STEWARDSHIP THAT LOVES ABSOLUTEY & SACRIFICIALLY
PART 1: TIME
Rev. Todd Leupold Perth Bible Church Sunday AM November 4, 2007
INTRODUCTION:
John 3:16 (emphasis on gave).
Having learned from God’s example, John Maxwell over 2,000 years later summarized one powerful lesson of this sacrifice when he wrote: “Giving is the highest level of living.” Perhaps you have instead heard it said that “to live is to give”. If this is true, and Christ made painfully clear He believes it is, what does it say about the extent to which you or I are really living?
You may have heard a time or two that our mission as Christians and as a church is “to love God absolutely and love others sacrificially.” Isn’t that what Christ epitomized upon the cross? What His death and pro-offered salvation were given for, that we may live likewise?
Ernest D. Standerfer, pastor of Valley View Baptist Church in Nashville, puts it this way: “You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.” Let me repeat that . . . He continues, “If we love God, love our church, and love the new life we have in Christ, we will give. If genuine love motivates our giving, we will give like God – our best.”
But, what is that? What do we really have to give and how do we do so in the midst of so much need and want?
For the next three weeks, beginning this morning, we will be exploring together what God’s Word says about Stewardship. Put simply, stewardship refers to how we handle, protect and invest that which belongs to another and yet has been entrusted to us for a period of time. Your bank or financial advisor are stewards of your money. Your children are stewards of your family name and reputation. For a significant part of their developing lives, most of us grant one or more schools stewardship over our children’s education and personal development on multiple levels.
When we talk about Biblical stewardship, however, we are referring to what we do with all that God has entrusted to us that yet remains His. What does that include? Well, I kinda hate to bust some bubbles here (well, not really), but the answer is EVERYTHING! Everything you have, not just your possessions, but your personality, abilities, experiences, opportunities, family, friends, everything is His given and entrusted to you and to me! And all of these “things” are inseparably tied together.
Don’t believe me? Consider: Jesus taught more about money and possessions than He did about heaven or hell. In fact, the word “give” is used more than 1,500 times in the Bible. If you’re counting, that is more times than the words “faith,” “hope,” “love,” or even “pray.” Why? Because none of these concepts – faith, hope, love, or even prayer – can be authentically or consistently lived out apart from a heart of self-less generosity! God is a giver, not just any giver, but the most generous and arguably even reckless giver in the universe! He has given us everything – most of all His Son, His grace and forgiveness, His empowering and comforting Holy Spirit, His unconditional love, His purpose, His wisdom, etc. . . To each and every one of us, He has given Time, Talent and Treasure to steward out of love for Him and others to His glory!
TIME
This morning, I am asking us to focus our attention on how we steward our TIME. Did you know that in spite of all our wealth, learning, freedom and opportunity, a new study by the World Health Organization and the Harvard Medical School found the US of A to have the highest rate of depression of any of the 14 nations surveyed? More than war-torn Lebanon, job-starved Mexico, or rigid Japan. In fact, the country with the lowest depression rate was Nigeria – a land of tremendous poverty, civil war,
tribal and religious tensions, and corruption. Perhaps, just as shocking, can you guess what they concluded to be the primary reason for this discrepancy? Time – and the fact that we Americans have
too much of it that we are wasting! As Vince Siciliano, of the Wall Street Journal, put it: “. . . when your life is a struggle for clean water and adequate food, you don’t have time to indulge in existential despair” (The Week magazine, 3/23/07).
Friends, despite how we feel, despite how we often see or complain about it, our problem is NOT that we don’t have enough time. Rather, our problem is (1) knowing our time, (2) seeing urgency in our time, and (3) how we value (that is, use) our time!
PRAYER
SCRIPTURE: ROMANS 13:8-14
We love God absolutely when we knowingly and urgently value every moment the Lord provides us to love others sacrificially for His glory!!
I.) KNOWING OUR TIME
OUR TIME IS:
A. The Present Future (v. 11a)
Folks, one of the biggest mistakes we make is to focus on time as a pie that is sliced three ways – present, past and future.
To live in the past, is to lose the present and the future. To live only in the present is to live a life that is unconnected, unimportant, and without impact. To live in the future, is to ignore the past and present at the cost of guaranteeing a future with no significance or meaning.
Pastor Reggie McNeal, in his book The Present Future, writes: “We think we are headed toward the future. The truth is, the future is headed toward us. And it’s in a hurry . . . We also generally think that the present makes sense only in light of the past. Again, we need to check our thinking. The present makes clearest sense in light of the future. We humans write history by looking at the past. God creates history ahead of time. He never forecasts. God always backcasts. He began with the end in mind. The future is always incipient in the present” (pg. Xiii).
I believe that this is what our Scripture means what it refers to “knowing the time” (v. 11). It is not enough just to exist in our time, to go through the motions. God, in His Word, encourages us to know and understand our “time.” How is our time today an outgrowth of the past? What kind of a future is it leading to and even at this very moment creating? How often or deeply do we even consider the impact of our present upon our future?
