to make margin? I don’t know. For me and my family, because I feel like I have to practice what I preach this summer, we made a lot of those kind of decisions.

We are. We became a one vehicle family. We sold our vehicle that we had to keep paying a C bills for over and over, and that has helped us. And we were gifted a vehicle. That’s not mine. I get to drive it, at least for now. I don’t know when I have to give it back, but I love it, right? The best vehicle is the free vehicle.

And we’ve also cancelled a lot of subscriptions. We’ve cancelled YouTube TV. I don’t know how my wife is going to watch football this year. But it’s okay, because the Cardinals will be bad anyways. But we’re making margin for ministry. This stuff is kind of hard. I get that. And that’s why I want to remind you again, this is all an invitation.

You don’t have to do any of this. You’re already saved if you’ve put your faith in the finished work of Christ. But man, it’s life so much better when you give than when you just receive. So we just want to invite you into that journey of maturity. And we know everybody has a different next step. We want to be patient with you and root you on as you take those next steps.

Let’s pray.