(Powerpoint slides available)
SLIDE 1
[Opening Activity
Begin The following items are needed:
1. An empty, old bottle
2. A large key made of cardboard and spray painted gold. The key will have the verses of Matthew 6:19-21 printed and attached to one side.
"Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal.
Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves.
Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be.
3. A treasure map with the following directions: Find a person wearing red. Move three people to the left. Go two rows back. Find the closest person wearing glasses. Move one row forward, then take five steps toward the center of the building. Go to the closest person with a birthday in this month. Look under that person’s seat for the treasure.]
Instructions:
1. Hide the key under a chair prior to the church service.
2. Roll up the map and put it in the bottle. Take it to the pulpit to begin the sermon.
3. Say:
SLIDE 2
I am so excited because I found this bottle with a note inside. It must be a treasure map! Read the title, which says, “The Key to Riches.” Would anyone like to see where it leads? Select a volunteer, then let them start following the directions. Have fun!
4. Of course, the key probably will not be under the chair that they land on. Say: Maybe we misread the directions. Everyone look under your seat and see if you can find the hidden treasure!
5. When someone finds the key, ask them to come forward and read the verses.
SLIDE 3
*Adapted from Bore No More by Mike and Amy Nappa, Vital Ministry (1995), p. 75.
SLIDE 4
I am beginning this series today on “Getting a Grip on My Finances.” I don’t know of a subject that creates more anxiety for people—whether be in a family, a business, or a church. So I admit right now that talking about this and even preparing these lessons created anxiety for me. Some people will get angry anytime you talk about money at church. And I’ve counseled more couples who’ve had intense arguments over finances.
SLIDE 5
Most church members hate when a preacher starts talking about money because they believe that the preacher is trying to take a little more money out of their wallet.
However, the Bible tells us that our financial condition can tell us some things about our spiritual condition. In other words, the Bible sees a connection between my finances and my spiritual condition. You show me your checkbook and I can probably tell you what’s important to you in life.
SLIDE 6
The email spammers—the people who send you junk mail through your email know that financial concerns will grab people. Here are some of the junk emails that I received just this week: (This is not even half of them).
SLIDE 6
· Learn How to invest and leverage Oil, Coffee, Gold,
Heating Oil, Sugar, S&P Stocks
· Get PAID To Take Surveys Online!
· You Can Get Paid $15 to $45 an hour just for giving your opinion
· How to Generate a Life time of limitless Wealth
SLIDE 7
· Get Your Unclaimed Military Benefits
· A Free End to Your to Your Bill & Credit Problems
SLIDE 8
· Rebuild Your Credit with a $5000 unsecured credit line
· Reduce your debt in 3 minutes –talk about quick service (or this next one is even better)
· Get out of Debt Now!
· We’ll pay for you to see any movie. (I looked into this one since I like to go to movies. It said I could get 8 free movie tickets to the theater of my choice. Well, it wasn’t that easy. You had to fill out this survey with your name and email address—so I could be inundated with more junk email offers. And although I could have received “8 free movie tickets” I had to give my credit card number to pay a shipping and handling fee to receive the tickets. Thanks but no thanks—I closed that web page)
SLIDE 9
{8:30 SERVICE: Well, since I realize this talk is making you anxious today, I’ve brought in a therapist to help you. And I’m not talking about any therapist—I brought in the big gun—Dr. Phil! Yes I want to bring you some words of wisdom from Dr. Phil. He’ll be here with us for the next couple of weeks. Welcome, Dr. Phil!
[SHOW VIDEO CLIP 1]} START: It’ a matter of setting up your environment (follows: It is bad as we thought)—END: ..and only enough cash to get what you are going to do}
SLIDE 10
When I start talking about God’s plan for your finances the first word that comes to the mind of many people who have been in church for a long time is stewardship.
Stewardship is the most misunderstood word in the English language. If you were to ask most people in the church what stewardship means they’d say Money or Tithing or Giving.
But stewardship is not a financial program.
So why would I start this new year with an emphasis on stewardship? For one reason it’s the second greatest theme in the Bible. It is taught all the way through -- from Genesis all the way through Revelation.
Jesus talked more about stewardship than He did about heaven or hell or prayer or a lot of other things. Over half of His parables is about money. In fact, one out of every six verses in the gospels—the first 4 books of the New Testament-- have to do with stewardship.
