w This is now the fourth week—the final week—in our series on stewardship. Stewardship: It’s a Matter of Trust began with us looking into God’s trustworthiness, continued with God looking into our trustworthiness, and now for the past two weeks has been involved in what author John Maxwell calls The Trust Test.
The Trust Test, if you recall from last week, is a line to be crossed, a decision to be made. At some point in each of our lives we come to a point where we must decide if we will make our actions line up with our words. A.W. Tozer said it this way: “The man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself with secondary ways of escape so he will have a way out if the roof caves in. What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day.”
To get a handle on the Trust Test, last week we began with an acrostic:
“T” stands for take a personal inventory. Taking inventory is looking at and taking stock of our lives. It is seeing how we are measuring up against what we know we are to be doing. It means we need to look at every facet of our lives and ask, “Am I trusting God in this area of my life?”
“R” is for recognize God as our supply, and it basically means that we acknowledge God as not only the source of what is good in our lives but that we recognize that He is, in fact, continually supplying us with all that is good.
“U” is for the fact that must understand God’s principles of stewardship. And here we began to unpack what it means to be a steward of God. The first two principles—the Divine Boomerang principle and the Give and Grow principle—we heard about how we must keep those two principles not only together but in order. First God gives to us and then we give in response, and to separate those two actions is unbiblical and results in not just poor stewardship, but no stewardship.
Principle number three—and this is where we pick up again on the interactive sermon sheet—principle number three is the “Who is number one?” principle. This is the principle of stewardship that most people are immediately familiar with. It goes back, way back into the Old Testament times when God declared to ancient Israel that, in order to honor Him rightly, they were to give the firstfruits of all that they had.
This can be difficult for us; instead of giving to God off the top, instead of giving Him our first and our best, there is a tendency for us to give Him of our leftovers. At times we’re like the little girl who went to her mother to ask for some money. Her mother handed her two dollars—one for ice cream, and one for giving to God on Sunday. Now this little girl heard the ice cream truck coming down the street, and so she got in a hurry, and as she was running down the street, one of the dollars slipped out of her little fist and blew down into the sewer. She stopped, and wasn’t sure what she should do. With her little lip quivering, she looked down in the sewer, then to the dollar in her hand . . . and then finally at the ice cream truck just down the street. Then she looked up at the sky and said, “Sorry God . . . I dropped your dollar” and off she went to get some ice cream!
Now, is that how you give to the Lord? Do you deposit your check, then pay the bills, then buy the groceries, then go out to eat . . . and THEN drop a bit of whatever might be left into the plate on Sunday? That’s not the way God says brings Him honor. Instead, God says we are to set aside His portion first—before taxes, before bills, before groceries, before play money.
Don’t go dropping God’s dollar.
Now you may be thinking, “Well, I’ll give to God of my firstfruits; but I’m not gonna like it.” And that offering plate comes around and BAM! . . . you chuck your money in the plate. Oooooooohhhh . . . . bad idea. That goes against principle number four: the “Cheerful attitude” principle.
The Cheerful attitude principle tells us that the management of God’s resources, that stewardship begins with the love of God working in us. It begins with loving, and not giving. It is a legalistic view to look at stewardship primarily as a religious duty to be filled, a spiritual checkbox to mark off once a week. What we need is an attitude of gratitude, a cheerful heart that is eager to give.
We talked briefly about this last week: How the Apostle Paul was so impressed by the church in Macedonia that he wrote to another church, the church in Corinth, saying in 2 Corinthians 8, “And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. 2 Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. 3 For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, 4 they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints. 5 And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God's will.” The church in Macedonia had been infected with God’s love . . . and His love just poured out of them. They were cheerful givers.
Legalism says, “What do I have to give?” Love says, “I want to give!” Legalism says, “What is the least amount that I must give and still do my duty?” Love says, “Please let me give!” Legalism says, “How little can I give?” . . . but love says, “How much can I give?”
See, it may be true that we can give without loving, but we cannot truly love without giving. Each one should give what they have decided in their heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
The fifth and final principle that falls under the heading of Understanding God’s Principles is the “Do it now” principle. This, too, is a bit of a reminder from a few weeks ago. Recall that stewardship is built around what we are doing now. It’s very real, very concrete. Stewardship doesn’t deal with hopes or intentions, saying, “I would give more if I had more,” stewardship doesn’t say, “I’m not giving anything now, but I’m planning on getting a big refund check in the mail, and I’ll be sure and give then.” See, you can’t do that! A trustworthy steward is one who is correctly handling what God has given him right now. There’s a little poem that goes with this, and it goes, “Procrastination is my greatest sin, it brings me untold sorrow. I’m going to stop putting things off . . . perhaps I’ll start tomorrow.”
Don’t do that! We can’t keep putting off to some indeterminate time in the future when we’re going to start being trustworthy stewards. Because if we keep on banking on what we’re going to do tomorrow, with what we may have tomorrow or the next day or the next month or the next year . . . if we keep on banking on tomorrow sooner or later there won’t be a tomorrow. The Master of the house, Jesus Christ, will come back and ask you, “What did you do with what I gave you?” And the fact that we had good intentions will really mean very little. Do it now—today is the day.
If we take each of those five principles—the Divine Boomerang principle, the Give and Grow principle, the Who Is Number One principle, the Cheerful attitude principle, and the Do It Now principle—if we take each of those and truly understand how God is working through us in each of those principles, then the next step in the Trust Test is to Surrender everything to God.
