Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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A Biblical View of Money – Stewardship part 1

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Opening

Well, this is part three of a series that we are going through on money. And in those first two sermons, the first one we talked really about the heart, looking at Matthew 6: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And we also talked last week as we looked at 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 about giving and generosity, how we’re called to be generous with our finances, just as God is generous to us. And today, we’re going to look at Matthew 25 and the concept of stewardship. But before we get into the passage we’re going to focus on, I want to give some context. In Matthew 24, Jesus is talking about his return. He tells us to be alert, to be ready, and to be found about his business when he comes back. Then in the first part of Matthew 25, Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven will be comparable to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise. Five of them kept their lamps ready for the bridegroom to come and five did not. And Jesus told us to be alert, for we do not know the day or hour of his return. And then we come to the passage we’re going to read here, where Jesus is going to continue to tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like. And so we’re going to go to Matthew 25, verse 14, if you want to turn there. We’re going to read through verse 30.

For it is just like a man about to go on a journey, who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey. Immediately the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and gained five more talents. In the same manner the one who had received the two talents gained two more. But he who received the one talent went away, and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, “Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have gained five more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” Also the one who had received the two talents came up and said, “Master, you entrusted two talents to me. See, I have gained two more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” And the one also who had received the one talent came up and said, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.” But his master answered and said to him, “You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

(Matthew 25:14–30, NASB)

So the kingdom of heaven is like a man who’s going on a journey, it says here. I’m reading the New American Standard here. He calls them to him and he entrusts his possessions to them. He entrusts it to them.

We Are Stewards, Not Kings

And before we get into what he entrusted to the people, his slaves or his servants. And this highlights something that we all are, and often forget about in this life. Everything we have is a gift from God. We don’t deserve or even really own any of it. In the eyes of man, yes, your stuff may be your stuff, or maybe not, depending on what it is and where you are. But every good and perfect gift is from our heavenly Father. Jesus is Lord and sustainer of all, and in him everything holds together. In reality everything belongs to him. He is Lord. Amen. So what does that make us? A steward manages something for someone else, often money or property or something of great value. If you’ve ever seen or read The Lord of the Rings, there is a character named Denethor [audio unclear] want to be. He fell prey to darkness and evil. He rejected the return of the king when he came to claim the throne, and ended in burning. Kind of like that useless and weak servant that gets thrown out into darkness. Denethor was not the king, and we are not either. We serve Christ. He has given us a [audio unclear], and we serve at his will. And he’s given us resources to steward as a help for that mission. And not just for us to do whatever we want with it.

The Dominion Mandate

This mission, this stewardship assignment, can be traced all the way back to Genesis 1. In Genesis 1, verse 26, it says:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

(Genesis 1:26–31, NASB)

This is what we call here in Genesis, at the beginning, the dominion mandate. We were given dominion over the earth. Not to be lord of it over Jesus, because he’s Lord of all, not to be master of it over God, but to be in submission to him. And God gave us what we needed to take care of this dominion in his name. He gave resources to accomplish it. God put Adam in the garden to cultivate it and keep it, and told him he could eat of any tree but one, because God was the master, not Adam. So he gave him stipulations. After the flood, God reestablished the mandate and told them to be fruitful and multiply, and he gave them again what they needed to do the job. Church, we are his servants, servants of the Lord, here to do his will, not our own. We have a job to do. We have been entrusted with a task. And then Jesus at the end of Matthew gives them the mandate again with the clarification. He says, all authority has been given to him in heaven and on earth. So again, he is the Lord over all. “Go therefore”—so he’s the one in charge. We’re all his servants and stewards. We’re to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that he has commanded. And he says he’ll be with us always, till the end of the age. He’s never going to leave us. This command, just like the dominion mandate back in Genesis, means we are servants and stewards. And the church has resources to do the things that God has called us to do. So with all that said, back in Matthew 25, we’ll keep working through it.

