January 31, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

ENTRUSTED WITH THE GOSPEL
1 Corinthians 4:1-5

[start with video: “Stewardship—Plain and Simple”]

Does what I have belong to me or God? That’s the question that we keep coming back to in our series on stewardship—and the biblical answer keeps coming back the same: It all belongs to God! I am now in my fourth week of a series of sermons on stewardship that I’ve called “Embrace the Trust.” The trust part is two-fold—God has entrusted everything we have to us as stewards. We’re to use every such resource in our lives as He would, trusting Him to take care of our every need as we do.

We’ve dealt with the overall principle and applied it to our money and our possessions. We also talked about it in the context of our giving. Last week we dealt with the interesting and challenging issue of being good stewards of our bodies—if you weren’t here, I might challenge you to listen to it online. This morning we’re going to deal with a facet of Christian stewardship that you may not have considered a “stewardship” issue before. The basis of it comes from our text. Let’s look together at the beginning of the 4th chapter of 1 Corinthians—
[Read 1 Corinthians 4:1-5, TNIV]

As servants of Christ, we have been entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. We have been entrusted with the Good News of the Gospel. Have you ever thought about how much God has entrusted to people just like you and me across the ages? Just think: it was to Jesus’ 12 disciples—one of whom defected before the mission ever truly began—and the few hundred or so faithful followers of Jesus that He entrusted getting the word out on the Good News that there is forgiveness, new life, hope and peace to be found and experienced through Him and His sacrificial death. We’re here today because they were faithful with that trust! There are millions of people around the globe today worshipping Jesus Christ and proclaiming that Good News because those early followers of Jesus were faithful stewards of the Gospel then! It’s amazing!

But as the saying goes, “Christianity is only one generation away from extinction.” We are now the stewards of the Gospel. It’s in our hands. And we must ask ourselves, “What is the legacy of faith we are passing on to others in our generation?”

Let’s dig a bit deeper into Paul’s statement to the Corinthians, particularly verses one and two—
[1 Corinthians 4:1-2, TNIV]
We are servants of Christ. We belong to Christ. We are subordinates to Christ, fully responsible to Him. Many of you can recall the role Joseph, in the Old Testament, played in the household of Potiphar. He was a servant to Potiphar and Potiphar had entrusted the management of the entire household to Joseph. Joseph was expected to do everything Potiphar instructed him to do. The Apostle Paul years later saw his role—and ours—to be servants of Jesus Christ who do all and only what God directs us to do. And the truth is that every believer needs to see himself or herself in such a relationship with God—He’s God and we’re not; He’s the Master and we’re the servants. As some kids might put it: God is the Boss of our lives. We are Christ’s servants.

As his servants, then, we are entrusted with the secret things of God—with the mysteries God has revealed. As stewards, we are given the responsibility to direct activities and make decisions in behalf of the Owner. So we are given authority to share the Good News of the Gospel with others—and we’re accountable to God for how we handle that responsibility.

What do I mean when I saw that we’re entrusted with the Gospel? The Good News includes the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection—and how, by these, Christ has provided for our forgiveness and salvation. But the Gospel goes further to include the mysteries of God—the power of God’s ways and unfathomable strength of His love and grace, poured out upon all who turn to Him for salvation. The Gospel includes the encouraging word that we are not alone, that our Heavenly Father walks with us. And all of this is more than just quoting Bible verses to people—it’s sharing the hope and the peace that’s found in Jesus.

Peter wrote in his first epistle:
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. (1 Peter 3:15)
Paul wrote to his friend Timothy—
Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage–with great patience and careful instruction. (2 Timothy 4:2)
We are to make the most of every opportunity. It’s what’s meant by being a steward of the Gospel. We must not only understand the Good News of the Gospel, but we must allow it to transform how we see the world and how we interact with people in our world today. We are to always be prepared to bring God’s truth to those who are without it.

We’ve been talking about the concept of leaving a legacy recently. As most of you know, we’ve used that term in the context of challenging our people to give proper attention to estate planning—which we believe is an important though often-neglected aspect of Christian stewardship. But we know that the legacy we leave goes well beyond our financial and material resources. The most important legacy we’ll leave behind is what others will have seen or learned about Jesus by observing our lives. The quotation I used two weeks ago is certainly relevant in the broader scope of us being stewards of the Gospel—
Let us not be afraid to begin tasks that are longer than our lives. (Francis Ward)

The task of sharing the Good News of the Gospel with our world is a task that’s bigger than any of our lives—but we need to jump into it anyway! The assignment given us by the Lord can never be completed by any one of our lives, but we must see ourselves coming alongside thousands and millions of others who are co-stewards of the Gospel with us today. We’re certainly not alone in this—and the job won’t be completed in our lifetime!