This is an aspect of stewardship that, frankly, can get pretty uncomfortable to us. Surrendering everything to God is closely related to the first commandment. Remember the first commandment? A little catechism test, here . . . it starts “You shall have no other gods before Me.” What does this mean? Answer: We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. And so if we surrender everything to God, it simply means that nothing in our lives comes before Him. Nothing else is number one.
Now, folks always seem to want to qualify the meaning of “everything.” You mean my money? I mean EVERYTHING. You mean my time? I mean EVERYTHING. What about my health? EVERYTHING. How about my family? EVERYTHING. What about * EVERYTHING.
EVERYTHING means . . . every thing. It means that there is nothing that you or I have, eat, breathe, spend, or use that is not a gift from God. The trustworthy steward acknowledges everything as a gift from God, and everything is in it’s place—beneath God. Not overshadowing Him, not blocking our view of Him, not gripped so tightly that He can’t use it . . . but everything we have is held in an open hand, for God to take and use as He sees fit.
Surrendering EVERYTHING means this:
You can’t only give and not serve.
You can’t only serve and not give.
You can’t give money but no time.
You can’t give time but no money.
You can’t pick and choose what you’d like God to have from you.
You can’t pick and choose what you’d like to have from God.
You can’t come to church on Sunday and forget about God on Monday.
Leviticus 27:30 says this, “A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD.” Everything you have already belongs to the Lord, refusing to surrender it to God doesn’t make that any less real . . . but it does make stewardship more difficult.
The final letter in the Trust Test is “T”—Test God’s promises. I like this one. It has seemed at times like all the rest of the stewardship principles have been Law-oriented; they’ve been things that God has commanded us to do in His word. And that’s okay, because David says in Psalm 119:97, “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.” God’s Law is good . . . but it can’t save us. And so I find it simply astounding that God says not to test Him in His Law, but in His promises! The Word of God recorded in Malachi 3:10 says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.” Right there you have the one place in all of Scripture where God says to test Him. He encourages us in that chapter to put Him first and to test His promise.
But what is His promise? Is it simply that if we tithe that He will increase our wealth? No . . . that is far too chintzy of a promise for our God. His promises go well beyond mere material comfort here on earth.
The Apostle Paul, speaking to the church in Corinth, says in 2 Corinthians 1:19-20, “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not "Yes" and "No," but in him it has always been "Yes." 20 For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God.”
The promise of God is Christ. And so when God invites us to test His promises, He first points us not to money, not to things, not to stuff . . . but to Christ. And in Christ God gives us rich promises, real promises that mean something. Not just for now, not just for a little while, but for all eternity.
You want to know something? You want to know the absolute bedrock of being a steward? You want to know the foundation of having a relationship with Christ, of receiving great, big, enormous gifts from God and returning a portion to Him and His work in thanksgiving for what we’ve received? That is in the promises of Christ, and there is ultimately no better reason I can give to you for being a trustworthy steward, of taking the Trust Test, than the promises of Jesus Christ.
Jesus says in John 5:24, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.
In Matthew 5:11-12 He says, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Again in John 10:28: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.”
And there are so many more:
In Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
In Matthew 28:20 “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
John 15:5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 6:35 "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
John 8:12 “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
John 10:11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me-- just as the Father knows me and I know the Father-- and I lay down my life for the sheep.
And John 11:25 "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies”
We test the promises of God that we read from His Word, we test our trustworthy God against what He has promised and given in Jesus Christ, and in that testing He proves His trustworthiness and through the Word our faith grows.
Today we are talking primarily about giving, about money. But the principle is that Stewardship is not a single action or, indeed, a set of actions—it is a way of life, it is a matter of trust. It encompasses all of us, our outlook on every aspect of life. It is a matter of trust.
A friend of mine a few years back told me a story about a preacher he knew. When people came by and greet the minister on the way out the door at the end of the service, it often happens that someone will say, “Good sermon, preacher!” And this wise old preacher would always respond by something just a bit odd. When they came by and said, “Good sermon!” this preacher would simply nod and smile and say, “ . . . We’ll see.”
“We’ll see . . .” This preacher was wise enough to know that the mark of a good sermon is not whether the people get pumped up on Sunday morning, it’s not if you get an emotional reaction to a story he told, it’s not how passionately he spoke. No, the mark of any sermon worth preaching is whether you can measure it’s effect in changed lives. A good sermon is one in which the Holy Spirit has worked in you to change your heart, to bring about a change for the better in your walk with Jesus Christ. That is what you call a “good sermon.”
When the preacher said, “We’ll see” it simply meant that if the message had been truly good that people’s lives would be visibly changed . . . the preacher would be able to see it. He might have to wait until next week, next month, maybe even next year . . . but in the end his reward wouldn’t be a compliment on the way out the door but in being able to see how God had used him in to work a spiritual change in the lives of the people whom he had been given to watch over.
The end of this sermon, then, isn’t mine to write, but yours. Today I ask you to write the end of this sermon by hearing the Word of God and obeying it, by allowing the Holy Spirit to work a true change in your hearts and in your lives. The end of the sermon is our Trust Test.
We’ve heard the Lord speak from His Word on this particular aspect of stewardship and giving, over the past week you’ve been in prayer over the amount you will commit to give towards God’s work in this place, and now has come the time for you to step up. In just a moment you will have the opportunity to put down on paper the dollar amount and the frequency that you’ve already committed in your heart to give. Simply take your pledge sheet, fill in your information and fold the sheet in half. And then, any time during this next song . . . when you are ready, I ask you to come forward and place your commitment on the altar. Just put it right up there . . . right on the altar. Take the Trust Test . . . God won’t let you down.
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