Faithful and Unfaithful Servants

Verse 15 says, to one he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. So he knew what they were capable of. He knew. He was giving them their talents based on what he knew they were capable of. Then he goes on the journey. This passage is often turned into a sermon on the talents or abilities God has given you, and money is sort of left out of it. And the principle there of it being whatever God has given you, whether talents, abilities, finances—the principle is sound. But it’s not directly what Jesus is talking about here. A talent was a measure of weight, and here he is specifically talking about money. So a talent, it depends on where you look, but essentially, if it was silver, which was the common currency, with the denarius being a day’s wages, that means a talent would be worth roughly 16 to 20 years’ worth of wages, and in today’s terms most people put that at over a million dollars. So the exact amount isn’t important, but we’ll just say, as we’re going through here for our understanding, a talent is a million dollars. So one guy got five million dollars, another two million, and another one million. Because if you’re reading, you’re like, oh, five talents, two talents, one talent. Man, that poor guy only got one talent. He didn’t really have a lot to work with. Well, I’ll take a million dollars if anyone wants to give it. And I’ll steward it well. But it was given to steward and use while his master was gone.

But look at what verse 15 says. He gave, again, he gave to each according to their ability. The master knew the ability of his servants. He knew what they could do and what they could handle. And so they must have at various points shown what they were capable of as they worked under him. Church, Jesus knows our abilities. He knows what we can handle, and he sees what we have already done with what he has given, as we’ll see more of that as we get into it further. But next, in this passage, the one who had five million, he goes and he trades and he gains five million more. So he goes from five million to ten million. He used the money to get more money. And the guy with two million, he did the same thing. He used the money to get more money. The guy who had one million dollars, one talent, what did he do? He hid it in the ground. He went and buried it. So the master comes back. The one who took the five million and made five million more, he showed his master and he’s overjoyed. He’s like, great job, you doubled this, welcome. He welcomes him into his joy and tells him, hey, you were faithful in a few things, so you’re going to be put in charge of many things. I don’t know if you caught that. He says, faithful with a few things. I don’t know who considers five million dollars to be like a few. That sounds like a lot, right? But that means you’re talking to someone who’s utterly rich. And church, this is exactly what we have. We have the Master who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. All belongs to Jesus. So the same thing happens with the one who had the two million. He’s told, well done, good and faithful servant. He enters into joy with his Master and shares his happiness. But the one who was given one million, just we’ll read it again, he says, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.” This guy, he was afraid. He was afraid. Fear was running his life and his decisions. So he went and he hid the money in the ground. He was afraid to mess up. He was afraid to lose it. So he did nothing with it. And the response from the Master, he called him a wicked, lazy servant. He told him, hey, you should have at least put the money in the bank, so I would have gotten it back with interest. It wouldn’t have doubled, but a little interest on a million dollars is a lot of money. So the Master takes the money from the guy who did nothing and gives it to the one who had ten million. Jesus says, everyone who has, more shall be given. Why? Because they show themselves faithful. Back to what we saw in 2 Corinthians last week, good stewards who show themselves faithful are given even more so that they can continue to be faithful and generous. And those who do not have, because they aren’t faithful even with the little bit they have, those will be taken away in that final day. This is a reference to our future. Again, storing up treasures for ourselves not on earth, but in heaven. The good steward uses his resources well. That is what money is, church. Money is a resource. It is a tool, and it is one to be used for God’s glory like all the other tools and resources we have. The good steward uses it well and lays up treasure for himself in heaven, where God will richly reward him. The bad steward tries to lay it all up as treasures for himself on earth. And one day it’s all going to be taken from him. And then, as we saw here, what happens? It does not go well for that wicked and lazy servant. But if we remember back in verse 15, again, the money given each according to their abilities—the last guy’s ability was not lacking. It’s not like the man who said, well, I know he’s not going to be able to do anything with this, but I’ll give it to him anyway. No, he knew the ability of that servant. It was other things that hurt him. He was wicked and lazy and fearful, and so he did nothing. He did not steward well. It doesn’t say he went and spent it lavishly. He just didn’t use it. He didn’t use the resources that he was given. Church, don’t be like this guy. Don’t be like the man that was thrown out into the darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth. Don’t be like him. Stewardship is really obedience, faith in action. Real faith in Christ bears good fruit. Amen. Stewardship here is about obedience. It is about faith. We are called to steward what God has given us, to love the Lord with our money and obey his commands, recognize that he is the one who has given us the money and we are to use it for his glory to further his kingdom.