Whatis stewardship?
One guy I know said to me “My home church welcomes all denominations, but really prefers tens and twenties.” Well relax I’m not going to tell you how much money the church would like to have. In fact it is not about the church needing money. In fact, God doesn’t need your money. Afterall he made everything, he already owns it. SO I hope I can get you to think about what is stewardship in a whole new way.
Webster’s dictionary
SLIDE 11
"Stewardship is the responsibility of managing some assets or affairs or property of someone else’s." Stewardship is managing something that isn’t your own.
SLIDE 12
The word "steward" means "manager". It’s the old English word for manager. I’m talking about how to manage your life.
To understand stewardship we have to go back to the very beginning of time. Genesis 1:1. Understanding stewardship starts at the very beginning of time.
SLIDE 13
Let’s go back and look at the creation story. Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..."
SLIDE 14
The first principle of stewardship is this: God owns everything. We sing, "This is My Father’s World." God owns everything.
SLIDE 15
The Bible says, "The heavens declare His glory... The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof." Why does He have a claim to everything? One, He created it -- He made it -- so He owns it. But more than that, He sustains it. The Bible tells us in Colossians that God holds everything together. He keeps the planets in line. God owns it because He made it and He sustains it.
That’s the fact. God owns everything. He owns you. He owns me. He owns this land. He owns everything because He made it. He owns the raw materials that made this building.
Obviously, a lot of things aren’t being used the way He wanted them to be used.
My question this morning is, Why did God make man? Why are you here? Why am I here? Why was man created?
SLIDE 16
The creation account: v. 25 God had created on five of the days and at the end of the fifth day God looked out over everything He had made -- He’d made the earth, the heavens, the sky, the animals, the plants, everything –
v. 25, the last statement, it says "God saw that it was good." Compare verse 25 -- God looked at the world and said it’s good -- to verse 31 where God saw all that He had made at the end of the sixth day and He said it was "very good". On the fifth day God looks at the world and says, "It’s good." On the sixth day, He looks at the end of creation and He says, "It’s very good."
What happened between verse 25 and verse 31?
Man was created. God looked at the earth and said, "I did a good job on this but there’s something lacking." And he made a human. And man made the difference.
SLIDE 17
Why did God create humans? Man was made differently from the animals in two different ways.
· Different in character.
"I’m going to make man like Myself. In My own image, after My own likeness." So we’re like God. So we’re like God in character. We’re not gods, but we’re like God.
· Different in our job description.
SLIDE 18
v. 28 "God blessed them and said to them [talking to man and woman] `Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth. Subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every creature that moves on the ground."
SLIDE 19
2:15 continues. The Lord God took man -- after He made him, He put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it.
Why did God make man? What’s his purpose? The Bible says that God made man to be the caretaker of the world, to be the manager, to be the steward of all the resources of all that God had created.
Notice 1:28 God said, "Here’s what I want you to do." First, He said "... be fruitful and increase." Up to that point we’re no different than the animals. He had told the same thing to the fish and the birds. He had said, "... be fruitful and multiply." That’s the only command man’s ever been able to keep.
"I’m making man a little different. Not only do I want him to be fruitful and multiply, but I want him to do five things." He spells it out:
· Fill the earth,
· subdue it,
· rule over it, (2:15)
· work it,
· take care of it.
.
SLIDE 20
Principle number one: God owns it all. Principle number two: You and I were made to manage what God owns.
What is humanity’s basic problem?: we forget what we were created for. We forget our purpose. Man goes out and manages what God has given and created and pretty soon man starts thinking he owns it.
We get to use it and we get to manage it and we get to enjoy all of life’s resources but God owns it. That’s stewardship.
SLIDE 21
Notice in v. 28 where God said, "I want you to rule over everything." In the King James it says, "I want you to have dominion over the fish and the birds and everything that moves."
You are God’s manager on the earth.
Stewardship, when you get down to it, is simply partnership with God. I Corinthians 3:9 says "We are laborers together with God." We work with God. We’re partners with Him.
What are the benefits of being a wise steward? or being a good manager of all that God has blessed me with?:
The better steward you are the greater your happiness. How? If God has given you, for instance, a talent and you don’t make the most of it, you don’t use it, you’ll be unfulfilled in life.
