Time, Talent, Treasury, Relationships: A Good Steward

Sermon outline

Every believer will answer to God for four things entrusted to them, their time, their talent, their treasury and their relationships, and a good steward gets involved in the work of the Lord rather than waiting to be asked.

1. Stewardship responsibility number one: our time

   Rich or poor, every person has the same amount of time, and what matters is what we do with it. God will ask the believer what he did with the time allocated to him on the earth: whether it was spent on selfish ambition or for the Lord, invested in the things of God or squandered on the things of the world.

   “So God will judge the believer by his time.”

2. Stewardship responsibility number two: our talent

   Every believer has a unique talent from the Lord, and saying you do not know what yours is will not do when aptitude tests abound and when you already know. The talent serves your tent making, your profession, but more especially the work God has put in you to do for the world around you. Some have a grace for people, some for technology or music, and church is not for a select few on the stage while everyone else sits quietly in the corner.

   Illustration: The visiting team was not only singers and musicians but people handling multimedia and social media, because the whole message is being broadcast, not just the song.

   “That talent was not for you and for selfish ambition. That was given to you for the Lord's work.”

   • Hebrews 10:25

3. Stewardship responsibility number three: our treasury

   Some people receive money and immediately spend it on jeans, clothes or a PlayStation, then trust the Lord for debt freedom. There are seasons, a time to eat and a time to sow. The tithe is not optional, and asking what the church will do with the money is the wrong question. Saving and investing are good, but putting hard-earned money into the kingdom is paramount, with the tithe as the absolute minimum.

   “You never find a blessed man complaining about giving.”

   • 2 Corinthians 9:10
   • Matthew 6:21

4. Stewardship responsibility number four: our relationships

   We will be judged on our relationship with the Lord, with the house of God, with people, with places and with things. Some people will only ever hear the gospel through how you live and how you react. Anything that takes more of our attention than God, the phone included, has become an idol. Walking in love does not mean inviting your critic home for a prayer meeting, but it does mean refusing to spite them or speak ill of them, and discerning when to respond and when to leave a thing alone.

   Illustration: When someone dies, a family will often sell the house because every corner reminds them of the person. That is how much weight a relationship with a place can carry.

   “It's easy to love when somebody's loving you. Not so easy to love when somebody's criticizing you.”

   • 2 Corinthians 10:5

5. Get involved: a steward in the world and in the house

   The visitors who crossed the world to share the gospel are a picture of good stewardship. Believers carry authority to speak and declare, rather than justifying where they are by what has happened to them. If you are not sure where you fit, get involved, whether serving, cleaning, painting, plumbing or electrical work, and seek the kingdom first. He reads from Hebrews 13 on brotherly love, hospitality to strangers and the honour of marriage, with the reminder that God will judge.

   Illustration: Before he was a pastor's son he was just a kid at another church, told that this was for so and so and that was for so and so. It did not stop him trying and getting involved, and that is where it started.

   “So you are a steward there, but you're also a steward in the house of the Lord.”

   • Mark 16:15
   • Matthew 6:33
   • Hebrews 13:1-4
   • Hebrews 2:3

In this message