Using Money to Make More Money

So how do we do that? We mentioned last time, one of the ways we do it is by being generous, by giving generously, by supporting the church, our brothers and sisters when they’re in need. But the Bible has a lot more to say about money than just that and how we should be using it. So we’re going to start walking through those things today and next week at least and look at some of those other areas. And I would say the first one, if you’re looking at this passage, one of the things you use money for is to make more money. That is what they did and that’s what they were commended for. It might kind of sound kind of weird to hear a pastor say that. You might think that sounds sort of like the world, oh, we get money to make more money. I get it. It can be bad. It goes back to the heart though. In this text, the one who buried his money was thrown out, and the one who used the money to double it was given even more. I’m not encouraging you to chase making money for money’s sake; that’s not what Scripture says, but again, money is a resource, and a resource that does many things. If you just think for a moment, how are you supposed to eat without money? How are you supposed to have a home without money? How are you supposed to educate your children without money? How are you supposed to take the gospel to the ends of the earth without money? Or provide your pastors with a salary without money? You need these things. It is a resource and one that can be used for a great many things. The church here, we can’t operate without money. Organizations like Reach, who are out there trying to save the lives of babies, they can’t operate without it. So they do big fundraisers to raise and then use that money to save the lives of children. Money is not bad. It is a resource. And more money is not bad in itself. It is good when we use it the right way. So making more money to be able to do more good, that is a good thing.

And so we’re going to talk about some of the ways that that happens. One of those is investing. Investing with eyes on the future, not just the moment. We like to live in the moment, but Scripture talks about wisdom thinking beyond this moment, right? We’ve got to think beyond the moment that we are in. Investing helps you be generous not only now, but in the future. Investing is also wise so that you have what you need many years from now when physically you’re unable to work in the same way you were when you were younger. So investing is something that is done by the wise. We know that with our children and with discipleship, at least I hope we do. We invest our time in our kids, amen? We invest our time into those who are younger in the faith, and it bears fruit if we do it well. Sometimes multiplying a hundredfold if we invest well. Our world and country here honestly make it pretty easy to invest in ways that not all that long ago would not have been possible for many people. And again, this is a blessing from the Lord. There’s a lot of different ways to do it. One of the most common ways is the stock market. If you put money into the S&P 500 consistently starting when you’re young, by the time you’re in your 60s, you’ll definitely be a millionaire. It’s pretty simple, at least in theory, but it requires discipline to do it well. Now, I am not a financial advisor. I am a pastor. But I do want to talk about this from an angle that I think a lot of people haven’t thought about. And some of you need to hear just the simple, hey, invest some money thinking about the future because you’re not doing it, and in wisdom you should. Some of you are probably nodding your head, you’re like, yeah, I know this, this is good. Some of you might be sad because you know it, but you can’t seem to find the money to do it, and I understand that as well. But if you are in that last group, you can’t figure it out, I’d love to talk and help you figure it out or connect you with someone who can talk with you and figure it out. But if you’re in that second group, you’re nodding your head and you’re like, yep, this is good. I know this. Hold on, because I have some more to say about it for you.

Righteous Investing

“Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death.” And Proverbs 15:27 says that whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household. Church, there is such a thing as sinning with how you make your money. And if we think about it, no one in here would disagree. There are some ways that Christians should not make money, amen. And I’ll just give a couple examples in case you’re not sure. Let’s say there’s a lot of money to be made from selling pornography, which there is. And so you open a shop for it. You don’t make the videos, you just sell them. Well that’s treasure gained by wickedness, amen? Let’s say you realize there’s a ton of money to be made in selling abortion drugs. So you open up a shop doing that, being greedy for unjust and unrighteous gain. So the question is, that I think we have to ask is, how much money is it right for a believer to make off of evil? And I would propose that as Christians we should do our best to avoid it completely as far as we know.