To live in “the present future,” then, is to live in the moment while simultaneously impacting the future for Christ!
B. A Time To Wake Up! (v. 11b)
All of us gained an extra hour of sleep last night. For many of us, that still equates to not enough! Even know, I am sure, there are some us still struggling to really wake up.
What happens when we fall asleep (literally or partly) and fail to wake up when we need to? Has anyone else, like me, ever been driving down the road in a sleepy fog only to suddenly realize you missed your turn or exit – miles ago!? Had a teacher throw an eraser at you because you were
’resting’ your eyes in class? Worked a 12-hour day and accomplished nothing? Witnessed a driver fall asleep behind the wheel at the cost of another’s life?
When we fail to wake up from these slumbers, bad things always happen! Sometimes, we think we can live with them, sometimes we know we can’t. Sometimes, they don’t seem too terrible and sometimes there is a price we’ll never be able to repay.
Just as it is true in our personal lives, so it is true of our Christian and church lives! When we, as Christians . . . when we, as the church, fall asleep time continues to pass and bad things happen!
To again quote Reggie McNeal concerning our time: “The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money, and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to congregations comes from people aged fifty-five and older) or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both” (pg. 1).
I have, on other occasions, quoted the stunning statistics of how each succeeding generation in our time is significantly less likely to attend church, read the Bible, trust the Bible, pray or put their faith in Christ.
CHURCH, IT IS TIME WE WAKE UP from our apathy and slumber!
Our world, in our time, desperately needs what God has given us to give to it!!! Will we?
C. Fading Night (v. 12, 13)
Scripture reminds us, too, that we in our time we are living in the “night” but that this night is almost over. What does this mean?
In God’s Word, darkness is always used as a symbol for sin, unrighteousness and evil.
Therefore, He says, the time in which we now live is one rife with sin, unrighteousness and evil.
And, YET, such a time is quickly coming to an end! A new dawn is approaching, the Son prepares to emerge once again. Will we be awake? What will His light expose?
Day or light in the Bible represents righteousness, forgiveness, newness, holy power, and positive change.
As this night of a sin-dominated world crashes toward its end and the new dawn of opportunity, judgment and reward emerges, how will the Son find us? How will we look? Where will we be? What will we be doing? Will He find us wearing our nightclothes or changed into something new and more appropriate for the day? Will we be disheveled, blurry-eyed and disoriented or alert, prepared and ready? Will we appear dirty, ragged and reeking from the events of the long night or will He find us washed, clean, and adorned with a fragrant aroma?
We love God absolutely when we knowingly and urgently value every moment the Lord provides us to love others sacrificially for His glory!!
II. THE URGENCY OF OUR TIME (vv. 11c-12b)
The time remaining for change, hope, redemption, life, joy, peace is quickly dwindling.
The future FINAL judgment and/or reward is closer than ever.
Everyone’s opportunities are dwindling by the hour. “Tomorrow” or even “in a few minutes” may already be too late.
Yes, it is a time of great urgency, but be careful to understand the nature of the urgency.
The urgency of our time, as explained and exemplified by Jesus, refers to the importance and priority of every moment – NOT necessarily physical pace.
As Kirk Nowery expounds: “It is clear from the Gospels that in the stewardship of His time Jesus was never worried or hurried. There was never a sense of panic, never a moment of remorse for time lost. He was in all instances and in all circumstances doing the work of the Father, yet never displayed the classic symptoms of a workaholic, so driven by His purpose and absorbed by productivity that He forgot about people. In the years of His earthly ministry, Jesus spent time praying, teaching, helping, healing and interacting continually with men and women from all strata of society” (pg. 81, The Stewardship of Life).
The urgency of our time is to share the love of Christ that impacts an eternity!
We love God absolutely when we knowingly and urgently value every moment the Lord provides us to love others sacrificially for His glory!!
III. VALUING OUR TIME (vv. 12-14)
A. Rejecting Darkness
The FIRST step to being a good and godly steward of the time God has given us, is to refuse to waste, squander, or misuse any of it!
Any sin or selfishness is a misuse of the time Jesus has bought for us by His own blood.
When we schedule or randomly occupy our time, what is our motivation? Who or what are we trying to satisfy?
B. Reflecting Light
Instead we are to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” That is, take upon ourselves, His character, His priorities, His vision, His purpose, His focus, and His light.
Like God Himself, we are to be what some might call “reckless” lovers. Our displays of divine love should be impulsive, bold, and without consideration of what others might consider risk.
We are to stop at nothing – no obstacle, no embarrassment or shame, no doubt or fear – in reaching out with His love!
Luke 9:23-27
We love God absolutely when we knowingly and urgently value every moment the Lord provides us to love others sacrificially for His glory!!
CONCLUSION:
Pitch Servant Evangelism
1 Peter 2:9-12
We love God absolutely when we knowingly and urgently value every moment the Lord provides us to love others sacrificially for His glory!!
CELEBRATE COMMUNION