Every time we mismanage what God has entrusted to our care, it produces negative results.
On the positive side: When we are wise managers, God gives us things to manage.
SLIDE 22 the Bible teaches that the more faithful we are in managing everything that God has blessed us with, the more He entrusts to us. And the more we’re blessed with because He says, ’Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Matthew 25:21
The Bible says in Romans 14:12 "One day every one of us will give an account before God of our stewardship" -- our management, how we handle all of the things that God blessed us with.
God made it all. We’re the managers.
SLIDE 23
It starts from Genesis 1:1 and you find the theme all through the scriptures. Stewardship is the basic principle of life.
So why do I start this new year talking about stewardship at our church? Because if you don’t grasp this concept, you could end up the year having wasted a great portion of it.
SLIDE 24
So where do you start? You demonstrate by tithing or at least begin working toward tithing.
SLIDE 25
{8:30 SERVICE OK now—I’ve upped your anxiety. I mentioned the “T” word. Maybe you need some more words of wisdom from Dr. Phil.
[SHOW VIDEO CLIP 2
SLIDE 26
What about tithing or giving? All tithing is, is a reminder. That’s the only reason God gave it. Tithing is a reminder. Tithing means ten, ten percent. He owns it all. He just lets me live on ninety percent of it. God just says, "I want you never to forget that I’m the source. I’m the creator. If it weren’t for Me, you wouldn’t have your job. You wouldn’t have your life. I made you. I’m your maker."
SLIDE 27
I read about a church in the south that was growing so fast it ran out of parking space. They went across the street to a super market that was closed on Sundays and made a deal with the owner of the supermarket to use their parking lot. The owner of the supermarket said, "You can use the parking lot 51 Sundays out of the year, but on the 52nd Sunday, I’m going to chain it off." The church people said, "Why? We don’t understand. Why would you let us use in 51 time a year and chain it off the 52nd?" He said, "Because I never want you to forget that the parking lot belongs to the grocery store, not the church."
God says I just don’t want you to forget where it’s all coming from. That I’m the source of your blessing. I’m the creator."
SLIDE 28
Deuteronomy 8:17 "You may say to yourself, `My power and the strength of my hand have produced this wealth for me.’..." Doesn’t that sound contemporary?
SLIDE 29
Deuteronomy 14:22 -- "Be sure to set aside a tenth of all your field’s produce each year." Why? Last part of v. 23 "... so that you may learn to revere the Lord your God always." That’s the purpose of tithing.
SLIDE 30
Living Bible "The purpose of tithing is to teach us to put God first in every situation."
We don’t give to help out God. Is God poor? Does God have to depend on my tithing to make it? God doesn’t need our giving. We give for our own benefit. It’s a reminder that God’s the one who blesses and if it wasn’t for Him, we wouldn’t have anything.
As a child at Christmas time, my parents would take us down to the store and give us their own money to go out and buy them a Christmas present. We’d buy the present and bring it back and they always got real joy out of seeing what we bought them with their own money. If they had wanted to, they could have gone out and bought the thing themselves. It was their money in the first place. But they got joy out of watching their children take money, that wasn’t even their’s in the first place, and spend it back on the parents.
SLIDE 31
That’s exactly what God does. God doesn’t need our giving. But He gets joy out of seeing us return a portion to Him of what was His in the first place. But we give it back as a reminder of the stewardship of why God put us on the earth.
Tithing is just a minimum standard. If you are not tithing today, I challenge you to figure out what percentage you are giving of your income. Increase it by 1 % every 3 or 4 months until you achieve the tithe. Check one of the choices on the response tab and turn it in today.
PRAYER:
God today I have learned you own everything. You created the world and everything in it and intend everything to be used for its purpose. Today I have learned you created me for a purpose to be a good steward, a good manger of all that you have entrusted me with. Heavenly Father, today I need to pray "God, how do You want to use the career or business that You’ve allowed me to be in?" or "Lord, how can I make best use of the time which you’ve given to me?" or "Lord, how can I make best use of the money that You have given me?" or "Lord, how can I make best use of the talents which you’ve given to me?" Help me to realize that Tithing is simply a reminder that all of it really came from You in the first place. I don’t want you to waste this year. Today I commit to following your plan for my finances and all of my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
(Ideas about stewardship influenced by Rick Warren’s thinking on purpose-driven life)