So how does this relate to investing? Well, if you bought those S&P 500 stocks like I was talking about, you own a share of the largest 500 publicly traded companies. That’s what it is. But that also means you’re making money off of things like the sale of abortion drugs and many other evil and unrighteous things as well. Because when you invest there, you become an owner. So you’re a part owner in this company. Now, you’re not really making a lot of decisions in how money is being made, but you are making money every time an abortion pill is sold. You’re profiting off of unrighteousness and evil. Now, I would guess a lot of you did not know that. I did not know that at all until very recently. I was shocked, I was sad, and honestly, I was tempted to do nothing. Because I was like, well, what difference does it make if I pulled my little bit of money out of the S&P 500, like what difference would that make? And I actually think it can make a difference, which we’ll get to a little bit later. But I came to the conclusion, even if it did not make a difference at all for that company, it makes a difference to the Lord and me, my money. So I was talking to my wife about this and she asked, okay, but how is this any different than like going and shopping at Target? We’re spending money at a place that promotes unrighteous and evil things. Which is a good question, but I would say there are some differences. First, Paul talks in 1 Corinthians 10 about meat sold in the marketplace. He says, eat any of it without raising questions of conscience. Okay, you don’t know anything about that and you don’t know what they’re going to go do with the money. So, buy the meat, eat it. There’s a difference between buying something from a [audio unclear] as the two examples that I named. And when you own stocks, you own a portion of a company. You profit off what they do and are at least somewhat responsible for what they do as well. And so brothers and sisters, I encourage you to really think about it and investigate and ask yourself, is your money being made in an unrighteous way? And I don’t want you to get all worried about every little last piece of, you know, where the money is. If you’re investing in the stock market and you’re buying these things, you’re becoming an owner, so you should think about it.

That led to another question for me. Okay, so if I’m willing to do something about it, how do I even know? How do I even know, right? That led me to trying to figure out how each company makes and uses its money. Honestly, that’s an extremely time-consuming and difficult task. I honestly don’t have time for it. There are others who have decided to do this for us. Inspire Investing is one, for example, that they go and do all the research for you, and they actually score each stock and tell you about the good things that they do with their money and the bad things such as abortion drugs. It’s a completely free tool. All you have to do is put your stock in there, it gives you a printout of all of those things, and tells you about it so that you can see. So that helped with my first question of, okay, how do I know? But my second question was, well, okay, so if I know and I decide to pull out of that, how do I easily invest money into some sort of fund without me having to go research each individual stock? Because again, I don’t have time for that. The same company, which is one of many Christian companies out there, by the way, they’ve actually created funds that invest in all of the best companies that do good things with their money and that they keep your money out of the stocks that are doing unrighteous and evil things. And historically speaking, as long as they’ve been operating, it has done just as well as the S&P 500. So there are options out there. But I would encourage you, church, as Christians, we need to think about how to take what God has given us and multiply it, but we need to think carefully about how we do that, and make sure we’re doing it righteously. Are we using the money in the best way possible?

Money for the Work of the Kingdom

We make money by working hard, something we’re all called to do, by the way. You’re called to work; we’re called to work hard. God created us that way. And this is all a gift from God, church. Even the strength to work is a gift, right? He [audio unclear] gave the abilities. It all belongs to him and he has called us to be good stewards. Good stewards in how we use money to make more and multiply what we’ve been given, and good stewards in how we use it and how we spend it and how we give it. So I already said investing, which we’ll come back to in a little bit, or making more money, that’s one of the ways. But we can wield that invested money and ownership of stuff to influence companies as well, to work righteously instead of unrighteously. That’s what we’re going to get to in a minute. We can be generous with our finances, but we can also use it for other things as we’re walking through. We can use it for the spread and establishment [audio unclear]. We talked about it when we looked at 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, but if you take missions for example, we are to go and make disciples of all nations. Take the gospel to the ends of the earth, which requires resources. And one of those resources is money. It costs money and quite a bit to send the Cooks to translate God’s Word for people that have never heard it. It costs money to send the Olinicheks to go encourage the Cooks to translate God’s Word, right? It requires money to go to Belize and encourage the church there. It costs money to get the gospel into the 10/40 window. It’s very difficult to get in there. There’s over three billion people on the earth that have had no exposure to the gospel. It means those people have never heard the name of Jesus. Reaching them requires people willing to be trained up, requires people willing to go, and it requires people that are willing to send them, which means it requires money to do that.

And if you think of churches, one of the most important things that we do each week is gather to worship the Lord, amen? To operate as a church, we have to have a place to do that. And in some places, the weather is nice enough that you could literally meet outside most of the time. Missouri is not like that, okay? If we didn’t have this building, most of us wouldn’t be sitting through this sermon right now because we’d be frozen. That’s just reality. So we need a building in order to operate. We need pastors to shepherd the flock, and Scripture says to pay them well. In order to do the basics that we need to do as a church, it requires resources, money. And then if you want to add more ministries, that’s more money. It’s just the way that God has set up the world to work. That’s just how it is. He set everything up that way. So the more wise of a steward you have been with what God has given you, budgeting as we talked about, investing, working hard to increase, the more you’re able to contribute to God’s kingdom. The more generous you are, as we saw in 2 Corinthians, the more God is going to equip you to be even more generous. It’s a part of God’s system in how he set up his world. And we talked about this a little bit last week, but when Christians are not wise stewards, when they aren’t being obedient, when they don’t work hard for money, when they don’t give, when they’re not generous, the work of the gospel is hindered. Again, missionaries can’t go without funding. The church suffers when it doesn’t have resources. Pastors have to end up working bivocationally. Usually not because [audio unclear] a state.

And that’s the problem in our country, and our country is the government education of our children. In the Greek word there is talking about the whole training and education of a child, the cultivation of the mind, and the reproof and punishment, the training and care of the body, everything. We’re to cultivate their souls, correcting their mistakes, curbing their passions, and training them to love the Lord. And you don’t do that by sending your kids to the government school 40 hours a week. As the late Voddie Baucham was famous for saying, he said, you can’t send your kids to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come back as Romans. So parents, they’re responsible for their children’s education, which is not easy, and the church should be coming alongside the parents, not the state. And there’s a lot of reasons it’s not happening like it should, but again, one is the cost. Schooling is extremely expensive, which honestly it should be, because we’re talking about the education and training of children for years and years. And we pay people all sorts of money for lots of things, but when it comes to the education of our children, almost all teachers, even government teachers, are underpaid. And it’s difficult for a man to earn a living for his family if he chooses to be a teacher. And it’s just about impossible if he’s going to be a Christian school teacher, because it costs money for good education. And so for the church to come alongside the family and do this well, if the church wants to open a school, if it wants to provide support, and the church in America giving at a rate of two to four percent, it’s hardly possible. But as I said, if the church starts doing what God’s called them to do, they steward well and they give generously and that church budget goes from that 2 to 4%, even to just 10%, then you’re talking about a two, three, or even four or five times increase for a lot of churches. And then maybe schooling and free tuition and stuff like that is possible. Again, putting on things like the Foundations Conference. It costs a lot of money. The fall party we put on costs money, going to Belize, all these things, just honestly taking care of our aging building so that we can worship costs money. So my point is ministry, it costs money. And the money we’ve been given, church, we’ve been given by God to steward well for his glory and for his kingdom. So again, when I’m talking about using money to make money, I’m not encouraging you to go out and invest and work hard and save all your money so you can go indulge all of your lusts and [audio unclear] can steward it even better and be even more faithful with it. God created us to work and use wisdom and steward well and multiply what he’s given us so that we can use it to accomplish the work he has put before us.

Wielding Investments for Good

And those things I talked about with church and missions and school, those are just a few examples. This is a part of the dominion mandate. God created us to take dominion and to work this world, to go out and gain knowledge and wisdom and understanding and make and use resources to take what he’s given us and increase it and use it to do things he’s called us to do. And church, if you use your money like I’m describing, that is fantastic. And honestly when people think about investing money and using it for God’s glory, the things I mentioned here are things that they think about, and the thinking is, okay, invest it, so there’s more of it, so then in wisdom, I have what I need to take care of me and my family and give generously to God’s kingdom, which is terrific. But circling back to investing, I believe we should think a little bit further than that.

So I mentioned that fund that Inspire Investing had that’s operated by Christians. So they invest in companies who are not making money off of unrighteousness, but they also seek out good investments in companies that do good things with their money, taking dominion. Seeking to invest like this, church, I think wields our funds that God has given us not only for good in the future, 10, 20, 30 years from now, but for good in the present during the time that it is invested well. And I think if the church, if Christians do this really well together, a lot of great things can happen. Now, I don’t have much money on my own. But together, when groups with a lot of other believers have money that is making money for us to do good things with, it can do good things while it’s making money. So just as an example: the president of Inspire, he was managing one of these funds, which is now pretty big. It’s billions and billions of dollars. They were invested in Costco. And they discovered at some point that Costco was giving a bunch of money to LGBTQ-plus stuff. And instead of backing out right away, he actually sent some messages to Costco. And almost right away, he got a phone call from the CEO of Costco. He called him and he’s like, hey, hey, don’t pull out, give me a little bit of time to figure out like what’s going on. A couple of weeks went by and all that stuff was ended and their money was no longer going that way. Because the CEO, he stood to lose investors. So what did he decide to do? He’s like, well, we’re not going to make money in that way. We’re not going to send money that way. We’re going to make sure that we listen to these people who have their money invested in us. So the money that Christians had invested in this fund was wielded to do good in the community and our nation, which is awesome. Praise the Lord. And church, I think I shared this last week, but Christians in our country have over 20 trillion dollars in the stock market. That is an insane amount of money. And so if you can imagine what would happen if even just like 10 or 20 percent of the church started to look into this and care about how their money was being made and was directing it towards good things and away from unrighteous things, that moves the needle. And companies decide, you know what, we’re not going to do these things anymore because they care about making money. So our funds can be used in the moment for developing and supporting [audio unclear]. And then they can also be used later for good things, supporting you and your family and allowing generous giving as the Lord enables. So I encourage you, don’t just think about how much money will have grown and how much you should have in X amount of years. It is a good thing to consider; you should, but seek to use it even now to promote righteousness and not wickedness. To use that money in all stages for God’s glory, not just at the end when you get it back.

Closing Charge

So we have a lot more to look at in the next week or two here as we continue this conversation of stewarding well, looking at debt and lending and providing and inheritance and saving and maybe some other things. But this is where we’re going to stop this morning. So in closing, I encourage you to remember, church, God has given us all abilities. Every single one of you here, he’s given you strengths, he’s given you finances, resources; those are all gifts from God. And as his people, we are to use them for his glory. We’re to use them to take dominion, to multiply what we’ve been given to accomplish good works, which he’s prepared beforehand for us to do. So I encourage you, look, just as the last couple of weeks, we’re looking at the heart, we’re looking at what our money is doing, look how you’re doing in this area. God created you to work hard, he gave you abilities and gifts. Are you working hard? Or are you just, hmm, I’m just getting by. All the money you’ve been given by God, church, are you stewarding your money well? Take a look. One of the reasons I have talked about having a budget, because if you don’t have a budget and you don’t have a way to track how you’re spending, you probably can’t tell if you’re doing a good job with your money or not, because you just don’t [audio unclear]. And he’s called us to imitate him. Are you being a generous person with your finances or do you hold back? Don’t let money have a hold of your heart. Do work hard and steward well for God’s glory. Amen.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray. God, we thank you for your provision, that you always provide what we need, and God, that as we’re faithful stewards, you continue to enable us to be even more faithful stewards. So, Lord, I pray as we go through this series and we’re looking at stewarding well, God, that you would help us as your church to steward well, to be using money well for your glory, God. We would let go of money or other things that have a hold on our heart if it’s gripping on tight, God. We want to have our hearts set on you and not money. Lord, I pray that if I said anything this morning that is not of you and from your Word that you would strike it from people, Lord. But God, as your Word has revealed things, you’ve spoken to people, help them to be obedient and follow through. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.