Entrusted and Faithful
1st Corinthians 4:2
Five things a man must learn to do, if he would make his record true:
To think without confusion clearly
To love his fellowmen sincerely
To act from honest motives purely
To trust in God and heaven securely.
To proclaim our release & freedom boldly.
1. We all realize that as Christians, each of us has been given responsibilities in God’s Church.
2. We all know our responsibility is more than just warm the pew, visit, or say an occasional “Amen”.
3. Jesus explained how we would be judged, (Sheep or Goats).
4. It is up to us how effective our ministry is.
1 Corinthians 4:2 “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. “
What we have been trusted to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us.
God entrusted his reputation to ordinary people, people filled with God’s Spirit.
God entrusted His most priceless gift to a very human, very young, earthly mother. Why? Because God so loved--that He gave. He relinquished His hold on His Son and placed Him in fragile human arms.
1. God holds us responsible, not for what we have, but for what we could have; not for what we are, but for what we might be.
2. God’s gifts have been entrusted to us for a purpose. If that purpose isn’t fulfilled, His gifts are wasted. What’s the use of having an eye or a hand that doesn’t serve the entire body?
We have been entrusted to have a positive influence, for today, for tomorrow, and for the future.
God will hold us responsible as to how well we fulfill our responsibilities to this age and take advantage of our opportunities.
There are several reasons why his people have failed. Our sorrows are usually the result of letting our wishes replace our duty.
1. Like many Christians today, some of the early church had a faulty view of the future.
They looked with anticipation on what would happen, instead of understanding what was happening.
2. They focused on Christ’s return rather than their responsibility to occupy enemy territory, proclaim freedom, and demonstrate their authority
The church’s responsibility to occupy the world can be compared to what happened in 1983 on the island of Grenada.
Due to the rise of Communist insurgency, the U.S. President ordered troops into Grenada. In just eight hours, the battle was over.
However, many of the Communists would not accept defeat. Rather than surrender, they sniped at our troops from behind cars, buildings, and trees.
So our troops remained there until the victory was secured and a new government was installed.
A. When Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, He was victorious over all God’s enemies.
He clearly won the victory. However, Satan and his followers have not accepted defeat and still try to claim victory.
Christ is victorious He has established His troops--the church--to live victorious until He returns to take us away.
B. The church is God’s occupational force until He comes again. Rather than focusing on their future rule with Him, therefore, Jesus wanted the disciples to focus on their impact in the world and be ready to receive and proclaim God’s power.
2. Its Normal to seek to escape from responsibility
The Bible, touches frequently on this subject. In its pages we encounter men with a burning desire to escape
What one notices in the case of the Bible, is that people want to get away from responsibilitys.
The Psalmist wishing that he had wings like a dove, for then he would fly away and be at rest;
A prophet, Jeremiah, standing up for God in the capital of his nation, Jerusalem’s most unpopular citizen, telling himself that it would be wonderful to betake himself to a hideaway in the desert.
Elijah in full flight from the problem posed for him by Ahab and Jezebel;
Jonah booking a passage, not for Nineveh where his duty lay, but for Tarshish;
John Mark deserting Paul and Barnabas in the dangerous hinterland of Asia and making by the swiftest, safest route for the security of Jerusalem and the comforts of home
Religion down the centuries has repeatedly been escapist in this sense.
The rise of the monastic movement in the early church is a case in point.
Christians withdrew in great numbers from cities and towns and deliberately elected to reside in solitude in the most inaccessible parts of the earth they could discover.
Why? They were impatient with it and its evil ways. They were afraid of being defiled by it.
They longed to escape from it, and they supposed mistakenly as it afterwards proved, that if only it were out of sight its temptations would be out of mind.
So there began something like a mass movement in disengagement.
Withdrawn from the world they prayed for it night and day, but they did not see their Christian duty in terms of Christian service performed in the busy centers of the world’s life
To this day too much religion is sheltered, shut up within church walls, out of touch with the stern realities and pressing urgencies of everyday life.
