Five Principles for Christian Stewardship, Part One
Malachi 3:6-10
Did you know 16 of the 36 parables are lessons on how to handle our money and possessions? One out of ten verses in the gospels are about money and possessions, totaling over 2000 verses in the the Bible overall! This clearly shows what an important topic stewardship is to studying and living by the Bible. Five basic principles form the central idea behind stewardship.
Everything belongs to God. All you’ve ever possessed, all the things you own now, and everything you will ever have all belong to God. We fool ourselves into thinking we have built and things of our own, but we forget that every tool and material we use is God’s creation, not ours. Everything we make ourselves is made up of things made by God long ago. Everything we know belongs to God because it was made by him for us.
We are stewards of what belongs to God. A steward is a caretaker, a manager, not the owner. He has built it in our hands for us to take care of. We are all stewards by virtue of being God’s creation, it is just up to us what kind of steward we will be. We have control over whether we treat the things God owns with respect.
God has a genius and gracious plan of finance for His kingdom’s work on earth. It is called tithing. Tithing is giving 10% of what you have earned back to the Lord. Everyone is treated equally with the same expected rate of giving. God only asks us to give back 10% of what is already 100% His!
You might think you can’t afford tithing. It’s a problem that affects many of us, but there are a couple things you can do. First, try starting with a plan of giving that’s within your means and work up gradually to tithing. Alternatively, you might choose to jump into tithing by faith. This is because through faith you trust that the Lord will provide for you. God has promised that tithing will be rewarded with great blessings.
Stewardship isn’t about raising money, it is about raising God’s children. Give back to the Lord what He asks you to give back. Next week we will learn the remaining two principles of stewardship.
Other sermons in this series: