SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning, listener. I'm Pastor Richard, and I want to ask you: do you know what the key difference is between a homeowner and a home renter? Between an employer and an employee. Today we begin to explore Christian stewardship and identify one issue that could prohibit you from being a faithful steward onto the Lord. My father grew up in a day and age when we we didn't readily throw things away. If something broke, uh you would work to repair it, to fix it, to see what the problem was. And this ability to perform skilled labor was seen as a sign of intelligence and of someone who was capable. All right. So this is someone that we would see positively. These were positive traits of a person. This is in contrast to my years in China. Uh, what I experienced, at least in the area of China where I lived, was manual labor, skilled or not, was looked down upon. It was seen as a sign of poverty that you were not able to pay someone else to do such things. Um getting your hands dirty was seen as a negative thing. And so uh back to my father. See, he grew up during uh challenging times, and as a result, he had trouble throwing anything away. And uh the thought was, you know, it might possibly have value someday. Maybe this thing would eventually be useful. And even now, in his 80s, uh my father, if you walk into his house today, you'll still have trouble walking through some parts of the house because there are things stacked up. Uh, maybe saw this here, saw that there, and uh just collected because maybe one day this will be important. For a long time I didn't understand why things were like that. But now I I understand a bit more. And although it's been around 35 years since I lived with my father, uh, I sometimes recognize some of the same habits in my own life. And uh, although to a lesser extent, okay, to a lesser extent, to be clear. You know, uh in our storage room, I have one or two containers filled with cables. Why do I have I don't know, but there are USB cables, there are uh uh power cables, there's power adapters, there's electrical cord, in case something needs fixing. Well, why go out to spend money on a new one? I have right there. Uh if my wife were sitting here, she's with the children today. If she's sitting here, she'd be nodding and laughing, I'm sure. Uh so I do see some of this in me. Even growing up, uh what it had its challenges. Uh, you know, once I went for an entire year straight uh with a physical issue that was causing me quite a bit of pain because I couldn't afford to go to the doctor. And so it just dragged on and on for a year. Uh I didn't miss many, but there were a few times I missed meals because we we just didn't have any meals to eat. And in the winter time, because you know uh we have seasons over there in the US, you know, in the winter there were times uh we were we were pretty cold because we couldn't afford to turn up the heat uh to what would be a comfortable level. So you put on lots of things to wear uh and you just take enough to take the chill out so that the fuel, the heating could stretch as long as it needed to do. Why share all this? It's because this all comes from uh a poverty or a scarcity mindset. And this this is important as we go through today and we're looking at stewardship. You see, God has blessed us to be a blessing. Amen. Do we know that? We're not blessed to enjoy a good life, although there's nothing wrong with enjoying the life that God has given us, but we are blessed to be a blessing. And this comes all the way, of course, from the book of Genesis, chapter 12, the second verse it says, uh, speaking to Abraham, I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. And this is God's pattern. He blesses us that we can be a blessing to others. Poverty does not prohibit us being a blessing to others. For those of us who uh don't have a lot financially, poverty does not hold you back for being a blessing to others. And I've I've experienced in China and in India some of the most amazing hospitality from people who had nearly nothing. And yet they they found a way to be a blessing through the hospitality and through their smile, through their warmth, through their welcoming. Poverty does not keep us from be a blessing, but a poverty mindset does, however. As we're talking about uh stewardship, I thought one good way to perhaps uh illustrate stewardship is the difference between a homeowner and a home renter, all right? Because there are definite differences. The homeowner will want to invest in the home. After considering, the homeowner will decide, you know what, it is worth paying the money and investing into this thing because this is something long term. You go in the kitchen, maybe the countertop and all the cabinets and needs changing. That is gonna cost a lot. But the homeowner says it's worth it. I'm investing into this thing. The renter, we know the renter isn't going to do any of these things. It's a it's a different mentality. Uh when it comes to painting the walls, the renter may just uh ignore some things. But if you're the homeowner, you'll want the house to be looking nice. You care about it, you care about its appearance, you care about its upkeep. If you are the homeowner, you're very careful. When you go out, that air con will be off. We'll only run it at certain hours because you know exactly what the bill is. But as a renter, perhaps the agreement is different, and so you don't look at these things so much. It's a difference in mentality because the renter has a short-term mentality, but the owner has a long-term mentality. Another example is perhaps the employer and the employee. There's a very different, uh, there's a great difference in mindset there. The employee come in, clock in, do the work. 6.01. Wow, I'm already late clocking out. Better go and clock out. All right. Um, the employer has, of course, a very different mindset. Always looking ahead, trying to forecast the sales, trying to see what is happening in the market, uh, what is the competition doing? We need to innovate, we need to continue changing things. So the mentality is very different. Perhaps uh we we just give a definition of stewardship. I think it's time. The definition I would give to you is stewardship is the process of being responsible with someone else's property for the time that it is entrusted. It's the process of being responsible with someone else's property for the time it is entrusted. And there's a few aspects to stewardship. One is initiative. A good steward takes initiative. And if we think through what we were reading just now, uh they had to take initiative. This this sum of money was entrusted to them, they had to take initiative with it. Uh, another aspect of a good steward is responsibility or ownership. So just as the owner and the renter, there's a difference, the steward has a certain mindset where they are responsible for whatever is entrusted to them. We don't just do do the minimum or or look at whatever the let's just box out the requirements and do only that, but they're really responsible for it. Stewards must know how to delegate as well, at least according to the parable, we see there's delegation at play. They must be disciplined, and they must be accountable. These are the aspects of stewardship. Stewardship, I'd say, we we first see perhaps in God's charge to Adam. And this is from chapter one, beginning with verse 26. It says, Then God said, Let us make man in our image and after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created him. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, Behold, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. And then later on in chapter two, it says, Then God, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Adam was, we could say, the first steward. God entrusted something to him. We remember Adam named the animals, named all the different creatures. And we can read here that he was given responsibility over creation that he was placed in. This responsibility is God given. And brothers and sisters, God has given you a responsibility with whatever he has given you, whatever knowledge of him, whatever experiences, whatever resources. In God's plan, we're all stewards, we're entrusted with something temporarily, and we we need to do well with it. I I I think of my family, my children. Um, I'm father to them, but it is also, in a sense, a stewardship relationship because I know they're going to grow up, they're not going to be children forever. Well, my daughter Sierra here growing very fast. Very fast. I will never stop being their father, but things will change after a time. They're entrusted to me, and I need to take this as a holy responsibility. So stewardship really involves responsibility. Now let's take maybe a closer look at our passage and especially its context. The first two verses it says, For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. Jesus' example, here in the parable, it was not about your skills and talents. This word talent is talanton in in Greek. Okay, has nothing to do with skills and talents. It's confusing since it uses the exact same word. The talanton was a weight, and it was a weight that we put on one side of the scale, and then on the other side, uh, it was a money measure, so you would put silver or gold, and it was to measure it. Can anyone guess how much one talent weighed? I'm okay with the actual response here. How much did one talent weigh? Speak up, give me a guess. Anyone? Okay. We do we do have some treats here as a reward. One talent weighed about 30 kg. This was a lot of money. And uh we would understand that in this uh passage, in this parable, he wasn't talking about gold, he's talking about silver. So 30 pounds of silver. And in today's money, if you look at it, how much it was worth then, you bring it forward today. Any guess how much that would be worth? Anyone at all? How much one thousand. All right, can we have a treat over here? Uh, much more than that? Yeah, right over here. Yeah. If you if you don't like the chocolate, you give to a friend now. Uh okay. We have a guess of a thousand. It's a lot more than that. Anyone else? Five thousand. All right. Uh one one uh chocolate for Uncle Sylvester over here. Keep going, keep going up. Thirty thousand. We've overshot a little bit, but that's that is uh not not bad. Okay, one more right over here. So today, roughly, I mean, we we can't exactly precisely see what the money would be worth, but it's probably around 23,000 sing dollars for one talent of silver. And so in this parable, and we they understood then it's a story, we understand now it's a story. In this parable, one person was given five talents of money. That is a huge amount of money. So, what's the context here? Uh in Matthew chapter 24, verse 3, this is where this whole section begins. It says, as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age. So the disciples wanted to know why Jesus was going to be leaving them, because Jesus kept talking about uh how he was going to be leaving them. They're starting to let it sink in. They wanted to know when he would be returning, and they wanted to know how this all fits in with the day of judgment, the end of the age. And so Jesus, he responds by speaking of signs that the day of judgment is near, about a time of tribulation. And so we see this in Matthew 24, we see this in Revelation as well. Uh he talks about how sudden his return will be. And he makes it very clear that only the Father knows the exact time of his return. We're looking at the context here, right? Then he begins to teach about the importance of that readiness. Uh, he talks about the parable of the ten virgins, if you remember that. And then we have today's passage, the passage about the talents, the parable of the talents. And so he concludes after this by telling of the day of judgment, uh dividing the sheep and the goats. And here in Singapore, we probably don't know, but to look at sheep and goats, they can look very, very similar. It can be very hard to tell them apart. And so uh the sheep will be known for their actions and their choices, and and so will uh the goats in that uh parable. And the sheep will enter into eternal life, and the goats will go to eternal punishment. So the context of our parable today, it's about relationship to God, our readiness to meet him face to face, and the report that we will receive. Our relationship, our readiness, and our report. So we look at relationship for it will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. In this parable, who is the man going on a journey? Who's the man going on a journey? The master? Is that what I heard? And who is the master? Sorry, I can't hear the master is Jesus, right? Do you do you need another chocolate for that answer? Doing okay? Oh, okay. One more, one more down at the end. All right. Uh it is the master. It's Jesus, God the Son. And where has he gone? I I I heard heaven. Who said? You gotta raise your hand so you can get your chocolate here. Someone oh, oh, oh, okay. All right, back there. Yes. Okay. Uh my lovely assistant, my daughter will give you chocolate. Yes, and where has he gone? To his father. Uh, we know the sauce. From the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky, Lord, we lift your name on high. Amen. And who are the servants or the slaves in this parable? Us. Yes. Wherever you heard in oh, okay. All right. Let's not get too distracted here. Sorry, yeah. It's us, it's all of those who have heard Jesus. This is our parable today. During the Greco-Roman times, it was normal for slaves to hold managerial roles, and the majority of households would probably be uh administered by them. So it wasn't uh so strange that these in the story that these servants were given so much uh wealth. And so this example would have been a very culturally familiar one to the listeners in Jesus' time. And if we think on it, Jesus' parables they often included uh servants as stewards. The parable of the wedding feast that comes before the uh that comes earlier on in Matthew. Uh there were servants there who were in charge of things. Uh, there's the parable of the dishonest manager. Remember, one person owed a small amount and was forgiven, and another owed a huge amount and so forth. And these were again servants. So this was a very normal thing. Even in the Old Testament, uh, this was a familiar practice for servants to be entrusted with things. Can anyone here tell me the person who was a slave yet was entrusted with an entire kingdom? Old Testament, Joseph. Yes, thank you. Thank you. All right, you're getting your exercise today. You don't have your step counter on, but uh thank you, Sierra. Joseph, and there's another one, maybe not the entire kingdom, but there's another person, slave, Old Testament, who was entrusted with uh quite a lot. Any guess who that other one is? Daniel, yes, that's right. Wave your hand so she can come to you. Oh, okay, yes, that's right, Daniel, right? Daniel was captained taken captive to Babylon, but due to God's favor, he was made administrator over the whole province of Babylon. And friends, uh, this is God's way. He he himself also entrusts to people. So we have we have relationship, we have readiness. About 250 years before Christ, there was a Roman playwright named Titius Machius Plautus who said, You must spend money to make money. Does this sound familiar in our understanding of business today? People say this, right? It takes money to make money. In Jesus' time, those who had money would also have opportunities to grow it far, far. Far, far beyond what anyone else would. It was a huge difference. And so in the parable where we see that the one with five talents and the one with two talents, they doubled the money. This was very reasonable to expect. So the parable, in that sense, it does make sense. In verse 16 and 17, it says in the ESV here, it says that the first two servants, they traded the money. Says he who would receive the five talents win at once and traded with them with the money. And so forth with the two. What does it mean that they were trading? There was no New York stock exchange in those days. Instead, the money would have been used. How is it traded? Well, it was probably used to start up a business and to uh maybe to buy and sell goods, something of this sort. So it was a very active endeavor. It was not something passive, it was active. As a steward, this is not something passive, this is something active. We have to take initiative to be good stewards. And it tells us in verse 19 that the master returned after a long time. See, there was no telephones in that day, right? No, no handphones. Letter writing was very expensive. It was very expensive. You didn't write a letter for no good reason. The servants, they didn't get an update on Instagram that the master was on his way back, had a great time in this place on the way. No, there wasn't that. In the parable, despite there not being any advance warning, the first two servants they were ready for the master's return. They didn't know when he was coming back, but they were ready. And it's important, especially within the context, that we must be ready. We're told in the gospel, according to Matthew, this story. One will be taken, one will be left behind. The whole imagery all throughout is of something very sudden. Friends, I don't know if the Lord is coming back in a day or a month or a year or a hundred years. I don't know. None of us know. But we're told it's important to be ready. And these stewards, they were ready. They were ready for the master's return in this parable. And that return is the second coming of Christ. Amen. And this is Palm Sunday. I I was with my wife looking back at a year ago and was reminded of some things. If you rode on a horse, this was a sign of military might. If you rode on a donkey, it was a symbol of peace. When Christ came, he came with a symbol of peace to the city of Jerusalem. That there could be an opportunity for peace between man and God. When he comes again, the imagery is coming on a horse, isn't it? Because it's going to be a time of judgment. God has given us a wonderful opportunity and a long period that we can turn from our sin. And we must make the most of that. All right, uh, finally, we come to the report, the report given to the master. It says the first two servants uh they reported about what they'd done with what they'd been given, and they reported to the master, we doubled what you had given us. And yet the third slave comes and he claims that fear drove him to bury the money, lest somehow he end up with less money than the master had originally entrusted to him. He described his master as a hard master. Is this third servant in the parable being sincere when he says this? I think the response of the master in the story makes us quite doubtful of that sincerity. The master accuses him of being wicked and slothful. Wicked and lazy. The main issue in the parable was of laziness. The laziness of this slave is contrasted to the other two slaves who they are active and taking initiative, and they work to grow what God had given them. These ready servants were praised, and the lazy servant was scolded. And so, this time of reporting, this time when the master came back, they had to have the report. This again, we're looking at the context. It looks for the day of judgment which is coming. And each of us is going to have to give an answer for whatever God has entrusted to us. So there are three aspects of a good servant as we come close to bringing things to a close here. First, the good servant recognizes the resource is being entrusted, but not given to him or her. All right? When God entrusts something to you, whether it's wealth, whether it is talent, it is time, whatever it may be, this is given to you for a time, and it is for you to work actively for him. It's important to be uh very active in this. We are not passive in the things God has given us. Has God uh given you an opportunity to study the word, to go in depth, to look at commentaries, to understand more of the background, to understand more of what's going on. Guess what? That's not just for you. In our connect groups, in our conversations with others, if God has given you insight, share it. We are given something that we can be good stewards of it. And thirdly, here, the good steward is rewarded with greater resources and greater responsibility. And so with this, I just want to say there's a truth here for us spiritually as well. If you are faithful spiritually, you know what? God is going to grow you spiritually. If you are faithful in taking time to read your Bible every day, God is going to reward that. If you are faithful in prayer, maybe right now your prayer life is giving thanks for meals for some here. If you commit to spending more time in prayer with the Lord, at first it may feel not very engaging, but if you are faithful in this, God is going to reward you spiritually. Wherever we are faithful, God brings more. This is the principle I want to have here. Wherever we are faithful, God brings more. In the parable, this is what we see. Those who are faithful with what God had entrusted to them, God said, You, these ones are the ones being responsible. I'm going to give them more. They are trustworthy. They are faithful. I will give them more. You see, in your heart of hearts, do you feel that God is a hard master? Do you have this poverty mindset that there is very little? If so, after the service, I want you to come up for prayer. That we can pray together. That God will do that work talked about in Romans about renewing our minds, transforming us. Because as long as we have a poverty mindset, we we hold tightly to everything we have. And when we do that, we are blessed, but we are not being a blessing to others. We are blessed to be a blessing, amen. And when we do that, we we don't seem to be getting anything more. Why? Because we're not being faithful. If we're just faithful, God will entrust more to us. All right, so in closing, I just want to summarize, just like the servants in the parable, we're to know our relationship to the master. And for us, we are not servants, we are adopted as sons and daughters. Just like the servants in the parable, we are to be ready for his return. And every time we celebrate Holy Communion, we proclaim together Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. He will come again. Finally, just like the servants in the parable, we're going to be giving a report to him of what we did with what he has entrusted to us: our wealth, our time, our skills, our opportunities, our relationships. Friends, it's not by our good works that we are admitted to heaven, but there's going to be a time where every deed is going to be looked at on the day of judgment. Let's be good stewards. He's entrusted to us stewardship of time, talent, treasure, and truth, and we can be a blessing to others. We pray that you've been ministered to by the Word of God today. If you'd like to know more about Eastern Christian Church, please visit our website at ycccanglican.com. Have a blessed day.