And, as stewards of the Gospel, we’re not responsible for how others respond. They’re responsible for that. Our responsibility is to be faithful stewards, sharing the Gospel with our words and with our lives. As servants of Jesus Christ, we have been entrusted with the mysteries of God’s marvelous ways.

As stewards of that Gospel, we are called to be faithful. I believe that in one sense Paul is speaking of the trust that had been given to him and to the other apostles of the Early Church, as leaders in this great mission. We could translate that today to the responsibility that has been given to pastors and other church leaders. And I sense that responsibility!

But I do not carry that responsibility alone! Ultimately, it is shared by us all. I don’t believe we can read the New Testament and not have a sense that the monkey’s on all of our backs! We have been entrusted with the Gospel and we are called to be faithful with that trust. We are to be trustworthy.

And as I was thinking of this challenge, I got to thinking of people I have found in every church I’ve served (including Valley Shepherd!) who were absolutely serious about being faithful with that trust. They did not see that as the pastor’s job—whoever that pastor happened to be. They saw themselves as responsible—partners with others in the stewardship of the Gospel in their time and place. And while there have been far more persons who took that trust seriously than we have time to discuss this morning, a few faces came to my mind.

Merle Foraker was a mail carrier who had served on the board of the Galion, Ohio Church for many years when I arrived as pastor. He seemingly knew everyone in that town—and I learned from my friendship with him how much mail carriers end up learning about those they serve—just by seeing the mail that they get! But there was a tender side of Merle that I have loved and appreciated across the years—for he had a genuine interest in the needs of people in our church and in our community. And whenever there was serious Kingdom work to be done, Merle could be counted on to stand with me.

Another face from that church that comes to my mind is a lady named Fairy Casey. She’s what I appreciatively call “an effervescent Christian”—radiating the love and joy of Christ wherever she is. She and her first husband had owned and operated a store in that town for many years—and she knew everyone and always had a word of encouragement for people.

When I went to Bedford to pastor, I quickly gained a love and appreciation for a man named Lloyd Schofield. As I recall, Lloyd made his living maintaining large industrial equipment. But he spent his life serving others. He was a senior adult already when I became his pastor, and he was still teaching 3rd and 4th grade boys in Sunday School—and was one of the best children’s Sunday School teachers I’ve known as he poured himself into not only teaching those boys but loving them. Our son was one of his boys! He’s the kind of man a pastor can depend upon—in prayer, in encouragement, in integrity, in confidential matters. He clearly saw himself as a steward of the Gospel!

When we went to Kansas City, I became pastor to a man who had been Cindy’s boss in our earlier days in Kansas City 25 years before when Cindy and I had met and married. I didn’t know Dick Fields well then, but I appreciated how he treated my wife like a daughter—for example, making sure, if she had to work late at Nazarene Publishing House, that she got to her car safely in an area of town that wasn’t always so safe. I came to love Dick Fields so much as his pastor! What a wonderful man of God with such a Christlike spirit! Whenever I’ve talked with him since we’ve left Kansas City, he reminds me that he and his wife pray for us everyday. He worked for 50 years for the Nazarene Publishing House, serving most of those years as the Director of Productions. He gave himself wholeheartedly to that work as a steward of the Gospel would, and all the while stood with others in the work of the local church.

I could go on and on in citing marvelous examples of men and women who embraced the trust of being stewards of the Gospel. And while they inspire us—and they do!—perhaps the most significant question we must ask is this: How are we to live out faithfulness in our stewardship of the Gospel? Let me suggest a few ways to you.

The first is in the context of what we have often called “Spiritual Gifts.” Listen to a passage from Ephesians 4—
It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13)
The New Testament listings of spiritual gifts are not all closely aligned, leaving us to believe that it’s not meant to be a finite, definitive list, but the principle is that God has uniquely gifted each of us with certain personal abilities which we are to use for His Kingdom purposes. In Corinthians 12, we read of additional spiritual gifts, including gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, discernment, and administration.

The bottom line is that God hasn’t made us all alike—aren’t we all glad for that?! Can you imagine how boring this world would be if all of us were like me? Or like you? Scripture speaks of us collectively as “one body”—
The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body…Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body…But in fact God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be…The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”…Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. (1 Corinthians 12:12, 14-15, 18, 21, 27)
As God has gifted us, we are entrusted as stewards to use those spiritual gifts—for His Kingdom purposes.