It is mostly an affair of Sunday mornings, and what goes on in churches on Sunday mornings has only a marginal reference to what is going on in the community, the nation and the world.
1. Church attendance for the majority of Christians is the major religious act, the substance of their church membership.
2. Attention is focused on personal piety, and by comparison little is said about social responsibility.
This is why much contemporary religion lacks dynamic appeal.
The churches have not kept abreast of the people’s needs and have been insensitive.
Instead of stirring up the public conscience they have blunted it by an excessive emphasis on peace of mind.
Self-contained and ingrown, they are only marginally effective
Too much of our religion has been escapist, comforting and comfortable, a private luxury.
Too much of our church life has been self-contained and ingrown.
No church that drops its disciplines and demands can deepen its life or broaden its outreach or make a clear-cut impact on the world around it.
Some of you have been seeking God and have failed to find him.
You may have been looking in the wrong place. God is found and known in involvement and commitment.
1. When Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment he replied: "’Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.’ That is the greatest commandment. It comes first.
2. The second is like it: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Everything in the law and the prophets hangs on these two commandments."
To love is to care, to be concerned, to respond to the claim of God and of our neighbor.
God is love, and it is in loving, in caring that He is known.
What tremendous emphasis on feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned, ministering to the needy!
It is the point made in the Epistle of John: "Beloved, let us love one another he that does not love does not know God. Nobody has ever seen God (but) if we love one another, God dwells within us, and his love is perfected in us."
In 1920 Harry Emerson Fosdick stated the case thus:
The great social needs and the projected social crusades of our days, which so depend on faith in God, may well themselves create the atmosphere in which we find God.
It is a grievous misinterpretation to suppose that God’s reality dawned on men, like the Old Testament prophets, in mystical aloofness from the social needs and social movements of their time.
Moses came face to face with the Eternal in the wilderness? To be sure, but the journey that so ended in a lonesome place before the face of God did not start in solitude at all. It began in Egypt among a suffering people. He heard whips whistling over the backs of the Hebrews until he winced. He saw women staggering under the loads of bricks to build Pharaoh’s treasure cities, until he could tolerate the infamy no longer. One day his scorching indignation burst all bonds. A brute of a man laying the knout upon a Hebrew! Furiously the son of Pharaoh’s daughter ripped his dignities and titles off. Only one thing mattered - just one thing: Israel must be free! There, in a high hour of social passion and sacrifice, began the road that, leading out from fury to wisdom, brought him at last to God.
Let us see to it that our major emphasis is on our Christian faith as requiring of us involvement, concern, and commitment.
A secretary on the job is engulfed in problems. Her husband left her; a son is in rebellion; she can barely make ends meet. She cries out for help. We don’t hear.
A fellow employee is overwhelmed by the complexity of overcoming his chronic drinking problem. He longs for a friend. We’re deaf to his cries.
The owner of the gas station where we’ve traded for years has just lost his wife. His eyes echo his loneliness. We don’t see.
A wife would love to share with us the trauma and trivia of her day--just to have a listening ear. Our ears are closed.
And as the "perfect" ending to such a self-centered day, we hurry to the church building and get our weekly door-knocking assignment as we hasten to engage a cold prospect in an ambiguous process which we have labeled evangelism.
Does that approach make sense? It seems to me it is time we acknowledged the fact that a good translation of the Great Commission has it reading: "As you are going into all the world. . . ."
You see, we are in such a hurry to "go!" that we miss the very ones whom God brings into our path--"as we are going."
May God awaken us to the realization that true evangelism is loving the world the way God loves it;
It is allowing our hearts to be broken by the things that break God’s heart;
It is acknowledging that there is no difference between "evangelism" and "benevolence"
that true evangelism begins with Matthew 10:42: "And if anyone gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you, he will certainly not lose his reward."