In a little different way, every one of us has talents that are unique to our personality and character and makeup. Some have music talents that they use to help us worship. Some are talented in working with their hands—building and maintaining things. Some of you are incredibly talented in cooking. And on and on we could go. God does not give us these talents for us to merely use selfishly. They are part of the resources entrusted to us for His purposes. They’re not really ours—they belong to Him, and we are to be faithful stewards of them.

Scripture teaches us to be faithful stewards of our time. We’re going to talk more about that next Sunday…

Some people see their work as something totally apart from their walk with Christ. But the truth is that God has put us where He has in order to serve His purposes in that place and time. That doesn’t mean we are to be less committed to doing what our superiors in the work setting instruct us to do and expect us to do—it’s just that we see our jobs as a gift entrusted to us by God and that we ultimately see our work accomplishing a greater purpose than even our employers might recognize. We’re to be exemplary workers, but ones who understand our work in the context of God’s greater plan. Certainly God has you in that workplace setting to accomplish His purposes in the lives of those with whom you work and with whom you interact in the course of your work.

We’ve probably talked more about money than we have possessions, so let’s acknowledge now that our possessions are such that we are to be faithful stewards of them. That may mean that your house is intended as a tool whereby you can extend hospitality and kindness to others. It also means that we hold loosely to things, responding to the promptings of the Lord when He instructs us to give something away to someone who may need it more than we do.

Have you ever thought about the need for us to be faithful stewards of our insights? Some people are tremendously creative—and God wants us to be faithful stewards of the ideas He gives us. It is God who grants wisdom, and wisdom needs to be shared in the right place and the right time and the right way—but it needs to be shared for Christ’s Kingdom purposes.

Can you see your relationships as treasures over which you are to be a faithful steward? Can you dare to see your interactions with other people as unique opportunities to serve the Lord and to serve others? There may be no other person in their lives who is a positioned to help them embrace the breadth of the Gospel quite like you! I’m learning before I get with friends and family members to ask the Lord to help me be a blessing to them. And I’m seeing more and more that I am a steward of the Gospel—and that my faithfulness to that calling is essential!

I’m also learning that the “chance meetings” I have from time to time are from the Lord. God has purpose in what may seem like random encounters. It’s part of being a faithful steward of our time—and allowing for God to send interruptions into our day whenever He so desires!

Verses 3-5 of our passage for today deal with the whole matter of accountability. Paul is acknowledging that God is the only One who can truly judge our faithfulness in our stewardship of the Gospel. It doesn’t ultimately matter what others think; it doesn’t even matter what we think ourselves about our “performance”! What matters is God’s judgment of our faithfulness in the stewardship of the Gospel.

Of course, we seem to have a cultural predisposition against anyone “judging” us—including the Lord! In the spiritual realm, our culture has fostered the thought that we can do whatever we want, that we can even create our own religion. We don’t want to believe that we are accountable to anyone—even to God!

But that doesn’t change the reality that we are accountable to God. Paul speaks of God judging us “when the Lord comes.” It’s like the end of many of the stewardship parables that Jesus told—about someone who went away and left his property in the hands of a steward. Those stories all seem to end with “When the master returned…” There always came a day of reckoning—just as there will surely be for each of us. And truly, when Christ returns as Scripture tells us He will, only the Lord will be capable of judging us.

So our question today then needs to be: Will God find that we have been faithful with what He’s entrusted to us? Will He deem us having been faithful with the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Will He conclude that we have been faithful in doing our part in pointing people to Jesus Christ? Will we have been faithful with the spiritual gifts He’s given us? Will we have been faithful with our unique talents? Will we have been faithful stewards of the Gospel in the context of our relationships?

Can I just admit something to you? When I put it like that, I am overwhelmed! I can’t do it all! I’m not good enough to pull this off! But I am reminded that we are not in this alone. Remember what some say is the most often quoted word from the Lord in scripture? “Fear not!…Don’t be afraid!” God does not desert us in this challenge. He does not desert us in this tremendous stewardship challenge! He walks with us! He empowers us! He picks us up when we fall short! He encourages us and cheers us on—until the battle is over and we fall into the loving arms of Jesus.

May God help you and me to be faithful stewards of the Gospel of Jesus Christ—whatever that may call for in each of our lives.